In no time, I was pushed up against the sink, my hands gripping marble as behind me, Jackson gathered the bottom of my dress. Breathless, I watched through the mirror as his handsome face contorted with the desperate need to be inside me already. With one hand, he undid his belt, his zipper, pulling out his hot, hard cock. I moaned as he rubbed its head along the length of my wetness.
But the second I closed my eyes, I saw her.
“Fuck,” I hissed, standing up and pulling away.
“The fuck – ?” Jackson nearly fell over, having been a mere second from plunging himself inside me. I spun around to see him bewildered, his blue eyes wild and his pulsing hard-on tortured. “Babe, what – ?” Panting, he read the look in my eyes. “Fuck, Lara, come on!” His voice was hoarse with torment.
“You bent her over like that.” I covered my face with my hands, desperate to erase the image of Jackson slamming into Gabrielle, those desk drawers rattling open in a noisy chorus with her moans. “Trust me, I do not want this scene playing over and over in my head! Every time I see it I think, ‘He doesn’t love me. He would never hurt me this bad if he really did.’”
Eyes blazing, Jackson roared at me like an animal. “I love you more than I can fucking say!”
Once he got dressed, he stormed out, leaving me alone in the bathroom, a shaking mess.
Chapter Five
“You’re leaving already?”
Sloane’s question took me by surprise when I returned to the table, which was otherwise empty.
“I – what?”
She took my hand and pouted her doll lips at me. “Jackson said you weren’t feeling well and that you’re leaving now.”
Before I could answer, Jackson returned to the table with Caleb. “Yeah, she’s going home,” he said, casting a steely look at me that demanded I go with it. When I narrowed my eyes at him, he came around the table. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice still hard. “But you and I aren’t going to be in the same room tonight without having some kind of blowup that’s going to ruin this party so one of us needs to leave. I’d go but Caleb would kick my ass and it’s his night. So just do me a favor, Lara, and go home.”
“You’re an asshole, Jackson.”
Jackson looked elsewhere for a second to control his anger. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, I’m trying to save this fucking night. I can’t look at you right now. It’s not an insult – it’s me being fucking in love with you and you hating my guts right now. So please. Just let me blow off some steam with the boys tonight and I’ll see you at home.”
I glared at him for as long as I could without warranting concern from Sloane. “Fine,” I muttered.
And within forty-five minutes – since that was how long it took to say goodbye to our friends – I was in the back of a car, on my way back to the duplex. My mood was sour until Jackson’s driver, Beck, read my mind and asked if I wanted to make a stop at “the little cart.” He was referring to an empanada truck that was generally parked a few avenues away from our apartment. Whenever I found myself in the car without Jackson, I asked Beck to stop there. It was my deep-fried, guilty pleasure – one I didn’t want Jackson to know about. Not that he was the picture of health with his smoking habit.
“Do you want to eat in the car?” Beck asked. “I’ll park.”
“Yes, please, that sounds awesome. They served such tiny little portions at the party,” I laughed.
“That’s usually how those are, right?”
“Pretty much.”
Thirty minutes later, I was back at the duplex and fully sober thanks to the empanadas. But the second I stepped into the apartment, I stopped.
Something was off.
Standing in the doorway, I stared out at the sprawling space. The lights in the open industrial kitchen were on. Had I left them that way?
Clink.
My heart stopped at the sound I heard upstairs. I held my breath, waiting to hear it again. Hand pressed against my chest, I willed my heartbeat to slow down so I could hear something besides its thumping pulse in my ears. Did I imagine that?
Clink.
Christ. Was it a drip in the bathtub? No, this sounded more like something being picked up and put down. Something glass. My heartbeat picked up further as I waited to hear it again. But after ten frozen minutes at the doorway, I heard nothing and began to tell myself that I was crazy. My fight with Jackson had my mind rattled, overactive. You’re imagining things, I told myself. And so I dragged my full stomach and lazy body up the stairs to peel off my dress and draw a bath.
But in my bedroom, I saw a man.
“Oh God.” My cold stomach dropped like a brick as the stranger turned to face me, my diamond tennis bracelet in his hand. I turned and ran. I didn’t stop to look for another second. But a scream ripped from my throat when I felt my knees smash into the ground, my jaw bouncing against the hardwood floor as the strange man tackled me and rasped throaty expletives in my ear.