His (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance)(44)

I set the tray down in front of her. I tried PB&J yesterday, but she didn’t eat it. I’m a shit cook, but she wasn’t eating anything I ordered in, so I decided to try making something for her myself. Yesterday, I sprinkled a few cheetos on the plate and a pickle. The sandwich was untouched, the cheetos were completely gone, and the pickle had a bite taken out of it. So today I tried cutting the crust off the sandwich like Ma used to and slicing it into small triangles. Then I piled as many cheetos as I could fit on the plate until they towered above the sandwich and three pickles.

She eyes the plate and then locks in on the tower of cheetos. The ghost of a grin touches her face, so faint that I’m almost sure I imagined it. It was there, I know it was. I’ve been chipping away at whatever wall she’s trying to put up between us, I can feel it. I just want to show her I can actually be patient. I can be calm. I want her to stop being afraid of me.

As soon as the grin passes, the same deep sadness crosses her face. I want to pull her close and kiss the tender place beneath her ear, to whisper the dirty things I want to do to her. There’s so much I want to do but none of it is right, not now, at least. If I want this to be more than casual fucking, I need her to trust me. So I set the plate down in front of her and then sit beside her on the bed, close enough that my leg touches hers. I’ll give her space, but there’s no way I can avoid any excuse to touch her. She’ll just have to get over that.

“You need to eat,” I say.

“I need to go home,” she says. It’s getting old. Any attempt I make at conversation with her feels like a circular path that leads straight back to that idea. She needs to go home. She wants to get away from me, from here. Too bad. She’s going to stay here until she learns to trust me and until she learns that she needs me right now. There’s no way I’m letting her out there until my soldiers and I have put this war to bed. No way in hell.

“C’mon. Eat something. You’re wasting away, doll,” I say, running a finger down her side where I can feel her ribs jutting through. It makes me sick to see her take such poor care of herself. It makes me feel like shit that I can’t take care of her because she won’t let me. She needs the food right now if she’s going to recover.

She shakes her head and a tear falls from her nose.

I move closer, taking her cheek with my palm and forcing her to look at me. “Hey,” I say softly, circling her with my arms and pulling her close to me, taking care not to squeeze her ribs or press on her bruises. She doesn’t resist and it feels so fuckin’ good to have her in my arms, to feel her warmth against my chest, even the wet heat of her tears soaking through my shirt. It’s her. All of it. I hate seeing her cry, but I don’t ask her what’s wrong. She’s upset, she knows I’m here for her, and she can tell me what it is if she wants. If she doesn’t, she can hold it in. For now, at least. My patience does have limits, and if it’s really bothering her I need to know at some point so I can set it straight.

She cries and sniffs in my arms for a few minutes. When she pulls away, she finally looks into my eyes. “I can’t keep doing this. Whatever was between us, it has to end.”

My eyebrows pull together. It feels like she just twisted a knife in my stomach. The familiar warmth of rage quickly replaces everything else. I shake my head. “No. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Maybe you can use brute force to get money out of people or whatever it is you do, but you can’t force me to stay with you.”

“Watch me,” I say slowly.

She rolls her eyes. It takes all I have in me not to grab her by the hair right then and make her apologize, but she’s still recovering. Instead, I raise a finger. “Be careful. Be real careful.”

“Or what?” she asks. “What can you even threaten me with? If you let me go, I’ll probably be kidnapped again or worse.”

“I’m working on that,” I say, standing to pace. Adrenaline is flooding my system and I can’t sit still anymore. I want to hit something, someone. I want to fuck something, her.

“Working on it? You mean you’re going to kill more people? Maybe that’s normal to you. Maybe you’re used to it, but I don’t want it on my conscience. I just want things to be normal again.”

“Tough shit. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, you’re targeted. They are going to come after you to get to me. Unless I get to them first.”

She shakes her head, raising her hands as if she doesn’t know what else to say. She lets them drop lifelessly to the bed, where the sheets and blankets are pooled around her wide hips. She looks so fuckable in those sheets. I can see the hard tips of her nipples pushing against the cotton of her shirt. Maybe she thinks she can live without me, but she can’t. She’s had a taste, just like I have, and there’s no way she can leave now.