Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Robyn
“ Y ou didn’t have to stop on my account,” I said.
The sight of him up close, shirtless with a towel around his trim waist, was one to behold.
Fifteen years was a long opportunity to forget the minutiae of every hill and valley of muscle—muscle that seemed to have only grown and hewn along with age. Scars studded what was once pristine flesh. I imagined becoming the world’s most wanted criminal didn’t come without trials or enemies, things I shouldn’t care to know anything about, though deep down, I did.
“Buonasera, signor Damon.” I looked away and picked up the wine glass again as Nonna went up to him and reached for the ball of clothes in his hand. “Wash?”
“Grazie, Nonna.” The rumble of his voice lifted goose bumps to my skin, and I quickly took another big sip of wine, the alcohol a dangerous, double-edged sword.
“Wash?” Her repeated question drew my attention, and I realized she now held my bundle of clothes— my only bundle of clothes.
“Yes, but I can?—”
She was almost to the door as I reached to try and stop her. “Mangia,” she ordered Damon again, pointing back to the oven.
My breath caught. He hadn’t eaten either. Before I could consider the reason, Nonna was gone, and it was just the two of us again, the king and queen alone on our invisible chess board, where I had all the power but only he could end the game.
What a dangerous game to play.
“I didn’t know you swam,” I remarked, my eyes trailing him as he moved through the space. Outwardly, I stayed relaxed in the chair, but inside, I was on edge, calling all my senses to high alert as he rounded the island close to me and opened the oven.
“Hard to go out for a run these days. Plus, it’s easier for Patrick. He hates having to follow on the road,” Damon replied, and for a brief moment, I wondered where his gruff bodyguard had gone off to. Probably prowling the dark grounds to make sure his boss was safe. The kind of loyalty Damon inspired in those around him infuriated me—Nonna, Patrick. They all spoke to me like I should be the one to pity him—the husband who betrayed me.
I stared at the deep red liquid in my glass, debating the price of another sip.
“Here, Pat doesn’t have to worry about my safety,” Damon added, casually unwrapping the foil from his plate and taking a seat on the stool beside me, making sure to angle it first so he sat facing me.
“Or apparently about your privacy,” I grumbled without even thinking—the price for all the wine I’d already drunk.
His perfect lips tipped. “You seemed to enjoy the view.”
A vision of his naked body flashed like a firework in the darkness of my desire, bright enough to make my breath catch.
“I’ve seen better,” I clipped and brought the glass to my lips, draining the rest of the liquid. Fuck it.
“I doubt that very much.” Silver eyes speared mine, an ice-cold fury washing through them before he wiped it away. “Maybe you just need a better look.” As he spoke, his legs drifted apart, the towel gaping with an invitation to look underneath.
“I don’t need anything from you.”
He speared into his food. “Except my help bringing down Belmont.”
My teeth clamped together, and my hand fisted around the stem of the wineglass. “Except that.”
I went to stand—to leave. My plate was empty. My glass was empty. I was empty, and I had no desire to fill my time around a man my body wanted, but my heart and mind knew better than to trust.
My feet hardly touched the floor before a large palm pinned my wrist to the counter.
“How long will you hate me, Robber?”
I tensed. Releasing a slow, strained breath, I forced myself to look at him as I answered, “Till death do us part.”
His low chuckle shouldn’t have warmed me the way it did, and for a moment, I thought I was going to skate by with only the coarse rumble as his response. A thought that was quickly eviscerated when his hand cinched around my wrist and he hauled me to him.
The move was so unexpected I couldn’t fight it or stop myself from stumbling directly between his thighs. He immediately leaned forward, his lips promising softly next to my ear.
“Even death couldn’t keep me from you.”
My eyes fluttered, the darkness tempting me with memories of another time. A time when his husked promises spurred the fusion of our mouths, a tangle of limbs, and ended with his body driving into mine like it was the only place he’d ever call home.
Pain seared through my chest like vinegar on the open wounds of my heart. “No, just other women.”
“There was only you, Robber. Only ever you.”
I shoved back, stumbling into the stool and almost dropping the wine glass in an effort to put some distance between us. It was those words that hurt the most—the ones he said with so much sincerity it could sink a ship, and yet were so false they drowned me in their deceit.
“You don’t need to keep lying, Damon,” I snapped, pressing my towel to my chest. “I’m already here. We’re working together again just like you wanted. And when we’re done, you’ll be in prison and I’ll be free, just like I’ve wanted.”
“Now who’s lying?” His question was cloaked in casual amusement.
I let out a slow breath, pulling in all the emotion that had slipped free.
“Me?” I scoffed and set the glass in the sink and then stepped back to the island. Folding my arms on top, I watched his gaze drop instantly to my cleavage. When his eyes found mine again, they were blown out and burning with lust.
