“Dammit, Dante, I have to believe I’m not.”
He laughed, a humorless sound. “I don’t blame you for not wanting my baby. You’ve heard about everything lurking in my gene pool. Hell, I’ve treated you to a front row seat.”
“That’s not it,” she said, ice trickling through her veins. “But be honest with me. If I were, would you even stay? Or would I be on my own with two children?”
“You would be better off without me.”
“I suppose that answers my question.”
“Sadly, it doesn’t. I would stay. But it’s better you don’t need that. Better I don’t have to.”
“I don’t want to be someone you’re forced to be with.”
“If you’re having my baby, then you will be. I will take care of my responsibilities, make no mistake.”
Her stomach tightened. He looked…resigned. She didn’t want that. Not for the rest of her life. “You would…you would love our child wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t think I could.”
“You don’t mean that. You just…you need to put the past behind you and…and…”
He exploded then, a dark flame in his eyes burning bright, stealing the light from the room. “Look around you, Paige. I own all of this. Things have already happened for me. What do you think, that I need to talk about my feelings? That I need a psych? To what? To listen to me? Because that will fix it? That will bring my mother back? It will make it so I don’t share half my blood with a violent killer? Is that it? It will fix me. Make me happy and able to love?” He shook his head. “You live in fairyland. But the real world has less glitter. You can’t fix everything.”
“Dante that’s not…I’m not trying to trivialize…”
“You did. I have a business trip that I need to go on this week. I’ll be back in time for the wedding. Everything is being planned. All we have to do is show up.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have business,” he bit out.
“Fine.” She went back to her desk and sat behind it, her heart in her throat. She had no idea where they stood. Except that they were both angry at each other. And that he was leaving while still angry at her. But she couldn’t figure out how to fix it, even though she hated it.
He walked to her desk quickly and braced his hands on the surface, leaning in and taking her mouth in a hard, intense kiss. She was lost in it, in him, the moment his lips touched hers. She pushed her fingers through his hair, slid her tongue against his.
He pulled away, straightening. Dark and dangerous. “When I get back, we’ll have the wedding. Then we’ll have the wedding night.”
* * *
The media had often accused Dante of atrocious behavior, and very often it had been a part of the myth they’d spun around him for their own enjoyment.
This time, with no witnesses other than Paige, he would have deserved it.
But his world was ordered, well controlled, just as he needed it and she seemed bound and determined to come in and challenge him at every turn.
He didn’t know why he’d told her so much about his mother. About why he took cold showers, and hit things. It sounded crazy when voiced, and maybe in some ways it was. But it had been necessary. The way he’d controlled his emotions as a young boy moving around in the foster system. Anger had to have a release, but if he gave the consequence to himself, no one got hurt. It had flooded over into every emotion until it had been easy to simply not have them.
He hadn’t needed the intense, physical reminder for years. Not until Paige came into his life.
Even with those precautions, everything had crashed down around him. He might have gotten her pregnant. A child. His child. He wasn’t the man for that. He couldn’t even look at Paige and Ana without being taken over by memories of his mother. Couldn’t bear to touch the child because she reminded him too much of what it was to be so helpless.
And he couldn’t, wouldn’t allow himself, to imagine what it would be like to have a child of his own. To share his poisoned blood. The blood he shared with his father. The blood he worked so hard to keep under control.