Chapter 16
Sixteen
Damien
It’s been hours since I delivered Blair into the hands of her father’s campaign people.
My original intention was to spend the afternoon running errands, checking on my house, and taking advantage of a few free hours in Wyngate. Those plans were forgotten, however, in the wake of recent events.
Instead, I found myself parked and waiting in a line of dark SUVs behind the shelter where the Porters are making their appearance. For hours now, I’ve been sitting in silence, struggling to make sense of what the fuck is happening, and getting no closer to the answers.
Blowing out a rocky breath, I rake my hand through my hair, staring at the rain-soaked windshield before me, without truly seeing it.
I could handle Blair insulting me.
I could handle her lack of discipline.
Fuck me, I could even take her defying and undermining me at every possible opportunity.
What I can’t stand, the development that has me questioning every choice I’ve made thus far, is wanting her.
The relationship I have with Blair is unlike any other I’ve had in my life. I’ve never dreaded seeing someone, while yearning for it too. No one has driven me out of my mind the way she has.
My only defense was denial, and I clung to it for so long. Even as the tides rose higher and higher, I held my ground, clinging to the utter, deluded certainty that I couldn’t possibly want her.
It was a mistake. A massive, earth-shattering mistake that I didn’t realize I’d made, until the woman I couldn’t possibly want was on my lap in a public dressing room, wearing little more than scraps of paper-thin cotton.
This entire situation has gotten so wildly out of hand. I need to correct course, to get us back into professional, neutral territory, but after what happened this afternoon… How?
Space would be ideal, but as desperately as I need to escape her presence, there is no way of doing that.
Not today, at least. A quick glance at the dashboard confirms today’s event will wrap up soon, but afterward, there’s her family’s scheduled dinner at their Wyngate residence.
Only once that’s over will we be permitted to leave the city and spend nearly four hours in a darkened car together for the drive back to Thornhurst.
It feels as if I’m being conspired against, as though the universe has been quietly putting things in motion, setting me up to fail. Again.
With a rough growl of frustration, my fist comes down on the dashboard, rattling the panel violently, and I slump back in the seat, my chest heaving.
There is no more time to grapple with this, however, because out in the alleyway, I hear the sound of muffled voices. Beyond the rain streaming over the windshield, indistinct, shadowy figures appear, moving around.
Closing my eyes, I brace myself and reach forward to turn the key in the ignition. The engine has barely come to life before the passenger side door is ripped open without warning, and Blair throws herself into the seat beside mine. She pulls it closed behind herself, not looking at me.
I stare at her profile through the semi-darkness, and at the way tension radiates from every line of her body, like she’s waiting to be attacked.
For a moment, the only sound is the quiet rumble of the engine and the rhythmic fall of raindrops atop the vehicle.
“I’d like to go back to Thornhurst now,” Blair tells me, her voice calm and determinately steady.
Something is wrong.
Steeling myself, I tear my gaze away from her, reaching out to turn on the windshield wipers. “You have dinner at your parents’ house.”
Even not looking at her directly, I see the way she shrinks in on herself, and when she finds her voice again, it’s only for a single word. “Please.”
A deep, violent ache spreads outward from the center of my chest.
I want to give her what she needs, to bundle her up and get her as far away from these people as possible, but—even discounting the shit I’d get for allowing her to skip the dinner—that isn’t something I can do.
Now, more than ever, I need to maintain my professionalism and authority over this woman.
Allowing her to believe that pulling what she did earlier might get her what she wants is a dangerous precedent to set, and I can’t allow it.
“You don’t make the rules,” I hiss, hating myself, and my muscles are stiff as I put the car in drive.
I half hope she’ll argue, but she doesn’t.
Lights gleam on the rain-soaked hood of the car, casting brief patches of light on the silent woman beside me as we make our way across Wyngate to her parents’ house.
It’s located barely five miles from the shelter where they spent the afternoon, but might as well be another world entirely.
The farther we drive, the more the city transforms, giving way from overflowing trash bins to sleek, marble facades and luxury storefronts.
And as we go, Blair Porter transforms, too.
I watch it happen out of the corner of my vision. I see her lift her chin and steel her expression, see as she pushes her shoulders back and sweeps her rain-dampened hair off her face.
The wound in my chest pulses painfully as I realize she is donning the same armor she so often wears for me, gathering all her strength to pretend, and I know—I know too fucking well—how much it costs her to keep it up.
We turn onto her parents’ street, and I see the towering stone townhouse up ahead, all lit up, yet still so cold.
Fuck.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel as I try to remember the reasons I need to stop the car and let her out. If I’m going to make it through another seven months at the end of the earth, locked up with this woman I can no longer pretend I don’t want, I need to stop.
It’s a tiny movement, barely anything at all, to move my foot from the gas to the brakes.
I can’t do it, though.
We drive by the house, and Blair turns in her seat to look at me. “It was back there,” she whispers, and there is no hope in her words, as if she knows better than to expect kindness from me.
Swallowing my guilt, I keep my attention focused on the road, taking us farther and farther from our intended destination. “Are you sure you want to go? You look sick to me.”
As quiet as it is in the car, I can hear her breath catch. “I—yes. Yes, I’m sick.”
“Okay, then.”
There is no more discussion.
We stop at a gas station about halfway back to Thornhurst.
