Chapter 163

“Please, Thomas.” Leah’s sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”

His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face. Fuck, he thought, how could he trick her now? There was no way he would allow her to see her family.

Leah really had changed, he thought. His woman had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said, Please.

Except…

Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defences had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought—he’d almost thought—

He cut off the memory savagely.

He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. Thomas wouldn’t think about how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.

Leah De Nero was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.

“Very well,” he ground