“I said, go away.” She repeated it.

No remorse. Her chin wasn’t even up defiantly. She just looked at him with soft green eyes. Eyes drowning in tears. Made his damn belly turn into hard knots.

“You did not just say that to me,” he said. His male pushed closer to the surface. Raking at him. Clawing at his belly. Furious. Almost as furious as Elijah was at himself. They hadn’t protected her. She was in pain, and it was such a simple thing to have avoided.

“I said it. I meant it. Now, go away.”

“Siena,” he warned. “You burned the crap out of your hands. You had no business cutting up those chilies without knowing how to properly handle them. What were you thinking?”

She lifted her chin. He’d been waiting for that little gesture of defiance. He liked it. It was perverse of him, but he did. She had attitude, and she could stand up to his foul temper. Still, everything dominant rose up to challenge her. To force compliance. To make her realize she was his, and he wasn’t putting up with her hurting herself.

“I was thinking I would surprise you by fixing something that was a favorite dish of yours. A criminal offense, no doubt. Then I burned my hands and I was thinking my man was going to come home and comfort me—maybe tell me what to do to stop the burning and how to prevent it from happening again. But instead, my idiot man is a total bastardo.”

Everything in him settled. The tight knots in his belly loosened just a little. He took a deep breath and studied her face. Most women looked like hell when they cried. Red, blotchy faces. Not Siena. No, she had to look even more beautiful. Her eyes looked greener than ever, brilliant, like gleaming polished emeralds. Tears sparkled on her lashes like tiny diamonds. Yeah. That was his Siena.

“My baby can say bastard but not fuck. Who knew?”

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she snapped. “I mean it, Elijah, I’ll dump this bowl of milk over your head, although it is helping to take the burn away.”

“Don’t dump the milk over my head, mi vida. You can have words with me, though. I won’t mind that. Although I don’t have a clue what that might be since you can’t say fuck or any other foul words beside bastardo.”

“Apparently,” she said in a very haughty tone, “your memory is going. I believe when I was very angry with you, I used extremely foul language and said the f-word several times, along with a few other choice words I was quoting from your extraordinary vocabulary.”

“The f-word?” he repeated. “Extremely foul language?”