My Love Forgive (8 page)

Several seconds passed in strained silence. Damian arched his brow and waited with the patience of the sainted. Or the damned. It was rather difficult to tell which considering the circumstances.

“Bathroom.”

“Okay. You should know it’s through that door over there.”

“Are you going to do something about this?” I pointed at the chain, refusing to touch it.

His decisive shake of the head punctured my hope that the morning would bring something new. “No. It’ll reach.”

“Damian…I…”

He paused in the middle of setting the tray and drink down. Without looking at me, he warned, “I’m not going to take it off.”

“You’re hurting me.” My voice came out raw, strangled by my profound sense of betrayal. “You’re hurting me so much.”

“I know.”

Damian’s calmness set off a shriek of rage. I reached behind me and hurled a pillow at him. He merely sidestepped the feathery missile. I clenched my fists and cried, “Why are you being like this?”

Look at me! Please make this better! Please, Damian!

Damian set the rapidly cooling food on the nightstand by his bedside before turning on the lamp. “You’re not in the right frame of mind to listen to anything I have to say. Would you like some juice?”

“Answer me!” I kicked out with both of my feet.

He inhaled deeply and slammed the glass down. The words spilled out of him sharp and merciless. “Because it’s what you need.”

“No!”

“Yes!” Damian rounded the bed. He pressed down on my knees with one hand, putting an end to my flailing tantrum. “You’re asking me the obvious but not what you really want to know.”

My fury flickered because of his confidence. “You’re wrong. I
really
want to know why you’ve chained me like a dog!”

“I could’ve chained you anytime I wanted, Risa, and you would’ve loved it. I could’ve made you come just from the thought of being my pet. This isn’t what’s bothering you.”

His pronouncement was too close to my thoughts of the night before. I reared back and kicked Damian in the stomach. The sound of his pain left a satisfying mark on an otherwise nightmarish situation.

“You try being chained up against your will and then you can lecture me on what’s really bothering me.”

Damian stood up from his hunched position. He made a very good giant. “Stop letting your pride and how you
think
you should react control what you’re really feeling.”

I wanted to scream. I didn’t want Damian to talk to me as if I were to blame for our current circumstances. I hated his calm, unruffled exterior but most of all I hated myself.

Even now I just want him to hold me and make this all better. Idiot! How can I think this kind of garbage?

“You planned this from the beginning.”

He didn’t deny or confirm. “Why do you believe I would do something like that, Risa?”

“To prove that you’re in charge! To prove that I can’t possibly do something on my own that you disagree with! To punish me!”

“Wrong.”

I shrieked a pitiful cry of helplessness and despair. I wanted to take my chain and wrap it around his neck.

Damian dropped onto the bed next to me. “Let it out, little girl. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“No!” I pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t try to act as if you care, as if this is all going to make me feel better.” Memory slammed into me. I exhaled as if mortally wounded.

This is exactly what Gretchen thought. This is exactly what she felt while she cried at his feet. How did she survive it? How will I?

“Yes, I do care. Do you know why? Because you belong to me and always will.” Damian gathered me in his arms and rocked me. “Ssh, baby girl. Stop fighting. I’m still the man you love. That hasn’t changed.”

Embarrassment made a fool of me. “Love you? How do you know…why do you think…I don’t love—”

“You finish that sentence and I’ll really make you sorry for lying to me.”

The venom in Damian’s threat silenced me for all of three seconds. “You don’t deserve any kind of truth from me. You fucked this all up, Damian.”

He sighed and settled back against the headboard with me firmly in hand. “I didn’t plan this, Risa, but I going to make the best of it.”

“The best of it. Knocking me out and bringing me here before chaining me up like a misbehaving pet is your idea of making the best of it?”

“Yes. You’ll see.” I tried to pull away. Damian tightened his arms around me. “I’m glad for you trying to sneak out.”

“I’m not glad you caught me.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll say that always.” Our sparring reminded me of old times, better times.

