I turn away. “Fucking idiot,” I roar and look around for something else to smash but I’ve already tossed and smashed her precious Thornhill to ruins. Shards of expensive vases and mirrors and plates and glass litter the marble floors. I’ve ripped paintings off the wall and slashed through the precious canvases. I played Nine Inch Nails on full blast in the ballroom while I spray-painted the tapestries and drew obscenities on the statues.
The room I fucked and punished Daphne in was the one room that remained intact, and only because I fell asleep in the master suite last night before I could remember to drag my drunken ass back downstairs to desecrate it.
I stretch my hand out and bring it to my nose. It’s still fragrant from her scent.
Her scent that he probably knows now. Because she gave away what’s fucking mine. After she promised me, she gave it away. Like it all meant nothing.
I roar and grab the leg of the four-poster bed, ripping and yanking until I separate the tall pole off the footboard. And then I attack the wall with the makeshift baseball bat, smashing and destroying and taking out my rage until dust and drywall rains down all around me and coats my sweat-soaked skin.
I slump, exhausted, to the floor and bow my head. I didn’t sleep last night. How could I? When I’m used to her warm body, when I let myself imagine getting used to it forever— The pain sears fresh all over again but I don’t have the energy to destroy anything else. I lie down and lay my head on my arm. Cold. Uncomfortable. A shard of a vase cutting into my thigh.
And I sleep.
* * *
7 years Ago
The Quarantine Ward
“I don’t want to go in again. We flipped for it and you lost. You go.”
Pain screams through my face as their voices wake me from another nightmare. But blinking my eyes open doesn’t make it any better. Maybe this is the nightmare and I’m still not awake. Please gods, let this all just be one long nightmare and let me wake up.
But I don’t wake. Because this is real. The pain, oh fuck, the pain. How did I even sleep as long as I did through this?
It’s all real. Half my face is gone. Chewed away by flesh-eating bacteria. My life is gone. And she hasn’t come to visit once in the month I’ve been here. Does she know what happened to me? Then again, why would they tell her? They were trying to get rid of me and they did a spectacular fucking job.
Quarantine plastic surrounds my hospital bed. I can just make out the shape of the two nurses beyond, and then one finally lifts a flap and slips through.
She’s covered in a blue suit, face mask, and thick hospital gloves as she approaches cautiously. “Mr. Wulfe. How are we doing today?” Her falsely cheerful voice is grating.
I don’t answer her asinine question. How the fuck does she think we are?
“Time to change your bandage.”
That has me alert. “No,” I manage to grunt out even though I immediately regret it because it pulls on my destroyed cheek and sends a fresh hell of blinding pain throughout my body.
That’s the thing I didn’t know about pain. The wound is just in my head but nerves are a strange thing. They seem to connect all over my body. And so the pain shoots everywhere. My face is on fire but I’ll feel the pain in my belly. It curls me over into the fetal position.
“You know we have to change the bandage regularly to keep away infection,” the nurse says, still in that fake cheerful tone.
They changed it last night and it’s only ten in the morning, I want to tell her, but I can’t imagine getting out that many words. The final surgery to remove the last of the necrotic tissue and fluid was supposed to make things better but I swear the pain has only gotten worse. Maybe because they’ve dug away that much more of my face.
When I first came in, I coded twice in the ICU. It’s been a month of this hell and a body can only stand so much.
But the nurse keeps coming relentlessly forward.
I try to shake my head but fuck, oh fuck, it hurts. I can’t help the pathetic whimper that escapes or the tears that film my eyes. Dammit. Godsdammit.
The nurse reaches towards my face but I can see her fucking hands are shaking. She thinks she’s gonna change my bandage with shaking hands? Fuck that.
I reach up to block her hands. She jumps back with a shriek at the barest contact. “Call the orderlies!”
She scurries back towards the plastic flap.
“Wait,” I grate out, trembling from the pain of speaking. “Pain meds.”
But she’s already gone. The first few weeks, they gave me a morphine button but they said now I could only have pain meds at scheduled times to start weaning me off so I don’t get addicted.
I flop my head back on the pillow, exhausted.
Daphne, where are you? It’s a weak thought. I don’t want her to see me like this. She’s so young. And we never made each other any promises, not any real ones. We never even kissed. Why didn’t I kiss her?
You were trying to be honorable. You were trying to respect her father.
I cough out a bitter laugh that has me curling over in pain.
“He’s in here. He struck out at me. He’s not in his right mind.”
I blink up blearily at the voices. The nurse is back, but this time there are two orderlies with her. Big guys.
I don’t get it at first, what they’re all doing here.
“Be careful,” the nurse warns. “He’s the one with—you know. He’s the patient.”
The two big guys hold up their hands as they approach. That’s when I see the fucking restraints they’re holding.
“No.” I start to sit up in bed, then immediately collapse back.
“We don’t want any trouble. We just want to make it safe for everyone.”
What did she tell them? That the monster in quarantine attacked her?
“I didn’t—” I try to defend myself but speaking is so painful and it doesn’t matter anyway. Their minds are already made up.
“Let me sedate him first,” the second orderly says, like I’m not even in the room. He approaches with a needle.
