Page 51 of A Love So Wrong
Chapter 15
Laying on the far side of the bed facing the wall, Jade listened to the sound of the bathroom door opening behind her. Ever since they left the other room, Gideon had not spoken to her. The hard edge of his jaw and the glint of rage in his eyes made any words she attempted to speak dry up on her tongue. The last time she had seen him this angry, he had four officers between him and Ron.
Shutting her eyes, Jade felt her tears roll down her face and into the pillow beneath her head. What had happened seemed like a dream turned nightmare. The voice in their ears had been merciless and twisted. He demanded things she had only ever dreamed of, and for a moment, she thought that despite the depraved path it took, she could have savored the outcome. She was wrong.
Despite the hunger she had witnessed in Gideon's eyes and the depth of his soul rendering kiss, he had come away from the room, pulling her in tow in stony silence. His simmering anger had reverberated off his partially nude frame like thunder across an empty sky. Letting go of her hand, he had walked directly into the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind him. Jade had felt every shred of hope inside of her die at once. He hadn't wanted her. All the signs she had thought she read correctly were wrong. Curling tighter into a ball, she lay very still under the covers, still only wearing her panties and Gideon's shirt. Sometime later, she heard the bathroom door open, and she felt the bed depress to her left, and Gideon's weight sink into the mattress beside her.
The silence in the room was overwhelming, and each second that crawled by felt like the score of claws across her heart.
Beside her, the bed shifted, and Jade held her breath as she felt a hovering heat at her shoulder. Without turning, without opening her eyes, she could sense his hesitant hand hover just inches above her shoulder suspended in the air. Please touch me, she begged silently in her mind. Please.
The hovering heat vanished, leaving her cold and more alone than she had ever felt in her life.
"I'm sorry, Jade," Gideon whispered into the air. "I'm sorry I fucked up and got us in this."
Taking a deep breath, she wiped her teary face and made her voice sound as normal as possible. "It's fine," she managed to say.
"No, it's not," he breathed, shifting in the bed, and Jade bit her lip to push back the unbearable sob building in her throat. She realized he had turned away from her, his back facing her like mirror opposites on either side of the bed.
It felt like a small eternity before she finally heard Gideon's breathing even out, signaling he was asleep. Sliding from the bed with cat-like silence, she padded around the room, picking up a handful of clothes along the way before slipping out of the room's double doors. Dashing across the suite to the other bedroom, Jade closed the doors. Finding her discarded bra still lying on the floor where Gideon had let it fall earlier, she did her best to ignore the pain in her heart and quickly got dressed. Coming back out of the room, she grabbed the few things she thought she would need and opened the door, and stepped out into the brightly lit hallway.
The hotel felt eerily quiet as she walked towards the elevator and called it up. With a ding that felt way too loud in the silence, Jade looked nervously back towards their room door, half expecting to see Gideon burst out at any moment. Getting on the elevator, she sighed in relief as the doors closed, and it began to take her down to the lobby.
Unlike before, the black and gilded first floor was like a ghostly shadow of its daytime self. She could hear the occasional sound of the noisy slot machines working in the distance, telling her some poor addicted soul was still playing even at this early hour. Turning left instead of right, she headed towards the empty hallway that led her past the bathrooms and towards the hotel's event space. Big black double doors edged in gold-lined the hallway on either side, each door held a numbered gold metal plate reading meeting room one, two, and so forth until it stopped at meeting room ten. At the end of the hall sitting on a gold mirrored table, was a courtesy phone. She had seen it earlier that day when she and Gideon had taken a wrong turn trying to find the elevators.
Stopping in front of the phone, she stared down at it. She could call the police anonymously, she thought, trying to play the scenario out in her mind. She could tell them she and Gideon had been taken hostage and blackmailed. No, she bit her lip in frustration, that would not work. They would probably only send one officer or detective maybe, and they would ask them questions, embarrassing and incriminating questions. Maybe a bomb scare? Maybe during all the commotion, she and Gideon could escape. But that would do nothing to stop the blonde man, Dimitri, from posting the video of her or calling the police on Gideon.
