I didn’t know a damn thing about this man standing before me.
And he knew damn near everything about me.
That was a humbling sensation, one that chafed, one that overwhelmed me completely, made me oblivious to the way the water continued to soak through me, made my thoughts too slow to realize I should have been using the time to try to work the rope off my hands now that they weren’t tied to another object.
But all I did was watch as he went so far as to turn his back on me to bend down and shut off the water to the sink, soaking through his white tee in the process.
It wasn’t until he turned again, face full of disgust – a feeling he was not entitled to because that was mine goddamnit, that I could feel my thoughts coming back, that I started working at my hands, finding the rope slipped without burning thanks to the frigid water.
“You could have walked away from this,” I told him, angling my chin up, feeling my teeth ache from how tight my jaw was clenched. “If you just gave the money back. They’d have let you go. Move on to con some other poor woman who was too blind to see you for what you truly are. But now? Now, that won’t be an option.”
“They?” he asked, sneering. “I believe you mean he. That poor sap who has been mooning over you for years, and has no idea how fucking dull you are. Think his interest would fade in a flash if he had to sit around and watch you speed clean your already clean apartment every single night of the week.”
It shouldn’t have hurt.
After everything else, there shouldn’t have been anything left that he could use against me to wound me.
But that was the terrible beauty of this, wasn’t it? He knew me well enough to know exactly what to say to pry my rib cage open and beat my already bruised heart.
The pain was a sharp and throbbing thing, stealing my usually quick wit, preventing me from finding anything to say to hurt him back.
“What’d you do? Bat your wet eyelashes at him, and he swore he would move Heaven and Earth to get your money back?” He asked, again making it impossible to say anything. But this time, because there was nothing to say. That was – whether I had purposely batted or not – exactly what had happened. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it was cruel to lead a man around by his dick?”
To that, I felt myself snort even as the cold started piercing in through my layers of skin, sinking into bone-level, making me wonder if I could ever feel warm again, cursing myself for the shivers that racked my system. “Who are you to lecture me on being cruel?” I asked, eyes shooting daggers at him. I refused to say the words, but he knew them regardless. After you slept with me, kept a record of all my intimate secrets?
“I’d say ‘Nothing personal,’ but that’d be bullshit. It was personal. And, personally speaking, you are a dead fucking fish in bed.”
It should have been rage I felt.
He, after all, had no right to even mention the sex that had been nothing but a job to him.
But rage wasn’t what I felt.
It was hurt.
And, incredibly, guilt.
Because there had been niggling thoughts in my head right along those lines. Because I hadn’t been able to orgasm. Because I knew he knew fireworks hadn’t gone off for me. And I had felt this overwhelming sensation of brokenness, of ineptness, like I wasn’t woman enough, like I wasn’t good enough if my body wouldn’t work like it was supposed to, how I wanted it to.
I forced back the hurt, and shot back at him with pure bitterness instead.
“Maybe if you hadn’t insisted on fucking me from behind like a dog all the time, I could have mustered up some enthusiasm for you. And, while we’re on the topic, my clit is about half an inch higher than where you thought it was.”
If he wanted to go low, I could go lower.
And I knew I had landed a good blow when his eyes slitted low, his back tensed. “Never heard any complaints.”
“Because I was too busy praying for it to be over.”
The next moment would prove to me what a great actor he had been all the time I had known him. Because I had never seen even a hint of violence in him before.
But as we sat in the flooded bathroom, his hand shot out, closing around my throat, fingers sinking in at the sides, cutting off my protests, my air, then dragging me onto my feet by my neck, pulling me off my soles entirely, dangling like a rag doll, like a convict in the gallows.