Have Me (Stark Trilogy, #3.6)(26)

Damien is in the street, and his fist slams hard into the photographer’s face even as I process the words that have been hanging over my head like a cartoon bubble since the first flash went off—“Fucking A. Stark pays for her, then he shares her.”

The accent is heavily British, and when I see the multiple cameras around the guy’s neck as he stumbles backward, his nose a bloody mess, I realize that he is a celebrity chaser from one of Britain’s tabloids.

I don’t even have time to feel sick before I see Damien lunge for the guy.

“Damien, no!” I shout, but my words come too late. Damien grabs the guy by the shirt front and pulls him back. He seems to hesitate, and then instead of breaking the guy’s face, he grabs one of the cameras and breaks that instead.

“Get the f*ck out of here.” His words are low and very, very dangerous, and it’s obvious that the photographer knows that. He turns, then breaks into a run. I grab hold of Damien’s shirt, afraid that he will run after him.

“It’s over,” I say, breathing hard and starting to shake. “Just stop. It’s over.”

But even as I say the words, I know that it is a long, long way from over.





[page]Chapter 11


“I’m sorry,” Damien says in the taxi on the way back to the H?tel Margaritte.

“For not stopping? For breaking his camera?” I make a face. “It’s okay, really. I don’t give a f*ck about him. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Not for that,” Damien says. “For bringing you here.”

It takes me a moment to understand what he’s talking about. “You mean to Paris? To the club?” I tighten my grip on his hand. “Damien, that’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” His words are tight. Clipped. “I almost canceled this entire trip after I saw your face in Mexico. How much you enjoyed the beach, the solitude.”

I remember the shadows I had seen on his face when we had talked about leaving the resort, and everything falls into place.

“And then to bring you to a city crawling with press—to put you back in that spotlight,” he continues. “And worse, to take you to that club. It was like opening a damn door for every lowlife *—”

“No.” I press a finger over his lips. “I love Paris,” I said. “And dear god, Damien, I loved going to à la Lune with you.” I remember the way he’d touched me, the over-the-top eroticism of feeling Damien inside me while we watched those strangers and knowing that we were just as exposed. “And there was no way you could predict that some * with a camera—”

“Couldn’t I? There’s always some * with a camera, Nikki. It’s part of the package. The cameras and all the shit in my past. It’s all there, and I’m so goddamn sorry that it’s part of your life now.”

“Damien, it’s okay,” I say fiercely. “I don’t want to be cloistered, and I don’t need to be. You take me places—in the world, inside myself—and I don’t want you to stop.”

I see something that looks like hope on his face, but then it fades, replaced by both anger and regret. “At the very least I should be able to give you a respite on our honeymoon.”

“No.” My voice is hard. Firm. “Dammit, Damien, don’t you get it? I don’t want to escape your life. I love you. All of that shit, it’s just part of the man you became.”

“Fertilizer?”

I roll my eyes. “I’m serious. You’re a whole package, Damien. And maybe I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings for the paparazzi, but I do love you. And that makes it easier to put up with them. You know that,” I add, feeling just a little panicked, because he does know that. “I’ve told you that over and over. Don’t you know I mean it?”

Damien, however, doesn’t answer, and my throat is thick with tears as I look into his eyes. This is about more than the paparazzi, I realize. I may not like them, but I’m getting used to them, and Damien damn well knows it.

I frown at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He is silent for a moment, and when he does speak, my chest is so tight that I am certain I have forgotten how to breathe.

“Sofia,” he says. “She’s the one behind the bullshit lawsuit.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“My lawyers managed to trace it back. That’s what Sylvia texted to tell me earlier. I was going to tell you later. I didn’t want to spoil Paris.” He makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “So much for that.”

He runs his fingers through his hair. “At any rate, it’s been shut down, and her attorney knows how he was duped. But she started it. She’s behind it. Because she wanted to f*ck with you.”

I’m still trying to take it all in. “I—I don’t understand.”

“WiseApp? Try WiseAss.” There’s anger and hurt in his voice. “Goddamn her.”

“She’s messed up,” I say, though the words are hard to choke out. I can’t help but remember what she said to me—that Damien didn’t love me, that I should give him up and turn to a blade to ease my pain.

I force myself to bite back the fury. It’s useless now. Because she is sick, and all her antics are doing is hurting Damien now. Damien, and me.