Feeling at a loss, Jade hung her head a little. There was only one other thing she could do, something she had toyed with in the back of her mind as she had lay in bed waiting for Gideon to fall asleep. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the phone that wasn't hers and one of the earbuds. Placing it in her ear, she hit the redial button.
The line ringed once.
"Yes, Jade," the familiar accented voice answered at once, and her stomach twisted a little in panic.
Not expecting him to answer so fast, she nearly stumbled over her words. "I w-wanted to speak to you—alone," she quickly added. "I'm sorry to wake you, but—"
"I hardly ever sleep, you did not wake me," the man said, and she could hear the heavy sigh of bitterness to his words before returning to his usual wry tone. "Come and speak with me, just follow Dominic he will escort you."
The line clicked in release before she could ask where Dominic was. Frowning, she turned around to go back down to the main hallway and gasped. Standing silently at the end of the hall like a giant sentry, Dominic's hulking figure stared back at her.
Her instincts told her to run, but she ignored them, and she forced herself to take a step and then another until she was within reaching distance of the behemoth. Without thought, her eyes trailed over the man's form. His suit jacket was gone leaving him wearing only the black slacks and a white button-down shirt that fit him like spandex. Muscles bulged everywhere on him, and she could see the faint dark markings of tattoos pressing against the white shirt, telling her that underneath that, his body was a canvas of design.
Nervously, she forced herself to make eye contact with the man. Instead of the hostility she expected, or the cold hardness of a criminal, soft brown eyes stared down at her with silent patience, and Jade immediately felt a tiny fraction of her defenses weaken. Something pitiful and weak in her wanted to hug the man. There was an odd sense of comfort radiating from his big form that called to her. It was pathetic how desperately she wanted to be held and told everything would be all right.
Swallowing, she offered him a weak smile and followed him as he turned and led her to the elevators. Taking the elevator only two floors up, she followed the silent giant down a series of hallways until they stopped at an unmarked door.
Reaching past her, Dominic swiped a card he held within his palm and pushed open the door. Inside, the room was designed a lot like their room in grays, blacks, whites, and occasional pops of color. Walking with her to the edge of the foyer, Dominic stopped with her as her eyes scanned the huge living room. Twice the size of their suite's living area, this room had two gray sectionals that overlooked a wall of windows staring out at a glittering infinity pool. Sitting in one of the sectionals in front of a coffee table strewn with papers, Dimitri sat with one arm slung across the back of the couch and some papers in one hand.
Seeing her, he looked up from his papers and smiled, lifting one arm in greeting. "Welcome, Jade."
Even from her position near the door, she could feel the dangerous aura around the man and could easily see the glitter of mischief in his eyes as he put down his papers and studied her. Regret hit her like a splash of cold water. What was she doing? This man had blackmailed and made her and Gideon do things they would have never done. This man had seen her naked. Feeling foolish and very afraid, she took a step backward into the foyer. Looking behind her, she cast a desperate silent plea towards Dominic.
Indecision flashed behind his brown eyes for a moment before sparking into something so powerful and determined it made her breath hitch.
From the sofa, Dimitri said something in a language Jade was now fully positive was Russian, which surprised her because she was not expecting Dominic to reply back in the brusque language. Immediately the swell of emotions behind the large man's narrowed gaze was shuttered behind a glacial wall she could not read. Taking a step back towards the door, he grasped the handle, and she realized he had every intention of leaving her alone with the blonde psycho.
Giving him a desperate entreating look, Jade silently willed him to stay. Dominic's face betrayed nothing, but his hand paused on the door's frame.
"If you keep looking at him like that Jade, with those beautiful eyes of yours and those chubby cheeks, I promise you Dominic will either die of blue balls right there on the floor, or he will go downstairs and shoot Gideon and take you for himself," Dimitri informed her with a laugh from the couch.
