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“Fuck you, Christian.”
I offer her a grin as she picks up her coffee cup. “You know my answer. It’s a double yes, please. I got a taste, I want more. So, you wanna fuck me here? Or take it up to the bedroom? Or are you thinking somewhere public? Now you’ve gotten a little taste.”
“You’re such a pig.” She takes a sip of the coffee and almost spits it out. Her face twists in disgust. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”
“I might get some soap, or come up with something more interesting to straighten out your potty mouth.”
“Right after I do the same to yours.”
“Really? In that case, I’m thinking some good old fashioned sixty-nine action could work.”
She shoves the cup away. “Is there any coffee in with all that cream and sugar? And I like my coffee black. Unsweetened.”
“To go with your heart?”
“Is that why you do that to your coffee? To pretend you have a heart?”
I start laughing. “Probably. And you’re way too thin. Don’t get me wrong, I like every version of Mia I’ve seen. But you’re like a twiglet.”
“I really hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You just wish you did.”
She goes still, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.
My little bundle of prickly sweetness here is great at staying in her self-built cage she thinks is an armor, but when I poke inside, she’s scared.
I want to poke.
Comforting her is poking. That startles me. I mean, I knew it, but it sort of just slapped me in the face right then. I’m not offering comfort right now, far from it, but I hit the same nerve, something that gets to her truth, and that makes her vulnerable and exposed.
I file it away to explore properly later.
Mia reaches for her phone as it buzzes and what she sees makes her turn pasty white.
I’m at her side so fast the plate is still clattering on the bench when I sit next to her at the breakfast bar, a hand on her lower back to steady her.
Without asking, I take the phone.
“Fuck.”
She’s paler than even before, but she just gives me a shove.
“I’m okay. I just . . . I just need space. I need to breathe.”
Nodding, I sit back and drop my hand, prepared to move if she even looks like she’s thinking of fainting.
But Mia’s made of stronger stuff than that, and she grips the edge of the breakfast bar as I shift her almost finished plate and coffee out of the way. In their place, I pull the glass of water I poured for her in reach.
Right now, I’m more helpless than if I was Rocco, my baby nephew. I’m not sure what to do, and it’s new, that feeling. New and unpleasant.
“She’s alive.”
“Ellie’s unconscious. We need to go.”
She starts to rise, and I put my hand on her thigh. “No. We’re not going anywhere.”
“One of my dancers was beaten unconscious and left to die in an alley, and you’re saying we’re not going anywhere? Bullshit.” The anger is sharp, jagged-edged. “Why hasn’t someone called? Reaper? Angel? Fucking Lisa from Hellfire? Don’t they think I can handle it?”
