“Tough shit.”
I tore my hand from his right as we got to the limo door. The driver rounded the hood of the vehicle and opened it. He didn’t hang around to close the door behind us and with good reason. He knew I was about to put up a damn fight.
“Say what you need to and I’ll go with Ivan, the way I came.”
“Say? You think I need to say something to you?” He leaned onto the limo and dragged his black, ominous eyes over my body, all the way up and then all the way down. He took his time, like the most powerful men of the nation could wait. “I don’t need to say anything.”
“Well then…” I turned on my heel to give him my back, but he spun me around and then pulled me close so that my breasts were in his chest.
He leaned down so that the scruff of his jaw was tickling my earlobe. “Words won’t fix what’s been done now, Katalina. I’ve suffered for days without you. I haven’t tasted your mouth, owned your pussy, or dragged my hand across your skin. And I’m saying this the nicest way I know how because it’s all mine. You took awaymymouth,mypussy, andmydamn skin. You’re fucking mine and I want you back. Even if it’s for a second in that limo.”
“You can’t have me back. You threw me away when you—”
“Enough.” He slammed his hand on the roof of the vehicle and then breathed out slowly. “Get in. Now. Do not make me carry you.”
“You wouldn’t be able to even if you tried,” I threw out, but I stepped past him to get in. I didn’t want to make a scene, not when every single person at the funeral was still watching.
He slammed the door after me, then ducked his mess of beautiful dark hair to my window as he mouthed a thank you.
Why did my heart ache at that one small gesture when it should have been beating in rage at him bossing me around?
I knew right then that I wasn’t going to handle this ride well. I missed him. I missed his commands, his eyes on me, the little glimpses of the gentleman under the beast that he gave me.
I just missedhim.
I took a deep breath and focused on what I knew couldn’t be anymore. We were enemies now. He was the reason we were all burying Mario today.
He deserved my hell, not my longing for him.
“Drive until I tell you to stop,” Rome announced to the man in the front seat and then he pressed the partition button. I watched it rise in silence and then turned to the man I craved more than anything else in the world.
Nothing about the day was going as planned. I’d lost complete control when all I’d wanted was to maintain it. Now, I sat with the one man I lost myself with and felt my blood pressure rising. “Why keep driving, Rome? None of this is of any importance at this point.”
“We could change that if you’d let go of your anger toward me. Why not show me the same grace you showed Mario in his death?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not dying.”
He pulled at his hair and then stared out the window before mumbling, “I could be from the way I feel without you around.”
His voice fell to such a small, soft tone that I almost didn’t hear the agony in his words. It was enough to remind me that my heart hadn’t hardened toward him at all. Instead, it gravitated toward him, wanted him, longed for him. I wanted to jump across my seat and touch him again. And I almost talked myself into it.
But I’d be back to what I was then. Or worse. Because now I had the bratva on my back. “You say those things like you’re willing to die for me, like you love me.”
“Because I do.” His voice echoed through the vehicle loud and vicious. He announced it from the pain deep within him. It wasn’t a statement of beauty, but one of agony.
“So you’re telling me like this in the back of a limo?” I whispered, trying to hold on to the fact that I should be angry, but my eyes welled with emotion I didn’t want him to see.
“Yes, because you won’t give me any other line of communication.” He saw through my façade and a string of curse words erupted from him before he slid across the middle seat to me. “Don’t cry, Katalina. I’m not here to make you cry. I’m here for you to see we can’t separate. You know we can’t. This arrangement isn’t going to work.”
“Why not?” I bit out as I leaned my head back on the arm he’d wrapped around my shoulders. I closed my eyes and wiped away the wetness on them so that I could try to relax, try to take in his presence all around me and have a moment where it was just us again.
Ivan may have been right. Maybe it was our last moment.
I didn’t want to spend it bickering.
“Do you love Bastian enough to take his arm instead of mine forever because that’s what they’ll ask you to do?”
“It’s not the worst thing.”