Page 42 of Seduced By the Billionaire
The confession spilled out before she could stop it. What are you doing, Juliette? You know better than to trust him!
But this had nothing to do with trust—she was forcing herself into a corner. With a few sentences, she’d make sure she had no choice but to leave. She’d be gone before he could get an arrest warrant, before he could bring her in for questioning.
If a choice to stay with him existed, she’d choose wrong—she’d get them both killed. The warmth in her chest, the way she desperately wanted him to hold her, was proof enough of that.
“I left the gas on, lit the house on fire while he was sleeping. Which is probably why he blew up your place.”
He said nothing but raised his hand to the front of her shoulder, dragging his fingers down her chest.
She waited for Waylon to shout at him again, but when she opened her eyes, Waylon was gone. Probably in the office, counting Ronan’s money.
“You must have been terrified,” Ronan said against her throat, his lips so soft that it took everything in her power not to kiss him.
Insane. This is insane.
His hands on her body, his rock-hard dick on her hip, should have felt demeaning in a club where women were supposed to be subservient. But it didn’t feel wrong. If she wanted him to stop, he’d stop. If she wanted to make him hard, she could. It felt like she was taking some hidden piece of herself back—something that had been stolen from her.
“He hurt you,” Ronan said now, pinching her right nipple and sending tendrils of lightning through her belly, coalescing between her legs in a heady, delicious throbbing. “I’ll make sure that he gets what’s coming to him.”
“I don’t want you to die, too.” Her voice cracked.
“What’s your real name?”
“Jenny.”
He dropped his hand from her breast. “Please?—”
“He’ll get away with it—he always does. I’ve moved nine times already. I should have left the night Jason was killed.”
A pause. He drew his lips to her ear. “Why didn’t you?”
I was busy dancing for you in that window. I wanted something that I could never have.
“I thought running would make me look more suspicious than I already did.”
This time, the pause was longer. She was hyperaware of his hand on the armrest, the other at his side. His heat along her spine.
“I know you feel something for me. By holding his name back, you’re leaving me vulnerable to whatever he has planned next. Even if you run off again, it’s not like he’ll just leave me alone,” Ronan said.
Her eyes stung, but she blinked back the tears. He didn’t understand. The second he popped Daniel’s name into the system, they were screwed.
“What else can you tell me?”
“He stabbed me in the back with a pair of gardening shears when I was working in the yard.”
Of all the things she could have said, why the hell had she told him that? Maybe because she’d never said it aloud. Maybe she just wanted someone to know. To believe her.
His breath caught, and he moved his hand to the back side of her ribs. She sighed when he found the scar—one he’d missed yesterday. Then he drew his fingers lower, over the curve of her hip, and forward to her upper thigh. “Is that why he stabbed Mercer in the back? As a reminder?”
That hadn’t occurred to her before, but… “Maybe. He likes games. But if you arrest him and he gets out of it, he’ll kill my mother. I’ve done everything I can think of to get him locked away. None of it has worked. This time will be no different.”
“We can put your mom into protective custody.”
“You can’t. He’ll find her.”
“Jenny—”
“I said no. It’s bad enough that I can’t go back there—that I let him cut me off from the only family I have. I won’t let her die for me.”
