Chapter Eight
~Christian~
Foreign frowned and stood like an oasis in a desert, mouthwatering and paramount to my survival. A week of deliberately not interacting with her, only a few miles away, was more agonizing than being on the other side of the world for months with no hopes of seeing or holding her again. All the while, I wished like hell that time and distance would get her out of my system. Making my first trip into her territory caused a thirst for her so extreme that drinking an entire ocean wouldn’t be able to quench it. Just being near her caused my whole body to react and there wasn’t anything I wanted to do to change that. I needed her, and nothing would get in my way.
Proximity was just as big a bastard as distance was, inciting a hunger for her I had no hope of controlling if I was thirsting for her too. In that case, I might as well get as many servings of her while she was near with something clearly on her mind. Before I asked what had the wheels in her head turning, I extended my hand to her, to get her in my territory before she backed out of the date while still safe on her turf.
She glanced down at my outstretched fingers, before shrugging then taking them. When she did, all was right with the world, or at least with mine. I reversed so she could walk out, closing her door with her free hand. After guiding her to the car, where Tony waited at the opened rear door, she greeted him then let go of me to climb inside. Withdrawal symptoms, in the form of wanting her fingers linked with mine again, started to emerge, along with the longing to pull her into my lap.
I fought both urges to get her as close as possible without being inside her and came out like a champ when I didn’t follow her to her seat, sitting under the back glass of the Hummer instead. Foreign sat like a dark-haired temptress with her back to the other side of the car beside a wrapped present on the seat. My muscles were locked to restrict my own movements. The strain, from curbing myself, rode my neck like it was a bicycle. Exercising restraint around her was a bitch.
“How was your day, sweetheart? And that’s your gift by the way. Open it.”
Maybe talking would get me an inroad into her mind, mine off of slamming my mouth down on hers, shredding her dress to get to the delicate parts of her then bottoming out inside her.
She smiled sweetly and shook her head, patting the flat top of the present as the car began to move. “My day was fine. I hope yours went well, and I don’t have to open it to know what it is… oh, and you shouldn’t have but thank you.” She was being friendlier than I expected. I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I wasn’t complaining.
With a flat top and four three-inch legs, she really didn’t have to open it.
“I told you I’d get you the stool and I meant it. My day went better once I got here.” With her. “Is your girl okay?”
For a moment, she simply met my gaze, then burst out laughing. “Small talk and gag gifts? That’s what we’re doing after all you went through to get me here? And of course, my girl is fine. I was there.”
We may have been beyond small talk, and I could certainly think of something that would be much more pleasurable for the both of us, but I’d already put the cart before the horse with her in California where I stupidly gave her what she wanted; a one-night stand. It was too soon for mentioning sex anyway; it would probably generate an awkwardness that we can’t come back from at this point, not after the level I’d dove to get us here. Reminding her of that would certainly provoke her into diving inside herself where she lived alone. That was if I didn’t straight up upset her. She was volatile and had the damn stool to reach my face with her fists. However, she still needed to get to know me, so small talk it was.
“Yes, Foreign, idle chitchat is how people—”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted dryly. “It’s how people get to know one another. And if they’re desperate enough, they’ll blackmail someone, won’t they?” That was more of the response that I expected from her.
I deserved her sarcasm, took it on the chin like a big boy. “When they’re at their most desperate, yes, people will resort to blackmail.” Even if said blackmail boiled down to empty threats.
She frowned again. “Desperate, you say? Okay, I’m confused. Let’s cut to the chase.”
I already had cut to it, or we wouldn’t be in the same vicinity now. “I noticed you cut to the chase a lot, never one to just enjoy the moment.”
She shrugged. “No point in wasting more time. I’ve enjoyed the moment for twenty-six years when I had nothing going for myself, no one to lean on or understand me. I’m all action now.” And that was the crux of the matter; she had no one to just be there for her, letting her be herself.
I would if she would let me. “I understand you, Foreign.”
She smirked. “What do you understand about me, Christian?” More than she would ever believe.
