I step toward him. This is going to make it much harder to not get shitfaced. I failed to eat before coming so this will go straight to my head, and as it is I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking. Still, I smile at him as I walk over and I place my hands on his shoulders as he tops off my glass. Henry turns, grinning at me, and hands me the bubbling liquid. “So, what’s the exciting news?”
“My design worked. You know how I wanted Ferro’s patent?” I nod and sip. “Well, everyone was telling me that what I wanted to do couldn’t be done, but it worked. The prototype was completed Friday morning and it worked!”
“That’s great, Henry! What is it? What does it do?” I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear and take another sip.
My mind wanders; I think I can outrun Gabe on foot. I could dart out the door and vanish. No one would ever see me again. I have enough money to live in a shack in some little town off the grid. I could do it—but I’d hate it. More thoughts flash into my head and disappear just as quickly, but no matter what, there is no way out of this.
“I don’t think you’d understand. It’s complicated.” Henry watches me sip. For some reason his words feel like an insult.
I twirl the stem of the glass between my fingers and look up at him. “I’m smart. Try me.”
“Very well, but first tell me who was keeping you from me yesterday and the day before? As soon as I found out the good news about my invention, I wanted to celebrate—and I wanted to do it with you—however your employer wouldn’t arrange it. So,” Henry slips his hands around my waist and pulls me to him so that our h*ps bump. His grip is firm, possessive. “Tell me who I’m playing second fiddle to this weekend.”
I laugh lightly, like he’s funny. “Henry, you know there’s no one else that I’d rather be with—”
“So Black was just creating supply issues to make me crave you more? Because I already crave you more than is reasonably healthy.”
“Cravings can be good…” I throw back the rest of the contents in my glass and set it down.
Henry’s gaze follows my movements. He tips his head to the side and whispers. “What are you craving, love?” Henry leans in and presses his lips to mine. He kisses me and I force myself to kiss him back, even though I don’t want to. When he pulls away, there’s a sparkle in his eye, like he knows something that I don’t.
“What’s that look?” I ask.
“You’re too sweet to me, always trying to protect my feelings, but I know who you were with this weekend. I saw you two together.” The floor of my stomach drops like someone cut the elevator cord. Before I can say anything, Henry stops me. “I knew you had other clients, but I didn’t imagine you were screwing him.” The idea of me f**king Sean obviously upset him.
I touch Henry’s arm lightly and look into his eyes. “Then don’t. Tonight there is no one else, it’s just you and me.”
He shakes his head. “It’ll never be just you and me. I should probably stow it and just shag you until I’m satisfied, but I can’t stand the idea of you being with him. Do you know who he is? What he’s done?”
Things are spinning out of control. My pulse pounds faster, so that it’s banging in my head like a drum. “I don’t really get a say in things, Henry. And I’m here with you now. I can celebrate with you now.” I try to touch him, but his hand flies out and he swats me away. The action surprises me and I don’t know what to say.
Henry’s voice sounds light, like it doesn’t matter, but it clearly does. “Yeah? And how should I take you? I’d rather not share the same woman with Ferro, but if I have to, tell me where he f**ked you so I don’t get his leftovers.”
This isn’t like him. “Henry? What’s going on? You hired me. Did you really think you were the only client I had?”
“I wanted you to myself.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Henry grabs my wrist hard and yanks me toward him. When Sean did things like that it felt exciting, but right now warning bells are going off in my head. Something isn’t right, but I think I’m overreacting.
Henry’s jaw is clenched tight and his eyes narrow to thin slits. He hisses in my face, “Maybe it should.”
“You’re hurting me.” I try to twist away from him, but I can’t. My pulse freaks out. This is wrong. Something has broken in this guy’s brain—I see it in his eyes. Every instinct I have is telling me to haul ass out of there, but the guy has a lobster-like hold on me and he’s f**king twisting. I bend my arm so that my wrist doesn’t snap and yell, “Henry, let go!”
But he doesn’t release me. Instead, he gets up in my face. When he speaks, his breath washes over my face. I expect him to say something, like he’s hurting me on purpose, but he doesn’t. “You have to know what you did to me, how I felt when I called with good news and couldn’t see you for two days.
“So, I waited, and the entire time I thought about you—and what he was doing to you—and how you let him. That’s unacceptable, and I intend to show you exactly what I mean, love. You’re mine.” It’s like he’s possessed. He continues to twist my wrist so hard that the skin burns, forcing it up behind my back. He holds it there, driving me onto my knees.
I’m close to hysterically screaming. It’s climbing up my throat, accompanied by raw terror. Black didn’t seem to screen this guy for crazy, because Henry has bat-shit crazy coming out of his ears.
