“Then stop looking at me like that,” I whisper.
“Like what?”
“Like—” I break off because I don’t even have words for it. Like he already owns some part of me. Like he’s trying to read me through skin. Like he knows I’m lying and is waiting for me to run out of places to hide.
My breath hitches. His face changes just a little at the sound.
Then he says, very quietly, “I’ll ask you again.”
I look at him.
He holds my gaze without flinching. “Who’s the father, Sienna?”
9
SIENNA
I knew this was coming.The question has been sitting between us ever since his hand found my belly last night. But hearing it now, while I’m still flushed and wet and trying to recover from the fact that I just let him put his mouth on me like I had no say in my own common sense, makes it feel worse. More intimate. More brutal.
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
His hand lifts, slow enough to give me time to pull away if I want. I don’t. His fingers touch my jaw, then slide down to my throat, not gripping, just resting there, warm and steady.
“You panic every time I get close to the truth,” he says. “That tells me more than you think.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate that he notices everything.
“I already answered you.”
“No,” he says. “You lied to me.”
The words are calm. Certain. Not cruel, which somehow makes them harder to fight.
“You don’t know that.”
His thumb brushes once under my chin. “I do.”
I want to tell him to leave. I want to shove him away and lock the door and pretend this room never happened. I want to stop feeling so exposed every time he looks at me. Instead, I just stand there with my pulse beating everywhere and my body still aching from what he just did to me.
He takes one step closer. Not enough to trap me. Enough to make it harder to think.
“Was it before the flight?” he asks.
I say nothing.
“After?”
Still nothing.
His eyes search mine, dark and unhurried.
I force myself to hold his gaze. “I don’t owe you an answer,” I say.
My voice is steadier than I feel. That’s something.
For a second he says nothing. His hand is still resting lightly against my throat, not holding, not forcing, just there, and I hate how much I can still feel it after everything. I hate the way he looks at me like he already knows too much. I hate that some part of me wants to give in just because he asked quietly.