Page 81 of Fool Me Twice

Hart snorted. “Extortion.”

“I am what I am,” Cane said, but quickly grew serious. “And when you say you’re mine, you’re mine. You know what that means.”

Hart’s hands shook and he clenched them in his lap.

“I’m sick of waiting, so you need to make a choice. I don’t have a lot left, so it’s kinda putting things in perspective for me,” Cane said.

He’d learned his lessons early, like he’d told Hart. Don’t let anyone take what’s mine. But someone had already done that. Stripped him down to his barest bones gleefully. Slowly. Painfully.

And now it was happening again in front of his eyes with no way to stop it. It made him feel desperate and cornered. Grasping to hold everything closer.

He wouldn’t force Hart to be with him, despite his desire to chain him to him, but the seesawing uncertainty was worse than not having him at all. The unstable footing. The looming dread.

Cane couldn’t deal with that anymore, especially not from Hart.

“I…” Hart trailed off and looked away.

He didn’t have an answer.

Cane had suspected as much, but it still stung.

“You have until the end of our business transaction to give me the answer,” Cane said. That was all he could stand to give anymore. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and the choice will be taken away from you. Maybe I’ll be in jail again or six feet under.”

“Don’t say that,” Hart said.

“The truth?”

“This isn’t over yet.”

Cane let his head fall to the side as he looked at him. “No. The curse isn’t over, but I am. My business is.”

“Cane…”

“There’s no coming back from this, sweetheart,” Cane said. “I’m a black mark now that the police are involved.”

“They let you go.”

“For now, because I’m very good…or I was very good at covering my ass, and Ares retracted his statement,” Cane said. “But that won’t mean shit to anyone who matters in my circle. Nobody will do business with me after this clusterfuck. The police are probably still building their case, they just don’t have enough to hold me right now.”

“Not even if we say the curse is to blame?” Hart asked. “It’s defensible. It has precedence.”

“And I have priors.”

“The rest of the crime world doesn’t care about that.”

“But they care about reputation and respect. I just lost it all when I bet everything. The smartest thing I could do is pack up and get the fuck out of this city.”

Hart scooted forward and grasped his leg, the material tightening under his searching fingers. “You can’t go.”

“Gonna miss me too much, sweetheart?”

Hart licked his dry lips, his eyes a little wild. “You’d miss me too much.”

“I would,” Cane said. He had no problem admitting it.

But Hart was still restless, and he ended up straddling Cane’s lap in a sudden move, grasping his shoulders tightly, sharing quick, hot breaths with him. “Just…don’t go anywhere.”

It was enough for this moment. That Hart needed him like this. Cane grasped Hart’s waist, pushing his hands under his shirt to touch skin.

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