Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Isabelle
Bastard .
Look at him with that smug grin on his face and that scrutinizing look of victory in his eyes.
He’s enjoying this—watching my defeat.
He looks the way he does when he’s just crushed his opponents in a game and obliterated the prospect of thinking they could ever beat him. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing his football jersey. He must have come straight from practice.
Like the other day, sweat has made his hair damp and the jersey cling to his abs. It’s irritating that he can manage to make sweaty look so good and laden with sex appeal.
His grin widens and the silence building between us twists my stomach. There’s so much I want to say but I need to choose my words wisely.
Kade walks over to me, stops a few paces away, and sets his duffel bag down by the sofa, which is covered in an array of business textbooks and football magazines.
I’ll probably be put to cleaning those up. And everything else here.
I can’t believe I worked so hard, for so many years, only to end up serving Kade Gurkovsky.
I’ll be his very own Cinderella, and he is certainly all that was wicked from the fairytale. Wicked stepmother, wicked stepsisters, wicked everything combined into the embodiment of a gorgeous football star—the dark prince.
I’ll be little more than a slave.
No. I mustn’t think of it like that.
That’s not what happened, or how it happened. Like my father—who was absolutely livid—said; I did the crime so now I have to do the time.
I really did lose my mind when I torched Kade's bike. I wouldn’t do anything differently—it was entirely justified—but these are the consequences. It doesn’t matter that I’m the only person who knows that Kade wrecked my sculpture and ruined my chances of going to Cambridge in the spring.
I guess the only small bit of compensation I can take from this disaster is that I stood up for myself. It doesn’t help me now but it’s something to hold onto.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” He finally speaks, his voice low and deep.
He spreads his arms wide and I look around the living room, taking in the less-is-more décor. The furniture is plain but entirely exquisite. The place looks like one of those penthouse suites in the city that a billionaire would own.
Oh, wait. Kade’s family are billionaires, so the description is fitting.
“There’s nothing humble about this place.” I steel my spine and return my focus to him. “Including you.”
“Ouch, baby.” He places a hand to his heart and pretends to be hurt. “What the hell have I done to you? You never used to be so vicious.”
“You asshole. Don’t you dare stand there and make fun of me.” I want to shout at him but I keep my voice calm and my tone purposeful. “There is nothing funny about this fucked-up situation.”
“Maybe for you.” He raises his dark brows. “For me, on the other hand … well, let’s just say I’ll be quite entertained for a very long time to come.”
Asshole. “Just tell me what I’m supposed to do here so I can leave.”
This meeting is only my check-in to see what jobs he needs me to do. The real work starts any time after today.
“I need you here five days a week. I’ll tell you which five at the start of the week. I’m out of town tomorrow, so come by Friday and I’ll show you around my humble abode.”
“Fine.”
He walks over to the desk in the corner and picks up a piece of paper. It looks like a list. It is.
Great. It looks like a very long list.
“These are your weekly duties. Get acquainted with them.” He hands the list to me. I take it and my eyes widen when I see all the shit he’s put on there. There are over a hundred tasks listed for me to do.
“This is too much. How am I supposed to go to class and fit all this shit in?”
“I’m sure you’ll make it work.”
I look back at the list to see what I can argue my way out of but my frown deepens the more I read.
Kade wants me to learn how to cook the meals he eats on his strict diet, clean the apartment from top to bottom, do all his grocery shopping, pick up his clothes from the dry cleaners and buy…
I snap my eyes back to his. “Buying condoms ?” I shake my head at him. “I’m not doing that.” I can’t imagine going to the drugstore to buy Magnum triple X size condoms, and I don’t want to. I always thought that’s the kind of thing a guy should do.
“Don’t you believe in safe sex?” His gaze flicks up and down, taking me in with that fascination I hate. “Or maybe it’s that you don’t like condoms.”
“I’m not buying condoms for you. And every week ? What are you, some kind of manwhore?”
“No, I just like fucking.”
My cheeks burn and I know I’ve turned red. I’ve never been around anyone who spoke in such a crass way before. And he’s like this all the time. “I think you need to get your own.”
