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Emery is sitting on the end of the bed with tears on her cheeks, and Rurik is sitting next to her… rubbing her back. They both jump when I storm in. But Emery instantly schools her face into defiance.
Rurik’s goes to fear.
“You’re even dumber than you look,” I snarl at him.
All of my men, no matter how green, know better than to try something like this. But Rurik must be a special kind of stupid.
“Remove your hand from my fiancée,” I enunciate. “Before I remove it for you.”
He tears his hand back and steps away, giving me a better view of Emery.
She’s sitting at the end of the bed, hunched over, her hands braced on either side of her. She’s breathing heavily.
“It’s not what you think,” Rurik starts to say. “I—”
I glare at him. “What I think is that you better shut the fuck up before I cut your balls off and feed them to you.”
Emery lets out a small, teary chuckle.
I divert my rage on her. “Something funny?”
“Stefan wasn’t kidding about that,” she mutters.
“What?”
She shakes her head. “Never mind. I was choking. Rurik wasn’t—He didn’t do anything. He was just helping.”
“If he wasn’t ‘doing anything,’ he wouldn’t be in your room at all.” I turn back to him. “She is in solitary confinement. You brought her here, Rurik. You know that.”
“I—I’m sorry, sir,” he says. “I think the vent in here is connected to the guard room. I can hear her. When she yells, or cries, or whatever. I felt… bad.”
If it was anyone else, I’d break their leg on the spot. I’m tempted to do precisely that.
But Rurik is… for fuck’s sake, he’s practically a child.
When I look at him, I see Yasha as he was in his wild days. Defiant and headstrong, but also so painfully naïve. So sensitive. So soft-hearted.
I grit my teeth as a tide of some unnamable emotion overwhelms my anger. “If you’re so interested in bringing everyone food, you can work with the kitchen staff tonight. The maids will show you how to run dinner service.”
He lowers his eyes. “Understood, sir.”
“Now, get the fuck out.”
Without another look at Emery, Rurik hurries past me and out of the room, leaving us alone.
Emery is standing in the middle of the floor now. Her feet are bare and she’s wearing a matching pajama set in a soft lavender. The shorts barely reach the tops of her thighs, revealing the long expanse of her legs. The top is loose and flowy, but the neck scoops low across her chest.
“Is this part of your plan?” I ask, gesturing at her body. “Whoring yourself out for a sandwich?”
“I didn’t—Jesus fucking Christ. I was hungry. And Rurik is nice.”
“He’s lucky, is what he is,” I snap. “I should have tossed him out the goddamn window.”
“For giving me a sandwich?”
“For disobeying me,” I growl. “I figure you’d understand the consequences for that, but I guess you’re not as smart as I thought, either.”
Emery opens her mouth to argue, but then, slowly, she presses her full lips closed again. She lowers her eyes.
“I just want to see Isabella,” she says softly.
“Unfortunately, my sense of charity recently bled out." I point to the bandaged wound on my side.
Her eyes narrow. "Maybe you're right. I should've gone for the heart."
I arch a brow in warning. She immediately looks at the floor again. "I—I'm sorry,” she stutters.
“For what?”
Emery takes a deep breath and straightens. Her shirt lifts as she does, revealing a thin strip of midriff. The peek of creamy white skin is enough to get my blood pumping.
That poor fucker Rurik didn’t stand a chance.
“For stabbing you,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. You took Isabella, and—”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
Her eyes widen. “That’s not what I’m—”
“You’re not even close to the first person who has tried to kill me," I bark. "I know what it looks like."
She huffs out a breath. "You were touching me, and I… lost control.” She takes a small step closer. “I just… wanted to feel like I was in charge of my life. For a second.”
There’s a steady beating in my own chest, verging on painful. But I’ve learned how to monitor my own reactions, to give no sign to the outside world of the turmoil within.
So I meet Emery’s eyes with an unwavering stare.
“I should have dumped you and your daughter on Malcolm Waters’s doorstep days ago. You’re not worth the trouble,” I say. “But I’ve kept you here for one single reason: so I can teach you the lesson you refuse to learn.”
I press a finger to her temple. She closes her eyes and shudders as if I have a gun to her head.
“You don’t have any power here,” I whisper. “You can’t manipulate me. You can’t apologize and make everything better. And you can’t seduce my men to do your bidding. I will decide when your punishment is over, and until that happens, you can’t do a damn thing to change my mind.”
I let her go all at once. She collapses against the side of the bed.
“Don’t try to outsmart me, Emery Montague,” I warn her. “You’ll never win.”
I turn towards the door, already prepared for the fight to spark up in her. I know it’s coming.
A second later, I hear the rustle of Emery standing up. The pounding of her bare feet on the floor.
I spin just as she hurls herself against me.
“Let me out!” she screams, her hands clawing at my clothes and my hair. One of her legs curls over my injured hip for purchase.
In just a few moves, I manage to pin her arms to her sides. And with her leg still wrapped around my body, I haul her back to the bed.
I drop her on the comforter, and fall over her, pressing into her with my full weight. After a few more seconds of struggling, she gasps for breath. Her body arches up, trying to fill her lungs, and she rolls against me.
I know the instant she feels my erection—because she freezes.
Her green eyes find me, and they’re heated. Dilated with hatred and lust, of course—the confusing tangle of emotions we seem to bring out in each other.
I lift off her just enough so she can breathe. Her collarbone is a stark shadow across her chest. Her pulse pounds in the hollows on either side of her neck. I already know how perfectly my lips would fit there.
How she’d taste.
How she’d moan.
I know how well I fit every part of her. And the memory sends a surge of desire through me so sharp I’m surprised it doesn’t slice us both in two.
I want to slide her tiny shorts to the side and shove inside of her until she’s screaming my name. Until she’s only too happy to let the entire mansion know who owns her.
But I’ve learned not to mix business and pleasure. This shit with Emery is messy enough.
So instead of shoving myself inside of her, I shove myself off of her. She gasps as I go, leaving her behind breathless and prone on the bed.
“One way or another, Emery, you will learn.”
Then I leave—before I make any more stupid mistakes.
