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“I didn’t know. I suspected.”
“So, after the fire, you bumped into me on purpose at that party when I was drunk?”
“Guilty.”
“Did you set me up to con you so you’d have something to hang over my head? So you could coerce me into your bed... I’m sorry,cage, since you won’t let me fucking sleep in the bed!”
Quill’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, Saskia. I’m being generous with you. You should be lashed for this much disrespect. And you give me far too much credit. I had no idea you were planning to fake the theft and run off with my money. That was just a stroke of luck. But I realized you had before I let you leave my house that night. I chose to wait and consider my next move.”
He sure liked to wait and consider things.
At the very least he’d been positioning himself to get close to her for clearly nefarious reasons.
“You could have met me in a sane way and asked me out. You knew how I worshiped you. You knew I’d go for this. I would have gone for anything you suggested if you’d asked like a civilized human.”
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t see you at any clubs or parties. I didn’t know you were into the things I’m into.”
“But you knew I was into your art. That wasn’t enough?”
“Not really.” Quill began to close the distance between them. “Either way, let’s say I met you in some normal way, asked you out, started some kink thing. We’re all painting and happy together and all of that nonsense, and then one day it’s too much for you and you leave. Likeshedid.”
“Oh, anything to justify your felony.”
“Glass houses,” he said unperturbed by her accusation.
“Do you know what I think?”
“No, butIthink you should be careful with that mouth.”
Saskia ignored the warning. “I think you don’t want something consensual. I think you just wanted what you wanted. Just like you wanted to take that painting from the Raine Estate when they wouldn’t sell it. You think everything is for sale. And if it isn’t, you’ll just take it.”
“It’s been working for me so far.” Quill stood mere inches from her. He dragged his finger across the front edge of her collar. His voice dropped an octave. “Tell me who you belong to.”
She just stared at him.
“Tell me, Saskia!”
She shook her head.
“You fought to stay with me last night.”
Already everything at that weird isolated club felt like a blur. Or a dream.
“Because I’m a starstruck little idiot!”
“Still. It meant something that you did it. And I told you there was no going back. So you may as well get over this snit.Whodo you belong to?”
She didn’t know why she was upset with him. He’d saved her work. Not all of it, but most of it. She thought she’d never seeanyof it again. Maybe it was that a small piece at a time he kept breaking apart her image of him. He’d been this lofty untouchable artist. She hadn’t wanted to learn he was just a man. And not the nicest one sometimes. But at other times...
Beyond that, he’d set up this fucked-up scenario, and a part of her thought all of this was a lie as well. She wasn’t his. She’d never really be his—even though some destroyed part of her that she didn’t want to think about still kind of wanted it. To be his. The ground under her feet didn’t feel solid anymore.
“Do you think this is a game, Saskia?”
“Yes. I very much do. I think you’re rich and bored, and playing with people’s lives is what gives you a buzz. I think you’ll drop me off in a gutter somewhere the moment you grow restless again. And God help me if I ever actually feel something beyond this childish crush for you.”
“Sheabandonedme. Not the other way around,” Quill said.
The mystery woman in those early paintings. The only one with a jeweled collar. She was an enigmatic Mona Lisa, and Saskia was sure he’d never utter her name—as if he’d sworn some blood oath to never allow that word to caress the air around him again.
