I’m frozen on my bed, captivated by the sound of his jagged breaths coming haltingly through the phone.
Looking down, I find that my hand is still buried deep inside my panties.
Embarrassed and self-conscious, I pull it out.
In the cold, harsh, post-orgasmic, light of day, I’m deeply ashamed of what I just did. I couldn’t help it…when he started moaning in my ear, groaning like he was almost in pain, begging me to talk to him, then describing all the dirty things he was going to do to me in that gravelly voice, I was powerless to resist it.
My hand found itself slithering down my belly and into my panties in search of my aching clit. Flicking it and rubbing it as I listened to his feverish pants. My pleasure was completely mindless, completely dependent on him.
Like a violinist following her conductor, I took my cues from him, pleasuring myself quietly until I heard him fall apart.
He’s not shy about his pleasure, the moans and groans falling liberally from his lips without a hint of self-preservation, making it impossible for me to hold back my own climax. I quickly followed suit, coming faster than I ever had before.
I turn my face into my pillow, trying to ignore the humiliating reality that there’s something very wrong with me.
I just got myself off while listening to the man who shot my best friend make himself come.
I’m sick.
This is a sickness, one that’s clearly already metastasized to my brain.
Probably beyond salvation, terminal diagnosis.
“Fuck, that feels good,” he growls, satisfied. “Nowhere near as good as when I’ll get to actually fuck you, but I assume that’s why you’re calling. When are you coming back to me?”
“I wasn’t joking, Thiago, I’m not coming back. Especially not now that you’ve hurt one of the people I’m closest to.”
“Tell me where you are,” he demands, ignoring me.
“No.”
“Did Dagny pass on my message?”
Dagny had gotten herself to the hospital where she’d been stitched up. She recorded a video explaining what happened and sent it to Wiz who’d passed it on to me. She was fine, she assured me, a little banged up and obviously sore, but true to form she seemed angrier about the state of her floors than anything else.
I told her to go to her family’s place or to a hotel and that I’d pay for it, but she promptly declined. She was back in her apartment and sleeping in her own bed last night, refusing to be scared away from her home.
“Did she?” he presses, and I hiss in a breath at his bleak tone.
“Don’t hurt her again, Thiago,” I say, steeling my voice.
“Turn on your camera.”
The command comes out of nowhere and I balk.
Suddenly restless, I jump out of my bed. If he can see me then that means I’ll be able to see him, and there’s no way I can face him.
“No,” I reply, ambling into the kitchen. I grab my coat off the hook and wrap it around me before going out onto my patio.
The air has felt almost suffocating inside my place since his voice started bouncing off the walls. It’s like his entire physical presence is there, growing and looming and taking up all the oxygen.
“Turn on your camera, amor, and we can negotiate,” he purrs, his voice sending an irresistible shiver down my spine.
Before I can answer, the request comes through. My phone starts vibrating with the incoming video call. I find myself nervously fixing my hair and then, incomprehensibly, answering the call.
There’s a couple of seconds of lag while the software works to transfer us over to video where I regret every decision I’ve ever made that’s brought me to this moment, and then there he is.
Sitting like a king on his throne in the middle of a dark, opulent office, wrapped in all black himself.
The very picture of a demonic presence.
The fingers of one hand caress his jaw back and forth. The move is so simple but so dominatingly male, my body can’t help but react.
A thick five o’clock shadow adds a rough edge to his already dangerous appearance. I want to run my own fingers through that stubble and find out how bristly it is. I imagine his face between my legs, the scruff of his nascent beard abrading my thighs, making me even more sensitive.
In the darkness, I swear his tattoos move, dark tentacles undulating up his neck. His eyes shine like a black cat’s, the only parts of him that aren’t completely void of life and color. He stares at me predatorily, unyielding and unapologetic in his perusal. His head falls back to rest against his chair as he rakes his eyes over every visible part of me.
