Chapter 175
Chapter 175:
Eliza looked at him — really looked at him. This wasn’t jealousy. This was terror. The terror of a boy who had been discarded, who had learned to believe that everything he allowed himself to love would eventually be taken from him or tainted beyond recognition.
“He is gone,” she said, her voice unsteady but certain. She reached up and cupped his wet face in her hands, feeling the water run slick over his skin. “You are here. Only you p>
Dallas made a sound low in his throat — half groan, half something that might have been a sob.
He kissed her.
𝗗i𝘴сo𝘷𝖾𝗿 𝗇𝘦𝘸 s𝘵о𝘳𝘪𝖾s о𝗇 𝗴a𝗹ո𝗈vе𝗅s.𝘤𝗈𝘮
The water roared around them, deafening and isolating, sealing them off from the rest of the world. This was nothing like the kiss in the hallway. This was a claim. Desperate, consuming, tasting of rain and relief and everything that had gone unsaid for far too long. He kissed her as if she were the only solid thing left in his world.
He lifted her again, effortlessly, pressing her back against the warm, wet tiles.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he commanded against her lips. “Now p>
She did.
Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows — aggressively, cheerfully bright, entirely at odds with the state of her body. They were at the penthouse. After the lobby, after everything, he had driven them straight here, as if her smaller apartment were somehow too contaminated by the day’s events. He had needed a fortress, and this was it.
Eliza woke alone in the king-sized bed. The sheets were tangled into a chaotic nest of high-thread-count Egyptian cotton that smelled of sex and Dallas. Her body ached — a dull, throbbing soreness radiating from her hips, her thighs, her neck.
She sat up slowly, the sheet pooling at her waist. She looked at the large mirror on the opposite wall.
She gasped.
There were marks. Vivid, purple-red marks. A cluster of hickeys bloomed along the curve of her neck and down to her collarbone. Darker, finger-shaped bruises were stamped onto her hips — impressions of where he had held her down, held her up, held her close.
She pressed her hand over her mouth, her face burning. Last night hadn’t been making love. It had been an exorcism. Borderline feral.
She turned to the pillow beside her. Empty, but a piece of heavy cardstock rested on it.
Meeting. Eat breakfast. Do not leave.
The handwriting was sharp, angular, and entirely characteristic.
“Bossy,” Eliza muttered to the empty room. But she was smiling. She traced the ink with one finger. It felt married. It felt real.
She found a silk robe on the floor — his — and wrapped it around herself. It swallowed her completely, the hem dragging along the floor, the sleeves hanging well past her hands. She rolled them up and walked out to the kitchen.
The smell of coffee reached her first. Then the sight of Azalea.
She was perched on a barstool at the island, looking impossibly fresh in a school uniform, eating a croissant.
“Morning, Mrs. Koch,” she chirped without looking up from her phone. “You look… ravished p>
Eliza pulled the robe tighter around her neck. “Azalea! How did you get in p>