“That you have been alone for far too long, a lot longer than the last two years you’ve lived here, despite the big family you have in California and the Philippines. And now you need to stop and smell the roses with me.”
She crossed her legs then swiped across her top lip with her tongue. The most erotic thing I had ever seen. Suddenly, it was too damn warm in the car. I took off my coat.
“Okay, Christian, I’ll play whatever game you want for now, but you should know there are no roses to be found in Arrow at any time of year. We don’t have a florist, and when are you going to let me cut to the chase?”
“There most certainly are roses in Arrow. They’re waiting for you at the resort where I’ll let you cut to the chase. There are a lot of surprises in store for you tonight.”
Her eyes bulged out of her head, a small smile playing on her mouth. “Surprises?”
I chuckled, her face blossoming with carefreeness that she probably wasn’t aware of. “Yes, surprises. You didn’t think I was taking you on a regular date, did you? And no more questions or nothing will be a surprise, will it?”
It was time someone went all out for this woman, not just asked her to give up something she wasn’t willing to give. God knew I was guilty of that.
She rolled her eyes. Her lips turned down in a pout, but I wanted to capture those lips with mine, claiming each and every moan she let loose. “You have all the answers, so of course I want a few,” she said. She was being flirtatious, but I knew it was simply because she wanted to get what I had. It wasn’t going to work “Just be patient. Not much more time until you’ll get more answers,” I cooed to her.
Cooed? What the fuck! This woman had me gone.
She looked so damn sweet my teeth ached. Her innocent expression paired with a sensual smile took my breath away. The atmosphere became so loaded with the sensuality she oozed naturally, I had to scramble for every bit of oxygen before it was all smothered. This close to pumping my fists in the air because she seemed pleased, and I made her that way, finally. I knew it wasn’t about the materialistic things but the thought that counted for the date even with this tough-as-nails woman.
Despite her pouting, her lips slowly curved up and she even started to relax. I had to situate myself, because I slowly felt myself losing the air in my breath. The erection she was giving me was hardening until it ached. I shifted in my seat, needing some relief from my condition before I switched sides of the car to seduce her on hers where I knew relief and a release waited. Then my phone vibrated, ruining the moment.
While extracting it, a curse slipped out under my breath. “Hold on, Foreign.”
A partial text message with ‘I missed you, so…’ from Natalia displayed at the top of my screen. The rest wasn’t worth opening the full message to read. We were done six months ago. She knew it, and hopefully didn’t have a sixth sense for when I was with Foreign. The phone went back where it came from. Foreign was placed back in my front sights again. Her smile had slipped, eyes less bright. A damn tragedy, but her sexiness and was still going at full force.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you, Foreign.”
“I like my life the way it is.” A warning if I ever heard one. Plus, she said it with certainty, like there was nothing else she needed to say.
“You don’t miss your family?” Like I missed her, and at least one other person did too; her mother.
Foreign looked past me to the back windshield. “Why would I miss them? All we did was fight.” She had no idea that what she didn’t speak came across as clearly as what she said. She missed them, but she wasn’t about to kiss anybody’s ass to be in their life, or dwell on them being out of hers.
I felt obligated to answer her question on her father’s behalf because he couldn’t, and I highly doubted she’d give her mother a chance to explain, since Foreign didn’t seem the sort to give second chances unless forced to, hence the sextape. “You guys fought all the time because Ma-ling and Terrence were trying to mold you into something you didn’t want to be; dependent on a wealthy man while wealthy in your own right.”
She snorted. “I’ve always been broke, Christian, no matter how much wealth my folks have, and there is no shame in that.”
“You’re right. I’ve been on both sides of the tracks too, but after being on your parents’ side of them, I’ve learned a few things about the rich.” She should know the hard truths about her folks’ world too. “Molding is mostly what the wealthy do with their children, and there’s a reason for that. You wouldn’t believe how many people just want to make sure that when they’re gone, their kids are provided for and can provide for themselves whether broke or not. Most people have a legacy to pass on, whether they’re good or bad, rich or poor, but no one lives forever. Most don’t want to see all they’ve achieved be buried with them.
