He turns back to me, his eyes hard, his lips somewhere between a smirk and a lip-curling growl.
“I own you, Fiona,” he snarls.
“Own me?” I whimper.
“Yes,” he growls, reaching across the table and taking my hand. “I own your smile and your beauty and your talent and your curvy hips. I own those creamy tits of yours. I own that special soaked place between your legs. I own you, all of you. I wanted to wait a little longer before I told you, but it’s out there now, and I won’t apologize for it.”
I stare, squeezing onto his hand, waiting for the punchline to drop like a hammer.
There must be another angle to this, some cruelty lurking in the wings of this conversation.
Is this even a real restaurant, or are all the patrons hired actors?
He’s a billionaire.
He could afford to do something like that.
But why?
“You belong to me,” he goes on. “I’m claiming you, today, this week, this month—forever. You’re never going to be with another man. You’re never going to talk to, or even look at another man in a way I don’t like. And yes, my sweet firecracker, we’re going to have children together. I never knew I wanted a family until I laid eyes on you.”
I blink back tears, running my thumb over the harness of his knuckles, shaking my head, and biting my lip.
“I want to believe you,” I murmur.
“Does that mean you feel the same?” he breathes, his husky tenor more like a beast’s possessive rumble than a man’s voice.
I turn my face away, taking a deep breath. It’s bad enough that I’m in this fancy Parisian restaurant so underdressed. The last thing I want to do is add a blubbering outburst into the mix.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’ve been having crazy thoughts about you, Forrest. I thought they were silly thoughts. I thought they were impossible. And then you came to me last night and—But you have to tell me.”
I turn to him, cutting myself off.
His eyes narrow.
“Tell you what?” he asks.
“Why you’re doing this to me,” I say. “Why you’re tricking me. Why you’d be so cruel.”
He stands up.
For a second, I think he’s going to turn and stalk away, laughing as he swaggers across the room.
She almost believed it, I hear him yelling so that everybody in the restaurant can hear. What a gullible foolish girl.
He walks around the table and slides into the booth next to me.
When he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close to him, it’s hard not to melt into a sob as I collapse against his chest. I fight the urge as I look up at him, biting my lip.
He gazes down at me sternly, his powerful gaze pinning me in place, his jaw pulsing as though rage is mixing with whatever else swirls inside of him.
“You need to tell me, Fiona,” he snarls.
“Tell you what?” I murmur.
“What he did to you,” he says.
“Who?” I say, my gut twisting.
Surely Forrest can’t know.
We only met last night.
Last night, and yet I’m ready to give myself to him, wholly, if I could only believe he’d really take me.
“I don’t know who,” he says. “But the way you’re talking, the fact that your first thought is that I’m tricking you, some bastard did something cruel, something unforgivable. And I need to know what, and who.”
I lean back, shaking my head.
The lights are too bright in here, both the glinting of the chandeliers and the sunlight glowing through the tall windows. The music seems too loud and the patrons’ conversations seem somehow louder, rising into the air like a thousand vindictive gossipers.
“I don’t think I can,” I murmur. “Not here.”
“Okay,” he says, sliding out of the booth. He offers me his hand, staring down at me with a plea making his lips flat, his eyes imploring.
“Come with me, Fiona. I’ll take you someplace private.”
Part of me screams to listen to my instincts, to accept that this could all be a trick.
I don’t know this man.
I shouldn’t go anywhere with him. We’ve already gone far enough.
But there’s another part – a naïve, glittering, unbroken part – that tells me if I don’t take Forrest’s hand, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
Taking a bolstering breath, I reach up and take his hand, squeezing tightly as the past flares brightly across the landscape of my mind. It burns, but not, in the same way, Forrest’s touch burns.
It scorches and makes me want to run.
“I’m here,” he whispers close to my ear. “You never have to be afraid again.”
I wish I could believe that.
I stand at the edge of the rooftop, gazing over the city, everything sparkling in the afternoon sun.
Forrest stands behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me close to him so I can feel his thundering heartbeat against the back of my head.