His voice was iron. A band against me. A fricking brand.
I was his.
That thought filled me with terror. And also something else.
Longing.
I wanted to belong to him. I wanted to feel like I fit in his arms, in his life. Let his violent gaze, violent grip, violent life envelop me.
But he was trying to take something from me. That control I clutched to my chest. The control I needed to keep myself together. He was trying to stop me from holding onto my strength because he thought I was weak.
It took all of my strength to yank myself out of his grip, and I missed the violent warmth of it the second he let me go. And he did let me go. Though his arms were vises, he wasn’t going to hold me against my will.
“You know, this isn’t how the world works!” I yelled, pacing the room like he had been moments before. We seemed to be trading fury, since his face emptied the second I raised my voice. “You do not just declare someone is yours and decide that you have a freaking right to tell that someone—me—what she can and can’t do.” I stopped pacing, turning to him and narrowing my eyes. “You can’t just order me to be yours,” I hissed.
I expected him to yell back. His eyes certainly told me he wanted to.
But he didn’t.
Didn’t even move.
Just regarded me with a cold gaze that would’ve frozen me to the spot if not for the pulsating heat inside me. It was empty, that look. Devoid of anything human. Any emotion. The gaze of a monster.
“Oh, I’ve got a fair idea how the world works, baby,” he said finally, his voice as cold and empty and terrifying as his gaze. “Know it’s ugly. Painful. Bloody. And there’s no fuckin’ way to control it.”
He stepped forward.
I stepped back.
“For someone who knows shit, you don’t seem to know that,” he murmured, stalking toward me. “That this is not something I declared. Or something I fucking wanted.” He reached me and I found no energy left in me to retreat. “I didn’t order you to be mine. You just are.”
There were a lot of things I could’ve said then. I could’ve continued to fight for the control I’d thought was so important to my survival moments before. That I thought I needed.
I could’ve told him to leave, take his dangerous menace away from my safe apartment.
It was the smart thing to do.
The logical thing.
I had a feeling it might be my last chance to get out of this, that I would be strong enough to do so. And Gage would let me. I had a strange feeling he wanted me to get out of this. That he wasn’t strong enough to walk out the door he’d dragged me through.
That I might have to be the strong one if I wanted the control I’d thought was his.
“Kiss me,” I demanded, voice hoarse and foreign.
It was like one of those sex goddesses from the movies came and took control of my vocal cords, because there was no way I had the ability to sound like a sex goddess. Then again, maybe there had been no man to awaken that ability.
“No.”
The word was a slap in the face, a whip against that sultry voice that I had been so astonished by—and secretly proud of.
That single word did a lot of things.
Made me want to empty my dinner, right there at the top of his likely steel-toed motorcycle boots.
Cry.
Curl into a ball and die.
No, run far away, then curl into a ball in die.
I did none of those things. The only one I was happy about was the vomiting one. That would’ve added to an already insurmountable level of mortification.
The sex goddess disappeared, likely to never return again.
My awkward, stuttering, so-not-a-sex-goddess self took her place.
“Oh, um, that’s okay,” I muttered, eyes darting down to my palms, which were wringing each other out like a Russian housewife. “You—I mean I know I’m not what you’re used to, not….” I trailed off, my voice rough and scratchy, full of unshed tears and unrealized insecurities. “What I’m trying to say is I understand. I was just…” What? Hoping this connection was actually real and not just inside my head?
Hoping something of import, someone of import might come into my beige life and splash it full of… something?
I tried to step back, desperate to engage in the running portion of the evening so the curl-up-and-die portion might come quicker.
An iron grip on my arm stopped me.
“Shut up,” Gage growled.
My jaw snapped shut on his command, though my eyes stayed down and I kept wringing my palms.
A callused hand snatched my jaw, wrenching it upward so my eyes had no choice but to meet the unyielding pools of citrine in front of me.