The Sect (40 page)

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I felt locked in his gaze, unable to look away from his captivating face. “Are you here to kill me?”

Annoyed, he rolled his eyes and sighed. “Princess? Really? While I may have lied about a lot of things, when I make a promise or a threat, I try keep my word. Speaking about my emotions…well, that’s a very tricky subject. Very few people can figure out when I’m lying or telling the truth. I don’t blame you for being so confused. I wanted you to be.” Keeping his hands in his pockets, he took another large step toward me.

“I haven’t said anything to anyone about you.” With my hands down on my sides, I clutched the flat surface behind me. I shut my eyes for only a second, hoping it would save me from my clouded thoughts. “You wanted off the radar and you are.”

“Given what I just told you, I think you know that’s not why I’m here.”

“Why are you here?” My body trembled as I sobbed.

“I really fucked with your head didn’t I? It’s the only reason I can give for how you don’t know.” He took another step closer, the heat of his body pressing against my form, siphoning my energy. “I don’t want to have this talk in a men’s bathroom. You have no idea what goes on in here. Sit with me. Talk to me. We can pretend to be normal for about five minutes.” Grabbing my hand without a struggle from me, he pulled me forward and opened the door for me.

His hold on my hand wasn’t released until he led me back to the table. Behaving with chivalry, he pulled out my chair, waiting for me to sit before he sat across from me at the small round table. “Did you eat much?” He glanced at my uneaten dessert. “It didn’t look like you did. It bothers me when I see chocolate-anything go to waste.” A slightly amused brow lifted, a smirk pressed against his lips, deepening the dimple on the left side of his cheek.

“Noah.” I sniffled, shaking my head. “You’re not allowed to do this. You’re not allowed to sit across from me and pretend to be a dutiful and caring lover. You were right, you are Gregory—no, you are worse than Gregory. I feel terrible for thinking that, but I can’t help it.”

“And I never denied that, did I?” He leaned back, throwing his arm across the chair beside him. His eyes darkened as he scanned my face. “Pick up your purse and show it to me.”

“Show you what?” I wrung my trembling hands in my lap, hoping to steady them. “Did you go through my things?”

His posture turned rigid as he leaned halfway across the table. “Pick up your fucking purse and show it to me.”

I reached down, internally griping about obeying him without much hesitation. I plopped it down on the seat next to me and retrieved the device. I slammed it down on the middle of the table, unable to look at it.

“It has my name on it,” he said with a smirk. “I’m not much for sentimentality, but I’m very moved, princess. It’s as if it’s your way of writing the name Keaton Oliver in your notebook with a little heart above the ‘I’ over and over again. But it’s a fantasy and not as good as the real thing”—his piercing eyes darted to mine—“is it, Keaton?”

“Why are you here?” No longer holding to the calm, my anger bled through every word.

A brow lifted as his sneer became slightly skewed. “Do you remember what I said to you that day?”

“I don’t remember much outside of the deaths you caused. It doesn’t matter who they were, what they did, or how they got away with it. Doesn’t make you any better than them to do what you did.” My eyes darted to the homemade whip between us. My head pounded as his ability to make me feel dubious returned. What he did was wrong, but right. I wanted to hate him for it, but I never could find the way. Even if I could forgive everything and rationalize it, I couldn’t rationalize the beatings, nor the feelings they brought out of me. “I remember the pain you caused me. Obviously.”

“You’re lying to me about what you remember,” he snarled. “Repeat what I said to you.”

“No,” I said firmly, my lip quivering with emotion.
 

His eyes turned darker, showing the emotion he displayed right before he hurt me mentally and physically. Because with him, there was never just one type of pain. “Repeat it, Keaton,” he pressed in a throaty growl.

“No, because this isn’t love,” I rebuffed with enough conviction to make it true, “and it most definitely isn’t lust.”
 

“I believe that on your end. I always did. I know what this was for you, but don’t pretend you don’t know what it is for me. I told you how I felt, and no, it wasn’t a lie when I said that to you. Why else would I be here if it weren’t true? You think I want to be here, tormenting you? I stayed away, thinking you should have better after what I did to you. I stayed away even though I knew if I had found out that anyone touched you, it would drive me crazy enough to hurt them. I still feel like you belong to me.” He caught my hand as it rested across the table before I could recoil. “I
know
that you belong to me. This is what else I know very well, princess. The moment I walked away from you, your soul became so dark and empty that every waking minute you were without me, you felt hollow. You pined for me, wanting me to be with you and fill you up again.”

Tired of crying, I shoved the tears with my fingertips as they guttered down my cheeks. I couldn’t answer, because the answer swirling inside my mind left me ashamed.
 

“You don’t have to say anything,” he replied softly. “You know how I know the truth? Because I felt it, too. I pulled off the biggest revenge fantasy in my life. I have more money than I could stand and you’ve rendered me into one of those assholes I hated. The ones with too much money and still unable to find happiness. The fuckers who spread their misery to others and hide their hands from the crimes they commit with their privilege.”

Staring at my hold as my arm tingled from his touch, I tried to withdraw. “The master of lying about his emotions, right? Why should I believe you?”

He clamped down with an almost painful grip, quelling my struggle. “Doesn’t matter what you should or shouldn’t do. I know deep down you believe me.”

“It was not love.” I fought not to raise my voice, my conviction holding strong to the one thing I knew for sure. “It is not
love.
”

“For you, it’s something more powerful. It’s need. You need me, princess, just as much as I’ve grown to need you. I bet if I lifted your shirt right now, I would see the marks on your back from your poor replacement for me.”

I didn’t respond; I simply gazed out of the window, becoming entranced with the foot traffic.

