Page 69 of Jace
He steps my way, trying to get in my face, but I shove him away.
“Buttheydon’t know that,” he snaps. “No one but your bitch-ass lawyer friend knows we’re legally divorced. To everyone else, you’ll always be my perfect wife, the prim and proper daughter of the esteemed August and Aurora Tate. So youwillfucking go with me to my sister’s wedding. They have a bunch of bullshit pre-parties planned where you’ll smile like you’ve been trained, so they leave me the fuck alone. Or…” His eyes glaze with lechery. “Everyone will see how August Tate’s daughter was reallytrained.”
I ignite with rage but fight it.
He can’t know.
I’m almost free.
“We are NOT sleeping together.”
“Why not?” He gets this odd look: delusion laced with adoration. “You know you still love me. We’re soulmates.”
“I’d rather fucking die,” I sneer. “I’ll post that video on the screens of Times Square before I ever let you touch me again. I’ll go. I’ll smile. I’ll stay in my locked bedroom, and you’ll party with your boys and get drunk and pass out somewhere else every night. Daddy and Mumsie would expect nothing more from you.”
I let him search my soul with his stoned eyes.
Every bribe has a breaking point, and this is mine.
Even if I weren’t in love with Jace. Even if my body didn’t still sing from his touch. Even if my heart didn’t feel completely melded to his. Even without Jace…
This is my pride, and I’ll die with it.
“Besides, you’ll be with your cousins, right?” Like a toddler, David’s easily redirected. I regain control. “DJ, Brayton, and Eric? They’ll all want their Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell nights away from their nagging wives, and you won’t want to miss out by coming home to yours.”
Something flashes across his eyes.
Holy shit, that’s it!
I can sense the connection. David’s cousins: a sleazy trio of rich men hiding their wicked ways behind red ties and golden crosses.They’re hiding the servers.They’re aiding and abetting his sex crime.
I relax my face, ignoring my fury, making myself look compliant and playing the game.
“I’ll give you two weeks,” I concede. “And?—”
“Ms. Tate?” A deep voice from the hallway demands our attention.
David whips around to Jace, wielding a barbecue chicken wing in the doorway.
He points it at David. “Ma’am, he’s leaving, I’m eating, and we’re closing. Do you need anything?”
In one beastly bite, Jace sticks the meat in his mouth and sucks the bones clean.
I have to hide my laugh and the shiver down my spine.
Jace is a kind man until he’s primed to kill. Then the warmth in his eyes vanishes, and what’s left is a detached look. No emotion, just an empty, deadly stare.
I once saw Jace rightly suspect that two customers, a couple, were actually a drug dealer and an underage girl, who the man was trafficking. I’ve never seen Jace like that. It wasn’t him.He was a lethal machine, cracking the man’s head open on the stairwell banister before he held him passed out, bleeding, and choked until the police arrived.
“Uh, no, Mr. Ryan,” I answer the Jace who’s always sweet to me. “Thanks, but I just came here for some gear. I’m ready to leave.”
David hisses, “And she’s leaving with me.”
The dumbass has a death wish.
“Not protocol.” Jace is stone, and mindfucking David by aiming his ravaged chicken wing at him, then at the stairs. “Out.”
David seethes, “But she’smywife.”
