Violent Delights: A Dark Billionaire Romance

by Linnea May

  She is hiding something underneath that pale, apathetic mask. A shadowy beast, screaming to be freed.

  The left corner of my mouth rises just the slightest bit as I reciprocate her gaze. Of course, she doesn't react to it. She just looks at me, unwilling to talk.

  That quiet, disclosed exterior. That perfect beauty. I want to smash her to pieces. Everything about her begs to be broken.

  Speak.

  "Nothing," she breathes. Finally.

  A normal person would have continued that statement with a short clarification as to what her sister was referring to, but not Elizabeth. Apparently, she thinks that one word to be enough of an explanation and decides to take another sip of her champagne while a soft fall breeze flies by, causing her doll-like hair to dance around the delicate shoulders.

  The image of her is maddening.

  She lowers her eyes and looks down at my hands. I have been clenching my fists without even realizing it. Now that her eyes are on them, I am terribly aware of it. Instinct tells me to relax my hands, but I fight it.

  Let her see this. Let's see if she dares to react to it.

  She doesn't.

  "Well, she refrained from joining the Ivy League club," her other sister Lucia finally says, unable to stand the silence that must have become awkward for everybody else around us.

  Out of courtesy, I turn around to Lucia, looking at her questioningly as does Will.

  "It's only a Liberal Arts degree," Lucia explains. "She went to a liberal arts college instead of entering Yale or Brown as she could have."

  "Like us," Sandria adds in a reproachful tone.

  "Oh, you were accepted at Yale and Brown as well?" Pete asks, sounding genuinely impressed.

  Elizabeth takes a deep breath. I watch as her chest rises beneath her light dress, the outline of her breasts clearly visible. They are bigger than her slim frame suggests at first, but not much more than a good handful. A perfect fit for my palms.

  "Yes, I was," she says, now looking at Pete.

  "Impressive!" Pete exclaims, much to the dismay of his betrothed, who rolls her eyes at him.

  "Yes, she is quite a smart one," Lucia adds, but it doesn't sound like a compliment at all. If anything her remark has a sarcastic touch to it.

  "No. Just diligent and rich," Elizabeth objects.

  "And what school did you chose to go to?" Will continues the interrogation, completely ignoring her awkward statement.

  "Williams," she says. "It's a-"

  "Private liberal arts college, I know," Will finishes her sentence. "And the best of the country, I might add! It outranks the Ivy League schools in some aspects, you know."

  He scans the little group to see if all of us heard this revelation.

  "There is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of," he comforts Elizabeth, tilting his head to the side as if he was feeling sorry for her.

  "I know," she hisses. "Like I said: I have nothing to be ashamed of."

  Sandria and Lucia snort, exchanging a telling look.

  "Will that be all?" Elizabeth asks, startling everybody with the question. "If so, I'd like to excuse myself for another drink."

  She doesn't wait for anybody to reply but turns around and hurries away, aiming toward the French door to enter the house.

  My eyes follow her, scanning her dainty body as she walks away. She is wearing thin and barely visible pantyhose beneath her dress. Through the thin fabric, I can see the marks around her ankles. She has scars on both sides, encompassing almost her entire ankle on each leg. Faint, red stripes. Cuts, maybe. In fact, that is my first assumption. But they are a little too wide and too trivial for that.

  They look more like rope marks.

  "In fact," I say, directed at no one in particular. "A drink does sound good. If you would excuse me for a moment."

  A round of empty smiles and nods lets me know that I am free to leave the group.

  I turn around and follow the path of the youngest Barrington daughter, hoping that she hasn't disappeared or started a conversation with someone else.

  Neither fear comes true. I spot her alone at the bar, placing her empty glass on the table and replacing it with a new one.

  I approach her with wide steps and place myself next to her, nonchalantly reaching for a glass so close to her that our arms brush.

  She flinches. Ever so slightly. That little touch sends shivers through her graceful body.

  I look at her, expecting her to turn around direct those beautiful eyes at me.

  But she doesn't.

  Instead, she makes a move to get away from me. She turns around and is just about to flee when I stop her by saying: "Does it hurt?"

  She freezes mid-motion and hunches her shoulders. Her feet are pressed together, shifting one in front of the other as if to try to hide the marks.

  "Excuse me?" she asks, looking back at me over her shoulder.

  She is so charmingly awkward.

  "Your ankles," I say in a low and husky voice. "Looks like you're hurt there."

  She slowly turns around to me, her eyes turning up to me.

  "I think most people would consider that quite the impertinent question," she utters.

  "Are you most people?"

  She frowns and takes a sip of her champagne. Her signature move it seems, especially when it's her turn to speak.

  "What happened to your ankles?" I press.

  "Nothing," she lies.

  She wants to run away and escape from this conversation, I can feel it. But I won't let her. I am enjoying her discomfort way too much to let that happen.

  "Well, I'm pretty damn sure you're lying to me right now," I whisper.

  She throws me an innocent look and shakes her head. "I don't lie. Ever."

  "Tell me what happened then," I probe.

  "Nothing happened," she insists.

  "I thought you don't lie?"

