by Robin Lovett
He marches on, not letting me respond. As his hostage, this seems—not reasonable, exactly, but appropriate. Though after his little story, I’m not so sure about my precise status anymore. If I were strictly a means of revenge, he wouldn’t have shared that story with me.
Perhaps this would be the best strategy.
Gain his trust. Get him to see reason.
It seems like a better option than risking escape. I believe he would go to the police and have my father arrested if I did, assuming his evidence is as sound as he says.
On the positive side, at least I’m not bored. He could be taking me anywhere.
I chase after him again. “Am I going to need a passport?”
* * *
“Charleston?” She sees the destination on the airport terminal and her upper lip curls. “Why are we going there?”
“Because my aunt has a house there.” And going to California, near my sister, is out of the question. I don’t want her there to constantly poke holes in my plans, or to find out just how deranged they are.
“But we could go anywhere with your Vandershall millions, and you choose South Carolina?”
My temper flares. She’s doing it on purpose, provoking my temper, though for what purpose I’m not sure. Well, I can guess—mostly it’s retaliation for what I’m forcing her to do. “Those Vandershall millions are tied up in the upkeep of the estate. I have zero cash flow.”
She frowns. “No way.”
“Yes, way.”
“Don’t you have a trust fund?”
“My sister does. I do not. I have what I make, and considering I’m on hiatus from my job, domestic flights are my limit.”
“Did you spend it all?”
I can’t believe I’m explaining this to her. “My father never gave me anything, because as a man he thought I should make my own way. Which is fine. For all the problems my sister’s trust has caused her, I’m glad I don’t have one.”
Her confusion makes her speechless for a moment, and I’m grateful.
I pull out her cell phone from my pocket. “Call your father and tell him where we’re going.”
“What? Why?”
“And convince him you’re coming voluntarily.”
She scoffs. “How the hell am I going to do that?”
“I don’t care how. Tell him the sex is great, I don’t give a shit. Just make sure he doesn’t send the FBI after us.”
“Maybe I want him to.”
“If I end up in prison, so does your father, so make it happen.” I thrust the phone under her nose.
“The battery is dead by now.”
“I charged it last night.” We stand toe to toe, so close the air sizzles, so close I can almost taste her, almost feel her. Last night, standing outside her door, watching her through the glass, still remembering what it had felt like to be inside her—it was a good thing she never opened the door. I wasn’t finished with her, I’m not finished with her.
I want her naked again, with me naked this time. I want to lose myself in her and her to lose herself in me. But I don’t know if I can take it.
In Charleston, I should be able to separate us. Being in a different place, with space between us, maybe this instant attraction will fade and fizzle. It’s so intense, it can’t burn like this for long. Or I hope not. I don’t think I’ll survive it for much longer without losing it totally.
“I’m not fucking you in an airport,” she grumbles, and takes the phone from me. She walks over to a seat away from the people waiting for the plane.
I stand close enough to overhear her, but far enough away that I can’t feel her near me or give in to the temptation to touch her.
“Hi Dad . . . I’m good, actually . . . Yeah, we’re going to Charleston . . . I swear, I’m fine. I’m sorry I won’t be at work . . . He hasn’t deluded me . . . No, I’m—Dad I—Wait, you—Shut up and listen to me!” Her face flushes with anger, her voice loud enough that she turns heads.
I like it—seeing her take control. I can’t decide which I want more—for her to take control of me or for me to take it away from her. Or for her to surrender it to me willingly. Yeah, that one.
She lowers her voice. “I like him. I like being with him. He’s—” She glances at me, sees I’m watching, and tries to turn away so I can’t hear. But her whisper still travels to me, “He’s fascinating, Dad. He has—yes, I’m sure he hasn’t kidnapped me . . . I’m leaving town. I just wanted to warn you and tell you not to get upset . . . No, that’s not—Bye. I’m hanging up.”
She puts down the phone and leans her forehead on her hand. Dejected. The call took a lot out of her. I want to fix it. Make it better.
I stand beside her. “Everything okay?”
“No, everything is not okay!” she shouts, too loudly.
“Keep your voice down, please.”
She bolts to her feet and says in my face, “If you had one ounce of human sense, if you had any feeling left trapped in that frozen heart of yours, you’d know that lying to my father is the thing I hate most in the world.” It’s then that I notice her eyes are glistening. Which can’t be right, because Daisy isn’t a woman I can ever envision crying.
She pokes me in the chest. “You made me lie to him, supposedly to save his life, and you’ve taken away any freedom or choice I have in this business. You’re causing him unnecessary stress. So no, everything is as far from okay as it can get.”
Her chest huffs up and down with her heavy breaths, and I can’t help noticing how she glances at my lips, and how I can’t stop staring at hers, and how my breathing is as elevated as hers is.
Anger, for us—on either side—is like a ticking sex bomb.
She backs away and shakes herself. “Add to that I’m still so obsessed with being fucked by you, I’m envisioning doing it right here on the airport floor? Yeah, everything is rainbows and roses.” She holds out her hand. “Give me my ticket.”
“Why?”
