And I didn’t even regret it when she looked over her shoulder at me and murmured, “It’s a good morning with you in my bed, I guess.”
“You guess, Darling? What would make you sure of it?”
She rolled her hips again. “I’m pretty sure that would make it perfect, even though we shouldn’t. It’s Monday. We both need to get ready for the day.”
I smiled at how groggy she still sounded, like waking up was a slow process that I wanted every part of. She rolled to face me, the haze of sleep from the night before still in her eyes. When she wiggled her hips, I gripped them immediately. “Darling, you’re tempting me again. I’m finding I’m not good at restraint with you.”
She chuckled but moved away and grabbed her pj’s to slide back on. “Were you ever good at restraint, Jameson? I don’t believe it.”
She stood there in her panties and tank, hands on her hips, with the sun streaming in from the window, and I realized with her I’d never be good at control. With her, I’d probably lose itall the damn time. And I craved losing it with her, for her, and because of her. That revelation had me sharing more with her than I ever intended. “Most of the time I am. I need control as a Diamond. Much more control than I had at our event the other night.”
She sat on the bed right next to me and folded her hands in her lap. “Why?”
“Because it’s better to act with strategy than emotion. To plan and execute rather than lash out or get lost in an emotion you can’t come back from.”
She hummed. “Sometimes embracing what you really feel is the only way to move forward though.”
“Maybe, but Ishouldhave more control with you. I enjoy you too much and don’t want to consider that you might run off,” I admitted, dragging a finger over her soft cheek.
She bit her lip and cautiously met my eyes to ask, “Might run off before our contract is up, you mean? Nervous you’ll lose me and Franny’s educational services early all because you aren’t planning ten steps ahead without emotion involved?” Her question had my body tensing as if it wanted to refuse her words immediately.
We were past the contract. She had to know that by now. “You realize I am nervous to lose you, period, right?”
“Jameson …” She frowned, and I saw how the tension in her shoulders relaxed at my words. Then she reached out to weave our fingers together and whispered, “You won’t lose me or anyone who matters for showing them who you are. And if you do, they weren’t meant to have you in the first place.”
I chuckle. “Mia Darling, how I wish that were true.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Looking toward the ceiling, I wasn’t sure how to tell her, but the need to burned in my chest. “I married a woman who knew exactly who I was in the syndicate—all about me, Mia—andshe abandoned us, walked away from her perfect daughter one sunny day when she was supposed to pick her up. My own wife left, and it’s because I didn’t give her what she wanted.”
Her lips thinned, and then she jumped up to pace with her head down, her curls going back and forth as she shook her head. “Whatever a couple is going through, Jameson, you don’t leave a child. That’s on her. Not you.” She froze and then winced like it caused her physical pain. “Did she betray youandthe syndicate?”
I waited to see if she would ask the next question. The one I wanted her to ask. Did I kill her? She should have. She should believe that I would have. She needed to see I had that darkness in me, that it festered and grew and didn’t make me a good man. “Don’t you have another question to ask me?”
“No.” She held my gaze. “I don’t need to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know you wouldn’t have done that to your daughter.”
“So much blind faith in me, Darling.”
“It isn’t blind when I see how you love her every single day.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief that this woman had more trust in me than most of the syndicate. My mother had asked about the accident. My brother and father too. Everyone who was close to me considered it, and I didn’t blame them. But Mia’s heart was something different.
Something too good.
Too trusting.
And then she asked a question I didn’t expect. “Did you love her too? Your wife?” She looked away. “Cal told me it was an arranged marriage of sorts.”
Of course Cal had. Rubbing my eyes, I nodded, not even sure where to begin. “We married for the syndicate. She had the right family that strengthened our partnerships on the East Coast. It was mutually beneficial.”
“For you, or for the syndicate?”
“Well, we thought for everyone. She was beautiful, accommodating, and … strategic. I thought I loved her at first. Until I found out she loved power, money, and prestige much more than me. She wanted to save her family’s company over everything, putting all of us at risk. I wouldn’t allow it. She relished the game, and I learned that with her I had to play it.”
