“Bastian,” I say again. “Look. At. Me.”
At long last, his gaze drops to mine. “What do you want, Eliana?”
“What do I—” I stop myself and take a long, soothing breath, because if I strangle him to death, it’ll be awfully hard for him to give me any answers. “What I wouldlikeis for us to have a reasonable, adult conversation about several shall-we-call-them ‘interesting’events that occurred around and between us this weekend. I think that is a reasonable, adult request and I would like you to respond in a reasonable, adult fashion.”
Shockingly, he does not. His brow arrows downward and he reaches out to snare my upper arm hard. “For fuck’s sake, what do you not under?—”
But then he cuts himself off and looks up. I follow his gaze to see both Jovanni and Shithead Kyle looking at us curiously. Bastian growls until they drop their gazes.
Then, with one sweeping glance around the office to be sure no one else is watching, he drags me down the hall.
He stops in a shadowy corner behind a big plant and shoves me against the wall. His body cages me in, one hand braced beside my head, the other still gripping my arm. “You want answers?” he rasps. “Well, I can’t give them to you.”
“Why—”
“I can’t tell you why Aleksei wants you. I can’t tell you what he’s planning. I can’t tell you about the things I’ve done or the person I used to be.” His jaw clenches. “And I sure as hell can’t promise that getting close to me won’t get you killed.”
I swallow hard. “Then whatcanyou give me?”
“Nothing you’re asking for.” His eyes search mine in the fluorescent light filtering through the plant’s leaves. But when he exhales, he softens, some of the tension leaving his face. “If you want to walk away right now, I’d understand. It would wreck me, but I’d understand.”
The sane thing to do is obvious. But it seems sanity left the building a long time ago, because what I say instead is, “What if I don’t want to walk away?”
Bastian’s hand slides from my arm to my waist. “Then for the next seventy-nine days, we pretend like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. No questions asked, no answers given. Just—” He sighs. “Just us.”
“That’s it? We just ignore everything?”
He shakes his head. “Not everything. We have the stuff that matters. The sex, the intimacy, the companionship. All those items on your list that you want to cross off before—” He can’t finish the sentence.
But I can.
Before I go blind. Before our contract ends. Before whatever this is between us implodes spectacularly and takes us both down with it.
“You’re asking me to live in a fantasy,” I accuse.
“I’m asking you to let me give you what I can.” His forehead drops to mine, and for the first time all day, the steel leaves his face completely. “Even if it’s not everything you deserve.”
I weigh my options. He’s asking me to pretend I didn’t just get assaulted in broad daylight and then get sexually ravaged by a caveman incarnation of my boss. It’s irrational, to say the least.
But I’m not rational anymore. Truthfully, I haven’t been rational since the day Dr. Haggerty told me what my future held.
And standing here, pressed against the wall with Bastian’s forehead touching mine, his breath warm on my lips, I realize something: I don’twantto be rational.
I want to be reckless. I want to take what I can get and worry about the consequences later.
I want a taste of the dark.
Because there’s no telling what “later” will bring.
“Alright,” I whisper. “For seventy-nine days, we lie to ourselves. I can do that.”
His eyes close and a soft sigh of relief passes through his lips. “Thank you, Eliana.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I warn. “You might regret this.”
“I already do,” he growls wistfully. Then he laughs. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”
45
