Surrender to Fire: Maison Chronicles, Book 3 (22 page)

He let her sleep for an hour, then roused her, clenching his fists to keep his hands off her luscious body. He knew that if he touched her more than necessary, he’d fall into bed with her and never want to get out. Instead, he gently told her it was time to head home and ignored her confusion. He didn’t allow himself to contemplate whether there’d also been hurt in her eyes.

They made the drive in silence. Awkward tension filled the air between them and he hated being the cause of it, but this needed to happen.

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you,” he said as they entered LA proper. Camille said nothing, staring out the window. But he knew she was awake—her breath had hitched at his statement. “After the incident with Shawn yesterday, I got suspicious. Officer Davis wants you to come in tomorrow or Monday to answer a few questions. They brought Shawn in and he confessed to some of the stalking charges. Davis also told me your apartment has been cleared. The super installed two new locks for you.”

She turned on him. He almost winced from the anger in her eyes. “Excuse me?” All traces of her submission were gone. “When did he tell you this?”

Damien sighed, girding himself for her reaction. “Yesterday. I didn’t want—”

“Oh fuck that, Damien. How dare you keep something like that from me?” He felt her staring at the side of his face, but didn’t turn. He focused on the traffic, heavier than normal due to the rain that had rolled in midday. She said nothing else, fuming from her seat and pointedly staring out the side window until they were a single exit away from her apartment.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? Talk a big game about how important truth and honesty are in a BDSM relationship, about how honored you were that I trusted you, then this? You think I would have run screaming from you if you’d told me yesterday? Or that your precious demo would have been ruined?”

He pulled up to her building and started turning into the parking garage.

“Don’t go any farther,” she gritted out.

Damien hit the brakes, at last turning to look at her. All the anger in her face couldn’t wound him as much as the moisture lining her eyes or the tightness of her jaw that belied how betrayed she felt.

She slammed out of the car, grabbed her duffel from the backseat and threw one final retort at him. “Thank you for showing me just how shitty my judgment really is.”

Then she was gone, before he could even decide how to react.

Like ripping off a bandage. Yeah, maybe if it had thorns twined around his heart. But this was for the best. It had to be.

Frozen inside, Damien drove home on autopilot, feeling like he’d left a part of himself behind with Camille. But that didn’t matter.

Despite the wet weather, the light traffic on the side streets of LA made for a quick drive. He slumped, exhausted, against the steering wheel once he’d parked under his hotel. He’d fucked more in the past four days than he had in the previous year and that, coupled with the intense scenes he’d done, made him one exhausted Dom.

It had nothing to do with losing Camille. Not at all. A whisky on the rocks would cement that belief in his brain before he went to bed.

Chapter Sixteen

Cam managed to stave off her tears as she checked her mail, which contained her new keys from the super, and rode the slow elevator up to her floor. She couldn’t get her mind off Damien. Though she was furious at the hypocritical asshole, she couldn’t deny her body still responded to the mere thought of him.

She leaned against the repaired doorframe of her apartment as she fumbled with her keys, finally unlocking the door in an exhausted stupor. With luck, she’d fall into a dreamless sleep and things would be less painful in the morning. She almost laughed at her naïveté, but feared she’d dissolve into tears if she didn’t at least try to believe it.

Once in her dim apartment, she dropped her duffel by the entrance, then started shucking clothes as she stepped over the mess of her belongings that still scattered the floor. She’d have to clean anyway, and she really couldn’t be bothered to hang anything up. Besides, they still smelled like Damien, and she wanted that as far from her bedroom as possible.

“Going somewhere?”

Shirt halfway over her head, Cam froze. She lowered the tee and turned to the darkest corner of her living room. Her heart thumped so loudly she imagined her neighbors would call the cops with a noise complaint. Maybe that would save her.

In the shadows, she barely made out a feminine form. The woman leaned forward, letting moonlight catch her features.

“Indigo, I’ve been trying to reach you.” Cam kept her voice calm, despite her fear and anger. “What are you doing here?”

The woman’s high, birdlike voice was hard. “Sit down. I’ll do the talking, thank you.” Light glinted off something metallic as she moved her hand and Cam’s insides iced over.

Cam moved around her couch to perch on the edge farthest from Indigo, then waited for the woman to continue. The cell phone in her back pocket pressed against her butt, but Cam didn’t want to risk a call until she knew exactly what was going on. “Indigo—”

“Silence. You should be good at obeying orders, right?” she sneered. “Yes, I know all about your pathetic attempt at submission. That idiot Shawn told me everything.” A sick smile crawled across her face. “He just needed a firm hand to keep him in check. Someone to show him how you’d mistreated him.” Her fake pout turned Cam’s stomach. “Poor Shawn, trying so hard to be manly for you. And you gave up on him, exactly like you did to me!”

Oh boy. Indigo had entered a whole new level of crazy. She shifted on the couch, trying to make accessing her phone easier, but froze when Indigo leveled a gun on her. “I don’t think so. We’re going to talk and you’re not going to move an inch.”

Her blood froze. If she got out of this, she was never working with people again. Her judgment? Obviously shit. While Indigo ranted about being abandoned to the paparazzi wolves, waving the gun wildly around the room, Cam tried to think of a way out. But every time she repositioned herself on the couch, that muzzle settled right towards her.

Finally, Indigo addressed her directly. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

She ducked her gaze, pulling out all the submissive stops that Shawn had liked to see. “I’m so sorry, Indigo. I should have been a better literary agent.” The worst part about her confession was the truth she heard in her words. She did feel guilty, though not for Indigo’s plight—not anymore. “What can I do to help?”

Cam chanced a look at the blonde woman. She’d always been thin, but now she looked emaciated, her skin and hair dull with neglect.

