Vanquish (18 page)

Her lips pressed together, and her body turned to shivering stone in his arms. After another battle of glares in the mirror, she looked at her hands where they were fisted on her knees. “Lots of people.”

“I want names.” Blood rushed outward from his core, heated and violent, hardening his muscles around her. “Start with the first fucker who fed you that bullshit.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I want. Give me the name here or outside.” He was one second from hauling her naked body through the woods. Thank Christ, his closest neighbor was two-hundred treed acres away. He trusted the waist-high trip wires he'd set up around the perimeter. One touch and the alarm in the cabin would blare. “Choose.”

“Brent.” Her voice was so soft he would've missed it if he weren't reading her lips.

“Who the fuck is Brent?”

She closed her eyes, opened them, and found his in the mirror. “My ex-husband.”

He held his expression blank as his stomach bucked and burned. Not once in his research had he stumbled on an ex-husband. His first instinct was to blame the cocksucker for her disorders then find him and kill him. But he needed the story so he could show her how very wrong it was.

“Eyes on your pussy while you tell me exactly what he said. All of it, from start to finish.”

She shifted her ass on the handheld mirror, which gave them both another angle of her beautiful cunt. When her gaze lowered to it, she clenched her teeth. “I've never talked about this.”

He dropped his mouth to her shoulder and murmured, “I swear, Amber, I'll burn off my dick if I ever use this to hurt you.” He meant it with a startling passion.

She kept her eyes on her pussy, but her gaze shifted inward as she leaned her back against his chest, her shoulders curling forward. “We were at an after-party for the semi-finalists in an international beauty pageant. I might've won the competition, but I let my stupid insecurities destroy my chances, my career, my marriage. My life.”

Memories of that night two years ago built behind Amber's eyes as she stared at the flabby flesh between her legs. She wanted to hide it, to hide
from
it, but she couldn't look away. Exposing her shame and
talking about it
was fitting, right here, right now. When her fractured life couldn't sink any lower. With a man she should be repelling rather than attracting.

“It was the eve of the final competition.” Her voice wavered. “All the icons of the pageant industry were there.” The Master of Ceremony, former pageant winners, handpicked members of the media, and a host of celebrity models and photographers. “It was a night to impress and network with the who's who among the business.”

Van's chest pressed against her back, centering her, his attentive silence an unexpected support. Despite being physically abusive, not once had he degraded her verbally. Wrong or right, it was enough to propel her. “Tawny was there.”

“Tawny?”

She tensed. Oh fuck, why had she mentioned her sister? Would he go after her next?

His palm caressed her belly, a vulnerable place to touch her.
He'd punched her there.
So why did the intimacy of his hand feel so good?

He kissed the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “If she means something to you, I won't hurt her. I'm only interested in what happened.”

“She means a great deal to me.”

“A best friend? Or a sister?” Understanding warmed his voice. He had no reason to fake that. He could've simply forced her to answer.

“My only sibling. She's a mid-level fashion model, dabbled in pageantry, but didn't have the same success. She was always at my side.” Clinging to Amber's circle of friends, looking for the big break in her own career.

He pushed her hair over one shoulder, and his lips brushed the back of her neck, raising hundreds of tiny bumps across her skin.

She cringed, but didn't lean away. “Brent was entertaining a crowded table with his usual charm when he asked me to grab him a beer. That was his thing. Work the crowd while I...I was an introvert.” Her stomach turned, and bile simmered through her chest. “When I returned, more people had gathered around him, and he was...fla— flapping his arms in the air. Men and women, dressed in tuxes and evening gowns, were doubled over, howling with laughter and wiping tears from their eyes.”

Van's chest hardened behind her as she contemplated the ugly dark folds of skin around her vulva. “I knew it had something to do with me, something awful.” It usually did. Her voice strained. “He was a crowd pleaser. Everybody loved him.” Which was why she fell so hard for him, so fast, at the naive age of eighteen. Her head bent forward, her entire body aching, as visible tremors coursed through her. “Always the center of attention. Even when it was at my expense.”

“Why?” His sharp tone cut through her. “What did he gain from that?”

Her spread legs shook beneath her hands, and her heart twisted painfully. She searched for the right answer, the one Dr. Michaels had helped her come to terms with. “We met in high school and married at eighteen, right about the time I entered the world of pageantry. Things were good. Better than good.” A flutter brushed against the ache in her heart and faded just as quick. “Time and the stress of my career changed him.”

By age thirty, Brent's physique had softened with extra weight. He never looked less handsome to her, but it bothered him, especially as her body continued to firm and tighten with her pursuit of fitness modeling. “He grew angry and unhappy, and I was the target for his bitterness, a way to redirect his insecurities from himself. That realization didn't come until later. At the time, I felt like a constant disappointment.”

Her legs squeezed closed, protectively, but Van caught her thigh and gave her a warning pinch on the tender skin inside her knee.

When his hand returned to her belly, she let her legs fall open and swallowed around the surging emotion. “He nitpicked and scrutinized
everything
, convinced me to...uh...well, to get this awful boob job, bleach my hair, and bake in a tanning bed. I wanted to please him, to absorb his sadness, so I guess I let him slowly transform me. But his insults grew crueler, more public.”

It was when Brent stopped looking her in the eye, when he stopped looking at her at all, that hurt the most. To think she'd kept the light
on
back then, hoping he would
see
her, so driven to please him. She was so goddamned tragic.

Van's thumb shifted upward, along her sternum, and traced circles in the hollow of her throat. “He's fucking weak.”

“Says the man who hits women.” She braced herself for a strangling squeeze of his fist.

The thumb stilled, and his teeth lowered to her nape, scratching gently, his breath shooting sparks of heat down her spine. “I'm far worse than your sissy bitch of an ex. Don't ever forget that.”

