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“I’m not going to jail, baby,” he promises, and he leans in and presses his lips to my ear. “I’d miss you naked and beneath me way too much to ever let that happen.” He scoops my backside and slides his cock along the wet, sensitive seam of my body. And then he’s inside me, and he’s created the ultimate distraction, but even as his mouth slants over mine, I silently vow to finish our conversation.
The moment I can actually speak again.
Chapter Nine
Alana
It’s a long time later when I lay with my head on Damion’s chest, and as much as I don’t want this time with him to end, we have to talk. We can’t hide here in this cottage, naked and pretending the outside world doesn’t exist. As if he’s thinking the exact opposite, Damion says, “I saw pizza in the freezer. I’m starving.”
I push off of him and sit up, reaching for the jacket that I’d long ago abandoned and pulling it around me before I stand to confront him. “You will not kill your father. And we need to just go home and face this. That’s all. That’s how it has to be. The end.”
He nonchalantly throws his legs off the couch and stands up, his hands settling on my arms, and he kisses me hard on the mouth. “Pizza it is.” He steps around me, grabs his pants, and steps into them.
“No to you ignoring what I’m saying to you, and no to pizza,” I say, though my stomach growls rather loudly in objection to that statement.
Damion laughs. “You’re clearly hungry. No good decision was made on an empty stomach.” He walks around the oversized gray cloth couch and then disappears inside a doorway that, considering Damion’s drive for pizza at present, I assume to be the kitchen.
I growl low in my throat, frustration burning in my belly. He’s going to have to listen to me; that’s all there is to it. For the first time since arriving, I see beyond Damion and scan what is a cute little cottage with wood-beamed ceilings and a fireplace that is as grand as the one in the main house. It’s not a bad place to be holed up with the man I love, but there is too much on the line for that action to be appropriate.
Determined to get us moving and back home, I hunt down my swimsuit and cover-up, pull them into place, and then slide my feet into my sandals for extra measure. It’s not exactly what I would call dressed and in control, but it’s all I have right now. Put together the best I can be, I march into the kitchen to be greeted by an oversized island with fancy pans hanging from above, hanging low enough to obstruct my view.
I round the island and find Damion standing at a window on the other side of a table and chairs, his back to me, tension radiating off of him, almost as if he’s steeling himself for his next confrontation with me. Or perhaps just feeling as if he’s holding the world, and me, on his shoulders. And that feeling, that obligation I believe he feels in his mind, is where all the “end of us” feelings come from.
I join him, stepping to his side and taking in the view of the pool that would have allowed Damion to find me had I not found him first. It’s why Adam sent me to the pool, and I’m reminded that he seems to truly care what happens to us. We are not alone in our battle, and yet, Damion doesn’t seem to recognize this.
When he doesn’t speak or acknowledge me, I rotate to face him. “Damion, we have to talk.”
He turns to face me, his jaw set hard. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to end this, and you’re going to stay here until it’s over. The end.”
“The end?” I ask incredulously. “Are you serious right now, Damion?” I don’t give him time to answer. “No. No, that is not how this goes. We end this together. We leave together. I’m not staying here.”
“You’re in danger, and you will stay here.”
“Yes. Danger. About that danger. Tell me about this threat against me.”
“My father won’t let what you did this morning go. He’ll lash out. He’ll hurt you.”
“So, there is no threat besides the perceived one in your mind?”
“I know my father,” he states firmly.
In other words, there’s no known threat, I think, but what I say is, “He can’t kill me right now. The attention would be too extreme, and you know it.”
“He can make it look like an accident.”
“Just like my father?” I challenge. “Don’t you think the timing would be damning?”
He catches my shoulders and drags me to him. “You’re staying here.”
“I’m not staying, no matter how many times you order me to do so. No. I need to be in front of the camera and keep the story I told this morning on people’s minds. And doing so has to make the board turn their backs on your father. They will vote you in as CEO.”
“And then he will come at you harder.”
“So, you have to kill him?”
“He’ll never stop coming for you, Alana. And me, too, for that matter.”
“Use Walker. Come up with a plan to put him behind bars. They just have to prove he killed my father.”
