I wind my fingers back through his hair, tugging slightly, eliciting a groan from him.
He pumps harder, and my orgasm gathers pace.
I bite his bottom lip, giving in to the urge to become the woman who knows that although this is far from gentle, she isn’t going to get hurt.
Cal rears back, his fingers grabbing my hips and digging into my skin as he plunges harder. My whole body trembles with the buildup of my release.
My walls clench around him, my breathing quickens, my screams become louder.
“Fuck, wait for me, baby,” Cal says as I am about to let go.
I mewl like a kitten at his words which stop me from going over the edge. I grit my teeth and dig my fingers into his thighs as I strain against the urge to tumble over the edge.
“That’s it,” he says, panting, his eyes blazing into mine.
“Cal, I can’t––” My words are cut off as his thumb connects with my clit.
“Come for me,” he says, and he pushes on my clit harder, setting off the bomb inside of me.
I cry out as I do what he says, and I come for him.
Only him.
Always him.
His roar has me pulsing around him, taking everything that he gives.
He collapses on top of me, and I hold him close.
This is true love.
No fear.
No fright.
No worry.
“I love you, Cal,” I whisper, needing him to understand just how deep he is ingrained in my heart.
“I love you more,” he says, placing a kiss on the side of my neck.
A few seconds tick by, and we stay as one before Cal speaks again. “This was supposed to be romantic.”
I push on his chest slightly, moving him back so I can see his eyes.
“It was,” I say with a smile. “And it was everything that I wanted.”
He places a light kiss on my lips and I devour the taste of him.
It may have taken us a while to get here, but now that we’ve declared all that we feel, there is no going back.
“You hungry?” he asks.
“You bet,” I reply before locking my lips with his.
He chuckles against my lips and I feel a warmth spread through me like never before.
He gets me.
He completes me.
By forgiving myself, I’ve allowed another part of me to open up.
And it feels so damn good.
Chapter Forty-One
Darkness always lays in wait
Lucy
Last night was magical.
Cal helped me realise that I do deserve to be by his side. I do deserve his love. I deserve my happy ever after.
This morning was wonderful.
Cal and I cooking breakfast together, eating and drinking coffee, and generally just talking about nothing in particular. Those are my favourite types of conversations. The ones where you are comfortable just being rather than finding a reason to speak.
Lunchtime came and went, and I finally decided it was time to show my face at work.
I have been granted special leave due to everything that went down with Michael, but I want to get back to normality. I can’t just sit around Cal’s house all day twiddling my thumbs. I need something else to focus on, and projects at work will help me do just that.
Focus.
Normality.
My life.
After speaking with Mr Collinson, it was decided that I will start back at work on Monday morning. My first meeting will be with the HR department to determine that I am fit and healthy to return, but I know that I will ace that meeting, because this is what I want. No one is forcing me to return, and Mr Collinson looked pleased to see that I was ready to come back. He also assured me that Michael was no longer a part of the workforce, and that he wouldn’t be welcome here ever again.
This afternoon brought a phone call that I wasn’t expecting.
One that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
One that allowed a slither of fear to curl its way around my heart and grip it with a ferocity that I haven’t felt for a while.
It was the hospital.
Michael had me down as his next of kin.
Yeah, pretty fucked up considering everything.
Even unconscious he’s still trying to keep some control over me.
And now, here I stand, outside of his hospital room, debating whether I can actually go in there or not.
The phone call was to tell me that Michael had took a turn for the worst. His body suffered convulsions of some sort, and it’s down to me to decide where to go from here.
Funny how when I first answered the phone, I thought that he had a small amount of power over me, but it actually turns out that I am the one with all of the power here.
He put me as his next of kin, ultimately giving me the decision over his future.
Do I want that decision? Fuck no.
But I’ve got it, and here I am.
Cal stands beside me, and the police have been informed by the hospital and by myself. Standard procedure seeing as I have control over the life of the man that tried to kill me. What kind of fucked up world is this?
I take a few deep breaths and Cal gently squeezes my hand. I want to look at him, but I can’t. I have to focus on myself right now. I have to get through this and come out of it the strong woman that I am today. Because I am strong, and I am working through my issues, and I’ll be damned if I am going to let fucking Michael make me take several steps back.
I can do this.
I can go in there.
“I’m ready,” I say as I continue to stare at the door. I don’t want to see the worried look on Cal’s face. He doesn’t need to worry, he needs to know that I am going to shut this bastard out of my life once and for all.
“You want me to go in with you?” Cal says, but I shake my head.
“I need to do this by myself.”
My words are something I never thought I would say.
