Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Nathalie
The phone is what wakes me. It is ringing from somewhere beside my head and my head is a block of pain. I am lying down and the ceiling above me is unfamiliar and it takes me several seconds of blinking to assemble these facts into anything coherent.
I groan and push myself upright, which my body objects to strongly, and I pat the surface beside me until my hand finds the phone.
I accept the call without looking at the screen.
"Miss Keller." Gerald's voice comes. "Where are you at present?"
Before I can answer there is a rustling and a sharp intake of breath and then my father's voice fills the phone so completely that I have to hold it away from my ear.
"Where are you?" he says. "Do you have any idea what time it is? Do you have any idea what has happened? How could you just disappear in the middle of the night without a word to anyone, you ungrateful—"
"What happened?" I ask. My voice comes out rough and slow, still dragging itself up from wherever the drug left it.
"What happened?" He repeats it like he cannot believe the question is being asked.
"Your cousin and James were found on the side of the road in the early hours of this morning.
In their underwear. Your fiancé is in the ICU with two broken legs and your cousin is in the hospital and there are photographs, Nathalie, photographs all over the internet of them tied together on the pavement like animals and the press has them and I have spent the last three hours trying to contain the damage and you dare to ask me what happened? !"
I sit with the phone to my ear and I listen to him and I look at the unfamiliar ceiling.
"Do you know anything about this?" he demands. "Answer me."
I end the call and I sit there for a moment.
Then I open my phone and I go online and I find the photographs in seconds because they are everywhere.
Alana and James are on a pavement, ambulance lights behind them, both in their underwear, James's face a documented testament to a very bad evening, Alana with her mascara destroyed and her hair in what I can only describe as the aftermath of a significant ordeal.
The headline on the first article reads:
Senator Hartley's Son and Mystery Woman Found Injured Outside Manhattan Hotel.
I look at the photographs again then I close my phone and I look around the room properly for the first time.
It is not a hotel room. The ceiling is high, the furniture is dark and the window shows a brownstone across the street. It's a private building rather than a commercial one.
Where am I? How did I get here?
I remember falling through a door and arms catching me and looking up and—
Was it real?
Was it actually him or was that the drug, was that my brain producing the thing it most wanted to see in the moment before everything went dark?
The door opens and Luca comes in wearing a dark suit waistcoat with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, the tattoos running the length of his forearms, and he is carrying a tray with a bowl on it and he looks at me and he says,
"You're awake."
My heart leaps.
He sits down in the chair beside the bed and he picks up the bowl. He stirs it and he holds it out toward me saying, "Porridge."
I take it from him before he can feed me because I have some dignity left, a small amount, and I intend to protect it.
"Thank you," I say. I am doing everything to look as unaffected by him as I can.
I blow on a spoonful and eat it. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face. I stare at the bowl and I say, without looking up, "Thank you for saving me." I pause. "I don't know how you came or why you were there but thank you."
He says nothing.
I eat another spoonful, I have no appetite at all, the porridge tastes like warm nothing and my head is still aching. I need to stop fighting with the urge to look at me, he just helped me because I was in a bad situation and maybe he happened to be close enough to hear the commotion.
My father is furious, I need to get up and go back to face whatever is waiting for me there because it is mine to face, and sitting here is not going to make it smaller.
I set the bowl on the nightstand and I stand up.
The legs are unsteady but I grip the nightstand and breathe through it. Then I stand up fully, I pick up my phone and my purse then I look for my shoes. I find one under the bed and I cannot find the other one.
"Where are you going?" He is standing now too.
"Home," I say. "My father is angry and I need to—"
"You're still weak."
"I'll call a taxi." I look around for the second shoe.
"Do you know where you are?"
I look at the window and I ask, "Where am I?"
"One of my properties," he says. "In New York."
I find the second shoe under the chair, I pick it up and I hold both shoes in one hand and I look at him and I say,
"Thank you. I need to go now."
"You can't go yet."
"Why not?"
"Because you were drugged." He says it and something changes in his face. "You were drugged, Nathalie. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what they were planning to do to you?"
I look at him. His jaw is set and his eyes are very green.
"What do you care?" I ask in answer.