“In order for a legacy to live on, Foreign, someone has to take the helm next. Some get so caught in making sure their legacy continues, they forget to make their children feel loved in the process of grooming them into adults who would work their asses off to continue that legacy and make it grow. I think that’s where your parents went wrong with you, but I don’t think they’re bad people. Have you tried talking to your mother about this?”
Foreign’s gaze returned to me with a vengeance. “Are you telling me I’m wrong for refusing to continue their legacy after being treated like chattel most of my life and I should ask her to explain why?” She gritted out the words, belligerent and nowhere near close to forgiving her parents. If her eyes were blades, someone would be picking me up in pieces.
“No, I’m telling you that maybe they didn’t mean to make you feel like chattel, but that made you strong enough to leave everything you knew behind to find something better in life. Most of us will never have that much strength to leave what we know.” People knew what to expect from the devil they know.
She laughed humorlessly, but her eyes didn’t show the sign of laughter. She looked annoyed. “So, you’re telling me to look at the bright side?”
“Not if you don’t want to, but I find it amazing that you’re strong enough to stand against a whole clan of Torres’ alone and be there for your friend. It’s a shame most people don’t know you’ll be there for anyone, all because your parents have thrust so many questionable men at you, you’ve learned to distrust everyone’s intentions from the start and keep your distance. So, you pick and choose who you want around, for how long, and that’s good until not many people can say they’ve had the privilege of being around you. You lose out too on what makes you human. A connection with other humans reminds us to feel. But I get why you don’t want that after growing up fighting for the most basic of things while in the lap of luxury, the right to just be you, who is someone wonderful. Everyone is missing out on that.” Deprived of her, and oh how I hated that.
She leaned forward, her eyes suddenly a little too bright. Hopefully, she thought someone finally understood her and valued her as more than flesh to be bartered with. I truly don’t believe her parents meant to make her feel like meat. They just forgot to tell her they thought she was more than that. Somehow, I became one of the lucky ones she let in for a while in California where she pretended the family surrounding her didn’t exist just as most of them did her. They missed the diamond I saw among all the lumps of molded coal at her mother’s home. I was positive her mother saw this, as well. Before I knew it, she was suddenly relaxing and even opening up to me. It was a welcome sight that I couldn’t ignore.
As Foreign talked a lot about what she wanted in life enthusiastically with me, I got a glimpse of the real Foreign. A woman who zested for life, her passion sucking me in. A woman who never noticed that her mother was always nearby, listening in, looking longingly at her baby girl who was all grown up… and keeping her distance. I could see how much that hurt in Ma-ling’s eyes, but Foreign couldn’t see. She wouldn’t ever look because she equated her family with pain now. Family that was too arrogant to look past their own wants.
To be around her folks was to hurt, to feel unaccepted. Foreign was pretty damn convinced she’d done that enough, so she wanted nothing from or to do with them. In exchange, her family lost the very thing they wanted from her, loyalty and strength… the very thing that would’ve taken her father’s companies to a new level. She was tireless in looking for ways to grow, would’ve applied that to the businesses. Once her mind was made up, she stuck to it. That included sticking with being a loner where it was less painful.
I bet my last dollar that there were layers of silent and disregarded pain buried under a lot more layers of her strength. It had to have taken a lot of that strength for her to step out of her comfortable zone of ‘snatch what she needed from people then run before she got hurt’ to simply stay the whole night with me. We never left each other’s arms where I felt more than just her body. I felt her presence. She delved inside me far deeper that night than I went inside her. We didn’t just fuck, we shared intimacy.
That night she got too deep, and took more than she wanted from me, gave just as much. I was glad to give whatever it was that convinced her to become not just a fighter but a lover. The potential was always there, she just hadn’t taken the chance to show that side of her to anyone but me. She hadn’t meant to either, but she had. Until I had to, I wasn’t giving up on getting her to do it again and again until she was comfortable with it for life… or pushed me away for good, but I would have no regrets.
