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She stiffened at the question, and I couldn’t blame her. “Do I really have to answer that?”
I could have made her. It was on the tip of my tongue to force her to, but I didn’t really want to know even if, somewhere deep down, I did.
“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” I asked instead of replying.
Her nostrils flared. “To keep silent.”
I nodded and almost smiled at her because, internally she was furious, but equally, she was lost. I could sense that like a shark could scent blood in the water. This had thrown her for a loop, and she was in shock, but she was, underneath it all, angry.
Good.
I wanted to fuck her tonight when she was angry.
Spitting flames at me, taking her outrage out on me as she scratched lines of fire down my spine as she screamed her climax. . . .
I almost shuddered at how well I’d painted that mental picture.
“When you’re ready, you have my card.”
“Ready for what?” she asked, perplexed. Her brow furrowed as she, for the first time since she’d climbed into the car, looked over at me.
“To make another tea room. I’ve had them move all the stuff into storage.”
She licked her lips. “I want to say that’s kind of you, but I’m in this predicament because of you.”
A corner of my mouth hitched at that. “Honestly, be grateful I was the one who came knocking today. You wouldn’t want any of the Five Points’ men around that place. Half that china would be on the floor now.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I pay them protection money,” she snapped. “Plus, I grew up around enough Five Pointers to know the score.”
That statement targeted my curiosity, hard. “You did, huh? Whereabouts?”
Her mouth pursed. “Nowhere you’d know,” she muttered under her breath.
“I doubt it. This is my area, too.”
She turned to me, and the tautness around her eyes reminded me of something, but even as it flashed into being, the memory disappeared as I drowned in her emerald green eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you think?” I retorted. “You’re a beautiful woman—”
“Don’t pretend like you couldn’t have any woman under you if you asked them.”
I wanted to smile, but I didn’t because I knew, just as Aidan had pointed out to me earlier that day, that Aoife wasn’t exactly what society considered on trend.
She’d have suited the glorious Titian era. She was a Raphaelite, a gorgeous and vivacious Aphrodite.
She wasn’t slender. Her butt bounced, and when I fucked her, I’d have some meat to slam into, and her hips would be delicious handholds to grab.
If I smiled, I’d confirm that I was mocking her, and though I was a bastard, and though I was enough of a cunt to blackmail her into this when it hadn’t been necessary—after all, before I’d told her who I was, I could have asked her out and done this normally—there was no way I was going to knock this glorious creature’s confidence.
“Some men like slim and trim gym bunnies, some men like curves.” I shrugged. “That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
Her eyes flared at that. “But Jenny—”
“Would you prefer she be here with me?” I asked dryly, amused when she flushed.
