Page 89 of Angels Are Falling

“Did you force Stefan to come here?”

“I don’t have the power to bend human will, Amelie. All I did was suggest it.”

That was all it took—the mere power of suggestion—for Stefan to throw my feelings out of the window. He was the magazine’s president and could have bowed out of the Beirut trip to spare my feelings. But he didn’t want to risk looking bad in front of his subordinates and new friends.

“That’s all you did?” I whispered. There was a crack in my voice. Kai had manipulated the situation, and while I wanted to be angry with him, the truth was that Kai hadn’t forced Stefan to come to Beirut. He might have dangled the carrot, but Stefan was a grown man who made a choice. And it wasn’t me.

“I didn’t force Stefan to come here.” He echoed my sentiment. “He made that decision all on his own.”

“You wanted me to catch him with Ruby.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“So you’d know he was fickle.”

“Why do you care what I think of him?”

“Because I can’t stand the way you fucking look at him.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“And because I need you to want me more than him.”

I didn’t know what to do with his honesty. It was so raw. With one sentence, Kai had bared his soul.

The numbness from the rooftop began, very slowly, to thaw. And it was all thanks to Kai’s lunatic admission. I’d known he was possessive, but never imagined he’d go to such lengths. Was this another thing I had to learn about polyandrous marriage? Your partners would always sabotage one another to be the favorite. It should have bothered me, but apparently, I was quite tolerant as long as my husband wasn’t taking another woman to my dream destination.

I needed to revisit my standards.

My phone buzzed.

Stefan: Please, baby. Just hear me out.

It was followed by a stream of excuses, apologies, and Can we meet up tomorrow to talk?

I clicked the lock screen button instead of responding. I’d chosen Stefan over everything since I was sixteen. He rewarded my loyalty by choosing money, luxury, and Ruby Sarafina over me. I was no longer disillusioned by my one-sided loyalty. There was one man who’d never betray my trust or pimp me out for his selfish desires. It wasn’t Stefan. It was the other man who’d been here all along.

I set my phone face down on my lap and stared at the back of the driver’s seat. My chest had gone very still. I was on the precipice of making a decision I couldn’t take back.

I was aware, without looking, of the heat of the man beside me. He made himself impossible to ignore, while I had deliberately refused to acknowledge my feelings. It would’ve meant admitting what I wasn’t ready to say. I acknowledged it now, the feeling I had been fighting all day, in the restaurant, in the car to the rooftop bar, every time his hand found the small of my back, and I told myself it meant nothing.

“Did I scare you, Princess?” he asked, his voice gravelly.

I glanced at Kai and reeled back when I found him watching me with an unguarded expression.

“No,” I said breathlessly. “You didn’t scare me.” And that scared me.

He thought nothing of what he had shared with me, and I had the feeling he’d do it again. Though he generally contained this side of himself—probably because he didn’t want to scare me off—it slipped out every so often. He was right to restrict it because the way he was looking at me scared me. Dark eyes that were far from bashful. He let his eyes roam my face unapologetically, as if he had every right.

The old reflex said: look away. I didn’t.

Stefan had looked through me for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to be someone’s entire focus. Kai made it impossible to forget. His attention had a weight to it, and instead of retreating from it like usual, I held still and let it land.

A shiver slid down my spine, my breath hitching. Not from fear. Fear made you want to disappear. This made you want to be seen.

It was sick to be so turned on after Kai’s admission. The proof of his competitive streak should have me running in the other direction. But after the repeated rejection from Stefan, it was perverse how comforting I found a man who’d go to any lengths to have me.