Pocketing my phone, I opened the driver door and got behind the wheel. I only spared her a glance, because if I let my gaze linger, my mouth would be on hers.
“Is everything all right?” she asked in a quiet voice that told me she was worried both for me and about the situation.
I turned the engine over, but then I cupped the side of her face. “We’re sticking to the script. Abernathy died from his own bomb. You didn’t see him. I didn’t see him. You were in the suite while I helped Harm, and you didn’t leave until I took you to the elevator shaft.”
Her fingers covered my wrist, and she gave me a slight smile. “Thank you.”
“For?”
She inhaled deep, and her eyes welled. “Being here.”
Two words and she fucking gutted me, because all of a sudden, I was looking at the last ten years.
“Don’t.” Her eyebrows drew together. “I know what you’re thinking.”
She couldn’t possibly. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Ronan,” she quietly chided. “We’re here now.”
But she may not want to be after I told her what I should’ve admitted days ago. “I saw you perform once.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Four years ago,” I added.
She pulled my hand away from her face, and I let her.
“At Madison Square Garden.” She’d admitted to me one night when she was only sixteen that it’d been a dream of hers to perform there. She’d said if you ever booked Madison Square Garden, then you knew you’d made it. When I’d heard she was playing there, I’d bought a ticket, gotten leave, and flown from Afghanistan to Germany to New York.
“You were in New York,” she stated, her hands folding in her lap. “At my show.”
“Opening night,” I confirmed.
She stared at me, waiting for more.
“You were beautiful.” So goddamn beautiful, it’d hurt to look at her when she’d walked out on stage in a revealing white dress. But then she’d started to sing. The crowd went insane, and I’d lost my fucking mind. I’d never been more proud of her, but I couldn’t watch twenty thousand people scream her name. I couldn’t watch the men in the audience staring at her, knowing what they were thinking.
“You didn’t come see me after the show,” she accused.
I didn’t make it though the first song. “I never would’ve gotten past security.” Halfway through, like a coward, I’d left.
“You could have told anyone who you were and you would’ve gotten backstage.”
It was my turn to stare at her.
“Your name has always been on my all-access list for every single concert. All you would’ve had to do was show your ID.” Her hands perfectly still in her lap, her shoulders proud, she’d slipped back to professional Sanaa.
I hated it. “I’m sorry.”
She stared at me a beat longer, then she leaned back in her seat and looked out the windshield. “You didn’t know.”
I wasn’t sure if she was stating a fact or looking for confirmation. “I didn’t know.”
She looked back at me. “Would it have made a difference?”
“I’m not going to answer that, and you’re not going to ask it again.” Either answer was shit. “If we do this, we move forward.”
“If?” she asked.
This was one of the things we needed to talk about. “Yes, if.”
She immediately turned away from me.
I caught her chin and brought her back to me. “This is one of things we need to discuss, Sanaa.”
“Sanaa,” she snorted, pulling out of my grasp and turning toward the window. “You only call me that when you’re being distant.”
“Look at me,” I demanded.
Spinning on me, she threw her hands up and spit hurt masked as anger. “Why? So you can give me every reason why we shouldn’t be here?”
I didn’t hesitate. My hand was on her throat, and my thumb and forefinger held her jaw firm. I dropped my voice. “I did not give you reason to doubt me. I said if. That implies choice, and I’m going to give you a choice, right now, this one time.” I held her gaze. Then I forced myself to give her the goddamn choice. “You give yourself to me fully or not at all.”
Her breath hitched, and her mouth opened.
“I’m not finished,” I warned.
Her mouth closed, but her pulse sped up.
I wanted to dominate the hell out of her. I wanted to fuck her hard for hours until she was begging me to come, writhing for it. Then, after she was satiated and boneless in my arms, I wanted to make love to