Endgame

Chapter 17 Aurora

AURORA

“Nothing.” After I force my lungs to work, the flippant response practically rolls off my tongue.

He thinks he can just march in here and scare me? After making me feel small and unimportant for more than a day?

No fucking way.

“Aurora.”

“What are you doing here?” I turn to my new husband, my chin held high. “Aren’t you busy avoiding me?”

Everett raises an eyebrow, leaning on the doorframe. A flicker of something unreadable crosses his face, but he doesn’t speak.

Damn him. Damn him and his casual jeans and T-shirt; how well they fit him. Those veins cording his lean forearms, making my body buzz for him.

Straightening my spine, I look him dead in the eye.

His expression changes until he’s fixing me with a glare.

This doesn’t feel like he’s taunting me back. The air in the room is so thick it makes me heady. Everett’s eyes have never looked more terrifying. I can tell he’s mad, even from a distance.

I bet he’d never looked at her like that. At the girl who, if I really think about it, reminds me of myself. Obviously, he knew her well.

A pang of something sharp and ugly twists in my chest. Not jealousy this time, but dread.

She’s not that much younger than he is. And since he’s forty-one…

Could she have been my…

My mom?

Bile rises in my throat.

No. My mother left me. I’m sure she had her reasons. I’m sure she loved me, but just couldn’t keep me.

I’m sure of that.

That’s how I know the girl in the photos isn’t her.

Judging from these pictures, even if she was just a family friend of the Alders, she wasn’t alone in the world.

They would’ve been there for her, had she needed help.

But she isn’t here, and I was raised by the Clarkes, so she couldn’t have been my mom.

It was a crazy idea.

This glowering man and this mansion are my reality.

He’s a threat, and I’d do well to remember that.

“Aurora, so help me—”

“No. So help me.”

It isn’t a hardship to fake my bravery. I am kind of pissed at him for locking me out of here. For ignoring me.

I raise one finger, starting to count his offenses. “You’ve forced me to marry you.”

“A merciful move.” He pushes off the doorway and shuts the door behind him. “Offering you this place, instead of a prison cell.” He gestures around the room, his house. “Seems fair to me.”

“You collared me.” Second finger up. Third for—“You zapped me, husband.”

“You belong to me.” He shrugs as if that explains everything. I’m boiling on the inside. “And you were being a brat.”

“Then, you made me…” My voice cracks. Fuck. “You made me have sex with you. To do other things.”

“We already had this talk. We’re married.

That’s the end of the line for you.” He shrugs, careless.

“Funny though. I remember you begging me to make you come. Demanding me to tell you where I’d been because of how much you missed me.

So spare me the bullshit, Aurora. You don’t get to rewrite any of it. ”

Everett crosses the room toward me, going silent.

I’m just as quiet. I’m too embarrassed and way too turned on to say another word.

My thighs clench under his intense gaze. The pressure from the butt plug enhances my sad state of arousal.

“You came all over my cock.” He’s closer now. His presence takes up the entire room. “You took my cock down your throat and came while sucking me off too. Didn’t feel all that forced to me.”

I swallow hard and school my face into something neutral. For as long as I can manage, my unhinged husband won’t get the satisfaction of seeing what he’s doing to me.

The six feet between us are now three, two, one.

I shriek when his hand lashes around my throat. When he guides me away from the pictures.

“You.” He slams me against one of his bookshelves.

He bends so our faces are only a couple of inches apart.

I’d put my hands on top of his, try to push him away, but fuck. The possessiveness of his grip makes me needy.

“You’re upset because I fed you?” Everett’s eyes darken. He’s vibrating with anger that I don’t understand. Fighting with his attraction as if it offends him. “Because I gave you a warm bed to sleep in? Is it below your standards, princess? Answer me.”

“Oh, please.” My derisive huff is embarrassingly fake. My need seeps into my every word. “Your house is incredible.” Not to mention he isn’t locking me up in a basement. “We both know that.”

“So? Why are you giving me that attitude?” His voice is lower. Like he actually cares.

How dare he accuse me of anything when he’s taken so much from me?

I’m humiliated, needy, and a little desperate. I hate him.

I don’t.

“What attitude?” I’m being a brat, giving him exactly what he deserves.

Hoping he’d like it.

“I’m being generous.” A jerk of his hips, and I’m pinned between the bookshelf and his hard cock. “I don’t even punish you as much as I’d planned on. Yet here you are, complaining. Breaking into rooms I have locked for a reason.”

His minty breath is hot on my skin. His cock throbs against my stomach.

Shame and something darker war inside me. I squeeze my eyes shut. Can’t take any more of this.

“Answer me.”

When I open them, I nearly choke on my emotions.

Why does this man, this person who used to be happy at one point in his life, hate me?

What’s so wrong with me that I’m this unlovable?

“I gave you a place to stay.” He seethes. “Away from those fuckers you call parents.”

“Fuck my parents.”

His thumb strokes my collar. His other hand slips to his jeans.

The remote is out.

“Ouch!” Jesus fuck, he zapped me. Me and him, since his hand is still on my collar.

My eyes widen at the realization.

Despite the pain he must feel, Everett groans in pleasure.

Rocks his hips into me.

Forcing me to like it. I always do.

“Fuck them and fuck you.” I lean in to bite his lip.

I want him to bleed, to hurt. I want to taste him.

But he’s quicker, pulling away. “You gave me nothing. Just pain. Avoiding me, hiding these books from me? Promising me I’d commit to—a job, right?

You’ve never told me what it was. We never actually talked about it. You lied, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Stop lying.” I’m struggling to talk, my desire and desperation for him locking my throat. “If nothing else, give me this. Just let me work.”

