“Lower your eyes when you speak to me,” she told him, refusing to be so easily won.
His gaze dropped to her chest.
“Lower,” she said.
It dropped again to her navel.
“Lower,” she insisted, voice gravelly.
He coughed slightly and dropped his eyes once more, until he was staring directly between her legs.
“Now,” she told him. “Beg.”
“Please,” he said to her crotch. “Please don’t leave me, Cordelia. I need you. I love you. I want you.”
She knew that to John this was sexual, some part of him responding in a primal, lustful way to her demands. She imagined that even now he was growing hard down there on the floor between her thighs, thinking he might take her right on this table.
But his fantasy of wooing her, winning her, fucking her would remain just that—a fantasy. Cordelia was taking something back. That was all.
Leaning down, she put two fingers on his chest and tipped him back. John rocked onto his heels and looked up at her with need. In that moment, she knew that for him to humiliate himself this way, the object of his desire couldn’t be her. It was the house, the trust, her sudden and unexpected status as a woman of great means. It was the prospect of being set for life and wringing even more from her than he already had.
“Get up,” she said simply, leaning back as she watched him stand, her lip curling in disdain.
“Anything,” he whispered, erection strained against the front of his chinos. He’d always had a hard-on for money.
Cordelia stared up at him, heady with power. “Now get the fuck out of my house,” she said plainly. “Andnevercome back.”
His face washed red, fists balled white at his sides. He reached for the empty mug on the table. “Goddammit!” he cried, sending it careening against the marble fireplace mantel, a hundred pieces of crockery littering the floor.
Cordelia laughed—a chest-deep, throaty roar burbling up from her gut.
John’s face went from red to plum. He lunged for her in the chair, wrapping both hands around her throat, squeezing. Cordelia clawed at his fingers, but his face was twisted with rage, manic with greed, as if he could choke the money out of her. Her heart throbbed desperately against the lack of oxygen as her mind wheeled for purchase. All the fury she felt bottled up inside her strained for release. She forced herself to push it back down through her feet and into the floor, into the earth.
The ground began to rumble beneath them. Everything—the table, the chairs, the glass bottles in the bar—vibrated violently. The candelabras toppled over one by one. The portraits of her ancestors slid down the wall, crashing in their heavy frames to the floor. The chandelier swung wildly in his direction.
Cordelia would bring it all down around them before she’d let him have a piece of it.
“What’s happening?’ John shrieked. A quake hit the floor beneath them with enough force to buckle his knees. He released her to catch himself.
She jumped to her feet, gasping, as John was knocked sideways into the hardwood table, then to the floor. She reached for a brass candlestick and held it menacingly over his head. Everything stilled as quickly as it had begun. The dining room door burst open, Eustace and Gordon rushing through.
“Our guest was just leaving,” Cordelia said looking down at John with more hatred than she knew it was possible to feel.
“Cordy,” Eustace said gently. “Put the candle-thingy down.”
But Cordelia didn’t budge. Beneath her, John cowered.
“You don’t want to do this, honey,” her sister said. “He’s not worth it.”
Cordelia glanced at Eustace. Behind her sister’s shoulder, shecould see the shock and concern on Gordon’s face, his dilated pupils.
She glared down at John. “If you ever touch me again,” she told him, “I’ll kill you.”
Then she straightened, dropping the candlestick to the floor, and stepped away.
Gordon rushed forward to help John to his feet. “I think you’d better leave.”
“What was that?” Eustace asked now that she’d managed to talk Cordelia out of murdering her ex-husband.