  "I don't," she says. "Nothing happened to me."

  She smirks and catches me off guard with that expression. It's the first time that her face shows anything but apathy or indifference.

  I quickly check our surroundings. There is no one I know within earshot. William and the little gang surrounding his son are still outside on the terrace, probably talking about the weather or wedding preparations. The Barringtons are still guarding the door, and everybody else is nothing but a mass of stranger's faces to me.

  She is giving off vibes. That smirk. The way she is looking at me. Expectantly. While just a few seconds ago it seemed as she couldn't get out of my reach fast enough, she now looks at me with expectation.

  Yet, I cannot risk it. I cannot talk to her the way I want to. I cannot do the things I want to do to her.

  Not here. Not now.

  For now I'll have to leave her with her obnoxious family and let her return to that casket of safety.

  "Alright then," I say. "I'll believe you."

  I turn around without waiting for her to reply anything and walk away. The knowledge that her shimmering eyes are following me as I leave makes me growl on the inside.

  I want her.

  She needs to become mine.

  Chapter 4

  LIZ

  "Sorry!" I gasp, balancing my glass just enough to only drop the tiniest spill of champagne.

  To my luck, Pete's sister, Angelica, is not holding a drink in her hand. I had bumped straight into her while my eyes were fixed on the stranger's neck. She is a few years younger than me and just started college, an Ivy League school, good girl.

  I don't mind her. Unlike my sisters, she acts friendly towards me. And she is a quiet person, never laughing out loud or speaking in a shrill voice when she is angry at someone.

  Also, I think she might have the slightest hint of rebel inside of her. Or maybe I am just biased because I know she dies her hair darker just like I do, and for some reason, in our world lighter hair is seen as worth striving for.

  She looks startled for a second, catching her breath and straightening her dress before
she starts laughing.

  "That's quite alright," she says. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, yes," I utter. "Sure. Sorry, I should have paid attention."

  "What kept you so preoccupied?" she asks, now following the direction I had been looking at.

  I hesitate for a moment, unsure whether I want to share my interest in the dark, tall stranger with her.

  On the other hand, she might know who he is if he is part of her family.

  "I was just wondering who my parents are talking to," I say, trying to sound not half as interested as I really am.

  She narrows her eyes in an attempt to be able to see better.

  "Ah," Angelica says. "That's Mr. Clark, I think. My dad's business partner."

  "Business partner?"

  "Yeah, they both invested in something together, absorbing another company or something? I don't know."

  She shrugs. "Never been too interested in dad's work. But he and my mother have talked about Mr. Clark a lot."

  "How?" I ask. "I mean... what did they say?"

  Angelica quickly looks back over her shoulder before she continues to speak.

  "Mom doesn't like him very much," she whispers. "He's new, you know. No known family, no fancy background. Just a guy who worked his ass up. He moved here a few months ago when he and Dad started working together. Owns a big fucking mansion over in the west."

  She raises her eyes conspiringly and leans in closer.

  "And he's living there all by himself," she adds. "It's kinda creepy, don't you think?"

  I look back over to my parents and the man they are talking to. Mr. Clark.

  "Creepy?" I wonder.

  "Yeah," she whispers. "I think it is. A single man living in a huge ass mansion all by himself? Why not get a nice penthouse closer to the city or something?"

  "Maybe he just likes the neighborhood," I suggest. "And all you can get here are big houses."

  She furls her eyebrows. "But still..."

  "People here are always so suspicious," I whisper, turning around to look back at him.

  He is still talking to my parents, together with Mr. Bishop, Angelica's father.

  "Well, I have to get me one of those," Angelica says, nodding towards the drink in my hand. "Talk to you later."

  I smile at her and our ways part. While she heads toward the bar, I continue my way back outside to take in the late afternoon air. The weather is still mild and sunny, even though summer is officially over.

  I place myself apart from everyone else, enjoying the fresh air as I sip on my champagne. I have always loved our garden. Neither the house nor the neighborhood itself ever had any sentimental value to me even though I have lived here my entire life, except for the past four years that I spent at college.

  But our garden is special to me. It is huge, as are most estates in this area, and I am the only person in my family who likes to walk. I could spend hours just walking by myself, and I spend a lot of afternoons circling our garden again and again. I know it better than anybody in our family, every corner, every tree, every flower bed at any time of the year. The only person who is more familiar with it must be our gardener, Henry. He has been working for us since I was a little child and even though we never talked much, I feel oddly close to him. He is a solitary man who once told me that he is doing this work for exactly that reason.

  "Not too keen on people," he once said. "No offense."

  Of course there was none taken. After all, I am not that different in that regard. But I don't think I could live a life in such a solitude as he is.

  “Always been fonder of flowers,” he told me, years ago. “They leave you alone, just looking pretty without asking for anything or talking behind your back. They know no evil.”

  I must have been about fifteen years old when he told me that. They know no evil.

  “How boring,” I said back then, and Henry shook his head at me.

  “Just you wait,” he said. “You must know evil and hardship to see it not as something exciting, but as something to be avoided.”

