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For a long time, I consider his admission. His words, the truth finally spilling free, hits me in the chest. An arrow right to my heart. I swallow past the lump in my throat, and I finally find the words. “You did.”
His head drops, and from this angle, he looks like a broken man. He doesn’t look like the strong, foreboding teacher who rules his classroom with authority. He also doesn’t look like the man who made my body sing under his touch and tremble beneath his control.
“I want to mend you,” he admits after a long silence. “I want to put you back together, mold you for me. I’ve craved you since the first taste, since the moment I laid eyes on you.” He turns his head toward me, blue locking on gray. “I’ve ached for you every night we haven’t been together. You were made for me, Arabella.”
I shake my head slowly. “This can never work.” I can’t be with a man who did what he did. He lied to me, hid his demons from me when he drew mine out into the light. He knew everything about me while he kept his sordid secrets. “What else is there? Are you still hiding something?”
“I met with your mother last night, well … I met with the man who’d been watching you.” I drop into the chair at the window where I’m standing because my knees can no longer hold me. “I hired him to scare you, and I thought perhaps he would push you closer to calling your father. I didn’t know you thought your father was really dead.”
“My rapist. You had the man who violated me when I was younger stalk me?” My voice cracks, the pain of his admission breaking through my strength, and I can’t pull in breaths.
“I didn’t know he’d done that. Of course, he didn’t admit it until last night when I killed him. It turns out your mother had told him to kick things up a notch. Which led to your underwear drawer being violated.” Elian moves closer to me, his cologne engulfing me as he crouches down in front of me. His hands on either arm of the chair, but he doesn’t touch me. He’s close enough, but he doesn’t make contact, which I’m thankful for. “I never meant to hurt you in that way.” The raw honesty in his voice, in his eyes, steals my words.
The moment I blink, tears trickle down my cheeks. “You … I was just a deal to you. Nothing … Everything we’ve done. All this bullshit was all lies!” I shove at him, causing him to stumble backward. But Elian straightens, standing to his full height as I push off the chair and my small fists slam into his chest. “Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Tears stream down my cheeks as my heart breaks, and my throat closes from screaming so loudly. My vision is dimming around me, and all I see are those fucking blue eyes.
“We’re done! Do you hear me? We are done!”
“My little deviant,” he says, the corner of his mouth tilting into a sardonic smirk as he allows me to punch him in the chest. “You think you can walk away from me…” Elian shakes his head. “There’s no escaping what we are.”
“It’s as easy as saying it’s over now,” I insist, but even as I utter the words, I don’t believe them. I push away from him, standing at the window, leaning against the cool glass, but nothing can calm my erratic, shattering heart.
Elian stares at me. With seemingly controlled steps, he eats up the distance between us and stops a hair’s breadth away from me. He’s so close I can feel his heat. I can smell the masculine scent I’ve come to love, and he leans in so his mouth is feathering along mine.
“Nothing between us can ever be over. You might think it is, but I don’t lose.”
“This time, you did,” I bite out, trying to fight off the need to fall into his arms. The thought of my father sending out an order to have Elian’s dad murdered breaks my heart. But Elian could’ve told me the truth.
“I’m not giving up, Arabella. Ever.” He presses his lips against mine for just a second before he pulls away and stalks off, leaving me shivering from the cold of his absence.35AhrenHe’s going to be fucking angry when he walks in here. I settle into the wingback chair and wait. My ankle resting on the opposite knee, I sip the bourbon from one of his finest tumblers and think about everything he told me.
Killing Arabella’s mother won’t go down well, but I have a feeling she’s going to hate him because he didn’t tell her the truth. She wasn’t close to her mother, that was apparent. But the fact that my brother didn’t consult me on his little plan doesn’t sit well with me.