Her slanted orbs drilled into me as she cleared her throat. “First off, Mahogany and Nevaeh chose me. They can be rather damn stubborn when they want to. It’s not my fault that my family is missing out on anything about me, and I don’t offer people more than I’m willing to give.” But she had given me more than she was willing to part with. She hadn’t, however, gotten enough back from her family. She didn’t want to risk the giving being one sided, if she could help it.
I was determined to give her everything she needed… and more. “It’s the nature of the beast to want more than they can have and want more of what they’ve had.” As was my case, but Foreign had taught herself to want nothing from anyone.
No longer content with just turning my head to look at her, I shuffled around in my seat until my shoulder was against it and we faced each other. “Foreign, we all want things and people we don’t have in our lives because most of us know a good thing when we see it. You’re still fighting tooth and nail to make sure the wrong man doesn’t get his hooks into your heart, holding you down in the process. Whether it’s a marriage of convenience or a relationship you willingly go into, you’re damn sure you’re not going to let it happen to you. And you could miss out on something great, but that would be alright with you, because it beats the thought of being hurt. You also associate ‘holding you down’ with your family, but no one can hurt you that way anymore. You’ve taken the right to just be you when you asserted your independence and holding onto it for dear life because no one can tell you that you don’t have a lot of living to do.”
I paused, staring deep into her eyes, grateful she was looking my way. “And you’re right, you do want more than you’re able to have, but your family’s way of doing things has had an effect on you that they hadn’t counted on. You want nothing to do with them or their kind. Unfortunately, most of the people you’ve met in your short life are what you think Ma-ling and Terrence is like. You believe they give only what is required, but expect a hell of a lot more back, so you think that maybe that’s how everyone is. That makes you afraid to love and connect, for fear you’ll make a mistake and get in too deep before you’ve soared high, so you push men away after taking from them what you need at the moment. Mahogany and Nevaeh aren’t threats to your heart in that way.”
A lover could only resist loving someone for so long. The nature of every beast gets its way eventually; everyone wanted to be loved in some way, and I made sure to love her well in California.
She jerked back as if I’d slapped her, but people don’t say the truth hurts for nothing. “I’m not a taker, Christian.” Her guttural tone and fierce expression silently dared me to say something else that would finish ticking her off, giving her the justification to jump my ass or jump from the car.
I shook my head. “I’m not talking about a ‘taker’ in the user sense of the word. Everyone is a taker. You can’t have givers without takers. You simply exchange one orgasm for another then move on. Comfortable in your existence now, living on just a few snatches of affection. That’s all you’ll allow yourself to get from others, as well as give to them. You leave no chances for anyone to get their hooks into you, or yours into them, but you can’t control how far yours sink into someone else or when, no matter how fast you run, Foreign.” That was up to the heart on the receiving end of said hooks only. Even the owner of said heart had no say-so.
She cocked her head. “While you’re analyzing me unasked for, you might as well tell me why I only allow just a few snatches, as if I don’t know myself.” The snarkiness in her tone was amusing, but she wasn’t leapfrogging around the car to get to me or the door handle with her claws either, so maybe… just maybe, she valued my opinion.
“Just a few snatches are all we need to orgasm, Foreign. The satisfaction isn’t long-lasting though, so we have to start all over again with giving a little to orgasm again. Then you go right back inside yourself where it’s safe with the devil you know. And then, the cycle repeats.”
She slanted her head and smirked, her eyes still unnaturally bright. “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know, right?”
“No. Until you face the devils you don’t know, you haven’t really tested your strength and learned what all you can truly survive in this world. Running before you get hurt stunts you emotionally until you’re not really living. Devils you don’t know teach us what things really matter and what things don’t.”
“I guess you’re going to tell me what things matter too, huh?” she asked sarcastically, blinking rapidly, putting away her emotions—they and her were not friends, but if she didn’t build a working relationship with them, she couldn’t build one with me either.
