Chapter Six #2
That felt like decades ago.
My heart skipped then settled. “You’re interrogating me on transgressions I’ve already explained?”
Victor pursed his lips. “Just indulge me for a few minutes, mon ami. I’m aware you said your fetishes include tears and whispers.”
A few guests snickered around the deck.
The jewels behind me stayed eerily silent.
“Amongst my top five, yes. But you already asked what I was doing when you came to find us. And I told you.”
Funny, the thought of whispering to Ily now leaned toward telling her exactly what I wanted, rather than doing my useless best to save her. I no longer wanted to whisper for her to play along but to truly confess that her blood made me throb and her tears made me ravenous to break her.
“Tell me again if you don’t mind.” Victor tapped my empty coffee cup with the remote. He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Go on. Don’t be shy. After all, there’s no secrets between us.”
There he went with the cryptic crap again.
Yesterday, I would probably have had a panic attack and overcompensated with some heavy-handed confession of wanting Ily in pieces.
Today, I merely shrugged and released a part of my untameable darkness. “Fine. I drank her sadness.”
“Why?”
“Why? I don’t know. Why do we like the things we like? I’ve always been drawn to tears. Probably another throw-back to my fucked-up childhood.”
“Oh? How interesting.” Victor took a bite of his mini blueberry danish. “Please...do continue.”
Ignoring the guests and their judging eyes, I said, “My mother would never touch me...unless she was crying. The nights when she sobbed for no apparent reason were the nights she actually looked to me for comfort. She never went as far as to hug me, but she did tolerate me to hug her. I guess you could say my adolescent mind figured I needed tears to feel affection, and the adult part of me morphed that into something sexual.”
“An understandable conclusion.” Victor nodded. “I always enjoy hearing guests psychoanalyse themselves.” Clicking the remote, he skipped to a short silent video of Ily trapped in my hold, wedged against the bookcases, our eyes locked as I whispered something with far, far too much emotion.
Shit, had I truly entrapped her that tightly? Whispered that fiercely? Passion dripped from my every word and motion. The way I looked at her blazed with possession even then. And the way she looked at me...
I paused and assessed the quick knot in my gut.
She looked at me as if terrified but also willing to trust. The way her mouth twisted and eyes widened. The way her bare skin glowed as I cupped her throat and hissed into her ear.
I hadn’t been able to see her gaze then.
But I saw it now.
Saw the flash of heat. The heaviness of her lashes as I nuzzled against her neck and said whatever stupid thing I said.
“And this?” Victor paused the video.
At least it had no sound.
No way to know all the broken promises I’d made or the jumped to conclusions she believed.
“Merely a silly little game.” I didn’t shake or sweat. I had nothing to hide now. Sure, I was a fraud yesterday, but this morning, I was one hundred percent one of them—an unredeemable, irreprehensible bastard—and I no longer suffered shame because of it.
“I told her that I wanted to—”
“Let Ily tell it.” Victor held up a hand, pointing the remote at my jewel frozen on the grass. “Sweetling...?”
Ily swallowed hard and refused to look at me. Slowly, she raised her chin. “H-He said he wanted to make me his in every possible way. To tear me apart. T-To bleed me and drink down every drop.”
My eyebrows rose.
Her memory was impressive.
The fact I’d tasted her blood made me shiver.
Her willingness to lie for me had almost brought me to my knees in the library. But here, in the bright light of a wonderful new day, I just pitied her.
All those lies I said under the guise of truth. All that honesty I spoke under the cloak of fibs. If I had my way, I wanted every despicable thing I’d confessed to come true. The tart pinch of her despair already coated my tongue, making me goddamn starving.
“Thank you, my pet. That was almost verbatim.” Victor nodded with a sharp edge. “Almost as if you were reading from a rehearsed script.”
Ily’s gaze snapped to Victor’s.
Mine narrowed.
Was that a lucky guess, or was he fishing?
Sighing happily, as if he enjoyed toying with us, he pressed the remote again.
The next scene made me flush with embarrassment.
A few guests chuckled. One even commiserated. “Don’t worry, Ward. I threw up the first day I gave in, too.”
“Pussy,” another whispered.
Victor merely waited for me to explain.
I scowled at the image of me on my hands and knees, dripping wet with the shower raining and my fingers clutching at the tiles. My back arched to hurl. My face tortured with nauseous misery. I didn’t need the video to show that my cock still glistened from being inside Ily the first time.