As soon as the word work leaves my mouth, Everett’s delicious grinding, his low groans, they’re gone.

The fire in his expression isn’t there. In its place, there’s confusion.

A crease between his eyebrows. A myriad of questions on his face.

“That, and let me have this room.” He hasn’t refused me yet. I have to try, have to keep fighting him, as risky as it is. “Let me spend time here. Don’t lock it up.”

“Repeat that for me.”

“I’m asking you to keep this room unlocked.”

“Not that,” he snaps, pressing tighter against me.

Now it’s my turn to be confused. “I want to work?”

The creases on his forehead deepen.

He says nothing.

“I won’t pry. I won’t look at your pictures.” I slide my gaze to the collage on my side. Back to Everett. “I’m desperate to read, I’m lonely. You won’t talk to me. You hardly come near me. At the very least, you could let me read. Let me be here when you don’t…”

“When I don’t fuck you.”

“Yes.” My thighs clench without my permission. The shameful need for friction is eating me alive.

“Okay,” he says.

“You can’t do this to me.” I launch into an argument I’d always lose with my parents.

They’d flip the lock, and that was that.

“I have the right to get a job. For fuck’s sake, I’m a human being.

I should be able to get out of this house.

I should be allowed to read something other than math textbooks or—”

“Aurora.” My body is thrust harder into the bookshelves.

Everett presses his thumb beneath my chin, tilting my head up. Staring down at me.

The shift in him is so small, but it takes my breath away.

“I said okay.” He makes me gasp, the bastard. Makes my heart flutter. “You can work and spend time here, in this room. The photo collage is off-limits. The whole corner over there is. Other than that, fine. I won’t lock it up.”

The need to hug him is explosive. My arms itch to fold around him.

I go up and down on my tiptoes, readying myself to jump at him.

And stop myself. I’ve been around controlling assholes for the past twenty-two years. There’s a caveat somewhere. There’s always a caveat.

“So.” I flatten both hands on the books behind me, steeling my heart against more pain. “Do I still start tomorrow?”

“Yes, though it won’t be a real job.”

My eyebrows shoot down.

“I said a commitment. A commitment you’ll treat as a job,” he speaks up before I have a chance to slip in a word, before I argue.

“A driver will take you there five days a week, six hours each day. You’ll do it voluntarily, this commitment that I’ve chosen for you.

Just this one. It’s not up for discussion. ”

“I’ll go. Every day, I swear.” Getting paid isn’t the issue. Meeting new people, socializing, evolving as a person…it’s the dream. “Where is it?”

“At the nearest hospital.” An evil glint shimmers in his eyes. He’s no longer compassionate or mad.

He’s pleased.

Strange.

I mean, this is good. Helping people. I can get behind that. Scratch that, I’m fucking pumped. What isn’t he telling me?

“Okay, cool.” My smile is hesitant. The caveat, I feel it coming. “I’ll volunteer there as…?”

His thumb strokes my jaw. A menacing touch. “A baby cuddler. Only with babies who were sent there for a few hours from orphan homes in the area.”

Two sentences. A bunch of words.

And my world comes crashing down on me.

Everett watches intently as my face crumples. My lips quiver. Hot tears prickle the corners of my eyes.

My empty stomach revolts, but I have nothing to throw up.

“No.” I grab the front of his T-shirt, twisting the fabric in my hands.

“No. Please. You must know I was left at my parents’ doorstep.

Alone. I needed someone”—a real someone, not my awful adoptive parents—“to hug me and love me. If you send me there, all I’ll think about is how helpless I was.

How no one was there for me. How no one will ever be there for me. Please, Everett.”

The look of confusion on his face gives me hope. Then his jaw tics. His shoulders tense.

The wall is up. “My decision is final.”

“I’m begging you.” Tears roll down my cheeks, landing on his hand. “You don’t have to be this cruel. Use me. Fuck me. Do anything. Not this. I haven’t even stepped foot in that hospital, and it hurts everywhere.”

“Don’t care.”

“You…”

Yesterday’s breakfast flashes before my eyes. He got off on me being on all fours.

On me crawling.

With my last ounce of strength, I rip his hand off me, move to the side. Drop to my hands and knees.

Beneath his cruel gaze, I inch as close as possible to him.

My fingertips are at his feet. My sanity is too.

“Get.” He grabs me by the hair, pulling me off the floor. I’m backed up against the shelves. “Up.”

My hair is released. My chin is in his grip.

“Why? It would crush me, Everett.” I’m blabbering. I’m sobbing. “It would really, really hurt me. Can’t you see that? You can’t be that cruel. You aren’t that cruel.”

“I am who I am.”

The slice of humanity I saw in him? It isn’t there.

I’ve been fooling myself again.

“I won’t change.” His free hand wraps around my wrists. “I won’t fucking change, do you hear me?”

“I’m not asking you to change.” In a last-ditch effort to save my sanity, I pull our hands up to his face. His scruff is scratchy beneath my fingertips. “I’m begging you to be compassionate. Please.”

Briefly, he turns his lips to my hands. Presses them to my knuckles.

I hold my breath.

“My compassion, or any other soft emotion I had, was stolen from me.” He backs up, leaving me shocked, grasping the books behind me to hold myself up. “I have none left. You will go tomorrow. You will cuddle those babies. This isn’t a request. It’s an order.”

“But—” I start.

He’s already at the door, slamming it behind him.

Leaving me alone again, with my pussy wet, my heart broken, and my life the same as it’s always been.

Fucked.