BOUGHT: A Standalone Romance (108 page)

              “I didn’t mean to, Meagan.” He didn’t offer anything else, but this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

              “Don’t you dare push me out,” I warned him, pacing the floor in front of him. “Don’t you do that to me, Levi.” Maybe I’d been good at being by myself before New York City, but I was fully addicted to having that support system with Levi. He knew exactly what I wanted, exactly how to make me feel good. I even had my doubts that I’d ever want to have sex with anyone else ever again—which was a stunning revelation.

              Should I have put a ring on it, or what? When you found the person you wanted to have sex with for the rest of your life because it was that physically fulfilling, was that how people decided to marry each other? There were probably other catches.

              “I’m not trying to push you out.” Levi ran both of his hands through his blond hair, a compulsive, stress-filled gesture. “There are just a lot of things going on right now, Meagan. Things you don’t know about.”

              “Then let me in.” Once I realized the problem wasn’t me, wasn’t the sex I was always demanding, I relaxed a little. He wasn’t going to push me out. He liked the sex just as well as I did. There was something else there that was making him act like this.

              “It really isn’t your problem,” he said. “I don't want to worry you.”

              “What else am I worrying about?” I laughed, always looking for a deflection. I worried about things constantly—that Levi would get tired of the sex. That he would get tired of me. That he would decide to do a little digging and discover all of my deepest, darkest secrets. That he would make me be alone again.

              I couldn’t be alone again. I decided I wasn’t built for it anymore.

              “You should be worrying about what you’re going to do with your life,” Levi said, but it was an old, worn-out argument. It was just something to say—his own attempt at deflection.

              “I’ll figure it out,” I said helplessly, knowing I’d said it before. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Wasn’t it enough that I’d made it out of my hometown? Wasn’t it enough that I was here in New York, with Levi? “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

              Levi heaved a heavy sigh that sounded like it originated all the way down in his bones.

              “It’s just something that comes with the territory, I suppose,” he said. “A price to pay for having the money that I do.”

              I sat on the bed with him, pressing against him and offering a sense of physical comfort. If he wanted to forget about whatever he was worried about and sink into me, I’d welcome it.

              What I didn’t expect was Levi stiffening up.

              “Just talk to me,” I said, scooting away to look at him. “Something is obviously wrong—so wrong that it’s affecting me. So involve me. Tell me.”

              “Have you noticed anyone around the house who shouldn’t be here?” he asked, squinting at me. “A deliveryman, maybe. Maintenance staff? Anyone hanging around outside on a daily basis? Watching?”

              A small chill worked its way up my spine.

              “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

              “My security staff has let me know about a credible threat to my safety,” Levi said, “and the threat mentioned you. Did you tell anyone that you were coming to New York City with me, specifically?”

              Troubled, I shook my head. “There wasn’t anyone to tell,” I said. “I didn’t give notice at my work. My brother was my last friend I confided in, and I still hadn’t talked to him in a year.”

              “You don’t have any friends at the bar?” Levi asked. “No regulars you’ve been in contact with since moving here? Friends from school you’ve chatted with?”

              It was pathetic to admit, and I was afraid of what Levi would think of me, but I didn’t have friends. I’d been isolated over the last year, and I’d done it to myself. I hadn’t wanted personal connections to anyone—not the regulars at the bar, not the people who saw me every day in my movements between the different landmarks in town.

              “No,” I said finally, clearing my throat. “I didn’t have anyone. No friends.”

              That admission didn’t seem like it bothered Levi very much. I guessed he was much more focused on the threat than by my sad lack of friendships.

              “What about here, in New York City?” he asked. “Have you made any friends here? Anyone who knows your name outside of the staff here at the townhouse? Anyone you’ve recently connected with?”

              “I haven’t been anywhere without you,” I told him. “You’d know as well as I would if there was some weirdo creeping around. No one here knows me.”

              Levi lapsed into silence, all out of questions to ask me. I didn’t like that silence, so I tried to fill it.

              “You should go to the police, if you haven’t already,” I babbled. “You’re the one who said they were good, and you have connections within the department. I’m sure they would be able to pull strings to see what was up. Maybe they’d even deploy a squad car or two to run surveillance here at the townhouse and at your work, maybe. You could probably get someone to follow us around to help figure out who was making these threats. And it’s a big city, too, you know. It could just be some random crazy person. This world’s full of them. ”

              “The threat mentioned you by name, Meagan,” Levi said quietly. “And your brother. My contacts I’ve talked to in the police department seem to think the threat’s connected to your brother’s murder.”

              That shut me right up. We sat there staring at each other, neither of us able to follow that statement with anything. It was starting to all make sense—the throng of security in Levi’s office, the fact that the receptionist downstairs was hesitant to admit me at all, citing recent changes in policy. Something had happened. Something that scared Levi.

              “You mean someone meant to kill my brother,” I said.

              “I don’t know if they meant to kill Matt, specifically,” Levi said, gripping his hair. I wanted to take his hands and untangle them, but I couldn’t make myself move. “Another possibility is that it’s just someone obsessed with the murder. It was in the news. That kind of visibility and violence tends to bring the crazies out of the woodwork.”

              “That’s so messed up.” I drew my knees up to my chin and hugged them, wanting to feel smaller for some reason. “My brother wasn’t famous. He didn’t know anybody famous. He was just trying to do his job and protect you.”

              Protect Levi so Levi would pay him, so my brother could bring me to the city.