I never thought I would be stood here with the love of my life, ready to dive head first into the future whilst leaving the tragedy of my past behind.
I remove my hand from Cal’s and go to the door that hides the devil behind it. Resting my fingers on the door handle, I feel the nerves fluttering around inside of me.
I can do this.
I don’t need to be afraid anymore.
He can’t hurt me.
In order to hurt me, I’d have to let the bastard back in, and I firmly shut him out of my heart weeks ago.
I push the handle down and walk inside, closing the door behind me so that the small part of me that wants to run away doesn’t let me chicken out.
My eyes rise to the bed, to where he lays, an oxygen machine breathing for him.
A nurse is stood beside the bed, her back to me as she writes down something on the notes in front of her that are attached to a clipboard. She turns around and gives me a smile.
“Hello,” she says, catching me completely unawares.
“Hi,” I say as I stay rooted to the spot.
“Do you have permission to be in here?” she asks, turning her body and walking towards me.
“I’m… I’m Lucy, his next of kin,” I stammer.
“Oh, of course,” she says as she gives me a sympathetic look. I’m guessing she thinks that I am upset to see him like this, but she couldn’t be further from the truth. “Take a seat by the bed if you like. You know, I believe that even though he’s sleeping, he can still hear you.” Her words are meant to offer comfort to a grieving lover, but all they do is fuel me to put an end to this part of my life, once and for all.
“Come on, love,” she continues as she guides me to the chair and gently pushes on my shoulder so that I sit down.
I do it because I want her out of this room.
I don’t want an audience for what I am going to say.
“Take your time, dear, and just press the button if you need a
nything,” she says as she places the nurse’s buzzer in my hand. I instantly feel better having it in my grasp, so I can use it within a second if I need to.
Just because the devil sleeps, doesn’t mean that he won’t give a spectacular finale and come alive to finish me off.
The nurse pats my shoulder gently before I hear her footsteps move to the door. My eyes are trained on Michael as I wait to hear the door click shut.
When it does, the silence looms.
Michael looks pale, gaunt, and nothing like the man that once made my heart flutter before making it pound in fear.
The stubble around his face has grown into a short beard.
Gone is the Michael that I knew, and in its place is a man that is weak. He always was, but I was too consumed by fright to see it.
He always feared me.
Feared that I would leave.
Feared that I would love another.
He ruined us, and I solely believe that the blame lies with him.
Yes, I could have been stronger, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
He always would have found a new way to try and infiltrate my mind and flip everything on its axis.
Our relationship was doomed from the start.
I clutch the buzzer in my hand and begin to release the final demon that lives inside of me.
“Michael,” I say on a breath before clearing my throat to speak a little louder. “So, here we are. You fighting for your life, and me in the driving seat. Quite a turnaround, huh?” I scoff at the role-reversal.
“You know, I will never understand your desire to make me yours, make me bow to you, and make me so frightened for my life. You preyed on my vulnerability, you homed in on my weaknesses, and you played me like a fool.
“I truly believed that we had something special, but from the moment that you first hit me, I knew that a shadow was cast over us. It took me a while to figure it out, or maybe my mind didn’t want to admit that our love was bogus. Whatever it was, I never should have let you in.
“I spent months blaming myself, telling myself that I needed to do better, that I needed to make you proud of me, act how you wanted, be the good girlfriend that you deserved. But in reality, nothing I ever did, or would have done, would have been good enough. You were always there, digging, taunting, poking, putting the fear of God in me.”
I take a few deep breaths as rage bubbles up inside of me.
A rage that I need to expel, and one that I never want to experience again.
“You were never capable of true love, Michael. I believe that you loved me, but it wasn’t healthy. Your love was an obsession, a curse. There would never be a cure for the way in which you need that control to make some part of you whole.
“I’ve been learning a lot about myself in the last few weeks. I am worthy of so much more, and I swear that I will forever remember that I fought and won. I came out of this stronger than I was before. Do I wish that I had never met you? It’s a question that has plagued me for months.
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t and sometimes I think that this happened for a reason. I didn’t know if fate existed, and for a while, I doubted that love did, but then something happened, a switch went off inside of me, and I know that fate and love are one and the same.
“I believe that there is a perfect person for everyone, whether they meet them or not. And you, Michael, were not my perfect person. You were my nemesis. You were sent to challenge me, to push me to be brave and become who I am now.
“I’ve been slaying my demons, putting them to bed, shutting the door on them and locking the key. And now I am slaying the final one.”
I stand from the chair and move to the bed. Looking down at how pitiful he looks, I should surely feel something? Shouldn’t I be sad? Heartbroken?
No. I shouldn’t.
I don’t feel anything because he is irrelevant to my life.
