Claimed By My Boyfriend’s Daddy

Chapter 10: Mine To Protect

Dario’s POV

“f**k” I muttered to myself as I heard the door to our room close behind Emily with a slam that made the walls shake.

I stayed rooted in the silence, still tasting the tension she left behind like smoke after gunfire.

Her natural perfume still clung to the air, threaded with the salt of her anger.

Then footsteps echoed.. One of my men stepped cautiously into the room, his hand brushing the edge of the doorframe. He bowed his head, but his eyes darted between me and the hallway she had stormed down.

“What happens now, Don?” he asked with a low voice.

I adjusted the cuff of my shirt I had worn loosely, steadying the burn in my chest. “Keep him in the holding room. He needs time to think about what he’s done. We’ll have another father son bonding session when I decide he’s ready.”

The guard inclined his head in silent understanding. I didn’t need to explain what “bonding” meant. Austin would learn why it’s important to respect what’s mine.. Slowly... Painfully.

When the man left, I finally exhaled.

Emily.

She was hot sexy young fury wrapped in silk, and heartbreak laced with fire. I should have left her to burn alone in her rage till she calmed. I should have.

But my feet carried me up the stairs before my mind could command restraint.

Her door was shut, but her voice slipped through the cracks.

“Damn.. I need a few shots,” she muttered to herself, sharp and bitter. “God, I need something strong just to forget this stupid.. stupid...”

The corner of my mouth lifted. Not in amusement.. no, never amusement with her.. but because even in her defiance, she reached for destruction instead of comfort. I couldn’t allow that even though I loved it.

I knocked once before pushing the door open.

She was calmly sitting on the edge of the bed, her back was rigid, while her hands were clenched on her lap. Her eyes flicked to me for a second , burning with acidic venom and rage, then away again as though the sight of me was poison if not disgusting.

“Emily,” I said, my voice low, deliberate. “I need you to hear me out.”

“I don’t want to hear you.” Her tone was as cold as ice.

But I stepped inside anyway, closing the door behind me.

“Look.. I admit it was wrong to not tell you my identity but that’s because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,” I confessed, each word tasting like blood on my tongue. “That night in the elevator.. I didn’t know who you were.. you just looked really familiar. If I had, I swear to you, I never would have accepted your offer. But f**k…” My voice roughened. “I wanted you too much to walk away.”

Her head snapped toward me, her eyes a storm of disbelief and fury. “Then when did you find out?”

My chest tightened. “After everything.. during the time you were telling me about him.”

Her laugh was bitter, hollow. “After everything,” she echoed. “And you didn’t let me go? You just kept me here next to you.. trapped with your family name.. while this… this rubbish unfolded?”

Her words sliced deeper than she knew.

I took a slow step forward. “I couldn’t let you go.”

“Don’t.” She shifted backward on the bed as I moved closer. Her hands dug into the sheets. “Don’t you dare come near me.”

But her warning only fueled the fire growing under my skin. I kept walking, each step measured, until the mattress dipped under my weight.

Her back hit the headboard, while her eyes were wide, chest rising and falling in quick bursts.

I reached out. Slowly and deliberately. My fingers brushed her cheek, feather-light.

Her breath slowly hitched.

And I smirked inwardly, savoring the crack I had made in her anger she wore as an armor. I knew she hated herself for it, but her body betrayed her.

“You consume me, Emily,” I murmured. My thumb traced her jaw, lingering at the corner of her mouth. “Every thought, every breath.. I can’t escape you. And I won’t allow you to return to someone who never valued you. You’re mine now. My wife. Mine to keep. Mine to protect.”

“Protect?” she spat, but her voice trembled. “Is that what you call this? Making me feel like a bloody gold digging w***e?”

“No,” I whispered, leaning closer, my breath ghosting over her skin. “I call it keeping what I love safe.”

Her lips parted, her words immediately lost. The rise and fall of her chest quickened, and her fists, once clenched hard on the sheets, loosened.

“You don’t need alcohol to lose yourself in anger Emily..,” I said softly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Lose yourself in me.”

And before she could deny me, before reason could sever the thread binding us, I pressed my mouth to hers again .

The kiss wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t pleading. It was a claim.

Her lips yielded and resisted all at once, fire clashing with fire. My hand slid to the back of her neck, pulling her deeper into the heat of it, into the hunger that had tormented me from the start.

“Mmmhh” She gasped against my mouth, and I swallowed the sound, devouring it like a starving man. Her fingers rose to my chest.. not to push me away, but to cling, as though part of her hated how much she needed me.

Her sweet taste drowned me, burned me, and healed me all at once.

And when I finally and slowly tore my mouth from hers, both of us were breathing ragged, I pressed my forehead to hers as she stared into my eyes with those sexy eyes of hers and I whispered against her lips.

“You are mine, Emily. Mine to love, mine to protect.. And I will never let you go even if I have to fight my own son to keep you.”