But being the stubborn girl I am, I say, “Let him then.”
He straightens his shoulders. “Is that what you want?”
I don’t answer. Of course it’s not what I want. But it’s a lose-lose situation. I have no place to call home. To have a good life. It’s hell with my dad, and it’s hell here with this monster.
“Tell me,” Caden urges, “do you want to go back to your dad?” There’s a serious edge to his voice.
“I want to win this stupid bet and be rid of both of you.”
“Well, you haven’t won yet, have you, princess? So, until then, and according to him out there, you’re with me for the rest of your miserable life. Which – also to him out there – isn’t fucking miserable. We’re a happy couple who can’t wait to get married and give him goddamn grandchildren. That’s it. You don’t need to lay it on so thick and give him a reason to doubt anything.”
I tap my fingers on my arm. “I can’t play happy families with you in a natural way. It’s impossible.”
His nostrils flare. “You are so goddamn difficult. You can’t just be normal for a couple fucking hours?”
I shrug one shoulder. “He started the conversation, what was I supposed to say? No, Mr Blackwood, I won’t be hopping on your son’s dick because I can’t fucking stand him.”
Caden throws his hands up in the air and, looking to the ceiling, growls like he’s about fit to burst. “God, you are so… so…”
“So what?”
He drops his arms, lowers his eyes back to me. “There are many words to describe you, Elodie.”
I fix my eyes on him in a challenging glare. “So, pick one.”
He closes the small distance between us. Caden watches me, searching for the right words. The most painful vitriol to throw at me.
But then he says, much quieter than the yelling he’s done since we walked into this room, “Stupidly brave.”
His eyes dart all over me, making me want to shrivel up and melt through to the earth’s core.
“Yeah, well,” I say, voice thick, “I’ve seen the worst in people. There’s nothing left to be afraid of.”
He studies me for another moment, the weight of his gaze crushing me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“No one’s ever given me so much attitude before you. No one’s spoken to my dad with such confidence, without so much as a tremor of fear. I could almost say I’m impressed.”
I give him a sly smile. “Well, thank you.”
“I saidalmost. I’m not. I’m irritated. You’re irritating as hell. Now, we’re going to go back out there and you’re not going to talk about how much you want to fuck me. Which, I know, deep down, is a secret truth of yours.”
I scoff. “As if.”
Caden leans forward, hands on the wall either side of my head, blocking the light above us and casting me in his shadow. “I can tell, Elodie, you have little tells.”
“Oh, yeah?” I will my voice to stay steady. “Like what, detective?”
His eyes drop down. “These lips, for one instance.” His hand comes up, fingers hooking under my chin, his thumb coming up to graze along my bottom lip. A feathery touch that tickles my nerves. “They give so much away. When you walk into a room I’m in, they part. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.” His voice lowers, almost to a whisper that crawls under my skin. “As if the breath in your lungs gets whipped away at the sight of me, and I can almost imagine, from across the room, the little gasp that escapes as this bottom lip falls open and the bottom of your throat hollows just a tad.” He swallows, eyes coming back up to mine and holding me there. “As if every time you leave me, you work so hard on forgetting I exist, and then each time we collide again, it shocks you just as much as the last. I don’t know what I prefer yet. When these lips move to spit venom at me, the screams that come out from between them, or when they only part just the slightest when your heart flutters around me.”
His words paralyse me. Such intimate details, such bold assumptions. Such sensuality lacing his voice. I get a glimpse of a different Caden. Just the tiniest bit as his features soften and his jaw unclenches. As he allows himself a second to melt into whatever this is. There’s no malice, no threat, no pain. His brain is taking him elsewhere and letting his mask drop. It freezes the blood in my veins.
“When your eyes drift down my body…” His hand lowers, fingers brushing down my neck. Then down the middle of my breasts – just the tips of two fingers, slowly stroking down – filling me with heat and making my heart flutter beneath his touch. “And I can almost see your imagination whir to life, spinout of control with the visions of me on top of you. Behind you. Beneath you.”
My voice is barely a whisper when I say, “You’re deluded.”
“And you’re wet.” His hand continues down, voice still low and raspy and awakening something dangerously hot inside me. “Aren’t you, little princess? I can see it in that brief moment, when your eyes fall on me for that first second, the dazed look as you allow yourself the smallest fragment of time to imagine what this would be like… if you let yourself go.”
His hand travels farther down my stomach, and I’m completely paralysed to do anything about it. “It’s not just me, you hate me too.”
