Page 13 of Striking
“Help me do more. Help me create a new division.” Mindlessly, I run my thumb over her knuckles, unable to pull away. “Help me focus on more than the bureaucracy of everything. I want to make a difference in people’s lives in other ways. You can help me develop a system where we offer patients and their families some kind of reprieve while they’re going through the hell you went through.”
I don’t add the hell my mother went through.
We had all the resources in the world, and it didn’t make any difference.
It couldn’t change the agony of losing her.
I can’t imagine how hard it can be on families without the resources that were available to us.
Bellamy’s eyes widen as my words take root. And there goes that light again.
Goddamn, she’s beautiful.
“What do you mean? What kind of system? What kind of help?” Excitement laces her voice and grows with each new question. “What would you want me to do?”
“Bellamy.” I run a hand up her arm and tug a lock of her dark brown hair between my fingers. “You would know better than anyone what families need. What would most help the patients and the people who love and support them. You could take your time figuring out what you want to do and how to make it work. You know this damn disease from both sides. What better person to take this on than you?”
She pulls away and pushes up to her feet with a gorgeous glare on her face. “You’re not doing this just to get in my pants, right? Because I’ve got to tell you,Your Highness, you’re Greek-god hot. You probably don’t have to give me millions of dollars to help people just to get me to sleep with you.”
“Greek god,huh?” Maybe one day I’ll tell her my great-great-grandmother was a princess of Greece. But for now, I stand and take her face in my hands. “Good to know, love. But the first time I fuck you won’t be because I offered you a job.”
Her pink tongue darts out and runs across her pouty lips, and I relax as her breath catches. It looks like I’m not alone in this.
Whatever the hell this is.
Everything it shouldn’t be.
Thank fuck.
“Come to Mornea with me and tour the foundation offices. Look at what we’re doing and the untapped resources we have. Help me make it better.” The golden flecks in her warm-brown eyes dance under the early morning sun, and my God, I want to see what they do when this woman is coming undone under my touch. “My plane leaves in a few hours.”
“I... I can’t just move to another country for a job...” Her words are soft and unsure. Like she’s questioning herself. “I have a family.Friends. A life. I can’t just leave them all?”
“Was that a question, or are you turning me down, love?”
I’m not sure I’ve ever begged a woman before, but there’s something about this one... I might be willing to give it a try.
She looks down at my phone, still clutched in her hand. “I’m not sure.”
“Then come with me. No strings. If you don’t want the job, help me structure it for someone else.”
Bellamy
Pretty sure I’m too tired to function becausehell nois on the tip of my tongue. I don’t want to share this man with anyone. Not even a hypothetical employee. And I’m not sure what that says about me, other than I’m certifiably insane.
He’s a prince. Not a boyfriend. Not a husband.
He’s offered me a dream job, nothing more.
But his hands on my face and that look in his eyes... I’m a goner.
Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with me?
Rhys towers over me, easily standing at six-four to my five-five. And hello, size kink I never knew I had. Because there’s something to feeling small and delicate in his ridiculously strong arms that has me melting in a way I haven’t before.
I nibble my lip, debating my answer, and when I look back up at him, I swear heat flares in his eyes. This is already a tangled, messy line between us, and I haven’t even taken the job.
“Rhys... you have to know this is crazy, right? I live on the other side of the world.” That argument sounded much stronger in my head.
