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Her eyes darted nervously to a spot above my head. “You’re welcome,” she said with a timid smile, then left me holding an envelope that seemed to become heavier with every passing second.
Dax
My head hurt.
Not from the bottle of whiskey I knew I’d downed without even opening my eyes, but from knowing everything about my life from now on was going to feel empty. I was never going to be complete. I’d found my other half, yet I’d done everything in my power, willingly or not, to repel her. And rightly so.
I was ugly, ruthless, damaged goods.
A barbarian.
A beast.
My neck groaned as I lifted my head off the carpet and gazed around at the room. It was blurred mostly, for which I was thankful. I knew a mass of blur would be preferable to the total destruction it masked. Memories of the previous night came back to me like falling shards of glass. I’d witnessed the most beautiful thing anyone had done for me, believing for a splitsecond I was worthy of it, and I hadn’t even been looking at the camera.
The live feed from Rose’s room had run continually ever since I installed her inside. It gave me ample opportunity to study her like a rare specimen no man had ever caught. I’d spent night after night watching, listening, marvelling at the rise and fall of her bedsheets as she slept, smiling in one corner of my mouth as she pattered barefoot from one room to the next, sometimes naked, sometimes not. I thought I knew every inch of her body, just from having watched it move around from every angle. But I knew nothing. Holding her flesh in my hands, so close to my lips, driving me despairingly mad, showed me how little I really knew. Seeing a woman’s naked flesh from a distance was a shallow turn-on. Having it displayed so warmly, openly and closely stoked a desire so deep it could wound the most cavernous man.
And I was wounded.
I thought my heart had already broken as we walked back up the towers stairs, until I heard her cry out when her leg took the brunt of her fall. I acted on pure instinct, shoving anyone and anything out of my way to reach her. My gut twisted at the agony on her face. Her pain was my pain, and it was excruciating.
Letting her go wasn’t just the right thing to do, it was the only thing. I’d been fooling myself – she was never going to want me. It felt wrong to say she just wanted the money because there was so much more to Rose than that. But it would have been a stretch too far to imagine she wanted meandthe money.
It took an otherworldly amount of strength to walk away from her bedside, knowing I would never see her in the flesh again. I should have switched off the feed; it would have only served to torture me further. I was sitting at my desk with only the dim orange glow of an antique lamp illuminating the drawings I’d laid out. Drafting concepts for buildings that wouldnever see the light of day was the only pastime guaranteed to distract me from anything else. But then I heard her.
At first, I thought she was having a bad dream. My instinct was to rush to her room and soothe her, but her moans turned to soft little gasps and luscious breaths. My body rose from the chair without command and moved across the room to the screen. I pressed the volume button and watched the bedclothes moving gently. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moist and parted. My stomach clenched possessively and I fought the urge to beat off – I needed to apply my whole focus and commit it to memory for the rest of my life.
Then she said the one word I never thought I’d hear fall from the mouth of any woman, let alone the woman of my darkest, most delicious dreams.
My name.
I cranked up the volume as loud as I could, keeping my eyes glued to the screen.
Oh God, Dax…
I then heard a heavy thud and realised it was the sound of my knees slamming onto the floor. Her head fell back as her spine arched, and a long, untethered cry filtered through the screen. I was still staring open-mouthed at the feed long after she’d rolled over and fallen into a deep sleep.
The first thing I did was pour a large whiskey. I needed a drink after that. Then I paced the room trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, because surely I’d got it wrong. I had to have got it so completely wrong.
I’d locked her up against her wishes. I’d forced her to have dinner with me, read stories to me, strip for me. And all of it she was forced to do in an attempt to save herself. It all became starkly, horrendously clear. If she had been turned on, it wasn’t by me, it was by the situation. And I was damn fool to ever have believed otherwise.
The more I thought through the ridiculousness of my hopes and dreams and the fact a small part of me had faith in them, the angrier I became. Before I knew it, my rooms were unrecognisable. Chairs and tables were upturned, their legs beaten and broken; curtains were torn and ragged. The entire contents of my drinks cabinet, cut crystal glasses and vintage port worth hundreds of pounds had been smashed to pieces. And three thousand rock crystals from my seventh century chandelier had scattered in every direction. My writing desk with the architectural drawings was the only thing left unscathed.
I peeled myself up off the floor and walked to the window. The mid-morning sun illuminated the south-facing lawns; it made Blackcap Hall appear almost pleasant. Very soon, a black Mercedes would be cruising down the long drive carrying my heart. I pressed my fist and my forehead against the glass and let long seconds pass as my skin cooled.
Behind me, a door handle turned and almost instantly, another person was inside my rooms and running up behind me. I turned just in time to feel a red hot slap across my unscarred cheek. When I turned my head back to face her, she had never looked more beautiful.
“How DARE you!” she shouted.
She raised her hand again but I caught it in a thick, tight grip. My eyes narrowed while my body expunged the shock of her entrance.
“You brought me here, hid me away, made me discover myself, made mewantyou. And for what? So, you can hate yourself even more? So, you can force me out without getting what you paid for? Without giving me what I want?”
I shook my head. “You don’t know what you want.”
“STOP TELLING ME WHAT I WANT!” She tried to yank her hand back but I didn’t let it move an inch.
I didn’t know what hurt more, the lies coming out of her mouth, or the shock of seeing her again after I thought I’d drunk and smashed away the worst of my heartbreak.
