A Dominant Man (61 page)

I spit in his face. “Fuck you,” I snarl.

He keeps my arms pinned with one hand, using the other to wipe away the spit. He takes the hand and latches onto my jaw, wrenching my head back, forcing me to look up into his glacial blue eyes.

“You two have complicated things for me greatly. You’ve made it impossible for me to be with the one I want, so now I’m going to return the favor.”

“What did we do to you, you vindictive son of a bitch?”

He releases my jaw and smacks me across my face violently. My head thrashes to the side.

“I know he plans on telling our parents. I’m no fool.”

I turn my head to face him with a confused, angry expression. “Why would he do that? He would expose himself,” I snap.

“What the fuck are you talking about, whore?”

“Ahhh. You don’t know?” I laugh lazily. “Olivia fucked Damian, too. You’re not the first brother she’s conquered.” I smirk snidely at him.

“You’re lying,” he growls.

“I wish. Olivia is nothing more than a cradle-robbing, brotherfucker.”

“Shut up!” he bellows into my ear, and I shudder.

“What do you want?” I murmur.

“My pound of flesh,” he snarls. “Now, listen to me you
fucking cunt
. You’re going to tell Damian you don’t want him, you want out of your relationship. You’re going to leave him.”

“And if I don’t?”

His demeanor shifts, becoming contained, arrogant.

“I’ll take him from you, permanently. I will fucking slit his throat while he sleeps soundly in his bed. I swear I’ll do it,” he says disturbingly calm, self-possessed.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I? It wasn’t hard to take your precious Nicholas’s life.”

My eyes fly to his. “What did you…say?”

“Did I fucking stutter? I was surprised to hear of your relationship with such a callous monster. He really was a horrid human being.” He notices the horror on my face, and his creepy, all-knowing smile slithers across his lips.

“You and Damian really should be more mindful of your surroundings. What were you arguing about at the funeral, anyway?”

“You attended the…”

My head spins as his words whirl about my brain.
He murdered Nicholas? He murdered Nicholas...? He murdered Nicholas.

“Now, you see I mean what I say. I will fucking kill him without hesitation. I will rip him from your life, the way you ripped her from mine. Say it. Say ‘Yes, Dante, I will break his heart the way I broke yours’.”

I clench my lips shut and shake my head vigorously from side to side. He clasps his hand around my neck again, pressing me into the wall, causing my airway to close.

“Say it!” he roars, his face blanketed with rage, teeth clenched tightly.

“Yes, Dante, I will break his heart the way I broke yours,” I brokenly whisper, tears silently falling down my flushed, burning cheeks.

He stares down at me with an intense, icy gaze. “You really are stunning. Terror is quite fetching on you.” He comes in slowly, mouth slack, hand firmly placed about my neck.

He’s going to fucking kiss me!

His lips creep ever closer, inching towards mine, and I struggle with everything I have, but it’s pointless. I’m pinned, immobilized by his massive body. His hips grind into my pelvis. He’s fully aroused.

He entwines his fingers with the top buttons of my blouse, yanking at them, tearing the top portion open. My cleavage exposed to him, he growls, causing my whole body to quake with fear.

His rock-hard erection is blindly stabbing into me while his hands deftly unclasp the top button of my jeans. I feel vomit rise in my throat and swallow the acid down, but it rises again when his breath brushes my lips, his mouth about to ravage…no, rape mine.

“Stop, please,” I beg, hot tears streaming down my face, “Don’t do this.”

I buck wildly, fighting him urgently, using the wall as leverage, but I can’t budge him, not a goddamn inch. His fingers slither down the opening of my unfastened pants, creeping toward my apex. His lips move in, caressing mine, tongue surging forward about to enter. I feel the weight of his body against mine as his hot breath brushes my lips. The tip of his wet tongue grazes the opening of my mouth as fingertips skim the top of my slit.

“Damian,” I whimper pleadingly.

