Deep Domination (Bought by the Billionaire #2) by Lili Valente Page B

so eager for the feel of his tongue stroking against hers—that when he suddenly pulled away her fluttering heart plummeted into her stomach, making it clench.
    “You should eat,” he said, motioning toward the lunch forgotten in her lap. “I don’t want you giving out halfway down the mountain.”
    She reached for her sandwich with an unsteady hand. “It would take more than a missed meal. I’m tougher than I look.”
    “That’s one thing I’ve never doubted,” he said, the mixture of frustration and admiration in his voice making her unsure how to respond.
    So she said nothing. She turned her attention to finishing her sandwich and juice and watching the waves curl into the rocks far below.
    Silence fell between them once again, but it wasn’t the same as the comfortable silence they’d enjoyed before.
    This silence was electrified, simmering with potential. Something had been set in motion, something was going to happen that would change both of their fates. Hannah wasn’t sure what it was, but she sensed it wouldn’t be long before she found out. This might not be the place for honesty, but they would find that place soon and then truths would come out.
    Maybe the entire truth.
    Slowly but surely, being hated by the man next to her was becoming as unbearable as the thought of her and Sibyl ending up on the streets. There was always a chance that with a mixture of hard work and a little luck that she could claw her way to a better life for her tiny family of two.
    But if she waited too long to tell Jackson that she wasn’t the woman he’d hunted, there would be no redemption for either of them. There were some things in life that couldn’t be forgiven or forgotten, paths taken deep into the woods from which there was no way back.
    Now Hannah had to decide whether it was time to come clean before it was too late.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    Jackson
    It took less time to get down the mountain than it had to hike up. Harley tried to strike up a conversation several times, but each attempt died a swift, sudden death.
    Jackson couldn’t stomach small talk, but he couldn’t start his honesty experiment until they were back at the house. If they started talking here in the woods and her answers didn’t satisfy him, there would be no one to keep him from wringing her neck and burying her body in a shallow grave beside the trail. The servants wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him if he decided to strangle her on the dining room table, but knowing there were other eyes and ears close by would help him exercise restraint.
    He didn’t want to hurt Harley—at least not to the point of killing her—but his control was fraying fast. She was making him feel things again, things he was certain he was incapable of feeling for any woman, let alone the woman who had ruined his life.
    He hated her, but he had enjoyed her today. He enjoyed her smile and her laugh and the way she looked at him with that wistful expression, as if she were wondering what could have been, if things had ended differently six years ago. It was insane, but those damned looks of hers and everything else that had happened between them in the past week had him wondering if maybe there was some sort of explanation.
    Maybe she’d been forced into her deception. Maybe she’d fallen in with bad people and ruining him had been her only way out. Maybe the thing with Clay had been a way to keep her sanity, soothing herself with one man while she prepared to destroy another, and his death was purely accidental.
    He knew people who forced others into situations like that now. Drug dealers who forced their girlfriends to become drug mules. Bookies who cut off a little girl’s fingers, one by one, when her father failed to pay his debts in a timely fashion. Fathers who sold their own daughters into sexual slavery to solidify an alliance with a rival cartel.
    He had no idea where Harley had come from or who her parents were—not even the best intelligence men had