“Move in with me.” A demand. Not a request.
It must’ve been my head injury, but I actually didn’t think it was a bad idea. Not that I could tell him that outright. “I just refused to go out with you, and now you’re asking me to move in?”
“No, youjusthad mind-blowing sex with me. That cancels your rejection.” He scowled. “You know you want to. My sister’s driving you mad.”
“That’s not a good enough reason to move in with someone.”
“Then do it for another reason.”
“Such as?”
“That no one will ever take better care of you. No one will devote their entire fucking life to you the way I do. No one will go against their family, tradition, and self-preservation like me.”
He was right, of course, but for some reason, that stunned me. I was so used to his love being laced with something punishing and cruel that I hadn’t stopped to think that Achilles hadn’t been the same person since I got shot. He tended to me without expecting anything. He nursed me back to life, even though he didn’t have to. My broken pieces weren’t his to pick up. But he still mended them.
But that wasn’t the only reason I was considering moving in with him.
I knew it would soothe the aching part of his soul that I’d fractured.
“I started having nightmares again.” My teeth munched on my lower lip. “I…I scream and cry in my sleep sometimes.”
“I saw when we were at the cabin.” He ran his fingers over his damp hair. “I can handle it.”
“I want a different room.”
He grabbed his own towel and ran it through his sooty, wet strands. “Done.”
“No surveillance—I come and go as I please.”
His lips gravitated to mine again, and we met halfway for a kiss.
“Done.” His teeth clamped around my lower lip, and he sucked it into his mouth, releasing it with a pop before lapping it with his tongue to ease the sting.
“No sex, either, until I say so,” I said. “Orgasms cloud my judgment.”
“We don’t want that.” He nuzzled my neck, dropping addictive kisses along my sensitive flesh.
“And I want a one-night stand.”
He ripped his mouth from me, glaring. “Why would you need a one-night stand with your future husband?”
“Not with you,” I said boldly. “I’ve never really dated anyone else. Never had the privilege of living life as I pleased because of you. All I could do was hook up with people like a thief, hoping you weren’t looking. If you’ve changed like you claim you have, you’ll prove to me that Iamfree,” I breathed out. “Free to choose you…or anyone else, if I wish to.”
Sleeping with someone else seemed as appealing as getting shot in the head again, but I wanted theoption. I craved some kind of a guarantee he wasn’t going to treat me like an object he bought, like other made men. For the past few years, I had been sexually starved because Achilles couldn’t handle me having a love life. All the while, he screwed women left and right without a care in the world, rubbing their existence in my face.
I needed him to prove to me he was a choice, not a decree.
“No,” he snarled.
“I’m not asking, Achilles,” I said quietly. “This is not about sex.” I shook my head. “You need to show me you can protect me from your own rage.”
His foreboding glare would terrify anyone else, but all I saw in his face was the resignation of a man too far gone to back out of any arrangement, including one that could very well kill him, to have me.
“I’ll do it whether you allow it or not,” I clarified.
“One time,” he growled under his breath. “One, Piccola Fiamma.”
“One time,” I repeated, my face so hot I fought the need to touch it to cool it off. “I want to know you mean it when you promise me that I’m free.”
