Didn't I Warn You (22 page)

Authors: Amber Bardan

TWENTY-EIGHT

“T
AKE
IT
,”
HE
SAID
.

I didn’t want to take it any more than I’d want to pick up a live snake. But I did. I slid it to the edge of the table and opened the cover.

A disc rested on top of the pile. I pushed it aside, picked up the paper on top. It took me a moment to decipher the image.
Haithem
.

His profile, captured—although grainy—on some kind of security camera.

“I don’t understand what this is.”

He pressed a hand to the table. “You will.”

I picked up the next paper. Another picture of Haithem, this one superimposed next to a different image.

I scanned the page and recognition hit. “This is me the day we met—after the elevator.” I read the line of text at the top of the printout. “This is from a news site?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why are there pictures of us on the news?” I looked back at the images. “Are you wanted by authorities?”

“I’m not the one the authorities are looking for—not really.” He straightened.

My neck twitched.

I grabbed the next sheet in the pile.

This one was me.

So was the next.

All me.

Pictures of me.

“Why am I news?” I dropped the papers and rifled through the pile.

Headlines.

Missing girl—The Disappearance of Angelina Morrison—Mayor’s Daughter Vanishes.

Articles.

Lines and lines of texts that I was shaking too much to read.

“Why do people think I’m missing?” I grabbed an article, pulling breath into my lungs. “You emailed my parents.”

He rounded the table.

“You emailed my parents, and they emailed back.”

He stood in front of me and lifted his jaw.

“Yes, you did—you did send it.” A sob caught in my chest. “You told me all the horrible things my mother said.” I shook the papers at him. “Why would you say that if it was a lie?”

I looked at the papers in my hands and cried.

“It wasn’t safe to send anything that could lead back here.” He stepped closer, his hand out. “Not when you’d already been reported missing.”

I stepped away from his touch. “But you lied to me—why lie to me?” I stared at him. There was still a chance. Still a chance he could explain. Maybe I’d misunderstood. He wouldn’t do this to me. “Why say all those things?”

“I couldn’t let you go until I could make sure I’d be able to get the prototype to the manufacturing plant without being intercepted.” He closed the space between us. “You had to be here for two more weeks. I wasn’t sure who you were, and I didn’t want to have to hold you prisoner. I didn’t want you to fight every moment.”

I barely heard his explanations.

“Do you have any idea what they must be thinking?” I wiped my face on my wrist. My gaze caught on another headline. A sob halted midway up my throat.

I picked up the news printout.

“Homicide detectives calling for...” I glanced up. “Homicide?”

Finally, his expression cracked.

Guilt—remorse
.

Too little, too late.

“It’s the common assumption in these cases...” he whispered.

My heart clenched as though a fist ripped through my chest and squeezed it.

“No, no, no—” I panted, dropping the papers. The room spun. “They can’t think that. Not them. Not after everything...”

I slipped, and he grabbed me around the waist.

I cried. Cried so loud, it echoed. Cried so hard, my body shook. Cried words I didn’t understand.

And I let him hold me. Damn him, no matter how much I hated him, I couldn’t push him away. Didn’t have the strength for it.

I only had the strength to purge.

I burned out quickly. Sobs drained to hiccups.

I pushed away from him and breathed. “I have to get home. I have to let them know—” I glanced at Haithem. “What time do I leave tomorrow?”

“Angel...” He shook his head, then bent down and sorted through the printouts, coming up with one. “Don’t you know what this means?”

I looked at the image, the one of him and me next to each other.

“Don’t you understand what it means to be publicly linked to me?”

I went numb.

I couldn’t feel my hands. With numbness came clarity. I understood now, why he’d let his secrets free. Not because he trusted me, as my heart willed me to assume.

He planned to keep me.

Keep me locked up tighter than that treasure of his.

I couldn’t tell any secrets, because there’d be no one to hear them.

“I won’t be going home, will I?”

The way his features stiffened told me all I needed to know.

I didn’t think I could hurt more.

But I could.

I wrapped my arms around my middle, my stomach a malignant mess of pain, and tore my gaze from him.

He’d lied to me.

Been lying to me this whole time.

Perhaps about everything.

Perhaps about his feelings for me.

Could he fake the way he looked at me? The way he held me? The way he fucked me?

