The Price (House of Sin #5) - Elisabeth Naughton Page 0,45

bringing me fully awake. For nearly a week, all he’d wanted to do was sleep and make love. Talking had not been high on his priority list, so the fact he wanted to talk now, in the middle of the night, set off a tremor of nerves inside me.

Brushing the hair out of my eyes, I pushed up from the mattress and tried to stay calm. “What time is it?”

“Late.”

Okay, that didn’t tell me a lot. “Did something happen?”

“No. Yes. Merda. Sorta.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I need to know what you meant earlier.”

My brow lowered, and I racked my brain, trying to figure out what I could have said that had thrown him so off-kilter. After we’d made love in the shower, we’d had dinner, watched a movie, and gone to bed. I’d barely talked at all. “I-I don’t know what you mean.”

“On the beach.” He threw back the covers and climbed out of bed in his boxers, then paced back and forth at the foot of the bed. “You brought up kids. I need to know if that’s a deal breaker for you.”

“A deal breaker? What do you mean?”

“I mean a family, kids. We never talked about it.”

My mind spun. I didn’t know why he was bringing this up now or why it even mattered. “No, we didn’t. But we have lots of time to talk about it.”

“No, we don’t. I need to know now.” He stopped and stared at me in the dark. “Do you have to have kids, yes or no?”

I didn’t like that he was pressuring me about this now, especially after everything that had happened recently and in the middle of the night. “I don’t know. Not right now, but in a few years...maybe.”

“Merda.” He rested his hands on his hips and turned to stare out at the moonlight shining over the water out the balcony windows.

My heart picked up speed. “Luc, what’s this all about?”

“I don’t want kids,” he said quietly, not looking at me. “Ever. And if that’s a deal breaker for you, we’ll get the marriage annulled. All you have to do is say I forced you, which I did. Fee can use her contacts to get you set up somewhere new.”

“Whoa. Hold up.” I threw the covers back and pushed out of the bed, moving to stand in front of him in his T-shirt that I’d worn to bed. “You didn’t force me to marry you. I asked you, remember?”

“Doesn’t really make a difference.”

I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but I didn’t like the chill to his voice or the fact he wouldn’t look down at me. I rested my hand on his arm. “Luc, what is this all about?”

“It’s about the future. Something I should have fucking thought of before.” He finally met my gaze, but his eyes were hurricanes, not the tender, loving eyes I’d looked into the last few days. “I’m never going to give you children, Natalie. And if you can’t handle that fact, then we need to deal with it right now.”

He was making this an ultimatum, about something I hadn’t even thought much about. And I didn’t like that. I didn’t like having to make a decision right this very second. But I didn’t say so, because he looked as if he might lose his shaky grasp on control, and after everything he’d been through, I didn’t want to push him and possibly lose him forever. Not when I’d just gotten him back. “I don’t need children, Luc. But I do need you.”

His jaw clenched in the moonlight as he stared down at me with those swirling, stormy eyes. And in the silence that stretched between us, I saw heat. I saw danger. I saw an inferno of emotions he was struggling to contain.

And I felt a rush of warmth slide through my belly in response and gather between my legs because I recognized that look.

It was the dark Luc. The domineering Luc. The one who could make me weak in the knees with just one command.

The one I had been waiting to come back to me.

My fingers trembled with need as I slid my hand down to his and squeezed. “I want you,” I whispered. “Let me show you.”

He stared at me for several beats with those eyes like roaring tempests, then tugged his hand from mine. “I’m not tired. Go back to bed.”

My heart rate shot up as he turned away, grabbed his sweats from the floor,