Page 36 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“It’s too long a drive, and the estate is out of the city. I’m not letting you drive back and forth.”

“Why do I have to drive with you every day?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes. You’re too nosy.”

He scowls at me over an armful of my belongings. “I just saved you from somebody who’s trying to get you into his bed, and this is the thanks I get?”

I glower at him. “Have you considered that I might have wanted to get into his bed?”

Callum goes very still on the step below mine, but I don’t care. “Do you know the last time I had sex? Seven years ago. I haven’t had sex in seven years. Do you know what that does to a person? It drives them crazy.”

His gray eyes glint, and for a moment, I think I see a hint of gold in them. “So you would have slept with him.”

“Yes, I would have. He’s the first red-blooded male to approach me. And I need somebody.”

I don’t see him move. He closes a hand on my throat and puts my back into the glass panel outside the studio door hard enough to shake it in the frame. The air goes out of me. My pulse is banging in my neck under his thumb, and there’s no way he can’t feel it.

I refuse to be cowed by him.

“What? I’m a grown adult.” I lift my chin. “I’m allowed to have these feelings. What are you, my father?”

He takes the hand off my throat and closes it on my jaw instead, thumb one side, forefinger the other, tipping my face up. “Say that again.”

I swallow against his palm. “I’m not scared of you, Callum Vance. You want to bully somebody, go do it to somebody else.”

I get a hand free and swing it at him. He catches the wrist, puts it against the glass beside my head, and steps in until there’s no space left anywhere at all.

“What are you doing?”

He’s too close, and while I was exaggerating about going crazy without sex, the smell of his cologne is heady. There is a tension in my lower belly, hunger I haven’t felt in a while. This is why I want to avoid him. I can feel the slick between my legs.

I want this man. I want to be under him. I want his large hands on me, his mouth on me, and I hate myself for it.

The way he’s looking at me has my heart pounding like crazy. My mouth is dry. It’s like he will devour me whole. My nipples are painfully tight, and all he’s done is hold me in place.

“Let me make one thing very clear to you, Miss Reyes.” He lowers his mouth to my ear. “You are not single.”

I blink at the ceiling. “What?”

“I will not repeat myself.” His thumb caresses my jaw. “You are not available to any man.”

Heat crawls up my face.

“Just because I’m raising Luca doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be with somebody. I have needs too.”

He tightens his grip on my jaw, then lowers his mouth toward mine and stops two inches short. Unconsciously, I lift myself on my toes.

“If you have needs, you come to me. I’ll deal with them.”

My stomach drops. “W-What?” The word is almost breathless. “Deal with—? What is that supposed to mean?”

“When you come to me, you’ll find out.”

He lets go. My legs are jelly, and I collapse in a boneless heap on the ground. He picks my bag up off the boards, and at the top of the stairs, he stops.

“I’ll wait for you in the car.”