Chapter 8 #3
Her fury comes back hot enough to fill the car. “And then you punished him for taking the bait?”
“I educated him quickly.”
“You could have blown our cover.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that,” she protests.
“Yes, I do. I know men like Alistair. I know much fear can be invoked from beneath a jacket before anyone decides whether they saw a weapon.”
“That is the most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever heard.”
“And yet, you now understand it too.”
She pulls her wrist free.
“You are impossible,” she snaps.
“Yes.”
“Controlling.”
“Yes.”
“Possessive.”
My mouth curves. “Yes.”
The admission affects her the way I knew it would. Her pupils shift. Her throat moves. Anger remains, but heat threads through it, unwelcome and unmistakable.
Still, she doesn’t step back.
“That isn’t a virtue,” she says.
“I never claimed virtue.”
“It isn’t romantic either.”
“No.”
“It’s a problem.”
“For him.”
“For me.”
That sharpens my attention.
She leans toward me, reckless with temper, eyes bright in the dim car. “I am not actually yours.”
The car seems to narrow around us.
There are many answers.
Legal answers. Strategic answers. Cruel ones. Seductive ones. Lies that would sound better than the truth and truths that would give her too much too soon.
I choose none of them.
My gaze drops to her mouth.
Slowly.
I let her see it.
Her pulse jumps at the base of her throat.
“Maya,” I say.
“What?”
“If you say that again, I am going to prove you wrong.”
Her chin lifts as she stares me down.
“I am not yours.”
One second there is space between us, charged thin enough to cut. The next, my hand is at the back of her neck and my mouth is on hers.
The kiss is not gentle.
Gentleness would be a lie. A question. A softness neither of us has earned and neither of us would trust. This is cleaner. Hungrier. A claim made without words because words give Maya too much room to argue.
She makes a sound against my mouth, shocked and furious and not nearly opposed enough.
Her hands reach for my chest. Her fingers curl in my shirt, and something in me that should remain leashed goes very still before it strains forward.
I angle her head, deepening the kiss, and she opens for me with a sharp inhale that sends heat straight through my blood.
Whiskey, anger, the faint sweetness of whatever she drank at the club, the bite of her restraint breaking piece by piece.
She kisses like she fights. Defensive until she decides defense is too slow. Then fierce. Direct. Almost violent.
Perfect.
Her mouth moves against mine, and for a moment, the entire night reduces to the grip of her hands on me, the heat of her body crossing the seat, the sound she tries to swallow when my hand slides to her waist and pulls her closer.
I wanted her before she was useful.
Now she is useful, furious, dangerous, and kissing me back like she can punish me with surrender.
A lesser man would mistake that for victory. I know better. This is not surrender.
Fine. Let her hate me. Hate keeps her closer. I pull back only far enough to breathe. Her mouth is flushed. Her eyes unfocused for half a second before anger fights its way back in. I like watching it return. I like knowing I disrupted it first.
“Say it again,” I murmur.
Her breath comes too fast. “No.”
“No?”
“I’m not giving you the satisfaction.”
My mouth brushes the corner of hers. “You already did.”
She hates that.
Then she kisses me.
This time she moves first, and every disciplined thought I have left fractures with it. My hand tightens at her waist, drawing her closer until one of her knees presses into the seat beside my thigh and the careful distance between us becomes a memory. Her fingers slide up to my jaw.
Then her thumb finds the bruise she put there.
She presses.
Not hard.
Enough.
A rough breath leaves me before I can stop it.
Her mouth curves against mine.
Vicious little thing.
I kiss the satisfaction off her lips.
The car slows somewhere outside the gates, but I do not release her. Not yet. My hand moves beneath the fall of her hair, thumb resting just below her ear where her pulse betrays every lie she has ever told me. Fast. Hard. Mine for this second, whether she admits it or not.
She pulls back first. Far enough to breathe. Far enough to remember herself. Her hand still on my chest.
The car turns through the manor gates, lights sweeping across the windows. She should move away before the driver stops. Before Omar sees her mouth and my collar and the way her hair is no longer as carefully styled as it was when we left.
She doesn’t move quickly enough. And I lift my thumb and brush it once over the corner of her mouth, wiping away evidence only I am close enough to find.
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn't stop me.
“Now,” I say, voice lower than I intend, “tell me again you aren’t mine.”
Her palm remains against my chest. My heartbeat is steady beneath it. Hers is not. Outside, the manor lights spill across the windows, bright and unforgiving. For once, Maya says nothing which makes me smile. Because her silence is the first truly honest answer she has given me all night.