Page 28 of Ruthless Claim

“Scared?” she laughs nearly hysterically as she shakes her head. “I am not scared of you. I am bored by you. I am bored by the constant posturing, the big silences meant to be intimidating. I’m bored by the…” She waves her hand at me with a gesture that encompasses my entire person and finds it distasteful “All of this. The big dangerous Brennan enforcer act. It’s so tedious, Cillian. It was tedious at Leo’s wedding and it’s tedious now and the only reason you’re still doing it is because you have nothing else⁠—”

“I’m tedious,” I say flatly.

Her eyes gleam. “Profoundly,” she draws out the word.

I scoff. “You’ve been timing your coffee around me for two weeks,” I say, stepping closer now, and I watch her register the step. There’s a slight adjustment of her weight and her chin goes up, “because I’m so tedious.”

Valentina rolls her eyes. “I do it to preserve my sanity, not because you’re threatening⁠—”

“You do it,” I say, my voice dropping, “because every time we’re in the same room something happens that neither of us knows what to do with, and avoidance is easier than dealing with it.”

Dead silence. Her eyes widen, the victorious look gone.

She looks at me. I look at her. The broken bowl is still scattered across the floor behind me by the wine glass. We’re standing close enough that I can see the pulse in her throat, moving faster than her expression is letting on.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says evenly and it’s completely unconvincing.

“Yeah,” I respond grimly. “You do.”

“Get out of my sight,” she hisses but there’s almost a waver to her voice now that I haven’t heard before. “I cannot stand to look at you for one more second. Get the fuck out. Get out of this room right now⁠—”

I move around the table toward her, fast enough that she doesn’t have time to do anything about it.

She backs up instinctively—one step, then two—until her back meets the wall and I’m in front of her.

The space between us is nothing, barely the width of a breath, and I can see every detail of her face from here.

The flush across her cheekbones.

The dark hair wild around her shoulders.

That full mouth pressed into a furious line, the lower lip slightly swollen from where she’s been biting it.

I’ve noticed it’s a tell.

She bites her lip when she’s holding back something she hasn’t decided whether to say yet.

“Are you done?” I ask quietly.

She licks her lips and my eyes focus on her tongue. “Done with that?” she asks, her chest heaving.

“Running your mouth. Are you finished?”

“Go to hell,” she says, her voice shaking slightly. Her hands come up to my chest to shove me back. It’s harder than I expect, enough that I actually take a step back. “I hope you die there, I hope⁠—”

I kiss her.

It’s not a romantic kiss from those bullshit novels Emma devours.

No, this is a hard kiss.

My hand comes up to her jaw, my thumb finds her chin and tilts her head back, and my mouth covers hers with a force that’s half anger and half, well, I don’t know.

She tastes like the wine she threw at me and something underneath it that’s just her.

For one moment she goes absolutely still.

Like she didn’t know this was coming even though we’ve both been walking toward it since the night she drew a line down the center of a bed and dared me to cross it.