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I shook my head. “I’m not going back with you,” I told him. “I have my own life.”
He snorted slightly. “Annie. Be reasonable. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but I can tell by how thin you look that it hasn’t been easy.”
“It hasn’t,” I admitted. “But I’m fine. I didn’t call you because I needed your help.” I left out the part where I admitted that I needed Rome’s help.
His lips turned thin as he tried to control his anger. I knew that he wanted to fight with me and force me to go back with him. But I wasn’t going, and if he thought he was going to force me, he was going to learn how different I’d become.
“Let me at least assign you a guard. Now that Rome knows that you are out there, it’s only a matter of time…”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Annie, be reasonable.”
“I am. I’m not taking anything from you, and if you want to have any sort of relationship with me moving forward, you’ll respect that.”
The struggle played out on his face, and I knew that it was taking everything in him not to argue with me. But at the end of it, he gave me a curt nod.
“Fine,” he said. “How can I contact you?”
I reached for the little piece of paper that I had crafted before coming here. I knew that once I told my father that I was alive, he was going to want me to return to the way things had been before. I’d expected him to drag me out by my hair. So maybe he had changed. “This is my number. You can call me. Maybe we can have dinner or something.”
He nodded and gripped the paper between his fingers.
I got up and gathered my purse. “I meant what I said,” I warned. “If you try and have me followed, if you don’t respect the rules that I’ve laid out, you’ll never see me again.”
My father nodded. He stood up with me, and before I could stop him, he reached out and gave me a hug. I allowed myself to fall into his arms for a split second allowing his scent to comfort me as I had when I was a little girl.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered. “So, so glad.”
The emotion in his voice was choking me up, and it took a lot for me to untangle myself from him.
I said nothing as I walked towards the door. Though the meeting with my father had been positive, I knew that I’d just thrown a bomb into the life that I’d created, and I was going to have to deal with the fallout. Whatever that meant.
* * *
Ezra’s lips traced a path down the column of my neck, and I tried not to moan as his fingers busied themselves between my legs. I’d come back to his home shortly after meeting my father, and we’d immediately jumped one another. We’d fucked on the floor, both desperate to relieve the stress of the day, and now, as I laid wrapped up in the sheets, I wondered what had made Ezra so mindless with passion.
“How did your meeting with Marcel go?” I asked. Ezra’s index finger slid inside of me, and I hissed at the feeling. I was sensitive from all the activity we’d been doing. I don’t think I’d ever had this much sex in my entire life.
I felt Ezra smile against the column of my throat as he licked up the droplets of sweat that were starting to accumulate on my skin.
“Nothing that we need to discuss now.” His thumb brushed against my clit causing me to throw my head back. I knew that he was distracting me, which made me want to know what they’d discussed even more.
Rome and I hadn’t been able to talk after I met with my father. My head hadn’t been on straight, and even if it had, I didn’t want my father to know about Ezra — at least, not yet.
Though it pained me to pull away from the pleasure that Ezra promised me, I did. Reaching out, I grabbed Ezra’s wrist to stop him from distracting me.
“Tell me what happened.” I commanded.
Ezra sighed. He rolled over, dislodging his fingers from inside of my body. “He came over to tell me that my campaign is basically dead in the water.”
I sat up. “What? I thought that you had enough money in the bank to fund the campaign for the next month at least.”
Ezra reached out and twirled one of my curls around his finger. It was something he did often. I noticed that Ezra liked to touch me even when it was just my hair. “O’Connor is taking all the ad space in the city. I’ve done several meet and greets. They’ve gone well, but I can’t be all over the city at once.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. I leaned my head back on the pillows. “I feel like this is all my fault.”
Ezra immediately grabbed me into his arms. I could feel every muscle of his body against my skin, which immediately ignited a fire in my belly. I ignored it as I tried to focus on the conversation. I’d made a sacrifice today, and it needed to pay off.