Tied to the maypole.
Taken so damn hard because the moment I sank inside her, I couldn’t stop.
Ily sucked in a breath on the lawn.
My skin itched.
I didn’t want her seeing that.
But then again, she’d already seen me at my weakest. Acted along with me at my dumbest. She’d not only obeyed me, but I had a sneaking suspicion she felt sorry for me.
My fingers dug into my biceps as I crossed my arms tighter.
I went to lie. To blame something I ate or jet lag or exhaustion, but...
I didn’t want to lie anymore. Not because five guards inconspicuously joined us on the deck, fanning out with their hands hovering over concealed weapons but because I’d changed last night and didn’t want to undo that change.
I liked my freedom far too fucking much to turn my back on it.
“So, Henri?” Victor canted his head. “Do you have an explanation for this one?” He scowled. “Were you throwing up from fucking your jewel or for giving me two million euros for the privilege?”
A man snickered. “Nothing worse than forking over cash you don’t have, huh?”
“Knew he was an idiot.” Someone chuckled.
“Neither.” I smiled. Genuinely. Full of goddamn relief that that little malady was a thing of the past.
“Pray tell,” Victor murmured.
“My guts have always been sensitive. I told you that last night. I guess you could say my body took it upon itself to keep me from straying.”
“Straying?”
“Into the dark.”
“So this is you purging the darkness of rape?”
I shot a look at Ily, needing her to see my face when I confessed, “It wasn’t rape. She consented.”
Another ripple of laughter was followed by a hissed gasp from Ily.
Peter didn’t look up, but his entire body tensed.
Glancing back at Victor, I flung open my rotten pages and became an open fucking book. “When I whispered to her...I might have said some things that made her play along with me.”
“Such as?” Victor narrowed his eyes.
I dabbled with stepping over the line of who Ily thought I was, but Victor didn’t need to know. That part of the pantomime was over. Ily would’ve figured out I wasn’t a cop after what I did last night.
I’d never been one. Would never become one.
That knowledge would hurt her almost as much as my switchblade.
That reminds me...I left it in Victor’s dead zoo.
I wanted it back as a keepsake for the night I awakened.
“I told her if she behaved, I wouldn’t let anyone else have her. I asked her to trust me. That everything I did to her was for the greater good.”
Peter let out a tortured sort of noise.
Ily remained deathly silent.
Greater good.
In the library, those two words had churned my stomach something terrible. Here, not even a ripple.
“Interesting. So that’s why she went from a barbed-tongue witch to an obedient little toy so quickly?” He watched me as if he knew more than what he let on.
Keeping my guard up, I nodded. “Clever, huh?”
He studied me closely. “Some might say you collared her mind...which seems far more effective than just collaring her body.”
I bowed my chin. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You do that.” He didn’t smile, though, merely clicked his damn remote again. “I suppose you’ll have an equally understandable explanation for this too?”
The screen erased my retching episode and replaced it with a photo of me leaning against the bathroom door, knees up, elbows wedged on them, hands buried in my hair.
I looked like a miserable fool.
I’d fallen asleep.
Ily had eaten all my room service.
I’d dry-humped her into an orgasm before thinking I was ever skilled or lucky enough to turn off the signal scrambler.
That’d been the end of our alliance.
I waited for a streak of remorse.
But only a faint tinge of nostalgia came.
I’d liked her pliant beneath me.
I regretted not fucking her when I had the chance.
“So?” Victor rolled his hand. “Go ahead and explain.”
I shrugged, not appreciating him exposing what a heartsick imbecile I’d been. “I wanted things I still wasn’t prepared to accept. I was exhausted by the struggle. I needed space, and she was in my bed. The bathroom offered the only privacy.”
“I see.”
I didn’t like that response.
Placing the remote ever so carefully on the table, Victor steepled his fingers. “There are only three more teeny tiny things to show you. So far, you’ve been honest. I suggest you keep being honest because I’m telling you now, I’ll sniff out any lies.”
“Lies?” I bared my teeth. “I’ve told you the truth—”
“And I just told you I’m aware of that. That’s what pains me so.” He glanced at the guards. They all drifted forward, closing ranks and trapping me in a wide circle.
“What the fuck are you doing, Victor?” I didn’t move.
Where could I go?
But I did lower my arms and ball my hands. “You planning on shooting me because it took me a day to accept who I am?”