She tucked her arm tightly against her tiny waist.
I picked up the dropped threads of the conversation she wanted no parts of whatsoever. “I can tell you what things matter to me, Foreign, but not what matters to you. That’s for you to find out.”
“Noted, and since you’ve dug into my business and head shrunk me, how about we dig into your business? What things matter to you?” To ask meant that she cared a little and wasn’t as closed off as she’d like to be.
“First and foremost, family. Then keeping the lights on. Then love. On a side note, I didn’t dig into your business to make you upset but to open your eyes, sweetheart. You’re missing out on the other wonderful someones in this world, just as much as they’re missing out on your brand of wonderful.”
She harrumphed and peered past me again but smiled a little. “Yeah, I’m pretty much not agreeing with your order of things that matter, and no one ever missed what they never had.” Since she had been deprived of the true meaning of love from her blood family and a good man before she struck out on her own, it wasn’t hard to believe that love in any form had no place in her life because she had lived this long without it.
Instead of responding, I watched her until I had her attention again, and then I replied, “This is coming from the woman who braved the whole clan she’d cut out of her life to say goodbye to her father she despised? I should also remind that your family and I have had you, Foreign, and we miss you. And I’m offering a lending ear for you to bitch in about your day or whole life if that’s what you want, just to relax and release. You’re not alone. That’s what I wanted to tell you.” A lending ear was where I’d start in helping her get past what held her back from embracing all that life had to offer, including me.
********
~Foreign~
My family missed me? If he knew that much, then he knew they cut me off first, and if the car hadn’t rolled to a stop before I could respond—more concerned about where we were—I might’ve became rather combative. He had overstepped when delving into my family affairs. Furious didn’t describe the emotion that ‘my family missed me’ unleashed in me. Anger, I knew that emotion intimately. Angry was how I lived day to day in California with my folks. They had no right to miss anything after shoving my ass out in the cold. Telling him where to get off at for justifying my parents’ actions was about to ruin this so-called date.
He seemed to have forgotten that Ma-ling and Terrence had mouths… well, one of them still did. If they had wanted me to know they cared about me, beyond throwing me headfirst into an arranged marriage, they would have damn well said they cared. That was exactly what Christian was trying to get across, but it wasn’t for him to say. Not after they offered me the front door, without even knowing if there was something on the other side of it to take care of myself.
Now, if he had stopped at how much he missed me, I might’ve shown him how much I missed him back. He seemed so damn genuine and… Ah hell, I missed him too. No, no, no, I didn’t want to miss anyone or be missed. Maybe it was better my temper rose when it did because he was getting to me with all these claims of how he understood me. He truly did seem to. Then claiming he missed me had me thinking things that I had thought were behind me. But to blackmail me just to be with me?
He did say you were wonderful and amazing, and he wanted to be there for you.
And I believed him and understood the need for employing desperate actions in dire situations, or I wouldn’t have ever gotten out of California. If he hadn’t used tricks and ploys, we certainly wouldn’t be sitting here together. I wouldn’t understand him or be this close to forgiving him for the blackmail that only required dating him. Fuck! I didn’t want to understand, forgive, and care or love my family either. Been there. Done that. Got hurt repeatedly. Never again. I wanted to be alone with my mission to make something out of my life, to never forget every transgression committed against me or be in the position to be trespassed against again. But he has a way of melting that ice you like to shield your feelings behind.
True, and damn him to hell and back for it. Oh, and for trying to push me back into the family fold he was convinced cared about me. Maybe he just wants the best for you.
Now that, I was as unfamiliar with as I was with living on another planet. I was still holding on to some very vile words about the people who never cared about what was best for me, at least in my opinion. For Christian to defend the Torres’ was the same as committing treason in my book.
