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Instead of fainting, she remained fully aware this time throughout the stages of the most blissful aftermath she’d ever experienced with him.
Suddenly he spoke. “I wasn’t satisfied with how things ended with you in the past. It felt...incomplete. And I must have everything wrapped up to my satisfaction.”
For long moments she couldn’t breathe, waiting for a qualification to tell her she’d jumped to the worst conclusions of his words.
He only validated her suspicion. “I got you here to close your case. If I may say so, I reached a spectacular conclusion.”
Feeling as if he’d dumped her into freezing water, she fought to rise to the surface and from his arms.
Without one more word or glance she dragged the sheet off his body, wrapped herself in it and teetered out of the bedroom, looking for the clothes she hadn’t been able to wait for him to tear off her body earlier.
She felt him following her, heading to the open-plan kitchen. Her numbness deepened.
When she was dressed, and as neat as she could get herself after he’d ravaged her, she turned to him.
He raised a mug. “Coffee? Or will you storm out now?”
“You have every right to do this.” Her voice was thick and raw as it always had been when he’d made her scream her heart out in repeated ecstasy. It intensified her shame. “I deserve whatever you say or do. After all you’ve done to me, I disregarded all the injuries you caused me and fell into your arms again.”
“And even now, you’d fall there again if I let you. But I’m no longer interested. I’m done.”
Gritting her teeth against the pain digging its talons inside her, she said, “Then, I can look forward to never seeing you again for real this time. And no matter what you’d like to tell yourself you can get me to do, I’m beyond done.”
“Yes, you are. That’s the other thing I got you here to do. To tell you that.”
She frowned. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“You’re done here. You will tell your new partners you’ve changed your mind about the partnership. You will terminate your lease, pay whatever early termination penalty your contract states, then pack your bags and leave this city, preferably the States. And this time, you will never return.”
Four
In her first twenty-four years, Isabella had suffered so many brutal blows, had endured and survived them all, she’d believed nothing would shake her or knock her down again.
Then Richard had happened to her. Every second with him, and because of him, had been a succession of earthquakes and knockouts. After he’d exited her life, it had been a constant struggle not to fall facedown and stay there. But it hadn’t been an option to give up. She’d had no choice but to forge on. But she’d thought even if she saw him again, whatever madness he’d induced in her, her own ability to experience towering passions, had been expended.
Then he’d reappeared and just by dangling himself in front of her, he’d made her relinquish all sanity and beg for his destruction.
Now there he stood, barefoot, in only pants, leaning indolently on the counter of his futuristic kitchen, looking like the god of malice that he was. He sipped painfully aromatic coffee in utmost serenity, clearly savoring its taste and her upheaval.
But what else did she think would happen after she’d committed that act of madness? Hadn’t she already known she’d regret it? Or had she been that pathetic she’d hoped it wouldn’t end horribly? That she’d have the ecstasy she’d hankered for without the agony that she’d learned would come with it? Had she even thought of the consequences as she’d grabbed for the appeasement only he could provide?
But this... What he’d ordered her to do wasn’t only horrific, it was...incomprehensible.
The numbness of humiliation and self-abuse splintered under the blow of indignation. “Just who the hell do you think you are? How dare you presume to tell me what to do?”
Almost groaning at how clichéd and cornered she sounded, she watched in dismay as he gave her a glance she was certain had hardened criminals quaking in their shoes.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know who I really am.”
“Oh, I know enough to extrapolate the absolute worst.”
Another tranquil sip. “From your defiant response I actually gather the worst you can imagine is nothing approaching the truth. But your misconception might be the result of my own faux pas. If I gave you the impression that this is a negotiation, I sincerely apologize. I also apologize for previously stating you always have a choice. You never do with me. Of course, there are always catastrophic mistakes, still categorized as choices, open to you. In this situation, the wrong choice is to stall. I strongly advise you don’t exercise it.”
Even now, his delivery of this load of bullying was so sexy and sophisticated his every enunciation reverberated in her reawakened senses like a shock wave.
Loathing her unwilling response, she gave him a baleful glance. “I assure you I won’t stall. I will ignore you and your deranged demands altogether.”
“In that case my only choice is to force you. So you’re now down to one catastrophic choice, and it’s how hard you decide to make this for yourself.”
