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Fucking Leland?
I laugh as I stomp up to the door of the resort and unlock it, switching on the lights. The scent of wood and beeswax hits me but fails to soothe like it usually does.
Dumping my bag on the front desk we still need to sand and buff to perfection, I sigh and lean against it, closing my eyes.
He’s not coming looking for me.
He’s flirting because that’s what he does with what he no doubt considers fresh meat. Leland doesn’t remember me. I got that, real fast.
When I drove up for the ass-beating that Dakota’s pathetic family deserved and saw him, my stupid heart and stupider libido leaped.
That tall drink of bourbon with amber eyes, dark hair, and sensual mouth that had made me sing was there.
A little older, a little better looking than I remembered, and he’d given me a glance like he’d like to get me naked.
But.
And there’s a real giant but here.
But it was the glance of lust a man gives a woman he’s never met.
Not only did he pay me like a hooker, but he didn’t even remember me.
Okay, sure, my hair’s not black and cut in a short pixie . . . I’m back to my natural color, well, mostly natural with highlights, and long tresses. I’m older, thinner, and grown fully into myself, but I’m still me.
If I can recognize and remember him why the fuck can’t he remember me?
“You don’t care,” I say, trying out the words.
Thing is I do.
It’s not ego.
It’s something else, something I can’t put my finger on and it’s driving me mad. He’s not even the one who got away. I don’t have that, and I don’t want that.
I don’t want a man ruining my life.
It took me a long time to get over Billy. Not the man himself, but rather, what he did, seducing a seventeen-year-old, drawing her into his world and displaying her like a prize. He kept me locked away to do as he pleased, and he did everything.
He liked to tie me up and use a whip. Sometimes he invited some friends to watch while he fucked me. That . . . I’ve never told anyone. I wasn’t even quite eighteen, but he was the man I was engaged to. I was equal parts enamored this impossibly sophisticated, older man would want me and ashamed over the fact he would want others watching.
At the time I believed him when he said it was a compliment to me that these men lusted and couldn’t touch, that it heightened the experience with him.
Now, I see it for what it was. Controlling and manipulating and an ego boost for him.
He was right, those men wanted me. And he wouldn’t let them touch.
But it was to show them he could get a young girl under his control, make her do as he wished. It was for him and not for me.
Did he love me?
Honestly, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I was his property and getting away when he stopped wanting me and started fucking other seventeen-year-olds was almost impossible.
His didn’t mean he wanted to give me up. He just didn’t want to share his property.
But I did it. Fought him, fought the seductions he tried, moved to Waterman Heights and filed for divorce. I was twenty-two. It wasn’t easy but I refuse to give in to him after so long of giving into his demands.
Shit.
