Page 51 of Connor's Claim

“It wasn’t a question. Now drop the fucking fork.”

I breathed out hate because fuck him. For my father’s sake, I should be doing everything I could to impress the man, but I just couldn’t.

I lifted my hand with a bite of food.

Under the cover of the people blocking us from the rest of the room, Piers half rose, looming over my plate.

He spat onto the cheesecake, his saliva dribbling over my fork and on the creamy pudding.

In horror, I dropped the cutlery, the clatter loud in the restaurant’s quiet hush.

“Next time, you will behave better,” he instructed with crystal-clear coldness and his voice at a level where only I could hear him.

The next several minutes passed in a blur. Piers paid the bill and joked with the waiter about women’s fickle appetites, and we left the place, returning to the car through the mild evening. I was in shock, I realised. My numbness had taken a slap to the face by someone so vile, he rivalled my father for the trophy of World’s Most Awful Human.

Surely that hadn’t just happened.

The rudeness and ignorance. The self-centredness. Thespit.

Piers drove us home. Throughout the whole journey, my father’s edict played out in my mind.Suck his dick.I couldn’t.You’re twenty-seven. People are talking.He’d set me up. My father was pairing me off with this specimen of a person. Not just for a date, but longer term, and for some benefit to him I couldn’t imagine.

Clearly Piers didn’t like me. He probably hated all women.

The minute the car came to a halt on our driveway, I hopped out and quick-stepped to the door. He had my phone, but I needed to get inside. At the last minute, I scanned the street to see if anyone from Connor’s crew was still following me.

But it was empty.

Laura’s car was gone, too. The only other vehicle in sight was a taxi, bringing home the couple who owned the huge house next door and who’d been on holiday. The woman waved, but I didn’t return it, not wanting to linger a second more outside.

I reached into my clutch.

A hand grasped my elbow.

Piers reached past me and opened the door with a key I didn’t know him to have. He wrestled me into the dark hall. Fear gripped me, and sweat broke out on my brow, my body urging me to run. To get away from him. But I couldn’t escape.

Once, when I was fifteen, another man had done the same. Caged me. Hurt me. Right here in the same spot.

Whatever Piers expected to happen next, I couldn’t oblige.

My father’s friend pushed me against the wall and rummaged in his pocket. I slammed my eyes closed, like that would somehow help me, piecing over what I could do.

“You’re forgetting something,” Piers purred, his breath sour with the meat and wine he’d consumed.

He pressed an object to my chest. My phone, I gathered from the shape.

Then he took my collar and yanked it, tearing the dress to shove my phone into my cleavage. “Well, well. Look what you’re hiding under here.”

I twisted away, clutching my décolletage. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

He advanced on me. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t let it, not again. Yet I was almost certain that if I yelled, no one was going to come running.

What I did next surprised even me. Reaching out, I grasped Piers’ arms and raised my knee in a swift jerk upwards. It connected sweetly with his groin.

He fell back and clutched the injured site. “You fucking bitch.”

He was going to hurt me for that. I knew it even as I flinched to get away.

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