Page 134 of Root

“This is ours. Wilder, I mean.” But it could be ours. “A guesthouse, and you and I need just you and I time.” I open the door. “Inside.”

I smack her ass, loving her growl of annoyance.

She stops in the foyer and crosses her arms. “Maybe I want to go.”

“Yeah? I don’t believe you.”

“You’re supposed to let me go. And then if I want, I’ll come back.”

“Will you?”

Her eyes narrow. “No.”

“Then I’m not letting you go. I saved you.”

“So?”

I grab her, turn her, and walk her back until she hits the door. Then, I cage her in. “So? You’re fucking scared of a happy ending.”

She blinks rapidly, and her gaze darts everywhere but at me. “No, I’m not. I’m realistic. There is no happy ending. Not for you and me. You need a female Rush. Someone with long hair, someone not tattooed up the ass.”

“I’ve seen your ass, and I’m pretty sure there’s no tattoo up there.”

She clamps those lips together. “You need someone who fits your world.”

“Want to know something? I hate the world you think I inhabit. I don’t like the girls I’ve been sleeping with, and I haven’t looked at anyone and wanted them since I first kissed you. The world I want is the one where you fit. Our world. No one else’s. You think sweet, delicate Rose was the same as the dark, deadly and dangerous Nikolai? No. Not when they met. They shaped each other, and made their own world.

“Ask me back then if I thought Rose was capable of ruling as a mafia queen and I’d have laughed, but now that’s who she is. She’s the light to him, and she wears the emotions so he doesn’t have to.”

“Well.” Her eyes glitter as she looks at me. “Great for fucking them. But I’m nothing like pretty Rose.”

“But don’t you think we’re made for each other, Jessie?” I shake my head. I’m so close to her and I want to kiss her, hold her like that’ll make her see. “Does it matter if I think you’re beautiful? That you’re smart and strong and fucked in the head the right way?”

“Are you insulting me or complimenting me? It’s hard to tell.”

“I’m giving you some truths. You might see a God in human form before you,” I say, leaning in, needing to be closer to the heat of her, needing to breathe her in, “but I’m just a man.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

A thrill rides my veins. “I’m just as fucking scared as you. I fuck up a lot. It’s taken me too long to see what it is I want. And that’s my own role in my own way in the family business, and you.”

“You can’t have known you wanted me before you met me.”

“I think I did. Not you, like you, but there’s been something missing, and I’ve chased the girls that I know Nikolai liked. The type, not the women. But it took seeing you to realize I didn’t want that. I wanted wild, unique. You. And you fit that space so perfectly.”

She suddenly moves into me, tits pressed to my chest and her hands on my face. “But I don’t.”

I hate that broken, ragged sound.

“You do, Jessie.”

“No, I’m just… I don’t let anyone in. Other than my brother, and you’re in further than anyone, and it cracks me apart, shows all the ugly and it means…” She gulps in air. “It means you can hurt me. Destroy me.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because you can?”

“I love you, Jessie.”

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