Page 37 of Intrigue

I clench my fists.

“I need you to fix this,” I grit out.

A side of his lips curves up. “Fix what?”

“You know what,” I snap. “The gallery. Cassian. Everything you’ve done.”

He exhales, dragging his eyes over me like he’s memorizing every inch of my destruction.

Then he leans in. “And what will you give me in return?”

My breath catches. I knew this was coming. I hate that my body reacts before my brain does.

“I can’t do a year, but I can give you a month,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “That’s not going to work for me. One month isn’t enough.”

“Please, Sandro. Just leave us alone. Leave Cassian alone. You don’t even want me, you just enjoy breaking people, bending them until they snap. So here I am, as you asked, giving you a month. That’s all I have to give. All I will ever give.”

And then it will be over. Cassian and I can go back to our lives. Back to normal. Away from my father. Away from Sandro. Away from all of this. At least, that’s what I tell myself—over and over—like a mantra I’m afraid to stop repeating, because if I do, the doubt might creep in.

Something glints in his eyes, hurt, maybe, but it’s gone before I can be sure it was ever there.

“You think I don’t care for you?”

He reaches for my face. I pull back.

His eyes darken. “You hate me, don’t you?”

I swallow hard. “More than you’ll ever know.”

His lips barely graze mine, a whisper of contact before he murmurs—

“Then prove it.”

Then with more force, his hands frame my face, his fingers sliding through my hair, tucking it behind my ears, too gentle, too careful, a contradiction to everything I know he is.

Then he leans in, his breath warm against my skin.

“Say it,” he whispers.

I swallow again. “Say what?”

“That you don’t want this.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Because I have come to realize that I can’t lie to him. I’ve never been able to successfully. He reads me like a book.

His fingers trail along my arm, like he’s memorizing the shape of my surrender.

“Tell me to leave you alone,” he whispers. “Tell me you’ll go back to him, pretend none of this ever happened.”

I clench my fists. “I—”

No more words come out.

He tilts his head. “That’s what I thought.”

I hate him. I hate him. But my body doesn’t. It never has.