That recognized they weren’t left voluntarily.
Izzy was the first, but she never pushed me. Just like I didn’t with her fear of heights.
Even best friends could keep secrets from each other.
Other times, I would get interrogated on the matter. Like by Kazi and Mateo, the questions burning in their eyes every time they found a new scar.
It made me uncomfortable. It added to the list of reasons why I shouldn’t cross the line with either of them.
But there was an indescribable urge to relinquish my inner demons ontothisman. This practical stranger. I imagined his sturdy shoulders could handle their weight.
“I’ll tell you what.” Our plates had long since been cleared, and I used the empty space to open the folder to the first page of the packet. “Sign the NDA, I’ll sign mine, and then I will tell you whatever you want to know.”
I could see the intrigue flicker across his face, his lip quirking up in a half smile. “The catch?” He chuckled in a deep vibrating baritone.
The sound went directly to my cunt. My hand reached across the table to stroke his, my eyes finding his. “Sign the NDA and I’ll tell you what you want, but it means you’re interested. That by the end of tonight you’re going to be pumping me full with your cum.”
I gasped in surprise as he snatched my hand with his free one faster than I could see. His long calloused fingers encircled my wrist. I expected for terror to pierce me, but it didn’t. It was instead a dark pleasure that rolled across my nerves.
He applied pressure, just on the cusp of pain.
“What if I hurt you? What if I’m not what you expected? What if I force you on your knees and make you work for it?” His voice turned guttural, saturated in desire.
Each question sent a volt of electricity straight to my throbbing core. The dinner had been tame, but now with his full attention, I was beginning to unravel. “I can handle it.”
With his fingers still shackling my wrist, his other moved to the pen on the table.
His eyes never left mine. “You’re going to ruin me.” He bit out each word as he signed the document, finally releasing my wrist.
I reached for the folder, signing mine, and discreetly showing him before closing it back and setting it to the side.
“You asked for my story?” My eyes found a scar on my forearm, another on my palm, a third on the back of my hand. I poured us both another glass from the wine bottle, it was running precariously low at this point. “I may seem like an angelic woman that has had it easy, and maybe for the most part I have, but that wasn’t always the case.”
My attention landed on him. He was following my every word, giving me his full attention.
I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that or wished he would tell me to stop.
I knew Kazi had been watching us, but he wouldn’t eavesdrop. He knew better.
“When I was eight years old, I was adopted by a loving couple and relocated to Florida, but before that? Before that I lived with a monster.”
Others referred to him by his name. But me? I called him dad.
Chapter 15
Yara
Iclosed my eyes allowing the memories to flood me. Thankfully, they were beginning to fade, but sometimes in the dead of night, I would wake up in Kazi’s arms sweating and trembling.
“What happened?” The concern coating my dinner companion’s voice was what kept me grounded in the here and now.
“What do you think it takes to be beautiful?” I muttered the words out hoarsely, my gaze flashing up to meet his.
His brow crinkled in unease. “I can’t say I have ever thought about it.” His expression turned wistful, he rolled his lower lip into his mouth, biting it. “Sometimes I don’t think beauty is outward at all. It’s how you choose to be despite everything else.”
I cackled, an unhinged noise that left me on its own accord. “I think you and I both know how shallow this world is. You’re an agent. You know that beauty sells.” My fingers traced a particularly nasty scar up my forearm. “He used to say,‘Scars can be covered, but your ugliness can’t,’as he punished me for not being his idea of beauty. As he shackled me to the floor for days. As he withheld food and screamed profanities my way. It never took much to set him off. If I ever even had a single strand of hair out of place.” I reached up patting it down.
“He?” The word left his lips in a harsh grating tone. His face coated in shadows.