Emily wastes no time with her freedom, darting away from me and charging for the foyer. I stand there a moment, inhaling a calming breath and contemplating my next move and her potential departure. If I let her go, I find out where her panic leads her and to whom. But if that happens, will I ever find out how those lies really taste and why I’ve missed them? That’s not an option, and I start walking, my long stride eating up the space she has put between us. I exit the kitchen to the foyer, just in time to see her slip her purse across her chest.

She glances up at me and dashes for the door, and I let her reach it, entrapping her from behind. Still, she reaches for the knob and I shove my hand on the wooden surface and hold it shut. She turns to find me almost on top of her, so close I could taste those lies right now, right in this moment. I could fuck her right here and now, the way she’s been fucking me over and over for days.

“You’re such an asshole,” she hisses, surprising me with her attack. “Why can’t you see that I’m protecting you?”

“Protecting me how?” I demand, all kinds of possibilities stirring in my mind. The Feds. The Martina cartel. My brother. “And from whom?” I add.

“Since protecting you meant not telling you what I have going on, I wouldn’t be protecting you now if I told you. And what exactly is the difference in you pretending to fuck that woman to protect me and me keeping secrets to protect you?”

“You aren’t who the hell you told me you are. That’s the damn difference.”

“Fucking someone else or me hiding my identity to protect you. Which is worse?”

“Since I didn’t fuck another woman, but you did hide your identity, that answer is pretty damn clear.”

“I could say about ten things to that, but then you’d just make some scathing remark I don’t deserve. You didn’t even ask me why I hid who I am. You just attacked me.”

“This isn’t a little thing.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not. Not at all, but not for the reasons you assume.”

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“You’re still trying to turn this one on me and it won’t work. All you had to do was just say ‘I can explain’ and then do it. If you had, we’d be having a different conversation.”

“Right,” she says, “and starting the conversation with ‘no more lies’ is certainly the way to invite me to share my deepest, darkest secrets.”

“I gave you every reason to trust me. Every reason to tell me what you chose not to tell me. You want delicate little questions? That’s not me and it’s sure as hell not me after I find out from someone else you’ve been lying to me and I have to question every moment I ever spent with you.”

“We’re done,” she rasps out, delicately clearing her voice before adding, “We both know that, so let’s not drag this out. Let me out of here.”

I study her for several beats, reading uncertainty in her face that I want to understand, to taste on my tongue, a little too much. “Yes,” I say tightly. “Let’s get out of here before I strip you naked and fuck you, which I have no doubt we’ll both enjoy, but I won’t be sure who’s seducing who. And I won’t be that damn naked with you ever again.”

“I told you why I did this, Shane,” she murmurs, defeat in her voice.

“To protect me. Funny. My father loves to use that as an excuse.”

“That was your excuse for being with that woman,” she fires back, that fiery side of her I like too damn much returning.

“I wasn’t fucking that woman and you know it.”

“Do I? Because you’re judging me by your family’s actions, while their blood runs through your veins, not mine.”

I press my fists on either side of the door by her head. “Being a bitch does not help you right now.”

“Being an asshole just proves you’re an asshole.”

“Lying only makes you—”

“Honorable in ways you’ll never understand,” she blasts back.

“I’m going to understand,” I assure her. “Sooner rather than later.”

“I’d like to leave, sooner rather than later.”

“We’re going downstairs to the hotel restaurant to eat dinner.”

She blanches. “What? No. I’m not having dinner with you.”

“You will. The lies started with dinner, and so it’s only appropriate they end with dinner.”

“No—”

“And you’ll do it because you owe me that damn much.”

“What is dinner going to do but draw this out, Shane?”

“We’re going to dinner,” I insist, knowing she could try to run, but also knowing she’s being followed, and that ultimately might be the only way I find out the truth of who, and what, she is really all about.

“What keeps me from leaving?”

“Nothing but you,” I assure her.

“I’m going to leave.”

“Then leave, Emily. I’ll find out the answers from someone else, and be colored by their definitions. If that is how you want to end this, then it says a lot about who we are and what we are.”

“Don’t do that to me.”

“I’m just being honest, a trait I value.”

“If you knew what—”

“But I don’t,” I say, pushing off the door, damn ready to get her out of here before I really do strip her naked, and there’d be no coming back from how cold and hard I’d fuck her right now. And apparently I’m still just foolish enough to actually hold on to a hope that she really has an explanation for all of this that makes it possible. As if she wants to douse that idea, she quickly says, “Dinner won’t change what I’m willing to tell you.”




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