He was a master player. Could I have been so willfully blind? There’d been signs. I’d feared this before. Maybe I’d never understood how all this worked. Maybe I couldn’t recognize true devotion because I’d never really had it.

All my certainties shattered. I’d been certain. Now everything I believed, everything I knew, balanced on a pinpoint.

“Did you ever love me?” I whispered.

“Yes.” He said it without pause. Without taking a breath.

Like someone telling the truth.

But then, I’d experienced his skillful deception.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, and reached behind me for the table, one arm still wrapped around my middle.

“I love you.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t love.” Tears rolled again. “This isn’t what love does.”

“I know,” he said. “I warned you I’m not good, that I wouldn’t do the right things.” His voice was like sandpaper on my soul. “I warned you not to cultivate my feelings.”

He came closer, and I couldn’t move away.

“I told you not to fall for me. I tried to stay away.”

I held on to the table, staring at the surface. The heat of his body, so close yet not touching, warmed my side.

“But you wouldn’t leave me be.”

I shut my eyes.
Truth
. If only this much from him.

“You sought me out. You demanded my touch. You stole my heart.”

Each new truth hit me with another stab to the guts. I had no words to deny any of it.

His shirt grazed my elbow.

“But this is all my fault—and you should hate me—because I never should have brought you here.”

He touched me, finally, a hand on my arm.

A reassurance I hated and craved.

“But I saw you on the docks that day.”

His words were a tug on my brain, yanking a thread of realization through the agony. He’d seen me? This entire time I’d been here because he’d suspected me of being after his secret.

“I couldn’t take the chance you weren’t who you appeared to be.” He’d come after me not because I was irresistible but because he thought I was something I’m not.

My fists flew to my chest. I couldn’t make the pain less. Couldn’t hold my heart inside my body. “That’s why you tracked me down. You never wanted me the way I wanted you.”

He touched the hands I clasped. “You want proof I love you?”

I dragged my gaze back to him. Watched him speak.

“If I didn’t care, I could have sent you home. Until today, you never had anything that could truly jeopardize me.” His voice dropped an octave. “So I could have sent you on your way, and maybe, just maybe, no one would ever recognize that image of me. Maybe they’d never put it together.”

I shivered, apprehension rolling across my skin.

“Maybe you
could
go home tomorrow. Your family gets you back. You slip right back into your life.” His caress turned to a grip. “Maybe you’ll be fine.” Then he took my arms, made me face him. “But maybe you won’t.”

My heart beat like a death-metal band screamed and rattled in my chest.

“Maybe one night someone with questions breaks in your back door—like they broke in my parents’ back door—and maybe no answers will satisfy them.” He leaned toward me. “Then no one gets you back. Not ever again. Not your family. Not me.” His features contorted, and his eyes shut for a pause. “That’s why I told you that you don’t want my love. Because I’m that selfish. I won’t give you the choice.”

“What choice do I get then?” I waited for him to answer me. This man who’d given me the kind of freedom I’d never known. I waited for him to take it all away.

He pulled me in, looked down into my eyes. “You get to choose me.”

My chest touched his. My skin flared to life. My body, soul and heart such hopeless traitors.

“Or not...” he said, and for the first time since knowing him, I saw him hesitate.

He led me to the window and pulled back the curtain.

I looked outside. I hadn’t noticed the yacht had stopped moving.

A large land mass lay outside. Mountainous and vegetated. Not huge but not tiny, either. Not like the island he’d taken me to before.

The island where I’d first bared my soul and let him take it.

I stared at the beach. A large white building covered with vast expanses of windows rested a third of the way up the incline of a hill. “What is this?”

“This island is rented through one of my companies, untraceable to me.”

I glanced from the window to him.

“You’re free to stay here for the next five months, never having to look at me again.” He stared at the island. “It’s fully staffed. You’d have everything you need.” His Adam’s apple moved. “Once distribution begins, there will be no stopping me, and then it will be safe for you to go home.”

He turned to me. “You can leave me,” he said. “I’ll still protect you. I always will.”

The pain in my stomach exploded into my chest.

How was it possible that this could break my heart even more—that he’d let me leave. I should be grateful for this one healthy gift—but all I could think was
please don’t let me go.

His expression changed.

