“Sit down,” he said again. “This will be the only time I ask you nicely, Gypsy.”
“This isn’t asking nicely,” I shot back.
He yanked his fist in a downward motion, and I squeaked as my head and the handful of hair he was holding followed. More than anything, it caught me by surprise, and before I could find a way to compose myself, he had me on my knees in front of him. My face was inches from his cock, and I was humiliated. With burning cheeks, I looked up at him.
“Let me go.”
“I think you are still struggling to comprehend how this works.” Lucian forced my gaze up to his face, exerting his dominance. “I know it must be difficult to relinquish control when you love it so much, but that is what you’ll be signing up for. So, you better get used to it.”
I was tempted to junk punch him, but I knew better than to resort to physical violence. A wounded man was a far more dangerous contender.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Are you ready to behave and do as you’re told?”
“I’ll never behave.” I clawed my fingernails into the carpet. “So you might as well get used to that.”
“Suit yourself,” he answered in a low voice. “I will enjoy punishing you.”
My fingers trembled, but I didn’t let him see it. Whatever he was planning to put me through couldn’t be any worse than the hell I’d left behind me.
“I will sit in the chair.” I forced the words between my teeth. “If you’ll let me up.”
To my surprise, he released me immediately. I was left to the humiliating task of getting off the floor in my red dress without exposing myself, but in the end, he granted me a shred of privacy by removing his watchful gaze. I brushed the wrinkles out of the material and sat down, rubbing the redness from my knees that had been left from the carpet. Lucian walked back around to the other side of his desk and took a seat, resting his elbows on the solid wood as he studied me.
“Now that we’ve established that, let me clear up your earlier point. I don’t need you, Gypsy. There is no ulterior motive for me doing this beside the fact that I want to. Turning you in would mean nothing to me, and I won’t hesitate to do it in a heartbeat if you become more trouble than what it’s worth.”
His words plowed through my mind and had the immediate effect of dousing my anxiety in kerosene.He was only doing this because he wanted to.Translation? He wanted me. Obviously, it had occurred to me. I wasn’t naïve. Men liked to get their dicks wet, and I knew it better than anyone. But I hadn’t shared my body with a man in four years.
I looked over his workspace. Tidy and clean. Minimalistic. These were the guys who scared me the most. The psychopaths. I could tell a lot from a man based on the way he kept his surroundings. Lucian’s life was orderly, and he would want his wife to be the same.
I squeezed my thighs together beneath the privacy of the desk. “There is nothing about a sexual relationship written in the pre-nup.”
“It wasn’t necessary to include it,” Lucian stated. “As I said before, there is only one rule to this arrangement. You do what I say, when I say it. It’s very simple, Gypsy.”
Arguing that it wasn’t fair would be a wasted breath. Nothing about this was fair, and he knew it. He didn’t care. He was exploiting my vulnerability the same way I had exploited men when I conned them. Karma really was a bitch.
“What if I don’t want to do something?”
He shuffled some papers around and plucked a pen from the holder, his attention more distant by the second. “Then we will discuss it like adults and come to a compromise.”
At this point, I wasn’t sure we were even talking about the same thing. If he was talking about sex, it didn’t show on his face. There was no excitement. No hint of impropriety. Nothing. But I couldn’t trust that.
“So, what if I say I don’t want to have sex at all?”
His lips tightened, and he turned his attention back to me. “How long has it been since you’ve let a man inside you?”
I squirmed, despite my resolve to appear brave. “That’s none of your business.”
“Every aspect of your life is my business.” Lucian clicked the end of the pen beneath his thumb, a steady drum beat. “Because I’ve made it so. When you’re my wife, you’ll be in my bed. For now, that’s all you need to know.”
I snapped the rubber band around my wrist to give my fingers something to do. The truth was that it didn’t matter what Lucian wanted me to do. He had me.
I knew last night that there was no escaping him when Ace cuffed the three of us together to sleep. Even if we were somehow able to run, I doubted we would get far. Lucian had been watching me for a long time if his evidence had anything to say about it. He’d prepared for this. He’d thought of every angle. And he knew that deep down, a life of running from the police was not what I wanted for my sister. I would do anything to give her a better life, and that was my weakness.
“I have a few conditions,” I murmured.
Lucian’s face was absent of the victory I expected. Instead, he was all business. “Such as?”