“We couldn’t keep going the way we’ve been. It wasn’t honest. We fucked, we spent time together, we played, we fucked some more but it wasn’t what I wanted for us, Risa.”

“I liked it just fine.”

“Liar.” He took the sting out by squeezing my hip. “Don’t be afraid—not everything’s changed.”

“It has. I can’t trust you.”

“You never did. You’ve had one foot out the entire time we’ve been together.”

Damian’s insight floored me. I never suspected he knew. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.

“That’s n-not true.”

“Yes, it is. It’s been that way since you saw Gretchen.”

I pushed at his arm. “Then why did I keep seeing you?”

Damian tightened his hold on me until I gasped. “Jealousy.”

“You’re so full of yourself!” I winced in preparation of a brutal squeeze that never came.

“I’m not. I just know you, Risa. That’s all. I’ve known you since I first saw you.” He nuzzled my cheek so gently. “I knew you were it for me. I knew it and it pissed me off.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to have to hurt Gretchen by never being able to go back to her. And because—”

I wiggled one of my arms free and slapped Damian. The ugly sound of flesh striking flesh inflamed my misery. I’d never struck him or anyone like that before. I wasn’t a violent person. I really wasn’t, but the rage that boiled inside me had turned me into someone else.

Someone I didn’t recognize.

Oh my God!

Lashing out in guilt, I yelled, “If you loved her so damned much maybe you should’ve just stayed with her instead of wasting your time on me!”

His cheek flushed with blood. My handprint became a beautifully impermanent tattoo. Damian’s gaze glittered with rage, but his voice remained as soft as it ever was. “I’m letting you get away with that now because you’re proving me right. Don’t do it again.”

“I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry but you have no right to throw that in my face, Damian.”

“Why did you react so violently when I brought up her name? Are you jealous?”

“No!”

He touched his cheek briefly. “Yes, you are. You’re sick with jealousy and always have been. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to address it then, but I’m going to break you of that now.”

The arrogance of this man! “Don’t bother.”

“I refuse to spend the rest of our lives with this hanging over our heads.”

My stomach dropped further. Damian’s imagination was an elegantly brutal landscape. His threat could ensure anything. I smothered my fear with outward contempt.

“It’s not jealousy. I don’t like you rubbing my face about poor Gretchen. Maybe I don’t like you blaming me for you leaving her. And maybe, just maybe, I don’t like what you’ve done to me!”

“I didn’t leave her because of you. I’d already left her because our relationship ran its course. You had nothing to do with it at that particular junction.”

Damian’s cold-bloodedness got under my skin. “I don’t care.”

“Of course, you do. Would you rather hear me say I left her because of you? That I fell in love with you at first sight? Would that soothe your pride, Risa?”

I closed my eyes and savored the masochistic rush of Damian rooting inside my secret self. Had I really become this shallow? “Would you have chained Gretchen like this?”

“No, you vain girl, I wouldn’t have done this to her or anyone I’ve been with. I told you already. I meant it.”

Something beautiful and dark pushed through the barren ground of normalcy.

He’s not lying to me.

I deflated and rested my head against his chest. My heart lightened just enough for me to say, “Captivity makes me special then.”

“Yes. I’m happy you’ve come to understand that so quickly.” He kissed my cheek. I shuddered from the person I’d become entrapped by.

“What’s wrong? Are you cold?”

“You always pay me back for whatever I do against you.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I slapped you. Hard.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You’re going to get me back for hitting you.”

He squeezed me and laughed. “It wouldn’t be punishment if you knew when and what was going to happen, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Don’t pout, Risa. It’s unbecoming of my special girl to do so.” He softened the stern admonishment by bouncing me on his knee. “Will you stop fighting me?”

Yes. I want things to go back to the way they were.

It was impossible. Everything had already changed.

It scared me how I’d fallen so quickly under Damian’s spell. All it took was an easily tossed suggestion of love and affection to have me under his thumb again. I knew what I had to do.

