It’s too much. It’s all just too fucking much.
I push out of bed, ignoring the protest from my sore and tired muscles as I pad across the suite as quietly as I can manage. For the first time since I gave it up cold turkey six years ago, I want a fucking cigarette. Just one, to steady my nerves and give me something to do as I try to figure out this clusterfuck. But since that’s not an option, I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge instead and try to ignore just how badly my hands are shaking as I twist off the cap.
What the fuck have I done?
I guzzle the water down in a couple of quick swallows before tossing the bottle in the nearby trash can and reaching for a second one. I drink that one down, too.
And more important, who the fuck am I becoming? Have I always been like this and just not realized it or is this something new? Something Veronica brings out in me?
I want an easy answer, am fucking desperate for one that will let me off the hook. That will make what happened here last night even a little more acceptable. But there is none. How can there be when I spent last night destroying a woman and enjoying every fucking second of it?
Across the room, Veronica stirs. She sits up on her elbows a little and squints at me from eyes ringed in exhausted black circles. She looks like she’s been beaten—or worse, used. She still looks beautiful, of course she does, but it’s a broken kind of beauty.
Haunted.
Fragile.
Shattered.
And still I want her. Still I want to bury myself so deeply inside of her that she’ll never get me out.
I try to think of something to say, some way to apologize, but in typical Veronica fashion, she’s barreling ahead before I can even get my tongue untied.
“What are you doing over there?” she rasps, and I wince at the sound of her voice. At how hoarse, how wrecked it is. It’s one more reminder of everything I did wrong last night.
Holding up the empty bottle in answer to her question, I ask, “Do you want anything?”
“You.” She smiles at me with her kiss-swollen lips, pats the spot next to her. “Come back to bed.”
I’m so messed up that this time I can’t tell if she’s being genuine or if this is just another act. Just one more example of Veronica Romero giving her audience what they want. Because I can’t, I know I should stay on this side of the room, no matter that my cock is twitching with interest.
But even knowing all of that, I’m moving as soon as she lifts a hand and beckons me over. Just another puppet dancing at the end of Veronica Romero’s strings. But it’s not like I could choose not to sit with her. Choose not to talk to her. The only thing worse than losing control like I did is making her think that it was somehow her fault. Which it wasn’t. Everything that happened in this room last night is on me.
Feeling like a total asshole—and worse, a psychopath—I grab a couple bottles of juice out of the fridge and carry them over to the bed.
I ignore the space she’s made for me next to her, choosing instead to sit as far away from her as I can as I try to formulate some kind of apology. Some kind of explanation for what I did. As I do, I hold the bottles of orange and cranberry juice out to her and wait patiently as she studies them—studies me—before reaching for the bottle of cranberry.
I twist off the lid before I hand it to her. She smirks a little, murmurs, “Thank you.”
But once the juice is in her possession, she only takes a sip before putting it on the nightstand next to the bed. When she turns back to me, she’s got a wicked look in her eyes.
“You okay?”
I reach out and trace one of the raw marks around her wrist. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Don’t worry about me.” It’s as close to a purr as her messed-up voice can get. “I’m always okay.”
It’s such a blatant lie that I almost call her on it—just because I’m fucked up over what happened last night doesn’t mean I don’t remember the state she was in when she got here. But before I can, she reaches for me, stretching across the bed to wrap one fine china hand around my upper thigh while the other rubs my lower back. “Besides, you’re the one who looks like you saw a ghost.”
I try not to wince at her choice of words and how unwittingly close to the truth they are. “Do you want to sleep some more? You must be exhausted.”
“Exhausted isn’t quite how I’d phrase it.” Her grin is wicked as she walks her fingers further up my thigh. “In fact, I should go soon. I’m throwing a party tonight.”
“A party?”
“For my mother’s birthday. Want to come?”