Page 52 of The Last Time You Break Me

“It’s easy when I’m with you. You take away all of the noise,” I whispered in return, unaware if he had heard me at all.

“Are you ready?” he asked and I opened my eyes to turn my head to face him.

“Ready for what?”

“To feel the elation you desperately crave,” he answered as he pressed down with his heavy foot onto the accelerator andthe car jolted forward with a jetstream of speed pressed behind it. He flew around the cliff roads with my back pressed firmly against the seat. My heart hammered like a jackhammer as my pulse thundered beneath my skin.

My mouth was dry, all the moisture suctioned down to my pussy as that elation he referred to rushed through me and I threw my head back and laughed.

I felt like I was flying.

The car was a bullet through the wind as everything settled into place and the world around me was sucked away.

Not too long after, we pulled up to a restaurant that had just opened up on the other side of town.

It was one we owned but I hadn’t yet been here, too busy with other business and tracking down the assholes who held the answers for the deceit within our empire.

It was opulent and grand. The building lit in low lights that gave it that breathtaking glow within the night as it stood out from the others on the same street. As we entered, we were immediately shown to a back room locked off from the others that dined here.

“What is this?” I asked, as I took in the backroom.

It had low lights that highlighted the rustic brick wall on the far side of the room. The opposite was aglow in ancient books with old and withered bindings as a grandiose book shelf sat into the wall itself. Black metal swirls accented each wall and were delicately placed throughout the dining room. Upside down candelabra bats were attached in the very corners of the room where the wall meets the ceilings. A massive, warped iron candelabra hung in the center of a room shaped in three tiers with lit candles all around them. The bottom level had appeared to be hovering around a pentagram attached to the spoke.

The entire room was dark and broody, yet so intimately done that it set the mood of a spectacular evening.

“Reggie, I designed this room” I noted out loud, stunned beyond belief.

It had been a random sketch I had made, wondering if I ever left the mansion would it be possible for my own home?

But leaving had never been an option.

Not until I was married and even then, it was a big if.

My father liked us to all be under one roof.

“I know,” he husked into the sensual gloom. “I found your sketch one day and spoke to your father about having it made here, off limits to anyone but you, to use as you pleased. We both felt like you deserved your own space, one you could claim and escape to if you ever felt like you needed an escape at all.”

“I can’t believe you did this.”

“I’ve always been watching you, Lara. Even when you thought I wasn’t. I have always been there, in the shadows hating myself for wanting you and hating myself for never being strong enough to claim you.” He showed me to my seat and I sat down tentatively.

My eyes sought his and my heart stuttered within my chest as I fought to calm my breathing and keep myself even. I had been a pro at masking my emotions around this man, all until this very moment. I felt the walls I had built break all over again. I knew I no longer wanted to hate, I wanted to make room for love, but I was still afraid that he would walk away.

Being humiliated isn’t something you could just switch on and off whenever you felt like it. That night had left internal scars within my heart ever since and they were scars I had thought were there to stay. For a moment, we fell into silence. I had no words left to speak as my mind absorbed the moment he had crafted for the both of us. It was such a thoughtful thing to do and it only cemented the fact that his words had been declaring all of this time how he had truly felt for me. I smiled,not allowing the past to haunt us anymore. I had told him that history doesn’t age and I had meant it.

It was time I took the profoundness I shared with the world and applied it to my own life.

After the waiter had entered, we placed our orders and Reggie took my delicate hand in his. “I met your dad when we were five, y’know? I was on the streets, fucking around in petty crime. Dad was a deadbeat, Mom was a drug addict. I learned pretty quickly how to take care of myself. He found me literally biting the ankles of one of the fuckers that had caught me. I was a kid, but he didn’t care. He was more than happy to rough me up a little. Dom came across us and pulled a knife from his baby blue dungarees and slashed the blade across the back of his thighs. That’s where that lesson came from. Took him down instantly. He was with your grandfather, Raymond. That moment changed everything. Raymond took me in and treated me like his own.” He had a faraway look in his gaze so I leaned forward and caressed his cheek with my delicate touch. “He became my best friend. I was a cunt, I know that. But I felt like I was betraying everything I stood for. Everything I loved. Not to mention ethics, I’m old enough to be your dad. It was a lot for me to handle, Lara. It was a lot for me to accept. It’s no excuse, but I just wanted you to know the truth behind everything that happened between us back then.”

He looked back at me, his aged eyes withered further in the expression of the heavy burden he had just shared with me. “I thought I was crazy. The soft touches and stolen glances. My heart felt like it had been captured by a prince and I had waited three years to be saved from the burning tower. Only, when I turned eighteen, it was the devil that came for me and he left me there to burn. I had never felt so worthless. Especially when I knew in my heart that this was real. I thought there was something wrong with me. Then when Mom was killed, I nolonger cared about any of it. I hadn’t even cared if I survived it. I was drowning,” I admitted quietly as my eyes fell to the tabletop. The waiter entered once again and placed my salmon and jasmine rice in front of me and Reggie’s steak and sautéed potatoes in front of him and silently left us to it. “I knew you hadn’t seen me as anything more until I was eighteen. I knew that. And I knew why you pushed back against it. I just had this silly dream that I would be worth losing it all for. When I was ten, I found letters written between my mom and dad. Letters that scripted their endless love and forbidden romance. I had no idea she was the daughter and heir to a rival family. I had no idea that my dad had gone toe-to-toe with my grandfather to claim her even when he had no idea if he would support it. From then, I guess I had just always wanted to know the feeling.”

He sighed and cleared his throat, as he tried to keep his voice even and not torn with emotion as he replied, “I’m so sorry, Lara. You deserved that and more.”

“No, I didn’t. Not then,” I answered as I brought my emerald eyes back to his brewed storm and told him the truth I had been too afraid to admit for all of this time. “I know that now. Even if you told me how you felt when I was eighteen, a year later, everything would have fallen apart and the only thing I would have done was burn you with me. We needed this. The time and the space. It gave me time to find myself. To know my worth and to give in to the darkness. I was at war with myself, Reg. I always had been. I wanted to be this good girl. One my family could be proud of and every time I lied to the world, it only killed me slower. I wanted to be a host for my desire, not something that killed that desire like the plague.”

That was the first time I could say that out loud. That I could admit that there was a chasm of pain inside of me that I didn’t know how to handle.

Even when Reg told the family about his feelings for me, I shut down. Walked out. I had no words left to say because the game I played with him finally became all too real.

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