Part 6 (1/2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Jude didn't barge into the bathroom as I thought he would.

As I squeezed the water out of my hair and wiped myself off, dread swirled in the pit of my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was return to the bedroom, to find him there. Or maybe he was downstairs in his office. Maybe it wouldn't hit him too hard. Surely he knew that sometimes it could take years for someone to get pregnant. Feeling less anxious, I walked out of the bathroom, a thick towel around my body.

He half perched on the edge of the neatly laid bed. Lin must have been up to clean the room.

He was dressed now, after probably using one of the guest room showers. The pajamas were replaced by the suit that wrapped itself around his defined shoulders. No tie. The top b.u.t.ton of the coffee s.h.i.+rt was undone. During happier times, I would have found the way he lay there, looking powerful and in control, s.e.xy. It would have turned me on. We would have ended up under the sheets and made love. It felt like so long ago.

My gazed drifted to the drink in his hand, a dark golden liquid settling at the bottom of a tumbler. He hardly drank unless he was stressed or angry. And as I stepped further into the room, I smelled it, thick and dark, suffocating. Anger. The quiet, dangerous kind. Everything underneath my skin started to tremble.

”Haley.” His voice was cool, controlled, too calm. He sat up and took a deep swig of his drink, barely wincing. ”I'm going to ask you one question. If you lie to me, I'll kill you with my bare hands.”

I knew what the question would be and already scrambled around my mind looking for a fit response. But whether I lied or told the truth, he'd probably kill me anyway.

He cleared his throat, took another drink and placed the gla.s.s with a slam on the bedside table. ”Where did you hide them?”

I tightened my towel around my body, wis.h.i.+ng it could s.h.i.+eld me from whatever awaited me in the next few minutes.

”I ... what?” I licked my dry lips.

”Don't f.u.c.k with me, Haley. Where are the d.a.m.n pills?” He shouted and I jumped.

I'd made sure to hide them well this time, in the laundry room, where he never stepped foot, taped behind one of the was.h.i.+ng machines. I had to keep lying to save myself from his wrath. I dropped my gaze. ”I'm not on the pill ... anymore.” I tried hard to keep my voice from shaking.

”So,” he said slowly, ”you're just a worthless piece of s.h.i.+t, then? Good for nothing.”

I lifted my head and met his gaze head on. ”Why did you marry me then? If you hate me so much, why don't you just let me go?”

His reaction was so quick and unexpected. I almost didn't dodge the gla.s.s as it hurtled through the air toward my head. But I managed to move to the right just in time. It smashed against the wall next to me, exploding into what seemed like a thousand shards of gla.s.s. One caught the side of my neck and sliced into my skin. I breathed in sharply, inhaling the stench of alcohol before grabbing my neck, the towel sliding from my body and pooling at my feet.

I smothered a sob as I watched the man I had married leering at me with the satisfaction of watching me in pain. I refused to cry in front of him.

”Come here,” he ordered.

I bent down to pick up the towel. The sight of blood on my hand made me nauseous.

”Leave it there.”

Careful not to step on any gla.s.s, I went to stand before him. He unzipped his pants and whipped out his c.o.c.k. ”Suck,” he ordered. ”That's all you're good for. Sucking and f.u.c.king.”

His words tore through me but I kept my mouth shut.

He made me give him a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b for what felt like an hour, until my mouth was numb and my throat sore from him slamming too deep into my mouth. Before he came, he yanked me by the hair and threw me on the bed. Then he f.u.c.ked me in every possible way, every possible place.

First he came inside me. The second round he withdrew before he came and stood over me on the bed, squirting his sperm on my face and hair. I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to see the pleasure on his face.

Just when I thought he was done, I felt a jet of something warm and sharp-smelling hit me where the s.e.m.e.n had landed earlier, soaking into my hair. Water? I opened my eyes just in time to see him urinating on me. Horrified, I gagged and cried and tried to scramble away from him.

”You stink,” he said when he was done. ”Looks like you need another shower.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

The marinated tiger prawns made my stomach queasy, and the oriental noodles looked like neglected yarn left out in the rain. From the way he dissected his steak, Jude's appet.i.te was just fine. I gritted my teeth as his knife sc.r.a.ped the porcelain plate.

Breakfast wound up being lunch because I'd spent an hour locked up in the bathroom weeping.

Even after what he'd done to me, he still insisted we celebrate our anniversary. At first I refused, but his palm connected with my cheek, quickly reminding me I did not have the power to make decisions anymore. I wore heavy concealer on my face and a silk scarf around my neck, to cover the signs of his abuse.

As I sat across from him, I thought of the options I had to escape this h.e.l.l. Whatever I decided to do, it had to work the first time. I only hoped he didn't kill me before I had the chance to try. I needed time, money, and courage.

He didn't say a word to me until his food was gone, and I had hardly touched mine.

Finally, he dabbed a napkin on his mouth and waved for the waiter. Without asking if I was finished, he said, ”We're done.”

The waiter nodded and scuttled over to remove our plates.

Jude drank his wine and watched me from under his thick lashes. He looked s.e.xy and distinguished, the kind of man women swooned over. In the past forty-five minutes I'd already caught a few gazing in our direction. Those women had no idea he was a pig, a coward who abused women to make himself powerful.

”Put a d.a.m.n smile on your face. It's our anniversary. Why do you look so f.u.c.kin' miserable all the time?” His words were a hiss through his teeth, but he smiled as he spoke.

I pasted a smile on my face, my right cheek aching from the movement.

”I love you so much,” he said, reaching for my hands. I flinched and he tightened his grip. ”When you turn your back on me, when you act as if you don't love me, you stab my heart.” His eyes bore a genuine broken look. ”We were happy once, remember?”

I nodded. He was telling the truth. He did love me, no doubt about that. But his love had become poisonous, twisted.

”The night I met you, the first time I gazed into your eyes, I was gone. I fell in love instantly. That's why I did everything in my power to hide you from what you did, to protect you. You're mine now. The sooner you accept that, the better. You belong to me and me alone. No one will ever love you as much as I do.”

”Then why?” I blinked away the moisture in my eyes. ”Why are you hurting me?”

He shoved my hands away and leaned forward. ”Because you can be such a b.i.t.c.h sometimes. But you're my b.i.t.c.h.”

I looked away from him. The sight of him disgusted me.

Breaking the pain-filled moment, his phone vibrated on the table next to the bottle of wine. He stood and walked out of the restaurant to take the call.

As I watched his back disappear through the sliding doors, a thought crossed my mind, and I turned my gaze to the floor-to-ceiling gla.s.s windows, observed the balcony beyond. What would he do if he came into the room and found me gone? Not gone in a way that he could hunt me down, but dead.

It would be so easy to step out onto the balcony under the pretense of wanting to enjoy the view of the lush garden below, so easy to step onto the ledge and jump before anyone had time to stop me. The chance of surviving a fall from the eighth floor of the building would be slim. And I'd be free of Jude forever. How would he react to losing one of his valued possessions? But I wasn't that stupid. Even with everything I was going through, I'd never kill myself, not before I exhausted all options first.