Her head snaps up, eyes blazing. “You might own this deal, Benedikt, but you don’t own me.”
I step forward, crowding her space again. “You agreed to give me a child. To be seen with me. To lie to the world with a smile on your face. That’s more than ownership, Sienna. That’s devotion.”
“It’s survival.”
“Same thing.”
She turns her back on me, walking toward the door. But before she can touch the handle, I speak again, lower and more serious this time.
“You can hate me,” I tell her. “You can curse my name and plot my death every day for the next five years. But you’ll give me what I want.”
She doesn’t respond right away. I can see her mentally calculating how far she’s willing to go, what the hell she’s signed herself up for, and how to get out of it. But there is no out. Not anymore.
Not unless I say so.
“You said five years,” she finally says.
I nod once. “Five years to give me what I want. The appearance of partnership. A child. A life I can parade in front of my father if it comes to that.”
“Why me?” she asks, and it’s not the first time she’s said it.
It won’t be the last.
I step closer. “Because you don’t belong in this world, and somehow, you keep surviving it.”
Her throat moves as she swallows. “That’s not a compliment.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
“I’m never going to like you. I’m never going to enjoy your company. I’m never going to want to spend time with you. This is all fake?—”
“Good.” I smile slowly. “It’ll make fucking you even more interesting.”
Her palm hits my chest, hard, but I barely move. “You’re such a bastard, you know that? No wonder you can’t find another woman to do this. You’re aprick.”
“And you’re still standing here.”
Her hand curls into a fist against my suit jacket, like she wants to punch me or hold on, maybe both. “This isn’t going to end well.”
“No,” I agree, lifting a hand to brush a stray piece of hair off her face. “But it’ll be memorable.”
We stand like that for a second, breath mingling, heat shifting between us like the gravity’s changed.
She hates me. But hate is still a connection, something I can work with.
Her eyes drop to my mouth, and she’s fighting herself.
She’s losing.
I’m winning.
However, I’m not that much in the lead. Sienna makes me want to lose control, and that’s not something I’m accustomed to. My world consists of thinking with my head, not my dick. I’ve come too far to act irrationally over a girl who works in a bakery, who is part of a debt, and who has no business being in my world.
But she is.
Or she will be.
And I want nothing more than her in my bed so I can fuck all my frustrations about my brother being out of prison out of my head. To start making an heir so I can secure my father’s kingdom once and for all.
