Page 31 of The Boss
He stilled. “Who?”
“A woman who cleans records. New names, new passports, apartments that don’t exist.”
“Do you have the name?”
“I have a number.” She lifted her head and he saw the shrewdness in her eyes. “I’m not giving it to you.”
“You will,” he said, not as a threat but as a fact. She glared. He let it slide because the next thing mattered more. “Your brother. Does he hit?”
“No.” The answer was immediate and the Brand didn’t stir. “He doesn’t need to. He removes.”
“Removes.”
“Options. Friends. Money. The ground under your feet.”
Leif filed that away. Astrategist, then. Acleaner. He’d need to see that man’s books and burn the lines that made him powerful. He’d need to see what moved him and break it. It soothed some violent part of him to plan thework.
He dragged the pad of his thumb across her lower lip and watched her pupils dilate. “If he comes again,” he said, “I’ll end him.”
Her throat worked. “You don’t know who he is.”
“I don’t care.” The Brand didn’t so much as flicker. Truth again. What she didn’t know was that he’d seen her brother. And if he ever saw the bastard again, he’d nail him. Leif forced his voice lower, gentler. “I care that you came into my life and branded me in my own bed and then ran as if I’d let you go. Icare that you’re sitting in my shirt and that your heart is beating in my palm.” He turned her wrist and pressed theirBrands together. Heat flared, amatched surge that rolled up his arm and into his chest. “Do you feel it?”
She shivered. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He held her there until she was breathing the way he wanted, until the stubborn line of her mouth softened and she leaned in for a kiss he still denied her. He liked the way she chased what he wouldn’t give. He liked the want in her face when he put her barely off balance.
“Leif,” she whispered.
He almost gave in. He almost took her mouth and forgot every rule he’d ever made. He didn’t. He set her back an inch and watched rebellion flare for the pleasure of seeing it. “Tell me something true again,” he said. “Something you haven’t told anyone.”
She looked at their hands. When she spoke, the words were small and lethal. “I thought if I gave myself to you that first night, Icould make the noise in my head stop.”
“What noise?”
“The one that says I’m already owned.”
He went very still. The Brand burned like a vow in his palm. “Does it say that now?”
“No.” Her eyes lifted, unguarded for a heartbeat. “Now it says I’m choosing.”
Chapter 10
LEIF DIDN’Tdeserve being the chosen one. He took it anyway. He’d make himself worthy after.
He kissed the corner of Mariah’s mouth, then her cheekbone, then the hollow below her ear where her pulse hammered. He tasted the silk of her skin, the faint ghost of his soap, and something sweet that belonged only to her. Her fingers curled in his hair and he let her tug, let her guide him the inch she wanted. He still didn’t take her mouth. He made her wait. It was half cruelty and half the knowledge that when he finally kissed her, he wouldn’t stop, not for hours.
He moved down, slow, to the open collar of his shirt and the vulnerable skin revealed there. He pressed his mouth to that place and a shiver raced through her, his own abdomen tightening with answering hunger. He teased at the buttons, undoing none and still finding his way inside, slipping his fingers beneath to trace the ridges of her ribs, the heat of her waist, the bare edge of her hip. She trembled in his hands, and he smiled against her throat like a man learning victory.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked, breathless.
“No.” He let the word drag, velvet and cruel.
She made a small sound he felt everywhere. “Then what are you doing?”
“Remembering what I own.” Her nails thrust through his hair again. “And deciding if I’m patient.”
