Page 150 of Lawless Rivals
“Keep it.” His voice is rougher now, like the words had teeth on the way out. “I’ll figure something else out.”
“You can’t just say that.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” he sighs. “But you matter more.”
My chest aches. “It’s not really mine.”
His forehead creases.
“It sits inside a Harrington trust. My father still has a say in it. So even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn’t.”
Understanding moves across his face, dark and slow.
I pull out from under his hands, and when they fall to his sides, it almost breaks me.
“I should go.”
It only takes two steps and Saint’s behind me. His arm slides around my middle, and he draws me into him so my back bumps against his chest.
The contact goes through me hard, heat spreading low beneath my ribs, then lower, hotter and helpless. In his arms, I’m alive in a way that still burns even after everything.
His lips tease the edge of my ear. “You’re not going anywhere.”
His breath moves against the shell of my ear, rough enough to tingle, warm enough to make my pulse spike. My fingers close around his wrist, meaning to pull him away, but my hand only stays there.
“Really?” I say, breathless. “You think we’re right back at the beginning. That I’m your hostage?”
His arm bands across me.
“Not a hostage anymore,” he says. “You’re my girl, and you know that’s true.”
His mouth stays near my ear, and his hand splays over my stomach, holding me against him.
“And I’m asking ya,” he continues, voice lower now, “to unpack your bag and put your toothbrush in the bathroom next to mine.”
I close my eyes, and the darkness gives me my father’s smile, his blood-red wine, his commanding voice telling me my name makes me his.
“He’ll destroy this,” I whisper.
Saint holds me tighter. “I won’t let him.”
“He’ll use Crowley. Whatever happened between your father and my aunt. He’ll come for Sera again… He’ll drag me back with lies.”
Saint turns me into him, and this time, I let him, though my hands stay between us, pressed to his chest.
His eyes hold mine, his inky pupils blown wide.
“If your father thinks fighting for land makes me ruthless, he should pray he never finds out what fighting for you makes me.”
“What about your mother?” I ask. “She hates me.”
He slides his hand into my hair at the nape and nudges my chin up with his forefinger. “Leave her to me.”
“Saint…” I whisper.
“I know.”
He says it as if he understands, as if he can read the war in me because the same one is moving through him.
