Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 53

This kiss has none of the uncertainty of New Year’s. She opens for me at once. She takes my bottom lip between her teeth and pulls. I put both hands on her body because she has spent too many years hiding it and I intend to teach her better.

I grip her hips. I take her ass in both hands. I move up her waist and feel every soft inch the dress displays.

She drags my mouth to her throat.

“Kane.”

I lift her against the wall.

Lilah locks one leg around my hips and pulls me between her thighs. Her dress rises. My hand reaches bare skin above her stocking.

“f**k, you taste good,” I growl into her mouth.

I push my hand higher beneath her dress. She opens her thighs. I touch lace and heat, and she moans.

I can have her here.

She wants me.

I have waited since the first night in her pantry to hear her admit it.

So why the f**k am I stopping?

I take my hand out from under her dress and set her down on her feet. I hold her elbow until I’m sure she has her balance, and then I step back one full step, which is the hardest thing I’ve done in ten years.

“What?” she says. Her chest is moving fast. “What did I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why did you stop?”

I don’t have a clean answer for her. I asked for this out of my own desires, never once giving a f**k what she wanted. I forced her hand at every turn.

And now she’s against my wall with her dress up, breathing like that. How the f**k am I supposed to trust that it’s real?

What if she’s only agreeing to this because I gave her nothing else to agree to?

I won’t collect a debt.

Not from her.

Not like this.

“Kane.” She’s tugging her dress down. Her face is closing up. “If this is the part where you tell me it was a mistake⁠—”

“It wasn’t a mistake.”

“Then what?”

I look at her. Flour on the apron. Hair loose and beautiful around her cheeks. Mouth swollen from mine.

“You don’t owe me this,” I say.

Immediately, her eyes start to fill with hurt tears.

Fuck, this isn’t going how I wanted. She’s not understanding.

“Stop.” I catch her jaw. “You did nothing wrong. Not one thing. Look at me.” Her eyes come up, wet and shining. “You think I stopped because I don’t want you. I stopped because I do.”

“That makes no sense.”

I press my forehead against hers and hold it there.

“When I have you, Lilah, you will know it has nothing to do with what you owe me.”

She opens her mouth to answer.

I step back before she can, and take the envelope out of the inside pocket of my coat.

“Now, come with me,” I tell her. “I got you another gift.”

I follow Kane out of the dark passage looking like I have been thoroughly mugged by a mouth.

Which, obviously, I have.

And I liked it.

My lips are swollen. My hair is disastrous. The back of my dress is bunched up into my underwear, and it takes several firm tugs before the fabric hangs down where it’s supposed to.

Kane, meanwhile, walks ahead of me looking crisp, composed, and criminally pleased with himself.

How annoyingly on-brand.

He opens a door off the front hall and waits for me to enter. I follow uncertainly, not sure whether to expect a room full of alligators, or a candle-lit torture chamber.

Okay, that’s excessive. It’s probably just gonna be something boring. A study, perhaps. Maybe a library.

Rich men love rooms lined with books they have never once cracked open. It tends to photograph well when they’re starring in Forbes magazine spreads about how wealthy and powerful they are.

This, however, is an office.

A pretty simple one at that. That’s not to say that it isn’t nice. Everything in it—the computer monitors on the desk, the nineteenth-century map of Brooklyn framed on the wall, the alarming row of locked filing cabinets—has the subtle gleam of stuff that was probably very expensive.

But it’s not garish. Nobody had Forbes in mind when they were decorating in here.

The problem is that I cannot appreciate the tasteful restraint of Kane’s office while my body is still vibrating like I’m a gong that someone just hit with a battering ram.

My mouth tingles. Every step sends a warm little aftershock through me. My thighs keep clenching together, which is making matters worse, not better.

I clasp my hands behind my back, mostly so I won’t fan myself like a maiden in a BBC period drama. Not that maidens usually get groped against kitchen walls during Orthodox Christmas.