The fuck? They think they can just knock me out and tie me the fuck up? For how long? I’m not a damned animal. I’m still a man.
But men can speak and reason and all I can do as they approach is grunt and shake my head and try feebly to hold them back. And finally thrash and scream until it takes both of them to hold me down to shove the needle in my arm until I descend into the nightmare hellscape of my dreams again.
“Logan!” calls out the beautiful girl with the green-flecked amber eyes. “Logan, where are you? I can’t find you!” She’s surrounded by fire and reaching out blindly.
I try to call for her but I have no voice and I can’t move, I’m tied down. I’m helpless as she’s burned alive, and then the fire comes for me, burning, burning, the flame endlessly searing my body from the inside out.
* * *
Present Day
I jerk awake, my hands immediately going to my face, then to my hands and wrists. Free. I’m not tied to that fucking hospital bed anymore.
Fuck, I haven’t had the nightmares that take me back to that time in months. I scrub my face as I come back to myself, then get to my feet. I look at the destruction all around me and hear my mentor’s voice in my head: Dr. Knox, who took me in when I was disfigured and broken, thrown away by everyone and anyone. Don’t expect life to be fair. This rage will do nothing but destroy you. Instead, use that energy to create. If you must destroy, destroy only those who are your enemies, not yourself.
I was alone, cast away by everyone, locked away in that quarantine ward, when Dr. Knox found me. He made everything possible. He set me on my course. And for a while everything seemed so clear. I was clear. I had purpose and drive and I knew who I was.
But now?
“What do I fucking want?” I ask out loud, kicking out at a particularly large piece of vase that managed to survive, sending it flying across the floor and into the wall.
Her fa
ce immediately comes to mind.
Daphne.
I want her. I thought I wanted revenge but deep down, she’s what I’ve always wanted.
Even if she doesn’t want you back? Even if she’s faithless?
I can never trust her, not now.
But I can still possess her.
Don’t expect life to be fair. And possession is nine-tenths of the law. If she’s mine, he can never have her. She’ll be in my bed. Her ass under my belt, submitting so beautifully.
If I can’t have love, then I’ll break and enslave her to my mastery. No, she’s not done with me. She’ll never be rid of me. Not in this life or the next, I’ll imprint myself so deeply on her. There will be no escape.
I stand and pull my phone from my trouser pocket. I pull up her contact and begin my message, then hit send:
Over your previous stay, you earned back 10 of the 130 Belladonna patents I own. I’ll expect you back at the castle at sundown tomorrow to begin earning the rest back.
Almost immediately, I see the icon that says she’s read my text, but it’s more than an hour before she finally texts back, just two letters, but they’re all I need: OK.
Six
Present Day
Daphne
“I don’t understand.” Rachel sounds as defeated as I feel.
I stay bent over my suitcase so I don’t have to face her, but that just means I can’t ignore the damn ring glittering on my finger.
“If I don’t go back, we won’t have a company. Belladonna will cease to exist.”
“I can’t believe all this,” Rachel says. I told her the bare minimum, the castle, the patents. How I’ve been negotiating with Logan Wulfe, my father’s former student, to take back ownership of my father’s research.
I’ve left out the exact details of our negotiations. Especially how they involve me naked and bared to Logan’s belt.
“You don’t have to believe it. Just know I’ll do what it takes to get those patents back. Whatever it takes.” I force my cheeks to rise in a tight and tooth-achy smile. “It won’t be like last time. I won’t just disappear, I promise. I have my phone—” I hold up the cell with the freshly fixed screen. “And I’ll check in.”
“You better. Or I’ll tell the press where you are.”
My smile turns into a grimace. I can only imagine Logan’s reaction to a flood of paparazzi on his lawn.
“I’ll be fine, I promise.”
Rachel’s silence says it all. She doesn’t believe me. Hell, I don’t believe me. But Logan would never really hurt me. As angry as he was, he confined his punishment to a kinky game. A kinky game we both love to play. He wants a piece of ass, not a pound of flesh.
But he had wanted more. When he let me go, I saw the man he was, the couple we could be.
And then I threw it all away. Logan sees my actions as betrayal but I have to convince him otherwise. I have no choice. He holds my past, present and my future in his hands. I own you.
I unlock my phone and check my texts. The last one from Logan makes me shiver:
Over your previous stay, you earned back 10 of the 130 Belladonna patents I own. I’ll expect you back at the castle at sundown tomorrow to begin earning the rest back.
And my reply: Ok.
On my way. I add. Then I tuck my phone in my pocket and close my suitcase. The zipper is loud in the quiet. The sound is so smooth and unwavering, so final.
“All packed,” I say with mock cheer. “I called my dad and told him I’d be on break, but I’d check in.” Dad was so excited—he’d already heard of my engagement from my goddamn fiancé. I kept the conversation short. “I put you down as a second emergency contact in case something happens and the nurse can’t get a hold of me.”
Rachel stirs. “What about Adam?” she asks.
My heartbeat stutters. I press a hand to my chest.
“Daphne? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I force out. I don’t have time to be sick right now. I have to be okay. “I don’t know what to do about Adam.”
