by P. Dangelico
“I’m a bastard, and a possessive son of a bitch,” he said, grunting with each determined thrust of his hips. “But I love you more than life itself…and there isn’t anything I won’t do to keep you,” The pressure building in my body coiled tighter and tighter until I was whimpering encouragement and incoherent nonsense. “Come for me, baby,” he murmured in that sexy voice of his, the rasp more pronounced.
At his command, demanding me to take my pleasure, the coil unraveled, a Catherine wheel spinning out of control, sending sparks of pleasure shooting through my body. I screamed his name out and dug my short nails into the muscles of his shoulders. Following me to bliss, he shoved home one more time and shouted at the point of release.
Breathing heavily, we stayed glued together for a long time, long after I stopped feeling the cool glass on my back, long after he softened and slipped out of my body. When his legs began to tremble, he carried us to the couch where we crashed for the rest of the night.
“Don’t leg go,” he whispered right before we fell asleep.
“Never again,” I whispered back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I stayed at the apartment as long as I could with the excuse that I wanted to make certain he was eating properly and gained back most of his strength. Truth was, I didn’t want to leave. How I accomplished it for a month was beyond me. How I existed before we met was even a greater mystery.
The day I moved back to my flat he was super quiet, following me around the apartment as I tidied up.
“When are you going back to work?” I asked. Sitting at the counter, he watched me organize the freezer with the meals I had prepared for him.
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“I can’t stay in this apartment another minute…especially now that you’re leaving.” In the silence, I glanced at him and found him looking like a whipped puppy––or maybe more like a whipped tiger. “You don’t have to go,” he argued quietly.
“I expect you to eat everything. The containers are labeled.” This was the most difficult part, holding to the plan when every cell in my body rebelled at the thought of being separated from him. “I have to. You know I do.” The forlorn look on his face almost had me rethinking my decision. Almost.
“When can I see you?”
“You’re my husband. You can see me whenever you want.” That seemed to appease him, the tense look on his face relaxing to some degree.
“I’ll pick you up for dinner at the clinic.” His words hung in the air, a challenge, a promise––definitely not a question. I stopped what I was doing to see what his face told me. The look he wore made me smile. Determination. It was all over him. His strength of will had always awed me. When he put his mind to something, he was an unstoppable force.
“I’ll expect you by six thirty,” I doubled down, and the predatory glint that I saw in his eyes told me he was up for the challenge.
“I’ll be there.”
With his hands on his hips in a defiant stance, Yannick glared––there’s no other way to describe it, it was a glare––at my beloved husband. The same husband that only a moment ago looked all soft and in love, at present looked like he was about to commit bloody murder.
“What’s he doing here?” The sweet inquiry was leveled at me with a deep v etched on Yannick’s brow.
“He’s my husband. He can hang out here all day if he damn well pleases.” My push back seemed to do the trick. I pressed my case. I knew that if I didn’t assert the rules firmly, these two dolts would’ve gone at it ad infinitum. “You two need to sort this out. I am sick and tired of drama. I love my job and I love my husband. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. I’d like to keep both. I would also like to get through a single week without any yelling, accusing, or fighting going on…are we clear? NO. MORE. DRAMA.”
A long, contemplative pause ensued. And then Yannick turned his formidable attention on said husband. “Are we going to have a problem?”
“I don’t know––are we?” Sebastian stood a little straighter, his arms crossed in front. I noticed as soon as he walked through the door that he didn’t have his cane with him. I’m pretty certain that was not a coincidence.
“Because I can’t afford to lose her. I lose everybody and I won’t lose her.” I could feel the faint prickle of heat on my collarbone.
“Same goes here.”
An epic silence followed, along with a lot of staring each other down and sizing each other up while I sat by clueless. Was this some kind of native masculine language that females weren’t privy to?
“Make yourself useful, and help her change the bed linens.” And with that, Yannick turned on his heels and marched to the next examination room.
Sebastian’s confused expression made my lips curl between my teeth, fighting the laughter that threatened to burst out of me.
“He always like this?”
“Always,” I confirmed, fully chuckling.
“Let’s get going.”
“Certainly––after you help me with the bed linens,” I chided. He grumbled the whole time we worked. But when we left later that evening, arm in arm, a big smile lived on his face.
By early morning, the snow was already falling steadily, dampening the blast of car horns and the vroom of buses. Fat, fluffy snowflakes, some the size of a fist, turned the busy city into an enchanted wonderland. By late afternoon it was up to my knees and still coming down hard. With cashmere hat and gloves on tight, I took my time walking to the corner store to do some grocery shopping, enjoying how romantically beautiful the city looked. Tilting my head back, I let the snowflakes cover my face and hang on my eyelashes, laughing as I licked them off my lips and replayed the scene that had transpired that morning in my head.
Sebastian moaned. His arms overhead, he stretched his back from side to side. “Do you have any fucking idea how many beds we own? Or for that matter, how many king size mattresses? But here we are, squeezed into this shitty double bed.”
