I’m delirious as his tongue teases mine, as one hand pushes me hard against his manhood and the other curls into my hair, tangling in the messy remnants of my bun.
There’s a low buzz and I open my eyes, startled. They flick towards the driver in time to see him disappear behind a divider screen.
I’m suddenly aware that I’m in the back seat, groping a man I barely know, while the boy I should be with is sitting back home probably imagining this exact scenario. Feeling rejected.
My body tenses and I tug my hand again. This time, Micah lets it go and I curl my shoulder, forming a barrier as I twist towards the passenger door, trying to hide as I hear him shuffle back to his side of the seat.
I’m embarrassed. Guilty.
Gabriel walked out of the room. He didn’t help you.
But that was shock. I wasn’t functioning either. I can’t dismiss our entire history based on a knee-jerk reaction to terrible news.
Micah is going to be your husband.
But it still feels like I’ve just betrayed the boy I should be marrying and for what? A quick fumble in the back seat of a car. Something the man seated next from me won’t even remember once we leave the luxurious confines of his vehicle.
A slew of demeaning words spill across my mind, jeering at me as shame rises from my belly to plug the narrowing gap in my throat. I gasp for air, drowning in my newest humiliation.
Then Micah’s hand sneaks across the gap to grip my fingers in a friendly squeeze. A lifeline out of my sea of self-flagellation. The vehicle slows to turn into an underground carpark. “We’re here.”
CHAPTERSIX
MICAH
The driver keeps Crimson’s door locked as a precaution until I walk around the back of the car and reach for the handle. As she steps from the vehicle, I offer her my elbow and she takes it, keeping her eyes lowered to the floor as I escort her to the lift.
Only then does she glance around. I look too, seeing things through her eyes. There aren’t many other vehicles parked down here and the cavernous space has taken out footfalls and turned them into a dull medley of echoes.
I punch in my twelve-digit code and the lift doors spring open. Crimson’s hand slips from my arm and I fight the urge to clasp hold of it. I don’t know why I keep wanting to touch her, hold her hand. I’m a grown man about to use her to exact revenge, not a boy in the schoolyard, hanging out for his first kiss.
Had tonight beenherfirst kiss?
The caresses in the back seat had been eager but not experienced. She’s a virgin, sure, but I wonder how little sexual contact she’s had over the years. With a father as scary as hers, perhaps none at all.
To my surprise, the thought of her being untouched is overwhelmingly attractive.
Then I stamp my foot on the brakes of my musings, sigh, and pull open the bins in my mind. Actions into one, emotions into the other and I slam the lid on that one quick before they can escape again.
The last thing I need tonight isfeelingsrunning around, off their leash.
The compartmentalisation is something I’ve used since I first went to work at the grand old age of fourteen, using my fists to explain to Oskar Hillam’s ‘customers’ why it wasn’t a great idea to skip a debt repayment. It keeps things clean. Makes things easier.
Usually, the habit is so well ingrained that I’m not even conscious of it. I don’t know why that’s changed tonight.
Maybe because I’ve been frantic for weeks, trying to clean up all the loose ends that frayed during the months I was held on remand. A rest would be nice, but a holiday is pushed so far into my future that I’ll forget the meaning of the word by the time it rolls around.
When the lift door pings, I step into my apartment, Crimson beside me. She shrinks back towards the elevator, but I propel her forward, her high heels clicking sharply on the lacquer floor.
A few metres inside, she shivers. I think from fear then realise it’s the chill. I like air-conditioning that constantly reminds me it’s on, but it means the temperature in the apartment is so cold I half expect to see a cloud of condensation emerge from her mouth.
“You can adjust the temperature to keep it how you like,” I tell her, moving to the dial and winding it up to the high teens, then again to the low twenties when I see how prominent the goosebumps are on her arms.
I don’t know why I’m bothering. She won’t be cold soon. And she won’t be staying long enough for the apartment to heat all the way through.
Pity goes into the emotion box, and I give it the side-eye, waiting a beat to ensure nothing else escapes before I lead Crimson farther into my home. She has a dazed look in her eye, close to blankness.
I wonder what she’s like when her world hasn’t just been turned upside down. So far, she’s run the gamut from dutiful to spitting fire. The latter seems more likely to be her natural temperament. Did her father spend years moulding her into the former, so she’d make someone the perfect syndicate wife?