“You’re going to show me how beautiful I made you tonight.” He squeezed my hand, forcing my gaze back onto his face. “Because the marks on your back are the most shining examples of what I tried to show you—teach you. Now, repeat what I said to you.”

“Love is the pain of pleasure,” I forced between sniveling sobs, “and pain is the pleasure of love.”

His blinking slowed as he gave me a nod. “I missed the hell out of you, princess.”

With my free hand, I toyed with the edge of the doily underneath my coffee, losing my hold on strength and anger at a cyclic rate. “Where did you go?”

“Not really an interesting answer.” He clung to my hand, as if he was afraid to let me go. “Since you’re asking about me as though you care, I take it you’re no longer pissed at me?”

I stared at our hold, shaking my head as I remembered the hell we’d been through—the hell he’d put my parents through. At the same token, I’d never be reunited with my parents if it hadn’t been for him. I would very likely have died and I wasn’t sure if it would’ve been because I was too scared to go home, or if Gregory would’ve found me. “There are some things I can’t work through—even with my visits to my therapist. My mother pays an exorbitant amount of money for the doctor to fly in from D.C. to wherever we are that moment. She wants to talk about it and I don’t. The sessions are a waste of money. I know what helps and the doctor can’t do it.” I averted my eyes, wanting to change the subject. Catching sight of his smile of self-satisfaction would’ve only made me sink lower in my disappointment.
 

“I wandered around the world for a while,” he told me, his words bleeding with a soft latent pain. “I fought against the same things you were—and some that you weren’t. I didn’t know how much you got inside me until I returned the money through anonymous donations to the families of the dead.”

“I’m sure you kept some of the money.” I gazed over the way he was dressed.

“I didn’t, actually. With Shiloh dead, I got the inheritance by default.”

I looked down at my lap, remembering the story Shiloh told me compared to the one Noah retold. Nadine said they told parts of the truth and when they came together, they made up the whole. At the moment, I was completely sure of what the truth was. It made the ache worsen, because it permitted me to feel a small sliver of empathy for him. “I can’t eat chocolate without thinking about you, but I keep ordering every chocolate dessert I can think of. How strange is that?” I looked at my barely touched beignet. “There are a lot of strange things you left me with. You left me…empty.”

“Keaton,” he sighed, leaning forward. “I came here for you because I want to fill you up again.”

“It’s unhealthy to want it. You’ve…debased me.”

He reached underneath the table and grabbed my hand, placing it on a part that was aroused. “I freed you. I made you better. Welcome back to my world, princess.”

I slipped my hand back to my lap, clearing my throat.
 

Amorousness filled his eyes as his attention was split between the whip on the table to me, he rubbed his bottom lip as his gaze continued to lock on my face. “Are we doing this, Keaton? If you keep up your hesitation and talking yourself out of what you want, I will take your choice away. I’ll make a scene to get you out of this place and into my bed.”

“I’m not ready to be alone with you yet,” I responded, my words pained and quiet. “I
can’t
be alone with you yet. I think if we…we should start over. Like we never really knew each other. Maybe I won’t feel so sickened with myself if we do.”

“You want to feel that way but you don’t. Right now, I’m pretty sure you feel what I do. Home is with me.”

I clutched my chest as it began to ache. My mind, heart, and body were all askew, because they all wanted him.
 

I knew deep down, despite how much I wanted to fight it, he was correct. He was an illusion of beauty. I knew what was underneath it all. It was twisted, tattered, and demented. Sadly, I couldn’t sate my need for him, unless I was with him.
 

“We need to start over,” I reiterated, thinking that if we did, our history would somehow be erased and I wouldn’t feel so guilty. I began to appeal to the piece that bound us, our bond. “I know who you were, but I think that place still got to you like it did everyone else. I don’t think it was the power trip for you like it was with Shiloh. It was being surrounded by the same type of evil that killed who you were. It made you feel something you were made to feel ashamed about.
 

“We met at a place that made a mess of our heads and made us the worst examples of who we really were. At least that’s what I keep telling myself to explain why I can sit at this table across from you and want to be with you after everything you did to me.” In saying the words, I remembered the night he took my virginity. The night he hadn’t lied to me or put on a mask to hide what was beneath. He wasn’t a monster that night, or the night I was blindfolded. I felt the real person behind it all and denied that it was him. I disavowed the idea of it, despite feeling him with me that night, showing me how he felt through everything he did to my body.
 

He was the man who began to make me think differently about everything I held on to, the things that tainted my soul. “Can we start over and try to be normal? I don’t want to have to hide you from my parents. It would be impossible with the way they almost never leave my side.”

“I don’t think meeting your parents right now with our history would go over well,” he surmised with difficulty. “‘Yeah, hey, Mom. This is the guy who drugged me, kidnapped me, and tortured me for seven months while being the mastermind behind a fucked up cult, that really wasn’t, but he’s a really great guy, pass the dessert.’ I’m not a good guy, and I never will be. If you want to feel guilty about feeling for someone like me, fine. But I’m not letting it get in the way of what I want. I want you and you’re not going to stop me from having what I want.”

I smirked, purposely ignoring his last few sentences. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor that was actually funny. You’re a very esoteric man, Noah.”

His eyes darkened. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, only because you’re not ready to see them.”

“Thank you,” I whispered my gratitude for the most selfless act he committed, ridding me of the man that plagued too many years of my life, Gregory Mitchum.

“I know you might’ve thought you were there because of him or what happened to your fiancé and his sister, but you weren’t. It probably makes you want to hate me more, but I’m not in the business of lying to you anymore. It’s pointless and I want you to learn to trust me.” He squeezed my hand and a shadow took over his face. “We’ll never talk about him again.”

Nodding, I ran my thumb against the back of his hand.
 

He released me to stand. “Now that the bullshit is out of the way…”