Page 49 of The Count
I entered the elevator and squared my shoulders like it could give my heart room to rattle itself out of energy inside my rib cage. The floors dinged like death nells, until the last one. Then the doors slid open and I stood there, willing myself to take the step forward across the threshold.
The door started to close, making the decision for me. I threw myself into his foyer. The place looked very similar to the previous apartment. All dark, broody, begging a visitor to brighten up the place. I wasn’t a good candidate. My home was decorated in similar tones and styles.
I peeked around a bookcase, waiting for him to pop out at any moment. He didn’t. She found in sprawled over a couch in jeans and a long sleeve cashmere sweater with a book in his hand. The vision shook me. Who the hell was this man now?
He glanced over his shoulder as I entered. “I wondered when you’d be by to see me.”
“You were expecting me?”
He slipped a piece of paper from the back of the book into his place and closed it. “I have to admit I didn’t expect you so soon.”
Anger pierced through the nerves and other emotions, I wasn’t yet ready to analyze, to boost my confidence. “You found out everything and then you treated me like shit. Like you’d finished playing with your dolls and now they could go back into the house until you were ready to drag them back out again.”
“Tone down the drama. We talked about this.”
My anger reached a pitch and I stepped forward and slapped him. Hard. His head snapped to the side and my palm singed in pain. Fucking worth it. “Don’t speak to me like that. I am not your captive. I’m not your whore. I’m not your fucking wife.”
He narrowed his eyes, his cheek blooming pink from my hand. “According to our agreement, you still belong to me.”
He crowded closer and I held my ground. “No. I reserved the right to renegotiate this arrangement when it began and I’m calling in that clause.”
The fucking bastard snorted and flopped back on the couch. He waved his hand at me. “Then negotiate, Mercy. What do you want?”
Right now, I didn’t want anything from his damn smug face. Earlier, I didn’t know what I wanted either. Some of the anger wore off on the edge of the memories. I plopped next to him, with enough distance in case I needed to slap him again.
“I don’t know. But it’s not this. Whatever this is festering between us right now. I don’t hate you. I never hated you. Even when you took everything.” I bowed over and placed my head in my hands.
His tentative fingers dug into my hair at the name of my neck and I froze scared to think scared to breathe, scared to break the moment.
“I don’t hate you. I didn’t hate you either. No matter what I told myself. Everything I planned, all the revenge, it was a way to keep myself alive. Something to latch on to. A life raft in the storm of prison.”
I swallowed and sat back, thankful he didn’t stop touching me. “How could you not hate me? After what I did to you, to us?”
A tear threatened to fall and I let it. I let him see into me. The broken places and the raw ones he’d rubbed the dead skin off in the last month.
“People do terrible things to each other all the time. Even to those they love. This won’t be the last time we hurt each other.”
“Last time?” I asked tentatively.
He dragged my heavily into his lap, having to lift me the last few inches as my coat bunched on his denim. “You want to negotiate. How about a partnership. Equal between you and me. Together we will rule the city side by side.”
“You want a partnership?”
“I want a queen.”
“I want a husband.”
He sucked in a breath. Whatever he was expecting it wasn’t that word. I pressed him. “What will I have to sacrifice for a ring?”
He cupped my cheeks between his hands and pulled me to his lips. “Everything. Give me everything.”
I twisted on his lap and let him ruck up my skirt while I grappled with his belt buckle. He entered me expertly, one smooth thrust into my heat like he waited to come home all this time.
It took mere minutes for us to both reach our end panting in each other’s arms. A sheen of sweat beaded at his brow and I watched the light dance on the droplets trying to remember this moment. Lock it in my mind.
Still inside me, he kissed my mouth, my chin, my neck, my decollate. Once he finished he started over until I stopped him. “Nothing gets in the way this time. Nothing.”
He nodded, still keeping his vigil, mouth on my skin.