Even through the phone, I can sense the volatile energy around him. It shifts and gets more charged the longer he stares at me.
The connection turns taut between us even as burning need swirls in my belly. Being aroused by him has become a part of my automatic nervous system, I’m incapable of controlling it.
That’s exactly what I’m running from.
“Amor,” he calls.
He might as well have whispered it right into my ear, his body pressed against my back and his hands on my throat for how much it affects me. If I wasn’t sitting on a chair, my knees would have given in.
But he’s a remorseless killer and I can’t lose sight of that, no matter how much my body tries to get my mind to submit.
“You have to know that attacking the people I love isn’t going to get you what you want.”
Instead of focusing on my point, his eyes flash in response.
“Who else do you love?” he asks, his lip curling up in irritation and his features drawing down into a glare. “Names.”
“A little late to worry about that, isn’t it?” I answer suggestively.
Extra rich of him to give a shit when he’s pining after a dead woman while continuing to make my life hell.
His aura turns downright hostile. He sits forward, coming dangerously close to the camera.
“Dagny lived because I knew she’d lead me to you somehow,” he rasps ruthlessly, jaw so tense it looks ready to snap. “But if I find out you have a lover waiting in the wings for you, amor, I’ll feed him to my dogs for breakfast and make you watch.”
“You can’t control my life that way,” I exclaim.
He bares his teeth, standing now. I feel intimidated even though he’s sitting hundreds of miles away and isn’t actually in front of me.
“Yes, I can,” he growls. “I own you.”
“Nobody owns me.”
Thiago grabs a sheet of paper just off camera and holds it up for me to see. “This contract says I fucking do. I paid twenty million pounds for you.”
He sure keeps that paperwork close. I wonder if it enrages him every time he looks at it knowing that his investment is gallivanting across the world, running from him.
Bitterness simmers in my stomach being reminded of just how casually he bought me.
How easily my father sold me.
I blink back tears thinking about it and scoff derisively instead to cover my moment of weakness. “That’s it?”
His voice is perilously low when he responds.
“I was willing to pay a hundred times that,” he mutters. “But in what seems like a lifetime of stupid decisions, the biggest one your father made was letting you go for such a cheap price.”
I shrug my shoulders like it doesn’t matter and look away. “My father has never seen any value in my existence. Who cares how smart or capable I am? At the end of the day, I’m just a daughter. He was probably overjoyed that someone was willing to pay that much money for little old me,” I add acerbically. “I guarantee you he thinks he came out the winner in your deal.”
Thiago remains silent for so long that I flick my gaze back at him. When I do, I find him staring at me, eyes shining with keen interest. There’s something about his gaze that feels completely denuding, like he’s seeing past the surface and peeling back every layer to expose me to my core.
“Just because he doesn’t see how exceptional you are, doesn’t mean I don’t. It’s why I need you back.”
Need, not want.
I’d be a fool to take those words as anything more than an unintentional slip up. Still, my heart trips over itself in response. His words ring with authenticity, almost as if he’s imploring me to believe him. But he’s a master manipulator – how can I trust anything he says?
“You hurt my friend. Why would I ever go to you when you could just as easily hurt me?”
“I will hurt you, amor,” he promises, making me shiver. Somehow, it’s not fear that I feel, but excitement. “I’ll punish you for being a bad girl, but you’ll fucking love it.”
“Then–”
“But I’ll also make sure no one ever touches you. You’ll be my queen and I’ll protect you with my dying breath if I have to. Whatever it takes to keep you safe, I’ll do it without batting an eye.”
“But you can’t protect me from you.”
“Come back and I’ll show you just how good pain and submission can feel. You’ll beg me to do everything I want because deep down that’s what you want. It’s just a matter of getting you to admit it.”
I shake my head, ignoring him. “Why can’t you find someone else, I don’t get it. You don’t even know me.”
“I know you’re mine.”
He says it categorically, believing in it more fervently than I’ve ever believed in anything my entire life.
