Page 35 of No Saint

I cock a brow, a giddy kind of feeling blooming in my gut at her defiance. Fighting with her was becoming a new favorite thing of mine because it meant I could do this.

I stand slowly, keeping my eyes on her. She narrows her gaze but doesn’t move.

I grab the back of her chair and yank, hard, pulling it away from the table. She jumps up or tries to at least, I’m quick to force her back down, her body rattling as she hits the chair with a thud.

“Get off me!” She orders. I walk around until I am standing in front of her, close, so close that if she stands, we would be nose to nose.

“Are you wishing to make your own life difficult?”

“No,” she sneers, “I’m trying to make yours.”

I chuckle, “Leonessa,” the nickname I’d applied to her rolls off my tongue, “It just makes my life interesting.”

“What, not enough work going around for you that you have to kidnap women and children now? Force them to marry you? If I were you, Gabriel, I’d get another hobby.”

“Why? When this one is so much fun.”

She turns her lip and looks away, crossing her arms.

“Now I would like my wife to sit next to me.”

“Well, yourwife,” she spits the word, “Wants nothing to do with you.”

I chuckle and lean forward, grabbing the seat of the chair between her legs, “You don’t have a choice.”

I yank the chair and she squeals, reaching down to grab the arms of the chair to steady herself as I forcefully drag the chair and her down the table, kicking one out the way to push her in.

“Much better.”

“You’re a fucking pig.”

I take my seat, ignoring her for a moment and pick up my whiskey, taking a sip of the amber liquid, “Would you like a drink, Amelia?”

She ignores me.

I pour her a glass of wine, pushing it towards her as I begin to serve her food from every dish. She wants to be stubborn, fine, doesn’t mean she has to starve.

She sighs and plucks up the glass, taking a sip as I place the plate in front of her. “Thank you.” She murmurs.

We eat in silence, Amelia keeping her eyes down on the plate in front of her. I steal glances every few seconds, taking in the silky strands of her hair, the creamy texture of her skin and how her dark lashes frame those stunning blue eyes.

She wasn’t what I had expected.

She stands from the table, plucking up her plate, turning as if to leave.

“Sit down, Amelia.”

“Gabriel, why do you insist we do this? We are not a couple. We are joined through a forced piece of paper and a threat. You have my son. His life. My life. You’re not getting anything else from me. Not now. Not ever. You and me, we’re nothing. You are nothing.”

“We’ll see about that, Amelia,” I stand, stepping close to her. She steps back. I follow. Like a dance she backs up, all the way, fear leaking into her eyes and a gasp escaping her lips as her spine hits the wall. She flattens herself against it.

I raise a hand and watch as she flinches, squeezing her eyes closed and ducking her face to the side. Not the first time this has happened with her, and it makes me question her past. I brush a strand of hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear, her skin soft beneath my fingertips. “I won’t hurt you.”

She breathes through her nose and blows it out of her mouth before she turns to look up at me. Her eyes reveal pain, a lot of it, pain from a past I will uncover, fear but not of me though she was undoubtedly scared of me.

“Who hurt you?” I whisper. I could feel this swelling sense of protection blooming inside my chest, a growing beast that I wasn’t going to tame. I would get her to trust me. We could be something.

“I don’t want this.” She tells me.

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