Читать книгу The Dare Collection January 2019 - J.C. Harroway - Страница 19

IT WAS ELEVEN at night and I paced back and forth in my bedroom, as furious with Xander now as I had been two days earlier.

At the way he’d dismissed me after basically taking me apart over his desk. Looking at me like I was nothing but dirt under his shoe after I’d confessed the most private, the most embarrassing thoughts I’d had about him. It still made me cringe, that I’d told him I wished he could have calmed and stroked me like that dog. That he’d made me beg him to fuck me and only then had he made me come.

That I’d come so hard I’d cried.

It had been the most amazing experience of my life and then he’d dismissed me as if I was nothing.

Yeah. Nothing you didn’t deserve.

The guilt I always carried with me whispered in my head, insidious and bitter, but I shoved it away. This had nothing to do with Dad’s death or my role in it.

No, this was all to do with Xander and the past two days of him ignoring me, striding past me at work as if I didn’t exist. Emailing me lists of tasks and not even bothering to speak to me about them.

And when I was the one who had to speak to him, he wouldn’t look at me. He kept his attention on his computer screen or out of the window or on his phone. Basically, he looked anywhere else but at me.

It made my anger a hard, sharp, bright thing that I wanted to cut him with. I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.

He’d made me feel like nothing. Less than nothing. Like so many other people had in my life...

You are nothing.

‘Bastard,’ I muttered to the walls of my bedroom, loud enough to drown out that horrible voice in my head. ‘Asshole.’

I wasn’t going to be able to sleep and I couldn’t even draw in my book, because the prick had kept it. I’d asked him about it the day after he’d had me over his desk and he’d told me he’d give it back once I’d finished working for him. That I couldn’t be trusted not to sketch in it while I was supposed to be doing my job.

I should have demanded it back, but I was determined to show him how little I cared about him and the way he was treating me, so I’d simply shrugged and hadn’t mentioned it again.

But that hadn’t stopped the fury from filling my veins.

I’d never been so angry in all my life.

Of course pacing around my tiny, shitty bedroom wasn’t going to help, and neither was pretending this didn’t matter. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to let this go until I’d yelled at him face to face.

Obviously the answer was to go to his house and yell at him in person.

Yes, it was eleven p.m., but too bad. He was the one who’d seduced me and then ignored me. He could deal with me confronting him late at night and having it out with him.

He’s not going to like it. And what about that reference?

Ah yes, that.

I stopped pacing, my hands curled into fists.

If I wanted to get that reference I shouldn’t do it. I should suck it up and handle the fact that he’d only wanted from me what every other guy I’d ever met wanted from me: sex.

Because, after all, why did it matter? So I’d confessed to some embarrassing stuff. So what? If I truly didn’t care what he thought, it wouldn’t bother me.

Yet it did. It bothered me a lot.

God, how stupid. I didn’t know why I cared about his good opinion. Sure, the sex had been mind-blowing and he’d been a prick afterwards, but lots of guys were pricks afterwards.

You know why. You expected him to be different.

My throat got tight. Maybe I had. He’d told me he’d wanted me for years and then he’d gone on to work me up like he already knew what I liked and didn’t have to ask.

And that had mattered.

As if he’d cared enough to study me and my reactions, gauging what I might like and what I didn’t. Jesus, even having a guy be interested enough to get me off instead of taking what he wanted was a change.

Which made him dismissing me at the end of it feel like...a betrayal of some kind. Not to mention that it didn’t make any sense.

He’d wanted me for years and one screw and that was it? Really?

Determination settled down inside me.

No, I couldn’t let this go, not this time. I had to know what was going on with him. I had to know where I stood. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going back to work with him ignoring me the way he was.

Someone had to confront him and clearly that someone was going to have to be me.

And if he threatened to hold that reference over my head instead of talking it through like a normal human being? Well. He wasn’t the man I thought he was.

God, he wasn’t the man I thought he was already.

What kind of man did you think he was?

I ignored that question, too impatient now to have it out with him.

Grabbing my battered denim jacket and my handbag, I headed out, deciding to taxi it into the city.

Xander’s apartment was in some massive tower block near the Opera House, probably worth millions. Getting in there was going to be a problem since I was in a faded T-shirt and jeans, my holey sneakers on my feet. Not exactly high class.

I was too angry to care though. If I couldn’t get in I’d stand in the foyer and dial his stupid phone every ten seconds until he let me up into his apartment.

Taking no chances, I texted him just before the taxi driver dropped me off, telling him I was coming to see him and if he wanted me to keep working at his stupid company he was going to talk to me.

Otherwise I’d quit.

He didn’t respond.

That might have been because he was sleeping, but when I got out of the car and looked up to the top floor where his apartment was, there were lights on. He was awake; I’d lay money on it.

I stormed into the building’s foyer and approached the concierge desk, all ready to argue. But the man behind the desk simply gestured towards the lifts.

‘You can go on up, Ms Valentine.’

It took the wind out of my sails a bit but, standing in the lift as it made its way up to Xander’s floor, I managed to muster up some more outrage. Enough that by the time the doors opened I was as furious as I had been back home.

