Page 37 of Illicit Games

“I do.”

“Then?”

“You’ll get mad or lose your patience just like my dad did.”

“No, I won’t.”

“You don’t know that,” she argues.

“Have I ever yelled at you?” Tracing my wristwatch, she shakes her head. “We’ll take it at your pace. I promise I won’t lose my patience.”

“Even if I accidentally crash your car?”

“Yeah. Even then.” Smacking her ass, I tease, “I will spank your pretty ass, though, for putting yourself in danger.”

She laughs. “Deal.”

“For today, I will call you a cab and drive right behind you.”

Iris

“Did Arjun change departments?” I ask Kian, staring at the empty desk across from mine. At first, I thought he was on leave until I noticed the desk had been cleaned out.

“I fired him.”

I gape at Kian, digesting his breezy tone. “When? And why?”

“He yelled at you.”

“You fired him because of me?” How the heck did I not know? I guess I was too caught up in the whirlwind of the past few days.

“No one disrespects you.” His calm statement holds a lethal edge.

The day of my panic attack replays in my head. I never asked Kian how he found me in the bathroom. The pieces click. “You saw me running away that day, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It’s why Arjun got off easy.”

“You didn’t have to fire him, Kian,” I reply, despite being grateful. Arjun was awful to me. Yet I can’t help but feel bad for him. “He was an amazing assistant to you and I’m here temporarily.”

“As an employee, yes. But as my woman, you’re in my life permanently.” Crowding me against the desk, he takes my face in his hand. “Whether or not he was amazing is irrelevant because I will not tolerate anyone belittling you. How could you think I’ll stand seeing his face day in and day out, knowing he made you cry? He won’t make it out of here alive if he were to return.”

His grip is the only thing that keeps me upright. I gulp past the dryness in my throat and croak out, “You can’t say something like that. You shouldn’t.”

I know. Pot, meet kettle.

However, when I blurted out what I would do to the women lusting after him, it was a form of expression of my obsession for him.

With Kian, there’s no telling.

“Iris,” he hums dangerously, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Anyone harms you, they die. Anyone touches you, they die. Anyone so much as looks at you wrong, they die. I will kill for you and it won’t be just in my head.”

A thrill shoots down my spine.

Arousal makes my breath quicken.

“If it wasn’t Nathan I was engaged to, but someone else—” I need to pause before I can even utter the next words. “—would you have…?”

A bloodthirsty light shines in his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”