72. CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
“Ihave something to tell you.” Jillian turns around and whispers into my chest.
I freeze. Although, after stalking her for weeks, there’s nothing she can say that will surprise me—or change how I feel.
“You can tell me anything, sparkles.”
“You’re going to be mad at me.” Her voice is low and soft. Afraid.
Taking a steadying breath, I say, “Then we’ll talk it through until I’m not.”
“Do you promise you won’t hurt me?”
“Hurt you?” I sit up to see her eyes.
“I’ve seen how men like you—”
“Whoa,” I say horrified. “Men like me? Do you mean mafia bosses?”
“Yes.”
I can only imagine what the hell she’s seen. The witnesses she’s had to depose in her corruption cases. What they told her.
“I promise you. No matter what, that’s not me. I can’t promise I won’t be angry or that I won’t hate what you have to say, but never will I hurt you.” I give a wry smile. “Unless you want me to.”
“Like with your belt?”
“Here.” I move closer and grip her ass, though I know she needs some distance between us. “Did I hurt you here?”
“A little.” She swallows. “But I really liked it.”
After kissing her, I get out of bed and sit on a tufted chair in the corner of her bedroom. “I won’t get up until you tell me to.”
She crawls to the edge of her bed and pulls her legs to her chest. “Really? You’ll stay right there?”
“Promise.”
With a pained look on her face that makes me want to blow something up, she whimpers out, “I… I slept with someone else.”
Every muscle unclenches because she’s talking about me.
Or is she?
I have to feign surprise and a little emotion. It would hurt her if I made it seem like her sleeping with someone else was no big deal. Sharing isn’t my brand.
“When?” I ask sharply.
“That’s it?” Her legs snap down as she glares at me. “You’re not furious with me?”
For a second, I consider coming clean. It will level the playing field. She thinks she’s betrayed me, and the guilt rakes the beauty from her face. So much that she’s expecting fury. A verbal lashing. Throwing things around, maybe.
If I counter that with my deception, she’ll feel better.
I just don’t know if I’ll need Johnny again.
So, I stay silent.
“I didn’t say I’m not furious.” Would I be furious if she really did sleep with someone else?
I’d set the guy’s house on fire after tearing off all his limbs. But I’d never hurt her.
“It takes a lot to make me furious, sparkles.” I grip the sides of the chair. “I’m a dangerous man. I’ve killed people, like I told you. But not from being furious. Uncontrolled anger is a dangerous emotion and something I can’t afford.”
That actually sounds pretty good…
“That’s a no? You’re not furious with me?” She’s astonished.
So long as I keep still, like I’m controlling a nuclear bomb, I can pull this off.
“Furious about what you did?” My voice gets low. “Yes. With you? No.”
“Do you care?”
Her question riles me because as much as I tell her I’m invested and she’s not a fling, she still hesitates to believe me.
“I asked when? I also want to know with who.” Despite my annoyance, I’m more focused on giving her the reaction she needs to feel better. “Answer me damn it!” I shout.
She pulls a pillow in front of her like a protective barrier.
“After you and I slept together, I couldn’t stop thinking about sex and how you made me feel,” she softly begins, pinching the pillow. “But I believed it was a one-time thing, that there was no way we could be together again. There’s your…background. Your, um, family business. Plus, you live in New York. I thought you’d be gone any day.” The catch in her throat guts me.
“There’s a lot in there for me to unpack and argue, but I accept what you’re saying.”
“I don’t want to throw my friend Trista under the bus, but she signed me up for a hook-up app.”
My grip on the chair loosens and my eyes flutter in relief. She is talking about me.
“What?” she asks, noticing.
Fuck, of course she would notice it. She’s trained to interrogate criminals.
“I thought maybe some man better looking than me charmed you into his bed.”
“Better looking than you?” she cackles. “That’s a good one. Truthfully, I don’t know what he looks like. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to get off. And you stole my vibrator batteries.” She whacks me with the pillow. “This is your fault!”
“My fault?” I wasn’t expecting that.
“You made me…” She doesn’t finish the thought.
“Fall for me? Or at least my cock?”
She smacks me with the pillow again. “Yes, damn you!”
“I wanted you to use me.” I stay in the seat, preparing to ravage her.
“I couldn’t, at first,” she whines with a pained expression.
“So, you hooked up with a guy on an app. Did he use a condom?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” She nods emphatically. “He asked me if he could skip it once. I said no.”
“Good girl.”
“I still don’t get why you’re not flipping out.” She stands and folds her arms. “All this talk that I’m yours. Was that just bullshit?”
“Do you plan to see him again?”
She blinks. “No. but…”
“But…”
“I was using him to fulfill fantasies. I didn’t think you’d… I thought you would think my ideas were silly.”
“I’m right here, sparkles. You can have any fantasy, any need of any sort fulfilled. I take care of you. Got that?”
“You won’t think less of me? I still have one fantasy left.”
“Are you asking permission to sleep with him again?” I’m not sure how long I can keep up the double life. Nor do I like the idea that she’d turn to another guy so easily. I thought I meant more to her by now. “Because the answer is no,” I roar. “I love that you told me about this, and you trust me with the truth. But you will not go near him or anyone else again, do you understand me?”
“I do.”
Fuck, that sounds nice. I do…
“Tell me the fantasy, right now.”
“It’s kind of dark.”
My heart stops. “Talk.”
She strips and gets back on her bed, face down. Every glistening inch of her drives me crazy.
I’m a dead man.
“I’m asleep in my bed. And you want me so bad, you don’t even have time to wake me up. You crave me so bad, you just need to be inside me.”
I’d heard of that kink. The craving part intrigues me.
“Permission to stand?” I say, to let her know she is still in control.
She smiles and faces me. “Granted.”
“Permission to approach?” I get to my feet.
Leaning back, she says, “You’re really hot as fuck in court, did you know that?”
“So are you. How the hell do you think I got here?” I strut up to her and hold her face. “Are we ready to discuss the terms of you being mine? For good?” I hadn’t considered I could use her confession as leverage.
“What do you mean for good?” She changes positions to sit down. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Do you think I’d do it without a ring?” I lean forward. “Is that the kind of man you think I am?”
Crest Diamonds, here I come. Shea should have negotiated a family volume discount. Maybe I can knock a few grand off the price when I say I’m marrying a Diamond.
“No.” She exhales. “I don’t suppose you would.”
“To answer you, for good, means, I want you to consider how we make this work.” I now get why guys just fucking kidnap the women they want.
This is fucking exhausting. And I see the exhaustion in her eyes, too. Like her confession about Johnny drained her. I wonder how long it’s been weighing on her mind. I never meant to stress her like that. Telling her the truth that I am the man she slept with might add to her stress, though. And start a whole new conversation thread I don’t have energy for.
“Let’s get some sleep.” I kiss her, hard and deep.
A mistake because now I want to fuck her again.
Her hot little hand grips my cock over the boxers I reluctantly put on because I kept waking up and rolling onto a stiffie. “I think we need one round of sex to sleep well.”
I slide the dumb boxers down my arse. “Game on, sparkles.”