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She was tired and sore, but if her pride demanded she slept in both items, then so be it. She was never going to go to him.
“I want out of this marriage. Immediately. We can annul it. Get divorced. I don’t care.”
“I distinctly told you I’m not in the habit of repeating myself and yet you’ve made me do so repeatedly. Anyone else and I would hand them their head. Now for the last time. We will remain married for the rest of our lives. Mine will be the only name you will carry. Mine will be the only bed you will sleep in. Are we clear?”
“No,” she shouted before taking a breath. “Look, Parker. Please, just listen to me. I know what it's like to be unwanted but not quite unwanted. My parents were much older when they had me. My mom was in her early forties and my dad in his late forties. My mom loved me. My dad… I think he resented me taking my mom away from him. But then as I got older, I knew when he felt guilty for thinking that because he would make an effort to spend time with me. You don’t want me. But you think you need me. The clause in my grandmother’s will was that I marry in order to inherit the land. There’s nothing in the will about remaining married. The land is yours now. Consider it a debt repaid.”
She stuck out her hand to shake his, to seal the deal she had just made with him. He ignored her hand.
“You seem to be having a very hard time understanding me. You’re mine. And since you’re having some difficulty understanding that I will gladly take you over my knee and make them stick. Are we clear now, Everleigh?”
She sunk into the green of his eyes and shivered. He meant what he said. She didn’t bother answering him.
“So… were you born a bully?” she asked conversationally while they were still in the elevator. “Or was that something you picked up along the way?”
“My parents were Greek, and we lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens for the first ten years of my life,” Parker said.
She spun around and faced him, utterly surprised he had said something so personal about his past when he normally appeared like a closed book.
“We were so poor, my father delivered me himself right there on the floor in that same apartment. And that made my father desperate to do anything to take care of his family.
“Then we moved to America. Dirt poor again. Both my parents worked as janitors at a school. One day my father saved the life of the son of one of the richest men around by pulling him away from oncoming traffic. That same man gave my father a job as an accountant in his firm, which is what my father had been practicing before he’d been forced to flee Athens.” He paused as if he were hesitating. She so desperately wanted him to continue but didn’t say anything in case she caused him to clamp up.
“We had to change our names; our surnames went from Kamaras to Knight. You see, Everleigh, in Athens my father was forced to work for the Greek mafia before he took my mother, his sons, our grandparents and two aunts then fled to the States. But even changing our names didn’t help. My father was assassinated with a bullet to his head. He died in my arms when I was sixteen years old. The responsibility of my whole family, of my two younger brothers, landed on my shoulders.”
She gasped, her heart breaking for him into a million pieces.
“The man whose son’s life my father saved; he had given him a few shares in his company which came to me when he died. I sold them and bought a laundromat which I turned into a gaming arcade. That’s how I started,” he said, suddenly closing the distance between them until she was backed against the wall of the elevator.
They had already reached their deck, but Parker didn’t care.
“But then the only way I could truly protect my family from the Greek mafia was to join the American Mafia and that’s what I did. By eighteen I was already feared in both Athens and New York.”
He leaned in closer. “I’m a dangerous man, Everleigh. Born dangerous,” he said softly. “And know this. There is nothing I wouldn’t do, lie, steal, cheat, kill, burn the world down to have you.”
Everleigh couldn’t get her legs to work, and she sagged against the cold steel wall of the elevator. A red-hot flush settled over her body. She was going crazy, but it felt as if her soul had been set on fire and his words blazed from them.
Taking her hand, while she still stood there dazed, confused, trying to process the enormity of everything he had said to her, he strode out of the elevator and into their cabin. He didn’t order her to go to his bedroom, so she chose the second bedroom instead, her mind reeling and spiraling out of control.
He had personally confirmed he was involved with the mafia. There was no longer any speculation on her part that he belonged to that world. Oh, who was she kidding? Hewasthe mafia. Indisputably.
She should be afraid of him. He was the freaking mafia, her brain kept interjecting, and she was trapped. Inescapably trapped. He had demonstrated how capable he was of being dangerous just by admitting it. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that he earned that title by being good and law-abiding. He must have killed people… She should be hitting him over the head with something until he was unconscious and seek help. Yet it wasn’t her life she feared for. It was her heart. His admission changed nothing for her.
Who had she become?
An object he wanted to own. Nothing more.
Once in the confines of the room, everything came tumbling back to her. She still had to go to him to remove the nipple clamps and butt plug. He would see she had remained aroused, swollen, and excessively wet throughout the dinner. His nearness contributed to that. Every touch. Every time she looked at him having a conversation. Every breath he took.
Her body didn’t acknowledge the truth about him. And maybe her heart too. She couldn’t deny the swell of emotion that had gripped her when he had told her about his life. Instead of fear she had felt anger on his path for the cold-blooded murder of his father. Instead of terror, she had instantly understood his need for vengeance, and the only way he could achieve that was to live in the world that had destroyed his family. Join the ranks.
Never had she wanted more to reach out and touch him than at that moment.
She had to find a way out of this marriage.
Falling in love with her husband, when he only wanted something materialistic and physical from her, would destroy her.
Feeling defeated but not so defeated that she would obey his command, she gave herself another twenty minutes to build up more courage before she marched to the main bedroom and swung open the door.
