Page 115 of Diamond In The Rough

“What was your objective when you came into my life?” He cups my breast and slides the pad of this thumb over my nipple, hardening the tip, elongating it and scratching away at my soul. Because his hand on my flesh still calls to me. It still sends spears of electricity to my very core. “You say observe. I call bullshit.” His eyes flicker to mine. Dangerous. On the edge of deranged. “What exactly was your mission?”

“I told y?—”

He pinches my nipple and sneers when I cry. But my explosive breath has nothing to do with pain. Or violation. And everything to do with the fact he can still command my body.

“Was it to arrest me?” he demands. “Or Felix? Which one of us was your end game?”

“Micah, I don’t?—”

He dips down and takes my nipple between his lips, biting just hard enough for it to feel good, and suckling so a fire coils in my belly. “You’re still wet for me, Tiia Ailani.” He crouches to save his back, and looks up at me from beneath long, beautiful lashes. “But your heart pounds from fear.”

I firm my lips and loathe the tear that trickles over my cheek.

“But you’re not afraid of death,” he decides. “Nor torture.” His eyes search mine, unblinking. Unkind. “You’re scared you’ll still come from my touch, even tied to a filthy chair where other men have died before you. You’re afraid of admitting you fell for a killer. Because if you do, you’ll be forced to toss your entire career in the trash and admit you’re nothing when you don’t have a badge to hide behind.”

“Please stop.” I keep a tight hold on my jaw. On my words. My entire soul. “Please just let me go. Or kill me.” I swallow a painful lump, damn near choking on it. “Whatever you’re gonna do, just do it already. I don’t want to sit here wondering which side of your family tree your actions will align with.”

“Which side?” He moves to my other breast. Leaving the first to rest in my stretched-out cup and drawing my neglected nipple between his lips until the tip elongates. “I only have one side to draw from, mo chroí. That’s why you’re here.”

“You have two. We all have two. It’s basic biology.”

“So we discuss science then?” He scoffs, cold and mean and horrifyingly distant. “X chromosome, Y chromosome. Mix it all together and we still end up with a killer. Or should we discuss rape?” He releases my breast and pushes up to stand. “Because that’s how I was conceived. Did the Feds think to intervene back then, when a seventeen-year-old girl was abducted from a good home, forced into captivity, bred, and discarded? How far back do your records go, Agent Hale? Could your people have helped my mother, or was she tossed away like trash, the timing wrong and her safety was not worth blowing an undercover case for?”

His mother was Renee Rossi, just as Christabelle suspects. And the men who surveilled this family before I was even born knew exactly what happened to her.

When.

How.

They watched it happen, and they did nothing to remedy abuses committed against the innocent.

“That’s what I thought. There’s not a lot of difference between the people in my world, and those in yours. You have guns, we have guns. You have a badge… and somehow, that makes your criminal actions okay.”

“Micah—”

“I know and associate with a lot of the people on your watchlist. It’s the way of our world. But I’ll tell you, Hale, none of us respects you or your profession. And it’s not because we disregard the law. It’s because you do, too.”

“Please let me leave.” Emotion balls in my throat and leaves my voice trembling. Broken. Because hell, he’s not wrong. My colleagues will call their moves strategic. Searching for the biggest fish.

I call it second-hand abuse.

To sit around and watch bad things happen to decent people. To let it, because that’s not the fish we came hunting for.

“Tell me why you came into my life, Tiia.” He circles my chair, slowly meandering as I twist my neck to keep him in view. “I want to know your main objective. Was it me? Was it Felix? Was it someone else completely—my father, perhaps? Since we know the FBI is a giant, slow-moving machine, and Timothy has been dead for only a few months. Maybe new orders haven’t trickled down from the bosses yet.” He stops behind me and crouches, sliding his hand around and cupping my pussy until my breath comes to a choked standstill. Resting his lips against my ear and ensuring I hear him, he murmurs, “Were you ordered to suck my father’s cock, Tiia?” Gently, he rubs his palm over my clit and forces my heart to race faster. “Would you have gotten on your knees for him the way you did for me?”

“Let me go!” I explode in my chair, trying, but failing, to snap my restraints. I throw my elbows wide, but they go nowhere, because my wrists are bound. I attempt to kick, but my confined ankles forbid the movement. “Micah! Stop touching me!”

“You took my cock in the back of your throat, Tiia Ailani. Kinda surprised me you’d be submissive so soon after meeting me, but I guess it makes sense now, huh?”

“Please let me go,” I break, slumping in my chair and sobbing. “Please stop touching me. Just let me leave.”

“People don’t leave this bunker, mo chroí. Not alive, anyway.” He brings his hand up and rests it between my breasts. “Not wearing a wire, are you? Can’t have you getting that recording back to the government, all so you can play it again during trial.”

“Micah—”

“Everything makes sense now, though.” He breathes against my neck. It would be erotic, if not for the fact that this isn’t the man I know. The one I love. “How does your boyfriend feel about sharing you with the job?”

“My boyfriend?”

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