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My heart slams against my ribs. I reach out and trace one of the flowers. “Is that jasmine?”
“You smell like jasmine, Dakota.”
“I don’t understand you. If no one’s right for me, why would you do that? What are you even telling me with that? It’s right, but we can’t be together? Wrong but you liked the sex? Help me out here.”
He blows out a breath.
“I don’t fucking know, baby girl. I don’t think I’m right. But I’m not sure if I’m wrong, either.”
“So what are you?”
“Daddy when you want?” he says, finally. “But Orion, too. The Dom to your sub.”
I want to melt into him, take this crumb and treasure it.
But sure as hell, I deserve more than a damn crumb.
“You’re a damaged asshole,” I say.
He moves closer, hand skimming along my waist. “I saw your art, Ms. Steele. Are you going to continue?”
“Trent didn’t like it. He just wanted me.”
This time he whispers his lips up to the pounding pulse hammering against my throat. “I spent a lot of time looking him up. He went for exceptional talent. And beauty, but the beautiful had insane talent. I’m a damaged asshole who knows shit about art, but I know my mother would have put one of your pieces in our home. My father would have hated it. He didn’t know shit about art, either. But my mother did. And…”
He pauses.
“I showed my sister, Ivy, and she said you’re beyond talented. She could see it, too.”
My head is spinning. “She’s your sister; of course she’d say that.”
“I’m Ivy’s version of Smith. She’s not fond of me for letting her think I was dead for so long. So she’d fucking tell me if she hated it.”
“You’re an asshole and a coward.” My fingers catch his belt and bring him in closer. “You chose your job over me. I’m already nothing in the eyes of the world. Another five people have already taken the internet by storm and claimed my place. And?—”
“Baby girl.” He grabs my face and lifts it so our mouths almost meet. “I chose you over everything. If I thought I could give you the world you deserve, I’d have walked. Fuck, I’d have stood by you while you shone bright on the world’s stage.”
He drags his thumb over my bottom lip. “But my baggage, my history, my crimes, along with the place where I work, wouldn’t let that happen. We’d be underground, on the run, living in some fucking hut on the other side of the world.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” I whisper. “If you loved me.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you. But it seems you’ve retired from public life, and I still fucking need you.”
They’re still crumbs, and I lap them up desperately.
“Need?”
“You need a daddy; I need a baby girl.” He traces the curve of my cheek. My skin tingles under the pad of his fingertips.
It takes all my strength to pull free. “You should go.”
Orion, a man who takes up more space than any other person I’ve ever met, looks at me, puzzled, like he doesn’t understand the word go in this context. Because I’m saying no to him.
“This is what you want, and don’t say you don’t. I feel it. You love me.”
My eyes burn as tears blur my vision. I swipe at my eyes, then I storm past him, shoving his chest until his back connects with the door.
He let me. I know that. But the anger is so hot and bright, I don’t care.