“How?”
“I knew it the moment I saw you.”
“And that’s enough for you?”
“It’s all that matters. You’re the only wife I want.”
His possessive words heat my blood, making me shaky.
“I want a husband who doesn’t kill people. One who doesn’t hurt my friends or doesn’t want to hurt me,” I say, shaking my head. We’re going around in circles. This was a mistake. “I’m going to hang up now.”
His eyes flash. “I guess Dagny has served her purpose then.”
His threat is crystal clear; he doesn’t even bother to conceal it. Ice steels my spine.
“I asked you not to hurt her.”
“The only person who gets to ask things of me is my wife. You’ve been very clear that’s not you,” he says silkily. “So, tell me — what will you give me in return?”
We’re bargaining with my friend’s life and all I can focus on is his lips. How plump they look, how they moved and danced against mine when he kissed me.
I used to be governed by logic and ruled by my mind. I have no idea what happened to that version of me and if I’ll ever get her back, but I definitely need her right now.
Clenching my jaw, I roll my eyes. “I’ll hate you the same amount I hate you right now instead of the exponentially higher amount I will tomorrow if you kill my friend.”
“I already told you it doesn’t matter what you think of me. I think hating me turns you on.”
“You’re afflicted by severe delusions.”
“I hope Dagny has a will ready.”
“Wait,” I exclaim, desperate now and searching for something to offer him. “I—I’ll call.”
He stares at me, unblinking, for long moments. So long that I start to wonder if the call didn’t drop and I’m not just left with a frozen frame of him.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” he finally says.
“I’ll call again.” It’s a terrible idea, but short of me going back to London, it’s the only thing I can think of that he might accept. “We can talk.”
His voice is gruff beyond recognition when he replies.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tonight.”
“What? No.” Why does he want to talk to me again today? “I’ll decide when.”
“Tomorrow,” he orders.
“Thiago, I’ll hang up right now and you’ll never hear from me again if you push me.”
“Fine,” he concedes grumpily. “But it has to be this week. Any longer and my trigger finger will get restless.”
“You’re an animal.”
A slow, smug grin pulls at his lips and hits me right in my core. “You haven’t seen anything.”
The sexual undertone of his declaration has goosebumps breaking out all over my body.
“I’m hanging up now,” I announce.
“Alright, amor. I’ll miss you.”
I pause, realizing that no one outside of my mum, brother, and Dagny has ever said those words to me. Not any of my past relationships, not any of my other friends.
He stays on the line, watching me. Waiting for me to end the call. I find myself thinking about tracing every single one of his tattoos with my tongue.
“I’m not coming back; you know that right?”
I’ve said it before, but this time is different. I want him to hear the sincerity in my voice, the categorical truth of my statement.
If I expected him to growl or get angry, he surprises me. He simply sits back in his chair and wraps one hand around the fist of the other.
“I know.”
“You’ll let me go?” I question, surprised.
Maybe even a little disappointed.
“No, amor.” He shakes his head slowly, like what I just said is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I’m going to track you down and drag you back here myself, just like you want.”
“Good luck with that,” I answer flippantly.
The pleased smile he gives me chills me to my bones. It’s almost unnatural in its satisfaction.
“There’s a very fine line between confidence and arrogance,” he notes.
My hand tightens around the phone, my own smile tensing in place. “What does that mean?”
“You made a mistake.”
“What?” I ask, rattled.
He leans forward and crooks a finger at me to come closer. Like a marionette on a string answering to its puppeteer, I do as he commands. I lean forward and tilt my face slightly to the side, keeping my eyes fixed on him.
Thiago’s mouth opens and my own lips part as I wait for whatever he’s about to say, transfixed by him and hanging on to his every word before he’s even spoken. His eyes blaze heatedly on me, victorious and cocky.
“Barcelona.”
The line goes dead, leaving me to stare at my horrified expression reflected back at me on the black screen.
