Page 45 of Manic

“Have you, I don’t know… thought about obtaining your money legally?”

“Hale,” Manic snapped.

I knew his patience was thinning by the use of my last name. Too bad my effort to care had slipped out the window.

“There’s a good chance he doesn’t even care about the outcome,” I said, exasperation heavy in my voice. “What makes you think he’ll care when he sees me?”

I rose, giving him my back, and took my empty plate to the sink. Manic stepped behind me, and my pulse skipped when his body heat seeped through my shirt. When I turned around, he was already staring down his nose, annoyance written all over his face.

“Fake it, then,” he said. “Pretend. Use whatever anger you have simmering in that pretty little soul of yours to make it work.”

I leaned into the cold marble, itching for distance. “So you want me to play the part of a weak, helpless captive to get my father to comply? Pretend I’m your whore? Is that what you want?”

He smirked. “Didn’t seem to bother you before.”

“Do you forget that you forced me to my knees?” I clipped, the memory bringing a sudden heat to my face. “That you pushed your gun into my mouth before you fucked it? Can’t really pretend, if it’s true.”

An uncomfortable cough echoed around the corner, letting me know Vince heard me loud and clear.

“I never heard you say no,” Manic teased. “Plus, you started it.”

I balled my hands, my eyes flashing. Not because he was wrong, but because of the truth in his words. I never said no because deep in my dark and twisted soul, I’d liked it. Manic was a fucking flame, and I was the moth who couldn’t help but fly right into his death trap.

If he’d been more present the last two weeks, I was positive I would’ve already crossed that fraying line between us. But… Was there a line before? Perhaps in the sand on a windy day.

“And if I did say no, would you have stopped?”

His palms pressed into the counter on either side of me as he leaned in, his lips curving into a menacing smile. His eyes fell to my lips before dragging back up.

For a breathless moment, I thought he might kiss me and wondered what his mouth tasted like. If it was anything like his cock, it would take up the majority of my thoughts. An embarrassing amount of heat blanketed my skin.

“Yes, but you didn’t,” he murmured. “And last I checked, you came twice.”

I looked away, annoyed that I was in this position to decipher his intentions. I’d like to think he was lying to me again—that he was manipulating me like he did at the mansion, but…

I strangely believed him.

Manic might be an asshole on a good day, but he’d been honest with me since my arrival with hard proof to show for it. Still, I wondered if there was something human left in him that could care, buried beneath all that darkness.

In the five years of knowing each other and besides the gray area of what happened on my first day, he’d never forced himself on me. Not even when he’d dropped me off at home when I was too drugged and drunk to see straight.

The night remained fragmented and blurry, but I’d woken in my bed the next day with painkillers and water on my nightstand. He could have taken advantage of me, but he didn’t. If he was as bad as his reputation perceived him, why didn’t he?

“Why haven’t you agreed to my deal?” he asked, and I blinked back to reality. “It’s been two weeks, and you haven’t said anything.”

“Because you have nothing to offer me.”

His brows actually creased in confusion, as if I’d unintentionally rewired his brain. “How is information on your stalker, nothing?”

I sighed and ducked beneath his arm to put space between us. He surprisingly let me do it, but he tracked me across the kitchen like a predator, waiting for my reply.

The quiet stretched a beat longer, but I held his gaze when I said, “I already know everything about my stalker.”

He chuckled, bracing his palms on the counter behind him and crossing his ankles like some kind of sex god carved from forbidden marble. My pulse beat harder as I recalled just how hard those abs felt beneath my palms.

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said, a dare settling in his eyes. “Enlighten me then, if you know so much.”

“Fine,” I said with a tight smile, rising to the challenge. “This… stalker prefers to message me in the morning before I wake up, usually around 4am. At first, I thought maybe he was an early riser, but I think it’s because he doesn’t sleep much.”