She's Too Young (10 page)

“Ramsey. I-I…can’t,” she sobs. “It’s different than last time…”

“Better or worse?”

“B-better.
Oh
.”

Veda’s thighs jerk in my hands and she screams, a visible shudder running through her. Her pussy clamps down around me as she takes on the orgasm and my vision goes black at the indescribable sensation, my hips pistoning out of control. A quickening starts at the bottom of my spine, traveling toward my balls, signaling I’m close to the end. For now. “Soon as I finish,” I grit out, “you’re getting a bath and something to eat, then you’ll spend the afternoon in my bedroom, modeling the new dresses I had sent over.”

Oh Christ
, she’s tightening up again and clawing at me, going through another climax—and it speeds me toward my own. “Oh my God…
oh my God
.”

I bare my teeth against her neck. “There are dresses for outside the house. And some just for me. The ones for
Ramsey
only
show off your pussy when you bend over, Veda. This sweet, fresh pussy.” Heat climbs up the length of my dick and my entire body stiffens as I release into God’s finest masterpiece. “I
own
it, you know.” My words are pushed through a clenched jaw. “Your father signed on the dotted line and handed it over.
You
, angel. My. Veda. You’re mine now and I’m never letting go.”

Relief is almost non-existent, because I’ve said too much. Veda is stiff against me, low sobs tripping into the air between us. And then all at once, she turns into a wildcat, batting at my head and shoulders, shoving me away.

I welcome the sting. I have no choice but to set her down before she hurts herself and when she deflates against the wall, sorrow owning her expression, I have a brief moment wishing I’d jumped from the building that night, rather than cause her this pain.

While I fasten my pants without removing my attention from Veda—in case she disappears—she curls into herself and I get the feeling she’s looking for something with which to cover herself, but there’s nothing, so I unbutton my shirt as fast as I can and throw it around her shoulders, hiding her nakedness.

“What did you mean?” She asks eventually, swiping at her nose with the sleeve of my shirt. “Signed on the dotted line?”

Now that the time has come to explain, my head is on fire. I’ve done something unspeakable, haven’t I? And excused it with my obsession. The action that brought her into my life is the very thing that’s going to drive her away. She’s already got most of the situation untangled. I can see the accusation of betrayal in her eyes. There’s no way to avoid the reaping, so I throw myself into the hurricane and pray it spits me out somewhere she’s still reachable.

“When I want something, I take it, Veda. I don’t know any other way. Only for the first time, I needed. I
needed
you so badly. So I found a way to make you mine.” I brace my hands on the wall, caging her in, and the symbolism isn’t lost on Veda. Oh no. Resentment lives in her expression. Toward me. “I canceled out your father’s debts and gave him that high-paying promotion—”

“In exchange for me.”

“Yes,” I grind out. “I’m your legal guardian until you turn eighteen. The promotion…it’s contingent upon you remaining with me until then.”

Her laughter is bitter—so unlike her—but the sound is layered over hurt. “
God
. You and my father are both bigger bastards than I thought.”

Stabbing pain.
“Even if he’d said no, angel, I would have found a way.” I have no idea why I’m defending the other man. Maybe because I want to spare her as much anguish as possible, even if it makes me look worse. “I’m not even sure I had a pulse before you spun in circles on my roof. I bought you so I could
live.
”

She hits me right in the soul with a venomous look. “I’m not staying with you. I’d rather die.”

Panic is like a knife cutting down the length of my spine. Already I can feel the bleak, gray world closing in around me. “The contract is signed, Veda. I won’t let your father out of his end.”

“What about
my
end?” Tears swim in her eyes. “You can’t just buy and sell people. I should still get a say in my life, even though I’m not eighteen yet.”

I grab her arms and lean down to speak at her mouth. “I would go out of my fucking mind without you, angel. I barely lasted the five days I spent waiting for you to move into my home.” Honesty has thickened my voice until it’s unrecognizable as mine. “Life was prison before that day—you’re the only one with a key. You’re my jailer as much as I’m yours.”

