“Can’t,” I said, as his warm lips brushed the skin just below my earlobe. “I just booked a new client. She’s already paid the retainer.” Thank goodness.

“This is important. And it pays well.”

It took most of my concentration to ignore how good his mouth felt, and that pissed me off. I didn’t want him to feel good. “I don’t want your money.” I wedged my hands between us and shoved him back. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Rtil my u want me to keep my word, don’t you?” he taunted, and my heart pounded painfully, though I recognized the empty threat.

“You don’t have any choice about that.”

He leaned into me again and slid his hands beneath my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders and halfway down my arms, until they were pinned by the material. “And you don’t have any choice about this.”

I’d had a choice, once. A year and a half ago. It was a tough one. No good options at all. I’d chosen the lesser of several evils, but in that moment, with his hands pushing my jacket off, his mouth on my skin, the evil I’d chosen didn’t feel very lesser.

I closed my eyes and tried not to react, not to feel, and when that didn’t work, I pretended. I’d gotten pretty good at that in the past eighteen months. At pretending they were someone else’s hands, and lips, and eyes. Pretending it was okay to enjoy it, because I was with someone I wanted.

Those were the only moments I let myself think about Cam—about what I’d walked away from—because those were the only moments when remembering the past hurt less than living in the present.

The door flew open, and so did my eyes. Michaela stared at us, shaking in a fury so strong the coffee mug clattered against the full pot on her tray.

“Out!” Cavazos thundered, whirling to glare at her while I stared at my jacket on the floor, mortified, and pissed off, and struggling to breathe.

She set the tray on the credenza, then backed into the hall and slammed the door. I flinched. “Why do you do this to her?” I groaned. “You told her to bring me a drink.”

“She delayed her entrance on purpose for dramatic effect.”

“Well, can you blame her?” I enjoyed throwing his own words back at him, but he didn’t seem to remember saying them. He just turned back to me with that hunger in his eyes, edged with an anger that seemed to serve as fuel for the fire.

“My marriage is complicated,” he whispered into my ear, his cheek brushing mine. “She punishes me, I punish her, and the cycle continues.”

“What do you punish each other for?”

“For living.”

“That’s screwed up, Ruben.” I tried to push him off again, but this time he wouldn’t go. “Did it ever occur to you that she might prefer a less complicated marriage?”

“Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia. She knew what she was signing when she married me….” he murmured, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt.

That was the part I couldn’t understand. Why would someone as smart and fierce as Michaela sign a marriage oath promising fidelity to a husband who wasn’t bound by an equivalent clause? Was the lure of money and status really worth a husband who screwed around right under her nose? In her own house? Right in front of her?

But then, who was I to judge? The specifics of my involvement with her husband weren’t exactly pretty, so maybe the same was true for her.

“Your people are starting to talk, Ruben.”

He shook his head and reached for my waistband, and I let him push the button through the hole. Because I couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t hit that brick wall yet. “My people are bound by privacy clauses. All except you.”

“I’m not yours.”

“Yet.” He stroked the unmarred skin of my left bicep with his thumb. If he had his way, my arm would look just like Tomas’s.

And then there’d be no escaping him.

“Well, someone’s talking.” More than one someone. And whoever they were, they didn’t have their facts straight.

He knelt to unlace my boots, then slid my jeans over my hips and let them crumple on the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing one stubbly cheek against my stomach. “The best way to silence the masses is to cut out a single tongue,” he whispered against my skin. Then he stood slowly and his fevered gaze met mine. “I could set something up. You can use my best knife if you let me watch.”

“You’re a sick bastard.” I bent for my pants, but he pulled me back up by one arm.

“Stay.”

“I have to work.”

“Stay as long as you can….” he insisted. I tried to walk away from him, but again, he pulled me back. “That’s an order.”

Damn it!

“Not today,” I said, and agony exploded behind my forehead, bright white and unbearable. I staggered and he picked me up. Several steps later, he lowered me onto the leather couch, cold against my bare legs, and knelt on the floor beside me.

He stroked hair back from my forehead while the pain raged behind my eyes and my hand twitched on the center cushion. “Why do you do this to yourself? You know you can’t win.”

“That’s exactly why I fight,” I groaned through clenched teeth.

Ruben ran one hand down my leg. “Let me see it,” he whispered.

My temper flared at his touch and I shook my head. The pain radiated toward the back of my skull and my left foot began to jiggle. My whole world was agony.