Bitter jealousy slips down my throat right along with my coffee. I know I brought it on myself, but thinking of him with another woman fills me with a sense of betrayal.
“Do whatever you want.” I shrug, though warmth burns in the backs of my eyes. Stupid tear ducts. “I’m just a prisoner here, right?”
“Did I strike a nerve?”
I push my empty plate back from me, leaning back in my chair.
“You can say whatever you want to me. I’m past caring.”
“Is that so?” he challenges, a hint of a wicked smile on his lips. “No fight for me this morning?”
“I’m done fighting. It’s not like anything that happened between us meant anything, anyway. I was just the easy, idiotic whore who thought she could save you and ended up almost dead because of it.”
And then I realize what I’d said.
Fucking way to go, Mila.
I’ve never seen someone’s face get so red, so fast.
“Want to run that by me again, Mila?.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I grab my coffee and move to stand, but his boot hooks in the bottom of my chair, dragging it back to the table so fast that I almost fall out of it.
I can’t help but glare at him, even if he is looking at me with a darkness that sends a shiver of fear down my spine.
God, I hope he didn’t hear what I said.
“Repeat what the fuck you just said,” he grits, his tone conveying my little slip-up, in fact, didnotgo over his head.
“Which part?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Mila.”
“Or what?” I counter, forcing my chair back and standing. Heat rushes through my blood, my temper flaring. “You’re going to kidnap me? Drug me? Use me? I don’t care anymore, Christian. I stopped caring the moment you walked out in the middle of the night and didn’t come back until you felt sorry for me.”
He regards me with that same bored stare, but there’s something else lingering beneath the surface. Something heavy and thick and dark that swallows all the air from my lungs and makes ignoring the fluttering in my stomach impossible to ignore.
“Felt sorry for you? Is that what you thought?”
“It’s what I know,” I growl.
“That the angle you want to play it?” He cocks a brow. “The unfeeling little brat and not the damsel in distress now?”
“No one asked you to step in and try to save me.”
“No? Would have saved a lot of fucking headaches in the long run if I’d left you to wonder the streets.”
My breath catches in my throat. Violence slips through me in waves. I suddenly want to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt me when he left without a word.
With a snap of my wrist, my coffee soaks his face.
There’s a clock ticking somewhere nearby. I know this because it’s the only sound while Christian and I stare at each other in the seconds that follow.
“Mila . . .” he starts, cracking his neck while beige-colored coffee runs down his cheek.
I don’t like how calm he is. Somehow, he’s never looked more terrifying than he does when his gaze locks with mine.