Page 35 of Lethal Devotion
“Shark!” he exclaims excitedly, squeezing it in both hands as he turns back to Sienna. “Mama, shark!”
“It is a shark,” Sienna confirms, a small smile at the corners of her mouth. When she looks at me, there’s a softness in her eyes that makes my heart suddenly pound with something that feels very much like fear.
“Tell Damian thank you,” Sienna instructs, and Adam looks up at me, a bright smile on his face.
“T’ank you, Damian!” he squeals, and then scurries back to the couch, picking up his book again with the shark now on his lap. Sienna looks at it, that smile still on her lips, and then she looks at me again.
I swallow hard.What was I thinking?Getting attached to this woman and her child, spoiling her and bringing him gifts, that’s not part of the arrangement. But I couldn’t help myself.
Ineedto put the brakes on, especially when it comes to her. This will end, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise, especially not when it could hurt them both.
“Sit here and read for a minute while I talk to Damian,” Sienna instructs, and Adam nods, fixated on both his shark and his book.
He’s a good kid.I don’t know anything about children, but Adam seems very well-behaved, sitting on the couch as Sienna asked with the picture book in his lap, as Sienna gets up and walks toward me. Her cheeks have flushed a bit pink, highlighting her freckles, and as her hands smooth down the skirt that flows around her legs, I can’t keep myself from looking at the curve of her hips against the silk. She looks stunning, and I feel my fingers dig into my palms in an effort not to touch her as she stops a few inches away.
“How was your day?” she asks softly, and I have to fight the sensation of how strange it is to have someone ask me that. It’s entirely foreign to me. No one has ever asked me how my day was when I came home before.
“Fine,” I answer, my voice more curt than I mean for it to be. “Productive,” I add. I see her expression flicker a little at my tone, and I’m aware all over again that this is why I don’t have relationships, why I would ordinarily never try to bring a woman like this into my life. I’m not built for this. Domesticity has never been a part of my life, and I’ve cut out the parts of myself that would want it. I don’t know how to be a husband to a woman like this.
“Good.” She bites her lip, shifting awkwardly in place. “That was very sweet of you—the present for Adam. He’s actually obsessed with sea animals.”
I manage a smile, that awkward feeling still tight in my chest. “Itwas nothing. Just something I saw on my way home. I see Valentina took good care of you. She insisted on going along, Konstantin said.”
Sienna nods nervously. “It was very nice of her. I told her she didn’t have to, but she said she was tired of being cooped up.”
I chuckle at that, and I see Sienna startle at the sound. That strikes me as odd. Is she that afraid of me? Is a laugh that unexpected? “That makes sense. She gets a bit stir-crazy from time to time.”
“Thank you for all of it.” Sienna’s teeth worry at her lower lip. “The spa, the hair, the shopping… it was all very expensive. I?—”
“I told you that money isn’t an issue.” I cut her off, and I see her eyelids lower, her tongue sweeping over the curve of her lower lip. My cock thickens instantly. Her mouth looks full and soft, and I want to take her chin in my hand, draw her mouth to mine, and devour it.
“Still,” she whispers, looking up at me through her lashes. “I want to thank you properly.”
There's something in her tone that makes me look at her again, and what I see in her eyes makes my blood heat and my jaw clench. She doesn’t look terrified, the way she did the night I brought her home or the morning that I walked in on her changing. There’s a determination that wasn't there before.
There’s something else in her eyes, too. Something that looks like curiosity, maybe? Every traitorous part of me that refuses to accept how wrong I know this is wants to believe that I see desire there, but if it is, then it’s manufactured desire. There’s no possibility that this woman wants me for any reason other than that she believes she has to, in order to stay safe.
“Sienna—” I start to warn her off, but she takes a step closer, and I catch a whiff of expensive perfume, something that smells like vanilla and flowers, mingling with the scent of her shampoo and skin. She must have bought it today.God, I can imagine breathing it in as I run my mouth down her body…
I’m instantly, painfully hard, aching to lean in and bury my face in her neck, to find out what sound she would make if I dragged my tongue up her throat. I struggle to breathe normally, to not let her seethe lust raging through me, threatening to make me do something that I know I’ll regret.
“I know you said this is all just temporary,” she murmurs, her voice barely above a whisper as she looks up at me, her eyes still hooded. Her lashes are thick, fringing those gorgeous green eyes. I can imagine she’d look up at me like this while on her knees, those full lips wrapped around my aching?—
Fuck!I take a step back, slowly drawing in a breath between my teeth.She’s too young. You hold all the cards. You’re the only thing protecting her. This is wrong… she doesn’t really want you.I keep repeating it all, like a mantra, as Sienna steps toward me again.
“You did so much for me today,” she continues, her voice still soft, almost husky. “You have been, since that night…” She breaks off, biting her lip, and I wonder if she realizes just how sexy that gesture is. How it makes me want to suck her lower lip between my teeth, and find out what kind of sound she makes when I bite it.
“The shopping, the spa, all of this…” Her hand comes up to touch the front of my shirt, her fingertips grazing the bare skin in the open V where I unbuttoned the top two buttons earlier, and the moment her hand touches me, I grab her wrist instantly, pulling it away. Just that slight touch sends a jolt through me, straight to my cock, and I can feel it throb, pre-cum leaking from the tip just from her touching me with her goddamnedfingers.
My head is spinning. I’m tempted to drag her into the closest room, throw her over the nearest piece of furniture, and show her just what she’s asking for. How I fuck women who beg for my cock. But she’s not doing this because she wants to. She’s offering herself to me because she thinks she owes me. Because this is what she thinks I expect in return for my protection.
Disgust—not with her, but with myself for how badly I still want her anyway—swirls through me, but it does nothing at all to lessen the force of my erection. I see her eyes go wide when I grab her wrist, see the frightened hitch of her breath, and I tighten my hand just enough to see that flicker of fear in her eyes.
She needs to remember who I am. I might have saved her, butthat doesn’t change what I am at my core—and what I am is the kind of man who shouldn’t be allowed within a hundred yards of a woman like her.
“You don’t know what you’re trying to get yourself into, Sienna,” I murmur, and I see her delicate throat move as she swallows. Her pulse flutters in her throat, and I imagine my hand there, feeling that pulse like a trapped bird under her skin as I feed her my cock, feel her choking on it as she swallows my cum down.
I’m so hard it fucking hurts. I know if I wrapped my hand around myself right now, I’d be slick with pre-cum, my shaft wet with how aroused I am. I want her, and I hate myself for it. It just proves every fucking thing I’ve ever thought about what kind of man I’ve become.
