Bianca tenses against me, and I want to growl when she pulls away from me. She takes a few steps back, and the chasm that opens between us is wide and cold, a trench deeper than the ones that run at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Something inside me knows I’m losing her right now, but Iignore it. Fight it. Refuse to surrender.

“Marry you,” she says softly.

“Yes.”

I’m totally going to stand my ground here. If I can’t have her, no one else will. I’ll fight tooth and nail to make it happen.

She wraps her arms around her, which feels like her shutting me out further.

“How do you plan to make this happen?”

My jaw clamps, and I force the words out. “I’ll find a way.”

“When I’m already engaged to someone else.”

“You’re not engaged, Bianca. Engaged is when a man proposes to you. You’ve been sold off so your father can cull favors with the syndicate.”

Her face has gone white, her lips pursed.

“Thank you for painting me such a detailed picture,” she quips.

I close my eyes briefly. This woman, she’ll be the death of me.

“I went too far. I apologize.”

Silence thrums between us, until the moment her lower lip starts to tremble.

I’m over to her in a flash, pulling her into my arms, wrapping her in them.

“Don’t cry,” I mutter, then drop a kiss on top of her head. “Pleasedon’t cry.”

“You’re not wrong,” she replies, words muffled against my chest.

I savor the feel of her against me, her warmth, the way her curves fit just right against the harder planes of my body, how her leg is tangling with mine as she burrows into me.

This is where she belongs. More so than in my bed with my cock buried inside her. I don’t want just the lover she is to me, I want all of her.

“Marry me,” I say again.

And it was the wrong thing to state. Again.

She pulls away, eyes fiery as she stares me down despite being a good six inches shorter.

“And what’s that going to do, huh?”

Reality douses me with a bucket of cold water. What was I thinking? As my wife, I can protect her, but what of the consequences around breaking the alliance between her and Abrashi?

“I could kill him.”

“And then what? The contract states I’m to marry into that family. There’s still another eligible brother. You want me to end up withThe Butcher?”

“I’ll kill him, too.”

Silence descends, then Bianca is laughing. But not at me. It’s a sad chuckle, and there are tears brimming in her eyes as she bites her lower lip.

“That’s just going to start a war, Leo. None of us can have that.”