Page 22 of Midnight Torment

I wandered about our garden, feeding Simon who happily ran along a branch beside me. Jordan paced around on his phone, arguing with someone. He hadn’t left the house in three days and had eyes on me at all times. I had wanted his attention before, but the concern in his gaze made me more than a little uneasy.

I stopped. There was a wooden box attached to the tree trunk higher up. When I walked around to leave nuts on his favourite window ledge, there was another attached to the top corner of the window. Jordan stood watching me, turning away when he saw me looking at the wooden box on the window. That got my attention, since he never backed down on anything.

“He’s up to something,” I told Simon, who sat on his fat bum and wiggled his nose. “Did he put those boxes up?”

I moved back into the house in search of the man who was suddenly engrossed in his conversation. My eyes narrowed on his broad back. He was deliberately ignoring me. Two could play at this game. I settled myself at the kitchen table and lifted my phone to check what was happening in the outside world. When I had counted to one hundred in my head, I screamed and waited for his reaction.

Jordan didn’t disappoint.

He appeared in the doorway with his gun in his hand and that steely look in his eye that said someone was about to die. The gun moved systematically in an arc as he scanned the room for any threats before that grey gaze landed on me, his eyebrow rising in question.

“I needed to talk to you, but you were too busy ignoring me,” I said.

Sensing there was no threat for him to eliminate, his gun disappeared into the back of his jeans. “Was that necessary?”

“Yes.” I set my phone down. “I’m bored. We’ve been here for three days while you treat me as if I am a client that you need to protect. You’re awake before me, come to bed after me, and avoid touching me.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at me. I knew that look because he used it on me all those years ago in the Twilight Rooms. There was a lot about Jordan that had been hard to accept—the man with a gun and a dark past, but I had ignored all that because I wanted to be with the man that only I got to see. Some of it had been a pill that was hard to swallow, but I did until this moment.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, pushing myself up and stalking from the room. He made all the decisions last time and I had no say. That would never happen again.

Jordan appeared at our room doorway to watch me a few minutes later. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

I paused with my pink bunny onesie in my hand and my case open on the bed. “Packing. Why, what does it look like?”

His jaw tightened and those shutters flashed down over his eyes. “Stop being a diva.”

I threw the onesie into my case and turned to face him with my hands on my hips. “No, Jordan, I won’t stop. You’re closing yourself off to me so that you can walk away again.” I took a deep breath and met his eyes. “I’m saving you the trouble of finding an excuse and packing my own bag this time. It’ll save you leaving my stuff in a box at the front door.”

He flinched at my words as if I’d slapped him. “Megan—”

I cut him off with a slice of my hand through the air. “Enough.” His eyes widened. “You said we were together, but the first sign of trouble you’re going to walk away tokeep me safe.”I used my fingers to put air quotes around the last three words. “I saw the dead mouse with the string around its neck even though you all seem to think I didn’t. I was there when that woman pulled the hand grenade out. It was me that man attacked in the hospital. I get it, there is a risk right now, but I refuse to face it while you pull away from me.”

I lifted another item and rolled it into a ball before firing it into the suitcase. The first treacherous tear escaped and I dashed it away before I lifted a handful of panties from a drawer and threw them into the case.

“Have you finished?” Jordan demanded.

“Nope. I have that wardrobe to empty,” I answered like a smartass.

His hand grabbed my wrist before dragging the bra from my fingers and flinging it onto the bed. His other hand dug into my waist and his breath fanned my neck. “Have you finished your temper tantrum, little butterfly?”

He only used that name when I was in serious trouble because he was reverting into his role as a Dom.

“No.”

I wanted to be a strong, independent woman who controlled her own life. In our time apart, I took control of my miserable excuse for a life and found an inner strength to carry on every single day even though I was emotionally bleeding inside.

His hair tickled the side of my neck when his head lowered so he could rest his chin on my shoulder. “You need to stop fighting me.”

“I’m not fighting you, Jordan. I’m protecting myself before you rip my beating heart out and crush it under your heel.”

His fingers at my waist tightened until I was sure I would have five bruises there tomorrow. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“You’re pushing me away.”

Jordan twirled me around so fast that my head spun. His hand holding my wrist pinned it to the wall and his other hand came up to my neck. Anger glittered to make his eyes more silver than grey. “You need to stop this right now,” he said in a low, lethal tone. “I’m walking on a knife edge right now and don’t need this.”

Normally the angel who lived on my right shoulder made me more docile and obedient. Today she was bound and gagged by the devil on my left shoulder. That diva stood twirling her long, pointed tail as she pouted in indignation.

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