I couldn’t help but snicker. I’d made the decision to move back home today, a surprise he would get later. Throwing the covers off, I mumbled, “Somewhere there’s a triple shot cappuccino with my name on it.”
“I’ve got something right here with your name on it.” He drawled then took my hand and pressed it against the erection bursting out of his boxer briefs. I poked him as I got out of bed because, as usual, he was making me late for my shift at the clinic.
“Ouch––that hurt, Dr. Mengala,” he said, rubbing the side of his gorgeous chest. In the three weeks since I’d left the apartment he had already gained back most of the weight he’d lost.
“You’re such a baby,” I replied over my shoulder, and hurried to put on my underthings. He leapt out of bed and wrapped his arms around me from behind, enveloping me in heat and a hundred proof testosterone. He rocked his hips into me, and I almost rethought my decision.
“It’s your fault I’m soft and sensitive there, woman,” he drawled seductively in my ear. I rolled my eyes and elbowed him there again for his corny reference to Adam’s rib.
“You better go take a cold shower because I’m late as it is.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, after which I got a hard slap on the ass and watched him squeeze every naked inch of his six three frame into my tiny shower.
“How the fuck does Yannick shower in this thing?” I was certain it was a rhetorical question. Then, more muttered insults directed at the poor shower.
My resolve had been fading since the day I’d moved back to the studio apartment. I never wanted to be apart from him ever again, plagued by a constant craving to feel him, hear him, touch him. Every night he came over, and every night we would spend hours talking and making love. Even my skeptical self had to admit that it felt like something had shifted within him…between us.
I’d read somewhere that a relationship cannot survive if either of the two people in it held anything back, that love was nourished by revealing yourself to the other. T
hat intriguing piece of information stayed with me for a long time because I never really understood it.
For so long, we had both been trying to protect ourselves from the world at large that we had to learn how to trust all over again, how to let someone in…to reveal ourselves to one another. We had to almost lose everything to realize that the only thing worth protecting was the love we had for each other. Without it, nothing else mattered.
A bling alerted me to the text. I fished the IPhone out of my pocket quickly, expecting to see one from Sebastian. We were going to dinner and a movie that evening; I’d been looking forward to it all day. What I found instead turned the hot blood in my veins to ice.
It was a picture…a picture of a bloodied and bruised Emilia. Naked and lying on a dirty cement floor, her hands and feet were bound together with rope like an animal being prepared for a spit. An instant later I couldn’t see the picture any more. My hands were shaking so violently that my phone fell, landing in a soft pile of snow on the sidewalk. I dropped to my knees. My heart beating a mile a minute, I frantically dug in the snow until I finally found it.
That’s when a second text from an unknown number came in. The bling hit me in the gut. I was terrified to look.
6 pm. The train station. Platform 3. Alert the authorities or your husband and I’ll send her to you in small pieces.
The weight of the world came crashing down on me. I knew in my bones that whoever had her wasn’t bluffing. My first instinct was to call Sebastian, but I might as well have signed her death warrant, so instead, with great trepidation, I dialed Yuri’s number.
“I haven’t seen her in a week,” Yuri casually claimed. “The bitch probably ran off with that bartender she was always shaking her ass at. He hasn’t been to work either.”
“I swear to God, you deplorable piece of shit, if anything happens to her I will make it my life’s mission that you spend the next half of yours in jail!”
“I’m telling you I don’t know where she is.” After that, he promptly hung up on me.
Gathering all the sense I had left, I started to form a plan. In an hour, Sebastian would be showing up at the flat for our date––on time. He was always on time. Loaded down with the groceries I had just purchased at the market, I began to sprint home. Slipping and sliding in the snow, like a pinball I slammed into people crowding the sidewalk and still, I kept running…because nothing was going to prevent me from being on platform three in an hour.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
If I hadn’t been so anxiety stricken, I would’ve stopped to consider what this would do to my marriage. As it was, I didn’t have the luxury of time, or contemplation for that matter. Marching as fast as I could in deep snow, I strained every muscle in my legs running back to the flat. The snow was still coming down, accumulating on the sidewalks, on the streets. Heavy snow, soaked with moisture and hard to move. I think it took everyone in the city by surprise.
Some primal instinct told me to prepare for the worst. I changed into jeans and layered my clothing. I slipped a small, and very sharp paring knife into the sturdy, high ankle winter boots I was wearing. I was a doctor after all. I knew where every vital artery was. All I needed was a small sharp instrument to end someone’s life––and possibly save my own. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, however, my past had taught me never to discount anything.
I was leaving without a word to Sebastian. I could only imagine how he would feel when he found me missing. Any minute he would show up at the flat and go into full tilt panic. The melee of feelings that thought invoked was too much for me to bear.
After making sure the ring tone of my IPhone was on mute, I headed out. As soon as I ripped the front door open, my heart skipped a beat. Standing with his fist raised in the air, ready to knock, was Alek. Both of us stood staring at each other in shock for an undetermined amount of time.
No preamble. “What are you doing here?”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Not now, Alek!” I shouted, slamming the front door shut. My nerves were so frazzled it took me three tries to get the key in the lock and turn it.
“Did you get a picture too?”
