Until…
For many years afterward, he wondered what would’ve happened if she had continued to sleep.
If she hadn’t switched on the light, flipped onto her back, and thrown off those covers.
If her hand hadn’t slipped underneath the band of her panties.
If after a few languorous strokes, she hadn’t begun to moan, “Victor. Oh, God… Victor.”
Shock, not 50-year-old baijiu, flushed his body with heat. A few moments ago, he’d been on the verge of passing out. But now, he was completely awake. The formerly soft flesh in his hand became a steel beam as he stared at what was happening on the security camera.
He watched. He watched her on that bed in a place three hours away from where he was now. Her body writhed under her hand, and her face was helpless with need as she moaned his name.
Calling for him.
She was calling for him.
And that was all it took.
“Victor!” Han yelled out when he emerged from the bathroom. He was standing with Phantom and held up three stemmed shot glasses filled with the ultra-vintage baijiu they’d been drinking all night.
Victor took the shot from Han but didn’t pause his strides. He threw it back with one scalding gulp and tossed the glass against a black stone column. The resulting shatter seemed to echo what was happening inside of him.
“Victor! Victor! Where you going, cuz?” Phantom yelled after him.
Victor ignored Phantom and all the other people calling out to him as he walked out of the party. And as for his drunken state. Well…
He sobered up during the three-hour taxi ride to her prison.
The night guard came scrambling out of the parked Audi when Victor suddenly came through the gate on foot around 3 AM.
“Boss, you made it,” he called out. “I didn’t think you were going to come this year.”
Victor didn’t answer him, just walked into the house and straight up the stairs. He didn’t stop…
He didn’t stop until he reached her room. Where he flipped her over, fell on top of her, and then savagely buried himself inside of her.
She was already wet. Why was she wet? And why did she moan at his forceful entry, her legs widening and one arm reaching up to cup the back of his head as he began driving into her. Why could he feel her relief as he finally filled her up, the same as if it was his own?
No, his willpower hadn’t been a match for her this anniversary either, just like it hadn’t been for all the others. He rutted on top of her, mindless as an animal.
And she took him, her wet heat squeezing him impossibly tight. Then, she gripped him even tighter when she came with a cry, her body shuddering her release underneath him.
Luckily, his body was pre-programmed. The tingling sensation in his balls cut through the fog of lust to let him know his own release was imminent.
At the last moment, he pulled out. But this was not an act of pride as it had been before. His back caved as his cock spurted, a firehose without any guide.
He came and came for an impossibly long while. And by the time he was finally emptied, he fell onto his back, drained and wrecked—the very opposite of powerful.
Somewhere in the distance, he sensed her tugging on the bed’s top cover. Dragging it from underneath him and tossing it somewhere he couldn’t see before climbing back into the bed with a heavier quilt to cover them both up.
They lay in the dark. Breathing together but no longer touching.
“I was afraid when you didn’t show up today. I was afraid you were…hurt.” Her voice was a soft knife in the pitch black.
Afraid.
The word squeezed around his heart. She’d been worried about him. And he was so defeated, so exhausted. He couldn’t fight it when the old feelings arose.
But then he remembered her sitting on the couch. Her eyes widening as he made his marriage proposal. The way she’d knocked him over with her yes, as if she’d been overjoyed.
It had been a lie. An act orchestrated by her father. She was a good actress, the best he’d ever known. He had to remember that.
Disgusted with himself, he climbed out of bed and left as abruptly as he’d arrived.
And the next day, he didn’t disenroll her from RhIDS, as he’d so maliciously planned.
He’d failed the test for the seventh year in a row. He still didn’t deserve that particularly sweet vengeance.
The eighth year went no better. He made plans to leave the country for the week, somewhere far away, where he couldn’t possibly change his mind within twenty-four hours. But at the last moment, he turned around and called one of his men to come to get him at the airport. Less than an hour later, he stormed into the Providence house. He hadn’t even made it on the plane.
