It’s a fight to stay on my feet, to stand strong against the sheer force of him. I make myself hold his gaze despite every instinct demanding I fall to my knees. “Stop playing coy and spit it out. What the hell do you want, Hook?”
Now he moves, stalking slowly around the bed toward me. His shadow grows behind him with every step closer to the light at my back until it threatens to swallow my world whole. When he finally stops, he’s so close, I could lift my hand and touch him if I want.
I really don’t want to want to touch him.
“You.” He reaches out and runs his fingers through my long blond hair, his many rings glinting between the strands. “On your knees. In my bed.” He catches my left hand, and I watch dazedly as he lifts it and strokes my knuckles. “My ring on your finger.” He gives a slow grin that has my stomach tying itself in knots. “I want everything, Tatiana. Absolutely fucking everything.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or knee him in the balls. For saying all this shit I definitely don’t want to hear. For calling me by a name I buried five long years ago. For all of it. “You’re joking.”
“Life would be easier if that were true.”
Yeah, it really would. But Hook’s similar to Gaeton in the way he moves through our world. His charm and devil-may-care personality makes people underestimate him. It always has. There’s no amusement in his dark eyes now. No, he’s serious as death.
I draw myself up. I have to. Standing this close to him is like standing in the eye of a hurricane. Scary. Powerful. Filled with promise of pain to come. I shiver. “You talk a good game, but it doesn’t mean anything. It never did.”
“You think I’m trying to … What? Seduce you?” He tugs on my hair. Not to hurt. Simply to let me know he could. It should scare me. I’ve lived through a relationship gone off the rails, the home I thought I’d claimed morphing through a funhouse mirror into a nightmare prison that took everything I had to escape.
I still haven’t escaped. I simply gave myself a five-year hiatus.
Hook tugs on my hair again, his dark brows lowering. “Fine. Let’s be explicit. I will give you everything I said and more, on the single condition that you marry me.”
Shock has a laugh bursting from my lips. “Marry you? You really are drunk.”
“You know better.”
I hate that he’s right. Hook might have the appearance of a hard-partying asshole, but despite always having a drink close by, he’s never once been drunk enough to so much as change his speech patterns, let alone get sloppy. I could chalk that up to the Underworld’s strict two-drink policy for those who want to participate in scenes, but plenty of the others show up to drink in the lounge from time to time. Not Hook.
He releases me and takes a slow step back, every move telegraphing that he’s choosing this, not me. “That’s the bargain. Take it or leave it.”
“I’m leaving it.” Bad enough that Hades is essentially kicking me out. But to voluntarily go back to the role as the little woman to the man who runs a territory? Been there, done that, bought a T-shirt, burned it to ash. I will not go back. Hook isn’t Peter, but that doesn’t mean a single damn thing. I’ve seen what it takes to hold on to power. It kills off a part of the person who wields it. If there was anything good in Hook—and that’s highly debatable—then four years running his territory are enough to have cut it out of him.
He watches me for a long moment and finally shrugs. “The offer remains on the table.” A plain black card appears in his hand as if by magic. I make no move to take it, but he catches my hand and presses it to my palm. “My personal number. Call it anytime, day or night, and I’ll come for you.”
I can’t tell if he means the words like a threat, but that must be what they are. I don’t believe in knights on white horses. Maybe I did once, but the only people out there searching for damsels in distress are more dangerous than anything said damsel leaves behind. Hook is just like the rest of them, always playing a deeper game.
I start to drop the card, but he catches my hand in his larger one and presses the card hard against my skin. “We both know you can’t afford to ignore a helping hand, Tatiana. No matter how distasteful you find me.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I reluctantly curl my fingers around the card, and he releases me. I can’t tell what I’m feeling. Everything is all jumbled in my chest, and the confusion makes it hard to wrap myself in my normal snark. “I’m not going to say yes.”