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Fuck yeah.
“If that’s what it takes to keep you safe, then I’ll bring the rope.”
“You’re a real bastard, you know that? After everything—”
“Don’t.” I flick my gaze to hers and hold her there that way too. “Don’t even begin to use that card on me. I would never hurt you. Never take what you don’t want to give, and you know it.”
Her hands are still on me, and her heat is moving through me from where she touches my abs and my ribcage. I can feel her like it’s bare flesh against flesh and not through a shirt. “I don’t want you.”
“That’s a lie.”
Her eyes narrow, and the anger in them feeds the hunger in me. “Not every woman falls on their knees for you.”
“I’m not talking about every woman. I’m talking about you, Mia. And you want me.”
“I don’t want anyone.”
That slices into me. I don’t believe it for a second because of how she kissed me back. There are some things even the best player can’t fake, and that response was primal. She couldn’t have controlled it even if she wanted to.
And she didn’t even think when it happened. Like how every part of me focused on just her. I’m usually fucking brilliant at compartmentalizing, but Mia throws all that away just by being there.
Of course, right now, she wants to pretend. It’s a defense mechanism.
That’s what hurts.
When she tells me she doesn’t want anyone, she thinks she means it. She can’t even see it as the defense it is.
She’s visited hell more than most, and a woman like her should only ever see heaven, not the other place. And I . . . I need to think.
Not about me being here. That’s a given whether she wants it or not, because I’m going to get to the bottom of everything. The reasons for my being here, the deeper ones, now, that’s a different story. Why I need to think.
“You want me.”
“Go to hell, Christian, I’m going home.”
I straighten up and release her. “Great. My thoughts exactly.”
“Alone. Not with you. Never with you.”
And before she thinks I can stop her, she marches off.
I sigh and close my eyes, pulling out my phone. “This isn’t over, Mia. Not by a long shot.”
* * *
The next day I’m sitting in her office, sprawled in her chair, talking the shit with Reaper and Angel. I called them here for a meeting. So did sweet little Mia.
She’s going to be pissed off because I let her go home without me, just like she said—I’m ignoring the never part because I don’t hold with that crap—with a security team tailing her and sitting outside her door the entire night.
But when she storms in, the door hitting the wall, she sends me a look of such hate-filled rage. It warms my cold heart and piques my interest when it passes over me to settle on the two big bikers.
She points a red-painted nail at them. I know she didn’t stop anywhere between home and here this morning, so she must have done them herself as part of her armor. She’s even wearing a dress that looks at home in an office. I’m sure she thinks it’s something to keep me at bay, but that corporate look on her revs my engine.
Of course, that seems to be a given with me when it comes to her.
“The only reason I’m not shooting all of you is I might as well utilize you.” She flickers her gaze at me. “Why are you here?”
“Told you last night, Mia.”
