I couldn’t stop the blush that spread through my body. “Damien…”
“Fuck, that’s hot.”
I shot Vicky a side eye.
Her eyes widened all innocent like. “What? It is.”
Damien decided to put a stop to the madness. “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go ladies.”
We made our way down to his private parking area in the garage below the building and after climbing in his car, we started our journey home.
The hour drive wasn’t bad at all. I had started to wonder how we were going to approach this whole dating thing when he worked the hours he did and we lived an hour away from each other. And that was without traffic. The morning commutes into the Bay Area was just as bad as living in Los Angeles.
Maybe the distance will be a good thing. I already feel overwhelmed by our new roles that maybe not seeing him every day will help me keep the balance I need in my life. I have a feeling if I let him, Damien would take over my life and I’ll never be at his mercy like that. Ever.
We dropped off Vicky and it felt such relief as Damien pulled into my driveway. There is nothing like coming home. I waited until Damien opened the car door for me before I got out. I learned quickly that he was a stickler for manners. I would never have guessed it with how he treated me as children, but the grown man before me made sure he opened my doors, carried my bags, pulled out my chair, and anything else that died out in the 50’s. And if he’s just trying to make up for treating me horribly when we were younger, he’s doing a great job so far.
He followed me into the house and immediately headed for the bedroom to put away our bags. The comfort he exuded in my home made me both smile and feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t shake Vicky’s words about Damien being in love with me.
I walked in the bedroom behind him and sat on the bed as I watched him unpack my bag first. “I can do that, you know.”
He didn’t stop what he was doing as he responded. “I’ve no doubt you can, but why don’t you go take a shower or bath and relax while I take care of all this.”
“I’ve recently discovered that showers and baths are much more relaxing if someone’s in there with you to wash your back,” I flirted. I mean, I was actually flirting with Damien Greystone!
Damien stopped unpacking my bag and came around to stand in front of me. He dropped to his knees in front of me forcing me to have to spread my legs to accommodate him. He wrapped his arms around my waist, and while I still had to tilt my head a little bit, we were pretty much face to face. But the knowledge that this powerful, rich, strong man would be on his knees for me had my female self-esteem riding a high that rivaled heroin use. “You need someone to wash your back for you?”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “No. I need you to wash my back for me.”
He lifted the corner of his mouth in smirk. “Good answer, baby.”
My phone started ringing in my purse and the sound of the personalized ringtone made me sigh.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as soon as he saw my demeanor change. “Who’s calling?”
I gave him a smirk back. “What, you don’t already know?”
“Okay, smartass.”
I gave him a pointed look. “Seriously, Damien, at some point we’re going to have to talk about the PI you claim you have watching me.”
He kissed me on my forehead. “I know, Halloween. And we will, but for right now why don’t you tell me who’s calling.”
I gave him his reprieve. “It’s my mom’s ringtone.”
Damien got up off his knees and sat down on the bed next to me. “What’s going on?”
I hung my head as I explained, “I haven’t spoken to either my parents in over a week.”
I could feel Damien tense up next to me. “Why?”
“When they told me about the…the, uh, money they owed, I told them I wasn’t going to help them and my dad slapped me when I said they were shitty parents for asking me bail them out.”
Damien jumped up off the bed and started pacing back and forth. “That sonofabtich hit you?”
Shit. “He didn’t hit, hit me,” I clarified. “He slapped me.”
Damien stopped in his tracks and the look on his face was pure outrage. “What the fuck is the difference, Fiona?”
“Well, a hit is like when you swing with your fist like in a real fight. A slap, well it’s a-”
“It’s goddamn abuse no matter if it’s a hit or a slap, Fiona! And I don’t give a fuck that he is your father, no one touches you. Do you hear me? No fucking one!”
“Damien, calm down. I’m fine. You-”
“Sit down, Fiona. I have a story to tell and you’re going to fucking listen,” he interrupted.
Well, hell.
Chapter 18
Damien – She still doesn’t get it Part 2.
I didn’t want to have this conversation, but she deserved to know why I treated her the way I did all those years. This was going to suck, but if anyone deserved to see my skeletons and scrape me raw, it was this woman.
“I know everyone in school thought I had the perfect life. My parents had lots of money, I was a straight A student, the sports, Yale and all that, but my life was not perfect, by any means.” I looked down at her sitting next to me and I could see I had her complete attention. It was almost as if she’d been waiting all her life to hear my story.
And maybe she had been.
“My father use to beat on my mom. He might still, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t spoken to either of them since I ruined my father’s empire and never looked back.”
