Page 50 of Call You Mine

I’m tired of feeling this way—confused, hating the way I feel at just the thought of another man being anywhere near her. She doesn’t deserve my jealousy, if that’s what you can call this. I call it my possessive nature needing to lay claim on something I believe belongs to me.

Unable to stand this any longer, I turn and walk away from her, with no further questions or explanation.

“Where are you going, Damon?” she shouts as I head back toward my car. I know she has more to say, but she doesn’t. She feels it too. How explosive we are together, how dangerous we can be since neither one of us thinks before we speak and throwinsults back and forth at one another as if words didn’t hurt the same as actions. “Damon!”

Opening the driver’s side door, I glance her way before ducking inside, and instantly regret it. Wynter looks defeated. The pain I can see in her eyes as the tears she’s trying so hard to push back, pool inside them. The way her bottom lip trembles when she bites down to try to push back the screams I’m sure she wants to let out.

But it’s the way her body grows stiff, the box still in her hand, her fingers turning white with how hard she’s gripping it, that makes my stomach churn with remorse. I should be there by her side, making her feel protected because obviously she’s running from something, and you don’t run from something that's good for you. You don’t run from safety. You run out of fear, yet I know the moment I allow myself to truly care about why she’s here, is the moment I lose myself to her.

So instead, I brush off the foreign feeling coursing through me and replace it with something she’s all too familiar with. A warning, “Lock your door, Princess. There are monsters lurking around, threatening to come out to play tonight. You may think you’re ready for that, but I know you’re not.”

The fear in her eyes proves I’m right. Someone hurt her, more than physical wounds hers lie deep inside. Emotional scars, the inability to trust, to confide in something without doubt. A familiar feeling to me which is why I can sense it. I can smell the scent of uncertainty, yet she wants to start something neither one of us is ready to fully give into. I’m not sure we’ll ever be.

I can’t deny I want her, that’s never been the question. I want Wynter more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I need her more than anything I’ve ever needed. But in order to survive, I must hold on to whatever shred of sanity I have left in me and I won’t be able to if I give into her. She will consume me completely,it’s just the woman she is. And after the shit she’s been through, Wynter Servite deserves to have my full attention, my loyalty, my devotion.

Igniting the engine and shifting the car into drive, I take off needing to get as much space from her tonight as I can. Because regardless of how pissed off I am at her for yet again lying and hiding shit from me, I was so close to punishing her in a way we’d both enjoy far too much.

In a way, I need to punish her for making me feel this way. A man like me has only so much self-control, and a woman like Wynter Servite is the ultimate fucking test.

It took morethan I care to admit driving away and leave her standing there by the front door looking completely devastated. Everything inside me ached to comfort her, to wrap her in my embrace and kiss away the tears she’s holding back. To assure her she’s safe in my arms, that I’d die before I let anything happen to her. But I can’t bring myself to say any of that. Not when she’s refusing to do the same for me.

There are so many reasons I should push away the thoughts running through my mind. I may be a ruthless asshole but I’m also fucking possessive and that goes hand in hand with needing to protect what’s mine.

She’s not fucking yours. I have to keep reminding myself of that minor detail. Wynter Servite cannot ever be mine, not completely, and I sure as fuck won’t share her with anyone else.

Being a protector is in my nature. With my twin sister Ruby when we were growing up, with Scarlett when we became friends and started dating, although I took that too far for completelydifferent reasons. Now here with Wynter, I’m falling into the same fucking habits.

An addict craving the only drug that’s ever helped me feel alive. The need to know everything about her. Where she is at all hours of the day—hence the tracker in her phone—who she’s talking to when she’s not with me. I’d go as far as saying I need to be in control of everything about her. It’s the only way to keep the doubt that torments me daily from consuming me.

I’m a sick motherfucker, but that’s what happens when you never meet your maker and your mother overdoses when you’re six years old, her dead body lying in front of you for days before it’s discovered. I never talk about it, but I know Ruby doesn’t either. I’m not even sure she remembers, since even at six years old I tried to shield my sister from it all.

Most people would say it’s a good quality to have, being a fierce protector, but not when you let it control you and force you to push too hard, take things too far, and become a monster who can’t be trusted. One who maims more than he protects. Possessive in the name of being fiercely overprotective.

That’s what I became when Scarlett and I were in a relationship, which is why I can see now it would never work. Yet here I go again, doing the same damn thing with Wynter. Falling into the same unhealthy patterns. Being so blindly obsessed with a need to claim that I become the worst version of myself, turning my insecurity into insults directed at the woman I want.

I’d go as far as saying the way I feel right now, the thought of another man coming anywhere near Wynter, being part of her life, is ten times worse than how I felt when Ace started coming around, inserting himself between Scar and I. And that’s fucking terrifying to admit a woman, this beautiful and alluring woman, has that kind of power over me. Especially when she’s not even fucking mine.

Not completely. Never.

Pulling up to the large steel gates of Clarissa’s estate, the location for tonight's charity dinner, this one supposedly in honor of the Metropolitan Association for Wellness and Rehabilitation, I pull up the winding gravel road and up to the front doors of the ostentatious mansion. White marble pillars line the front of the home, illuminated with bright twinkling lights that lead up the front porch. A red carpet leads the way into the estate from the driveway where the valet escorts the guests out of their pretentious cars.

I fucking hate events like this, events I obviously don’t fit into yet have too frequent because of our business. A few months ago, I would have been here for a completely different reason. I would have had a woman, like the one who exits the car in front of me wearing an exquisite silver gown which surely costs thousands of dollars, draped along my arm as I served as her escort for the night. We’d be cordial in public, parading around the room so all her friends could see she had a younger, good-looking man on her arm, but after the event concluded and I drove her back to her estate, I’d have served a completely different purpose.

One she’d hired me to do

Bile rises inside me at the memory of what I’ve submitted myself to since I started working for Clarissa. At the time I was okay with it, actually I needed it to cope with the demons that lurked inside me. I saw it as an outlet, a way to release the pent-up aggression inside me in a healthier way than succumbing to drugs or violence, only it wasn’t healthy, quite the opposite. Looking back at it now, as I sit here with a different point of view, now that I no longer engage in those activities, I’m repulsed by the thought.

It wasn’t necessarily the acts I’d take part in, because all of it was consensual and requested by every willing participant, but how it all made me feel. I thrived on being in control of thesituations I found myself in, craving the way it made me feel in the moment. But it was the lingering shame and disgust which taunted me after that made me feel worthless. Like I was no better than my mother, then my father, then any other scumbag addict. I was addicted to the numbness it gave me.

I used my job as an outlet to extinguish the need in me for a relationship, for someone to protect, to have by my side. My need for her. Sure, I started working for Kingsman shortly after the first time we were together, but the only reason I could go through it all for so long, was because it was her face I was picturing when I was with the countless women who chose me as their prize. It was her mouth on me, her hands on my body. It was Wynter who brought me to my knees every single time. I think that’s the reason I’ve kept things so cold and distant with my clients.

Clarissa was the only one who could look me in the eye, the only one who could show her face when she was with me, and I think that was merely because she demanded it. For a long time, she was the only one who could touch me, but suddenly I craved the touch of a woman, even if it was a faceless one who I’d pretend was someone else. But they didn’t care.

They knew exactly what they were getting when they hired the elusive Draco. In public, I was a doting gentleman. Silent, complacent, willing to play whatever role was required. But in private, once the lights were off, the doors were locked, and the blindfolds were on, I was the one in control. I made the rules. They were few but simple.

No direct eye contact.

---