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He snaps his laptop shut and gives me a look. “That is none of your business, young lady.” His tone is playful, but a note in his voice tells me his statement is final.
I sit in the small chair next to his desk and watch him for a second. “So what happens now? Are we staying here?”
He shrugs. “If that’s what you want. We can enjoy at least another day of my sister’s protection, although, if they are around, I haven’t heard a word about it.”
A part of me wants to argue with him again, but I know it’s fruitless. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to marry me. I should get out of the chair and go to another room before I say something I’ll regret.
It’s strange. At the cabin, all I wanted was to be alone. But here, alone feels so very permanent. I explore his house a little bit and then return to his office. This time, he closes his laptop as soon as I walk in.
“Something else,” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah, we need to figure out the next steps. I can’t just wander around your house waiting for someone to try to kill me, or you, for that matter.”
He grins, his eyes sparkling. “To be fair, I doubt a murderer will come to my house to kill me. He’d probably try to do it somewhere less defensible.”
I mock shrug. “See, shows you how much I know about trying to murder someone.”
I sit back in the chair and watch him. “So…what next?”
The humor bleeds away from his face, and he meets my eyes. “You should go home. Get out of here while you can, before someone realizes…”
He shakes his head and looks down at his laptop.
“Realize what?”
“Nothing, just that you’re with me. If they think we are together, you will become an easy target, even worse if they learn who you are.”
“If the council is the one trying to kill you, don’t you think they’d already know who I am? Especially if they hunted you down specifically when we were hiding away.”
“Go home. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
I straighten in the chair, anger burning down my chest in a heavy line. “Oh, you want me to do this for you, so I’ll be safe. Rich from the man who flat out refuses to marry me to keep himself safe.”
His mouth flops open for a second, and he rubs the back of his neck. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is. We aren’t the same. We don’t come from the same world.”
Now he’s really pissing me off. “Valentina, no doubt, told you what we went through. You know how it ended. How can you say I’m not a part of this world when I was raised in blood and violence? I watched a bomb kill my mother and my aunt. The only relief I felt then was that they went together, and later that they didn’t have to see how far my uncle had fallen.”
Before he can respond, I shove out of the chair again, leaving it to bang into the desk, and stalk out of the room. The only room I feel comfortable in right now is the bedroom. But even there, the memory of his mouth on my skin is too much to take, especially when I want more than anything for him to do it again.
Since I don’t have many choices, I settle in the bed, on the covers, and prop a book open on my knees. If he wants to talk, he can come find me this time.
It’s late afternoon when he searches me out, and he places a large glass of water on the side table, then settles on the bed by my feet. “Rose…”
I shake my head, keeping my eyes on the book. “No. I don’t want to go through this again. You made it clear I mean enough to you to fuck, but not enough to marry. I get it, it’s a guy thing.”
“That’s not what this is, and you know it.”
I still don’t look at him until he grabs my face and forces me to meet his eyes. “Will you look at me when we talk, please?”
His hands on my body, even something as trivial as my face, are too much. I want to crawl onto his lap and see what else he can teach me with his sinful fingers. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Rose, or things will get out of hand.”
I swallow, my body lighting up, but the fear still flares right along with it. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
He brushes my cheek. “I know, which is why I’m not, and will not, push you. Not in a million years. It would only confirm what you think about me, and I can’t let you see me like those other men. The ones who used you.”
