Dark Notes(56)

With his back to me, he places his wallet and keys in a wooden dish. His phone and mechanical watch go next. His waistcoat falls over the back of a stiff leather chair. His necktie follows.

When his hands fall to his belt, my breath catches.

He shifts to face me, his fingers slowly unclasping the buckle. “It’s time to address the issue we’ve been avoiding.”

My stomach sinks, and a wave of vertigo shivers through me.

He slides the belt free, winds it into a coil, and sets it on the nightstand beside the bed.

“No lies.” He clasps his hands behind his back, squared shoulders stretch the white button-up across his chest, and his glare hardens. “Omitting is the same as lying.”

Shit! I squeeze my eyes shut. Shit, f*cking shit.

“Ivory.”

I open my eyes and find him studying me. Of course, he is. Always watching. Always seeing too much. I bite my lip. This isn’t going to end well.

“I’m probably going to lose my cool again.” He glances at his shoes, smirking to himself. “Since I can’t seem to control my temper where you’re concerned.” He looks up beneath a veil of thick lashes. “Remember what I said about that.”

My eyebrows pull in as I think back. “You never hit a woman in anger?”

“Good girl.”

My lungs expand, inhaling those words.

He kneels before me, his chest touching my closed knees and his hands on my hips. “I know you need money. I’ve deduced that Prescott and Sebastian pay you.” His eyes spark with anger. “Tell me how and when the arrangement began.”

I want to caress his face, but the angles of his bone structure suddenly appear too sharp, too untouchable. So I place my palm on the warm skin of his forearm, where it rests alongside my thigh. “I’ll tell you. I promise. But what will happen to my education and Leo—?”

“Leopold is neither here nor there. This isn’t a student-teacher conference.” He shifts, grips the hem of my skirt, and shoves it up my thighs until it sits just below my panties.

I keep my knees together, but I don’t fight him.

“This is you and me, Ivory.” His fingers slide beneath the gathered fabric, tracing the hidden bend between my legs and hips. “We’re just a man and a woman, sharing an intimate moment of honesty.”

I like the sound of that almost as much as the soothing touch of his fingers. A silent caesura stretches between us, during which time isn’t counted or weighed. Eventually, his caresses calm me enough to speak.

“Freshman year, I was desperate for friends, desperate to fit in, and offered to help some of the kids with their homework.” Sweat slicks my hands, and I clasp them over the crease of my clenched bare thighs. “Only the boys took me up on the help. Prescott and his friends. At some point in that first year, my tutoring turned into me doing their homework for them.”

“And what I saw in the car?”

“They touched and kissed and took things I didn’t want to give.”

Emeric rises, his hands raking through his hair as a violent symphony clashes and vibrates in his eyes.

“They took things…” He drops his arms and flexes his fists at his sides. “Explain that.”

I tell him how I threatened to stop helping them, how they offered to pay me if I continued, and how badly I needed the income to keep my house. By the time I get to the part about them taking more than the homework, Emeric is pacing a furious track through the room.

If he’s going to burn off steam, he has the space to do it. I mean, it’s the biggest bedroom I’ve ever seen, with nothing on the floor to trip him up. For a guy, he’s surprisingly tidy.

And for a girl who’s in a cage with a pacing lion, I feel strangely detached. Liberated even.

Finally voicing these things is freeing, and he absorbs every word like he’s living it, feeling it. Yes, he’s angry, but he hasn’t once directed it at me. He cares enough to be angry for me.

He stops before me, his face as red as his swollen knuckles. “You told them no?”

Directing my eyes to his Doc Martens, I nod. “For a while.”

“Define a while.”

“The first couple of years.”

“They raped you. For years.” His scathing voice rolls into bellow. “Look at me!”

My gaze jumps to his. The horror etching his face makes my heart pound so hard it hurts.

How do I explain these embarrassing things when I’m not even sure about any of it? “I don’t know.”

“There’s no I-don’t-know’s about it, Ivory.” He grips the back of his neck with both hands and paces in a tight circle. “You were either willing or you weren’t. Which is it?”

“Sometimes, I feel trapped by circumstance. Sometimes, I’m held down. Other times, I just let it happen.”

“You just let it happen,” he echoes with venom. “Bullshit!”

The roar of his shout hitches my shoulders. He spins and slams his fist into the wall, wrenching a gasp from my throat.

I leap from the bed, shoving my skirt down as I cautiously approach his back. “Emeric.”

He punches another hole, and another, his arms flexing and contracting with the impact as dust and sheet rock explode around him.

“Emeric, stop!”