Page 40 of Protégé King

“You dismissed what’s been happening to me and my family.”

“I separated me from the loan, which is the truth. I didn’t want it to seem like my favor was connected.”

“Instead you came off like a jerk, and what’s worse is that I was still, after all these years, so stupid over you that I didn’t even realize it until a few minutes ago. I actually let you get away with that jerk move. But you’re right. I’m responsible for me. No more stupid girl. There was a time when I’d have done anything for you, Damion, but not anymore.”

We stand there, staring at each other, and I can feel the tension between us amping up. “Not anymore?” he challenges.

“I haven’t so much as heard from you in ten years.”

I blink and he’s closed the distance between us, his long fingers shackling my waist, his powerful body intimately pressed to mine. “I’m here now,” he says, and then he turns my question on me. “Now what, Alana?”

Chapter Thirty-One

Alana

The minute his hands are on my body, my heart is racing, the tug of dark lust between us impossible to deny. I tell myself to push him away, to end this now, but everything about him consumes me. He’s like a wickedly strong drug, and I have a lifetime addiction that can clearly never be cured. And just like any drug, he’s dangerous. He controls me. He understands me in ways I don’t even understand me, and I don’t even know if he’s a friend or an enemy.

“Now what, Alana?” he asks again. “I’m here. What are you going to do with me?”

He watches me with those intelligent blue eyes that see too much, that know me too well. There’s no sense in lying to him or myself, but we both know the truth. “Hate you,” I say. “We both know that’s how this ends.”

“Does it?” he challenges. “You once told me you loved me. Remember?”

“And hated you,” I remind him and then add my own challenge of, “Remember?”

I try to twist away from him. He holds onto me. “Not so fast.” And then his hand is on my head, our lips close, our bodies touching everywhere. His fingers close around my hair, and the erotic tug that follows clenches my sex, and there is no denying the burn between us. “Do you hate me now?”

My hand has somehow slid under his jacket, the warmth of his skin seeping into my palm. This feeling between us, the magnetic pull, the lusty heaviness, is hypnotic. “Oh, yes,” I whisper, and my voice trembles. “For so many reasons.”

“Why don’t you show me how much you hate me.”

“That could be dangerous for you.”

“I like to live dangerously.” His mouth closes over mine, and when his tongue licks past my teeth, I can feel myself unravel, unleash. I want him. It doesn’t mean I have to love him. I kiss him back. I kiss him hungrily, like a woman in lust and hate. There’s no schoolgirl to me. My hands move under his jacket and explore his body. He’s hot. He’s a man a woman fucks. My problem is I always forget he’s a man you don’t fall in love with. I remember now, and it’s liberating.

He tears his mouth from mine and stares down at me, surprise in his eyes that transforms into something I can only call hunger. Whatever he sees in me, he likes it. He shrugs out of his jacket, tossing it to the table, I kick off my shoes. This is happening, but I’m not the girl next door anymore.

This is for me, not for him.

I toss my belt, and when he steps back in front of me and reaches for me, I grab his ridiculously expensive tie. “You can spread my legs, Damion, but you will never own me.”

His eyes glint with something I cannot name, something wholly male and dominant. Something I saw a glimpse of that night ten years ago. Heat rushes low in my belly as he reaches up and catches my hands, his gaze holding mine, and I could drown in the hunger I find there. His lips gently press to my skin, and every part of me tingles. I cannot explain it, but this moment is one of the most erotic I’ve ever experienced, and I think…I think it’s because there is a promise in the act not yet realized.

His hands come down on my shoulders and he turns me to face the other direction, one hand on my belly, fingers splayed wide, his lips pressed to my ear, as he says, “I already own you. You just don’t know it yet.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Damion

I hold Alana in front of me, allowing my words to sink in.

I already own you. You just don’t know it yet.

What I don’t say, what I can’t say right now, is that claiming her, making her mine, is how I protect her.

If I told her that, she’d run from me and right into the trouble I’m sheltering her from. She’d claim I was using her, when nothing could be further from the truth. I want her. I’ve always wanted her. And I will never fail her again. I will never let her get hurt again.

She sucks in a breath at my bold statement, and her hand flattens on my hand where it still rests on her belly as if she wants to control me, instead of me controlling her. But when I reach for her zipper and pull it down, she doesn’t stop me. I could undress her now, fuck her ten ways, fuck her every way I wish I had for ten years, but I do not. I turn her to face me again and brush my lips over hers. “Undress for me.”

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