Tony opened the door for us before I could speak my mind, and that was possibly for the better too. I was seething. We were parked under the roof extending from the resort. Having to concentrate on getting out of the car behind Christian, who left his overcoat behind on the seat, gave me a chance to cool down one level below going nuclear on him. I was still radioactive about his unsolicited beliefs about my folks when he reached for me. It felt like he was on their side when I had experienced the emotional neglect at their hands. He hadn’t, so I swerved around his outstretched hand.
Afraid to touch him for fear of what else he’d make me feel besides anger, missing him, and damn near forgiving him for blackmailing me into this fucking date so he could testify for the Torres’. Bypassing him took me to the glassed-entrance of the Powers Royal Resort. A modern day wooden castle without the turrets jutting up from the flat roof. If there wasn’t an Olympic-sized pool on top of it or beneath it, I was a flying monkey. This place would have all the facilities that the elite desired.
“To the left toward the elevators,” Christian directed from behind me in the softly-lit lobby.
I followed orders and led at the same time across real wood flooring with random free-standing walls. Water cascaded down them, pooling in ceramic basins with coins in the bottom. People had made them into wishing wells. Maybe you should drop a few coins in all of them too.
Don’t tempt me—I was going to need a lot of luck to keep my temper in check tonight.
Amari Powers waved from the check-in desk in front of me just as an alcove with the lifts to the top thirty-five floors appeared on my left. Her in-laws owned the resort. Often, she flew on a private jet all the way from New York to eat at Tommy’s Cuisine and help out here since Blake Powers owned the joint and couldn’t register guests all day unless he wanted the place to fall apart. His wife, Sheriff Astrid Powers, couldn’t help out often; she ran the sheriff department.
To have one family member come when you need them was a pipe dream in my neck of the woods and if I stood still long enough, I’d be envious of what the Powers probably took for granted. But supportive family wasn’t in the cards I was dealt. I accepted the dealer didn’t have better ones in that deck after trying twenty-six years to get them. At some point, you just have to call it a day and move on.
I returned Amari’s greeting before stopping at the first available elevator. Christian materialized beside me, swiped his card through a reader on the wall. The iron, shiny doors parted. I stepped inside. He pushed the thirty-fifth-floor button. Tense silence impregnated the confines of the lift. The climb up to the top floor felt hours long. In reality, it was short and sweet. When the elevator glided to a smooth stop, his jaw was clenching big time in my side view. Somebody didn’t like being left behind.
Well, somebody didn’t like being subjected to years of being showcased like grade A meat then practically told by an outsider to forget it happened, so we were evenly angry. The doors slid apart to a long corridor with a low ceiling bathed in yellowish paint, carpet, and radiance from overhead globes. I had a good mind to let him get off first, then hightail it back down to the lobby and ask Amari to call me a cab home. This evening sucked. I wasn’t fit for company, especially the kind that sided with my parents. I didn’t hear him say one time that he agreed with what your parents did, but don’t piss him off any more than he already is. He still has shit over your head.
Knowing that was sound advice, which should be heeded, caused me to grind my back teeth. I couldn’t go home until I was told I could.
Christian stepped out then veered right toward a single door at the end. I shadowed him, glowering at his broad back. His suit jacket molded around his firm ass cheeks that were taunting me, challenging me to come up with a fantasy befitting them, despite my mood. I didn’t want to. However, his ass shifting beneath his slacks was rather damn thought-provoking. Eventually, my mind fell prey to the gutter again without even putting up a fight.
“Stop staring at my ass, Foreign,” Christian spoke with a grin in his voice.
How the hell did he know? Caught off guard and red-handed, excess saliva hit the back of my throat with no warning. I strangled on it, hadn’t known there was drool inside my mouth. At least it wasn’t outside it.
He snickered, his humor infectious and pulling a small grin from me. Dammit, I didn’t want to be smiling around him. I wanted to prove that I didn’t need him. Yet, he was bringing things out of me that made me cave. It’s called feelings. Deal with it. I was annoyed by my conscience many times and this was one of those times. Reaching the door with a long bar with one hand, he swiped his keycard in a reader below the bar, then glanced back at me. The smile I heard when he spoke last was having a damn party on his face. Helpless to stop myself, I smiled back when I wanted to stay mad with him. I wasn’t going to be able to as long as he teased grins from me.