“Fifteen years, Damon. I’ve served a life sentence for my deal with the devil, and now, I’d like to go free.”
The briefest shot of anger hardened his expression before he masked it with a cocked smile. “Prove it.”
Heartbeats spilled into my veins, skittering like a stampede of emotions I couldn’t control. Meanwhile, he turned and started to eat, and I couldn’t stand how nonchalant he was with his disbelief.
How could he think I’d want anything different after what he’d done?
“If I had my polygraph equipment here, I would.”
“Lucky for you, I have one of my own.” He turned the stool to face me, his towel draping wider, but what caught my attention was how the cloth distended over the ridge of his long arousal.
Goddammit.
Heat coiled, desire flushing my skin. It had been so long…too long…for good reason.
“Fine.” I jerked my gaze up and played along, ignoring the husk in my voice because I refused to be beat. “Where is it?”
Damon lifted a single finger.
I blinked, my brows winging up, and then a laugh tripped out of my chest. “What are you going to do, feel my pulse?” I straightened and shook my head, propping my hip on the edge of the counter. “Sorry, Damon, you’re not that good.”
This conversation was pointless. Even with a lie detector, he was too arrogant to believe I no longer wanted him, and I was too cautious to actually hook myself up to a machine that could make me a liar.
I pushed away from the counter, intending to finally leave the kitchen. I thought I’d kept myself far enough away from him, but as it turned out, I hadn’t. A long arm stretched out, fisting the front of my towel and hauling me back to the pen between his thighs.
Goddammit. Had I been that close to him? Or had he grown Michael Phelps’s arms from all that swimming?
His silver stare was molten as it roamed over me, desire unraveling in my core like a dropped ball of yarn as madness threatened the fringes of my sanity.
“Let. Me. Go.” Heat crackled with every punctuated word like lighter fluid on the lies. I ached for this closeness. For his touch. For the oblivion of his affection.
I’d spent the last fifteen years alone with nothing but my purpose. My revenge. It was my choice to not move on in ways that could’ve changed this—that could’ve quelled this pathetic desperation for him. But I’d chosen not to, and now, I paid the price.
My nipples pebbled hard, the towel suddenly painful against the sensitive buds. And lower, my core clenched, feeling how close he was. Reminding me just how lonely I’d been. Empty. Heartbroken.
“Robber…”
Air hissed through my teeth. I could back away, but there was a ninety-nine percent chance that if he didn’t release his hold, I’d end up naked in front of him in the process.
“Let go,” I ordered again, but instead of releasing me, Damon held up his finger.
A single, long finger. And I watched it come toward me like an arrow streaking toward its target. First landing on my cheek and then taking a soft sweep along the curve of my jaw.
A shiver unspooled from my spine. I wanted to jerk away. No, I wanted to turn into his hand and beg for more of his touch. And that was exactly why I should’ve turned away. But if I did, he would know. He would see the effect he had on me. He would realize how I ached for him in spite of how I hated him, and then he would win.
And I couldn’t afford to lose whatever was left to me to the man who’d already taken too much.
“Fine.” I tipped my head to the side, giving him the expanse of my neck. “Go ahead and feel my pulse when I tell you I don’t want you.”
My body revolted at the words. I was a liar, but he was never going to know.
He said nothing, taking his time tracing from my jawline to my ear, then sliding down the slope of my neck all the way to my collarbone. Wait—and then lower along my sternum, my breath catching as his finger skimmed the edge of my towel .
I locked my teeth so hard I swore I heard them cracking. I could tell him to stop—should tell him—but it felt so good to be touched. So warm and electric and forbidden.
And because I didn’t stop him, he didn’t stop. His finger breached over the crest of the towel, and I swore I stopped breathing as it moved on top of the cloth and along the slope of my breast. From the looks of it, he did, too.
He stared at his hand like he’d give his own life if that single finger could roam forever over my body. A crease blemished his brow, the beauty of his face exaggerated as every muscle drew taut.
His head drifted lower, his heavy breaths soaking the skin of my lips. “I’ve missed you, Robber. God, how I’ve missed you.”
My throat constricted. I should hate those words just as much the second time, if not more. I should fight them harder. Push them— him— away. But God help me, those words felt like rain on arid soil. So unreal, they almost felt imagined. So precious, I wanted to siphon them off and bottle them up for the day when I’d finally be free of him for good.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to stop this. He was too good at being him, and I was too good at falling for it. But what were a few more seconds when my heart was already broken…
Heat sloughed off him with every ragged breath as he marked a path straight to the bud of my nipple as though he could see straight through the thick cloth. Pain and pleasure skipped along my nerves, and my fingers dug into the granite counter so hard that tomorrow, I was sure I’d find dents.