My old Haithem, the one who played to win, rose up through the pain to stake his claim. “Remember what you said to me, Angelina?”

His voice swam like satin over naked skin—tantalizing. “You said you knew me—that you’d take my good and my bad.”

His words wrapped around me, and I did remember my vow.

“You swore you’d pay the price for our love...”

My head swam, and I felt those very words on my lips as clearly as the moment I’d said them. Fantasy and reality converged like flames hitting water, leaving me trapped in a boiling mist, where fantasy and reality were one and the same.

EPILOGUE

L
ONG
FINGERS
CLOSE
around my throat. Not squeezing, not hurting, but commanding. I look at him. This man I love. This devil I adore. He’s gorgeous—dark hair, darker eyes, olive skin, body and features all chiseled hardness. But that’s not what makes my veins jump under his hand. That’s not what makes my skin slick with sweat.

There’s more to this man than meets the eye.

His thumb strokes my pulse, gleaning secrets right out of my blood. His mouth curls to the side, forming a smile that reveals he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“Didn’t I warn you, Angel,” he says, and his thumb moves up to my chin, “that it’s not a good idea to love me?”

My pulse leaps from erratic to chaotic. I can’t answer, only listen in horrified fascination to what I know will come next.

He traces the groove below my bottom lip. “Didn’t I warn you my love would be bad?”

Shivers run hot then cold over my skin.

“Didn’t I tell you, you’d pay for my heart?” He touches my mouth, dragging my bottom lip down.

My body sings, my blood hums right down to my womb. I can’t resist him. He did warn me. He truly did. But I was greedy. I wanted him anyway.

I didn’t understand how bad he could be.

He’s the devil. Tempting me with what I desire most. Luring me to an irresistible destruction. A destruction I’m so close to I can smell it—taste it—touch it. Pain grips me, my insides bruise with it. My family believes I’m dead. The life I’ve left behind lies in tatters because of him. Because he keeps me.

He won’t let me go.

He tilts my face, brushing his cheek against my ear. “I promise it will be worth it.” His stubble chafes my earlobe, stinging and electrifying. I’ve felt those bristles scrape against my neck, my breasts, my thighs. There’s not an inch of me that hasn’t felt the sweet torture of their abrasion. “Can’t you see it?” he asks. “The future where you’re mine?”

My eyelids drift shut. I know it’s only the hand cradling my face that’s holding me up. I
can
see that future. I see it with fluorescent intensity. Life with the lights turned on. Life where living means more than existing. For everything he’s taken from me, he’s given me back more. He breathed a soul back into me. Without it, without him, I’d be a walking corpse.

I see our future. I ache for it, yearn for it, despise myself for it.

“Say it, Angel. Say, Haithem, I’m yours.”

For all intents and purposes, I’m a prisoner—captive—perhaps even a slave. Because I have no choices but the ones he gives me. Yet, he gives me this choice—or at least the illusion of a choice—to choose him.

To love him.

As if making a choice had ever been an option. The moment I met him, I may as well have been branded.

The days and weeks since I’ve known him flow through my memory like a song. Each moment a lyric in time. Each word soldered into my heart. I see him for the first time with eyes wide-open.

Giver and taker.

A symphony of complexities—man of generosity and greed, cruelty and kindness.

The man I love.

Villain and hero.

The man who took me apart and put me together again—over and over.

I feel all the danger, all the fear, all the pain—pain sharp like a blade cutting right through my scar tissue. I feel it all. Sensations packed one on top of the other, cramming into me.

The hope, the joy, the need, the love.

It all flows in, and in, and in, filling me until my skin could tear.

I hope that it will.

That I’ll burst and the skin will peel right off me. Then I’ll be who I am. It all keeps coming, and it hurts. Hurts bad and good and I swallow every last drop of it like some obscene glutton.

Because under it all is one undeniable truth.

Haithem is mine.

I fought for him. I won him. I earned him.

All of him.

I knew it from the moment we first joined together, his body in mine, that there was no longer he or I, only us.

He hurt me to save me—and I’d hurt to save him.

He is mine, and I am his.

I press my hand over the one holding my cheek and raise my chin.

“Haithem,” I say finally, “I’m yours.”

* * * * *

Haithem and Angelina’s story concludes in

DIDN’T YOU PROMISE, available June 2016.