Then he’s gone. His devious endeavors foiled by a merciful, dark, hulking mass smashing into him with crashing force, colliding them into the ground.

I fall to the floor, gasping for air, confused by what just occurred. I clench my throat with my hand, rubbing away the pain left from his grasp.

“Gabrielle, look at me,” A concerned, distant voice calls. I slowly come back from my terror-filled state and gawk at Chase crouching next to me, cupping my face. “Ellie, you’re ok. It’s all right. We’re here.”

He snatches me into his arms, closing my blouse and covering me up.

We’re here?

My vacant gaze turns to the struggling figures wrestling on the floor. It’s Damian. He’s straddling Dante, smashing his fist into his stunned face.

“You’re fucking dead,” Damian growls.

He grabs Dante’s collar and smashes his head against the hard wood floor repeatedly. The loud cracking noise it makes reverberates about the room. His fist comes back down at Dante’s face, but he manages to weave out of the way, and Damian’s hand collides with the ground.

“Fuck!” Damian screams.

Dante makes his move. He leaps up and, in a series of graceless movements, makes a B-line for the open elevator doors. Chase spots what’s happening, sets me down, and jumps up.

“The fuck you’re leaving!” he shouts, chasing him into the elevator, tackling him into the back wall as they wrestle one another. Chase’s fist is pummeling Dante’s already mangled face when they gradually vanish behind the sliding elevator doors.

“Banks…Dante’s attacked her…Yeah. He’s heading down to the lobby.
Don’t
let him get away,” he orders sternly, teeth clamped.

I curl up on the floor, holding myself, and allow the tears to flow. I cry good and loud, as the events of the last few agonizing moments sink in, and I fall apart.

“Gabrielle, angel.” Hunt kneels down, and I jerk away from him.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

He goes in to lift me up, but I move away again. I shot up, smashing my back against the wall like a terrified, cornered animal. I cradle my legs into my chest and glance up at him. He stands over me, appearing understandably devastated by my reaction to him.

“You can’t…what?” he asks, fear wrenching his words.

I do not reply. I cannot. I sit there frozen. I am unable to tell him it’s over, so I wait. I wait for the call from Liam, for a miracle. I don’t want to leave him, and if they catch Dante, I won’t have to. Therefore, I wait and wait and wait. Time drags, crawls by, the seconds become minutes and minutes become an eternity.

Then finally, the phone goes off, causing me to jolt and my muscle to clench with anxious anticipation. Hunt, who has been silently studying me this whole time, reaches into his pocket and snatches out his cell, mashing it against his ear.

“Hunt…” Rage seeps onto his face, his brow furrows and jaw clenches. “What the fuck do you mean? How did he get away from the two of you...? Un-fucking-acceptable!” Hunt screams into the phone. “Find him, Banks. Track him down and take care of him.” He hangs up the phone and throws it at the wall, causing it to explode and shatter.

He got away?

I know what I must do, and though it pains me to the point of excruciating agony, I have no choice. His safety means more to me than my own. I take a deep breath and shakily rise to my feet, fastening my jeans and adjusting my blouse.

He steps toward me, and I hold up a hand, halting him. I can’t let him touch me, if he touches me, I might collapse under the weight of its tenderness. He stares at me with a helplessness, horror distorting his mind-melting face. He’s tense, wound-up tight, his hands fisted at his sides.

“You can’t what, Gabrielle? Answer me, angel,” he breathlessly pleads.

I stare red-eyed into his, but the grief radiating from them is too much. I turn my face away and whimper, “I can’t do this.”

“What? What can’t you do?” he asks, tortured, then snaps, “Look at me, damn it.”

My head snaps back, and I stare him dead in the eyes. “I can’t do this.” I gesture my hand between us. “I can’t be with you.”

His eyes go wild, scanning my face in search of something, for what I’m unsure. I remain stone-faced, giving nothing away. If I removed my mask, it would reveal the immense suffering tearing me apart inside.

