“I’m not riding your dick,” I clarified.

“You always make the rules?” His fingers slid through my hair, tucked the strands behind my ear. His touch was gentle. I expected him to turn us around, bend me over my father’s desk and say Who’s your daddy now?

“Always,” I snapped, lifting my chin.

“We’re not doing this here,” he said, glancing around.

“Yes, we are.”

“Your bedroom would be more private.”

I wasn’t having memories of Jed Barnett in my room. I’d have to relocate to one of the other nine bedrooms instead of spending the rest of my life remembering what I couldn’t have.

“No one’s going to bother us in here,” I said, making it a fact. A given for how this was going to go. He stepped back, gave me room. I took a breath. I was rarely flustered, but I’d never been offered sex—no, orgasms—before. A guy had tried to pick me up in a bar a time or two, but that wasn’t this. He’d caught me by surprise, and I didn’t like surprises.

He nodded. “Your brothers going to be a problem?”

“You saw East. He’s staying in the guest house with his sandwich. I haven’t seen South and West, but they don’t live here.”

“Right, only you and your father in this big place.” He stared up at the ceiling as if he could see through it like Superman.

“This is my house now. I do what I want.”

His chin tipped down and he eyed me closely. “You fucking me in here to fuck your daddy over?”

I bristled. “One. We’re not fucking. Two. Macon,” —I didn’t call my father anything but his name and I made that clear now— “is dead. He’s been involved in too much of my life.” I left out the fact that he’d tried to sweeten a deal with my virginity and all the threats he’d made since. “If you can’t keep my father out of what we’re going to do, then it’s not happening.”

He studied me, either thinking I was completely insane or too rational, I wasn’t sure. “Fair enough. Hand over the panties, princess.”

He raised his hand between us, palm up.

I arched a brow, gave him a look that usually made men’s balls shrivel. “I’m supposed to listen to you?”

He sighed. “We can do this with your panties on if you want.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He moved his hand now in a circle between us. “You’re under a strange notion that you’re in charge.”

“I said I made the rules.”