Chapter 16 Open Up
SIXTEEN
OPEN UP
DALLAS
For a moment, I think she’s going to pretend it didn’t happen. God, I hope that’s what she does. The mirror is fogged with our breath, her fingerprints smeared across the glass where she braced herself while I made her watch us.
Watch me.
Watch the way she moved against me like her body remembers something her mind doesn’t, and it can be just me and Lucy and no one else.
For a moment, I think we’re okay, that she’s going to look past the way I lost my fucking shit all because she murmured the name of another man while I was inside of her.
It’s not her fault. How can it be? She doesn’t know better.
I had to introduce myself to her as Julian when I first told her I was her husband.
I had no other choice. After the patient advocate, her care team, and the cops confirmed that she was Lucy Wright—because, oh, something as simple as fingerprinting wouldn’t work when shit like that wasn’t done in Harmony Heights unless you get caught outside of it doing something you shouldn’t—all through her phone, it would take a quick look through online records to see that she was married to Julian Fairchild.
I was lucky that she didn’t question it when I gave her my real surname instead of his. Julian, though… she believed that was my name, and until right now, she’s never used it so I figured I was safe.
I never expected she would whimper it while I was fucking her—or that it would be a trigger that set me off.
Something inside of me snapped, and I did everything I could not to take it out on her.
I wouldn’t hurt her. I refuse to hurt her, but damn…
did it do a number on my heart to hear her call his name.
She told me to go ahead. That, for the moment, we could drop the subject, then talk about it later.
I was still throbbing inside of her, Lucy up on the tips of her toes so that she could take me, and though you’d think that would’ve been enough for me to lose my hard-on, it wasn’t.
She could still feel me stretching her out, and determined to please me even though I know I scared her, she bent over enough to entice me to finish.
And I did.
I did.
She didn’t.
Gripping her hips, holding her place as I fucked her, hoping that she could feel the apology caught in my throat in the way that I dug my fingers into her skin, pinning her in place, chasing the high that had been within our reach mere moments ago…
I fucked her and I came, and only after I slowed my rhythm to passive thrusts as she accepted every drop I had did I realize that—for the first time ever with Lucy—I finished before she even orgasmed once.
Feeling like a world-class jackass, I immediately offered to focus on her until she got some, too.
Did she want me to fuck her with my semi?
Finger her, using my come as lube? Eat her out again?
She found it scandalously wicked the first time that I eased on her back and ate my own jizz out of her pussy before making her come on my face.
I begged her to let me do it now, but Lucy…
shit. Lucy just stepped away from me, using her trembling fingers to smooth her nightie back down over her hips before she stumbled away from me on weak legs.
And I know then that I fucked up again, and no matter how much I hoped she’s look right past my freak-out, she’s not ready to do that. She still let me come first, but now that I have, she needs her distance.
How do I know that? Because, without even meeting my eyes, she stares down at the floor and murmurs, “I’m going to go take a shower.”
The words are so quiet, they break my motherfucking heart.
I swallow roughly. “Okay. I’ll come with you. Scrub your back for you.”
“No, thank you. I’ve got it.”
“Lucy—”
She doesn’t answer me. She just shakes her head slowly before walking out of the room.
Mom’s room.
I haven’t been in here since the day I put the urn on top of the dresser and closed the door behind me.
I know that the cleaning lady that Jack hired would come in here weekly to dust—otherwise it would’ve been too much of a closed-in mess for me to bring Lucy in here—but I put her on leave as soon as I knew that I was bringing Lucy home with me.
I’ve been paying her anyway, but I told Louise that I had a new guest that I wanted to be comfortable.
Once she was used to the penthouse, I would love for her to resume my duties.
It hasn’t been a month yet, not long enough to get too dirty so long as I send our laundry out to be done, and I don’t even think that Lucy noticed that this room was more of a shrine than an extra guestroom.
But that’s what it was. Up until I brough Lucy in here to show her Mom’s mirror and ended up losing control long enough to fuck Lucy in front of it is, that is…
I never got the chance to introduce Lucy to Mom.
I would’ve, I swear I would’ve, and it wasn’t because I didn’t believe that she would keep my secrets.
While she was alive, she kept all of them, but in Harmony Heights, it’s hard to keep any at all.
