I flinch.
“You’ve had your fun,” he tells me, voice tightening. “But it’s over. I didn’t put five years into molding you, shaping you, creating the perfect mistress just to see you with another man. Not my Annaliese.”
I’m an idiot. As he moved closer, I stopped matching him step for step. Suddenly, he’s right there, within arm’s reach. It’s too late to do anything but stand my ground, which is what I do as I tell him plainly, “But I’m not yours. I belong to Sebastien.”
I loveSebastien.
Oh, Eric doesn’t like hearing that. His face twists into an expression of fury, and I’m so stunned that he dropped his maskthat I don’t protect myself as he slaps me. It’s open-handed, flat across my left cheek. The sound cracks through the entire foyer as my head snaps sideways. Even worse, the momentum knocks me to my knees as my cheek burns.
Before I can even let out a soft cry of pain and fear, Eric lunges down. His arms wrap around me, lifting me easily up off of the floor. I want to struggle out of his sudden hug, but my ear is ringing. He clapped that, too, in his strike, and I’m too dazed to do anything but let him drag me down the hall.
Down the hall and toward the stairs that lead up to the second floor where our bedroom is.
The way he’s groping me, the way he’s dragging me… I suddenly know exactly what Eric means when he says that he’ll show Sebastien I chose him. If my husband comes home, finding me and my former lover in bed together… if Eric has me under him in mine and Sebastien’s marriage bed, no matter how he got me there… I don’t know if Sebastien can forgive me that. After all, we’ve only been married for two and a half months. I’d like to think that Sebastien would realize that I would never go back to Eric, but then I remember how the first time I fucked him, I did so to forget about Eric.
What if Sebastien believes that I haven’t?
No. I can’t let him do this. I struggle, yelling ‘stop’, yelling ‘no’, but all Eric does is continue to manhandle me, maneuvering me up the stairs. Of course he figures out easily which room is the master bedroom. I don’t even want to think how, but he no matter how I try to go boneless so that he can’t continue to carry me into the room, Eric is too strong. Too determined.
And I’m scared out of my fucking wits. Scared and angry. Scared andfurious.
“Get the fuck off me!”
He spares a hand to pop me in the mouth again. I see stars. It was a lucky hit, shoving my nose up, making my eyes water evenas he snaps, “My Annaliese doesn’t curse. So maybe… maybe you’re not mine anymore.”
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him. “Get out,” I repeat. “Before Sebastien comes home?—”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to send me away.” He drops me. I hit the floor hard, but before I can crawl out of his way, his hands are around my throat. “You don’t get to leave me.”
I twist beneath his weight, panic clawing at my lungs. “Let… let go?—”
He snarls, and I choke. He squeezes, and I start to buck underneath him.
“Eric…” I gasp out, clawing at whatever part of his wrist I can find. “I can’t… what are you…please…”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says, his voice suddenly so tender, I’m even more terrified than I was. “And when you stop breathing, you’ll take your final swan dive.”
What?
His grip tightens. Stars spark at the edge of my vision, the black creeping in as my airway continues to close.
Eric leans in, smiling like a man delivering a love confession. “You realized you couldn’t spend your life with Reynolds. And I wouldn’t have you back. So you killed yourself. Like Reese Collins. Like Sebastien’s Julie.”
No.
No.
His voice drops to a dangerous whisper. “In the Order, the only way out is death. Your boy threatened me with it. Well, who says it has to be mine?”
Something snaps inside me. Fight or die, Annaliese. Fight or give Eric the pleasure of disposing of you like so many other Order woman.
Fight or?—
Before I lose consciousness, I slam my knee upward with every ounce of desperation I have left. He wasn’t expecting it. He must’ve thought I was already gone, but he underestimated me like he always does.Good. All I needed was one hit, and I get it as my knee collides hard between his legs. I aimed for his cock. After all, it’s caused me more grief than it ever did pleasure.
Eric folds with a strangled sound, grip loosening enough that I can finally crawl out from under him. He’s already fighting to get to his feet. I back up, looking at the window, knowing that if I can’t get out of this, I’ll be tossed out of it, my body left for Sebastien to find.
No. I finally got my happy-ever-after. I won’t let Eric Ward fuck it up for me.
