Sordid (18 page)

I snuck glances through the mirror at him while I put on mascara. He was reading something, scrolling through the phone, and a serious look etched his face. He was a dark shadow of the man I thought I’d loved in secret.

Talk about ridiculous. I hadn’t spoken to him once the whole semester. I’d studied him relentlessly, and inferred what I could, but love? I was so hopelessly naïve. I didn’t know the real him. I’d only had surface data, like how he took his coffee and that he preferred a messenger bag over a standard backpack.

The memory stormed in and the words came before I could stop them. “I almost bought you a cup of coffee once.”

His attention lifted from the screen. “What?”

“You usually had a Starbucks cup in class. I thought about buying one and bringing it to class for you.” I despised not only how shaky my voice was, but that I was telling him the story at all.

He blinked, visibly intrigued. “How did you know what kind I drink?”

“It was always marked on the side of your cups.” I finished capping my mascara and dropped it into my makeup bag. “I was determined to be outgoing and talk to you. So one day I ordered your tall, dark roast, got to class early, and . . . I couldn’t go through with it.”

He pushed off the counter and stood. His expression was focused. “I would have liked that. Sounds like you wasted an opportunity and a cup of coffee.”

“No, I drank it.”

His lips pulled up into the half smile. “Fuck,” he said, brushing his hand over my arm. “I would have eaten you for breakfast. And you would have enjoyed every goddamn minute of—”

There was a short knock at the bedroom door, followed by a male voice. “Sir, your father’s waiting in the dining room.”

The half smile faded. A black storm of disgust crawled over his expression and Luka turned cold. “Are you ready?”

Was I? His angry expression left me feeling unprepared.

Luka’s hand was tight on my wrist as he led me down the stairs, and my pulse roared beneath his fingertips. It wasn’t until I smelled the food that I realized I was famished. I’d only eaten the bagel this morning. Yet that was standard fare for me these days. I didn’t put on the freshman fifteen, mostly because I skipped meals. Studying for the MCAT last year on top of everything else had me down to eating once a day.

We turned the corner and I fought not to dig in my heels and skid to a stop. Luka had presence and gravity, but Mr. Markovic was a black hole.

He was seated at the head of the long dining table and looked to be in his early fifties. His patterned dress shirt appeared tailored and expensive. His face was rugged, his eyebrows thick and dark, and his hair had a few streaks of silver near the temples. If this was an indication of what Luka would look like in twenty years, he’d be handsome and distinguished when he was older.

But there was a dark, frenetic energy radiating from the elder Markovic man, and I could sense it clear across the dining room. A quiet rage boiled just below the surface of his skin.

My mouth went totally dry and my throat closed up as Mr. Markovic’s discerning gaze discovered me alongside his son. Luka had warned me not to speak, and it was not going to be a problem. I’d held out the tiniest shred of hope that Mr. Markovic could help me, but no. I suddenly had no desire to say a word. His eyes were as black as Luka’s, but far scarier.

“Who’s this?” His voice was loud and accusing. I wanted to shirk behind Luka’s broad shoulders, but Luka’s insistent hand pulled me forward toward the table.

“This is Addison Drake. We met at Vasilije’s frat party last night.”

Mr. Markovic’s face twisted into a scowl, and he peered at me like I was dirt. “You brought the situation home with you?”

“I didn’t have any other options.” Luka squared his shoulders to me. “Addison, this is my father, Dimitrije Markovic.”

Was I supposed to espouse some sort of pleasantry after he’d just referred to me as a
situation
? My mouth wouldn’t cooperate, so I stared at Luka’s father and nodded my acknowledgement.

Luka put his hand on the back of one of the dining chairs and his tone was flat. “I see you brought the whore.”

Dimitrije Markovic was so dominating, I hadn’t even noticed the blonde woman sitting to his left until then, and my mouth fell open at Luka’s insult. It was impossible to guess her age. Her casual dress was tight and low-cut. She had flawless makeup, perfectly colored blonde hair, and a wide, bright smile. The ageless woman could have been thirty or fifty, and I suspected she was closer to the latter, maybe with an excellent plastic surgeon at her disposal.

Her laugh was shrill and she grinned, waving away the comment like it was hilarious, her wedding ring glinting in the chandelier light. “Oh, Luka.”

Only there was nothing in Luka’s demeanor that said his statement had been a joke. He looked like he’d meant it exactly as it sounded. He pulled out the chair and pointed to it, wordlessly demanding I sit. I collapsed into the seat, and as he sat, I was thankful Luka was a buffer between me and his father. It put the blonde woman directly across from us, and my gaze naturally went to her.

“I’m Tori,” she said, when it was apparent neither of the Markovic men was going to introduce her. “You’re the first girl Luka’s brought to meet Dimitrije.” Her sharp blue eyes shifted Luka’s direction. “I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t into girls.” She’d said it with a light tone and a smile on her lips like she was teasing, but I could hear the burn beneath.

There was no love lost between these two.

Beneath the table, I balled my hands into fists. The tension in the room was stifling.

“You met at a party?” Tori asked me.

“We know each other,” Luka answered. “She was a student in the calculus class I was a TA for.”

I stared at the plate in front of me. The china was simple but elegant. White with a silver rim, and I wondered if a single plate cost more than my mother’s entire set of good china.

“Why is she here?” Dimitrije demanded.

There was an excellent question.