“I’m getting my seat changed.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Oh, really? You think being pressed together, thigh to thigh, for hours hearing each other breathe inside a claustrophobic flying metal box is going to help our already low levels of self-control? I don’t know about you, but I have never had aspirations to join the mile-high club, and certainly not with you.”
She’s right.
I hand her the ticket, and she goes to the attendant to have her seat changed.
I’m relieved and annoyed at being separated from her, but mostly horrified at the anxiety it gives me—and at how I can’t help looking back at her seat every fifteen minutes for the entire flight.
Chapter Thirteen
The house is on Rainbow Row.
“Your aunt lives here?” I ask him in shock as the cab pulls up outside the eggshell blue house, in the French Quarter of Charleston, along the battery, overlooking the harbor.
He closes the door to the cab. “Were you expecting a slum?”
“I was expecting something a little more normal. Not an iconic building that appears on every brochure ever made of this town.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“You’re right. That was sarcasm,” he says dryly and carries his bag to the front door.
We’re barely inside the historic little two-story house when a phone rings.
I reach for mine—realizing that he never took it back. I have no idea if that was on purpose or by accident, but I’m not going to ask.
It’s his phone that’s ringing, though.
He looks with annoyance at the screen, but when he sees who it is, his face lightens and he picks up immediately. “Penny?”
His voice changes, his face changes, his posture changes—everything easing and relaxing. Like he’s a different person. One with a beating heart, compassion. Someone who knows how to love someone unconditionally.
I didn’t know whether he knew how.
He shelters
his face, trying to hide his expression and his conversation from me, but his words carry.
“How are you . . . Everything okay with Logan . . . Yeah, I’m at Aunt Maggie’s . . . She’s not due back for another week, she said . . . No, please don’t come. I mean you could. I’d love to see you but . . . No, I’m not alone . . .” He glances up at me. “Daisy Nowell.”
He flinches at the words that come through the phone. “It’s not like that.” He walks away into the back of the house. I hear a door close, and his words are gone.
Protective. That was what his posture said. He curved over the phone like it was someone he wanted to shelter, to keep safe. If I didn’t already know Penny was his sister, I’d know from how he answered the call.
I should be relieved to have a break from him.
Except there’s a surge of jealousy in me.
What I said to my father was almost true. I did like him—a lot—before he refused to let me leave. Why did I have to get the vindictive side of him? Now I know there’s a side of him like he is on that call with Penny, I mourn that couldn’t be the side of him I got.
What could this have been like between us, if he hadn’t been out for revenge on my father? If he really had come back to look for me after I graduated?
It doesn’t matter. He’s not that man.
He’s a man whose life and mind are warped by hatred.
That’s all there is.
I grab my suitcase and walk up the wooden stairs. Though the outside may be famous, the house is small on the inside—cozy, homey. A refreshing relief after the excessive grandeur of the Vandershall estate.
I admire Blake. Working for his money. I can respect that. A lot. Especially when, for him, having money never helped him at all. If anything, it made his family more isolated on that estate, his father more likely to get away with murder.
I wonder how he did it. It wasn’t through my father, but somehow that man stayed out of prison.
I poke through the upstairs bedrooms. There’s three. One of them reminds me of Blake, I can’t say why, but something about the navy colors and the nautical charts framed on the wall reminds me of the control he likes to exert on everything.
I will not be staying in there.
We’re alone in this house. No one coming home for a week, he said, till his aunt gets here. My stomach knots. Us alone with nothing to do but stare at each other.
We won’t be just staring, that’s for sure.
I don’t know what about coming here he thought was a good idea. At least on the estate we could sleep in separate buildings. Here, the bedrooms aren’t much bigger than his sister’s walk-in closet there. Even in the bedroom across the hall, I’ll still be sleeping less then ten steps away from him.
This is bad. This is very bad.
But there’s nothing I can do. I have zero control. I guess I could sleep downstairs on the couch, or set up a tent in the back yard.
Not sure either of those would really help though.
The chemistry between us doesn’t seem to lessen with distance. Even on opposite sides of the plane, it was still like a magnetic field had wrapped around us. I couldn’t read or sleep for wondering if he was looking at me again.
I drop my suitcase and flop onto the bed.
I hear his footsteps coming up the stairs—slow, hesitant. He knows I’m up here. My heart accelerates. Maybe resisting him is stupid. I did find a giant box of condoms he put in my suitcase. The least I could get out of this shitty situation is some great sex. And God knows, it would be great.
But in exchange for the pleasure I would gain, I’m afraid of what I would lose of myself along the way.
I hear him walk into the room I assumed was his. The wooden floors carry every sound. I hear his suitcases drop, the dresser drawers open, a closet door squeak. I lay unmoving, praying and hoping he doesn’t come in my room.
Or more like praying that I don’t want him to come in my room.
Praying that I’ll stop thinking about how good his lips would be on my skin, how delectable his mouth would be on me, how hard his . . .
His footsteps move away, back down the stairs. I sit up. He didn’t even say anything.
“Daisy,” he calls from the first floor.
“Yeah?”
“Come to the top of the stairs please.”
“Ooh, you said please. I guess I’ll have to do it, then.” I stand and walk to the top of the stairs, looking down at him.
