Available—such an ordinary word that sounded like a command when he used it. My mouth dried. “Yes.”
He reached up and brushed my cheek with his fingers. It was casual. It wasn’t. “You understand that nothing shifts what you are. You’re mine, Uriah.”
The words should have comforted me, but Angel’s laughter echoed in the back of my skull, and the relief was tempered.
The dinner was a study in perfumed restraint. Conley and Angel moved through the room like practiced hosts, while I hovered behind the scenes—a presence polished and invisible. I timed the courses, adjusted the lighting, fluffed napkins, and read the room. The guests were important, rich men and women who would not notice a woman’s burnished cheeks or the fact one of the host’s employees was trembling.
Halfway through the me
