“Get off me and get out,” I demanded, leveraging my chin in the air so it almost collided with his. “I don’t want to talk to you now or ever again.”
“And what of Brando? You’ll have to talk to me if you want to see your brother again.”
Air leaked out of my mouth like a puncture wound as the reality of his power over me settled in. “Would you really use my brother against me like that? That’s low, even for you.”
“Even for me,” he murmured, as if testing out the taste of my hatred on his tongue. “Who do you think I am, Bianca?”
“A fucking monster,” I growled, rearing up to snap at him. “A lying, manipulative bastard.”
He stiffened at my words, something dark crossing his features before he could control them into impassivity again.
“Because I didn’t tell you who I was?”
“Because you lied to me every single day I lived under your roof. Because you played dangerous games with not only my life, but Brandon’s! How could you ever think that was forgivable?”
He stared at me calmly, absorbing my features like an artist trying to render every detail. “Did you not play games, too? When you decided to come to Bishop’s Landing, the home of your father’s people, and not tell me, the guardian who was appointed to protect you, that you were the daughter of Lane Constantine?”
“I couldn’t trust you with that and you proved me right,” I spat, trying to wrench out from him again. “Get off me, now, or I’ll scream.”
“Scream,” he invited on a slow drawl. “Draw Caroline and Winston Constantine up here. Let them see how…close we are. Explain to them how close you are to them, in ways they never even dreamed of.”
“Stop it,” I hissed, but my anger was waning into hopelessness. Why was it that I never had the power? How could little old me stand up to these behemoths? These men and women who hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer in so long that the word was a foreign language to them now. “I was doing what I thought was best.”
“So was I,” he countered, dipping to speak the words against the corner of my mouth. “I was wrong then, but I thought I was doing what was right.”
I froze, confused and terrified by his admittance. I didn’t know what to do with his regret.
I couldn’t handle it.
“Don’t.” I turned my head hard away from that warm mouth on my skin and closed my eyes. “Don’t you dare.”
“You’re wrong now,” he continued as if we were having a pleasant conversation sitting side by side at a café and not on the ground of his enemy’s home. “Give me a chance to prove it just like you did. Come home with me to Brando and The Gentlemen, sweet little thing. That’s where you belong.”
“I belong with Brandon,” I admitted. “But not you. Maybe…maybe I wanted that for a minute, but I know better now. All you’ve ever been is cruel.”
“It’s all I’ve known in a very long time,” he rasped as he drew his nose along my jawline and pressed a tender kiss to sensitive skin beneath my ear. “Come home and teach me how to be kind.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said, but the words lacked punch.
I was softening, not with acceptance or forgiveness but with pain. Like a bruise. My whole body ached at his sudden sweetness, with the desire to teach him grace like he had taught me violence.
But I wasn’t a fool.
I was young and I knew nothing about this twisted, dark world of riches, but I knew enough not to get burned twice.
“If you want to be kind, you’ll let Brandon come here with me,” I told him.
Whatever gentleness he’d shown me evaporated with my words. He grew hard against me, pressing me almost painfully into the floor. I watched as his features tightened, lips peeling over strong, white teeth into a wolfish sneer.
It shouldn’t have aroused me.
That edge of pain and fear, that meanness shining through.
But I shivered and he felt it, his lids lowering with heavy arousal.
He transferred both my wrists into one punishing grip and used his free hand to tug my hair back sharply. His lips found my hammering pulse point and sucked it into his mouth.
“You can lie to yourself as much as you want, Bianca, but this body became my body the day I took you on the beach and it cannot lie to me. You want me, even if you hate me.”
“I’m not controlled by my urges like an animal,” I protested, holding still because I could feel his hard shaft against my belly and I didn’t want to incite him any further with needless friction. “Do the right thing for once in your life and relinquish guardianship of Brando and me.”
“Never,” he growled, nipping at my jaw. “You both belong to me.”
“Stop being a possessive heathen,” I cried out. “Human beings don’t belong to anyone.”
“They do,” he countered, moving his hand from my hair to my throat, collaring it gently so I was immobilised, my eyes forced to focus on his somber, devastatingly beautiful face. “Ezra, Henrik, Walcott and me belong to each other. Children should belong to their parents, but sometimes, in cases like ours, they don’t. Wives with their husbands and husbands with their wives. Brando and you. Brando and me.” He feathered his lips around my mouth so I was forced to taste his next words. “You and me, Bianca. We belong to each other, it just took me a minute to understand it. Now I do, I won’t let you go for anything.”
“I don’t want to be possessed,” I argued, but oh my heart was on fire.
Because this was what I’d wanted all my life.
What I’d yearned for.
Not money or fame.
Not world peace or an end to famine.
I wanted, selfishly and fundamentally, to be loved this way.
Bought and owned with no return policy.
To feel as if I’d never be left behind or lost again.
“It’s too late for that,” he said simply, his mouth descending to mine. “It’s too late for both of us.”
And then, he kissed me.
He kissed me in a way that had tears springing to my eyes in an instant.
Those lush lips parted my own and his tongue slid inside to claim my mouth on a low growl of male satisfaction that rumbled up his throat and over my tongue. The hand not capturing my own framed the entire side of my face. It made me feel small in a cherished way, like he could shield my entire heart with a single large palm. His thumb edged the corner of our fused mouths, dipping inside to wet the pad. Done, he traced that wet digit down my throat into the collar of my shift dress and unerringly found my hard nipple, flicking it then pinching it.
Fire arched through me, my chest pressing up into his.
“This,” he rasped as we broke for breath. “The way we fit together, feel together, it’s not normal. This madness I have for you,” he shook his head as if he could clear it of me. “It’s in my blood.”
I panted heavily, squirming. Only, I didn’t know if I was trying to get away or get closer.
“I know it’s not normal. It’s wrong,” I said, hoping to hurt him into stopping.
Instead, his chuckle was husky against my closed lips. “Maybe. Nothing about this makes sense except for the fact that I feel like I’m on fucking fire when I’m near you. Like nothing but the wet of your kiss and the wet between your thighs can put it out. Like the wet of your tears when you cry so damn pretty for me.”