Page 61 of Claimed By the Villain

“You don’t need to throw your sexual experience in my face.”

“You’re pissed because I had women before you? I never said I was a virgin,” I reply, somewhere between irony and disbelief.

I’m thirty-five fucking years old! What did she expect?

Jackie

Right now, I feel like the biggest fool who ever lived. I should’ve enjoyed life more, get to know more men, the way he apparently has with women. The way heclearlyalways has. But deep down, I know it never would have worked for me.

I can’t picture myself in the arms of countless men without any real connection. My heart has always belonged to him. I’ve never been able to separate sex from love, and because of that, being with anyone before was never easy. None of those moments even came close to what we had last night… and I hate how foolish that makes me feel.

I smell something burning, and even more irritated, I turn to shut off the stove, seeing the eggs I’d been making completely ruined.

“Okay,” he says, and I glance back, because if there’s one thing I know about this man, it’s that he never backs off.

I study him, trying to figure out his next move.

“Giving up so easily on something isn’t your style.”

“You’re right, but it makes no sense to talk about what’s already happened—or what might happen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We don’t need to plan the future.”

“We’re going to spend five years together,” I argue. “On some level, planning will be necessary.”

“Yes,onlyfive, and then you’ll be free. We can live one day at a time until then.”

I leave the kitchen with a tangled mess of emotions spilling over, heading for the stairs because I don’t want to talk to him right now.

“Are you going to run away every time you don’t have an argument in a conversation?” he asks, sounding irritated as he follows me.

I stop in the hallway, hands on my hips.

“My problem isn’t having arguments. It’s the exact opposite,guardian, and you have my word you wouldn’t want to hear any of them right now.”

“Why don’t you try?”

“Where should I start? Oh, right, how about with the part where getting into a relationship that hasn’t even started, and you already seem eager for it to end, makes no sense at all?”

“Life doesn’t always have to make sense, Jackie. You should know that by now. But just so you know, I’m not eager for it to end. Why would I be? I’ll have you in my bed for the next sixty months.”

“Don’t think that just because I accepted to marry you, I’m locked in and you’ll have free access to me. I’m not one of your women.”

Chapter 32

She walks to the bedroom where she slept the first night she stayed here, and I follow her.

When I step inside, she’s looking out the window, her back to me.

“It’s what you want,” I say, moving closer, brushing her hair aside and biting the back of her neck. “To be mine, to be taken by me, to come screaming my name. I can give you all that, Jackie. I know a million ways to satisfy your body, but I will never be able to give you the dream… or love.”

She spins in my arms, her eyes stormy.

“I never said I didn’t want you. I’m telling you I won’t be something ‘guaranteed.’”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I step back, wondering how the fuck, after spending the entire night inside her, the best night I’ve ever had with a woman, we’re arguing before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee?