Page 109 of Be With Me
Red crept up her cheeks. She shoved the phone back at me, her jaw set. "We can’t."
I took a step forward. She took one back. Again. Again. Until her spine pressed against the door and her hard nipples—fuck me—pressed against my dress shirt.
"Don't tell me you don’t want this."
Her head tipped back. Her gaze flicked to my mouth. "It’s not about what I want."
"Why not?” My voice dropped lower. “For once, Mia, why can’t it beallabout what you want?"
She swallowed hard. “Because that’s se?—”
“Selfish?” I cut in. “Last night, you were selfish. How did that feel?” I slipped my fingers between the folds of her robe, slid them down, and pressed into her slick heat. She gasped, her hips tilting into my touch. "Didn’t it feel so fucking good?"
She squeezed her eyes shut like she was trying to block me out.
"Look at?—"
“No.” She shoved at my shoulder to break free and stalked across the room until the kitchen island was between us. Her eyes blazed with frustration, mirroring my own. “What are you even asking for? Specifically.”
“More time.” My voice was rough. “More time to be with you.”
“To be with me? You mean tofuck me, right?”
My jaw tightened. “Yes.”
Her lashes lowered, like that wasn’t what she'd wanted to hear. But I was probably just projecting. “How do you possibly see this playing out? If anyone finds out?—”
“No one will find out. Leave it to me. I’ll find ways for us to meet without anyone knowing."
"Why should I trust you?” she demanded, her palms flat against the counter. “I still don’t even know what you wanted from me in the first place. Why did you come to my studio? How do I know this isn’t just the continuation of some kind of a plan?"
Her voice was laced with something deeper than suspicion—hurt.
I exhaled.
She had me there.
How the fuck could I ask her to trust me when I hadn’t been honest about a single goddamn thing?
Trust was a two-way street, wasn’t it? And if I wanted her to give me something, I had to give her something first.
A small crumb of truth. Just enough to make her give me a chance.
No matter how small, it’s a betrayal to the family.
I gritted my teeth. Morales wanted to end us, and here I was considering whether to tell his daughter our suspicions about him, all so she would see me…for what? A few more days? Weeks, if I was lucky?
Worth it. So fucking worth it.
Despair at my predicament dripped through my veins like slow-acting poison. Women like her were the reason men like me got themselves killed. What would she do if she realized the power she had over me?
I clenched my fists against the roar inside my head.
Fuck it. At the end of the day, what real damage could I cause by telling her the truth? I was convinced she didn’t know anything about Morales anyway.
"My mother suspects your father has a secret backer, someone with a vendetta against us who’s pushing him to go after us aggressively."
Her eyes widened. "What? That’s nonsense."
