Dancer in Lingerie (Lingerie 13)

I barely had a moment to reflect on what he’d said before Drake stepped inside. “What?” I asked, in a darker mood than I had been before.

“It’s about Carmen. Or should I come back later…?” My one-word answer was enough to put him on edge. Now was definitely not a good time.

But since it was about Carmen, I wanted to know every detail. “What about her?”

“She had lunch with Vanessa again.”

This oughta be good. “Yes?”

“Vanessa told her to end things with you…and Carmen agreed.”

After the way she’d crawled back into my bed, she actually thought she would have the strength to walk away from me? I found that very unlikely, but it pissed me off that she was even considering the idea. “Did she say when?”

“No. But she thinks she should stay away from you.”

Yes. She should have stayed away from me. She never should have ended up in that alleyway. She wouldn’t have met me at all, and she would be living a normal life right now. Maybe she would have met a nice man to become her husband. But that would never happen now.

Because she was mine. “That’ll be all, Drake.”

“Sir.” He nodded before he walked out.

13

Carmen

I’d never been so nervous in my life.

But I was utterly terrified.

Bosco was an unpredictable man. I had no idea what his reaction might be, but judging by the fact that he’d let a man die in the most brutal way possible, it wouldn’t be good. He had a frozen heart in his hollow chest. He didn’t see me as a person, but a piece of property, no different from the watch that sat on his wrist.

Regardless of what his reaction was, this wouldn’t be a clean break.

He wouldn’t let me go easily.

I never realized how much I needed my family until that moment. A part of me wanted to run to my father and ask for his help. In any other situation, he would be able to fix it for me. He would be able to protect me.

But both he and my uncle couldn’t do a damn thing.

Even Griffin, the strongest man I’d ever known, was useless.

The most powerful man in the world was my opponent. And I would never win this war.

We didn’t talk for a few days after I left. I thought I could use the space and time to collect my thoughts, to consider how I was going to accomplish this. The distance would allow me to think clearly, to stop thinking with the nerve center between my legs and starting thinking with that big brain of mine.

But waiting only made it worse.

Only made me more afraid.

I was sitting at the dining table drinking an entire bottle of wine by myself while staring at my phone. I kept going over the words in my head, trying to think of the right way to phrase it. If I acted timid or scared, he would run me into the ground. I had to be confident and strong. The smartest thing to do was to do it over the phone, not because I was a coward, but because he couldn’t touch me that way. He couldn’t push me up against a wall and shut me up with a fat kiss.

I took another long drink and finally made the call.

He picked up right after the first ring. “Beautiful.” His deep, masculine voice was like perfectly aged wine. It was so smooth, full of texture, and it was bold. Just his voice was sexy, as sexy as his hands felt against my tits. He had the kind of voice made to speak to a woman, to make her wet without being in the same room with her.

Listening to him destroyed all of my resolve. Like the weak person I was, I instantly succumbed to desire, my thighs pressing together under the table. My heart rate spiked, and I couldn’t drink any more wine because my stomach started to tighten.

He didn’t say anything else, perfectly comfortable with the silence.

I wished I were just as unaffected by tension as he was. “I want to talk to you about something…”

“You do?” he asked, slightly amused. “What would that be?” There was a playful hint to his tone, but there was also an underlying vibration of hostility. Without even stating it, it seemed like he was threatening me. He was volatile, dancing between rage and amusement. He could project so much with so little.

As if he were standing right in front of me, he knocked me off-balance again. I had to recover by taking a long pause, using the silence as a crutch. I reminded myself that I had to be stern. I had to match his hostility with mine, make him listen to me because he respected me. “This is over, Bosco.” I kept my tone surprisingly strong, like it wasn’t even my voice that was speaking. “I’m done with you.”