I finally face her. She’s perfectly dressed and coiffed as usual, but she’s wrapped one arm around her middle and the other crossed over her chest, protecting and comforting herself. Her face is wan and pale.
“I don’t want to see him right now.” Funny how I’m rushing back to Logan, the Beast who locked me up, but I can’t stand the sight of the man who gave me a diamond ring.
My intuition is telling me something. I’ve numbed myself to it for years, but now it’s waking from slumber.
Maybe that’s why I’m so eager to head back to Logan. Somehow, somewhere in that castle I’ll find my truth. It’s been buried far too long.
Rachel holds my eyes for a long moment before she presses her lips together and nods. “Okay. Leave Adam to me. I’ll hold him off.”
“Thank you.” I rush to hug her.
She squeezes me, then pulls back to look in my eyes. “Don’t thank me. Just...take care of yourself, okay?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Then, before I lose my nerve, I wheel my suitcase out the door. The cab is waiting to take me back to the castle.
Back into the arms of the Beast.
Because while he’s the Beast, he’s also...Logan. Sometimes the two barely fit together in my head and other times, I think, of course it was Logan all along. Of course only Logan could have ever made me feel so safe while I explored such wild things.
Only Logan would I have trusted to catch me when I leapt into the unknown. Only Logan could have known me better than I knew myself and how to draw me out.
Only Logan...always Logan.
Seven
8 Years Ago
Logan
I storm into the lab, that bastard Adam’s voice ringing in my ears as he bragged about banging yet another college co-ed who was ‘barely legal.’ What a fucking bastard. I can’t believe I ever considered that guy a friend.
When we both started working for Dr. Laurel, Adam showed me the same face he shows the rest of the world, polished golden boy, perfect in every way.
Until he realized I’m a nobody from nowhere. Then he didn’t see the point and started shirking his work off onto me, not showing up, but still expecting to take equal credit for what’s essentially become my work. Not that Dr. Laurel will hear a word against Adam, not the perfect Adam Archer. All he says is that we need to learn to get along if I want to keep my spot in the internship.
Fucking infuriating.
The door slams behind me and I hear a small yelp from the corner. I look up and freeze.
Because she’s there.
Dr. Laurel’s daughter. Soon to become a doctor herself, she’s so close to getting her Ph.D. even though she’s just a few months past eighteen.
She looks up at me, her eyes even larger and more luminous through her round bottle-glass lenses, which she immediately pulls off. But then she squints and puts them back on, running a hand through her hair and shyly saying, “Hi Logan.”
“Oh. Hi.” I cross the room over to the small study carrel at the edge of the lab where she has four huge textbooks open and a notebook with tiny scribbled notes covering the page.
As she looks up at me, her chest heaves up and down like breathing is suddenly becoming an issue for her.
And I’m immediately transported back to the ball a month ago. Walking up to her in that luminous toga that hugged all of her womanly curves, and watching the way she flushed so prettily when I spoke to her.
Not that it stopped her from gathering the courage to ask me to dance.
I don’t dance. Not even for you, I told her.
I meant to say more, to invite her to go for a walk, maybe out to one of the balconies where we could hear ourselves think beyond the unnerving roaring chatter of the ballroom.
But no.
Adam fucking Archer swept in and grabbed her, smirking at me as he led her onto the dance floor in my place.
He doesn’t care about Daphne. He barely speaks to her. But she
was beautiful, the center of attention, and he could tell in that moment I wanted her.
But he’s not here right now. It’s just me and her.
And unlike him, even in her oversized sweater, tortoise shell glasses and her hair in a haphazard bun, I can see that she’s just as beautiful now as she was the night of the ball.
Her face has thinned out as she’s transformed from girl to woman while the rest of her body has softened. The tight leggings she’s wearing show off her curves as she curls up in her chair, one knee to her chest.
“What are you studying?”
“Ugh.” She makes a face. “Stem cell research applied to Myelodysplastic syndrome. I mean, it’s really fascinating. And it could have implications towards Dad’s research trying to help Mom. They harvested stem cells from my cord blood when I was born, knowing it might help Mom—”
I close the books and her notebook. “When was the last time you ate?”
It seems to me her whole life, her Dad has considered his wife’s needs before his daughter’s. Maybe it’s not my place. I don’t know what I would do if my spouse was sick, but he barely spends any time with Daphne, when she kills herself to please him studying, getting early degrees so she can join him in the lab, and spending all her free time nursing her sick mom.
She looks distracted, her eyes going back to her books guiltily like she feels like she ought to be studying—as if even the thought of taking a break seems selfish.
Which makes me grab the back of her chair and pull it out from the carrel. “No more excuses. We’re going out for a bite.”
Her bright green eyes flash up at me. “We are?”
I give a firm nod. “We are.”
A small smile lights her face. “Okay.”
Good girl, I think but don’t say. The thought immediately discomfits me, though. Especially when her instant obedience has my jeans tightening. I stand back and frown as she grabs her jacket. Shit, I can’t be thinking that way about her. And not just because she’s the boss’s daughter.
Billionaire’s Captive: A Beauty and the Rose Box Set Page 19