Page 34 of Crushing His Mountain Flower

“You’re a loyal little creature, aren’t you? I really believe that no matter what I did, if I raised a finger, you’d come back to me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

He snorted, and his dark eyes gleamed at me. What burned maliciously in those depths? What made him such a wicked, brutal man, so uncaring of his own wife and child?

“Girl, I own you and I have for a long time.”

My temper flared uncontrollably inside me, and I twisted my hand to fling the water in his arrogant face, but he struck faster, knocking the glass away before a drop could get on him.

The water splashed all over the floor, the glass slipping through my fingertips to shatter on the ground.

And in a second my husband had me up against the table, my hands clutching the wood as he gripped my hair.

“Léonie Bastide, what the hell has gotten into you?” he growled.

Emotion almost swamped me, but instead of love it was rage.

“I could never come back to you. Not after what you did to me.”

“What I did?” he hissed, his arms caging me in, his weight pressing down on my back as I felt his hard thigh against mine. “What about you inviting other men into our bedroom?”

“You didn’t even check yourself on the paternity test, or even do any investigation to see if maybe, just maybe, you were being lied to and set up. You’re a lazy bastard, just like Hugo says you are.”

He pulled my face around to look at him.

There was a strange light in his eyes, and suddenly he seemed so terrifyingly alive, like there could be no one in the world as alive as Étienne Bastide.

He was more predator than man, wasn’t he? I wondered as a shiver ran down my spine.

“Maybe you should trust me that I’m taking care of it.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said, my jaw set.

There was something hard jabbing into my side, and I felt humiliation wash over me.

“Merde. All right, wife, I’ll look into the paternity test. After these meetings are over.”

“You want to look into the paternity of your own child, but—you have too much work?”