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“Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
“I don’t care if we never talk again.”
He sucked on a spot behind her ear and slid his palm under the waistband of her loose-fitting shorts. “Such a bad liar, Aria. I expect better. You didn’t need to come to my rescue. You could’ve let me tough it out alone with my shark lawyer.”
“If I’d known that, I would’ve.” She wasn’t wearing much in the way of underwear and he discovered that. They both hissed when he cupped her and her temperature went nuclear reactor.
“I let you go twice. The first time was an accident. The second time was, hell, that was your fault too, you made me do it. I’m not letting you go again.”
He’d let up the pressure on her arm, though, and it ached as blood started to flow. “You will let me go. Eventually. Everyone does. My own father did.” Love was for storybooks and TV shows and other people.
His fingers danced across the silk of her G-string and his lips were back on her head. She wanted to give in, but where would that get her? “I’m not your father,” he said.
“We were young. We didn’t know any better.”
“There is no better than you with me.”
“I was difficult, impossible, you’d have grown tired of me, or I’d have done something you didn’t like and you’d have turned away. Don’t pretend that’s not how it would’ve been.”
He spun her abruptly so they were face to face. “What we were isn’t over.”
“We don’t know each other anymore.”
“I know you right to your heart, Aria, and you know me.”
She broke away and took a step back. “That’s just romantic bullcrap.” This was Cleve with his honey-dripping tongue, his gift of persuasion, wanting something she didn’t have to give.
“Our romantic bullcrap.”
She’d helped him stay free. He could at least respect that and leave before he made her weak again. “You need to get out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere unless you’re with me.”
She turned away, going for the door. She needed him gone before she begged him to stay. “Like that’s happening.”
He was on her from behind, a hand to her belly, another to her throat. “You can punch and kick, buck and threaten all you like, but I’m holding on to you. Nothing you do will make me stop. Start speaking in tongues or wearing pink, I’m still yours. Take up boot-scooting or crocheting or scrapbooking, I’m yours. Get religion, yours. Stand naked on the street hollering, yours. Aspire to being a soccer mom, yours. Tattoo your whole body with creepy ancient idols or killer critters, yours. Turn me in to those guys in the van out there, still yours. Are you hearing me?”
She might shake apart from the strangeness of what he was saying.
“I’d have taken any punishment, a long stint in prison, rather than see you reduced by one tiny hair on your shaved head.” He tightened his grip on her. “Nod if you understand.”
She didn’t understand. There was no way he meant all this. He was a professional liar. She shook her head. He was grateful, high on being free, that’s all this was. Maybe a little guilty about Celestia. She wasn’t the type of person who other people stuck with. Pari was her only real friend and that friendship had started out as a business deal.
He turned her body into his and got right in her face. “Get fat, I’ll love you with meat on this ass. Grow a beard, I’ll thread daisies in it. Take a vow of silence, I’ll listen to your eyes. Fuck up, I’ll laugh at you and help you fix it. I’m done being out here on my own, Aria. I’m done missing you. Fair, foul, legal, illegal, now and always, I’m for staying by you.”
She found her voice. “But—”
He stopped the sentence with a hard, quick kiss. “Let’s deal with the buts.”
“I’m not a proper person. I don’t have any skills except graft and corruption.”
His brows took wing. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
She’d said that to him not so long ago. “You were a worthy successor to my father. He was right to discard me and leave it all to you.”
“He was an uptight, anal, misogynistic psychopath with a god complex who hated his own daughter. The chicken bone did us all a favor.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I always thought you respected him.”