He swirled and rubbed, his head drifting lower like he was slowly losing the reins he held on his mouth. God, to feel the pull of his lips on me. The heat and pressure. My nipples had always been so sensitive. Something Damon had magically been in tune with—knowing when they were too sensitive to stimulate and when they were just sensitive enough to send me soaring over the edge with a single expert touch. A single deadly touch.
“You can’t feel my pulse there.”
A noise rumbled out of him, but instead of moving his finger back to my neck, it sank lower, tracing the fold of my towel down my front, all the way to where the edge kissed my thigh.
“This isn’t for your pulse, Robber. It’s for your pussy,” he ground out, the brush of his fingertip on my bare skin creating a riot of tension in my core. “One touch and I’ll prove how soaked you are for me. How you want me just as much as I want you. How your mouth has the only lips that can lie.”
His words twisted the knife he’d buried in my chest over a decade ago, each of them a brutally sharp slice of the edge.
With my pulse pounding in my ears, I grabbed his wrist and pulled it from my leg, at the same time securing my towel with the other. My thighs were slick with the telltale truth as I stepped back, finding his silver gaze that punctuated his fierce face.
With his flared nostrils and knotted jaw, he looked like a bomb unable to explode. A restraint I was almost tempted to admire…if it hadn’t been a trap.
My mostly naked husband held the advantage—knowing I needed him in more ways than one, and as soon as I gave in, he’d be the first to use that against me.
And I hated that.
“Yes, well, how much you want me must be seriously clouding your ability for rational thought.” I latched onto the loathing in my voice like the only life raft in this storm, even though it would betray just how precarious I felt. “How could I want a man who was unfaithful at the first opportunity and then disappeared for fifteen years?”
He shoved his plate away from him like the thought of food suddenly made him sick and then shot to his feet. Briefly, I noted the distorted drape of his towel over his massive erection as I skittered to the other side of the island.
“First off, my darling wife, rumors are easy to spread, especially when it boosts everyone’s reputation in the process and when I line their pockets to do so.”
What was he saying? That he didn’t sleep with scores of women around the globe for the last fifteen years? No . He was lying. He had to be. He was toying with me. Toying with the strings of my emotions and desires, and my mind was too jumbled to see it clearly.
“And second.” Damon tipped forward, his palms flattening on the counter. His eyes pinned mine, and my lashes fluttered, something distinctly vicious entering his voice. “Call me unfaithful again, and I will assume you want me to force-feed you the rest of the truth and then fuck you like the man who’s been starved and rabid for his wife’s tight cunt for fifteen fucking years.”
It was a crack in his calm veneer. A giant fracture in the fine lines and smooth smile of his chivalrous persona, revealing the possessive man underneath. A man I dreamed of every single night we’d been apart. The hook of his gaze. The pull of his touch. The combustion of our bodies.
Everything inside me from the fringes of my scalp to the ends of my toes went up in flames. Beautiful, destructive flames, licking at my deepest wants and begging me to step into their burn. To drop my towel and let the animal in his eyes come for me.
Could he be telling the truth? All I had to do was ask—was trust. No . I stiffened and shivered off the ashes, jerking my chin higher. He couldn’t. I saw the note. I knew what happened. And I wouldn’t be the fool who begged for a different story just because I still wanted him.
“Come here, Robber. Ask me for the truth,” the king beckoned to his queen. Too bad this time I knew we weren’t building a kingdom but playing another twisted game.
“I don’t want your truth,” I said, my voice strong but brittle. “I don’t want anything from you except help getting to Belmont.”
Damon let out a pained exhale, staring at me like he was the one tortured. “You’re my wife, Robber. You’re going to get a hell of a lot more than that.”
“I haven’t been your wife for years,” I snapped, dredging up every icy inch of hurt from the tomb in my chest. “And I won’t be your spouse for much longer.”
His teeth gnashed together like grinding stones. “I won’t let you go again.”
I shivered, swearing his ring burned hotter where it rested against my sternum, branding his promise into my skin.
Lifting my chin, I warned, “You won’t have a choice.”
He could swear his sincerity to the moon and back. Unfortunately for him, my shattered heart served as a sieve, weeding out all sweetness from his destructive secrets.
I wouldn’t be fooled by Damon Remington again. And neither would I become a fool for him.
I fled from the room without another word. Yes, I was still stuck in his house, but it felt good to walk away from him. It felt good to feel the heat of his furious stare scorch my spine.
It didn’t feel as good to crawl into my cold bed alone.
And it definitely didn’t feel as good to fruitlessly search for release when the source of my ache was in the bedroom above me, taunting me with satisfaction if I only said the word.