Chapter 34

What’s done is done and I have learned to never linger on this kind of shit or else it just fucks your head up. Get over it and move on, look forward and keep going, it’s worked for me so far and I won’t fix what isn’t broken.

Alexi falls into companionable silence as we move and it’s odd that I don’t feel awkward about the lull in conversation. He does silence very well when he wants too, and I fall into step with his easy stride. Sort of glad of it really. I don’t feel like chit-chat.

It’s even weirder walking arm in arm with him so cosily and close. My naked skin on his smooth expensive tuxedo covered arm, walking out like any normal couple who have gone out on a date. I’m held tight to his body and trying to conceal my face and worst parts of my torn dress by using him as a shield. I feel surreal and lower my face as we pass suited staff wandering around in the main lower floor when we leave the corridor.

‘‘I was wrong … about the hair. You look better when it’s down.’’ He adds in afterthought and I blink at him with more than a stirring of suspicion.

‘‘Why are you being so nice? It’s making me nervous! You don’t do nice so what do you want?’’ I glance at him sideways and catch a tiny flicker of tightening muscle in his jaw. It’s either a thwarted smile or an irritated grimace.

Who can tell with him?

‘’I just got you roughed up because I wanted you to play a safe bet for me. I happen to feel responsible for the way it played out and like I said, I have no patience for men who use force on weaker opponents. This wasn’t part of the plan and I detest when I don’t predict an avoidable outcome.’’ Irony as I’m sure he pounds down weaker men all the time.

Who knew Carrero would be a soft touch for women under all that cold indifference. I still don’t know what to think about his little revelation; this doesn’t fit the image he exudes daily. It certainly doesn’t fit the way he behaves towards any of us; controlling bastard with zero tolerance to disobedience. He talks down to his little bedroom buddies anytime he brings one upstairs, and God knows what he does to them when he gets them in his bed; contradiction entirely.

‘’It’s not my first beating. I am practically immune to men slapping me around and exerting their dominance. I’ll heal, I always do.’’ I say it impulsively. That mouth of mine working faster than my brain, and he halts; turns to me with a hint of darkness in his eye.

‘‘That’s not admirable, or right in any way. You belong to me now. No one will ever touch you that way again.’’ That soft tone he used in the bathroom, and I am rendered mute as the palest grey eyes lock on mine in some weird silent communication I have no way of deciphering. Carrero is a complete enigma to me, and I am totally out of my depth every time we connect. ‘Complex’ should have a picture of him next to it in the dictionary.

He leans in and strokes my hair from my face, runs a thumb over my swollen bruise forming lips so softly it makes my body tingle. Caught in complete surprise and glued to that flawless face and not sure how to feel at all as my insides dissolve into water and trickle away. I am powerless at this moment and can’t catch a breath.

‘‘I don’t ever want to see you marked like this again.’’ My heart literally stops beating, and he seems to flinch at his own words, stepping back suddenly, almost as soon as they are out of his mouth and completely lets me go.

It’s like watching a curtain fall fast and that gentle glimpse of something shuts hard and fast as his face smooths over. He seems momentarily at a loss himself and I guess he didn’t mean to say it at all.

‘‘Let’s go back to the club; you should go to bed with pain relief. Put some ice on for swelling.’’ He seems reluctant to get too close again and I for one am a little glad. Whatever that was right there, it made me afraid. Uncomfortable with affections and in no way in hell do I want to explore anything that makes my body react like he does.

I swore at fifteen I would never let a man into my heart or my head the way my mother did, and I am not about to let someone like him be the first. I see what happens when women let their emotions overrule logic, and they become victims of their own heart. Well, mine died a long time ago and I’m sure that not even electric shock therapy could restart the beating of my cold dead organ. I’m an empty shell of soulless unfeeling and I have no desire to root around in the depths and darkness of my lost soul to find a little burning ember of giving a shit.

I’m incapable of feeling. Giving a toss about anyone but yourself is how you get yourself fucked up in a fate worse than death. It’s how you let people both hurt and disappoint you. I have no desire to ever try it.