He no longer has a hold over me, and fuck does it feel good.
I lean down, placing my lips beside his ear and whisper, “I’m going to live my life and love with everything that I have. My parting gift to you is the fact that I am free. Free from your chains, free from the terror that you instilled in me, and free from your curse. And you, you’re probably going to die in here because as your next of kin, I’m going to tell them to shut the machine off that keeps you alive. If you breathe on your own, then I’ll fight you in court, and I’ll make sure that you pay for what you did to me.
“And if you don’t breathe on your own, then I’ll know that you were always the weak one. So, this is my goodbye, asshole, may your twisted heart rest in peace.”
I stand up and walk away.
Away from Michael.
Away from my past and towards my future.
Chapter Forty-Two
Goodbye
Michael
The grey fog swirls.
Clouds.
Obstacles.
They block me from going into the light, and they try to keep me in limbo as I struggle against the mist that clouds my mind.
I want the light.
I don’t want the darkness that tinges the edges, beckoning for me to just let go.
I can’t let go.
I can’t leave her.
She loves me.
I love her.
She needs me.
I need her.
She’s just playing hard to get.
She wants me to chase her.
I feel like I’m suffocating without her.
I’ve drifted in and out, hearing some voices mumbling before being dragged back under the dark cloud. I’ve strained to hear what they’re saying, but it’s just a few snippets of confused sentences. Sentences that my mind can’t quite put together.
I don’t know how long I have been… wherever I am.
Feels like an eternity, but then something seeps through a crack in the clouds.
A light.
Bright white.
And a happiness settles over me.
That sound. One I know, and one I love more than life itself.
“So, here we are. You fighting for your life, and me in the driving seat. Quite a turnaround, huh?”
Yes, baby, I’m fighting.
I’m going to come back to you.
I can’t leave you.
I’m sorry for allowing you to be on your own. I know that you can’t cope without the control… Why else would you keep doing things wrong if you didn’t want the lessons?
“You know, I will never understand your desire to make me yours, make me bow to you, and make me so frightened for my life.”
Frightened? What does she mean, frightened?
She will never understand?
Of course she understands.
How can she not?
My need to wake the fuck up and re-educate her takes over my fog-induced brain, but no matter how hard I try, my body won’t respond. I can’t move, I can’t open my eyes, all I can do is listen.
“I truly believed that we had something special, but from the moment that you first hit me, I knew that a shadow was cast over us.”
A shadow?
There was no shadow, what we had was perfect… wasn’t it?
We were happy.
We were in love.
We did have something special.
She’s been my greatest love. I’ve had a few, but she was the best, the one that stuck around the longest, the one that needed me the most.
“Your love was an obsession, a curse.”
Now she’s just trying to make me mad. My love is not a curse. I love hard. I love so much that it scares me at times.
How can she say these things? Why is the fog allowing her to reach me? Why doesn’t it shut her words down and take me back into its never-ending mist?
“You were my nemesis.”
Fuck. She’s finally lost it without me around.
She’s finally become someone that I won’t recognize when I wake up from whatever the hell pulls me under.
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It’s going to take me months to install the level of commitment I had in her before.
I trusted her, and I still do, but she clearly needs to remember how much she trusts me and values me.
“My parting gift to you is the fact that I am free.”
Parting gift?
Free?
I don’t want a fucking gift.
I don’t want her to be free.
She’s mine.
Nothing will ever change that.
I need to wake up.
Wake up.
Open my fucking eyes.
Why won’t they open?
Why is the mist getting darker?
Fuck.
“I’m going to tell them to shut the machine off that keeps you alive.”
I’m dying?
What the hell is going on?
The fog swirls faster, growing darker by the second.
A machine is keeping me alive?
Why?
What happened?
It slams into me like a freight truck.
Prison.
The fight.
My head smashing against the concrete floor, over and over again.
The pain radiating throughout my body.
“If you breathe on your own, then I’ll fight you in court, and I’ll make sure that you pay for what you did to me.”
Court.
Fight.
I don’t want another fight.
I can’t go through that again.
“And if you don’t breathe on your own, then I’ll know that you were always the weak one.”
Maybe I am the weak one?
Because I don’t want to fight. I can’t. My body and mind won’t withstand it.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
The word rattles around, but with every repeat, I slink further into the darkness that starts to come down like a curtain.
It has more appeal now.
It has the ability to stop me from entering the fight.
“So, this is my goodbye, asshole, may your twisted heart rest in peace.”
Goodbye.
Wait.
What?
She’s saying goodbye.
She called me an asshole.
Taking Control (The Control Duet Book 2) Page 13