Page 78 of The Heart You Kept

“Who’s your surefire, Alora?” he murmurs, he’s so close that I feel his breath tickle my skin.

“I’ve never needed one,” I lie again, I basically couldn’t lie straight in bed now.

Compulsive.

They keep coming, one after the other.

“I….”

I suddenly feel tight chested and I know if I stay here I am one hundred percent committing adultery and I’m going to break that big fuck-off bed of his. “I have to go.” I turn and rush down the stairs and down to the next level and I feel him coming after me and I walk faster and faster. I get to the ground floor and head for the door.

“Alora. Stop,” he demands.

I stop on the spot as I face the door, my breath hitching as I try to gain some much-needed control over my traitorous body.

“Let me walk you out,” he says calmly from behind.

I nod and he walks past me and opens the door. The security are waiting on the end of the gangplank. “Give us a moment please,” he says as we walk past them and they stay where they are.

We walk in silence back to the Bentley and he opens the back door and I pause before I get in. “When?”

His eyes hold mine.

“When was the last time you used me as a surefire?”

“Yesterday.” His tongue swipes over his bottom lip as he stares at me. “I fucked your mouth and I blew so fucking hard.”

I audibly gasp, my heart races.

He leans in and puts his mouth to my ear. “Then I needed more, so I fucked your ass.” His breath on my ear sends shivers up my spine. “And you loved every fucking inch of it.”

I get a vision of him pulling himself as he pictured us together, the image heats my blood to boiling point. I pull away from him, my scared eyes search his. The hold this man has over me is terrifying.

“Goodbye, Edward.”

A trace of a smile crosses his face. “Goodbye, Alora.”

I get into the car and he closes the door, and then as if nothing happened he casually turns and walks back to his yacht. I slump back into the seat as if I have just run a marathon.

Dear God.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ALORA

My moral compass has always been a shining light, my ethical standards a cut above the rest. My standards are high, my love is true and I’ve judged people for less.

What a joke, I don’t even know who I am anymore.

I’m definitely not the girl I was this time last week. Last Friday night Pascal and I went to the movies and laughed and ate at our favorite restaurant and everything was normal and controlled and in order as it should be.

This week, I’m on a plane to New York, alone. Carrying an extra-large suitcase of guilt.

Since Mr. Prescott came back I’ve lied to Pascal, I lied to my friends, I kissed another man, and today without telling a soul where I was, I went to his yacht. Stood in his bedroom and nearly did something that I would never forgive myself for.

This is toxic.

I cannot and I will not become someone that I don’t recognize. Someone that I’m not proud of.