Page 117 of Underground Prince

“I think it’s pretty obvious.” He gestured to the room around us. “I’m in the middle of scheduling our next shipment of MDMA.”

“You—you—” I needed to choke back my garbles and come out coherent, because I had the terrible sense that if I could not get him out of this tonight, I’d lose him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I very much am.” He set his drink to the side, focusing all his energy, stubbornness, and refusal on me.

“This is what you want, right?” he said. “Despite my relations, my past, my present crimes, this is what you signed up for. You still good for it?”

“Fuck you,” I said. “You do not get to do this, treat me this way, act like I’m nothing but some rodent you want to kick aside.”

He wavered, but said, “I can do whatever the hell I want. Don’t you know? It’s a family perk.”

I sprung up. “This is insane. I’m pissing you off so much that you’re running further into your father’s arms? What’s going through your stupid head to make you think that’s a good idea?”

“Don’t you get it?” he shouted. “I’m trying to save you.”

“And I don’t need saving!” I yelled. “Are you going to keep escalating the more I stick around? Shoot someone in front of me just to prove your point? This is what you don’t understand! I can’t help it any more than you! I can’t stop caring by flicking some inner switch that you seem to think is in complete working order for yourself. You can keep doing all this.” I swept my arms out. “Continue to ‘schedule’ shipments and traffic drugs and become your dad’s best bud, but I ain’t moving, you bastard. I’m here to remind you of what you want. Not crime. Not drugs. Not money. Life.”

“Enough,” he said, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“You want me,” I said hoarsely. “And I don’t come with threats or innuendos. I’m just here. For you.”

“You being here is a threat,” he said. “My feeling anything for you puts you at risk. What’s it gonna take? What do I have to do to make you hate me?”

“Nothing.” I laid my hands on his chest, registering every shuddering breath. “It’s too late.”

He gripped my hands as he bowed over, cringing as though he were fighting the greatest possible pain.

I kissed near Theo’s ear, then at his jaw, until his lips met mine.

Cradling my head, he pulled me to him, coaxing with his tongue but luring my soul. He drew it in, curled it around his own, and made it his. The way he held me as though I’d break if he let go. The quiet urgency with which he took me. Merely a kiss but it stripped me naked more than sex ever would.

He burst out of my hold. “Why can’t I resist you?”

Tingling from my lips to my toes, I replied, “Because maybe I’m here to save you.”

Sighing, he drew me back into his arms and kissed my hair. “I can’t let them near you.”

“They won’t. I’m not a threat. I”—it so hurt to say this part—“I won’t stop you from fulfilling expectations. If it means keeping you close, I won’t.”

“Scarlet.” My name was an exhale. “You already have.”

“Then we can go. Run.”

“No.” He smiled, sadly, wholly. “I can’t abandon my father. He’s too far-reaching, and besides, he wouldn’t come after me. He’d go for what I care about most. You know that.”

I did. It’d be me in the most peril, not him.

“Then what?” I asked. “Because I’m not doing this. I’m not walking away.”

“You really mean that.” He shook his head, disbelieving. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t give me that crap. I know what I deserve and I—”

“You choose me.”

“Yes. Theo, I—” My mind fired a warning before I finished the sentence. It stopped the no-turning-back point, the second I laid bare my true feelings and made myself so exposed, I’d never want safety. Just him. Running, hiding, tearing through the dirt and never seeing the light of day. I’d do it all, so long as I was with him.

But to admit it…

---