“No, I can’t,” he says without hesitation, raking his mouth through my hair. “I’m already ruined and I like it. So I’m taking you to lunch, understand? Before I fuck you again and call you those names that make your pretty young cunt dripping wet, I’m going to make sure you know I respect you. You want to be my whore in bed, that’s fine. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t make me hard. But when we’re not in bed, you need to know you’re my princess. All right?”
Grief almost cracks me wide open. “But I’m not a princess.”
I’m a murderer.
Indirectly, at least.
I was in the car that hit and killed his sister. I should have been more insistent that my friend call an Uber. He could still have his sister if I’d been more responsible. Now I’m going to obsess this man to the point of madness, that way I’m obsessed with him?
It’s reprehensible.
“You’re my princess,” he says, leaning down to kiss my mouth slowly, thoroughly, a groan building deep inside his chest. “The sweetest, most beautiful one there is. And I need to know you. I need to fucking consume you.”
What else can I do but nod and let him suck a red mark onto my neck, my core tugging anxiously in response? What does a girl do when the object of her obsession offers her everything? A fortune beyond her wildest dreams? Answer: She can’t do anything but nod, letting her body go pliant against him, nearly in a faint. She makes a sobbing sound and lets him pick her up, cradle her protectively and carry her to his waiting Tesla. She tries to tell herself he’ll get over the infatuation soon. That she won’t ruin him completely.
And she’ll know she’s dead wrong.
Byron brings me to lunch at a private club. I’ve never been here, nor did I know it existed. He holds my hand on the way through a shaded courtyard, through a fence and into a stately looking brick building. An older gentleman in a suit greets us just inside the door and without a word, he guides us through a lounge area complete with billiard tables, low lighting and a smattering of members on their laptops. We’re brought to a small, intimate dining room located downstairs in a wine cellar. A table has been set up with white linens, candles, a bottle of wine.
Byron DeWitt arranged this lunch for me.
He came to my job and carried me here, refusing to take no for an answer. And now he’s holding a chair for me, looking for all the world like he can barely contain his hunger long enough to make it through this meal.
“On second thought.” He shoves the chair back into place and crosses to his own, sitting down and crooking a finger at me. “You’ll sit with me. Come here.”
Oh my God. I’m going to hyperventilate.
“It’s too much,” I rasp, hot shivers raking up and down my arms.
He watches me steadily, unblinking. “What is too much?”
“You being like this.” Like me. But out in the open.
“Do you want me to restrain it?” he asks. “This way you’ve made me feel about you?”
“No, I want it to run loose. That’s the problem.”
“You’re too late to stop it, Jane.” He’s breathing hard. “Come sit down.”
My mind is usually a palace of intensity, but it never spreads into real life. It feels like I’m living in one of my fantasies. It can’t be a dream, though. Everything is real. The smooth linen tablecloth beneath my fingertips, the glare of sunlight bouncing off the drinking glasses, the distant crack of billiard balls hitting each other. And Byron’s arm when it comes up and locks around my hips, drawing me backward, down possessively into his lap—that is very real.
“You’re a lot different than the first time I met you,” I whisper, exhaling tremulously when his mouth drags across the bare slope of my shoulder. “You were shy then. A little clumsy.” From behind, his teeth rake my neck and I gasp. “This is far from clumsy.”
His mouth pauses against my skin. “When I saw that man speaking to you in the coffee shop, something changed in me. I realized…you have options.” He grips my knee hard. “Eliminating those options is taking up all of my concentration. I don’t have room for shy. I can’t be self-conscious when all of my focus is going toward not eating you alive. Yet.”
“Yet?”
The way he hums in my ear makes my core clench. “I told you, I’m not getting physical with you again until we separate real life and…”
“Play time?” I offer in a thready breath, my eyes barely able to stay open, I’m so overcome simply by having this intimate conversation with him. Being held by my Byron.
The waiter arrives and pours us both a glass of red wine. He doesn’t seem to register or care that I’m sitting on Byron’s lap or that Byron’s hand is partially hidden beneath my dress. He simply takes our order for red snapper and risotto, leaving the way he came through the gleaming wood paneled wall.
“Yeah. Play time,” he answers me, picking back up with our earlier conversation. A moment passes while he seems to be thinking. “I need to know that when I call you those names, Jane, that I’m not…prodding at any damage inside of you. That I’m not making it worse without even realizing it.”
“You’re not,” I say quickly. Too quickly. Thank God he can’t see my face. The flush that spreads up to my hairline is telling. But telling how? There’s a sense of foreboding inside of me and I’m not sure what it’s warning me about. “It might not be typical for a girl to l-like that sort of thing in bed. But it’s not that odd. Is it?”
He huffs a laugh. “You’re asking me? I have no idea. I only know you.” His hand moves higher beneath my dress, his thumb brushing across the mound of my sex. “You’re all I want to know. So talk to me.”
“I don’t know what you want to hear.” The table and everything on top of it blurs in front of me. “I’ve had a perfectly normal life. Mostly. My father was in the military so we moved around a lot. He was gone most of the time. My mother, though? She was an interesting character. A former pageant girl turned makeup sales lady. From the time I was a child, she just focused on grooming me for marriage. Taught me to cook and clean and sew and how to make small talk. Everything was about getting a good man. ‘Find yourself a good man, Jane.’” Lost in the memories, I shrug a shoulder, sighing when he settles his mouth against it. Just listening. “One day, my aunt showed up at my front door. I’d never met her. She and my mother had been in a huge fight before I was born and decided not to speak again. And there was this ten-minute window where my mother was inside cleaning furiously—God forbid her long-lost sister see a speck of dust in our house. I was left outside with my aunt. My unmarried aunt who told me about her adventures while we waited. Dancing in clubs in Vegas, hang gliding in Wyoming, surfing in Florida. And it sounded a lot better than being married and having to live in the same house, on the same block, cleaning and doing laundry forever. So…I rebelled. I rebelled against my mother for years. For the most part, I wanted nothing to do with the opposite sex. I just wanted to dance and party and be free of responsibility and then…”
My throat cinches up like I’m being choked.