Page 114 of Diamond In The Rough

“It’s not who you are.” Fresh tears spill from my eyes and track over my cheeks. Silent. Devastated. He doesn’t get the wild, pathetic girl sobs most others would put on. “You’re better than the world you were born in to.”

“Am I?” He unsnaps his pants and lowers the zipper. But he doesn’t push them down. Doesn’t expose himself to me, despite the fact that my eyes wait for it. Despite my heart skipping a beat when he doesn’t. “I’m the son of a don, Tiia. Literally bred to murder others.”

“You’re better than this.”

“I was contracted by my own father to kill my brothers.” His lips curl into a cruel smile when my eyes jump back to his. “Guess that wasn’t in your information packet when you were assigned to this family.”

“Micah…”

“He told me when I was ten years old what my future looked like. He told me who. When. Where.” He sets his hands on his hips and looks down at my chair. “Felix would be the first to go, because he was clearly gunning for top spot.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what? You’re observing, aren’t you? I’m giving you information no one else on this planet knows. You can take it back to the office and get yourself a raise large enough to pay for a hearing specialist.”

A painful lump of nerves settles in my throat. Anxiety. Desperation. “Please stop this. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“You lied to me! Lied to my face. You ate with my brother. You were in my fucking home! You spent the night, where you could have easily snuck out and slit his throat while I slept, sated from good pussy and naïve with trust.”

“Stop degrading what we had.” I jerk in my chair and try again to loosen the straps. “You call me a whore and describe it as good pussy. But I know you love me, Micah.”

“Loved,” he spits out. “It’s a feeling I long ago learned how to switch off.”

“Love!” I cry. “And it’s not something you get to abuse. You have a good heart, Micah. You’re a good person. But you undo it all for every second you have me tied up in here.”

“I have a job. One single fucking mission in life. According to my father, it was to eliminate anyone who would dare sit atop the Malone throne and rule New York City. But according to me, to my heart,” he spits out, “it’s to protect the man who now owns that throne. I owe my brothers that protection.”

Then he looks down at me, sneering with disgust. “I owe you nothing.”

Stalking around and coming up behind my chair, his woodsy scent is tainted by the tang of sweat filling my lungs. He grabs my hair and yanks me back, straining my neck until the muscles and bones ache. Stretching my throat until it hurts. Then he slams his lips to mine and steals my breath, his tongue coming out to duel with mine.

But this isn’t like a real kiss this man is capable of.

This isn’t love. It’s not Micah.

So I give him nothing back. I don’t fight or bite or turn my head away. Nor do I give in, kissing him back and returning what he so freely gave any other day.

“You don’t want me anymore, mo chroí?” He pulls back with a gasp, his breath and chest racing as he studies me, upside down in my vision. “How dirty did you feel, fucking a man for work?”

“I fucked you because I wanted to.” I close my eyes and steal from us both this memory. Whether I live or die, I don’t want to remember him this way. Not when I know the real him. Not when I know the tenderness he’s capable of. “I went to bed with you because I wanted you. That had nothing to do with work.”

“It had everything to do with work!” He releases my hair and stalks back around to stand in front of me, snarling when I flicker my eyes open. Though I only allow slits, so I can close them again at a moment’s notice. “You accepted my pendant, knowing you were a lying cunt.”

Tears burn the backs of my eyes, his words, worse than knives.

“You deceived me, Tiia. All so you could make an arrest? So you could add this catch to your record and go down as the one who finally locked up a Malone?”

“No, I?—”

“For more than sixty years, my father lived. Sixty, Tiia! Where he laid scourge on this city and killed countless people. He trafficked guns and powder into this country by the ton. And he transported women out to sell them. To have them raped and killed. Sixty fucking years, and his father before him, destroying anything good this country had. The Feds could have stepped in at any point. They could have intervened and saved five little boys from the torture of living inside that house with no way out. But no, you choose to breach now? When those boys are men and the crimes they commit are in the pursuit of something decent.”

“Micah, it’s not?—”

He reaches out and tears my bra down, the cups folding forward and my breasts pebbling when they’re exposed to the fresh air.

A bursting sob races along my throat, violent against the sensitive skin and leaving me a shaking mess.

“Don’t do this,” I tremble. “You’re not like him.”

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