I reached my mom yesterday morning, confirmed she and Ari were safe again, and when I asked how
she could leave me and when she’d be back, she paused just a little too long, and I hung up. Let her get her excuses straight and leave me a message.
Had she honestly believed that shit he told her? About us being in love and needing time to reconnect?
Or was it what she wanted to believe, because it was easier than fighting back?
I locked my door and lodged my chair under it before sliding into bed and setting my alarm.
But as tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come.
Doors opened and closed quietly downstairs as Damon’s security moved about, circulating around the property and keeping an eye on the house while he was away.
At first, I thought it was guards for me. To hinder my coming and going and report back to him on what I was up to. And those were undoubtedly some of their orders, but no one gave me any hassle when I wanted to go somewhere, and I never got any instruction to stop doing that or stop going there.
A driver chauffeured me, doors were opened for me, and if it wasn’t them or Damon creeping me out the other morning or in the theater, I actually felt a little safer with them here.
When he was gone.
I clutched the sheet, resenting the thought that wormed its way in. That a part of me wished he wasn’t gone.
Where was he? It had been days. Did he still have Mikhail?
Or did Damon go to the Maldives after all? A pang of jealousy hit me, and I drew in a deep breath, pulling my shirt away from my neck, because I felt stifled.
Fuck you.
What the hell was I doing? The sex was good, so I forgot that he was a lowlife? What a cliché.
I didn’t care that he defended Rika when she was four or that he was abused as a child. Plenty of people grew up shitty.
I’d fucking loved who he pretended to be, but his lie negated everything that happened between us. He humiliated me.
Why was it so hard to remember that whatever he made me feel had been a lie, too?
The haunted house. The fantastical fear. The pulse in my veins.
But then I remembered his strong arms around me.
I loved the danger. The way he brought me to life.
My fingers rested on my stomach, against the sliver of skin where my shirt rode up, and I glided my hand along it, throbbing between my thighs as my nipples poked through my shirt.
Tears burned my eyes. I hated myself.
Because I wanted him.
He lied so well, didn’t he? That I wanted to feel everything he convinced me of when he was in my bed when I was sixteen.
A tear fell, but I tried not to cry. I wanted to feel him again.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him win.
I heard a heard a car pull up outside, the door open and slam shut, and then the door downstairs slam.
I froze, the pulse pumping in my neck as I listened.
Footfalls on the stairs.