Her spine tingled anew, itching to put space between them. At the same time, it'd been years since she felt this at ease with her body. Not that she was relaxed. Far from it. Hell, she was sitting on a mirror with her legs open.
With the lights on
. Her muscles ached and trembled, and her hips burned. But the pain was a startling distraction. Her vision wasn't consumed by black snow. Her heart wasn't flat-lining. The absence of a looming breakdown made her head spin.

He kissed her neck and placed his palms on her inner thighs, widening her legs. “Continue.”

Cool air drifted over her labium, bringing with it the chill of memory. “Right.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I approached the table, and dozens of eyes flew in my direction, leering, crinkling with laughter. Lowering to my groin.” Which had suddenly felt obscenely pronounced in the tight satin of her gown.

Truth was, she'd grown insecure about the way her lips had stretched over the years, enough to stupidly mention it to Brent while he was fucking her the night before. A desperate attempt to seek his approval. His only response had been a series of grunts.

Tears rose up, then and now. She exhaled through it. “Brent was too busy flopping his bent arms like a chicken and squawking hysterically to notice my return. 'Flapping wings,' he said. God, it was...so loud. So fucking mean.” When he’d finally made eye contact with her, he leaned over to Tawny.
I feel bad for her. You should see how the skin hangs. It's grotesque.

Sharp pain seared through her sinuses, stabbing needles behind her eyes. “Then he played the role of concerned husband, asking if anyone could recommend a...a g-good labial plastic surgeon to help me with my...
problem
.” She whispered the last word as if that would make it less real.

It had been a defining moment. The accumulation of all his hurtful words, the years of insecurities that came with posing before judges, and her lifelong battle with OCD had mounted inside her, pressurizing, as she stood amidst the laughter, moments from losing her polished demeanor.

Van tilted his head. “You looked up images on the Internet, right? You would’ve seen how completely normal your cunt is.”

She wobbled on the counter, nodding. “Those pictures made me feel worse. Outside of the few deformities posted on medical sites, the Internet is full of porn and beauty and perfection. Normal thirty-year-old women don’t post those kinds of images.” She tried to close her legs, and his grip on her thighs stopped her.

“Then you recognize the difference between a deformity and an eighteen-year-old porn twat.” His hands found her fingers and moved them to her inner thighs, holding them there. “What did you say to Brent after the surgery comment?”

Van’s nonjudgmental interest bolstered her, and she sat taller, less shakier. “It was clear he had described my vagina to a room packed with my colleagues, people who could make or break my career. In that single lonely heartbeat, I woke up. I realized he didn't love me. How could he? You don't treat someone you love with such vicious cruelty.”

Van shifted against her, and a swallow sounded in his throat. “Love and hate are closely related expressions of the same intensity. Both require passion, and neither follows logic. If he didn't love you, he would've treated you with shrugging detachment.”

His response resonated with what she knew of his own volatile behavior. She didn't
know
him, but she imagined he could love someone as fiercely as he hurt them. It would take a strong, willing person to survive his brand of passion.

With his hands caressing her fingers and thighs and his face nuzzling her shoulder, his affection
momentarily eclipsed his earlier abuse. But he would hurt her again. She needed to pin that to the forefront of her mind and never confuse possessiveness and control with love. The way she had with Brent.

A glance at her pussy transported her back to the ballroom, and the remembered shock of what happened dragged her tongue over numb words. “The beer I held out dropped to the floor as I repeated out loud, 'Flapping wings.' It was the first time I'd heard that particular insult, and I wish I would've yelled it, owned it, with fucking venom. Brent didn't bother to turn around, simply glanced over his shoulder and told me to fetch him another beer.”

Van's fingers wove through hers, digging into her thighs, and his breaths grew sharper, faster. “Amber—”

“Let me finish.” She wanted to relive her anger, feel it thrash through her body and feed on its strength. “Tawny leaned back in her chair beside him and asked with drunken liveliness, 'Your lips are so stretched you can fly with them? Really, Amber? You gonna fly across the stage tomorrow and collect the crown with a sweeping vaginal thrust?'“

Van's eyes flashed to hers in the mirror. “I hope you smacked the mouth off that whore.”

She flinched. “She was drunk.” Tawny had a sick mother just like her and would always be her sister, the girl she raised and loved unconditionally. Even when Tawny stood by Brent during the divorce. And after. The heavy, achy weight of responsibility pressed down on her chest. “You promised not to hurt her.”

“I won't.” His gaze didn't waver from hers. “Unless you ask me to.”

“Never.” She unloaded the gravity of her heart in that single impassioned word.

His arms fell away, his body heat gone. She watched his reflection pace the large bathroom, hands in his hair, red splotches creeping from the neck of his t-shirt. Even when irritated, he moved with a swagger in his step. The lift of his arms raised the hem of his shirt, exposing the cut
V
of his abs and the bounce and flex of cotton-stretching muscle. His jeans rode so low on his trim hips a dark line of hair surfaced above his belt.

On the next pass, he slipped a toothpick in his mouth and stopped behind her, his expression turbulent. He gripped her thighs, holding her legs open, and gave her the full potency of his silver eyes and growly voice. “You should've yanked up your dress and showed those fuckers your beautiful pussy.”

Oh God, he was fuming. On
her
behalf. It should've scared her, but in that fleeting moment, she trusted he wouldn't turn his anger on her. “I did. I removed my panties and ripped my designer gown from ankles to waist, right up the middle.”

His eyes widened, and his mouth hung open, the toothpick protruding from the corner. She liked that. When his lips tilted in a lopsided grin, she loved it, so much so she wanted to smile with him. But she could still feel her fury from that night, her blood simmering at the surface, scorching her skin.