My breath stalled. I whipped around and examined his handsome face. He looked…I don’t know, worried. The cloak of superiority and nonchalance he was never without was presently missing. “Emilia?” was all he said, all that needed to be said.
“Yes, I have to go. I have to be on the platform 3 by 6. That’s in twenty minutes. I’ll barely make it in time in this weather.” Walking right past him, I marched double time down the long hallway, headed for the stairs.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, keeping pace, his voice right behind me.
“No.”
“There’s no way I’m letting you go alone. Besides, they’re expecting me.”
I looked over my shoulder, sizing up his intentions. “Fine, but let me do the talking,” I fired back. He jerked in surprise. His brow furrowed at my delivery.
“You’ve changed.” This was no compliment. His tone reeked of disapproval.
“Yes. And I have you to thank for that.” Pushing the door of the building open, I stepped out onto the sidewalk with Alek right behind me.
“Vera?”
I never thought the sound of that voice could ever hurt, never fathomed that hearing my name on his lips could devastate me. And yet, I felt all those things and more. I turned slowly. Sebastian stood on the sidewalk, snow half way up his jeans covered calves. The night sky, glowing with the light from streetlamps reflecting off the still falling snowflakes, gave everything a romantic appeal when in reality a nightmare was unfolding.
He was dressed casually for our movie night, a grey cashmere beanie hanging right above his eyes––eyes that jumped back and forth from me, to Alek. Lips parted. Bewildered. He looked like I’d plunged a knife in his chest––like I had betrayed him.
“Let me do the talking,” I murmured to Alek in Albanian.
Shoring up my resolve, I took one step closer. A woman’s life depended on what happened next.
“Alex showed up. I’m going for a quick drink with him.”
“I thought…we had plans,” he croaked. He did nothing to hide the pain, the gapping wound in his heart. It nearly killed me to see him in such a state, but time was running out. I had to go at him hard and fast, leaving him no room to argue––otherwise, he’d never let me go.
“Change of plans,” I retorted. “Don’t make this difficult, Sebastian. I’m not in the mood for any of your crap. We’re only grabbing a glass of wine––I’ll call you when I’m done.” Somehow I managed to push all my love for him behind a closed door, my expression one of total indifference. I didn’t give him a chance to respond. Walking back to Alek, who had been patiently waiting and watching in the wings, I grabbed his upper arm and pulled him along, leaving Sebastian standing in snow––and confusion. But I couldn’t say for certain, because I never looked back.
The streets were mostly empty. I pulled the hood of my down puffer coat over my head. Eyes shifting furtively side to side, searching for danger, I probably looked like an inept criminal.
“Do you think he’ll follow?” Alex finally asked after a solid fifteen minutes of heavy silence. The look on my face had probably warned him to keep his mouth shut.
“No.”
No, he wouldn’t…not after my implied threat. Sebastian knew that one more broken promise, one more perceived breach of trust would have ended our relationship for good. And I had used it against him. Rage ran through me. At myself, at life. All I wanted was a quiet life with the man I loved, but there was always an obstacle thrown in our way, the universe conspiring to make it impossible.
“Are you getting a divorce? Why aren’t you living with him?” The muscles in my legs were weak from trudging trough the snow. It was still falling steadily, all the roads in the city eerily deserted.
“Because of you, thank you very much,” I snapped. That wasn’t entirely true. Th
ough for reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted to hurt Alek. I wanted to make him feel as bad as Sebastian was feeling right now. “And no, we aren’t getting divorced if I can help it. He’s the only man I ever really loved. The only one that’s ever really loved me.” I stole a sideways glance to see if my bullets had hit their intended mark. Sharp, scruff covered jaw tight. Lips pursed in a straight line. My success only managed to make me feel worse.
“I don’t know why you seem to think I’m the villain here.”
“That little stunt you pulled…” Alek’s expression was completely blank. “With the lip biting, almost worked…almost,” I explained, my tone caustic enough to burn.
He turned then, grabbing my arm to stop me. “I spent years looking for you. Beating myself up for leaving you there.” The tortured look on his face did nothing for me, not even a sliver of sympathy did it evoke.
I continued walking, the snow as treacherous as quicksand. The effort it took to pull my legs out of it with each step was getting to me. And then…finally. I spotted the train station up ahead. My anger with Alek faded away. My heart was suddenly stuck in my throat. I swallowed, but it remained exactly where it was.
That’s why I didn’t scream, why I couldn’t scream when a sudden, overpowering force hit me from behind and pulled me out of the snow, almost out of my boots…and off the street. The next thing I remember was a sack being placed over my head. The smell of gasoline and cow shit…and something else, some other…chemical. Then nothing, only absolute black.
Untethered, I drifted on a dark and dangerous sea––a sea of fear. Then a jolt, my body jostled. Curved in a fetal position, it pressed against metal, not smooth but ridged. Then, pain. A lot of pain, in my shoulder, my head, my legs. It grew stronger as I slowly ascended from the depths of hell I was visiting only moments ago, back to consciousness, back to the hell I would be experiencing in reality.