Page 23 of Yours Suddenly

“Oh yeah. Huge asshole. Always abused his workers, I heard.”

When we're finished, we walk outside to my luxury private jet. I look down at my wife and she's awake, watching me. I brush a lock from her forehead. The way she's looking at me, she heard the airport employees too.

Scaring her is the last thing I want to do. It could even make me lose her again.

But I won’t ever let anyone fuck with her.

On the plane, I don't even let her sit in her own seat. I've been apart from her for way too long. She doesn't object, either because she's too drowsy and weak from the medication and the bruise, or she's just resigned herself to the situation.

I link my large hand with her much smaller one and press my lips to her forehead throughout the journey back home to New York.

Chapter 12

Alexandra

The medication they gave me is sedative, so I barely have any energy to protest or to unlink his hand from mine.

A part of me hates myself for loving how tenderly and protectively he's holding me. Like I'm glass and someone wants to shatter me with a hammer. Only problem ishe'sthe one who's wielding the hammer and has already smashed me.

Is this what it's going to be like? Him suddenly pretending to care and then after a month or so he gets bored and goes back to treating me like crap?

Probably.

I look out the airplane window as we soar through the night.

Strangely I don't really feel sorry for the horse ranch owner. Everyone on the ranch hated him and I'm likely to have a mark on my neck forever.

Something savage and satisfied blooms in my chest, worrying me a little. The fact that he was willing to avenge melike that is a little scary but also… hot. It makes my heart ache and warm at the same time.

“You’re going to drink this,” he says to me when a flight attendant hands him a bowl of warm broth.

My mouth watering from hunger, I move to take the bowl from him, but he shakes his head.

“I'll feed it to you.”

“I can feed myself,” I snap. “I’m not a child.”

“Didn't say you were. Now open up,” he says, dipping the spoon into the hot, aromatic liquid and blowing the heat away.

Reluctantly I open my mouth.

A man of my caliberhas been ringing nonstop in my head for days yet I’m allowing this man to feed me. Just tells you what a grip he has on me.

I have to work on loosening it otherwise I’ll suffocate.

When the broth is finished he tucks me in closer to his chest and resumes pressing his lips to my forehead, breathing in my scent. Inexplicably, I cuddle closer to him and when we land in New York, I'm glad he has no intention of making me walk at all. It’s the least he can do after being the cause of all this mess.

In theArrivalshall, we find Mama and Adrianne.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Mama cries.

I'm surprised she's not pissed off, only relieved. Adrianne, too.

“We were so worried,” she sighs.

“I just needed a little vacation, that's all,” I say, a little embarrassed.

Adrianne and Mama are throwing Roman looks of disapproval.

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