14. Maeve
CHAPTER 14
MAEVE
I’m humiliated, and this hurts.
Not much else runs through my mind as we take the final turns that lead to a tall building on the edge of town. I don’t doubt that my picture and that quote will be all over the gossip magazines tomorrow morning and on the website by tonight.
This type of thing happens to heiresses all the time. People have an interest in old money. My ballet career is lightly reported, but since I’m not particularly scandalous, I don’t get much air time. That’s about to change. Everyone is going to hear how I married him, how I begged him to eat me out and called him my stepbrother.
That’s the easy part. That’s nothing compared to the truth he’s leveled me with—that my father knew all about his mother’s illness and tossed her away rather than helping her. That he was dating, working, and living his life while she was denied medical care he could have easily paid for.
I knew they had an ironclad prenup, but I never knew money had anything to do with why they split. How privileged of me to never assume she needed help. How small and shallow and awful of me to show up at her door when she needed help all along and no one would give it to her.
My stomach churns as he parks his car in a spot marked reserved, and I can’t bear the thought of him touching me. It’s not because he makes me sick and I hate him. Even though I really should, I don’t. I hate myself for everything he told me, the privileged life I lived while she died and he suffered. Well, maybe I’m not that big of a person because I fucking hate him too.
With that in mind, I push the door open and hop out before he’s got the car in park. His touch is the last thing I want, emotionally at least. My pussy is still hot and needy, begging for that release he wouldn’t give me and rubbing against my jeans with no panties in the way to protect me. I’ve never been such a combustible combination of sad, angry, and horny. I’m moments from losing my shit.
I expect him to chase me, but he doesn’t, taking his time stepping out and then locking it. Beat-up cars line the street. Several people sit along a wall, and their eyes flit between me and him getting out of the car. Several other vehicles on the street are broken into or missing tires and rims, but he doesn’t worry about leaving his there.
A sense of danger runs through me at their inspection, and I realize Diego lives in a much rougher part of town than his mother did. The garage I drop the cars at isn’t far from here. A man with a big scar on his face and a gun sitting on his waistband watches me from his spot in the center, and I decide I’d rather wait for Diego than run off without him, especially when there seems to be so much attention on us already.
He walks up beside me, slow and assured, and once again grabs my upper arm. Part of me hates it. It’s demeaning and forceful. Who the hell is he to treat me like this? The way he marches me is humiliating, and with how badly I want him to bend me over and keep fucking me?
We stroll past the men, and he’s far from concerned. I’d rather die right now than go inside his apartment. The doorman looks twice when Diego drags me in but doesn’t dare say more than a greeting.
“Good evening, Mr. Rodrigues.”
Diego pauses a moment and shakes me. “This is Mrs. Rodrigues.”
“Ah.” He looks me up and down, scrambling for the right thing to say. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Rodrigues.”
“Maeve,” I grit as Diego pulls me faster.
“Mrs. Rodrigues,” he corrects over my shoulder as he leads me to an open elevator and pushes me inside.
The door slides closed, and it’s just the two of us, the tension building in the small space. I can’t tell if it’s anger, sex, or both things morphing into one.
“Why are you so fucking pissed at me, Diego? This was your plan. You wanted revenge, and you’re getting it, so why aren’t you goddamn enjoying yourself?” He radiates tension, and I don’t understand what his problem is when I’m thoroughly humiliated and debased, when my public reputation is hours from ruin, and he owns me. We don’t even have a damn prenup, and I own no small amount of interest in my family’s companies.
He turns to look at me with true disgust in his eyes. “Why am I so pissed? Because now I’m fucking stuck with you.”
The words are a slap to the face, and I very nearly make a sound reflective of my pain. He asked me to marry him, he told me he would protect me, he promised I was helping him. So what if it was all a lie, and he actually wanted to make my father pay for all the pain he caused Miss Angie? So what? Why the hell did any of that require spending time with me when he didn’t want to?
I’m so fucking naive that even after everything he’s said and done, that still hurts.
The elevator opens onto a normal-looking hall, and he leads me to the end. He must have a corner apartment. The door opens, revealing a gorgeous but plainly decorated apartment that screams bachelor at the top of its lungs. Cool-toned tan, hunter green, or is that olive?
I don’t bother telling him what I think, and he doesn’t ask. He lets go of me, like the spot our skin touches is burning him, and he’s been dying to make it stop. The big living space sits to the left, the kitchen to the right, but I don’t get to look for long.
“Head straight down that hall.”
Something about his commanding tone forces me to listen. If I’m being totally honest with myself, I’m hoping if I’m very obedient, he’ll finish me off. I’m so horny I’m even willing to let him smack my clit until I come like he did the night before. The thought of it makes me crazy, and I nearly moan at the pulse in my clit as I walk and my legs rub together.
“Stop. Open that door.”
I do as he says, and he places his hand around the back of my neck much like he did in the storage closet to push me inside.
“Since when are you so fucking obedient?” His derision breaks the spell, and it’s painfully obvious he has no intention of finishing what he started. He left me this way on purpose for his own sick enjoyment.
The room is simple and ultimately not terrible. There’s a TV mounted on the wall, a bed, two doors, and I assume that means one of them is a bathroom. Of course it’s a lot smaller than my own room and not as highly appointed, but if he’s aiming to punish me, he isn’t doing a great job.
He doesn’t leave right away, so I go to sit on the bed and get myself acquainted with the space. Maybe he’ll change his mind and fuck me again. I wouldn’t mind that, and if he doesn’t, I plan to fall apart once he’s gone anyway. I mean, really, how much is any one person expected to take?
He goes to the dresser and pulls out a remote, fiddling with it until an odd ambient sound fills the entire room.
“Give me your phone,” he says once he’s done.
“No.”
“Give it to me, or I’ll send you the magazines in the morning.”
I grind my teeth as I reach into my pocket and hand it to him. The last thing I want to do is read what people are saying about me.
“Enjoy,” he says mildly as he leaves me sitting there.
Of course, he closes the door and locks it. I barely entertain the idea I might be able to escape. He doesn’t seem like the type of man who would make such a simple mistake. And where the hell would I go now?
I’ll sleep for now. My exhaustion is a bone-deep thing, especially with all the awful things I learned today, and if I don’t rest now, I’ll never find a way to escape him.
The strange noise seems to be coming from the speaker system, and it continues for a few more seconds before I recognize his thick and heady voice from the night before. He didn’t just record the part he played for the camera crew; he recorded the entire nasty scene where I begged and then he ate me out.
I listen through once in stunned shock, not doing anything. Then when it starts to loop again, I scream at the top of my lungs. Flying into action, I rip the damn room apart, looking for the speakers, but I don’t find them. All I manage to do is exhaust and hurt myself.
By the fifth time it plays, I’m so goddamn horny that I give up. I lie down flat on the bed and fuck my own fingers to the filthy and delicious sounds of Diego’s voice. I hate him. I want to come on his cock. I pity him .
I’m not sure where the lost thought comes from, but I do. I come around my own fingers feeling my heart yearning to comfort him, but it only lasts so long as my orgasm, and when I come back to myself, I smash the shit out of the rest of his stuff as a way to vent my rage, and the powerlessness of my situation.
I hate to admit that my fingers didn’t do the trick, and I’m still desperate to ride him.
“Motherfucker!” I shout at the top of my lungs, hoping to get a rise out of him, but he never comes.