She gasped in shock. “Damien, you don’t have-”
“Shhh, baby, yes, I do.” I treated this woman like dirt and she was still giving me the best pieces of her all these years later. I sure as fuck did not deserve her, but there’s no way in hell I was going to ever let her go. “I wish I could say it was because he was a mean drunk or he did drugs or even that he had an uncontrollable temper, but it wasn’t. He was ice cold and he demanded perfection from his wife and son at all times. Whether it was dinner being late, a speck of dust on the floorboards, a wrinkle in his tie, my mother’s fingernail polish chipped…whatever, she would be at the receiving end of whatever was handy.” Fiona brought her hand up to her mouth in a silent ‘oh’, her eyes glistening a little. “It’s okay, Halloween, you don’t need to cry for me, baby.”
“Damien, I just never imagined…”
I shook my head. “No one could or did.”
“Did he ever hit you?”
“No and it wasn’t until I got older that I realized it was because I went to school. It was too much of a risk that a teacher or coach would notice bruises on me and start asking questions.” God, I didn’t realize how hard this was going to be and it wasn’t because I was embarrassed. It was because as I listened to myself speak, I realized my home situation had never been a good enough reason to treat Fiona the way I did. As a child, it seemed legit enough, but now as an adult, I see that it really wasn’t.
“Are you okay? You don’t have to finish if-”
I grabbed her hand and held it in mine. “No, I’m fine.” I gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Anyways, when I was finally old enough, I had stepped in to defend my mother one night and she actually turned on me.”
Fiona gasped. “What do you mean she turned on you?”
“She started yelling at me, telling me to mind my own business. She said her marriage was between her and her husband and if I didn’t want to get shipped off to boarding school, I’ll mind my own business from now on.” Even now, all these years later, I can still remember the shock I felt at her words. Why would a woman ever choose that?
“She said what?!” Fiona shrieked, and I loved her more for it.
I chucked at her outrage for the teenage me. “I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you to freak out on me, okay?”
Her beautiful brown eyes rounded, but she just nodded giving me permission to continue.
“If I had been a better son, a stronger male or maybe just a more compassionate person I would have tried to save her again, but I didn’t.” I didn’t know how to tell her this next part without her freaking out or calling me a liar, but I went on anyways. “I was 11 years old when my father stood there livid as she threatened to send me away for interfering, and uh...by then, I had…uh, shit!” I shook my head at how ridiculous I was back then and how am I kind of still am. “By then I already had you so under my skin that the threat of being sent away and not being able to see you every day worked. I loved my mother and it did irreparable damage watching my father use her the way he did, but I needed to be around you more than I needed to save my mother.”
Fiona’s watery eyes rounded at my revelation, but she didn’t comment on it the way I thought she would. “Why would your mother put up with the abuse over what’s best for her son?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
“Money, Halloween. Money, cars, houses, furs, diamonds, you name it and it was worth the beatings she endured. It was worth whatever damage it was causing her son. That’s why I took everything from them when I was in the position to. Revenge is a motherfucker.”
And just when I thought she was going to ignore what I said about her, she piped up again, “Why do you call me Halloween, Damien?”
I gave her a small smile before I leaned over and kissed her on her forehead. “Some of my earliest memories are of my father striking my mother, so I already had a lot of dark emotions even at the age of five. The older I got the more I realized frustration at the helplessness of my situation was what I felt the most. The first time I laid eyes on you…” I let go of her and ran my hands through my hair. There was no way she could understand what she makes me feel, so she was probably going to think what I’m about to say is bullshit or crazy. And, yeah, it may very well be crazy, but it definitely wasn’t bullshit. “The first time I laid eyes on you, I finally felt something different than the frustration, fear and sadness. You made me feel…capable.”
I stood up and started pacing. I was getting frustrated at trying to explain how she made…makes me feel. “It’s hard to explain because I was only five and didn’t understand the feelings I was experiencing. You made me feel like I was strong. You made me feel like I could be my favorite superhero, but for some reason, instead of a positive superhero like Superman or Batman you made me feel like a horror movie villain. When I looked at you, you made me want to be a masked Michael Meyers or Jason because I knew enough about their characters to know that nobody fucked with them. You made me feel powerful. You made me wish it was always Halloween, so I could dress up and pretend to be so dangerous no one would dare come after me. You made me feel like I was strong enough to go home and protect my mother. You made me want to protect you.”
I looked over at her and the tears were really flowing now. “Damien,” she whispered.
“You made me feel untouchable when I knew it wasn’t true. I knew my father could crush me. So I began to hate the hope you made me feel and I started to hate you. Only I didn’t really hate you. I never hated you. I just didn’t know how to exist around you and how you made me feel,” I finally confessed to her.
I sat back down next to her. “As we got older, your hold on me tightened and you had no idea what you were doing to me. You’d go about your day without any need for me and it killed me. It killed me knowing you could and probably wanted to live your life without me around but I would lose my shit if I didn’t see you at least once a day.” I let out a pathetic laugh. “You should have seen the state I used to fall into whenever you would stay home from school sick or whatever.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing to say.” I stood up again and looked down at her. “Look, I know all this sounds crazy and paints me as unstable as fuck, but it’s the truth. I wanted to keep you behind me and let no one else see, hear or touch you. If anyone else realized how special you were they might try to take you from me and then I’d really lose my mind,” I kept confessing.