When he finds what he’s looking for, his mouth goes slack, as he takes in a loud, sharp intake of air. He looks as if he’d just been punched in the gut, his face wrenched with pain. He throws his hands into his hair, grabbing at the muddled, thick strands. He takes a moment, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. When he looks at me again, he seems to have gained composure.

“You don’t mean it. You’re upset…I’ll make you a drink.” He holds up his pointer finger in a gesture to keep me from leaving and turns toward the kitchen. “You can go up to bed and sleep on it. In the morning, you’ll have a different outlook on everything.”

“No…” He stops, quickly spinning back to stare at me with a new wave of panic washing over his eyes. “No alcohol, no sleep, no sex, no time will change anything. My mind is made-up. I can’t handle this.”

“Gabrielle…” he trails off, coming back for me.

“Please, Damian, don’t make this any harder. It’s too much. You’re too much for me. I can’t live like this. Ever since we met, there has been one thing after the next, each issue worse than the one before. I can’t take it anymore.”

He ceases his determined stride, as if my words were an invisible wall keeping him from me.

“Is it my lifestyle? Was it last night? I’ll change. Was it the incident with Dante? We’ll find him. I’ll take care of everything that comes our way. You won’t have to worry about anything. I’ll up the security and change the access code. I’ll…”

“Damian, you aren’t listening to me. No, it’s not our sex life, or our sessions, or anything you’ve done. It’s me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

“You’re honestly going to insult me with this cliché dribble. It’s not you, it’s me? Really?”

“In this case, it’s true.”

“You can’t do this to me. I love you. I refuse to be without. You promised, Elle.
We
made promises to each other. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“I’m sorry. I…I have to go.”

I stride over to the couch where my purse lies and snatch it up. Hunt picks my blazer up off the floor and hands it to me, holding onto it as I try to take it from him. I gaze sorrowfully into his heartbreaking, earthy eyes and give him a pleading look.

“Allow me.”

I release the jacket so he can hold it open for me. I slide my arms through and shrug it on. His fingers slither under the collar, adjusting it, gently grazing my neck, and I tremble.

I compose myself and to
ss my purse strap onto my shoulder. I pinch my fingers around the black and white diamond ring and slide it off before turning toward him. I hold it out, and he takes a step back.

“No, it’s yours. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.”

“I can’t take it. Please, it wouldn’t feel right, knowing what it’s a symbol for.”

He hesitantly takes it from me, extreme pain emanating from his heart-melting emerald eyes. I give him a sympathetic nod and head toward the elevator. I press the call button, fighting my boiling tears back.

“Gabrielle, I love you. You are everything,” he gently professes.

When I don’t acknowledge him, he grabs my bicep, hauling me roughly into his arms. His persuasive lips crash down on mine, forcefully making their argument, convincing me to stay. I wrap my arms about his neck, but he doesn’t flinch, and I allow him to ravage me, prove we’re meant to be as I know we are.

But we can’t. We can never be. I promised that little boy I would take care of him and that’s what I intend to do.

I break away as my senses flood back and turn to walk into the waiting elevator cab. As the doors slide shut, cutting us off from one another, I watch him, the anguish torturing him, that desperate look in his shadowy emerald eyes. The doors inch closer until only a sliver of his beautiful face peeks through.

Suddenly, his hand slides through the tiny crack, reopening the doors. I tilt my head down, obstructing his view of my face and the tears that have broken free, liberally spilling over it.

He doesn’t say a word as he steps on and the doors shut behind him, encasing us in the tiny space. We ride in silence, his eyes burning into my profile. I turn my face away, and he pinches my chin between his long, firm fingers, forcing me to face him.

When my red, puffy eyes meet his, he gasps and lets out a pained moan, wiping the salty traitors from my cheeks.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Why are you running from me?”

I rip my face from his grasp. “I told you already. I can’t do this anymore.”
Why is he doing this? Why won’t he let me go? Why does he insist on torturing us?