Page 73 of Plunge into Obsession

“Do you really want to know?” I asked quietly. It might be less cruel to lie to her, but fuck, I didn’t think I could. Not when it came to something so significant about my life.

She blanched. “I can’t be with a man like you.”

“A man like me?” I asked calmly.

She tried to shift away from me. I held her firmly against my body.

I was supposed to be fucking gentle with her, but hell, we hadn’t even started, and already she was talking about leaving me.

When I fucking died was when she could escape.

“Y-yes. A man with the cartel can’t be a good man. And I don’t—”

She shook her head.

I cupped her cheek gently.

She still flinched.

Would she have done it if she knew just how fucking incapable I was of hurting her?

That I would have fucking chopped off my own arm before I ever laid a hand on her?

Yet she still looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

She was looking at me the same way men had looked at me right before I sent them on to their reckoning.

“You want to know what a man like me is capable of?”

She bit her bottom lip but didn’t say anything.

“I would cross every single fucking line to keep what’s mine.”

“And you decided that’s me?” she asked softly, her voice set in whispers.

“That’s right.”

I noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She looked utterly exhausted.

And this wasn’t the time or place to have this talk.

“Go to sleep,mi cariño. You’re tired.”

She frowned. “How do you expect me to sleep when you just said all that you said?”

Her breathing grew erratic, and I knew she was moments away from losing it completely.

I lay down on the bed and pulled her down with me.

She tensed, and I rubbed my hand in comforting circles around the small of her back.

“You fell asleep in my arms before. You will do it again. I won’t hurt you.”

“You expect me to believe you?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.

She shook her head against me.

---