Page 71 of Deception & Desire

Because it might have been fun to flirt with me, fun to fuck me. Fun to dance up against me in a club where no one could see us. But now that I’ve served my purpose…

“No, you’re right,” I swallow hard as I take a step back. “Let’s not lose sight of what’s important here. I wouldn’t want anything to distract from bearing your goddamn children.”

His eyebrows knit into a tight frown. “You know how important this is.”

“I don’t need you to remind me!” I laugh even though I feel like crying. “Is that everything you want from me this evening? Have I fulfilled my purpose? Can your wife return to bed so that she might rot there in peace?”

“I’m not sending you away.” He suddenly crowds me again. “I want you to stay.”

How many times has he asked that of me now? Each request had been like a jolt of electricity to the heart, a whisper of something more that could flourish behind it.

Now it just sounds like…

Stay where I can see you. Stay so you don’t wander too far. Stay so that I can know you’re safe.

Stay safe. Stay safe.

It’s my duty to stay safe.

“Why?” I ask because my heart is already breaking.

His expression shifts into alarm. He wasn’t expecting me to ask.

I want to scream at him, want to beg him.Please, give me one good reason. Please tell me there’s something more. Please. There’s more, isn’t there? You feel this, too. You can’t kiss me like that, make mefeellike that, if you don’t feel it. I need more.

“I’m sorry.” He searches my face for something I evidently don’t provide. “You can leave if you want to.”

It feels worse than when Amos Rubio kicked me in the chest. “Right.”

I back away before I can say something I regret. Or my body betrays me with some gross display of emotion that I can already feel simmering under the surface.

“I didn’t mean to…” Leon trails off when I look back at him. He swallows the words back down, chocolate eyes burning with an emotion I can’t name. “Goodnight, Mia.”

I don’t trust myself to voice a reply.

I slip out through the door and into the room that I’ve never slept in before.

The wallsof the brownstone feel closer every day, the once-grand space shrinking into a prison with every passing hour.

I’ve memorized every detail of it—the cracks in the kitchen countertops where Leon had once bent me over. The subtle creak of the third step on the staircase, the way the light filters through the heavy curtains in the living room just before dusk.

I can’t remember the last time I felt the fresh air on my face or the hum of the city beneath my feet.

At first, I thought I could handle it. I thought I could just stay quiet and fulfill my goddamn duty.

But after three weeks, I had gone to Leon after a dreadful morning of sickness and begged him. I pleaded with him to let me out. To give mesomething.

“I’m keeping you safe,” he had said the last time I brought it up, his voice calm but final, his hand brushing over my stomach. Making it very clear who, exactly, he’s trying to keep safe.

The child growing inside me should be a blessing. Instead, it feels like a leash.

That was the day I decided to leave. I ran down the stairs, my feet making the third step creak, and burst through the front door. For a moment, I just let the sounds of the city overwhelm me.

Then I saw that Max was stationed outside. He turned me back around with a sympathetic look of a man on someone else's payroll.

Leon’s absence only sharpens the edges of my isolation. At first, his injury kept him home. But once he was mobile again, he threw himself back into his world of business and violence, leaving me behind to rot in silence.

Well, not complete silence.

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