But he pushes me back to him, hugging me harder. “So, he told you about some stupid girl and that was enough to convince you.” His voice is still thick with amusement, but underneath is a hard edge. “Or was there something else?”
He knows me too well. There’s nothing like anger to make me speak. To lash out, even. I’m shocked I know how, after so many months of silence.
“A picture,” I snap. “He showed me a picture.”
“Of what? A model listing or something?”
“Ofyou. Of you in Columbia, while I was dying. Of you and her. He told me everything. Youusedme.”
My voice is shaking with barely controlled fury. He tries to soothe me again, but this time, I won’t let him. I push myself off of him and stand, swaying, darkness creeping into my vision.
“Careful,” he warns, standing up too.
But I take a few wobbly steps away from him, intent on keeping a distance between us. It’s the only way I can keep myself from giving in to his spell.
“You’re nothing but a liar,” I snarl. “I hate you. Fuck you!”
Now I’m the one trying to rile him up. I remember how he reacted the last time I swore at him. He whipped me in front of his friends. Now, I repeat those words over and over, searching for a reaction in his eyes. But I guess I’m not as good a mind reader as him. Or maybe he’s better at keeping his emotions hidden. His face is a mask as he watches me.
Of course he’s good at keeping things hidden. How else could I have fallen for his lies for so long? How else could Istillbe falling for them? I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a precipice, inches away from giving in to him again.
But no. I have to be strong. I have to resist.
“Are you finished?” he asks quietly, far too quietly. It’s the kind of quiet that tells me he’s angry, but I force myself to hold on tomy own anger.
“I’m only getting started,” I say in a shaky voice. “Don’t lie to me. I know you have a girlfriend. I believe Noel. You have a girlfriend, and you’ve been cheating on her. With a girl you’ve kept locked up in a room and used. I’m nothing more than your sex toy. Isn’t that right?”
In spite of everything, I wait, my heart hammering, for him to deny my accusation. For him to tell me, in that smooth, convincing way of his, that nothing I believe is true. For him to lie to me again.
Instead, his head falls back, and helaughs.
I see white. Shaking with fury, I take a step toward him, planning… I don’t know what. To hit him, to strangle him, to claw at his pretty face. Instead, I stumble, and before I know what’s happening, a wave of faintness overwhelms me. I feel myself fall to the floor, my last thought on the two strong arms that catch me. The arms I love so well.
__
When I awake once more, my eyes fix themselves immediately on a grinning face.
“You’re very cute when you’re angry,” an amused voice breathes in my ear. “Do you know that?”
I don’t have the strength to access my rage anymore. I merely stare at him numbly.
“I’m going to spend the rest of our life together laughing at you. You’d better get used to it, pet.”
The words fall on my ears, meaningless, except for a few.The rest of our life together.I can’t understand it. But an odd sort of hope bubbles up in my chest. He can’t mean it. Can he?
He’s holding my hand in his, his thumb tracing a light circle on my palm. “You’re going to have to accept, my pet, that I do know a few women who aren’t you. Doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with any of them. In fact, I haven’t been with a girl since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
My breath hitches, and I find myself drinking in his words, believing him. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Do you know the first time I laid eyes on you, Seraphina?” he asks softly.
Slowly, I shake my head.
“About a year before the boys brought you in.” He squeezes my hand. “I haven’t fucked another girl since the first time I saw those big violet eyes of yours in the surveillance footage of the Devil department store.”
I stare at him dumbly, trying to make sense of what he’s told me.
“You were just about the cutest thing I’d ever laid eyes on,” continues Damien. “I knew the first moment I saw you on the screen that you belonged to me. You hadn’t even met me yet, but you were mine. You still are, my darling, and you always will be. Do you hear that?”
