“Fine,” he says, warily. “If it’s genuinely work and boredom-busting you want to return for, I won’t stand in your way. But if it’s something else, then…”
I don’t need to try very hard to force a pained frown onto my face. “Why else would I want to return?”
Remo folds his arms and gives me a look. “You gonna make me say it?”
“Yes,” I squeeze out.
“Pfeiffer McAllister.”
“Fuck her,” I reply through gritted teeth, filling the pause with the sound of grinding coffee beans.
“I thought that’s what you’d been doing,” he says, leaning back against the cupboards and inspecting his nails of all things.
“Yeah. But not while I’m bedbound in a penthouse apartment.”
His gaze lifts. “Is it working?”
“What?”
“Are you ruining her, Fiero? Is she sorry yet for what she did?”
I turn to face him. “She doesn’t remember.”
An image dashes across my vision, suddenly stealing my breath. It must be the aftereffects of morphine messing with my mind. But as I stand facing Remo, recalling exactly why Pfeiffer McAllister needs to pay, I can’t halt the memory.
Bitten words echoed by taunting laughter, wet sidewalks and humid train carriages. A father’s fist, pain too excruciating to ever truly recover from.
Dogs.
Hunger.
Silence.
“So, you’re going to make her remember,right?”
Remo’s tone is thin, like he’s losing patience. He has every right to. All I’ve done so far is pleasure her. Even when she was sucking my dick she was wet for me. I need to turn this ugly somehow.
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
As the words come out of my mouth, I know it’s what I have to do.
I can’t let fifteen years of hurt and pain be eroded by an ill-advised kiss and decent-as-fuck blowjob. Sure, so she saved my life. She’d have done the same for anyone else. And so what if she’s ‘caught feelings’ for me? That’s her problem, not mine.
Even though my chest tightens at the thought of ruining her now, I don’t owe her anything. She wrecked our lives and she has to pay.
I have to make her remember exactly what she did.
Preferably when she’s at her most vulnerable, when I’m balls deep in her pussy and she’s starting to tremble, right on that edge, that’s when I’m going to tell her. I’ll watch the bliss slide off her face, watch the tears fill her eyes and hear the pleas for forgiveness fall from her lips.
I won’t need my hands on her to feel the pain spreading across her skin—I’ll feel it radiate from her soul. And that’s when I’ll come inside my teenage wet dream, and when she’ll regret the day she ever met me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fiero
Thirteen nights to go.
She’s standingat the podium scanning a customer profile when I pull back the curtain. Her lids lift as if all it took was my vibration crossing the threshold and she knew I was in the room. I walk with forced nonchalance in her direction, not stopping as I pass, but locking my gaze on hers.