Maybe there’s a deleted scene somewhere. PBS does have standards, after all.

Kane glances over his shoulder.

I immediately look at the map so he can’t read my eyes. He stopped touching me out of respect, or so he claimed, which is somehow hotter than if he had kept going.

Horrible. Deeply unfair. A woman should not be expected to survive ethical restraint in a man with a butt like that.

I breathe slowly and order every mutinous organ to behave. My brain is in charge here, dammit! Not my stupid v****a!

Not one bit of me acknowledges the chain of command.

Kane shuts the door behind us and guides me into a large leather chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. He goes to claim his seat, and then waves a hand.

“Open the envelope,” he instructs.

“Could I have one minute to reconstruct my face first?”

His gaze settles on my mouth. “Why? I like it just the way it is. Nothing better than knowing I ruined you without taking off a single piece of clothing.”

I blush hard enough that my blood vessels raise several alarm bells.

I pull out my phone and open the camera so I can see just how visible my internal state of mayhem is. “Some of us prefer not to broadcast to forty dinner guests that we spent the family photograph grinding against the host’s thigh.”

“Some of us do,” Kane agrees. “Some of us wouldn’t give a damn if the whole world saw you coming on my lap, just so long as they knew that you’d only ever do that for me.”

Oh.

My.

God.

We can’t be having conversations like this. It’s so far beyond the carefully laid out boundaries of our deal that it may as well be a different universe.

So, nope. Abort. Retreat. Will not venture further.

Using my phone’s front-facing camera as a mirror, I attempt repairs. The lipstick has migrated beyond the borders of my mouth. I wipe away the damage with my fingertip, add a new coat, press my lips together, and decide the result will have to satisfy Kane’s many armed relatives, colleagues, and employees.

Kane watches all of this with that ever-present smirk simmering on his face.

“You could pretend to do paperwork,” I tell him. “Or something.”

“I certainly could. I’d rather watch you, though.”

I scowl.

Then my screen lights up before I can put the phone away.

NIKO MAKOV added you to MAKOV CHRISTMAS.

A torrent of unread messages appears beneath the notification. Most are photographs of children making faces, Anton defending his cookie box from Yuri, and little ones scampering around.

Then the family photograph arrives.

I am in the center.

Kane sits in the middle chair with me on his lap and one hand wrapped around my hip. Niko crouches beside us, grinning recklessly. The little ones in front are making rabbit ears over one another. Everyone behind us has squeezed close enough that there are no gaps.

I am glaring at Kane.

Kane is looking at me.

Not one other person in the photograph has his attention.

“Niko added me to your family chat,” I say.

“I will have him executed in the morning.” Kane extends one finger toward the envelope. “Quit stalling and open it, Lilah.”

He’s right. I am stalling.

And I’m not quite sure why.

Is it because opening it feels like admitting something? Not about the gift itself, whatever terrifyingly generous act of organized crime Kane has tucked inside.

About us.

There is an us now, apparently. And this “us” involves sitting on laps in front of his whole organization, and making out in kitchens. This “us” has something to do with hands wandering up beneath the hems of dresses that they really should not be wandering underneath.

This “us” is f*****g complicated.

If Kane were merely extorting me, I could file him neatly in the mental cabinet reserved for men I wouldn’t let within a thousand yards of my lady parts.

But extortionists aren’t supposed to seat you next to them.

They don’t remember your hangover order or look at you in a family photograph the way he was looking at me.

And I am not supposed to like being wanted this much.

My thumb slides beneath the flap, then retreats.

Coward. Sensible coward, but still.

Because once I open it, I participate. I accept that this thing is changing shape faster than croissant dough in an overheated kitchen. I acknowledge that the s****l undertone has become a s****l air-raid siren.

Kane waits.

I set my phone facedown.

“Fine,” I say. “What is it, anyway? Did Connor sign over a kidney?”

“Why, do you need one? Say the word and I’ll send a man over with a scalpel.”