Blair goes inside, while I stand at the pump, staring off into the stretch of unlit field across the road. We’ve long since left the city behind, and after driving through the darkness, everything feels surreal under the shop’s bright, fluorescent exterior lights.
It’s nothing, however, compared to the muddling effect of the woman who steps out of the shop’s glass door, holding a brown paper bag in one arm.
Blair’s gaze meets mine over the roof of the car, and my heart stalls as I watch her step off the curb, crossing the empty parking area in calm, measured steps.
She isn’t wearing any of the day’s luxury clothing purchases—which I barely remember loading into the trunk—but a very ordinary sweater and skirt that she’d changed into before we went to the shelter.
Nothing has changed.
I need to keep my distance.
Even acknowledging the sliver of humanity I’ve seen in her, Blair still represents everything I turned my back on. She is making me do things, say things, become a person I don’t recognize, and—my god—it infuriates me. The things she makes me feel, jumbled together and all at once, are infuriating.
I hate that she has that power over me.
I hate the overwhelming, all-consuming urgency of it, which demands I do something before it swallows me whole.
I hate her. It’s the only possible word, the only possible emotion strong enough for what she does to me, and yet, somehow, it still isn’t enough.
Something reckless and fierce is rising inside me as she draws nearer, growing more powerful with each beat of my pulse. The fuel pump clicks off under my palm, but I don’t move, watching as Blair moves around the back of the car, coming to a stop just before me.
Neither of us looks away, and her lips curve in a silent challenge as she reaches into the paper bag.
As focused as I am on her, it takes me a moment to register what she’s holding out.
It’s a miniature travel container of pretzels, in the brand and flavor I like, but rarely bother buying.
In fact, since we met, I’ve had them only once.
They’d been sitting on my desk the time she’d come by the security office, complaining about the noise from the electrician.
The oxygen vanishes from my lungs.
With a noise like a snarl, I close the distance between us, sending her purchases clattering to the ground. My hands find her face, and suddenly, I’m guiding her pointed chin up, angling those perfect fucking lips for me to kiss them.
If anyone could call it a kiss.
It’s harsh and demanding and fast. Within a second, I’ve turned us, pressing her into the car with my body. In the next, my tongue is teasing the seam of her lips, and I swallow her noise of shock as the taste of her—honey and apples and Blair—floods my senses.
There’s no stopping this.
All the want I tried for so long to ignore has been released, surging over us both in an overwhelming, inescapable wave.
She’s touching my arms, my chest, my neck, her fingers twisting in my hair.
I’m crushing our bodies together, devouring her without a thought of teasing or finesse, driven by the same reckless, fierce need that rose inside me when she stepped outside.
Her teeth graze my lip, and I hear myself groan, pressing my cock into her belly.
There’s heat, so much heat, and in this moment, I would do anything to be inside her. Would, quite literally, commit a crime if it meant I could tear away the barriers between us and fuck her, raw, hard, and dirty.
She likes it that way. I know she likes it that way.
The longer this goes on, I’m pulled farther from my reservations, my common sense, my own goddamn mind. I am—quite literally—lost. The only thing I know is her, and the illogical certainty that Blair needs this as deeply as I do.
Every noise of pleasure, every throb of pain, the pressure against my aching cock…
And then, before I can even brace myself for the end, it’s over.
The crunch of tires filters back to me through my lust-muddled mind, and I tear myself off her, throwing myself back into the corner of the fuel pump.
Chest heaving, I stare at Blair. She’s still leaning against the side of the SUV and gazes back at me through wide pupils, her kiss-swollen lips parted in shock. Headlights beam over us both as another vehicle pulls into one of the neighboring spots, and still neither of us moves.
Nearby, a chorus of doors slams shut, and a gaggle of teenage boys walks past us into the shop, casting sly, approving looks in our direction.
Fuck. Fuck.
“Get in the car,” I tell her, and my voice is so rough I hardly recognize it.
Blair blinks, her fingers drifting to touch her lips, as though checking she can still feel me there and that it was real. “What—”
I shake my head mutely and tear my eyes away, staring at the scattered snacks at our feet as I scramble to get myself together. “The car,” I say again, the words just as rough as they were seconds ago. Clearing my throat, I try again, “Please, just get in the car, Blair.”
She doesn’t respond this time, and I turn away, busying myself with the fuel pump while Blair stoops to scoop up the fallen food.
Neither of us says a word as we get back in our respective seats.
The mundane sounds of bags crinkling and seatbelts being clicked back in fill the silence, but none of it is louder than my own racing thoughts.
I did this. Me. Nobody else is responsible for such an epic lapse in control, and my chest burns with an unsettling emotion that should be regret but isn’t.
Blair sets the container of pretzels in the cupholder between us, and I start the engine, still not daring to look at her. I’m reaching for the gear change when the noise of a phone vibrating fills the darkened space.
Grateful for something else to focus on, I seize the device from the center console, but my heart drops when I read the notifications.
“What is it?” demands Blair, who has obviously seen my shock register.
The rush of adrenaline that came from kissing her had only just receded and is now flooding my system once again. Jaw tight, I put the car in drive, pulling out onto the road at a much faster speed than I would ordinarily.
“Damien,” Blair prompts again, a note of panic in her voice now.
I let out a long, determinately steady breath, staring at the dark road ahead. “Somebody broke into Thornhurst.”