If Mom knew about Lucy, it wouldn’t be long before Jack found it, and I… I couldn’t do it.
I always knew I was fucked-up in the head. If all of the times I thought about just blowing my brains out weren’t enough of a clue to that, it was in how I thought it was a good idea to finally introduce Lucy to Mom by fucking her in her room, with her urn right there.
Now? I blow a kiss to the brass urn that I forced Jack to buy—because, if it was up to him, he would’ve left her in the box that her cremated remains were returned to us from the funeral home in—and go after Lucy, pausing just long enough to grab my jeans and stab my feet through the legs.
I can’t stop myself. Leaving the button and zipper undone, I shove my dick inside of my jeans and head toward the guest bathroom.
I tell myself not to take it personally when I see that the door is closed, that the water is already running.
Fuck that. It feels like, in the aftermath, all she wants to do is wash me off of her skin.
And that’s why I take one look at the doorknob and leave it alone. I don’t go in after her, not when she obviously doesn’t want me to.
Instead, cursing under my breath, I move past the door and keep going.
Apart from my bedroom, my private gym is the only other room in the penthouse that feels honest. That feels like me.
It isn’t much. The Fortress has a full, state-of-the-art commercial gym for Order members, but I’m not in the mood to walk in there and have every fucking Owed fawning over the King.
I have everything I need up here. A heavy, punching bag.
A weight bend. Free weights. Medicine balls and a jump rope.
I’m good.
Today, I target my old friend: the punching bag. Usually, I stop to tape up my hands, but I don’t bother. Why, when the only reason to do so would be to protect my knuckles, my wrists, the small bones of my hands?
I deserve the pain. I deserve to bleed.
The first punch snaps the chain tight. The second splits the skin across my knuckles, just like I expected.
By the fifth, blood slicks my fingers. That doesn’t stop me.
I keep hitting, the bag swinging wildly from the force of my punches.
The pain is sharp, yet simple. There’s more when the sweat dripping from my brow stings my eyes.
I spare a moment to brush my damp curls out of my face, staining my hair with fresh blood, then return to beating the leather.
My breath comes out in labored pants. I take a moment to steady it, sucking some of the blood from my knuckles.
The metallic taste is familiar. Grounding.
For a moment, the urge to continue beating the shit of the bag fades into an urge to grab it, hold it tight, and rest my sweaty forehead against it.
And that’s when I hear her.
“Dallas?”
Fuck.
I’m a mess. Wearing only my half-zipped jeans and blood everywhere, I’m a goddamn mess.
I try to wipe the blood on my pants, but all that does it smear it all over, making it worse.
Running my fingers through my hair, trying to at least get rid of the red there, I take a deep breath and turn around.
It’s Lucy. Of course it’s Lucy. She’s standing in the doorway, freshly dressed in a cream-colored sweater, a pair of dark brown leggings, her damp hair falling in ringlets around her frowning face.
“You’re bleeding.”
I shove my ruined hands into the back pockets of my jeans as I fall back on my heels. “Didn’t tape up. My mistake, but I’m fine.”
The look she gives me calls me on my bullshit. “You’re not fine. You’re angry.”
I am. At myself, not her, but how can I tell her the reason why when, to do so, I’d have to admit that I’ve been lying to her all along?
When I don’t say anything, she hesitantly enters the weight room. It’s gotta reek like sweat and testosterone, but she doesn’t give any indication that it disgusts her as she moves over to me.
“About earlier…”
I exhale roughly. “I’m sorry. I… shit, Luce.
I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I don’t blame you for needing to get away from me.
” She’s so close, I want to touch her, I want to stroke her cheek, I want to pluck one of her ringlets…
but if I did, she’d see how much I fucked up my knuckles, and I don’t want her to. “That’s not why I’m pissed.”
She knows why. “You told me your name was Julian.”
Lucy…
“But then I used your name, and you acted like I stabbed you or something. Now, I know it’s not your nickname, but I didn’t expect that reaction at all.”
Of course not. And I should’ve known better than to let my own issues affect Lucy when my Dandelion is already dealing with so much, but I… I lost control.
She knows why I flipped, but she doesn’t know why.
What can I say?
Because that name belongs to the man who took you from me?