AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No can do, sweetness. I’m your shadow.”
Mia gets up and stalks over to me, shoving me out the door. I let her do that. She slams the door in my face, and I laugh. I’m giving her five minutes. That’s all.
I go and scan the crowd. Nothing seems amiss. Everyone is at their stations, and the bouncers are at the door. Andrew’s talking to someone, checking their ID. But Frank . . .
The big guy with beady eyes and close-cropped brown hair is glowering in my direction.
I send him a ‘fuck you’ smile and head back to Mia.
This time, I don’t knock.
I just open the door.
The office is empty.
She’s gone.
ChapterSeven
MIA
I’m half congratulating myself, half thinking it was too easy to lose him.
Then again, he’s not all that.
Sure, Christian is brilliant. And he’s hotter than a supernova, and he knows how to rev an engine, even one that doesn’t want to be revved, but I’m not stupid. I just waited until he went back out into the club before I grabbed my bag and keys and slipped out the back exit to my car.
It’s late, so traffic is light, and I don’t go to my apartment. Instead, I keep driving, heading out to the sprawling property I love.
I turn on the radio and hum mindlessly to the music that plays, my thoughts trying and failing to catch hold of it.
But Christian takes up too much space.
“He violated me,” I say.
“He took me against my will.”
Both those statements are empty. They lack the emotional punch and meaning I want them to have. It’s almost a desperation that coils through my blood.
The thing is, he didn’t violate me, except on a level that I can’t explain. Like he got past things he shouldn’t have, and that, in and of itself, is unforgivable.
Christian also didn’t take me against my will. He gave me the chance to say no.
Would he have stopped?
I want to say no. But I can’t because he would have stopped.
Both times. In the middle, too, if I’d said then and there, stop. And meant it.
I said don’t, I said . . . I said a lot of things, but I caved like some depraved weakling, caved and crumbled for a manwhore. For a fuck boy who adds to the notches on his bedpost with frightening regularity.
Over the years, I’ve crushed on him, thought I loved him, hated him. Christian never looked at me, never made a move. He teased. He flirted, and he fucked me with his eyes.
Christian Bandoni fucks women with his eyes like he’s blinking. He flirts and teases like he takes in air.
It’s part of him.
And I know it.
