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“You want the truth?” I shove a forearm beneath her ass, jerking her off the ground, glorying in the feel of her legs sliding into place around my hips. “The truth is, I’m fucked up, Veda. I’m a monster.”
“No, you’re not.” Her arms wrap around my neck, her luscious mouth planting fairy kisses on my lips. “You’re not.”
Desperate to watch her eyes when I take my first thrust, I align our foreheads and give an upward ram of my hips, growling at the way her neck loses power, that whine I missed so much punctuating the air. I can breathe again now that I’m inside her, balls deep, but only for a split second, before urgency pounds into me, giving me tunnel vision and a twisting gut. Relief. I need relief. She’s the only one who gives it.
“My God.” My words are gritted and hoarse. I thought I’d gotten as deep as possible last time, but there’s no comparison to having her impaled on my cock, her naked body my prisoner against the wall. “Wiggle around a little, angel, like you want to get free. I won’t let you, but it’ll be cute watching you try.”
Like the vixen I know she is, Veda complies, mischief in her blue eyes as she whimpers and twists, legs kicking, dragging her cunt all over my flesh and leaving wetness behind. Her pout almost makes me come, all by itself. “You’re a big, mean man, and I’m going to tell on you.”
“Tell anyone you want,” I groan into her neck. “They’ll take one look at you and understand.”
I can’t hold back my pumps after that. They turn more and more aggressive the harder her fingernails dig into my shoulders, the slipperier she gets. She’s clinging to me, her legs like a vise around my hips, but I need more. Need deeper. So I take her bent knees in each of my hands and press them back against the wall, shouting a curse up at the ceiling once she’s completely open, pinned to the wall, taking my thrusts. It leaves her clit right there for the taking and I stop driving into her long enough to grind down on the bud—and fuck me, if I didn’t have hold of her, she would have hit the ceiling.
“Ramsey. I-I…can’t,” she sobs. “It’s different than last time…”
“Better or worse?”
“B-better. Oh.”
Veda’s thighs jerk in my hands and she screams, a visible shudder running through her. Her pussy clamps down around me as she takes on the orgasm and my vision goes black at the indescribable sensation, my hips pistoning out of control. A quickening starts at the bottom of my spine, traveling toward my balls, signaling I’m close to the end. For now. “Soon as I finish,” I grit out, “you’re getting a bath and something to eat, then you’ll spend the afternoon in my bedroom, modeling the new dresses I had sent over.”
Oh Christ, she’s tightening up again and clawing at me, going through another climax—and it speeds me toward my own. “Oh my God…oh my God.”
I bare my teeth against her neck. “There are dresses for outside the house. And some just for me. The ones for Ramsey only show off your pussy when you bend over, Veda. This sweet, fresh pussy.” Heat climbs up the length of my dick and my entire body stiffens as I release into God’s finest masterpiece. “I own it, you know.” My words are pushed through a clenched jaw. “Your father signed on the dotted line and handed it over. You, angel. My. Veda. You’re mine now and I’m never letting go.”
Relief is almost non-existent, because I’ve said too much. Veda is stiff against me, low sobs tripping into the air between us. And then all at once, she turns into a wildcat, batting at my head and shoulders, shoving me away.
I welcome the sting. I have no choice but to set her down before she hurts herself and when she deflates against the wall, sorrow owning her expression, I have a brief moment wishing I’d jumped from the building that night, rather than cause her this pain.
While I fasten my pants without removing my attention from Veda—in case she disappears—she curls into herself and I get the feeling she’s looking for something with which to cover herself, but there’s nothing, so I unbutton my shirt as fast as I can and throw it around her shoulders, hiding her nakedness.
“What did you mean?” She asks eventually, swiping at her nose with the sleeve of my shirt. “Signed on the dotted line?”
Now that the time has come to explain, my head is on fire. I’ve done something unspeakable, haven’t I? And excused it with my obsession. The action that brought her into my life is the very thing that’s going to drive her away. She’s already got most of the situation untangled. I can see the accusation of betrayal in her eyes. There’s no way to avoid the reaping, so I throw myself into the hurricane and pray it spits me out somewhere she’s still reachable.
“When I want something, I take it, Veda. I don’t know any other way. Only for the first time, I needed. I needed you so badly. So I found a way to make you mine.” I brace my hands on the wall, caging her in, and the symbolism isn’t lost on Veda. Oh no. Resentment lives in her expression. Toward me. “I canceled out your father’s debts and gave him that high-paying promotion—”
“In exchange for me.”
“Yes,” I grind out. “I’m your legal guardian until you turn eighteen. The promotion…it’s contingent upon you remaining with me until then.”