There was a small hallway outside the lift that led straight to the door of Xander’s apartment and I strode up to it, lifting my finger to press the buzzer.

But, before I could, the door pulled open and there was Xander, standing on the threshold.

And my heart stopped. Literally stopped.

He filled the doorway, tall, broad, commanding. He was in black suit trousers and a simple white shirt with no tie, the top couple of buttons undone. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular, tanned forearms and for some reason I found that one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

He was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

My body hummed, remembering what had happened between us two days earlier, the way it had been doing for two days straight now, driving me absolutely crazy.

I didn’t need the reminder. I didn’t want the reminder. But, like Pavlov’s dog, all I had to do was set eyes on Xander, remember how he’d touched me, what it felt like to have him make me beg then thrust inside me, and I was a quivering wreck.

He leaned one of those sexy forearms on the doorframe and tilted his head to the side, black eyes staring into mine.

He didn’t say a word yet I flushed, immediately hating myself for it. Part of me wanted to thank him for seeing me, but I crushed that part flat. I was not going to thank him for anything.

‘I want to talk to you,’ I announced belligerently.

‘Clearly.’ His voice was cold. ‘What’s the problem, Poppy?’

‘I’m not having that conversation out here.’

‘You’re not having it in here either.’

I took a step towards him, fury burning inside me. ‘Why not? Scared you might suddenly want to rip my clothes off and make me beg again?’

Heat flared in his eyes at the same time as his mouth hardened, and I knew he hadn’t meant to give away the fact that my suggestion had turned him on.

A deep satisfaction filled me, along with something that felt like relief. He’d ignored me so completely the past two days that I’d been beginning to question whether he’d ever wanted me at all.

But it seemed that he did, which was good. I could use that.

He shifted in the doorway but didn’t move, keeping one forearm against the frame while his body blocked the rest of it. ‘Go home,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘Obviously you don’t.’ I took another step closer until we were inches apart. ‘In fact, for the past two days you’ve been doing a very good job of acting like I don’t exist at all.’

‘Does it matter?’ His face was expressionless and yet somehow his dark eyes burned. ‘You don’t like me anyway.’

‘Is that what this let’s ignore Poppy thing is all about? You have sex with me then dismiss me like dirt because you think I don’t like you? What are you? Twelve?’

His mouth hardened even further, the embers of banked anger glowing in his eyes. And, in that moment, all I could think about was blowing on those embers, making them glow brighter, turning them into flames. I wanted to get beneath his control and unleash the passion I’d seen in his office. I wanted to have him concentrate that passion on me.

He did want me. He did.

‘I didn’t...dismiss you.’ There was a slight note of hesitancy in his deep, dark voice. ‘I’m sorry you interpreted it that way.’

‘Well, how else was I supposed to interpret it?’ I demanded. ‘You gave me the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had, made me confess my most secret fantasies to you, then acted like it was nothing. You told me to get on with my work and didn’t speak to me again for two days. Two days!’ I was shaking all of a sudden, full of remembered shame and anger. ‘You made me feel like I was nothing, Xander. And you know what? People have been doing that all my goddamn life and I’m sick of it!’

His gaze narrowed, the look on his beautiful face suddenly intense.

I was aware of what I’d said and of what that had revealed.

God, I was a bloody idiot. What did I expect, confronting him like this? What did I want from him? An apology? A repeat performance?

For him to take you in his arms and hold you? Make you feel like you’re actually worth something?

My chest ached. No, screw that. I was worth something and I didn’t need him to prove it to me. Which made coming here a huge mistake.

He didn’t care that he’d hurt me. He didn’t even want to discuss it. And now I’d revealed how much his dismissal had affected me.

What a stupid thing to do.

I turned sharply without a word, intending to leave.

Until long fingers closed around my upper arm, jerking me to a stop. And then there was heat at my back, warm breath against the side of my neck.

‘You’re not nothing, Poppy,’ he said quietly, fiercely. ‘If you were, you wouldn’t make me so goddamn furious.’

I was trembling and I couldn’t stop. I felt the pressure of his fingers around my upper arm, holding me still, the heat of them burning through my denim jacket. I felt the tantalising warmth of him behind me, his body probably only inches away.

For a moment nothing happened and there was a thick silence.

The tension between us pulled taut.

‘You shouldn’t have come here.’ His voice had become darker, rougher. ‘You should have stayed away from me. But you didn’t, did you? You had to come and tell me that it matters to you.’ His fingers tightened around my arm very slightly. ‘That what we did matters to you.’

My heart raced, the deep note of command, of warning in the words making me breathless, the hum that vibrated throughout my body getting stronger.

‘That was a mistake, Poppy. There are reasons I put you at a distance and one of those reasons is because there are many things I want to do to you and all of them are wrong. Very, very wrong.’

I shivered, tried to swallow to ease my dry throat. ‘But...how can they be wrong if I want them too?’

‘I was afraid you’d say that.’ His mouth was very near my ear, the warmth of his breath making the blood rush hard in my veins. ‘Get inside,’ he ordered.