I walked as quickly as I could manage on stilettos, propelled by rage and shear force of will in search of the exit. I heard him calling me softly, trying not to draw too much attention to the barely clothed woman that was leaving a wake of curious stares as she shoved people out of her way.
Somehow I found the jewel box chamber and ran down the velvet corridor. I blasted the steel doors open hard enough to startle the hulking bouncer. Without a backward glance, I continued marching towards the street, too enraged to even consider where I was headed.
“Vera, stop.” He sounded angry and annoyed. The nerve…I didn’t look back. I knew he couldn’t run after me, but I wasn’t running either––mostly because I had no idea where I was, or where I could run to.
“I said stop, Vera. Goddamn it, you know I can’t run after you!” A strong hand encircled the upper part of my arm and spun me around. His face was a mixture of anger and frustration with an undercurrent of fear. Gripping my upper arms painfully, he shook me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?! Don’t ever run from me again! You know I can’t run after you!”
I swung with everything I had, slapping him across the cheek. He dropped his hands, shocked at the force of my blow. “Don’t ever touch me again. Go back inside and enjoy yourself.”
He grabbed me again, his grip punishing, and pulled me into a deserted alley around the corner. Pushing me up against a cold wall, he caged me with his body, heat and anger burning through our clothes.
“Now you listen to me you little witch––” his voice was raw and low. “I was getting damn good at doing an impression of a dead man until you walked into my life. You don’t get to come in and disrupt everything––make me feel things I don’t want to feel, and then get to tell me it’s just sex!” he shouted, his hand slashing through the air. “You don’t get to turn my life upside down, make me want you…make me want things…” he shook his head. “I know you’re scared, and don’t even think about denying it. Fuck!!…I’m…” Breathing heavily, he looked around searching for words he didn’t have. “Forget it.” His shoulders sagged, the fight leaving him all at once.
Tears started to funnel down my face unchecked. I blinked repeatedly, trying to push them back, and bit my bottom lip in an attempt to stop it from trembling.
“Tell me. Are we just fucking? Because if that’s what this is then I’m done. I’m out.” He released me and turned away, then abruptly spun back towards me again. “And I sure as hell never said that before!”
It came tumbling out of him in a tone soaked in rage and lust and something else, something soft and vulnerable. I launched myself at him. Shaking, I held him tightly. I was a messy heap of raw, exposed nerves. With a few simple words, he had cut me to the quick. I shook my head.
“No…no, it’s not just sex,” I said with my face buried in his chest. I could feel his heart thumping loudly. His warm hands cupped my face, his thumbs brushed the wet stains off my cheeks. He tilted my chin up and stared down with passion and yearning in those brandy colored eyes. I lost myself in those eyes. Dropping his face onto the curve of my neck, he hugged me tightly, too tightly, as if he were scared that I would get away somehow.
“I had to know. That’s why I did it…I had to know.” Something around my heart released at the sound of his words, relieved that he felt bound to me––because he had already reached deep inside of me, and attached himself to vital organs.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We were both quiet on the drive back to the apartment. There was too much feeling hanging in the air between us, dense and charged with significance. He parked the Bentley, turned to look at me, and still said nothing. There was an obvious shade of apprehension mixed in with desire in his expression. He looked lost, unsure. His hands were on me the second the elevator doors shut. Touching, gripping, pulling me up against his body with an urgency that I recognized in myself. The brakes he depended on to keep him in check, at a distance, were failing.
As we entered the apartment, he yanked me forward into his bedroom without pausing. Everything happened quickly after that. His lips came crashing down on mine, much too hard. His hands were all over me. I pushed at his broad, sculpted shoulders trying to temper his passion.
“Easy,” I whispered.
“I can’t. I need you too much. I can’t be gentle right now.”