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I don’t know how to feel about that. “I have a feeling you have the rest already planned out,” I chance.
Kane takes a step forward, first closing his massive hands around my biceps, then dragging one to my lower stomach. His palm covers almost all of it. “You can have one of our children—or you can choose none. Ever. I won’t rush that decision, but when the time comes, your father will know that his control over that line is over.”
I feel a small pulse of relief that I don’t have to decide that now.
“And marriage?” The words fall from my lips like a whisper, and although Kane is only touching me with the tips of his fingers now, I still feel his tension.
“I’ve always said the underworld needs its queen.”
“So itwasyou all along,” I say.
He looks me in the eye, then takes a step back as the door behind us opens and Phoenix walks in. He approaches with a hand out, and Kane reaches behind him to brush their fingers together once Phoenix is close enough, like he’s letting him know when to stop. “You’re being offered what the three of us would kill for.”
His tone is bitter, and I’m starting to regret my decision now because I assumed—like a fool—that Kane wouldn’t pit me against them.
“Go with Phoenix up to his room,” Kane says, and he lets me go, turning toward Phoenix. His hand presses to the side of Phoenix’s neck, and it’s only because I’m staring so hard that I see his fingers moving in a tapping pattern.
I’ve seen that before too. Ari does it.
They’re speaking without speaking, and fury rises in me because I’m so goddamn tired of all the silence.
And while I want to rage and scream, I also can’t help but watch the way Kane tenderly strokes Phoenix’s jaw, and how the bitterness in Phoenix’s face melts into something else, and how they seem to know exactly which way the other one is going to move. I realize the hot, uncomfortable feeling inside me is envy because I want that.
I’ve always wanted that.
It’s a desperation like hot embers burning away at what’s left of my hope, because all I’ve ever wanted is for someone to look at me the way Kane looks at his boys: like he truly would end the world for them.
Or the way they look at him: like he was worth getting on to their knees to worship.
He’s going to marry me, but I’ll never have him the way Phoenix, James, and Ari do. This is all for show—for punishment—for revenge. And that’s all I’ll ever be worth.
My voice dies in the back of my throat as Kane finally steps away, and he gives me one last hot look before he leaves the room completely. All that’s left is Phoenix, with his head tipped down and his hands clenched into fists, and me, with hitched breath and uncertainty because I don’t want to do this to him.
“I can choose someone else if you want me to.”
“Is that whatyouwant?” he asks, his voice gruff.
I almost laugh because, yeah, it is a little bit. I don’t even know why I chose Phoenix, other than he’s been forbidden and untouchable, and it’s been torture knowing I could never have a piece of him.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” I admit.
Phoenix’s head tips up, and I stare into his honey-brown eyes. They’re heavy-lidded, and they don’t move the way natural eyes do, but it’s almost enough to fool someone who was casually looking. There are scars, though—an indentation on each temple that’s barely visible. Part of me wonders if his injuries still hurt, and then I remember it was my father—or, rather, the man who raised me—that did this to him.
“I’m not his daughter,” I say suddenly, needing him to know that.
He laughs and then turns away from me, starting for the door. “I’m aware.”
I walk with him only because I know that if he has to come back for me, I’m going to regret it even more than the willing submission to this first act of selling myself to Kane Walsh.
Chapter17
PHOENIX
She chose me.
James had whispered it into my ear as he watched the screen and I listened to Kane confess everything he knew. Well…almost everything. There are some secrets he’d keep to himself, but Alice would have to learn to live with that.
I can’t help but feel a pulse of jealousy when he all but tells her he’s going to marry her, and I do wonder if James will hate me a little bit for being the first one to touch her. I wonder if she’s chosen me out of spite—the one man who hasn’t allowed himself to truly get close to her. Maybe she’s angry with Ari or James and is trying to make them jealous.