He breathes in. "Stay here," he says. "I'll take care of you."
I feel something crack open in my chest that I promptly push back down and seal over.
"No thank you. I would rather not get drugged again."
"I would never do that."
The laugh that comes out of me is not a happy one. "You won't?" I say. "That's interesting. Because I remember fucking you and begging you to keep me, then waking up in a hospital bed with my father glaring at me."
I feel the tears coming but I refuse them. "We made love all night, Luca. I begged you to keep me. I told you I wanted to stay and you looked me in the eye and you put something in my drink and you threw me away like I meant absolutely nothing to you."
"Nathalie, listen to me—"
"No." I wipe my face with the back of my hand and I will not cry in front of him.
"Thank you for last night. I'll compensate you for any trouble. I have to go now."
I walk to the door.
"Back to the den of wolves?"
I stop.
He is behind me, I can hear it, and I don't turn around but I stop walking.
"Your fiancé and your cousin planned this together," he says.
"They put enough of that drug in your wine to knock out someone twice your size.
If I hadn't happened to be in that building tonight you would have woken up in a situation you couldn't have recovered from easily. " He pauses. "Do you understand that?"
I turn around.
"So what?" I say. "It's my business. It's my life."
"You're handling it badly."
"That has nothing to do with you. It's my fiancé and my life and none of it has anything to do with you!"
He drags his tattooed hand over his face in the way he does when he is containing something.
"Do you love him?" he asks. His voice is very quiet and very direct.
This becomes about the last small piece of pride that is left to me, and I say, clearly and without flinching, "Yes."
I keep my face very still. Luca comes to me and pins me to the wall before I realize it and his mouth bites into mine. He bites my lower lip hard enough to sting, forcing my mouth open so his tongue can push inside.
One hand grabs my hair, yanking my head back, while the other grips my waist, holding me immobile against the wall.
I kick against his legs, trying to push him away, but he only lifts me off the floor, carrying me to the bed while still kissing me.
My feet kick uselessly in the air. He drops me onto the mattress and pins me down with the full weight of his body, still kissing me.
We break apart, both of us red-faced and gasping for air.
"Say it again," he orders, voice low and dangerous. "Say that you love him one more time."
A tear slides down my cheek. "Why are you so angry? Don't you have a woman that you love?"
He swallows hard.
"You can't even deny it," I whisper. "So why are you so angry?"
He grabs my face with both hands, thumbs pressing into my cheeks. "Because you belong to me."
He begins kissing my neck hungrily, his teeth sink into my skin, sending sparks of pain that melt instantly into throbbing pleasure. His scent floods my senses.
Why won't he keep me if I belong to him? Tears flow freely down my face now.
He stops suddenly and looks up. Horror flickers across his features at the sight of my tears. "Nathalie, I am sorry."
I grab his collar with both hands, pulling him closer through the tears. "Don't stop, or I'll fucking hate you. Remind me that I belong to you."
I look at his lips, at his face, and begin undoing the buttons of his shirt with trembling fingers. He catches my hands, stopping me.
I laugh through the tears. "Don't you want me anymore?"
He wipes my eyes gently with his thumbs. "Why wouldn't I want you, princess?"
I want to believe his lies one last time. I know his heart lies with another woman. I had greedily tried to force him to accept me. Now I understand I have no place in his life. But one last time, I want him, so I stroke his face. "Fuck me like you did the first time."
He strokes my eyes, my nose, my face with careful fingers. "You're ill, princess. You can't take it."
I whisper, "I guess I'll let my fiancé do it then."
Instantly his hand wraps around my throat and he kisses me hard. The taste of him floods my mouth as his tongue pushes deeper, stroking against mine.
I've missed this taste, this heat. I'm terrified he'll pull away again, that this is the last time I'll ever feel him. My fears twist tight in my chest even as heat pools in my belly.
He pins me down, ripping the pink dress down my body until my breasts are free.
My nipples are already tight. I hold onto him tightly.
I miss him — the feel of him, his tongue, his mouth.
It isn't mine to own, but I want it so badly.
My hands finish undoing his shirt and wrap around his bare back, his skin already wet with heat.