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She shakes her head at my warning tone, and her lips pout in irritation. “You can growl at me all you want. I know you want me to shut up about it, but I…care.”
My heart starts hammering. Questions and scenarios whizz through my brain.
Does she care enough to stay? Or is her care just to soften me up so I’ll let her go eventually? Let herfathergo?
I resent the ingrained cynicism that lets me question everything but it’s what’s kept me on top of my game thus far. What’s given me a great life.
What great life?
This reclusive existence that has kept me trapped in my luxury tower for years?
The vice around my chest tightens until I can’t breathe. I want to despise her for making me question everything I was okay with before her, but when her soft hands caress my jaw and she slides on top of me, her eyes searching mine in the dark, I want to give her…everything. “Let me in. Let me help.”
A part of me cracks wide open, offering my wounds up to her even as I shake my head. “You can’t, princess. It’s too late.”
“Why do you say that? You’re alive. It’s never too late. You try to hide it but you’re a good man, Jared. You’re gentle and caring with me.”
I snort. “Didn’t seem like it when I was pounding that beautiful cunt last night like it was my last night on earth.”
Even in the dark, I feel her blushing. She squirms a little because my princess still isn’t used to my frank and filthy references to our fucking—a fact that makes me hard as fuck—but she doesn’t let up.
“Noelle and Amelie and all your employees worship you. And not because you write their checks. They genuinely love working for you.”
“Because I’m a fucking genius, angel, and genius attracts acolytes. I thought you knew that by now?”
Her lips purse. “And you go after people like my father not because they steal from you but because their disloyalty hurts you.” She hesitates for a moment, bites her lips and then exhales. “It’s because of your father, isn’t it? I…I read some of what happened.”
I flip her over and pin her beneath me. “Watch where you’re going with this, princess.”
She swallows but again, she doesn’t back down and that wound opens wider. I’m terrified. Not because I fear she’ll make it worse but because I want her to…make it better.
I want to be healed. I want to stop being so fucking…monstrousall the time.
“What did he do, Jared?” she prompts softly.
“A gross fucking error of judgment, that’s what he did.”
That soft hand finds my jaw again. “Please,” she urges.
I shouldn’t do this…shouldn’t let her in. But my princess hasn’t got a single manipulative bone in her body. And if she cares for me…
But for one minute three days ago, you consideredbuyingher from her father.
What strain of asshole does that make you?
I suck in a breath, push that thought away. “Everyone I let in has let me down. It’s happened far too many times to believe that people change.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t share that belief but…go on. What did he do to you?”
I can’t look into her face when I expose my past gullibility and vulnerabilities, so I slide off her and reverse our positions.
“I was always good with numbers even as a kid. The kid who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in forty-one seconds. I started a company with a couple of friends when I was a freshman in college. Even without much experience, I knew it was a sound business venture. We were pretty wealthy but my friends’ folks weren’t. They begged and borrowed to invest in the business. My father wanted me to concentrate on my education, so he offered to manage it for me.” My jaw throbs with the pressure of my gritted teeth. “He took unnecessary risks and ran it into the ground within eighteen months. My friends’ folks lost all their money. Dad didn’t care. Said they knew the risks and absolved himself of all blame.”
“But you didn’t.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t right. I needed to make things right, so I started another company. That did pretty well too.”
“And let me guess, your dad wanted in on that too?”