With a feral smile, her face curved into an ugly mask. “I’m so glad you asked.”

This week, his parents had plans for dinner, so the whole family had gathered for brunch. Damien had just made himself a Bloody Mary the next morning, ignoring the judgmental eyes of his mother, when his cell phone rang. He recognized Officer Davis’s number and picked up. When the officer told him what Shawn had just shared with them, and that there had been no answer when they’d called Camille’s apartment to check on her, his world stopped spinning and became tightly focused. He’d left Camille alone, thinking the threats were under control. But Shawn had been working with that disgraced author—who was still unaccounted for. “I’ll meet you there,” he said. “I’m about twenty minutes away.”

“Damien, what’s going on?” He looked over the brunch tableau. His parents and brother and little Cordelia were seated around his brother’s dining table, the surface filled with his mother’s famous pancakes and eggs and bacon breakfast. In that moment, nothing mattered more than getting to Camille.

“Emergency. Don’t wait for me.” Without another word, he snagged his keys from the table by the front door and prepared to break a few laws getting to Camille.

His heart lodged in his throat throughout the entire drive, aching more every time he called and her phone went to voice mail. If something had happened to her, he’d never forgive himself. If only he’d stayed with her last night, taken her to his place, been brave enough to take her to meet his family, anything…

All the ways he could blame himself lashed at his conscience and in the face of all that scrutiny, his fear of commitment looked ridiculous. He just wanted her to be safe. Nothing else mattered.

A squad car sat around the corner from her building, lights spinning but siren off. He parked behind it, then approached Davis in the passenger’s seat.

“That was quick,” the officer said, looking up and down Damien’s rough appearance. “I’m letting you come up, but you better stay behind me until we have more information, okay?”

Damien grit his teeth. But rushing into the situation wouldn’t help anyone, especially since they had no idea if anything was wrong in the first place. Camille could be taking a long bath, or her phone could have died… Any number of plausible scenarios could explain the circumstances. But that did nothing abate his terror.

He followed Davis around the corner and into the building, then up to Camille’s door. They listened from outside for a moment, but couldn’t hear anything. Davis took off his uniform shirt to expose the plain cotton tee beneath, handed it to Damien, then waved him farther down the hall. Then Davis pulled a sheaf of rolled paper from his back pocket knocked on the door. “Miss Verona? It’s the superintendent. I have some repair information for you.”

A
thump
sounded from the apartment, setting Damien’s nerves on edge, but then the door opened a little bit and he heard Camille’s voice. “Huh?” She paused, clearly confused.

Davis stepped in to cover the silence. “I have those insurance forms too, if you’d like me to come in and go over them with you.” He waved the papers through the cracked door.

He almost didn’t catch the shaking in Camille’s voice. “Now’s not a good time. I’m a little under the weather. Could you come back later?”

Damien couldn’t hold back any longer. He took a step forward, drawing Camille’s attention. Her wide eyes had deep circles beneath them and a bruise shadowed her chin. Anger gathered in his chest and only his years of practice in restraint kept him from charging inside.

“Miss Verona, I really need to get these taken care of now.”

Another voice, barely audible, said something and Camille hunched her shoulders, then reached a hand through the door opening, pointing her thumb up and finger out in the unmistakable shape of a gun. “I’ll take those papers, Mr. Davis. Give me five minutes and I’ll come down to fill them out, okay?” Her eyes begged them to get her message. Damien nodded in reply.

“Sure thing, Miss Verona,” Davis said. “Feel better.”

The door slammed shut and Camille’s pained gasp from behind it had Damien ready to launch himself at the closed entryway, but Officer Davis restrained him. The lock
snick
ed shut and he stared at the knob as if willing it to open.

Davis marched him down the hall. “Give her five minutes. She was scared, but seemed to have some control of the situation.”

Dread coated the back of his throat. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

Davis stepped all the way down the hall then pulled out his radio and called for backup, scratching a hand across his buzzed black hair as he explained the situation. When the five minutes were up—and Damien knew, because he’d checked his watch a million times—he looked to Davis.

“They’re on the way,” Davis said.

Fuck that. He didn’t want Camille in there any longer than she had to be. Who knew when that crazy woman had shown up or when she might decide to do something stupid? He charged to the door and knocked before Davis could stop him. “Camille, I know you’re in there! You promised to call me last night, but didn’t. Is that how you treat your boyfriend, hmm?”

The door was yanked open and a blonde with wild eyes grabbed his hand and pulled him inside. A gun was in her other hand, wobbling around the room. “Shut up and sit on the couch next to her,” the woman demanded. “You stupid son of a bitch, you’re ruining everything.” She hadn’t locked the door. That was good. He hoped Davis had noticed.

He took a seat next to Camille, grabbing her hand and checking her body over for injuries. She looked remarkably well, aside from her bruised jaw and shadowed eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked. She said nothing and he realized why when the woman stalked over and pointed the gun at him.

“I said shut up.” Blonde hair stuck up around her forehead and her clothes were rumpled, like she’d slept in them all week. “My agent is working on a project for me and we’re almost done.” The gun swung around towards Camille. “Isn’t that right?” Hysterical laughter bubbled from the stranger before she took a seat in the recliner across from them. Camille’s apartment looked even worse than it had on Thursday, like someone had tossed it a second time in a fit of pique.

Camille reached for the laptop in front of her, eyes hard. While her fingers jabbed at the keys, Indigo watched over her shoulder, letting the gun drift farther and farther away from them, only to swing it back to Camille’s head. He knew waiting for Davis’s backup would be the sensible thing to do, but he’d come this far. Every time the muzzle fixed on Camille, a little piece of him died. He couldn’t take much more.

“Indigo, right?” The woman shifted her attention to him. Good. “I thought I recognized you.”