Beneath the Apple Leaves(99)

She walked into the room. Her heart was quiet now, silent, seemingly nonexistent. She closed the door, put the deed on his desk. “I’m ready to pay in full.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Is that so?” Slowly, his eyes drifted down her body, and she felt them across her skin like hands. And she let the eyes drift, stood steady with attention no different from that of a soldier under inspection. And she was a soldier at that moment and she needed to be brave in her war, even if it meant losing her soul.

“How do you know my offer still stands?” he asked, holding cold eyes to her blue ones. “Maybe I’m not interested anymore.”

“Then I’ll go.”

He nodded. Tilted his head to look at her from a new angle. He stood then and came around, sat on the edge of the desk. They were only inches apart, their gazes level. “My terms have changed.”

“How so?”

“I get to do whatever I want to you.”

She thought about Andrew and the coal mines, swallowed, but kept her head up. “All right.”

He leaned back against the desk, spread his legs slightly. “And you have to do whatever I tell you to do.”

The silver letter opener gleamed near his hand. She wanted to thrust it into his heart. “All right.”

“And”—he reached a hand up and grabbed her hip, squeezed roughly—“you have to like it. Have to show me how much you like it.”

Bile rose to her throat. Her nostrils flared. She nodded fiercely.

He grabbed her by the waist then, pressed his lips hard against hers, his tongue hot and large in her mouth. Eveline pulled back. “Not until you mark the deed.”

He laughed, breathed fast, his pants tented. He turned and grabbed a pen, scribbled on the paper. She took the moment and wiped her mouth, wished she could expel the remnants of him on his shoes.

With a final signature done with impatient flurry, he turned back and found her mouth again. “Remember, you have to show me you like it.”

Eveline let her stiff lips yield against his. She pinched her eyes closed, fell into the rhythm of his kissing and panting, matched his seamlessly, concentrated on this matching so that it was not a kiss but a mechanical act that took no feeling.

She hated him and yet she was giving her body. She used the fire of hate to tear at his shirt in mock passion, ripping the buttons from their holes. She found his mouth and bit his lip hard. He pulled back for only a moment before coming at her swiftly, pulling at the buttons that reached from her chin to below her waist. She tore at his undershirt until it was above his head and then on the floor and she kissed his chest, bit the skin roughly. She clawed at his back, knew she drew blood and kissed him harder for it.

He twitched between the spasms of pain and pleasure and growled into her neck. “Knew you were a fiery one.”

Frank stood then and lifted her, swiveled their bodies and placed Eveline on the desk where he had been. He pushed down the dress to her undergarments, found her breasts hidden behind the fabric, tore until the strap ripped and pushed it off her shoulder.

The hardness of him told her he’d be quick and she hurried. Eveline grabbed the pearl buckle, the one that had intrigued her in another life, and pulled hard until the leather came undone and lay slack on either side of his waist. She unbuttoned the fly, shoved her hand into his underwear and grabbed with a tight grip.

He moaned heavily into her ear, fumbled with the remaining clothing until it lay in a puddle on the floor. He opened her legs with his knees. She stroked him, used her nails against the sensitive tip, watched his face contort with her fingers and pressure. She pushed his jeans off his hips and leaned back against the desk, opened her legs widely and pulled him toward her. He entered her swiftly, banged against her thighs and pelvis, their movement making echoes of thump, thump, thump in the tiny room. He finished in less than a minute, taking her deep and growling into her neck with the release. She was not a victim, she told herself. He was. And she took him fully and watched distantly the weak man get his little pleasure.

She lay there, Frank still lodged between her thighs as his chest quieted in her neck. The letter opener sat next to her fingers and she glanced at it from the corner of her eye, thought how easy it would be to slip the tool into her palm and thrust it into his back.

She twisted her neck away from the man’s panting. “I’ll get my things,” she started, but he stopped her with a shake of his head.

“We’re not done yet.”

She met his eyes with as much blackness as she could and in response he just chuckled, his laugh slow and long with pleasure. Her stomach dropped and she closed her eyes, realized she had been a fool to think he would let her off easy.

“You a religious woman, Eveline?”

She didn’t answer. Simply hated him. Turned all her hate into one glaring pinpoint of disgust.

He donned a look of priestly devotion. “There’s a story about Adam and Eve that you won’t find in the Bible. It’s an old story from the Jews.” He reached over and rubbed her breast, squeezed the nipple between his fingers. “The story says that Adam’s first wife was a woman named Lilith. But Lilith was an evil woman, you see. Impure. She was not a good wife to Adam. She would not obey him. She refused to be subservient. And so she abandoned him, left the Garden of Eden and hid within a cave to do her evil deeds.”

Frank ran a finger down the line between Eveline’s breasts and continued, “As you can imagine, Adam was very distraught and angry at his first wife. But God took mercy on him and created Eve.”