Four Score

Fifteen

I blink, shaking my head, and hear movement upstairs.

Dornan.

I adjust my white sundress and make my way quietly up the stairs. As I hit the last stair, I hear the creak of a chair from the office. I knock gently on the door and it swings open.

Showtime. I’m woefully prepared for this, but I suck in a breath and give it my all. I haven’t come this far just to drop my game in the final stretch.

Dornan’s sitting behind his desk, his laptop open in front of him. He’s staring intently at it, but presses a button shifting his focus to me when I enter the room.

“Sammi,” he breathes.

“Are you okay?” I ask hesitantly, hovering on the other side of his desk. I’m stalling. After making love to Jase, I can’t bear the thought of Dornan’s touch on my skin.

He rises from his chair, his ability to walk around apparently undisturbed. I marvel at the fact.

“You can walk,” I say, surprised. “I can’t believe it. After what happened?”

Luckiest bastard alive. That blast should have killed him.

“Come here, you little cunt,” he says, his teeth gritted together in a grotesque sort of grimace. It’s made worse by the healing scars that litter every piece of his exposed flesh.

“Whoa,” I reply lightly, surprised. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Dornan smiles, baring his teeth, and my world crashes down around me as I hear the door slam behind me, locked with a key from the outside.

He turns his laptop around so that I can see the video he’s watching, and my heart sinks as my knees threaten to buckle underneath me.

As I realize what it is I’m seeing.

Surveillance footage of a girl. A girl in a garage, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, her movements quick and efficient as she places crudely fashioned bombs into the gas tanks of her enemy’s motorcycles. My heart rushes up into my mouth as I continue to watch the screen, completely engrossed. As the girl turns, the camera catches her face in the infrared light, and I see her trepidation.

Her excitement.

What a stupid girl.

I take a step back, hitting the door with my ass as he answers my question.

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

“No,” he says, coming around the desk at me, “but I kissed your mother with it plenty of times.” He smirks as he delivers the final word in his sentence.

“Juliette.”