              My ever-present anxiety and guilt gave a surge, reminding me that I was responsible for my brother’s death. If I’d been stronger, I would’ve been able to remain in my hometown, maintaining the house until we could figure out, legally, what to do with it. I should’ve been patient, but I’d been desperate to get out of that house. I’d forced my brother to think he had to take on a dangerous job in order to give me what I wanted.

              I hated this anxiety, and my old solution to cope reared its head. My savior was right here with me, well within arm’s reach. I didn’t have to feel like this. I refused to feel like this. I could do something to make myself feel better.

              I let go of my knees and crept back across the bed until I was sitting in Levi’s laps, my legs unfolding until they were wrapped around him. I hugged him close, and he held me after a couple of beats, stroking my hair. He froze when I kissed his neck.

              “Really?” he asked, puzzled.

              “Really, what?” I answered.

              “We’re talking about a threat that I’ve received—a very specific threat—that might be related to your brother’s death, and you want sex?”

              I stiffened in his lap but didn’t make a move to leave it. It was warm and comfortable, and even as he fussed at me, I could feel his cock stir within his pants. I was very sure I could win him back over.

              “It’s a stress reliever,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t you like to blow off some steam?”

              “Do you even care that Matt died?”

              My anxiety screamed inside of me. I was a heartless bitch, a worthless leech, a wretched, twisted, broken person. I didn’t have real feelings. I was ruined forever—irredeemable. A whiney, crybaby, weak victim.

              A murderer.

              I was all of those things, because I kissed Levi on his mouth, anyway. I kissed him hard, bit his lip when he tried to pull away, grinned when he shoved me away a half second before covering my body with his own, ripping our clothes off, and shoving his cock in me—roughly. It hurt, and I wanted it to, as my body quickly adapted and responded, slicking me from the inside out, building up to that inevitable release.

              Levi didn’t make a single sound, just breathing angrily through his nose, not kissing me, not grunting, nothing. He held one of the posts on the bed with one hand and had the other planted right next to my face, balled in a fist.

              I could feel that he hated me in this moment—that this was the very definition of a hate fuck, jagged and angry, out of breath but over too fast to get sweaty.

              My eyes rolled helplessly into my head as I came, gritting my teeth, trying not to cry out, trying to match that quiet intensity that Levi had. He stilled his thrusts as my body clenched and just watched me as I came apart.

              There was the light, sure, the one I craved, but the darkness was there this time, too. I thought I’d banished the darkness by coming to New York City with Levi. I thought he’d chased it away, but there it was, that maw open inside of me, and I realized that it had always been there, just disguised.

              It would always be a part of me. I would never be anything different from that giant, needy nerve ending. And I would never be worth a damn to anyone, least of all to myself.

              I was losing it. I was losing my goddamn mind. If I lost it in New York City, the only place I’d ever wanted to be in the world, it would all be over. If this place couldn’t work its magic on my broken life, no place would. I’d be faced with the reality that I’d never get it together. I’d never heal.

              Levi withdrew, and I realized he hadn’t come, just like the first time we’d ever had sex. He’d gotten me off because, for whatever reason, I needed it, and now he knew. He knew, and I couldn’t cope.

              “I’m not a bad person,” I said, wiping a single tear away. It wasn’t fair that my body felt so good but my heart felt so shitty.

              “I know you’re not a bad person.” Levi sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands.

              “I am sorry that my brother was killed.” I was so sorry that I couldn’t properly work through my emotions about it. It was as if my brain short-circuited and my body had to take over—and my body dealt with it in the only way it understood how.

              “I’m sorry that I said that. I know you miss your brother. I know that people grieve in different ways.” His hands muffled his voice.

              We stayed silent for a long time, Levi unmoving, as I shook with sobs. I hurt badly, and as that afterglow faded, regret took its place. Why couldn’t I have been a normal person?              Why did all that bullshit have to happen to me? Why did my brother have to die? Why had Levi come to my hometown in the first place?

              If he’d never come, I still would’ve been there, coping in the best way I knew, keeping that maw at bay. I was a survivor, no matter how ugly that survival happened to be. I was still alive, anyway, but now I felt like dying.

              My traitor fingers reached for Levi, my mind shutting down in favor of my body handling things. My body knew how to close that maw a little, if only for a while. And Levi was sitting right there, naked. He could get me there. He could give me what I wanted to make this hell inside of me behave for a little bit.

              I smoothed my hand down over his arm and he flinched as if I’d burned him.

              “I meant what I said, when you first got here,” he said, taking his face out of his hands, looking at me. “I was afraid I was getting addicted to you. But I figured something out, too.”

              “What did you figure out?” My voice sounded dead to my own ears, just my lungs forcing air out of my mouth, my tongue shaping the syllables against my teeth, a soulless instrument parroting a real person.

              “You’re addicted to me. Well, maybe not to me, specifically. But to sex. You’re addicted to it.”

              “People aren’t addicted to sex,” I snapped, snatching my hand back and yanking a sheet over my naked body. Thank God for anger. If not for anger, I probably would’ve died a long time ago. “People are addicted to booze, to heroin. Not sex.”

              “People are addicted to sex,” he contradicted, not a trace of anger in his voice. “You’re addicted, Meagan. I can’t count the number of times we’ve had it just since you’ve been in the city. That’s a lie—I tried to keep count, in the beginning, just because I thought it was so phenomenal. And I lost count at a hundred. You haven’t been here much longer than a month, Meagan. It’s insane. How many people have you had sex with before me?”