Page 29 of His Stakes (His Obsession 2)

As soon as she was decent, I pulled her up into my lap and wrapped my arms around her. I sighed, my anger diminished for the moment. “You can’t leave me, Veda. I won’t allow it.”

If she heard the raw need in my voice, she didn’t react to it.

She cleared her throat. “Are you happy now?” she asked me. “Does…does…humiliating me like this make you feel more like a man? Do you feel better now that you practically pissed all over me like a dog?”

I pulled back and stared down into her gray eyes, wet with tears she wouldn’t shed. She was right. What I’d done to her just now wasn’t something I’d do to one of my lowest whores. But goddammit. This woman was mine. MINE! And no, I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for proving that to her. “Yes, I do,” I told her.

My honesty took her by surprise, and she stiffened in my arms as she stared at me. She jerked her eyes away and changed the subject. “I’d like to continue the self-defense stuff with Enzo.”

A gruff laugh escaped. “So you can take me down and escape?”

“Yes.” There wasn’t an ounce of humor in her voice.

I studied her. She was perfectly serious. “If you want to learn how to beat me in a fight, then you’ll train with me.” I trusted Enzo with my life, and Veda’s, but there was no fucking way anyone else was laying a hand on her from now on except for me.

“I’d rather train with Enzo.”

“No.”

She weighed my response and decided not to fight me. At least not now. “I’d like to get the rest of my stuff from my apartment. If they haven’t evicted me yet and thrown it all away.”

“You haven’t been evicted. Tristan found out where you lived the day we found out who you really were and I’ve been paying your rent.”

Her head snapped around to look at me, her expression shocked. “You have?”

“Of course.” I didn’t know why that came as such a surprise. The monthly amount was minuscule, and I barely noticed it coming out of my account.

“Thank you,” she told me.

Her gratitude was genuine, and it made me uncomfortable after what I’d just done. “It’s nothing. I’ll send a couple of my men to collect your things.”

“I want to go myself.”

“No.” My answer was swift and final.

I felt her stiffen just before she jumped out of my lap and swung around to face me. “You can’t just keep me locked away like a bird in a cage!”

“I can. And I will.”

The tears that had threatened finally overflowed to run down her cheeks. If she noticed them, she didn’t show it. Her hands fisted at her sides. “Luca. You can’t.”

I sat up in my chair, my elbows on the arms, and pressed the tips of my fingers together. Tilting my head to the side in a silent question, I waited for her to realize I would do whatever the fuck I wanted, especially in my own home. And what I wanted was for her to stay here, with me, where no one else would ever touch her again.

She took a breath and regrouped. “Luca, please. I’ve been locked up in your house for weeks.”

I raised one eyebrow.

“Look,” she said, her voice carefully level. “I know you have good intentions, and I’m not completely stupid. If you say I’d be in danger on my own, then I believe you. I mean, it makes sense. But…” She looked around as if she’d find the words she was trying to say on the floor, or perhaps the walls. “Luca,” she finally said, her eyes pleading with me to see her side of it. “What kind of life will that be for me? My entire life will pass me by with me locked up here until what? Until you tire of me and don’t give a shit anymore? Until you die? Then what’ll happen to me?”

The way I felt right now, with my body already hardening for her again, I didn’t see myself ever tiring of her. Dying, on the other hand…there wasn’t any avoiding that. “I’ll make arrangements to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“So I’m just supposed to wander around this house like a ghost? Luca…I’d go insane.”

I stared up at her as she stood there, arms akimbo and pleading gray eyes luminous with her tears. If I had my choice, I would lock her away in my bedroom and never let her step foot outside of it. Not even to the balcony to get some sun. But I had to admit to myself that perhaps she was right. It wouldn’t be healthy for her. And maybe we could find some sort of middle ground. “Let me think about it.”

She looked like she wanted to say more, but in the end, she just nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

I gave her a nod and stood. “I’ll get with my men about going to get your things. What we can’t find room for here, we can put in storage until you decide what you want to do with it.”

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