Only it wasn’t her name. Not really.
Her heart split wide open, and tears flooded her eyes. She didn’t want to be Sage to him. She wanted to be someone else, someone…real. God, she was thinking dangerous, crazy things, and her heart pounded with fear of it, but despite everything, she trusted this man. He was safe, and she wanted him to see her for who she was. Her real self. Just this once.
“My name,” she whispered, “is Dahlia.”
He lifted his head and stared down at her, but he said nothing for several heartbeats. His damp hair fell into his eyes, obscuring them, and she had no way of reading his expression. Finally, he propped himself up on one arm and cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb rubbing lightly back and forth across her lower lip.
“I don’t care,” he said on barely a breath of sound. He pumped his hips again, punctuating his words with shallow thrusts that triggered another soft orgasm. He weaved his hands into the strands of her hair on both sides of her head and held her still for a long, drugging kiss. “I don’t care what your name is. All that matters is you’re mine now. You’re fucking mine, and I’m not letting you run anymore.”
Chapter Fifteen
He claimed she was his, no matter what. And oh, how she wished she could be. But she couldn’t, and he deserved to know why. She owed him that much.
“I’ll tell you now. Everything.”
He didn’t answer. She was afraid to look at him, afraid of what she’d see in his expression. Or, maybe worse, what she wouldn’t see. But she forced herself to meet his gaze, surprised to see stubbornness etched into the hard planes of his face and a bit of annoyance darkening his eyes to storm clouds.
“You can tell me or not. It’s not going to change the way I feel,” he said.
Nerves quivered around in her belly. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
He grumbled and pushed off the bed. “Let me clean up.”
She watched him walk into the bathroom, admiring the flex of the muscles in his ass with each step. She couldn’t help herself. The man had a backside to drool over.
She heard him grumbling some more, muttering to himself as he washed up. Yes, he was definitely annoyed. Strange, since all he’d wanted from her since day one was the truth, and now that she was offering to tell him, he acted as if he didn’t want to hear it. Was he as afraid of his reaction to it as she was?
Another rabble of nerves took flight in her belly, and she climbed out of the bed to find her clothes. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have naked.
Vaughn came out of the bathroom and scooped up his jeans from the floor. Apparently, he’d had the same thought. Then they just stood there, the bed between them, and looked at each other. Moments ago they’d been as close as two people could be, joined in body and spirit. Now, although only a few feet separated them, they might as well have been on different planets for all the figurative space suddenly yawning open between them.
She sucked in a breath, let it out, and blurted, “My name was Dahlia Bellisario.”
Vaughn cursed and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I wondered.”
A blast of surprise left her cold. She blinked. “You did?”
“When you said you were running from Giuseppe Bellisario, I started putting the pieces together. Everyone knows his favorite son was killed, and his daughter-in-law disappeared shortly after, never to be seen again.” He nodded in her direction. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She sank to the bed as all the years of regret suddenly felt too heavy to shoulder. She needed to unburden herself of it or it was going to crush her. She stared down at her feet, concentrated on tracing the ugly geometric pattern on the carpet with her toe. “My maiden name was Dahlia Grant. I was born in Los Angeles—the accidental baby my parents never really wanted. Dad was always off on one business trip after another, and Mom tried to use me to realize her Hollywood dreams until she realized I had no talent for acting, I had too many curves to be a model, and I can’t carry a tune in a plastic bag, so she lost interest in me fast. I was left to my own devices for most of my teenage years and ended up falling in with the party crowd. Drinking, drugs, sex, skipping school to go out to the clubs every night. My parents didn’t care. Hell, maybe they didn’t even know. They’re…self-absorbed. To say the least.”
Vaughn sat down beside her, his weight on the mattress sliding her toward him. He put an arm around her and hugged her to his side. “When did Dahlia Grant become a Bellisario?”