Page 33 of His Asset
The words hung like acid in the air between us.
I lifted my chin.He’d clearly done his research.No doubt from the moment he’d seen footage of the kiss Reuben had bestowed upon me.I met Adam’s glittering eyes.“Yet I was the only woman he wanted to keep.”
Adam stepped even closer, anger tightening every line of his body.“Then I guess that’s the one thing I have in common with him,” he snarled.“You.”
I didn’t bother suppressing the laugh that slipped out.“I think you have more in common with Reuben than you’d ever admit.”His eyes narrowed, and I pressed on.“You’re both violent and obsessive.You both don’t like being told no, and you’re both convinced I belong to you.”
Adam’s nostrils flared.His entire body became rock-hard, his jaw locked so tight I thought it might crack.A beat passed.Then another.“I could’ve let him die,” he said finally, his voice low and simmering.“Back there.I should have.But I didn’t.Do you know why?”
I didn’t answer.I didn’t even blink.
“Because the second I saw you, I knew I couldn’t lose you again.”He exhaled angrily.“I couldn’t stomach the thought of you hating me even more than you already do.”His eyes flashed.“Youstopped me from destroying him.”
He reached out and ran the back of his fingers down the side of my face.My skin tingled at his touch, and I hated that instead of revulsion I felt something deeper, a touch I’d craved but been denied for too long.
“Come,” he said.When I didn’t move, his fingers closed around my wrist.“I won’t say it twice, Bella.”
I grudgingly relented.There was a time and a place for a battle, and this wasn’t it.
He guided me down the hallway, deeper into the penthouse.The silence felt heavier now, the air too clean, too still.He opened a door at the end of the hallway, and I stepped into a bedroom I’d never seen before.
It was spacious.Minimal.Impeccable.A king-sized bed with sharp corners, snow-white sheets and a jet-black comforter.Opposite the bed, a fireplace was set into black stone.But there were no personal touches.No clutter.No history.Just wealth and power.
I snorted my disgust.“This is just another sterile prison, a little fancier this time, but still a prison.”
Adam turned to face me, his expression unreadable even as he said softly, “Except there are no guards.”
And no cuff around my ankle, but I wouldn’t remind him of that.I wouldn’t put the thought into his head of putting one on me again.My spine tensed.If he even considered it I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions.
Instead I replied scathingly, “And no freedom.”I looked around, scoffing.“What evenisthis place?”
He’d moved me from one cell to another.Had he built this just for me?Or even worse, for others like me?I swallowed hard.As much as I wanted to ask, I couldn’t force the words out of my throat.
“I’ve had this place for years,” Adam said.“But I’ve never brought anyone here.Until now.”
I stared at him.“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Yes.”His voice was low.Frustrated.“I waited for the right moment to bring you here, waited longer than anyone could have possibly understood.Longer than I understood even myself.”He pushed a hand over his face.“You don’t know what it cost me.Holding back.Watching time run out.”
I snapped my head up.“You mean the time before I turned twenty-one?”I let my disgust show, my lip curling, my eyes flashing.“You waited for me like I was a ticking clock, and now you’re angry someone else got to me first.”
His jaw locked even as his brilliant gaze flickered.
“You think that waiting makes you different?”I said, pushing home my point.“You still planned to claim me.You still kept me a prisoner.You still tried to take awaymychoice.”
His nostrils flared, his breathing becoming uneven.
I managed a small smile.“I never slept with you,Adam.”He definitely wasn’t my master anymore.“You never had me.”
Something in his expression fractured.“I know,” he said, his voice rasping like it pained him to speak, to acknowledge the truth.
He didn’t need to know I was lying, that I’d never been intimate with Reuben, not in the way that still made me a virgin.
I stared at him.“Then why do you still act like I belong to you?”The silence pressed in, broken only by the faint hum of the city’s traffic far below.I wondered abstractedly if Adam’s human ears could hear any of it.I didn’t move, didn’t soften.“You want forgiveness,” I said, my voice flat.“You won’t get it.”
He looked at me, unreadable again.“I never stopped seeing you as mine,” he said finally, the words low, raw.“I fought with everything at my disposal to stop what they were doing to you.”
I shook my head, my jaw clenched.“You still funded it.”He didn’t deny it, and I pressed on.“You made all of it possible—the cells, the pain, the degradation my kind suffered.All of it, tied to you.”My throat tightened, bleak, dark rage intensifying within.But I didn’t blink.“That makes you worse than any of them.”A beat passed.My final blow.“I’ll never forgive you for that.”