CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Griffin
I hold Ava’s face. “Are you still upset because of Wren?”
“No,” she scoffs, but her hands are ice cold and she’s shaking.
“What’s going on, siren?” I pinch her chin. “I’ve been fucking you for weeks, you don’t tremble.”
As much as I’d like to make her a trembling, messy puddle of lust.
“I... I saw Rand Miller today.” She strokes her throat. “The guy who—”
“I remember that name.” My hands fall to my sides in a stupefied shock. “And what he did. Where did you see him?”
“In a restaurant. At the bar. Watching me.” Her cheeks redden. “I... I thought he was dead.”
I tilt my head, my heart pounding. “Why would you think he’s dead?”
“He... He left in an ambulance that day.” She backs up and wraps her arms around herself. “And I never saw him again.”
It hits me, why the training center closed. “What happened later that day, Ava? Before you and I met up at the bar. Did he fucking lay a hand on you again after I caught him touching you on that platform?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “We should go home.”
“What are you not telling me?” I grip her, knowing there’s more to her past with Rand Miller.
“I don’t know where to begin. But it doesn’t matter.”
I guess it doesn’t matter. And I’ve learned not to push her.
What I have with Ava and how we connect have outgrown those people who found pleasure in a motel room between sunset and sunrise. She’s all mafia princess right now with a taste for blood because she’s a badass deep down inside.
Alexander knew that. Saw that. He may have been protecting her, but he knew her potential and used our military to train her to be a killer, a fighting machine, and most importantly, someone who takes orders.
Someone who takes orders...
“There is one thing I need you to answer. Who do you belong to?” I ask her low and huskily.
“What do you mean?”
“Who owns you?” Ava’s cheeks blaze under my lover’s stroke. “Where are your loyalties right now? Your brothers or me?”
“You,” she says immediately with a high-pitched squeak.
Because she thinks I’m letting her go. Ares will keep her in matrimony chains forever. I’m her way out. But every time I touch this woman, every time I sink my dick into her, every night when I wake up and feel her against me, her leg thrown over mine, a smile on her sleeping lips, I know deep in my heart, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
And I am not letting her go.
But I’ll forever have a horrified image in my head of what happened to the last man who put Ava Zervas in a cage.