He chuckles. “Sorry, Lolita, you don’t have a choice in this. You’re supposed to serve me, remember? So if I want condoms, you get condoms.”
“Ugh, whatever .” God I hate my life. This is absolute fucking shit. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from doing whatever the hell I did to him.
I decided to take Annika and Mackenzie’s advice and stop asking him, but I still wish I knew.
I fold the list, push it into my little pocket, then head to the door. I’m done here.
“Don’t you have anything else to say to me, Lolita?”
I stop and turn back to face him. “No. I don’t. What did you expect me to say to you?”
“A thank you would be nice.”
I throw him an incredulous glare. “Are you serious?”
“Well, yes. You did set fire to a motorcycle that cost me over seventy thousand dollars. It had modifications I can’t just replace.”
“You destroyed my sculpture and my chance to get into Cambridge. And you’re not even coming clean. People think I’m crazy.”
“That’s not exactly the same thing.”
“To me it is. An eye for an eye.”
He walks up to me, moving way too close. So close I can smell the musky sweat on his body.
He reaches for a lock of my hair and we both watch the ends curl around his thumb. I move away from his touch but he grabs my arm and pulls me back.
Now I’m even closer.
“You could be in jail right now, Isabelle.” He says my name as if he’s stroking each syllable with his tongue, his tone is filled with a hint of possession. “You could be sitting in a cold cell shaking with worry about what’s going to happen to you. But I dropped the charges.”
“I won’t thank you, because I’m not sorry.”
My answer seems to amuse him. A spark of humor creeps into his eyes and dances with the fragments of desire I can clearly read.
He’s doing that thing again. Another mannerism I’ve picked up. It’s when he looks at me like he hates me but his eyes tell a different story.
Kade stares into my eyes, his thinning gaze rooting me in place. “I’m not sorry either, Lolita. I’d destroy your sculpture all over again just to keep you here.”
Those selfish words yank me back to my furious state and I feel even more enraged. Of course he’s not sorry for what he did. He’s an asshole so he must have enjoyed every second of bashing my sculpture to hell and destroying my artwork.
“I know you’re not.” I nod firmly. “That’s why I hate you.”
His eyes regain that scary cold edge and he tightens his grip around my arm. “You wish you hated me, Lolita, but you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” I speak with the conviction of a general launching into battle.
A moment passes between us when I think he’s going to drop the argument but then he shakes his head and looks at me as though he can see beyond my words.
Like he can see deep inside me to the place where my truth resides.
“No, Isabelle. You might hate what I do and everything I did, but me… you don’t hate me.”
I don’t like the way he sounded. He was too sure. Too right.
I don’t want him to believe he has anything over me, even knowing my deepest thoughts.
I’m about to refute him with another lie, but Kade silences me by pressing his hard body into mine. Before the next second passes he swoops down to capture my lips for that kiss we never had the other day.
Every nerve in my body stills and stands on end, then sparks of electricity dance under my skin and I go up in flames.
I’m so astounded to have his lips on mine that the realization leaves me paralyzed with shock.
I want to be enraged, slap him again like the other day and run far away from the desire numbing my mind. But I can’t keep my body from responding to this.
The girl inside me who used to want him is holding me captive and she won’t let me fight. All she wants me to do is feel. Feel the moment we both daydreamed about for what felt like eons.
The kiss is more than I thought it would feel like and better than any I’ve ever had.
The fire ripples through my soul when Kade presses his cock between my thighs and God help me, I lose myself.
When a little moan slips from my lips he slides his tongue through the seam of my mouth. It strokes mine the way I would imagine him eating me out.
The so-not-like-me thought makes my clit throb and I relish the feeling. It’s a sweet luxuriating sensation that’s different from touching myself, and he hasn’t even touched me there.
Suddenly I’m embarrassingly wet and my pussy aches with a need that leaves me feeling faint and limp as a ragdoll.
I sink into the hard planes of his body and he catches my face, slipping his hand under my chin to deepen the kiss.
He swallows my moans and feeds me more hungry kisses that I can’t resist.
Even though I know I should.