He turned around, heaved the door open, then strolled through it. Softly playing lyrics and the slow, melodic beat to Jhené Aiko’s While We’re Young drifted into the hallway from a speaker system probably built into the walls in the next room. Over his head, the ceiling shot up two stories in the new space. The carpet gave way to smooth and hard floor as I trailed him to the edge of a pool. The soundproof door shut behind me, closing out the corridor’s lighting, shrouding us in darkness subdued only by the glow of countless candles that bordered the edge of a clear-covering over the pool. Four walkways extended from it. In the middle were the roses Christian promised. Two massive bouquets that stood as tall as me in slim, glass vases seeming to extend from the false floor behind red, thickly cushioned throne chairs at a glass table set for two. A few feet away waited a rolling, sterling-silver steam table burdened with matching covered dishes. Next to it, bottles chilled in see-through ice buckets with their own stand.
Rocked into speechlessness and awe at the fairytale scene set before me, I stepped forward, pausing at the walkway on one of the long sides of the rectangular pool, taking it all in. Nobody had ever done something like this for me. Probably because you didn’t let them.
Too shocked to even tell myself to shut it or be startled when Christian’s presence suddenly loomed behind me, I couldn’t even react to his hand pressing lightly in the small of my back. “Go ahead, Foreign. It’s safe. I promise everything is either screwed down, glued down, or too damn heavy to move like the flowers that will arrive at your house tomorrow.”
“I…” Well, shit! I had lost my command of speech. Your manners went wherever your vocabulary went too. Say thank you already.
“Thank you, Christian,” I murmured, unable to look back, talk louder, or walk forward.
“My pleasure,” he said so sincerely I believed him.
My vision was misty, throat too full, chest swelling. I was completely thrown off balance emotionally and physically again, a walking disaster if I moved from this spot. I felt like I was close to crying and that’s the last thing I needed to do.
I didn’t ask for these freaking emotions, dammit. They’re called feelings.
Yeah…got it! These feelings were causing emotions.
Putting them away required some skills I hadn’t had to use in a long time, which consisted of putting a figurative stopper in my tear ducts and forcing down the damn lump that had been hanging around my throat since Christian said he understood me. This was the proof he did because I certainly wasn’t looking forward to eating with strange people around; had done that enough growing up and didn’t do it at work. It was a complex I didn’t even know I had developed. Or maybe he just wanted me all to himself. Either way, it worked out for you.
It really did.
I worked quickly to remember how to shut emotions gotten too far out of hand before stepping on to the slightly raised, half a yard-long—too long—pathway that was bolted to the side of the floor. If the pathways hadn’t extended out a foot on each side of me, I wouldn’t have braved the journey to the center of the pool. Being short, always close to the ground, didn’t leave room to develop a tolerance for heights or skills for balancing on objects stationed above the earth, especially in heels that weren’t touching the ground right then. The pool covering was no substitute for plain old God-given dirt that didn’t need screws and bolts to just lay. Even the glimmering surface of the water a few inches below me was too far away, so Christian got left behind again as I scurried to the table where there was more pool-covering, less chances for falling over the sides of it.
If you weren’t such a scaredy cat, you could’ve gotten a little payback for the blackmail.
That thought hit me just as I gripped the raised back of an empty chair and the fragrances of the sweet-smelling roses wafted around me like a cloud of perfume. I had done the unthinkable; forgot what someone had done to me and missed a chance to make them pay for it. The bitch in me got a little agitated about that because ‘falling over the sides’ was exactly what should’ve happened to Christian at my insistence. He had blackmailed and locked me into obedience that didn’t benefit me, but I wasn’t about to stick around on the walkway long enough to push his ass off it. This bitch feared heights, remember? You gotta go back the same way though.
Indeed, I do, and that brought a shit-eating grin to my face.