AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes narrowed and the warmth disappeared from his face. “Oh, I understand completely. We wouldn’t want to tarnish your image as the grieving, virtuous widow.”
Donni set her teeth. It was easy to forget herself when it was just the two of them in a room, and his forceful personality overwhelmed hers to the point where the past fell away along with their clothes. Nobody else would understand that. They’d just think she was a freak. Maybe she was.
But he was, too.
“Fine. You want to go out? Morning Glory Bakery,” she said. “That’s where we’re going. No one in my social circles goes there. We’ll buy whatever, get in, and go out.” Her eyes flicked harshly to his. “Don’t you dare embarrass me.”
That cool smile settled on his lips like a leaf on a dark pond. “Don’t talk to me like some fuckboy, Donni,” he said. “What we have is so much more than just sex. You’re mine, just like you should have been ten years ago.”
A lump settled in her throat and stayed there. “You said you wouldn’t force me.”
“I also said that I’d rather have you hate me than not have you at all.” His eyes shuttered. “Let’s not fight. Remember—we’re in this together.”
Are we?She wondered bitterly.
Rafe grabbed his keys. “Let’s go.”
???????
It had been a while since Rafe had been to the Morning Glory. Not since he was a kid. The place was stuffy, dripping with doilies and dried flowers. His mother had taken him there for a high tea, with airy sandwiches that left him even hungrier and small cakes that looked like brooches from his mother’s jewel box. Sitting in the dining area filled with older women and not a single other child in sight had left him feeling clumsy and unwanted, especially with his mother watching him like a hawk. As if her disappointment in him was guaranteed.
He hadn’t liked feeling that way at all, and he was feeling pretty fucking similarly now. The thought of her wanting to hide him away like he was some dirty little secret made him want to smash something. It wasn’t like she was fucking the pool boy. He was a man and she was a woman, and that was where it should have ended. With her on his arm, his in every way that mattered.
It was painfully obvious that the only reason she was keeping him around was because she was afraid. He’d recognized the desperation in her voice when she’d called him on the phone and known what it had meant for him. He had her over a barrel. Now it wasn’t just her finances that were at risk, it was her life. A good man wouldn’t have taken advantage of that, but Rafe already knew he wasn’t a good man. His morals, already fuzzy, disappeared entirely when it came to her.
And she knew it, too, he thought wryly. Most people didn’t look beyond the good breeding his mother—his real mother—had drilled into him. But Donni saw him for exactly what he was, and there was something thrilling about that, because he saw her for what she really was, too.
Rafe had seen the stares and heard the whispers. There were hundreds of eyes on the woman, waiting to see how much further she could slip from grace. But she was a manipulator at heart. He would know; he’d caught her in the act. She’d wrap him around one of her manicured fingers, if she thought it would buy her freedom.
Then he thought of Christophe cornering him in the store with his lewd insinuations. The man was scum, but he wasn’t ugly enough to entirely soothe Rafe’s suspicions either.
“You and Christophe,” he said idly. “Anything ever happen there?”
“Why?” she asked flatly.
“He seems stuck on you.”
Donni gave him a withering look. “He’s not as good at scheming as you are.”
“So he thought he’d twist your arm a little, too, hmm?” He glanced at her briefly. “Would you have let him, Donni? If he beat me to it, would you have gotten on your knees for him and made all of his filthy little dreams come true?”
“I guess we’ll never find out.”
“No,” Rafe said. “We won’t. The only one who’s going to be making you do any twisting is me.”
“Is that supposed to impress me? You think I get off on threats?”
“I think you do, actually,” Rafe said. “But this isn’t going to be a few light love-taps with the flat of my knife. You want to keep this arrangement quiet? I want to keep it exclusive. It’s up to you how far you want to push that. Maybe you get off on seeing other people bleed.”
He threw the car into park. They were outside the bakery. Donni looked at him for a long moment before swinging out of the car. As he locked up, he noticed sourly that she was already scrambling to get ahead of him so they wouldn’t be walking in together.
So, he thought.It’s going to be like that, is it?
A bell chimed overhead as he entered the door. The air was heavy with the smells of baked bread and vanilla. His stomach growled. Donni was already ordering, pointing emphatically at the bakery case with her dog’s leash held in her free hand. Rafe folded his arms behind his back and wandered, pausing behind her for a beat before moving on down the receiving area to examine a table filled with hand-painted china and wooden spoons for sale.
As he bent to examine a small jar of local jam, a voice said, “Rafe! Is that you?”
He straightened and looked over. A pretty red-haired woman was standing to his right, hands clasped over the front of her apron. It took him a moment to place her, and then all at once, he did. “Ariel Lambert,” he said, mildly surprised. “It’s been a while.”
