Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
She abruptly rose to her feet and tossed her napkin on the table. “I’m going to pack.”
“Sit.”
She ignored me.
I rose to my feet. “Sit your ass down.”
She flipped me the bird and walked off.
I followed her into the apartment and gripped her by the arm.
She twisted her arm out of my grasp then aimed her palm right for my face.
I grabbed her wrist and steadied it before she could slap me again. I squeezed her so hard it hurt a little bit as I forced her hand back to her side. “I warned you not to fuck with me.”
“Well, you shouldn’t fuck with me either.” She shoved me in the chest and headed to her room.
I went after her, abandoning my hot coffee and cigar.
When she got to her bedroom, she slammed the door in my face and locked it.
My temper was smoldering, so I slammed my body into the door and broke it right off the hinges.
She screamed and tripped backward, landing on the rug around the bed.
I moved on her fast, pinning her hands together above her head. “Listen to me.”
For the first time, she didn’t fight me. Watching me break down the door like a cannonball obviously got her attention.
Good.
“I own you in every way that you can think of. You seem to forget that fact every five minutes, demand information you have no right to know, run your mouth like anything you have to say matters. Know your place.” Once I relayed the message and let it sink in, I released her.
“Know your place?” She sat up, her robe coming undone in the fight, showing her short white tank top that revealed her pierced navel and hard nipples through the thin fabric. She wore no bottoms, just a black thong. “I do know my place, and it’s not putting up with your bullshit.”
I got to my feet, in nothing but my sweatpants because it was too warm for a shirt, even this early in the morning. “As long as you want my protection, you’re going to put up with my bullshit every fucking day.”
On the floor of the bedroom with her nearly naked body on display, she looked up at me with unbridled anger in her eyes, like she wanted to slap me until she made me bleed. There was a special kind of loathing there, the kind that pierced deep under the skin. “Don’t pretend you don’t need me, Cauldron. You need me to sell your diamonds, so I suggest you stop being the world’s biggest asshole.”
Something about the way she looked drove me crazy. The way her hair fell over one shoulder, showing one of the diamond earrings in her lobe. The silk robe was open, exposing her almost naked body and making it look so vulnerable. But what turned me on most of all was her resistance. I didn’t tolerate disobedience, had no patience for it, so this attraction made no sense whatsoever.
I dropped back to my knees and moved over her, the robe coming apart altogether. My hands slid up her loose shirt, and I gripped her tit, my thumb brushing over the hard nipple.
“What are you doing?” She lay back with me and didn’t slap my hand away.
I yanked her thong over her ass before I pushed my bottoms down in a hurry. Nothing more was said before I shoved myself deep inside her, my knees cushioned by the thick rug on the bedroom floor.
The anger from our fight was channeled into passion—and we fucked on the bedroom floor as if the fight had never happened.
Camille and I could agree on one thing.
Neither one of us enjoyed Paris.
I preferred the privacy of my Cap-Ferrat estate, the way nature and civilization coexisted in a peaceful way. If I craved further solitude, all I needed to do was board my yacht and take it out in the Mediterranean.
“So that’s her, huh?” Laurent looked out the back windows to the pool, where Camille was lounging in the sun on one of the armchairs, wearing a pink bikini with sunglasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.
“Yes.” I brought the glass to my lips and took a drink.
He gave a nod in approval. “She’s hot.”
I ignored his words.
He turned to look at me, as if to gauge my reaction. “Willing to loan her—”
“No.”
“Damn, she must be good.”
“We’re monogamous.”
My cousin cocked an eyebrow. “You? Monogamous?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“You’re fucking one woman and only one woman—it’s exactly what I think.”
I ignored what he said. “Grave saw us together at Fender’s event.”
“Did you speak?”
I shook my head. “He had Camille cornered, and I intervened.”
“How did you intervene without speaking?”
I shrugged before I took a drink. “Sometimes a look is more than enough.”
“You think that’ll be the end of it?”
“I hope it’s not. I hope he spends every waking moment utterly enraged.”