Mind racing, I decide to go with what he wanted in the first place—me. Henry wanted me to be his girlfriend. He took this arrangement instead, because it was the only way to get me. Now, I see that he’s not the charming guy I thought he was. Sean is devious, wicked, and maybe even evil, but this guy is insane.
And that’s the thing that scares me the most—crazy people are irrational—they do things that don’t make sense, and right now Henry is close to breaking my wrist. He doesn’t seem to realize that what he’s doing is bringing tears to my eyes and a tremor to my already strained voice. I try to talk him down, to bring him back enough to grab my bracelet and smash the black bead. All I have to do is get him to let go for a second.
Steadying my voice, I say, “I’m here now, Henry. I want to hear about everything. We can do anything you want—anything at all. Just let go of my hand and I’m all yours.”
His eyes blaze with fury. Holy f**k did I say the wrong thing. “No! You’re not! You were with him!” Henry makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat. He releases my wrist and throws me to the floor. “Do you know? Do you even know! That f**ker ruined my life! He took her away and now he’s done it again! Because there is no way in hell that I am going to let that son of a bitch do it again!”
Henry continues to bellow at me. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but there’s a river of bad blood between Henry and Sean. Holy shit, it’s like a deluge of hatred. His eyes aren’t even focused anymore. Henry looks as nuts as he sounds. He’s ranting, with his hands flying, screaming at me like I planned to do this to him.
I never wanted to hurt him, but right now I’m so scared that he’s going to kick me and smash my ribs. I roll onto my side as he screams, then gracelessly crab-crawl away from him, and finally take a second to jump to my feet. Reaching for my wrist, I feel for the bracelet. Taking my eyes off of Henry would be beyond stupid right now, but my palm only grabs flesh. Frantically, I feel for the black bead, but it’s not there. I chance it and look down.
Horror washes over me when I stare at my wrist. The bracelet is gone. It’s not there. My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out everything the crazy man is saying. Henry’s ticking things off on his fingers and stepping toward me, like I personally f**ked up his life. As I scan the floor of the room for the bracelet, his words finally sink in.
“Are you even listening to me, you f**king whore!” Just as I look up, his palm collides with the side of my face. Pain explodes in my cheek as my face whips sideways. Henry grabs me by the shoulders and pins my arms to my sides.
His voice gets freaky calm. The death grip he has on my shoulders loosens and he pets my arms like I’m a cat. “This is your fault, you know. I normally don’t get this bent out of shape over the little things.” As if f**king Sean was a little thing. How many times has this guy been cheated on? Is that why he’s freaking out? “Today could have been perfect. God knows how hard I tried, love. I tried to put it behind me, to forgive you, but once you walked in here with that slutty dress and that beautiful smile, I kept looking at your mouth. I thought about shoving my c*ck in between those hot lips and enjoying you like I should. I deserve a good time after what I’ve been through, I do. And you were supposed to be it, but then I kept thinking about it and looking at those lips, and those tits in that dress—and it just kills me that he had you first.” Henry takes a breath and tries to steady himself.
“I’m a forgiving man, I am. Just ask any of my exes and they’ll tell you that I don’t hold a grudge under normal circumstances, but bloody hell—this is so far beyond normal that I can’t handle it. I can’t…” By the time he’s done talking, his voice is so high and airy that I’m seriously considering jumping out the window. I can’t get past him to run out the door. What floor are we on? I’m pretty sure a three to four story jump will break my legs and I’m up higher than that.
I’m talking. I don’t know what I’m saying, but my voice is soothing, soft. My palms are up towards him like he’s going to hurt me and I’m begging him to stop. “You can. You can handle anything, Henry. You can handle this.”
Slowly, his eyes raise and he looks at me. A bolt of frigid fear shoots through my stomach and lodges in my gut. “Tell me something.”
I nod. “Anything.” My gaze flicks around the room for the bracelet, but it’s gone. It’s so gone. The clasp must have been broken. It’s probably outside the building in a gutter. Gabe is going to find my chopped up body at Captree tomorrow if I don’t figure out how to get out of here. I make my decision and wait for his question.
“How do you live with yourself? You see what you’ve done to me and I’m sure you’ve done it to other men. You’re an addiction, and an anomaly. You have a wickedly sinful body, like you’ve used it to get what you wanted your whole life, but there’s this wholesome, chaste thing about you—like you have no idea how to use that body—like you’re shocked when some guy looks at you like he wants you. You can’t be both. It’s not possible to be a virgin slut, but somehow you are.”
I have no idea how to answer that. My eyes dart between Henry and the door. He notices and the corner of his mouth tugs up. “Do you want to leave? I haven’t even gotten what I paid for yet.”
Yeah, there’s no way in hell I’m hav**g s*x with him now. I don’t do crazy. “I really think we should reschedule.”