He’s changed clothes. He is in summer attire now—shorts and boat shoes with a hat and sunglasses. “I’m going out. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“The morning?” I take two steps down.
He holds up a hand to stop me. “For both our sakes, please, just stay up there.”
I pause. The separation is good. The explosive nature of us—the honest truth is that if we touch, the possibility of us landing in a bed and not getting out until tomorrow is very high.
“Where are you going?”
He adjusts a bag on his shoulders. “None of your business. You have my cell number if you need me.” He turns the doorknob.
“Wait.” A horrible thought comes over me—one I wish I could get rid of and leave behind forever. But I’ve thought it, so it can’t be undone. “Are you going to—is there someone”—I can’t stop the bright flush I feel coming over my face—“else?”
He stills and his mouth pops open. He stares up at me with surprise.
I stare at my feet. I’m as surprised as he is. But I refuse to be embarrassed. “I don’t sleep with people when they’re sleeping with someone else too.”
“There’s no one else, Daisy,” he says, and I’m shocked to hear a note of gentleness in his voice, not unlike with his sister. “You should be glad to get rid of me for a little.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll run off?”
He points to a pile of papers on the coffee table. “Those are copies of what I’ll be taking to the police if I come back and find you gone. It’s your choice.”
“Thanks a lot. So generous of you.”
“Don’t mention it.” He opens the door. “Oh, and the same will apply if you burn down the house.”
I salute him. “Aye-aye. No house burning.”
He does the unthinkable. He laughs.
After he leaves, out of habit, I check my email on my phone and am thrown back to my real life at home. There are responses to some of the emails I sent inquiring about the charity going under. They have my brain spinning, wishing I were home.
But I respond to the emails anyway. No matter what Blake says, I will be going home at some point. Maybe not tomorrow, but he’s delusional for thinking he can keep me forever.
* * *
The morning sun blazing on my back, my skin warm from its rays and my hair ruffled from the breeze, I get back to the house with a spring in my step. One I haven’t felt in a long time.
Life is good. I may not know what to do with the woman I’ve bound to me, but I had a message from her father this morning. One with the kind of soul-wrenching agitation I’d been hoping to achieve with this plan. Begging, pleading, threatening bribes, offering me obscene amounts of money—that I don’t want—for the sake of getting his daughter back.
My plan is working. He’s in misery.
A small price for him to pay for my mother’s hell, but it’s something. The reality of it will sink in when I’ve had her for weeks and months without him seeing her. Only time will let him really know she’s mine.
Though how I’ll cope with her during that time, I have no idea. But I refuse to let that small detail ruin the glow of my revenge realized.
I open the door with a proud, “I’m home,” assuming she’ll be waiting for me. She doesn’t answer and I don’t see her. Even better, a challenge to hunt her.
“Daisy?” I search the living room and den. I’m thinking I’ll try the gardens next, when I spy her around the corner in the kitchen . . .
. . . watching me like a hawk appra
ises her kill.
I stop and straighten. “Hi.”
She taps her fingers on the counter, clicking like a timer. “Hi,” she says, through gritted teeth. She looks angry enough to do me violence.
I hold up some pastries I picked up a French bakery on the way over. “I brought breakfast.”
Her glare doesn’t lessen, and I can’t help it—the torrent of arousal that takes over me is as inevitable as the tide. She stands there, bitterly angry with me, her eyes like daggers, her lips pouted and plump, her breasts rising and falling, peeking out of the neckline of her top—but it’s mostly how she looks at me. Like she can’t decide if she wants to hit me or kiss me, which pretty much adds up to she wants to eat me.
I shouldn’t. I should run back out the door. I shouldn’t give her what she wants. I shouldn’t have come back at all. Being here with her is going to result in nothing but trouble.
But it’s trouble I can’t resist.
I wait, trying to muster the self-control to leave the room. But I don’t have to.
She runs at me and leaps, her arms and legs grabbing me, her mouth crushing to mine.
I’m slammed backward into a table. Her teeth biting at my lips, she growls an animal sound so feral, so erotic, it sends blood rushing to my groin.
“I still hate you,” she mumbles against my mouth. “This changes nothing.”
“Mm-mm.”
I press the back of her head to me, opening her mouth wide. I thrust my tongue into her, as deep as I can go. She bites it, dragging her teeth over it.
It incites a growl of my own, an echo of hers, an awakening of the crazed beast I work so hard to cage. She rubs against me, and I’m overtaken with a need to press all of me into her.
I flip us around and drop her back on the table, covering her with my chest.
She yanks at my shirt, her nails tearing at it. I pull it over my head and she digs her fingers into my chest, clawing my pecs and abs, biting my shoulder like a ravenous woman starved for a meal.
I guess that’s what I’ve done—leaving her overnight, I starved her of me.
With me pushing, her pulling, her shirt and bra go, and my bare chest meets hers in a blissful joining of skin. I gnaw on her mouth, so desperate for more that I can’t keep from tasting her. Over and over, the feel of her mouth, the wetness of the inside, the heat of her tongue, the strength of her bite, I want to drown in it.
