“I’ve been taking care of Sierra without your help all this time. If you think you can use her to get to me, you—”
“I don’t need to use Sierra. I get to you just fine.”
We both knew he was talking about my fevered response to his kisses.
“Last night changes nothing,” I said.
“Last night changes everything.”
Our eyes clashed, gray on black.
“Fine,” I said. “Make your deposits. See if I touch a single penny.”
Damian got up and walked around to my side of the desk.
“It’s very simple. You want the deposits to stop. I want you and Sierra,” he said. “Marry me, Skye.”
“Marry you?” I blinked. It was the last thing I’d been expecting. Proposals were supposed to be epic—grand moments that swept you off your feet, not negotiated like some business transaction. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I?” He swept one arm around the small of my back and pulled me in. “Tell me you haven’t missed me. Tell me you haven’t stayed up nights thinking of how good we are together. Because right at this moment, all I want to do is push you up against the wall and take you so hard that I can’t tell where I end and where you begin. Iachewhere you’re supposed to be, Skye, and I’m not going to stop until you’re mine. So we can draw this out or we can quit wasting more time. Either way, we’re going to end up right here. Me about to fuck you.”
“Is that what this is about? You want to fuck? Let’s do it, Damian. Let’s do it right here on my father’s desk. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nailing his daughter on his desk. You’ve taken everything else—his company, his home, his life—so why not his daughter? He’s gone, Damian, but you’re still trying to prove a point.”
“This is not about that,” Damian growled. “You and I haveneverbeen about that, so let it go.” He clamped down on my wrists as if trying to make me drop it.
“Really? Let it go? You couldn’t let it go with MaMaLu, but you expect me to just move on when it comes to my father?”
“I did let it go.” He spoke slowly, each word punctuated with razor sharp control. “I let you go. Back to your father. I left you in that supermarket, butyoutrackedmedown. That’s something that you conveniently omitted from your statement. I knew they were working on you, and you let them coerce you. You picked a side, Skye, and it sure as hell wasn’t mine.”
“I wasprotectingyou.”
“You couldn’t even look at me in court.”
“Because I was pregnant! Because you can read me like a book.”
His hold softened on my wrists and he tugged me towards him. “Precisely. So I know you still want me. I can tell by the way your breathing changes. The curve of your spine changes. Everything in you is screaming for me, Skye. So why are we fighting?”
“Just because we have mind-blowing sex doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Need I remind you? You said you would always, always love me.”
“I do. I always will. But it’s not enough.”
“Mind-blowing sex and love? That’s enough for a damn good start in my book.” He bent his head and said it in my ear, sending icy shivers down my skin. “And I’m not even throwing in the fact that we have a daughter. Say yes, Skye. Tell me you’ll marry me.”
“I don’t trust you, Damian. That’s the problem. There was a time when I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. I fought for you, but you know what you fought for? Vengeance. Retribution. Revenge. Even when you were in prison, you couldn’t let it go. You didn’t just bring down my father’s company, Damian. You ruined the lives of all the people who worked there, who depended on it for their livelihood. They were real people with real lives—kids, dreams, mortgages. Some of them were just weeks from retiring. Some depended on the health benefits. Do you ever think about that? Does it ever keep you up at night? Or are you still caught up with your own needs and your own pain? Open your eyes, Damian. There’s a bigger world out there and it’s not all about you. I’ve finally got my life together and you waltz in, expecting me to rearrange it because it suits you? Well, guess what? It’s not going to happen. You want to see Sierra? Fine. I won’t stand in your way. But stop trying to strong-arm your way into my life. That’s a right you have to earn.”
For a second, Damian stared at me. The raw desire in his eyes gave way to something else. Respect. He stepped back and allowed me my space.
I was almost out the door when I heard him speak.
“It’s not over, you know. It never has been,” he said. “Whether you say yes or no, you will always be my forever.”
If anything gives amateur craftsmanship away, it’s wonky stitches. Hand stitching is what made my brand stand out from mass-produced goods, so it was a skill I held regular workshops on. Anyone could attend, including the prisoners that I didn’t employ. I hoped that learning a new trade would help them when they got out. A lot of the lifers took the workshops too. It broke up the daily drudgery of prison life, and many of them ended up joining the production team afterwards. They used the money to buy small comforts that made their lives more bearable. Some of them were brute, hardened women, prone to fits of rage. I’d been plagued by second thoughts when I first started, and I’d had my fair share of panic attacks. There were times when I’d wanted to drop everything and run back to San Diego.
Now the guards welcomed me and the women were protective of me. I was showing them how to saddle stitch when I looked up and lost my train of thought. Damian was standing in the center of the compound, scanning the walls. He was the one constant, rooted thing in the middle of all the commotion. People were milling all around, but they gave him wide berth, clearing a small circle around him. His eyes were open, but he was lost to everyone and everything. I sensed it was the first time he had visited Valdemoros since the night he’d found out that MaMaLu was dead. Had he stood in the same spot then? Had my Esteban died there?
I wondered when my heart would stop aching for him, when my body would stop reacting to him, when my soul would stop humming around him. Why do we fall for people who are no good for us? Why, when we’ve been there, done that, and we know better? I was about to turn away when he shifted and stared straight at me. He could always freeze me with a single look, but he did something different then. He smiled. One minute, his face was frozen in the past, and the next he looked like he had found a ray of sunshine.
