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She nodded slowly and backed away from him, breaking his hold on her. She turned and walked back into the ballroom, keeping her head down while she walked through the knot of people.
Her stomach felt like it had a brick in it. Her entire body shaking. How easy it had been to use the idea of his past to judge him. To make herself feel superior to him in some way. How easy it had been to use it against him. To make light of it.
Now she felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out. Felt like she’d been forced to look in on what he’d been through, with nothing to shield her from it.
Ferro was a proud man. And he’d had his pride stripped from him during that part of his life.
Had been forced to belong to other people.
It hurt her he’d been through it. And her vision of him changed. Not the worldly playboy, but the victimized boy. Sixteen and in desperate need of so many things. Of guidance and love, and shelter. And he’d been offered an empty version of those things and had latched onto them. But she saw him now, for what he was.
She’d imagined him as the smooth, suave womanizer. As the man who took gifts with a wink and left his lover sated and satisfied. She hadn’t realized…she’d never imagined that he’d sold himself. His body.
And yes, it disturbed her. But it also made her feel some sort of a strange connection with him. Because she’d had a taste of how dehumanizing, how frightening and horrifying it was to have someone try to take possession of your body when you didn’t want it.
Only he’d done it over and over again. Submitted to it. For survival. It made her ache.
It made her feel too exposed.
But he didn’t want her anyway. And now she didn’t blame him. She’d insulted him past the point of reason. She’d treated him like a whore and, now, knowing his past, she knew he had every right to hate her for it.
She pushed the button for the elevator, about nine times more than she needed to, then stepped in and leaned her head back against the wall, letting it carry her up to her floor. Maybe she should quietly get another room. Put some distance between them.
But she couldn’t do that because if they got caught sleeping separately then the news of a split might come bite them in the butt and that was not what they needed before pitching to Barrows.
She was trapped. Still trapped in this hell of their own making.
She stepped off the elevator and stalked down the hall, sliding her card through the reader. It didn’t go. “Argh!” She slid it again, and was met with a red light. “Oh, you stupid, stupid, stupid thing!” She slid it again. And again. And kicked the door. Then she forked her fingers through her hair and turned around, leaning against the wall, fighting against tears. Against overwhelming misery.
The elevator next to the one she’d just arrived in, opened and Ferro stormed out. He strode toward her, dark eyes locked with hers. He tugged at the knot of his tie and jerked it off his neck, letting it fall to the floor.
He stopped right in front of her, his hand braced on the wall behind her. He leaned in, his lips a whisper from hers. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“Or what?” she asked.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. He lowered his hand from the wall and traced the outline of her lips with his thumb.
“You know my secrets now,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “You broke your rule. Don’t confirm or deny.”
“I did. I am also breaking another rule.”
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice breathless this time for real.
“I want,” he said. “I don’t let myself want.”
“You don’t let yourself want…sex?”
“No. I have never had a lover, Julia, does that shock you?”
“But…but you said…I don’t understand.”
“I’ve had sex but I’ve never had a lover. I’ve had clients, not lovers. I have never been with a woman of my choosing, and whatever I have done in a bedroom has been controlled by the other person. I have learned, in those situations, to be nothing more than a body. I detached, as completely as possible, found a fantasy in my mind that allowed me to function and…that’s it. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to feel. It’s wasn’t my body then. I didn’t live in it.”
