Page 48 of Worth

Taking two steps towards her is all I need to be in her face, but she doesn’t back down. If anything, her spine lengthens further, putting her nose almost level with mine. Determined eyes meet mine without hesitation and I realize they aren’t fully gray. They’re streaked with bits of almost white and a lighter blue color, making her irises look like one of those plasma balls that I remember having in my room as a kid.

It’s fitting, the lightning in her eyes matching the stormy personality she has underneath the traumatized exterior.

“It was dangerous as fuck,” I snarl. “You could have been caught. You would have been sent back toDamienif they had. Or worse—if Damien had decided you were tainted after being kidnapped, he could have sent you to a Lab.”

One of Blake’s brows lifts the tiniest bit, but there’s still zero concern about the predicament she could have landed herself in. “Careful now, Zander,” she murmurs. “Don’t want to sound like you care.”

I want to react to that by hauling her over my knee and spanking her ass until she can’t sit down for a week, but I have a feeling that it’ll only make her think that she’s right.

She’s obviously not.

She needs discipline.

I’m doing her a favor.

This is not a world where you can skip around hoping for the best. This worldalwayscomes for what it believes it has coming to it.

But how do you discipline a girl like Blake?

At some point, after Blake and I went head-to-head, both of us refusing to back down or look away, Aiden had crawled behind Blake. I can see him in my periphery, rising onto his knees behind her. His chest presses into her back as his hands find her hips, the movements making her tits press into me.

Neither of us react—almost. I see the way Blake’s pupils dilate with a mix of fear and desire, her expression twisting into a grimace like she can’t decide which she should be feeling.

I’m betting it probably matches the way I’m feeling, despite the blank expression I focus on keeping.

“You two fight too much,” Aiden rumbles and I can hear the sly tone in his voice. “Maybe you should kiss and make up.”

It’s what spurs me into action—the idea of kissing Blake. Reaching out, I cuff the side of Aiden’s head, just hard enough to knock him off balance. He falls to his side with a cackle. I catch his arm and yank him toward the door, shoving his nude ass through the opening. I slam it closed behind him, rolling my eyes at the way he’s belly laughing.

I hear a snicker behind me and turn, so slowly that it feels like I’m moving in half time. I find Blake in the same place I left her, mostly naked and on her knees, a smirk on her lips.

I charge towards her, ignoring the way my cock is throbbing in my pants. She goes to scramble out of my way just a moment too late and I catch her around the waist. She shrieks as I swing her around, but it’s filled with laughter, not fear.

“God, you aresopredictable,” she announces, still chuckling. “Stomping around here like a fucking animal because you’re not getting your way. You are no different than Aiden—you just wear a suit.”

It snaps whatever was left of my control. She wants unpredictable? Blake doesn’t know what she just awakened, and she’s going to fucking regret it.

I whirl her around and slam her against the wall. The way her eyes widen in shock, her breath exiting her in a whoosh at the impact, gives me a sense of satisfaction I haven’t felt in a very long time.

“Predictable, baby girl?” I whisper. “You silly little thing.”

“Zander,” she breathes out, and there’s a tinge of alarm in the words.

But I don’t want to hear her words. She’ll remind me exactly why I don’t want to have her pinned against a wall, my body pressing against every inch of hers. The body that’s still bared to me. I do the one thing that comes to mind to stop her words, to halt my remembrance.

I kiss her.

I’m not gentle. I command her mouth, her lips prying apart immediately around my tongue as I stroke it against hers. The noise she makes is one of protest, but I don’t think it’s because she’s refusing me. Not with the way her fingers are pulling at my shirt, curling into it tightly enough that I’ll have to change it because of the wrinkles.

I can taste the staleness of her mouth and smirk into the kiss, understanding her protests. She hasn’t brushed her teeth this morning.

What she doesn’t understand is that she tastes like fucking heaven despite the bitterness, and it has everything to do withher. Every sense I have is on fire, fucking pissed that I refused myselfthisfor as long as I did.

The scent of her surrounds me—the coconut body wash, smoke, and sex—and paw at her ass, pulling away from the wall as I lift her up just so I can slam her against it again. She lets out a little cry but, somewhere along the way, Blake has decided to meet me halfway. Her tongue strikes out against mine and her arms wrap around my neck, and her hips thrust. She groans as she rubs her pussy along my cock.

I drop her, choosing to let her stumble, because despite the way I want to fuck her into next year, this isn’t a reward.

“Down on your knees, baby girl,” I order. I expect her to fight, to look at me with such defiance that I have to force her to her knees. Yet when she glances up, keeping herself from falling over, she holds my eyes as she gets on her knees.

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