  I know that I am spoiled, that is why I never dared to complain, especially not to Henry, who I know had a lot more serious and existential struggles to deal with than I ever did. But I have always led a lonely life, at least as long as I was living here.

  College life was different. At college, I had people I would call friends. I am not as antisocial as my family thinks me to be. The people I met at college didn't make me feel invisible like my family does. Sometimes I feel like I might just as well not exist for them.

  It's all the worse that I had to move back home with them now that I have finished my degree and did not get accepted to the Master's program I applied for. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be. An imposed gap year is what I am facing right now, in hopes to be accepted into another program next year. Months of nothing to do except for inhabiting my old childhood room in a house I don’t like with people who don’t want me around.

  I flinch in surprise when someone touches me on the shoulder. It is my sister Sandria, asking me to come with her so she can introduce me to her father-in-law to be.

  We head to a little group on the terrace that includes Sandria’s fiancé, my other sister Lucia and her husband and Mr. Bishop… and him. The ominous tall, stranger with the dark hair and the tattoo peeking through at the top of his collar. Mr. Clark, Angelica had called him.

  My heart almost stops when I notice his presence, but I try my best not to let it show.

  I can feel his eyes on me as I join the group, but I don’t reciprocate his gaze. Sandria introduces me to her future father-in-law, and I shake his hand like a good girl, but cannot bring myself to respond to his lame introductory words.

  Of course, I am introduced to Mr. Clark next. Our eyes meet for a few moments when we shake hands and he pins me down with his stare. His eyes are not completely black but more of dark gray. He looks at me with such intensity that I would normally fear that there was something wrong with my hair, my face, my dress. But I can tell in his stare that that's not it.

  He doesn't focus on any imperfection. Just on me. No one has ever looked at me this way.

  Why is he gritting his teeth, though? Am I making him angry?

  "Leonard Clark," he introduces himself.

  I look at him and give a polite nod before withdrawing my hand from his grip.

  I cannot shake off the feeling of his intense stare the entire time I am forced to chit chat with Mr. Bishop and my sister's dull fiancé. When the topic turns to my academic endeavors and my sister uses yet another chance to play me down, Mr. Clark chimes in, forcing me to look back up at him.

  I find it very hard to talk to him, even harder than usual.

  He wants to know what it is that I could be embarrassed about.

  "Nothing," I lie.

  I am certainly not embarrassed about my choice of major and college.

  I am, however, embarrassed about what happens in my bedroom when I find myself alone. I am embarrassed about what happened on campus when I participated in occasional dating and found myself with a boy staring at me with fear and disgust when I told him what I wanted him to do to me.

  I am embarrassed and sad about the emptiness I felt every time someone fucked me, thinking he was giving me just as much pleasure as he was enjoying, while I just prayed for it to be over, faking every single orgasm I have ever experienced with a man.

  Of course, that's not what anybody here at this party would expect or want to hear from me.

  Mr. Clark looks at me as if he expects me to continue, but I am of the opinion that everything I need to say has been said. When I can longer bear to withstand his dark gray gaze, I lower my eyes, noticing that he has his hands in fists.

  He is tense, clenching his fists so much that his knuckles turn white.

  His hands are big and strong.

  I wonder what they would feel like wrapped around my throat.

  He knows that I noticed his clenching fists, but doesn't relax them. T
he longer I look at them, the more it feels as if he is grasping me, as if I was within his strong touch.

  I avert my eyes and resume the dull conversation about my educational choice. I don’t want to be here. This conversation annoys me, and Mr. Clark’s eyes feel like spears poking into me.

  “Will that be all?” I finally dare to blurt out. I know this is not the way one ought to leave a conversation, no matter how dull or annoying it is, but thanks to my overall reputation I am granted a fool’s license when it comes to my family - and I intend to use it to my advantage.

  Of course, my sisters roll their eyes in embarrassment, but no one stops me when I flee the little circle. If anything, I am sure they are glad to be rid of me.

  Except for one person.

  I don’t have to turn around to know that he is following me.

  My hopes that he might be heading a different direction are shattered when he appears next to me at the bar, brushing along my arm as he reaches for a new glass.

  I am just about to turn away and scurry off when he asks me: “Does it hurt?”

  The question is so multifarious that I am having trouble to answer it.

  I am not even sure what he is talking about. The way my sisters treat me? He must have noticed how they both rolled their eyes and the way they addressed me in general. Or is he talking about the marks on my legs?

  I don't dare to turn around, but I look back over my shoulder. "Excuse me?"

  "Your ankles," he says and my heart skips a beat in shock. "Looks like you're hurt there."

  Alright, then. I could have anticipated this. After all, the marks are clearly visible.

  I am just not used to anybody looking at me with that much attention. I bet my family wouldn't even say anything if I had the marks right at my neck, where I would want them to be.

  I turn around and accuse him of being impertinent.

  He wants to know what happened to me, to my legs in particular. I hesitate for a moment, unsure whether it would be wise to insinuate anything.

  He might just be genuinely worried. A good man.

  A man who clenched his fists while staring at me as if I was an archenemy or something to eat.

  All I can come up with is: "Nothing."