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“No.” I don’t need to think about it, but he isn’t any less angry. “He just got…extremely rough.”
“Okay. And yet… You want to rob me blind. For that fuck.”
A small smile breaks free. “He’s paying me a shit ton of money.”
“I was going to show it to you, you know.”
A jolt runs through me. “Why?”
He’s silent a very long time, just the splash of the water and the sounds of our breathing, along with the noise of Delacroix filtering in.
“Honestly? Lots of reasons. Some good, some bad, some convoluted. But the base reason is I know you’ll fucking get wet. And I have a fantasy of you in that, nothing else and me fucking you.”
“This sounds like a relationship, Hendrick,” I say. I’m only half joking.
That’s my exact fantasy, too.
“Want to hear the kicker here?”
“What?” My heart starts hammering.
“I sent the note to fuck with him, but your name, real name on the front means you’re under my protection.”
I swallow. “Like…you claimed me?”
His non-answer is answer enough. He claimed me like some caveman. These two men really are alike.
“I haven’t told you the kicker.”
“Which is?” I ask.
He slides a hand over my bruised cheek, fingers gentle as he turns my head to him. “I could fall for you, Cat. Maybe I am. It doesn’t make sense, but for the first time in ten years, I’m considering…something more.”
I’m trembling. This is why I’m so hurt by his betrayal. I could fall for him, too. Maybe I am. I want both him and Jac, but I want to know him more, on that emotional level. He’s a shifting sea. Jac is Jupiter’s storm.
“So what? We get a house in a small town and invest in picket fences?”
He laughs, but it’s sad. “Hardly. Love and all of that shit doesn’t always lead to something good. I’m just saying how I feel. I don’t really like playing. And no, I’m not staking a claim. I know you aren’t the type to want to be pinned down.”
“Hendrick…” I don’t know exactly what I want to say because nothing’s changed at all. And he’s right. I’m not that kind of girl. When I sail off, it’s going to be with Harry for our own adventures on a beach, and she’ll have all the girls she’ll want. I’ll choose boring lovers who can make me come but don’t give me anything wild, and the world will go on.
Hendrick and Jac will either keep playing their stupid games or they’ll kill each other.
“Just…just leave it there, Cat,” he says. He shifts the stool down and starts on my feet and legs, and my pussy gets ideas again. “Fucking hell, he did a number on you.”
“Maybe you two need to just have it out and move on. Neither one of you’s happy,” I say without meaning to.
“I work. I build my empire, and I stayed in my lane until a cat burglar snuck into my life. Happy is for fools.”
“That’s the kind of answer begging for questions,” I say.
“It’s all you get.”
I look at him as he shifts his chair behind me, and he starts to massage my shoulders and it’s orgasmic in the best non sex way. “And Jac?”
“Look, I fucking hate the asshole. But his life hasn’t been a bed of roses. I get why he’s like he is, but he just revels in it and doesn’t get out of his own way. He’s a dick. And he’s dangerous.”
“You did kill his father.”