Luka drew in a long breath. It was the same as he’d done on the couch at the party, right before he’d forced himself on me. “I drank last night,” he said, “and so did she. We went upstairs and things got out of control.”

Oh my God.
I had to breathe through my nose to try to keep myself calm.

“How out of control?” Dimitrije’s voice sliced through the tension-filled silence.

“We fucked. She said I moved too fast.”

I gasped and glared at Luka, my eyes burning with furious rage and my face flushed hot.

There was a terrible crash as Dimitrije brought his fist down on the edge of the table, making the silverware rattle and both Tori and me jump. Then a slew of words burst from Mr. Markovic, but I couldn’t understand a word of it except for
Vasilije.
Was he speaking nonsense? No. My stunned mind was slow. It was a foreign language, and one I didn’t recognize.

Luka did. His posture snapped straight and his eyes narrowed, and then he was responding in the language with the same vitriol his father had used. From Tori’s blank expression, it seemed doubtful she understood any better than I.

“You don’t think I tried?” Luka said, abruptly switching back to English. “It didn’t work. All it did was make her sick. She remembered everything, and it didn’t matter. She was a virgin.”

I stood up so quickly the chair almost tipped backward. I had no plan, only that I needed to get the hell away from the table before I lost it completely. I couldn’t listen to Luka tell his father all the sordid details of last night.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Dimitrije bellowed. “Sit back down.”

The voice stopped me cold, but I couldn’t get my muscles to comply. I stood as a statue halfway to the front door, facing the illusion of freedom. I was in a sleeveless dress, it was November, and I was barefoot. Plus, it was dark outside and I hadn’t a clue where I was. The cards were stacked against me, and yet every cell in my body was still screaming to run.

“Luka,” Dimitrije said. “There’s a simple solution to this problem.”

A chair squealed as it moved back. “No,” Luka said quickly. “I’m handling it.” Footsteps approached, but I still flinched when Luka grasped my shoulders. “Come back to the table.” His voice dropped low so only I would hear. “
Please
.”

I would have been less surprised if he’d stabbed me. The single word was a request, and I got the feeling Luka didn’t make requests, not unless it was something extremely important. His strained tone was unsettling, and I allowed him to turn me to face the table, but I kept my focus on him.

“Please,” he whispered again, his face desperate.

It was the most emotion I’d seen from him, and it was heartbreaking. Did he realize he was more powerful than he’d ever been when he was like this? In spite of everything, I wanted to do whatever I could to take his worry away. The desire to please was absolute. I found myself back in my seat, staring at the plate once more.

His father’s voice was deep and booming. “How exactly are you handling it?”

“She’ll stay here.”

There was a pregnant pause. “Until when?”

“Until she changes how she feels about me.” Luka corrected himself quickly. “How she feels about the situation.”

It was achingly silent for a long moment.

Tori laughed softly. “Your plan is to make her fall in love with you?” Her grating laughter swelled until it was a cackle. “Jesus, Luka. You can’t be as smart as your father says you are, because that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Be quiet,” Dimitrije snapped, and the laughter ceased instantly. “Although she has a point.”

“It’ll be fine,” Luka said. “Addison understands who’s in control, and I’m confident I can do this.”

The blasé tone dug under my skin like a splinter, and grew more uncomfortable with each breath, until the words spilled out. “I’m not a puppet you can manipulate.”

Luka’s head snapped my direction and his whole body seemed stressed. “I told you to keep your mouth shut.”

His father’s eyebrow lifted in the same arch all the Markovic men had. “This is under control?”

“Yes.” Luka’s tone was strict and harsh. It commanded me to obey. “It won’t be difficult. Addison’s halfway in love with me already.”

Fire erupted from deep inside me like a volcano. “The fuck I am! You
raped
me.”

My words pulled the trigger in the already tense room, detonating like a bomb. Dimitrije sneered at my profanity and his face had a violent cast, while Luka launched to his feet.

“I warned you,” he said. He fisted my hair and yanked upward so hard he pulled strands from my scalp. I cried out in pain as I scrambled to stand, only for Luka to slam me down on my stomach, face turned to the side on the flat surface of the dining table. The place settings jumped from the impact.

I stared at Mr. Markovic in shock, my cheek pressed against the polished, smooth wood. Luka grabbed the back of my skirt, flung it to my waist, and the air was cold on my thighs. He exposed my naked lower body for everyone to see, and my heart screeched to a stop.

Chapter

Thirteen

The room became a vacuum,
lacking oxygen or sound.

Luka’s hand pressed firmly against my spine, pinning my hips to the edge of the table. I was saying something, but my level of panic had crossed into hysteria, and my brain would only operate on a lower level. Its focus was solely on getting up and decent again.

I slammed my palms on the wood and pushed up, but a sharp crack rang out, followed instantly by acute, stinging pain. The force knocked me into the table and my arms gave out. I flopped down in pure shock. Luka had slapped his hand so hard against my bare skin, I expected it to burst into flames. I locked my teeth and tried to breathe through the burn.

He’d spanked me right in front of his father.

Dimitrije watched the scene with surprise painting his expression. His gaze was on Luka, evaluating and curious.

“You want to behave like a child,” Luka said, his voice verging on a snarl, “I’ll treat you like one.”

His father’s mannerisms were no different than Luka’s. The subtle curl at the corner of Dimitrije’s mouth hinted he was pleased with his son’s actions.