“Sebring—”
“Livvie, not ten minutes ago, you gave yourself to me. He can’t own you when you belong to me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I didn’t feel the burn but I see the scars so I do understand, baby. But that’s done. It was done the minute you walked to my chair in the club. I owned you then. And you own me.”
I closed my eyes and dipped my chin into my throat.
God, I wanted to own him. I wanted him to be mine.
And I wanted him to own me.
I felt Nick’s lips at the top of my hair.
“We’re gonna do this right. Take it slow. Build the trust. Figure it out. And do it smart. You with me, Livvie?”
I tipped my head so my lips were at his throat but I didn’t open my eyes when I whispered fervently, “He can’t know. It isn’t about me. But he can’t know. I can’t go through it again. Not it happening to me. Watching.”
Nick slid his arm up my spine and curled it around the back of my neck.
“Leary,” he said quietly.
I pressed my lips deeper into his throat, murmuring, “He can’t know.”
“He won’t know, honey.”
“He can’t know,” I repeated.
“He won’t touch me.”
“He can’t know.”
“Shh,” he shushed me, his hand at my neck shifting to sift through my hair.
It took a while but eventually it worked. I turned my head so my cheek was to his throat and relaxed in his arms.
“I need to keep you safe, Sebring,” I whispered.
“I’m safe, Livvie.”
“You need to let me keep you safe.”
“If that means letting you go, that’s not gonna happen.”
I sighed and said, “They watch my house.”
“Okay,” he replied slowly.
“They have a tracker on my car.”
I felt his body grow taut.
“Fuck,” he clipped. “Do you—?”
“I take it off before coming here.”
“Goddammit,” he muttered, then, “Lavish cage,” but said no more.
That was when I took a chance and gave him some more of me.
“They don’t know about the club. When I go, Harry drives me.”
“Harry?”
“A leftover from another time. He’s loyal to me. He also knows the drill. He’s the one who showed me how to find a tracker on my car and remove it without them knowing.”
“Right.”
Nick again said no more and I didn’t either. I just lay in his arms trying to get back that feeling of just Nick and me.
But the fear kept invading.
Nick felt it.
“He’s not gonna hurt me and he’s sure as fuck is not gonna hurt you, Olivia. You got no reason to trust that but we work this out, we build it, you’ll eventually get there with me.”
The fear started choking me and to release some of it, I shared, “He won’t let me go easy.”
“I don’t give a fuck how hard it is on him.”
For some reason, I expected there to be more.
There wasn’t.
That was it. Simple.
To Nick, it was a foregone conclusion.
No, not even that.
To Nick, it was done.
I was Vincent Shade’s no longer.
I belonged to Nick Sebring.
With some surprise, on that simple thought, I felt the tension ebb from me.
He felt it too.
“Now, babe, this time answer me. Have you eaten? Because I haven’t and I’m fuckin’ starving.”
“No,” I answered. “I haven’t eaten.”
“Right,” he muttered. His arms tightening around me, he dragged me up the bed so we were face to face. I opened my eyes and caught his just in time for him to finish, “Got nothin’ in the fridge. So we’re ordering a pizza.”
Nick was ordering us a pizza.
I was a girl with her guy, spending the night at his place, fucking and ordering pizza.
Normal.
Simple.
Real.
The last of the tension shifted out of me.
“I hope you have beer.”
His concentration shifted and he muttered, “I’ll run out and get some.”
“Sebring?” I called.
His attention focused again on me.
I had something to say but when I got those blue eyes, I couldn’t get anything out of me.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I moved to him and touched my mouth to his, my eyes open and I hoped communicating.
I had a feeling he read me because one hand glided in my hair, the other one glided down to cup my ass and he rolled into me, taking my lip touch and turning it into a hot, hard, rough kiss.
He ended the kiss by rolling us again, him to his back, me on top of him, whereupon he immediately smacked my ass and muttered against my mouth, “Now go get me the pizza menu. Famous’s. Top drawer, left back of the kitchen.”
I heard not a single word out of his mouth.
“You smacked my ass,” I declared, eyes narrowing.
“Do it again, you don’t get me the menu. And grab my cell on the way back. It’s in my slacks.”
I pushed up.
He came up with me and brought me down, twisted so my torso was pinned under his, back to the bed, lower body on its side so he could smack my bare ass again.
I felt my eyes get round before they went squinty.
“You gonna do as you’re told or you gonna fight me?” he asked.
He looked like he was struggling against smiling.