This is it, isn’t it?
This is where it all goes to hell.
My plans of turning the tables on him. My dreams of being with the love of my life.
This is the moment when everything comes crashing down. Everything falls apart.
He knows.
That I’ve been lying about Jimmy.
I’ve been found out and God only knows what he’ll do to me. God only knows that he’ll do every single thing he said he would and I have no chance now.
“And this lipstick,” he goes on in the same tone.
I swallow, hiccupping. “A-also for him.”
“Name.”
“Handmade Heaven.”
It’s purple but more on the pink side of it, to match my dress.
Which he looks at next.
His eyes lower and I thought — stupidly — that maybe it would give me some relief. To not stare directly into his wrathful devil eyes. But I was wrong.
This is worse.
Because now his devil eyes are taking me in. They’re taking in every part of my exposed body.
My collarbones, the slopes of my exposed shoulders in the strapless dress. My deep cleavage. The fitted bodice leading down to a fitted skirt that leaves almost all of my thighs bare.
He’s staring at each and every inch and it’s making me squirm.
It’s making me want to hide myself.
Not because he’s the one who’s staring at me, no. It’s because of how.
It’s the opposite of how he stares at the dresses I sketch.
I can feel it.
He stares at my design sketches with sort of an awe, with reverence even, and it melts me. It melts all the things inside of me.
Right now though, it’s the opposite.
With his face dipped slightly, he’s watching me with anger, with hatred and I’m freezing. It’s making a chill run down my spine. And I wrap my arms around my waist.
Which makes him jerk his eyes up.
“You make it?”
I shake my head adamantly. “No. I didn’t. I don’t…” I swallow, fisting the fabric on both sides. “I don’t like dresses like this.”
“So this is for him too then,” he says, a muscle jumping on his cheek.
I nod, unable to say anything.
He stares at me a beat, all tight and angry. Then, “Let’s go.”
“What?”
“I’m taking you home.”
He steps back then, ready to leave.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
I’m still struggling to understand how he is even here in the first place, and I want… I want to know what he’s going to do to me. I want to know what my punishment is.
“But wait,” I call out, stepping away from the wall. “I —”
My words halt when he stops and looks directly at me. I even jerk back, crashing into the wall.
He doesn’t say anything though, simply stares at me. Either waiting for me to speak or to snuff out all the words I was going to say with his dark eyes.
But I still forge ahead. “What… What are you going to do?”
It’s as if my question triggers something inside of him. Something big and drastic.
Something that really makes him inch closer to me.
That really makes him shrink this corner to the point where it’s just me and him and the two brick walls that I’m plastered against. And we’re encased in shadows, shut away from the world where all I can see is him and all he can see is me.
All I can breathe is him and all he can breathe is me.
And all I hear is his words and nothing else.
“What am I going to do,” he begins in a soft, rough tone. “You mean, now that I know.”
“Mr. Mar —”
“That you’ve been lying.”
I wince, not because he’s raised his voice but because he’s lowered it. To the point that each word scrapes against my skin. “I-I’m —”
“You were lying, weren’t you?” he cuts me off again, inching even closer, dipping his head further, as if trying to box me in. “That night. When you said that you hadn’t seen him in three years.”
Oh God.
Oh God, I’m going to throw up. I’m really going to throw the fuck up.
“I… Yes.”
His chest shudders with an angry breath. “When you assured me that I’d already taken care of it all. That I’d successfully torn you apart from that worthless cocksucking son of a bitch.”
My arms have come back around my waist again and my nails are digging into my skin now. “Yes.”
“So you really don’t want to know what I’m going to do to you,” he says. “Or to him.”
My eyes go wide.
And without volition, they skirt away from him and go to the boy I love.
Or at least try to but can’t.
Because the man in front of me is so massive that the extent my eyes can travel to is his right pectoral. And also because he tells me to.
“Eyes on me,” he growls.
A thick animalistic growl.
Which grabs hold of my entire body and squeezes, taking my breath away.
“I… I was —”