Page 68 of Take Her

I’d put more effort into figuring out how to rig which analyst at the New York Stock Exchange Corvo was going to get assigned to than I had into figuring out why the fuck Lia wanted anything to do with me.

Probably because I didn’t actually want to know.

But if today’s activities hadn’t scared her off—it was clear that nothing would.

I let myself into my place, took off my coat to hang it up, and walked over to the marble bar that divided my kitchen from my living space. My apartment had one of those open floorplans for people who were gracious hosts, which I wasn’t. No one came up here but me. I’d had a brief window into a “normal” life with Isabelle, but then it’d closed and now...who the fuck knew what I was doing with Lia.

All I was sure of was how intense it’d felt knowing she’d done as I asked, and then me whittling away pieces of her compunction and shame until she was coming for me, like I’d told her to.

I’d kept a foot in racetrack dealings and horses for as long as I could. It was how I’d met Isabelle—and why I still owned Gracie. And part of the reason for that was because I’d never found another relationship that could be as absolutely in sync as the one between a horse and their rider.

I didn’t actually want Lia to be a horse—but I did want her to be obedient to me.

And she wanted to be. Staring into her eyes, when she was working on her second orgasm—there was no room for doubt.

I didn’t want to say she was incapable of deceit, I wasn’t an idiot—but whatever she was when she was my little girl in my lap?

She wasn’t lying to me.

She just was what she was...which in this day and age felt unbelievable.

Maybe that’s why Nero had sent her away. He’d realized he’d needed to keep her safe from the world. A modern-day Rapunzel.

But he hadn’t really been able to, had he? Sable had sent an entire dossier over of every place she’d been. While my skills were nothing like Sable’s—technology had surpassed my limited abilities to code a long time ago, which was why I paid the right people good money to be smart for me—even I could hop through Lia’s timeline of pain and misery.

I leaned against my bar and pulled out my phone, opening Instagram just like I knew I shouldn’t—and saw a fresh post.

It was a zoomed in picture of three words, from another one of her romance novels, highlighted in pink.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

And even though it was dangerous and deadly...I wanted to think that they were about me.

29

LIA

Red flag party time!

Give me all your epic alphahole recs, ladies. I want to hear about the shit you’ll need someone to delete off your ereader when you die, to protect your family’s memories.

from @rosepetalromances

Go download the new Austin Belle IMMEDIATELY, but hydrate before you start reading it. You’ll thank me later!

from @taroterriblereader

Rhaim beat me into the office the next morning, but he’d left his door open—and I could see him packing up a leather satchel.

“Where are you going?” This time, I asked it only out of curiosity. I’d done nothing but think after he’d dropped me off last night. Between our activities yesterday afternoon and evening, I had a newfound confidence in...whatever unlabeled thing this was.

He looked over at me, and his eyes ran over my body—the skirt I was in was appropriately knee-length, but the bottom was loose and flowy.

A lot more room to move around in.

But he shook his head and sighed. “To suck someone’s dick at the NYSE—metaphorically.” He put a final notepad into his satchel and shouldered it. “Our stock can’t get listed unless they say so.”

---