What I should’ve already thought of as soon as I came to.

Somehow, someway I was going to need Damian to drop his guard and then I’d succeed in leaving. What happened after that was something I couldn’t think about right now.

“Yes.”

No.

He observed me, effortlessly drawing me into his exotic stare. “I can trust you, right?”

“Yes.”

No.

“You won’t fight me?”

“As much as I can stop myself.”

Every step of the way.

He smiled. “I believe you.”

I got the strange feeling that he was testing me. Unnerved, I tried to distract him. “Damian, you know this is crazy, right? Believing me?”

Wow. Why did I just say that to him? Was I
trying
to get caught?

“I believe you.”

I looked down at my lap. Beyond logic, beyond right, I felt guilty. “I’ve always trusted you too, Damian.”

Until now.

He shook his head at my lie. “If you did you wouldn’t have tried to leave me last night.”

There was nothing I could say that would have any affect on our situation. I had the right to leave last night if I wanted. Obviously, Damian didn’t agree and that’s why I was chained to the bed. Anything said at this point was simply circular.

Still, I couldn’t ignore the very real hurt hiding behind Damian’s words.

“Why did you try to leave me?”

I clenched my jaw. “What difference does it make?”

“Because I want to know. You owe me at least that much.”

“Because I…”
I love you and you didn’t love me.
“You really want to know?”

“Tell me.”

“Because I saw how you were looking at me.”

“How I looked at you? You tried to break up with me because of a look.”

His even drawl made me feel ridiculous beyond words. “You looked like you hated me,” I defended. “I saw it.”

“Why would I hate you, Risa?”

Damian asked it with the surety of an innocent man. I didn’t know what felt worse—the growing ache in my heart or the bruise in my pride.

“Risa?”

The impatient prompt coaxed me to spill out, “I know you don’t really like me most of the time. You constantly pick on everything I say or do. The only time you seem to like me is when I’m naked. Eventually that was going to go away. I decided to save us both the embarrassment.”

Damian moved me off him and onto my side. He then mirrored my position. “No, you decided to save yourself the embarrassment by not discussing your feelings with me.”

“Would you have listened?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “I’m listening now. What you call ‘picking’ I call ‘taking an interest.’ However, you are right. There are certain things I don’t like about your behavior.”

Charged silence stretched between us. I cleared my throat and crossed my ankles. It was bound to be a long list. I might as well have settled in and endured as best as I could.

“Such as?”

“I don’t like your continuous need to hide things from me.”

“I don’t hide everything from you. I just need my privacy. That’s all.”

“And that’s a problem.”

“No, it’s not. I hardly know anything about you, Damian. Why do you have a right to privacy and I don’t?”

“You’ve never asked about my life.”

I opened my mouth to refute him before snapping it shut. He was right. I had made it a point not to push. “You’re always so cagey with your words. I figured you’d be that way about your life.”

His sensuous lips curled into a wry smile. “I’m not always so cagey.”

“So it’s just me?”

“Actually, yes.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Damian laughed. “I know, but it’s true.”

His happiness drove through me like a knife. Now he wanted to be close, but I didn’t. Not like this. Even though my stupid heart thrilled at him finally sharing confidences with me, I had to remain strong.

I couldn’t forget that for all Damian’s kindness, he was still keeping me here against my will. In direct contrast to the tightness in my chest, I said lightly, “Well, we have nothing but time to share now since I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Damian kissed my temple. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For still wanting to love me.”

There it went again. Pain. Pain because since meeting Damian all I ever wanted was his love and now all I had was regret. I was scared and angry. Worse, the longer I was with Damian, the more confused I was about being here with him.

If it was just about sex I wouldn’t be so upset. I would’ve loved to have been chained to his bed for a whole weekend. I loved being the center of Damian’s attention, but this felt so wrong.

Wasn’t it?

“Do you think you’ll let me out by Monday?” I asked while drawing a circle on my leg.

“That’s up to you.”