“Don’t most men?” Electricity fired in her striking eyes. She knew he was trying to terrify her out of there because he cared. She cared too and would fight to stay.
“Isn’t that the ambition that drives most men when it comes to a strong woman? Break her down, see her come apart in his arms, make him feel virile? Needed?”
He gave her the benefit of his gaze for another heavy moment. The hint of the purple lurking in the pitch depths, was easy to spot given the spike in his temper.
“I want you out of here, Persephone.”
“No Hill.”
“Tonight.”
“And what are you going to do in the meantime?”
Hill let his glare do the talking.
“Alright, look,” Persephone slapped her hands to her sides and studied the intricate patterns adorning his tie. “I believe he really doesn’t want your family knowing how deep he’s into it with Eva- not until he’s at the top of Shannon’s organization. But, maybe it’s like you think and this is all about him playing me for however long it’ll take to get me into bed.” She overlooked the incessant flinching of muscle along his square jaw.
“If I know Eva, just a little,” she continued, “then she’s already taken it there with him anyway and probably told him he could expect the same from me.”
Hill leaned back his head. “Ah yes, the Black Widow’s Creed. If you can’t kill ‘em quick, fuck ‘em and then kill ‘em.”
“The Black Widows also taught me how to defend myself. I know how to take care of myself, Hill.”
“Oh yeah...I got that part. You’ve definitely made your point there.”
Awareness flashed in her eyes then as the underlying message beamed through his words. So that was it. She willed herself not to smile over the simple poignancy of it.
“Let me stay, Hill.” She quietly pleaded.
“Don’t make me do that,” he pleaded just as quietly. “These people have a bad effect on me. I don’t want you seeing that in me.”
“You’re not that guy anymore.”
“I’m not as much of him as I was, but he’s still there.”
“You’re not that guy anymore,” she repeated the phrase as though the words had power. “You’d never hurt me.”
“I never would,” he rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers, “not the way you mean, but I could damn well disappoint you. That’s a hurt all its own, isn’t it? The kind that might have you second guessing letting me see my girls-”
“No,” she shook her head defiantly. “Never that. Never again.” She took his face in her hands, gave him a shake. “You’re not that guy anymore and I’m not that girl. We’re in this. Together.”
“But after we finish this-”
“I’m talking about right now, Hill. That guy you’re so afraid of? When he starts trying to take over, you hold onto me.”
Hill pulled her hands from his face as he began the defiant head shaking. “You don’t want that, Goddess. You don’t know what I was like before I met you or what I became after I lost you. Being around these people...it’ll bring that back.”
“So you hold onto me tighter. All your family knows is that you’re psychotically jealous of any man that touches me. And none of this group were at either of the weddings- all they know is we unexpectedly…ran into each other here and you…being you, took possession. Sort of plays into the theme around here, right?”
He continued to shake his head even as his grin made a slow, steady appearance. “How’d you get so tough?”
She looked down at her hands inside his and smiled. “I live with two very powerful forces- they take after their father, so I have to be on my game.”
Hill savored the amusement her words brought on for only a moment. He sobered shortly and took both her hands in one of his to squeeze. “You’re to stay by me all the time. If you talk to Son, you do it with me there or in the same room.”
Persephone beamed, stood on her toes and leaned into him. “Thank you-”
“Don’t thank me yet. I mean this. No shit. You listen to me here. I tell you to jump, you don’t argue, you only thank me for the exercise.” He held her wrists captive against his chest then. “If you go against this- even by a hair, Sef, I’ll kick you out of here so fast, your gorgeous ass won’t know what hit it. Understood?” He squeezed her wrists in warning until she nodded.
“Why are you putting yourself through all this?” Persephone watched as he turned and went to check his tie at a full mirror in the corner of the parlor. “Why didn’t you just grab one of these people long ago and make them tell you what they were all into?”
“It was tempting and don’t think I haven’t considered it time and again.” Hill observed his reflection, smoothing a hand across his jaw as he surveyed the closeness of his shave. “Grabbing Gabe or Vale...I thought about it all the time, especially after what happened to my mother. But,” he turned from the mirror and sighed. “Even I know the time it’d take to sweat the info out of them-if they even knew it- would give their people time to panic. Once word spread, it’d spread to the very folks we’re trying to find and they’d close up shop, run for cover and we’d risk losing track of them for years.”
Persephone’s mouth curved with approval. “That’s impressive thinking Hilliam.”
Hill tugged his jacket cuffs and let his arrogance show in a smirk. “Does it surprise you to know I'm not all ‘pulverize first and question later’?” He pulled open the parlor door as she laughed.
When the sounds of the party flooded in,
Hill bristled. “Pulverizing does have its advantages, though,” he
muttered.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
“My God, if you aren’t the most stunning thing here this weekend. I see why the kid hasn’t let you out of his sight. Liam, I commend you for being at this breakfast table. You couldn’t get me out of bed, if she were in it with me.”
“Hell! You couldn’t get me out of her if she were in bed with me!”
Persephone kept her practiced smile in place as she nodded graciously at the eighth and ninth Tesano to so bodaciously and insultingly compliment her that morning.
Casually, she set a hand to her lap and then reached under the table for Hill. She sat to his left at the long table reserved for the Tesanos in the lofty dining hall. She found Hill’s denim-clad knee, patted it to encourage calm and thought all was well until she encountered the fist he had perched against it.
