Page 10 of Wicked S.O.B.

I force myself not to stiffen. “Yeah?”

“Can I go take that shower now?”

I silently exhale and rise with her in my arms. I notice she avoids looking at the carnage as I walk her out of the living room and down the hallway to our bedroom. I don’t let her go until we’re inside the shower cubicle.

Her eyes meet mine as she gathers her long hair on top of her head. She opens her mouth, pauses, and then shakes her head.

“Spit it out, Elyse.”

“Tell me how it went with Dr. Freeman.”

It’s not a subject I particularly want to discuss. But the sex has settled me a little, so I give what I can. “He wants me to forgive him.”

“Your father?”

“The asshole whose sperm created me,” I amend. Maxwell Blackwood stopped being a father to me long before he and my stepmother orchestrated my mother’s suicide and sent me down a spiraling road to hell.

Elyse sighs and closes her eyes. For some reason, that pisses me off.

“What? You better not tell me you agree with that quack.”

“He’s not a quack or you’d have fired him a long time ago. But I’m guessing you told him no?”

I grab the shower gel and take my time in soaping her body. “I did more than that. I told him to go fuck himself.”

She shakes her head. “God, Quinn. What did he say to that?”

“He made a note of it and said he’ll see me next week.”

She laughs for the first time since walking in the door.

And I can’t help it. I fall even deeper under her spell.

Chapter Three

Elyse

New Wave

It’s 5:45 a.m.

From the living room window, I stare eastward and take in one of the many spectacular views from Quinn’s penthouse ninety-two floors up. I love watching New York City come to life in the mornings. Love watching the light on the Chrysler Building’s spire blend into the rising sun’s rays. Love the warmth of first morning light on my face. And having just come through my first, fierce NYC winter, I crave the sun with almost rabid zeal. It must be the native Californian in me.

New York City is fast becoming the center of my world, though. It’s where the love of my life, the reason for my existence, lives after all. I don’t doubt that Quinn’s presence in the city is what makes it extra special for me.

But it’s also become clear that while he lives in the most dynamic city in the world, this isn’t his home. It was the stage where he plotted his father’s downfall. It became the place we crashed together and almost fell apart. Since then, it’s become the place we exist.

He doesn’t have a home, not after the debasement he witnessed his father commit on his mother in the place he was born. I don’t have a home either. After my mother’s death, I went from Trailer Trash Central to a brothel run by my biological father, where he made me his prized whore until I escaped.

Between Quinn and me, we’ve lost sight of what a true home means. I’ve tried to convince myself nothing else matters as long as we’re together. What happened last night no longer sustains that belief.

I turn my back on the view and survey the carnage before me. Another room destroyed in a fit of demon-charged rage. The third such outburst since we started seeing Dr. Freeman five months ago. I have no concerns that the outbursts would ever transfer to me. Quinn would cut off his own arm before he hurts me. I know that as surely as I know the color of my blood. But things are escalating. I wish I could say they were coming to a head. That there was a cathartic end in sight. But how can I when I have no idea what is causing it?

The one thing I do know is that the situation needs to be dealt with. It’s eroding our trust, fracturing our fragile love.

My heart clenches in fear at the thought of losing what we have. In a world of unlikely possibilities, Quinn and I ending up together was one in a million.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking the path to our future was going to be easy. Yes, finding out that Q, the masked stranger I whored myself out to for a million dollars to save Petra from my father’s vile clutches, was the same as Quinn, the mesmerizing billionaire boss I served lunch to at Blackwood Towers, devastated me. Enough to make me take out a restraining order when it became clear he’d deliberately deceived me but wasn’t about to let me go that easily.

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