Fiona blinked away her tears. “I can’t believe how clueless I was all those years.”
I sat back down and leaning forward, rested my elbows on my knees as I held my head in my hands. “I was so sure I had given myself away the night I went after Dennis Franks. I’d never felt so much rage as I had that night when I saw him with his hands on you.”
“The night you kissed me,” she confirmed.
I looked over at her and brought my fingertips to her lips. “Yeah, the night I kissed you.”
“Do you have any clue how confused you left me that night? One minute you hated me and the next you were kissing me with everything you had. It was overwhelming,” she admitted.
I gave her one of my rare smiles. “Baby, if I had kissed you with everything I had, you would have been naked underneath me that same night instead of two years later.”
She lowered her eyes, unsure. “All those girls…”
Fuck! “All those girls were Will’s crazy idea of helping me control my obsession with you. After that night with Dennis, he finally understood the depths of my issues with you. He thought if he paraded other girls in front of me, it would help. Hell, we were 16 year old hormonal boys, it should have worked, but it didn’t. Nothing ever did.”
“Wow. I just….that’s a lot to take in,” she quietly whispered as she let out a heavy sigh.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Well, there’s more.”
She let out a genuine laugh. “Well, by all means, don’t stop now.”
“Graduation night was a first for me too, Fiona,” I confessed as well.
She was so shocked I had to reach out and grab her before she slid off the bed. I planted her firmly back in place and finally let out the laughter bubbling inside me at her expression.
“You, you…you…” she shook herself out of her stupor. “You were a virgin that night too?”
“Yep.”
“No way! No fucking way, Damien,” she denied. “You were Damien Sebastian Greystone, the most perfectly hot guy in the entire school. There’s no way cheerleaders and other girls with pulses weren’t throwing themselves at you all day!”
“Every girl but the one I wanted,” I confirmed.
“You…you were waiting for me?”
I let out a sigh because she still wasn’t getting it. “It was always going to be you, Fiona. There was no way I wasn’t going to experience that with anyone other than you. I don’t think you truly get just how fucked up in the head I was and still am over you.”
“The heartbreak I experienced that night was almost unbearable, Damien. It took me years to get over it. It’s like I was waiting and waiting for you to come back and make it right, but you never did. I finally had to move one and try with someone else,” she brokenly whispered.
“I wish I could tell you I’m sorry and mean it, but I can’t. Fiona that night with you is the single most important night of my life,” I told her, willing her to believe it. “It’s the best of all my life’s experiences and I will not lie to you and tell you if I could go back I’d do that night differently, because I wouldn’t. I’d still manipulate you into giving me your virginity and I’d still slam my cock into you like I did without any fanfare.” Her eyes were so full of disbelief. “Did you know I took a condom with me that night?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I did. Even though I knew what I was going to do, I still wanted to protect you and take care of you while doing it, but my need for you that night was so unbalanced, I’d forgotten to put it on. I almost went crazy knowing I was leaving for Yale and that you’d be left behind, that I finally got the bright idea to put a PI on you. I don’t think I could have left if I hadn’t.”
“You know this is all so…unreal, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know. And I also know none of what I just told you makes up for how I treated you and the point of telling you wasn’t to do that. I told you all this s
o that you’ll understand why I plan on having a talk with your father.”
“Wait, what?”
“Fiona, I wouldn’t stand by and let a random stranger hit a woman in front of me, you think I’m going to just let the fact that your father struck you go?” I snorted at her naivety. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’d let anyone put their hands on you and not do anything about it. No one hits you. Ever. Your father is not excluded from that.”
Her strike was deadly, but she was entitled to it. “So only you’re allowed to hurt me?”
I reached for her and grabbing her by her hips, straddled her over my lap. I wrapped my arms around her back keeping her anchored upright. She immediately put her arms around my neck and held on. She also never averted her gaze. That was one thing she never faltered at. No matter how mean I was to her, she always looked me in the eye as she took my abuse. Fiona was a lot stronger than she gave herself credit for. “Yes, only me, Halloween,” I confirmed, although my plans were to never do anything to ever hurt her again, if I could help it.
She didn’t say anything at first. She just kept looking at me like she could see inside my soul and couldn’t decide if I was worth saving or not. “Why?”
“Because as we move forward there are going to be times where I’m working late and forget our anniversary.” Her face paled at my words, but I kept going. “There are going to be times where I won’t notice you cut your hair or miss one of the kids’ soccer games. I’m going to hurt your feelings from time to time over the years, but you’re always going to forgive me when I do.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you are, baby. Because when I’m not unintentionally hurting your feelings, I’ll be trying my best to make sure you’re happy, healthy and very, very satisfied.” I buried my face in her neck and just inhaled her scent. “I’m going to make sure you never go without and I’m going to do everything and anything I can think of to make sure you don’t regret being with me ever.”
In Enemy Territory Page 13