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Miss Stone immediately ceases her hunt and turns her focus back to me. I nearly grin in delight. She’s so much fun to manipulate.
“Barlow? Why is he crying? Are you hurting him? Please just let me see him. He must be hungry by now and need changing as well. Who’s going to do that?”
“He was. I did it.”
Miss Stone blinks. “What?”
“I fed him. I changed him.” I give her my coldest smile. “When you and your family are dead, I think I’ll adopt him. Raise him to be just like me.”
She stares at me in shock, and then she slowly shakes her head. “You’re not really going to do that. His crying is going to wear on your nerves, and then you’ll lose your temper and hurt him.”
“Probably. You’d better hurry up and get to him. Otherwise, it will be all your fault when something terrible happens.”
I anticipate her screaming at me and having a complete breakdown at my feet. It will be just wonderful when it happens. Any second now.
Only Miss Stone doesn’t scream or sob. She steps closer and presses her hands imploringly against my chest. I’m lounging atop the wall and our eyes are at the same level.
“Please,” she whispers, and her heartfelt expression makes the nasty words I was about to say freeze in my throat. “You don’t understand. I can’t lose Barlow. He’s innocent in all this. He’s the only good thing I have. I’ll die if something happens to him.”
I drop my gaze and look at her hands. Such small, pretty hands. She’s touching me the way a woman might touch her lover right before she leans in to kiss him. If I was shirtless, it would be how she touches me when she’s imploring me to fuck her. I picture myself capturing her hands against my chest and slamming my mouth over hers.
Her green eyes are huge and liquid as she supplicates me. “Take me instead. I won’t talk back. Well, I’ll try not to, but you’re very annoying, and—” She takes a calming breath. “I promise I won’t talk back. I’ll do whatever you want me to. Just please,pleaselet Barlow go.”
What is it about Miss Stone, dangerously close to tears and pleading for her brother, that’s turning me on so much? My gaze drags up her body to her beautiful face. I want to fist my hand in her hair and flick her lips with my tongue, but I keep my hands forcefully in my lap.
I never wanted a woman. My own woman. The mother of my children. A fierce, beautiful little thing to fuck my babies into, who will protect them to the ends of the earth and back. There’s no woman I’ve met that I would trust to be as insanely overprotective as I would be. Miss Stone begging for her baby brother and running herself to exhaustion to save him is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Mr. Mercer?” she whispers when I don’t say anything.
I’m meant to be distracting and tormenting Miss Stone, not the other way around. “I just took two hours off your time limit. You have forty-one left.”
She rips her hands off my chest and steps away from me. “What? Why?”
“For pissing me off,” I growl.
Anger bleeds into her expression. “Youbastard.”
“Name-calling? There goes another four. Keep talking and I’ll keep taking away hours.”
“It isn’t fair if you keep changing the rules.”
“Who said any of this was going to be fair? I’m letting you play the game. I’m giving you a chance. Am I not merciful?”
Miss Stone’s eyes flash, and she really loses her temper. “You’re a power-hungry asshole who expects everyone to roll over at your feet out of pure fear.Yes, Mr. Mercer. Thank you, Mr. Mercer.I’m not afraid of you. You’re a bully, just like all tyrants are. Just like your name. Do you know what happens to tyrants? They’re toppled. Their regimes end. Their statues are torn down. Read some history.”
Oh, this girl is mouthy. I stand up and push past her as if I’m leaving her behind, but I’m only pretending to go. I whip around, grab her by the throat, and slam her into the wall. Miss Stone gasps and her eyes grow huge. She grabs my wrist and struggles against me, but she’s not going anywhere.
My hand tightens mercilessly around her slender throat. Such a pretty neck. So very chokeable.
“You’re doing everything right to make me lose my temper,” I growl through my teeth, my nose an inch from hers. I crave her pitiful surrender like oxygen. She’s so fucking pure. Sogood. I hate it. “No one asked you to sneak into my home and enact a daring rescue. If you’re just going to whine, you should give up and go home.”
Desperately, Miss Stone shakes her head.
“Why not?” I demand. I’ll figure out her buttons and press every one of them until she’s a crying mess at my feet and she loses to me.
“Because—” she wheezes around the grip I have on her throat. “Because you don’t abandon family. Please, I can’t breathe.”
I want to throw up. You don’t abandon family? How honorable. Howadmirable. What total fucking bullshit. People abandon family all the time. She’s probably been abandoned herself in one way or another. Her father’s had another child well over a decade after she was born. Replaced her with a new family. She must feel angry about that.
