At six-thirty sharp, Gabriel excused himself from the dining room table and walked into the living room, readying himself to receive Julia’s call. The call never came.
He checked his voice mail. No messages from Julia. No new texts from Julia. No e-mails, either. At ten minutes to seven, he dialed her cell phone. After a few rings his call went to voice mail.
“Julianne? Are you there? Call me.”
He ended the call and used the White Pages application on his iPhone to find Tom’s home number. It rang and rang and rang. Then the answering machine came on. He hung up without leaving a message.
Why isn’t she answering the phone? Where is she? And where’s Tom?
A dreadful suspicion took hold in his mind. Not wanting to waste a single second, Gabriel stormed out the front door without speaking to anyone. He started the Jeep and sped all the way over to Tom’s house, trying again and again to reach Julia or Tom on the way. And if a policeman stopped him for speeding, so much the better.
***
Simon’s victory was so close he could taste it. He knew that Julia wasn’t a strong person, and he was accustomed to using her weakness to his advantage. When she looked him in the eye and pleaded with him to believe that she didn’t have the photographs, he believed her. It was far more likely that Natalie was setting her up, trying to deflect attention from her own vindictive game. As he held Julia in his arms once again, he gave up his quest for the pictures. Now he was on an entirely different mission.
Undeterred by the ringing of the telephone in the kitchen, which alternated with a few bars of Message in a Bottle, as played by Julia’s iPhone, Simon continued kissing her, pulling her so that she was straddling him as he sat on her father’s couch.
She was still frigid. She was tolerating his advances, but barely, her arms and body limp. She’d never liked his tongue in her mouth. She’d never really liked anything of his in her mouth, and even now she squirmed in his arms. But her discomfort excited him, and when he slid his tongue over and around hers, he felt his arousal grow and strain against the zipper of his jeans.
He kissed her until she screwed up the courage to push against his chest with her fists, and he knew it was time to move on to other activities. As he began to unbutton her shirt, she struggled.
“Please don’t do this,” she whimpered. “Please let me go.”
“You’re going to like it.” He chuckled as he leaned around to cup her ass, kneading and groping it while she tried to escape from his lap. “I’m going to make sure you enjoy it. Then I’ll let you go.”
He dragged his mouth across her jaw line and down to the left side of her neck, sucking on a patch of skin near the middle of her throat, above the pearls. “I don’t think you want a repeat of our last fight, do you Julia?”
She trembled.
“Julia?”
“No, Simon.”
“Good.” Since his eyes were closed, he missed the obvious love bite on the right side of her neck. It wouldn’t have mattered. He’d already planned on marking her. A nice bite mark so that her boyfriend back in Canada would see what his little girlfriend had been up to. A mark that would even the score between the two of them. He vacuumed her blood up to the surface of her skin and for good measure, sank his teeth into her.
She cried out in pain.
He licked the skin softly, enjoying her taste, salty and sweet and bloody and Julia. When he was finished, he moved back to admire his handiwork. She’d have to wear a turtleneck to cover it up, and he knew that Julia didn’t like turtlenecks. The mark was monstrous, angry and red. It showcased his large ring of teeth. It was perfect.
Julia looked up at him through her impossibly long lashes, and he watched something shift in her eyes. He leaned forward in anticipation and licked his lips. Suddenly her palm connected with his cheek with a vicious slap. In a flash, Julia flew to the staircase to escape to the second floor.
“You fucking bitch!” Simon roared as he followed, easily catching up to her. Just before she reached the top stair, he caught her ankle with both hands and twisted. She collapsed on her knees, shrieking in pain.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,” he said, moving to grab her by the hair.
She howled as he yanked her head backward.
Flailing madly, she kicked at him furiously with her uninjured foot and miraculously made contact with his groin, releasing his grip from her hair and sending him careening down the stairs. She hobbled up to her bedroom and locked the door behind her while he doubled over in pain.
“Wait till I get my hands on you, you bitch!” he shouted, clasping his crotch with both hands.