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“And what is this?” His chin rose. He was closing off, and the friendship of a moment ago was turning back into us being opponents.
I stepped away as he rose to his full height, looking down at me like a vengeful god.
“W-We…” I stuttered. I swallowed and found my voice. “You had another woman on your lap.”
“Another woman you were tasting.” He snapped.
“Still!” My hands balled into fists. “Hardly the sign of… anything… intimate.”
I hated those words. I hated saying it, but it was true.
He scoffed and turned away, his blonde hair falling gracefully over his forehead. When he glanced at me, those icy blue eyes were bright, cruel, and ready to bore right through me. He shuffled closer to me. I pulled away. He did it again until the rope of the boxing ring caged me in. He reached to the rope on either side of me and pulled me closer to him until we were inches apart.
We weren’t sparring, but it felt like we were. He was so close, I could feel his breath against my cheek as he growled. “There has been no one else since the moment that library door closed us in together.”
He bit my ear, and I yelped at the pain, trying to tilt my head away from him.
“I haven’t been inside another woman since I was inyouin France.” His lips traced down my cheek and to the corner of my mouth. He kissed that spot, and I breathed him in. He nipped at my bottom lip, and I whimpered when it stung. He brought his nose near mine and I felt the rumble of his voice as he said through gritted teeth, “And you will pay for thinking otherwise.”
It was my turn to scoff at him.
“Yes.” I faked a smile. “I’m always paying for something, aren’t I?”
It wasn’t fair to say that to him. I knew it when I said it. But it was true. As a girl, I had to pay for my parents’ sin of having me out of wedlock. Then, when I gained the father I had always longed for, I paid for his life as an assassin, and lost him as soon as I felt like I had a family again. Then Jericho… Brett… whatever name I called him. My second father, and the only person who had been at my side, was now gone too, paying for my sins. Paying for my pride that refused to let me lose a fight when the Vasilievs put a gun to my head.
Now, with Alastair, I would pay for it with bruises, bite marks and my own admissions that I was nothing but a slut to him. A whore. A toy. I wasn’t a woman, but a kink. Something he got his rocks off on, or in, and was left walking home alone in the cold night.
I blinked the tears away before I could look at him again. He hadn’t moved away. He was staring at me, not with malice now, but the way you might look at a creature in the zoo. He was looking at my eyebrows, my eyes, my lips, his head slightly tilted as if he was thinking.
“I see,” he said, more to himself than me.
“What do you see?” I wiped my tears away with my palms.
“Everything, little vixen,” he said, bringing his forehead to mine. “I see everything now.”
“No, you don’t.” I told him as my body shook. Maybe it was from pain. More likely, it was from the secrets welling up inside me.
He kissed me. It wasn’t like his other kisses, which had been meant to hurt. He simply placed his lips on mine, his tongue nudging at the seam of my lips. He didn’t invade or conquer. He didn’t push his way in. He simply waited, kissing my top lip, then my bottom, then trying to weave his way into my closed lips.
When I opened my mouth, his tongue delved in, massaging mine. No force, no violence. One hand cupped my cheek, gently, his thumb grazing the wet path my tears had made.
“Tell me what I need to know, then,” he said, gently. It was hard to resist the lure of arctic blue eyes. I was a mouse caught in the eyes of a snake. I was falling into the sky, my arms outstretched and wanting something to take my pain away.
“My name is Rose Marie Legaspi,” I whispered. “My biological father’s name is Leopold.” My heart felt weak and anguished. “Leopold Bonifacio.”
I stared past him, down at the canvas mat, not wanting to see his face when he put two and two together. He didn’t. He simply looked perplexed, as though the cogs in his brain had stalled and he wasn’t sure how to connect the dots.
“My father had a twin,” I said, and realization seemed to slowly dawn in Alastair’s eyes. “His twin also had twins. A boy and girl. Leo and Lea.”
He leaned back in his hands, looking at me from head to toe as if the answers lay somewhere there. And maybe it did. Was he finally seeing the family resemblance there?
“Fascinating,” he said. “Your father was the uncle assassin.”
I pulled away, and turned my head, shutting my eyes to keep from seeing his gaze, his lips, that square jaw. I settled onto the mat, lying on my side and bringing my arm over my head.
“You need to tell them. You need to talk to Leo and Lea—”
“Please stop.” I interrupted, shaking my head. “I can’t do this now.”
