I can’t keep looking at him when he’s being so intense, so I stare out the window again as I think about what he said. I have them, do I really, though? They are impossible to fully trust. A light breeze drifts through the perfectly manicured gardens surrounding the house. There is something about this place that reminds me of Valentine’s mansion. A room for everything you could ever imagine, ridiculously vast expanses of land stretching out in front of us, so much space, yet I still feel just as trapped as when I was with him. “What about Dahlia? It’s my favorite flower,” I eventually say.
His lips lift at the sides a little as if he likes the idea. “That will do.” He types it into the form he’s filling in.
“You can choose whatever surname you want. As long as it’s not Moretti, I’m happy.”
“Done.” He keeps filling in the form as I watch him. He’s still favoring his good side, and while he hasn’t mentioned being in pain, I’m sure he must be. It hasn’t been long since he was shot. It’s strange, but our time in the clinic made me feel like we could be something different. Even though we didn’t talk a lot, I felt closer to him, like we had a silent understanding for whatwe both went through, but out here in the real world, he’s back to his tough, cold, asshole self. And the distance between us is glaring. It hurts in a way I never expected. Why do I want to be close to someone like him, anyway? What does that make me, a glutton for punishment or something?
“Why don’t you touch me like your brothers?” I don’t know where the question comes from. All I know is I’m sitting too close to him because my brain has turned to mush, and suddenly, I want more from him than I should.
He peers up from his laptop, his eyes narrowing as he scans over my face. “You’re not ready for me to touch you, flower.” His voice is icy, and it sends a shiver over my skin.
“What does that mean?” I ask anyway.
With a serious expression, he closes the laptop and sets it down on the coffee table. “You nearly got us both killed.”
I stare back at him, trying to work out how that correlates with him touching me.
He leans in closer. “When I get my hands on you again, you will know.” His words send goosebumps over my skin, and I know instantly what he wants.
I pull back from him, my back ramrod straight. “You want to punish me for running when it was you who scared me?” I splutter back at him. What the fuck.
His eyes flash with something unhinged. “You wouldn’t have been scared if you had trusted us instead of listening to your brother.”
I cross my arms over my chest protectively. “I wouldn’t have been scared if you didn’t take all my stuff and told me the truth instead,” I spit back at him. How dare he turn this around on me.
“You would have taken off, thinking you were running from us, and run right into them. Right now, you would be in the possession of Leone Russo. Is that what you want? Because I thought you wanted to be free.”
“Of course it’s not what I wanted. But I could have gotten away. I could have escaped to someplace better.”
He huffs out a cold laugh. “They had your phone tracked, our apartment building bugged, the Serpents watching our every fucking move. There was no getting away from them. This is real life, Daisy, not some sappy movie. Stop living in a fantasy world.”
I stare back at him, my heart racing in my chest. How dare he talk to me like that! I know what this is. It’s my fucking life, and I have been living in this nightmare for years before he got involved. “You’re not my papa,” I growl back at him, hardly recognizing my voice.
A dark chuckle vibrates from him. “Someone needs to be. Your own papa failed you.”
My mouth pops open. I have no words to come back at him with. His eyes leisurely roam down my body, settling on my bare legs, and I see him grow hard. He knows I have nothing on under his brother’s shirt, but it’s more than that. It’s this conversation. He doesn’t want to touch me until he can control me in every way, and he knows he can’t do that while I’m still recovering, so he won’t touch me at all. Even when it’s damn obvious fighting with me turns him the fuck on. “You’re getting off on this, aren’t you… the control you think you have over me,” I whisper, my voice so soft it’s barely audible. But I’m not letting him get away with this shit.
He collects a strand of my hair and runs his fingers through it slowly. I should flinch away from him, but instead, I stare back at him in fascination. His features can be so harsh, but with me, there’s another side to him. “You have no idea how much. And I don’t just think I have control over you. I know it.”
“Jagger,” I gasp, because the way he’s looking at me is turning me the hell on as well. I’m supposed to be telling himhe can’t fucking control me. Storming from the room and never talking to him again. But that’s not what I want at all.
His eyes met mine, a disturbing mix of desire and something sinister that sent shivers down my spine. “Come sit on my lap, flower.” His voice is almost a whisper this time but still holds that edge of authority.
What does he want with me? He doesn’t grab my wrist and pull me onto him; he’s waiting for me to follow his instructions, and I’m not sure I want to. His brow rises, challenging me to defy him. I should. I stand, tossing up my options. But I don’t want to leave his side. This is the fucked-up thing with him. I stay. With shaky legs, I move to sit on his lap.
“Not always such a brat.” His voice is a low rumble in my ear, it makes my stomach flip. And I go to stand again, over this shit already. But he wraps an arm around my middle, stopping me. And that sends my heart into overdrive.
He picks up a remote and flicks on the flat-screen TV in front of us. The same surveillance screens I saw come up in his club flash onto the screen. “You want help with your work?” I ask, trying to work out what on earth he wants with me right now.
He presses a hand to my front, so I’m forced to lie back on him, his body a comforting warmth it shouldn’t be right now when I’m mad at him. “You wanted to know what happens at my bar, and you have bitten into my work time with all your huffing and puffing.” He flicks to one of the black scenes and a couple flashes up in a darkened room. “So how about a lesson instead?” The woman is bent over a black leather bolster, her ass bare, her hands bound at her back with some type of cuff, her ankles attached to the legs of the bolster. The man is in a dark suit and holds a paddle of some sort, slapping it against the palm of his hand as he walks by her.
I swallow the lump now lodged in my throat. “Are you allowed to watch this?” I ask, half turned on, half mortified,because I know this is playing out in real time, and it feels all kinds of wrong that I can see it. “This seems like a massive invasion of their privacy.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “He’s a client of mine, breaking in a new sub, and wants some pointers. So yes, I have permission to watch their scene.”
I glance over my shoulder at him. “You’re like a coach for the doms?” A sentence I never thought I would say.
His lips twist up at the sides, and a shadowy delight dances in his eyes. “Don’t look so horrified.”