Her laughter is bitter—so unlike her—but the sound is layered over hurt. “God. You and my father are both bigger bastards than I thought.”
Stabbing pain. “Even if he’d said no, angel, I would have found a way.” I have no idea why I’m defending the other man. Maybe because I want to spare her as much anguish as possible, even if it makes me look worse. “I’m not even sure I had a pulse before you spun in circles on my roof. I bought you so I could live.”
She hits me right in the soul with a venomous look. “I’m not staying with you. I’d rather die.”
Panic is like a knife cutting down the length of my spine. Already I can feel the bleak, gray world closing in around me. “The contract is signed, Veda. I won’t let your father out of his end.”
“What about my end?” Tears swim in her eyes. “You can’t just buy and sell people. I should still get a say in my life, even though I’m not eighteen yet.”
I grab her arms and lean down to speak at her mouth. “I would go out of my fucking mind without you, angel. I barely lasted the five days I spent waiting for you to move into my home.” Honesty has thickened my voice until it’s unrecognizable as mine. “Life was prison before that day—you’re the only one with a key. You’re my jailer as much as I’m yours.”
Her eyes are blank, without emotion, so I can’t tell if I’m getting through. But I suspect even if I did, her next words prove it wouldn’t matter. “I don’t feel anything for you but hate.”
My arms fall to my sides as if they weigh a ton each, the sound of crashing waves churning in my ears. “You don’t mean that,” I manage around the strangling sensation in my throat. “I only want to give you everything. Anything you could ever want, I need to make it happen, or I consider my life a failure.”
She shakes her head, disturbing her blonde hair, looking more gorgeous than anyone has the right to be. “If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is freedom.” This isn’t the first time she has said these words to me…perhaps I should have listened before. “That’s what I want, Ramsey. Can you give me that?”
“You’re calling for my death.”
Her shrug is jerky, her gaze conflicted, even as she hammers the nail into my coffin. “So be it.”
For hours, I stand in the conference room, staring at the wall where she last stood, listening to the sounds of her moving upstairs in her bedroom…and when I finally hear the front door slam, my knees hit the floor.
Done.
Chapter Ten
It’s cold as fuck on the roof of my building and I’m glad. At least there is a temperature to match the barren wasteland inside my chest. When Veda left, she dragged my heart along with her, letting it skid on the ground, but I can still feel the mutilated, fractured organ from a distance—it makes my whole body impossible to live in. There’s no way to escape, however, so I sit here on the roof where we met, staring out over the glittering Manhattan skyline and pray to God she’s safe somewhere out there.
It has been a full week since the angel sent me to hell, although time means nothing now. Nothing. I’m not even sure if I exist anymore, or if I’m a ghost, haunting my former life. Every time my body t
ries to sink into sleep, I hear her laughing, or see her spinning like a ballerina in the aisles of the movie theater. Or languishing naked in my bed, trying to tempt me…as if the simple act of her breathing wasn’t a temptation all its own.
So many times throughout the week—every single minute, in fact—I’ve been tempted to search for Veda. Or send a team of private investigators after her. The first time I encountered that urge, I slammed my head into a wall until I blacked out. And again when I woke up. And again. Until I numbed my panic enough to hear logic.
Herein lies the reason I haven’t leaped from my building’s roof yet. I gave her freedom. Total, authentic freedom…and because of that, there’s a sliver of a chance she might come back to me. Up above, at the top of the building, my name has been replaced with hers. Veda instead of Beckett.
You didn’t think I was legitimately insane, did you? I assume you’re no longer questioning me.
Having something so difficult done on short notice cost me, but I would have paid quadruple. In a moment of clarity, my business mentality kicked in and I remembered how important it is to know the ins and outs of the commodity you’re attempting to obtain. Now, lest you think I didn’t learn my lesson, I understand all too well now that Veda isn’t a commodity. She’s a perfect, warm blooded creature…and also a too-young girl. And in my short experience with Veda, my very own too-young girl, I learned they—she—has a healthy supply of vanity. So that is what I’m appealing to in a desperate Hail Mary to bring her home. I’m trying to win her back with something big and bright and shiny and I won’t apologize for it.
Have I mentioned that I love Veda’s vanity? I think of the way her eyes lit up when she was kneeling beside the pool and I explained the deeper she took me in her mouth, the more presents I would buy her. Goddamn, I want to indulge that acquisitive nature with my bank account, which, despite my public act of lunacy, continues to grow by the hour. What good is money, though, without Veda to spend it on? I might as well be sleeping in Grand Central Station without a penny to my name.
