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When she finished, she was breathing hard, but she felt more alive, more her, than she had for years. If Ferro was going to reject her, he had to reject her. Not some polished version of herself she’d created to seem more powerful, more capable. But the version of herself he’d brought back to the surface.
The girl who had had unreserved enjoyment in life, who had cared about everything, from games to prom, so much. The girl she’d stuffed down and hidden to avoid getting hurt. Well, now she was standing with everything out in the open, vulnerable, easily destroyed. But she had to do it. For him. For them.
“This has been an enjoyable arrangement for me,” he said, his voice monotone. “I hate to see it end. However, it’s clear to me that it must.”
She wanted to scream at him. She bit her lip, a tear falling down her cheek. He was hiding. Hiding still. Behind a mask. Behind his scars.
“You know we can’t really go back,” she said. “We’ll never go back to how things were. We were stupid, Ferro. We thought we would control it, but it controlled us.”
“I’ll go back,” he said, his voice hard. “Like it never happened, cara. Because that’s what I do. Sex is nothing to me. Nothing.”
“You don’t mean that. Not with me.”
“As you’ve been such a good lover, I would like to increase your payment.” Another tear fell and she shook her head, begging him, internally, not to do this. But he continued. He bent down and picked up the computer bag he’d brought with him, pulled out a folder. “Everything I have collected on your company over the past five years. Some of it I haven’t even looked at yet. It was for use at a later date. After our peaceable term ended. But I’m giving it to you. With the promise that I will never make an attempt at bringing Anfalas down. You’re safe from me.”
He extended the folder to her, as if he expected her to take it and thank him for it.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“That’s not how this works, Julia. You gave me sex, I’m giving you payment.”
“I gave you my damn soul, Ferro. You can’t buy that.”
“But I didn’t ask for your soul, my dear.” His special endearment for her, in English for the first time. “I only asked for your body, so it is all I will pay for.”
“You have to cheapen it, don’t you? Not so you’ll understand it, but so you can put it with the rest of the things in your life you’re ashamed of. Because you like shame, don’t you? It keeps you insulated. Keeps you from having to move on. Protects you from your feelings.”
“I don’t have feelings, Julia. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“Tell me you don’t love me,” she said, because she was perverse, because she had to hear it. “Tell me, and I’ll take your ‘payment’ and I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t love you.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek. “Great. Then it’s really over.” She bent down and took the folder from the bed, held it over her bare breasts, needing cover now. Ashamed of her nudity. She wiped a tear from her cheek and lifted her hand, treating him to her best Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper. And get the hell out of my house.”
Ferro nodded once and then turned around, walking out of her room, closing the door firmly behind him. Julia sank onto the bed, her legs trembling, her stomach threatening to rebel and release its contents.
She swallowed hard. Then she lay down, still holding the folder tight against her chest, and cried.
* * *
Ferro stormed out of Julia’s house and to his car, the engine roaring to life with the push of a button on his phone.
It was done. What he’d needed to do was done.
He couldn’t stay with her. Couldn’t indulge himself any longer. The woman was too destructive to him. She was too adept at reaching inside him and making him feel things. It was like she was hot-wiring his soul, reconnecting wires that had long ago been cut. Sending jolts of emotion and need and pain through him.
And what it had done to his control was unacceptable. Unprotected sex first, and then his outburst in the meeting. And tonight he’d come to prove that he still had the power in the relationship. That he was in charge. That he was not at the mercy of one skinny blonde who should, by all rights, drive him completely insane.
