Lilia’s POV
The kiss went on much longer than I expected.
He tasted faintly of wine, the clean bite of it drifting between our tangled breaths.
He took what he wanted, deeper and deeper, until I could hardly breathe at all,and with one hand locked at the back of my neck, there was nothing I could do about it.
His Alpha presence filled the small private room without restraint, thick enough to choke on.
Only when the edges of my vision began to whiten did he finally release me.
I pushed myself upright against his chest, sat up straight, and gasped, hand pressed to my chest like a drowning woman who’d finally caught air.
“Enjoying kissing me?”
He watched me sideways, lazy, the teasing entirely undisguised.
Enjoying it?
I could barely breathe.
The retort stayed inside where it belonged, and I forced my expression flat and smiled at him.
“Y-yes.”
”Good girl.” His eyebrows lifted, and the interest in his eyes deepened.
He didn’t call out my lie.
Instead he reached up and wiped the dampness from the corner of my mouth with the pad of his thumb, unexpectedly gentle.
“And the roses. Did you like them?”
I frowned, alarms going off in my head.
I could not accept his courtship.
It would drag me all the way into a world I didn’t belong to.
I shook my head without hesitation.
“No.”
Kael drew a cigarette from the box on the table, saw me watching him without blinking, and slid it slowly back.
“Why not?”
My mind raced, and I improvised.
“Because roses are all show.
However beautiful they open, they always wilt.
Pretty to look at, useless to own, and worth nothing.
A man like you, courting a woman with nothing but roses,that’s rather stingy, isn’t it?”
”Stingy.” He laughed, chin tipped up at me.
“And this,is this stingy too?”
I followed his gaze down to the inside of my left collar,and found something there that hadn’t been there before.
A sapphire butterfly brooch.
The wings were set with a dense pavé of small diamonds, each one cut and placed exactly right, holding a restrained glimmer under the lamp.
The sapphire at the center was a deep, bottomless blue, like a piece cut from the darkest sky of the fullest moonlit night.
And the pattern of it,the line, the shape, the color,was identical, down to the last detail, to the butterfly tattoo on my shoulder. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
The one that covered the claw scar.
My breath stopped.
One day.
He had glanced at my shoulder exactly once,at the scar and the ink I thought I’d hidden so well.
How had he memorized it, and found someone to recreate it overnight?
A cold shiver climbed my spine.
This man’s attention to me was far more precise than I’d understood.
And far more dangerous.
My hand rose to touch the brooch.
What my fingertips met was cold metal, but something slipped silently into my chest all the same.
“Talk,” Kael said, propping his head on one hand and leaning lazily to the side, one arm settling along the back of my chair, half-circling me.
“The brooch.
Is it worth anything?”
”How much?” slipped out of me before I could stop it.
He looked at me, apparently checked for a moment by the question.
“Three hundred thousand.”
My face didn’t move.
If anything, I looked faintly disgusted and started to unpin the brooch,and he paused, then added two more words, flatly.
“US dollars.”
My hand stopped.
It turned instead into careful stroking, and I traced the whole span of both wings, an inch at a time, murmuring to myself.
“This is a good thing… this is very good.”
Three hundred thousand dollars.
Even better if it could be turned into cash.
Nothing bores a strong man faster than a woman who is greedy and shallow,and this money-mad skin was one I wanted to wear as long as it would stay on me.
So I turned my face up and planted a loud kiss on his left cheek, blinking.
“Thank you.
You’re so generous.”
”Mm.” The smile deepened.
He turned his head until our eyes met.
“A little money-chaser after all.”
After all?
The question stirred in me, but nothing showed on my face.
I nodded, perfectly serious. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“What I like best? Fast cars, more money than I could ever spend, and enough to eat and play for a lifetime.”
I said it with total sincerity, watching the gold of his eyes darken a shade,and my heart both panicked and, inexplicably, leaped.
Yes.
Now.
Get angry.
Find me vulgar.
Tell me to get out.
I nearly laughed out loud.
But he only watched me, eyes lowered, saying nothing, until my nerves crawled,and I had to probe.
“Everyone loves money.
Am I…
wrong?”
”You’re right.”
A curve of pure amusement touched his mouth, and he leaned in suddenly, breath warm against my ear, teeth closing lightly on my earlobe.
“Lilia, the one thing I have never lacked is money.”
Something tightened in my chest.
“What does that mean?”
”It means name your price.”
His lips slid along my burning earlobe and down to the side of my neck, his nose against my skin, as if identifying a scent he already knew by heart and could never tire of.
“How much, to be with me? I don’t like forcing anyone.”
My heartbeat skipped, hard.
I looked at the want churning in his eyes and felt the heat of his breath spill across my neck,and a ridiculous feeling passed through me: if I said yes in this moment, I would only sink into deeper trouble.
I pushed at his shoulder with a wry smile.
“I’m…
very expensive.
I can’t think of a figure on the spot.
Let me consider it.”
”How long?
My patience has limits.”
”Let me think…”
”Alpha Kael.” Derek’s voice came through the door, careful.
“Alpha Callum of Ashgrove is on the line. They’ve put him through.”
A lifeline.
I blurted toward the door before I could think twice.
“Come in!”
Then I turned back to him.
“Kael, it’s Callum,it must be about Alex. Better to make peace than not. I… I won’t hold up your business. I’ll go.”
Without waiting for his answer, I shoved his chest, stood up straight,and in the instant before Derek pushed the door open, I ducked, darted under his arm, and fled the room without looking back.