Page 43 of A Touch of Dark
“Are you?” he demands. Another searching thrust of his thumb fractures my attention. Can’t focus. “Too tight,” he grates, speaking more to himself than me. “Have to be.”
I bite my tongue and he draws back, rising to his feet. The loss of his heat deals a harsher blow than it should. Cold air cruelly replaces him as he starts to pace. One of his hands tears through his hair. The same one he had inside me. The nails on it assault his scalp, ripping strands of ebony hair from his neat ponytail. In place ofme.
I’m the real target of his rage. To prove it, his head swivels in my direction and I sense his focus on my fingers. Looking down, I see why. They’re flexing against the leather, straining for leverage as the hand on the clock inches minutes past an hour.
But I’m a long way from moving. If anything, the slight tease of freedom is a million times worse. I’m not so helpless, but still at his mercy. Still vulnerable to the threat he voiced.I’ll leave you here in the dark.
“D-don’t. P-please!” The plea scrapes my throat as he stalks past the couch, beyond my sight. With my eyes wide open, it’s harder to assume what he’s doing. Wood drags across carpet. Fabric swishes through the air. Footsteps angrily approach my door. “W-wait—”
“Once upon a time, you were left alone in the dark.” There’s what could be mistaken for pity in his voice. Almost—and it unnerves me like nothing else. “Afraid. Abandoned. In so many ways, you will always be that little girl.”
The door opens. Slams shut. Rain hammers against my windows, drowning out my rapid breathing.
Shadows loom across the floor. He must have disabled my automatic lights somehow, because they don’t come on no matter how my fingers flutter. I’m frozen. For one minute. Two minutes…
There’s no bluffing on his part. I’m swallowed by the silence. The loneliness. It circles me like a predator, waiting for the right moment to strike. It comes as lightning illuminates the sky and thunder reverberates through the very foundation of my building. Panic.
Bit by bit—cell by fucking cell—movement returns.
But all I can do is scream and remember.
Simon says…
You’re never lonely with a…
“Smile so hard and you might hurt yourself!” Sharla from accounting makes the assessment as she drops a stack of documents onto my desk.
My mouth practically waters at the prospect of more work. These will take hours, if not days to review. Less time to think. When I swipe my hand longingly over the pages, the perky blond raises an eyebrow.
“You must be having the best day ever. You haven’t stopped smiling since you came in.”
She’s right. I haven’t. My mouth aches with the effort it takes to maintain my flawless expression. I’m happy, all right. So damn happy.
“Thank you.” I beam wider as Sharla saunters off and closes the door of my office behind her.
The moment she’s gone, I lift a mug from the corner of my desk and drain it in one go. The liquid running down my throat isn’t coffee—the one risk in my façade I’m willing to take. As they have since the moment I woke up, memories from last night play tauntingly across the inside of my skull and only alcohol can counter them.Thissinister brand, to be exact.
Maybe I’m as much of a masochist as I am a coward. The bitter taste serves as a harsh reminder of just what Damien is capable of. Stalking. Drugging. Abandoning.
It took two hours after he left for me to regain control of my limbs and crawl into my bedroom. I only had enough strength left to switch on every damn light before a pounding headache drove me beneath the blankets and into a dreamless sleep—a quick Google search revealed a headache could be a potential side effect of succinylcholine. So that was that. He hadn’t poisoned me at least, and somehow, I woke up in time to hobble into my closet and get dressed for work.
But something else he said makes me compile another search, and the results are more puzzling. Legal cases have never interested me before—not even my father’s before he took the bench. A cursory search reveals a few of his landmark cases as a defense attorney, but little else.
Erased,Damien said. In fact, the only thing even remotely out of place is a single headline from over twenty-one years ago reading “All Charges Dropped Against Child Murder Suspect.” My father was briefly mentioned as the defense attorney, but the police apparently had no solid evidence and the suspect was never named. Nothing nefarious in that. Still, the topic of murder makes me shudder. Could that case be why Heyworth Thorne picked me, of all children, to adopt? Misplaced guilt?
Perhaps Damien thinks that fact might shock me. Oh no, my father didn’t happen across me by chance, but he sought me out because my case paralleled another he’d worked on. How evil.
But the bastard is a liar. And he’s ruthless. There were some lines even Simon hadn’t crossed. I asked my questions last night, but this morning brought my answers: Damien is more than just creepily intuitive.
After fishing out the bottle of wine hidden under my desk, I fill my mug to the brim and down half of it before focusing my attention on the small object beside my computer keyboard. It’s black and square-shaped, and it resembles an earpiece one might use for telephone calls.
Or spying.
I found it tucked discreetly near the bulb of my desk lamp this morning. I didn’t have to look hard—it was almost as if whoever had placed it therewantedme to find it. For all I know, there could be more. Or a camera watching me from some unseen corner.
If so, I give my audience a damn good show. I smile until my jaw feels liable to fracture from the stress. I comb through my work at record speed. I even deign to join the others for drinks after.
Anything to ignore the persistent reminders of last night. My throbbing arm. My worn, broken fingernails. The slight ache between my legs…