Her eyes are blank, without emotion, so I can’t tell if I’m getting through. But I suspect even if I did, her next words prove it wouldn’t matter. “I don’t feel anything for you but hate.”

My arms fall to my sides as if they weigh a ton each, the sound of crashing waves churning in my ears. “You don’t mean that,” I manage around the strangling sensation in my throat. “I only want to give you everything. Anything you could ever want, I
need
to make it happen, or I consider my life a failure.”

She shakes her head, disturbing her blonde hair, looking more gorgeous than anyone has the right to be. “If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is freedom.” This isn’t the first time she has said these words to me…perhaps I should have listened before. “That’s what I want, Ramsey. Can you give me that?”

“You’re calling for my death.”

Her shrug is jerky, her gaze conflicted, even as she hammers the nail into my coffin. “So be it.”

For hours, I stand in the conference room, staring at the wall where she last stood, listening to the sounds of her moving upstairs in her bedroom…and when I finally hear the front door slam, my knees hit the floor.

Done.

I
t’s cold as
fuck on the roof of my building and I’m glad. At least there is a temperature to match the barren wasteland inside my chest. When Veda left, she dragged my heart along with her, letting it skid on the ground, but I can still feel the mutilated, fractured organ from a distance—it makes my whole body impossible to live in. There’s no way to escape, however, so I sit here on the roof where we met, staring out over the glittering Manhattan skyline and pray to God she’s safe somewhere out there.

It has been a full week since the angel sent me to hell, although time means nothing now.
Nothing.
I’m not even sure if I exist anymore, or if I’m a ghost, haunting my former life. Every time my body tries to sink into sleep, I hear her laughing, or see her spinning like a ballerina in the aisles of the movie theater. Or languishing naked in my bed, trying to tempt me…as if the simple act of her breathing wasn’t a temptation all its own.

So many times throughout the week—every single minute, in fact—I’ve been tempted to search for Veda. Or send a team of private investigators after her. The first time I encountered that urge, I slammed my head into a wall until I blacked out. And again when I woke up. And again. Until I numbed my panic enough to hear logic.

Herein lies the reason I haven’t leaped from my building’s roof yet. I gave her freedom. Total, authentic freedom…and because of that, there’s a sliver of a chance she might come back to me. Up above, at the top of the building, my name has been replaced with hers.
Veda
instead of
Beckett
.

You didn’t think I was legitimately insane, did you? I assume you’re no longer questioning me.

Having something so difficult done on short notice cost me, but I would have paid quadruple. In a moment of clarity, my business mentality kicked in and I remembered how important it is to know the ins and outs of the commodity you’re attempting to obtain. Now, lest you think I didn’t learn my lesson, I understand all too well now that Veda isn’t a
commodity
. She’s a perfect, warm blooded creature…and also a too-young girl. And in my short experience with Veda, my very own too-young girl, I learned they—
she
—has a healthy supply of vanity. So that is what I’m appealing to in a desperate Hail Mary to bring her home. I’m trying to win her back with something big and bright and shiny and I won’t apologize for it.

Have I mentioned that I
love
Veda’s vanity? I think of the way her eyes lit up when she was kneeling beside the pool and I explained the deeper she took me in her mouth, the more presents I would buy her. Goddamn, I want to indulge that acquisitive nature with my bank account, which, despite my public act of lunacy, continues to grow by the hour. What good is money, though, without Veda to spend it on? I might as well be sleeping in Grand Central Station without a penny to my name.

Come on, angel
, I beg the skyline.
Look up and see me. See your name on my tallest building in blood red. See that I didn’t mean to be such a heartless prick. I just didn’t know another way.

