“I’m yours,” she cried out.
He pushed into her, again and again, relentless and without mercy, and the heat, the pressure…
“Beau!” she screamed before exploding.
She felt his surge inside of her soon after. But unlike her, he didn’t make a sound, just kept angrily pumping into her until he was fully released. He then pulled out of her and stood up so he was looming above her.
“The next time you’re with Sam, I want you to picture yourself like this.” His voice was as cold as a block of ice. “Begging me to you until I finally give you what he can’t.”
Without him to hold her up, Josie fell onto her side, ashamed of herself and her traitorous body, which had made her resort to begging Beau Prescott to her as hard and as cold as he wanted.
She shut her eyes and she kept them closed until she heard Beau leave the room, kicking a fallen chair out of his way as he did so and then slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER 16
HE’D GONE TOO FAR. Beau only got to enjoy truly showing Josie who was boss for a few minutes, before cold, hard reality hit him.
He found his bed and sank into it, feeling even worse than earlier in the day when his best hope for getting his sight back informed him they weren’t even at the human trials phase yet. The truth was, he’d let himself forget Josie hadn’t spent the week in bed with him because she’d wanted to, but because he’d been paying her to. And all the eating, reading, and laughing they’d done? It had seemed magical to him, but for her it was just a job.
He’d let himself get caught up in the fantasy, had actually allowed himself to believe Josie was enjoying being with him as much as he enjoyed being with her. But that had been dream, one he’d woken up from with Mac knocking on his door.
Knowing she was out with Sam, that another man was touching her, had nearly driven him crazy. At first he’d gone up to her room to fire her all over again, but then the first hour had passed, and then four more. Each time he pressed the time button on his phone to find another hour had passed, his anger doubled, and by the time she entered the room, he was in a full on rage.
Maybe if she hadn’t come in with the scent of soap and some fruity shampoo clinging to her body and hair, like a shower was enough to scrub off what she’d been doing with her other lover. He’d wanted to punish her, presumably for sneaking out, but really for choosing to be with another man after the week they’d shared.
And now here he was, lying in his bed alone, desperately aware that whatever magical thing he’d thought he’d been building with Josie had burned up in the fire of his rage.
He fell into a heavy, dark sleep, and when he finally awoke, the talking clock on his nightstand told him it was now late in the afternoon.
His empty stomach confirmed that fact with a grim tug of hunger.
“Mac?” he called out. No answer. Then he remembered he’d been so pissed the night before, he’d fired Mac on the spot. Just like the jerk Josie had been insinuating he was since they’d struck their deal.
He cursed. “Josie?” he called out now.
No answer. Where was she?
He walked to the bathroom to take care of his bladder and also scrub the last twelve hours off his body. He easily found his own way there and got himself showered.
I must be getting used to this blind stuff, Beau thought, because lately he’d been navigating his room a whole lot easier. He hadn’t become disoriented nearly as much as his first few days in the house, and save for his trip to Josie’s room, he hadn’t tripped over anything in almost a week. He even managed to get dressed despite the fact that neither Josie nor Mac had laid anything out for him this morning. A few foot sweeps across the bathroom floor, and he found the sweatpants he’d discarded the morning before—sweatpants that wouldn’t have been there if Josie had done her job this morning, which she obviously hadn’t.
A fissure of fear then interlaced with his hungry grumpiness. It wasn’t like Josie to leave someone in a lurch like this. He followed the carpet runner he’d only realized was there a few days ago into the hallway and another one down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Josie!” he called out again when he made it to the kitchen, this time somehow managing not to bang his legs against any heavy furniture like the last time he’d tried to find the kitchen on his own.
“Hi,” a voice said from the direction of the kitchen table. “I’m thinking I should alert you to my presence. Sorry for being in your kitchen unannounced.”
The voice was feminine, and it almost definitely belonged to a black woman, but not a southern one. “You’re not from here,” he said.
“No, actually, I’m from Detroit. But I’ve been living in Birmingham for the last five years. It’s actually where my mama was from. She and my dad came up to Michigan to work in the car factories toward the end of the Black Migration. So I’m like a lot of black people from the Midwest, first generation Midwesterner with southern parents. And I’m sorry, I know I’m rambling, but when Josie asked me to meet with you, she didn’t tell me you wouldn’t be wearing anything but a pair of sweatpants.”
Beau ran a hand over his bare chest, and almost started to explain that the sweatpants he wore as pajama bottoms had been the only thing he could easily find, but then he realized there was a more important question that needed to be asked.
“Who are you?” he asked. “And what are you doing in my kitchen?”
At this point, he was bracing himself for the worst, for this woman to tell him she was the person Josie had hired to replace her, because she was quitting after what happened the night before.
“Oh, Josie didn’t tell you we were meeting or who I am?” The woman sounded as surprised as he felt to have an unannounced stranger in his kitchen.
“No,” he said. “And if you’re here about the housekeeping position, then tell Josie if she wants to quit, she needs come back here and tell me herself.”
“Okay, I am so confused, because obviously you have no idea who I am, and I thought Josie would have—” She broke off. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter, because I’m here now, so I’ll just tell you…”
He heard her take a deep breath. “My name is Sam. And I’m in your kitchen because Josie asked me to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 17
A BOMB COULD HAVE DROPPED in the kitchen and Beau doubted he’d have been more surprised.
“You’re Sam,” he said, his voice sounding dull and hollow in his own ears.
“Yes, I’m Sam,” she answered, still sounding confused.
She wasn’t the only one. “So Josie sent you here to tell me she’s a lesbian?”
Sam laughed outright. “No! Not that I know of, at least. She’s the best friend I have in Alabama. She said you had some questions and I should answer them.”
He frowned but made his way to the kitchen table and dropped into the chair beside her. “Okay, then my first question is why has she been spending all her Friday and Saturday nights with you?”
“It’s not exactly with me. Josie is one of the most dedicated volunteers at Ruth’s House, the domestic violence shelter I started when I moved here. She used to be there just about every day, but then she got this job.” He heard the sound of Sam shifting in her seat. “At least I think it’s a job. I’m uming if she asked me to come in and talk to you, it’s become more than that.”
Regret and remorse exploded like a landmine inside Beau’s chest. “Why didn’t she tell me she was going out to volunteer? I would have been fine with that, but she let me ume the worst. Was she toying with me? Trying to drive me crazy?”
Sam didn’t answer right away, but when she did, her voice was very careful. “I’m not sure you fully understand the situation here. A lot of women volunteer their time for pet causes, but nobody volunteers at a women’s abuse shelter on Friday and Saturday nights.”
And it all started to fall into place. “She didn’t want me to know how important the shelter was to her, because she knew I’d ask why.”
“I think so, yes.”
Beau’s hand curled into a fist on top of the table. “It was her ex-husband. He hit her, didn’t he? That’s why she came back to Alabama. That’s why she was so down and out when my mother called her about taking this job.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I can’t answer any of those questions for you. That’s Josie’s story to tell. I’m just here to help you understand some things. Like why she wouldn’t necessarily want to tell you where she was going on Friday and Saturday nights, and why she’d rather let you believe she was seeing someone else than tell you she was volunteering.”
“She said it was none of my business,” Beau said.