Page 14

“That isn’t the way this works,Abigail Prior. You don’t get to tell me what I do or do not get to talk about. If you were making this easy, I wouldn’t need to speak at all. You’re the one who should be talking.”
“Please,” she says, her eyes trained on a random spot beside me. “I don’t know who you think I am, but you have it wrong.” She closes her eyes and takes a breath like she’s readying herself for what she’s going to say. “If you’re going to kill me, kill me, but don’t bring my son into this. Don’t even say his name.” The words run from her mouth in a jumble, but her voice doesn’t break. She opens her eyes, red from pepper spray but with a sheen over them that looks to be from emotion.
She’s serious.
“Kill you?” I ask, my head tilting. “You think I meant I would kill you?”
“Isn’t that what you mob guys do when someone pisses you off?” Now her voice cracks. She finally meets my gaze, green eyes zoning in on me like she’s looking for my reaction.
Mob guy.
She thinks I’m a mob guy.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or sneer.
“Is that what the people on Danny Bower’s campaign told you?” My eyes dip to her cleavage spilling from the corset, and she covers herself with her peacoat and fidgets. “And you let me fuck you anyway?”
“I didn’t know who you were until tonight. I didn’t know your family owned the club, and I didn’t know you would kidnap me off the street. I didn’t know a damn thing about you, not even your first name, but if I had, I wouldn’t have stepped foot on your property. And I wouldn’t have let you touch me.”
“I think youlikedme touching you. I doubt they even asked you to do that.”
“No one asked me to do anything! I’m not fucking working for anyone!”
My lips lift. She’s been speaking calmly up until this point, her voice low. She explodes like a little firecracker now, and I don’t suspect it has to do with my accusations. She’s embarrassed. I can see it in the red tinge of her cheeks.
“So then why did you go through with last night?”
She glances away and shifts uncomfortably. I don’t for one second believe that no one sent her, but I do believe she’s genuinely embarrassed by letting me fuck her. It doesn’t make sense to me why they’d ask her to do that, other than maybe they wanted her to find out if I have a special kink or some shit like that, which I suppose to some I would. I’m not exactly vanilla.
But no, they didn’t. They wouldn’t have sent such a rookie to do something like that.
Rather than answering, she fidgets again and then changes the subject. “If you don’t care about the money, why would you tell my boss I stole from you?”
“In case he decides to askhisboss why I would want you fired. It wouldn’t have been good for you if I’d told him the truth.”
“Why?”
“Why don’t you answer my question first.”
She seems to think for a few moments, and then she meets my gaze. She sits up straight and squares her shoulders in the same facade she displayed on the street.
Who does she think she’s fooling?
“Honestly? I needed the money. I tried to explain to you that I wasn’t who you thought I was, but you kept interrupting me so I didn’t get the chance.”
A laugh barrels from me, and I throw my head back. “You didn’t get the chance,” I mock, shaking my head and grinning.
“Fuck you,” she mutters and pulls on the door handle.
I slide so that I’m pressed against her and take her hand clutching the handle, bringing it to her chest. She does that thing where she freezes again and her eyes hold mine carefully. What is she doing, sizing me up?
We stay like this, holding each other’s gaze. My eyes are the first to break away, and I run them down her chest where her coat has slipped open. The ivory skin of her chest is smooth and dotted with freckles I have the urge to lick.
I want her again.
My cock stirs and skin heats with my boiling blood. I don’t know who I’m angry at, her or me. But I know exactly how I want to release that anger. Images of her bent in front of me fill my head, and I get lost for a moment.
Then I’m back.
I let go of her wrist and knock three times on the partition. Oliver’s shuffling reaches the backseat, and Abi looks at me with a question in her eyes that she doesn’t voice.
“I’m going to find out what you told Danny’s campaign, Abigail. With or without your cooperation.”
Her door opens as soon as the last word is out of my mouth, and Oliver pulls her out by her arm. The door slams shut, and a minute later we’re driving away, leaving her dazed on the street. Or maybe she isn’t dazed. Maybe she’s only afraid, because she knows when I find out what she’s done I’ll be back. I don’t think about that, though. Something else distracts me, filling my head with images I’m certain will infest my mind for the rest of the night.
I have to have her again.