AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If there was a chance it would destroy what they have, do you think he’d share it with her?”
She swallowed to coat her suddenly dry mouth. “If he truly loved her, he would.”
Roth’s lips twisted in what she suspected would have been a sneer, but he didn’t allow it to fully form. “Love isn’t indestructible. It’s so fragile it can vanish in an instant. It can disappear as if it never was.”
“And you know this from experience?” she said sarcastically.
“Yes.”
His answer, so swift and unexpected, stole the scathing reply from the tip of her tongue.
Time stood still as they stared at one another. When Jasmine’s chest began to burn, she realized she was holding her breath. As she sucked in air, an invisible paring knife skated over her heart and left a trail of seeping red in its wake. She broke their eye contact and tried to slip past him. She wasn’t falling for his crap. He clamped a hand over her arm, stopping her.
“Take your hand off me,” she ordered.
He gave her a rough, teeth-jarring shake that shifted her focus from what was going on inside of her to the asshole manhandling her. Again. She prepared to knee him in the balls, but a glance at his face banished that notion.
“Don’t tell me not to touch you. Who fucking owns you?”
CHAPTER 3
Roth’s emotions, usually hidden behind an apathetic mask, were on full display, startling Jasmine into dialing back her own anger.
“You said we wouldn’t fight,” she said quietly, hoping her even tone would mollify him.
“We won’t if you tell me who the fuck you belong to.”
Her recent vow to avoid confrontation at all costs fell by the wayside at his crass demand. She lifted her chin, and her hands balled into fists at her sides. He catalogued every move without taking his eyes off hers.
“I told you last night, I’m through with you denying me my place. If I want to touch you, if I want to kiss you and fuck you, I will.”
To prove his point, he backed her up to the counter and effortlessly boosted her on top of it. Before she could get away, he yanked her to the edge and spread her legs.
“No!” She shoved at him, only to have her hands pinned behind her back a second before he ducked his head to get at her neck.
He latched onto that spot that short-circuited her brain and made her pliant, weak, and stupid. She wriggled and strained in his hold even though she knew it was wasted effort.
“You’re a bastard,” she panted as her thighs clamped around his hips, unintentionally dragging him closer, so his crotch aligned perfectly with her tingling flesh.
He kept at it until she was boneless; until her head listed back like a flower on a broken stem. Her neck was throbbing pleasantly when he finally released her lax hands. She stared at the ceiling through half-closed eyes as his mouth moved along her throat and lapped at the base of her neck.
“Why am I allowed to mark you, dress you, keep you locked in this penthouse with me where no one can get to you?”
She was so focused on her pulsing skin that it took a few seconds to register his gruff words. He collared her throat, raising her to face his livid gaze.
“Whose cock do you come on?” He squeezed her throat ever so slightly as he brushed a kiss over her parted lips. “Whose ring are you wearing? Who’s protecting your sisters from ruin?”
Her natural inclination to spit in his face was tempered by the strange glint in his eye and his utter stillness, which raised the hairs on her nape. When he got her out of bed, he’d seemed cool and collected. When she splashed him with her bathwater, he’d taken it in stride. But something had shifted. She could taste the threat of violence in the air. He was barely holding himself in check.
“You want to fight me on something? This isn’t it,” he warned. “Who did you choose to give it all up to? Who owns you?”
She swallowed hard and whispered, “You do.”
He didn’t drop the hand around her throat. “I what?”
He wanted her to say it, the bastard. Again, the need to fight fire with fire rose, but Jasmine shoved her emotions aside and focused on the unnatural glint in his eye that promised retribution if she didn’t heed him in this. If she defied him, he’d punish her, and the cycle she was trying to break would start all over again. She felt a slight tremor in his hand as his control wavered.
Pride be damned.