As if I’m being mocked by God, a crack of thunder goes off somewhere in the distance and it begins to rain, reminding me of the time Veda sought refuge from the storm in my bedroom. Since my mind insists on torturing me by replaying the entire scene, word for word, I assume it’s my imagination that conjures her voice, light and musical behind me. I squeeze my eyes shut, rain coursing down my face, ordering myself not to turn around, because I know when she’s not standing there, the disappointment will finally kill me and my life will end one hundred and twenty stories below, my body flattened on a city sidewalk.

When I feel a soft touch on my shoulder, I’m so unprepared for it, my legs almost forget to support me. I turn around slowly, carefully, scared as hell if I move too fast, she’ll fade away into the rain. But she doesn’t. She’s there in vivid color, her blue eyes like beacons in the darkness. Until this moment, with her standing right in front of me, I haven’t allowed myself to speculate too deeply on where she’s been, or more importantly, with whom. Right now, however, with her coveted beauty staring me in the face, jealousy tries to reach into my chest and rip out my internal organs.

As if Veda senses this, she reaches down and threads our fingers together. “I stayed with one of my girlfriends from school.” There’s more I need to know and she’s aware of it. I
know
this by the way she peeks up at me from under long eyelashes. “She lives with her mom.
Just
her mom.”

Combined with the fact that I had Talvert removed from his position over a week ago, Veda’s explanation sends the burning in my chest fizzling down to a dull flame and I release a rush of breath. “Veda, I’ve gone completely mad.”

“I know,” she whispers, looking up at the gigantic, red, neon sign, the glow of it painting her face. “I saw it all the way from Brooklyn.”

Needing to reacquaint myself with every part of her, I unzip her raincoat with my free hand and push both sides apart, finding her in a short, white summer dress. My favorite among the ones I bought her, although she wouldn’t have known that, since she never got around to trying them on for me. She sways a little under my perusal, more of her body becoming visible as the rain dampens the material.

I’m assaulted by so much hunger, my head feels like it’s floating while my gut is filled with lead. “Why have you returned to a mad man, angel?”

After a few seconds, she lifts my hand to her mouth, running her tongue across my knuckles.
Christ.
And there’s that flash of mischief in her demeanor I remember so well, the proof she’s a touch dangerous. “I think maybe I’m a little mad, too.”

No more waiting. I grab Veda and reverse our positions, pushing her body up against the high ledge, slipping my hands inside the jacket so I can cradle her hips. “Why do you say that?”

She lays her head back on the concrete wall, sticking her tongue out to catch a few raindrops. “Because I missed you. Even though you
are
sort of evil.” Her eyelids flutter down, so she can’t see my astonishment, my utter relief that she actually
missed
me. Has anyone ever noticed and disliked my absence before? No. I don’t think so. “Every night, I lay in bed and think about…how much you must have wanted me. To buy me. A-and…”

“And what?” I demand.

“I remember you at the party and how lonely you looked.” She rolls her head side to side. “Maybe I was sent onto this roof after you for a reason. Because the thought of you lonely makes me hurt. So much. And I think I need you just as bad.” While I reel under the power of those words, she leans up to whisper in my ear. “When I think of you buying me now…it makes me angry and…wet…at the same time. And then I remember that’s exactly how I felt whenever you were inside of me.” Her shy explanation turns my cock to steel, robs me of reason, of breath. “I needed to feel that way again—the way I feel when you’re pushing into me the hardest—and I couldn’t do it myself. But Ramsey?”

My hands slip around to her backside and grip those taut cheeks. “Yes?”

Her eyes are serious as they find mine. Rain hangs on her eyelashes. “I needed you for even more than touching.”

This is what I’ve been afraid to hope for. No way have I been forgiven. Impossible. Isn’t it? “What other ways do you need me?”

The rain is growing louder, so I drop my head down near her beautiful, forgiving mouth, trying to hear her better. “Even though I get annoyed at you for being protective of my body, you make me feel safe. I know you won’t let anything happen to me.” She coasts her damp lips over mine. “And I know you won’t hurt me again. Will you, Ramsey?”