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I let out a breath, tried not to search Lance’s attractive face for a reaction. “In saying that, it’s pretty much a crime to eat steak without red wine,” I continued, picking up the corkscrew again. “So I’m going to open this. And I’m going to get two glasses.”
He stiffened at this, as I assumed he might. “Yes, I know you’re on the job, you need all your faculties just in case a plane falls from the sky and you have to save the neighborhood, but you can have a glass of red and not even dull the edges, I’m pretty sure about that.” I didn’t wait for him to reply, I walked over to the kick-ass cabinet I’d restored, with glass doors that showed my mixed collection of wine glasses and funky bowls and plates.
I took my two biggest ones.
“Furthermore,” I said, after opening the wine and waiting for it to breathe. “I’m paying you back for the car repairs. Because that’s the same as the groceries. That’s the car I drive my kid to school in. That’s my responsibility. It’s one I want. And that’s all there is to it.”
I didn’t look at him, instead, I poured the wine into two glasses. I took great care in doing this, like I was a heart surgeon, because I was a coward and didn’t want to look at Lance, considering he hadn’t said a word since I’d said my piece. I didn’t regret speaking up. I’d spent far too long biting my tongue, not standing up for myself when a man thought he could control me. I had a voice. I’d use it.
But still, the way Lance was controlling me was nothing like Robert had. He was helping me pay for groceries and buying me wine I couldn’t afford. Because Lance was a guy who I assumed liked control. Not in what I wore, ate, said and my basic human rights. But different things. Harsh, infuriating things that I was starting to figure was his version of sweet.
Sweet or not, I was not letting that fly.
I didn’t need to think about it being sweet. That was a whole other story. A dangerous one. One that most definitely didn’t have a happy ending.
When I didn’t have much choice but to walk over to where he was still staring at me silently, I did so, hand outstretched with his wine.
For a humiliating half a second, I didn’t think he’d take it, I thought he might just continue to stare at me, unravel me. That he might turn away and resume cooking without a word. Or, worst of all, he’d just walk out the door and away from the complicated, slightly crazy woman who talked about goats and dogs in between telling him off.
But he took the wine.
I exhaled.
But I relaxed too soon.
Far too friggin’ soon.
Chapter Thirteen
Lance
He didn’t want to take the glass. Fuck no.
He wanted to snatch both of them out of her hand, smash them on the floor, rip her clothes off and fuck her on the dining room table.
Shit, his fucking finger twitched with the force of that carnal reaction. That need. A feeling that was foreign, in all his life he’d never needed anything that bad as he needed her in that moment.
That’s what his life was about, had been about for the past decade, controlling his baser instincts until they served his goals. Not his needs.
She was too good for him. That was the surface of it. Fuck if she was too good for him in every way, and fuck if it tore at his fucking soul hearing her talk about herself, stand up for herself and hear the shake in her voice, hearing the shame at her talking about people like ‘him’—who she thought he was at least—and people like her.
She considered herself lesser.
Because she couldn’t afford fucking wine.
He wanted to shake her. Fuck sense into her. Kiss her.
Not necessarily in that order.
And then she kept talking. About fucking goats and dogs and farms. About the life she was giving her son. The life she was giving him without help. That she wanted to continue giving him. At first glance, it was her tits, face, eyes, ass, and fucking hair that drew Lance to her. He may have been a severely broken one, but he was still a man. And Elena Phoenix was a woman all men and women who swung that way stopped and looked at. Wanted.
But there was more. There was her standing there, scared of him—he knew that, since everyone was—but still standing up for herself, still determined. After everything that had happened in her life to give her good reason to be afraid to stand up to a man, she did it anyway.
Tits, ass, no matter how magnificent—and they were—meant shit compared to that.
