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We stared off.
‘You’re trying to trick me,’ I breathed.
‘Why do you immediately assume I’m trying to fuck you over?’ he growled.
‘You know why,’ I snapped. ‘You don’t get to be a fucking stranger to someone for nine years and then suddenly change your mind after bonding over murder for five minutes.’
His poker face disappeared, morphing into something that looked equal parts lust and rage. His hands found my wrists again, pushed me roughly so my back settled against the tiles once more.
‘What do you do when you want something you can’t have?’ he ground out. His blue eyes were bright, a dead giveaway about the state of his mind. When he fired up, they spoke loud and clear. I knew because I’d been looking away from them for years, afraid that if I stared too long I’d get lost in them. And I could absolutely, definitely, categorically, not get lost in John Portland’s eyes for even one second.
He. Was. Dornan’s. Best. Friend.
‘I wait,’ I whispered, my own convictions sliding away like melted butter as he rested a hand on my hip, just above my panties, and squeezed.
‘And then?’
I thought about the money I’d stockpiled over the years. Emilio’s dirty money. My escape plan for a rainy day. And it was pouring with rain right now.
‘When nobody’s looking, I take it.’
His eyes burned into me.
‘Nobody’s looking, Ana.’
Something inside me snapped, like an elastic band that had been pulled and pulled until it broke apart. I was starving. Not for food. For affection. For understanding. For the touch of a man who wasn’t trying to hurt me.
We came together in a frenzy, lips crashing on lips, hands everywhere. I pulled him close to me, sighing into his mouth as I felt how hard he was against me, only his jeans separating us. Jesus Christ, he tasted exactly like I thought he would, a combination of the coffee we’d just drunk and something sweeter, something undefinable but delicious. I devoured him, unable and unwilling to stop, to come to my senses, until I remembered the reason why he was in my apartment in the first place.
Murphy.
I broke the kiss and pushed a hand against the middle of his chest. I wasn’t rough about it, but I was firm. I covered my mouth with a shaking hand, my knees like rubber, my nipples hardened to twin points, clearly visible under my barely there lace bra. I didn’t let go of him, though. I held onto him like my very life depended on being in constant physical contact with him, this man who’d pushed me away for nine excruciating years. Because he’d been attracted to me, too? God, the hours upon hours we’d spent together in that tiny office, breathing the same air, working the same jobs, numbers and accounts and with enough sexual tension to make me think of him when I touched myself at night. John Motherfucking Portland, the guy who’d carried a photo of my secret son around with him for months, until it was safe to return it to me. John Motherfucking Portland, who had barely looked into my eyes for nine whole years. The things Emilio did, that he couldn’t control.
The dark pleasure Dornan carried and tucked away in an apartment like a dirty secret. A sin. All of those things were what I’d assumed John had thought of me, but now, as I looked at the tight expression on his face, the stricken eyes and the sad, resigned air he wore like a second skin, I realised how utterly wrong I had been.
I opened my mouth, and what I meant to say was, I thought you didn’t really like me. But that didn’t come out. What came out was something else entirely.
‘He killed them all,’ I said in disbelief, my knees no longer holding me up. John caught me, slowed my fall to the floor. He wrapped his arms around me, getting soaking wet under the shower spray. I closed my eyes, sagging into him as my legs curled around me on the hard tiles.
I cried like I’d never cried in my life. I cried nine years worth of tears, worth of lonely nights, worth of longing. I cried until I couldn’t breathe, and then an exhausted calm descended upon me. I was empty. I was broken. The most ironic thing of all was that I had somehow managed to be the only one who’d survived out of all of us.
My mind went to that cool, dark place where it retreated when it couldn’t cope any more. The place I’d been when they first took me, the place where I didn’t have to be afraid. My tears had soothed me enough to allow me to enter that detached sort of depersonalised state, and I sank into it with relief.
He didn’t let go of me, not once. He held me, and he stroked my hair, and he shut off the water when it finally ran cold.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JOHN
Nine years is a long time to watch somebody from the shadows.
He did it, and he wasn’t proud of it. He had a wife and a daughter, and he’d never betrayed them. Not once.
But he’d wanted to.
And now what had he done? Put his hands on another woman. The woman he’d been watching for nine fucking years, picturing in his head as he jerked off in the shower or, less frequently, while he made love to his wife, on the rare night when she was her old self.
‘Mariana,’ he murmured.
