I wanted her again, sure. I should cut my own nuts off for the thought. But I can’t hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt. She deserves better than anything I could ever offer her.
Absentmindedly, I run my hand over my hair and cringe in pain.
“There’s a bit of dried blood there. Here,” she says standing up and bending over me. “Let me take a look.”
She leans a knee on the couch between my legs and I’m hit with such lust for her, I flinch and shift away from her hands. “What? Are you a nurse now?”
Her eyes widen. “No, but—”
I climb off the couch and back away from her. “Maybe we should keep our distance from each other. You and your long, smooth silky legs go stay over there.”
“Okay then,” she says, taking her drink and whirling away. “You and that monster cock of yours can just stay over there.”
I can’t help but smile.
It might just kill me trying to stay away from Claire Radcliffe.
Chapter 15
Claire
I feel a wave of relief when I slip back into my own dry clothes, but my stomach is a tangle of bubbling nerves. I still need to find those accounts. I don’t have a choice.
The bedroom door is closed and this might be the only chance I have to search through everything in this room again, alone. Vaughn listened to me vent before, and that’s all well and fine, but I’m not sure he understands what’s really at stake for me. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have nothing—no money, no family, no one to count on. And I’m not one hundred percent positive he believes anything I’ve told him.
My fingers tremble as I flit through the dresser drawers that Silas and my mother shared. Clothes. Books. Jewelry. Bits and pieces of their life together.
“What are you doing?” Vaughn’s voice asks from behind me.
Startled, I reel away, dropping everything in my hands. I didn’t even hear him open the door. My palms start to tingle and sweat. I wipe them down the sides of my jeans and stare at him. I’m positive there must be a bright neon guilty sign flashing on my cheeks. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I’m just trying to save myself and I can’t see any other way out of this situation. Even if I call the administration, even if I explain, if those pictures get sent, no one will be able to unsee them.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” he repeats slower. Louder.
I throw my hands in the air, “Those messages are serious, Vaughn. Do you think this is all some sort of a joke? Whoever it is wants to destroy my life. And they can. I’m scared. Please help me find the accounts.” I open and close my mouth trying to say more, but words slip and slide along my tongue. “Please,” I beg.
“No,” he growls. “No blackmailing asshole is getting my father’s accounts. I don’t care if your pussy gets plastered all over Times Square. It isn’t happening.”
My pulse pounds loud in my ears, making them pop. “You son-of-a—”
“Go right to the police, Claire. I’ll even go with you if you want, but you’re not handing over money that’s not yours to someone just because they demand it.” His face turns a funny shade of red.
He needs to understand. He needs to know how frantic, how terrified I am. “If those pictures get out—”
“Why did you even take them in the first place?” he roars, taking a step closer to me.
My stomach drops. I can’t believe his audacity. Has he completely lost his damn mind? “Why do you think?” I can’t keep the sharp bite out of my voice.
Vaughn glares at me.
I glare right back.
“Maybe you like getting your picture taken,” he says icily, folding his arms across his chest. “By the quick peek I had of them, it sure looked like you were enjoying yourself. And it sure as hell looked like you did it a lot.” He laughs bitterly, manically. “You must really get around.”
As soon as the words leave his lips, I truly hate him. I take one deep breath, then another. It doesn’t help stop the vice grip that squeezes at my chest. “Those…” My voice cracks, and I stop, taking a deeper gulp of air. I clear my throat and hold back the slap my palms are itching to land on his stupid, arrogant face. “Those pictures look like I get around? I look like I’m enjoying myself? That’s what you just said?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Did I stutter?” he rasps. “Who are all those guys anyway?
“Guysssss?” I yelp, stretching the s. “You think there was more than one guy?”
“Why are you acting all surprised by my questions? From the way it looked to me, you were having orgies daily, with multiple partners.” His expression turns sullen, his lips pressing into a flat line across his face.
Oh my God, he’s jealous.
He thinks it’s really me, that I really did all that.
I step forward, closer to him, toe to toe—because I want him to hear me loud and clear right now. “Number one—” I bark, holding my index finger uncomfortably close to his face. “Stop slut shaming me when I’ve heard you’re a whore yourself, and number two—" I hold a second finger up. “I’m not in any of those pictures, you stupid, stupid asshole.”
His entire body freezes.
“What do you mean you’re not in any of those pictures?”
“This is exactly why I need to find those accounts,” I whine. “Everyone who sees those pictures will just assume since I’m that Radcliffe whore’s daughter, it must be me.” I shake my head and move away. I’m so angry I can’t even think straight. I stuff everything that fell back into the drawers and slam them closed. The dresser rocks back and forth and the frames and bullshit that decorate the top of it crash down. I spin on my heel and jab him in the chest with my finger. “For the last ten years I have lived in the shadow of their affair. No matter how good and kind of a person I was, everyone just pegged me as a slut—because obviously that’s some sort of a biological gene, passed down for generations from one whore to another. I got a reputation without ever having any of the fun. You know, the first summer I came back, I couldn’t get a job for a long time, those country club people of yours remembered my mother’s sins and cast them right on to me. Whores can’t wait tables. Did you know that? They can’t stock shelves in grocery stores either, we’ll get our tramp germs all over everything, it’ll spread like the plague. But your father?” I laugh bitterly. “Your father was instantly forgiven, wasn’t he? He didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Even though it was his dick that started the whole ordeal.”
Vaughn stays silent. He must remember all the internships I had been promised, he has to remember how bright everyone in this town thought my future would be.
“I’m am so sick of no one noticing me trying to crawl my way out from under the darkness they buried me in,” I grind out.
Every muscle in Vaughn’s body is taut, his teeth clench tight. “It’s not you? In those pictures? It’s really not you?”
“No, Montgomery, you fucking moron. It isn’t,” I say in a huff.
Without warning, Vaughn lunges forward, arms up, reaching behind me. His hands slam over the surface of the bureau so hard the mirrored wall attached to it cracks and splinters. Everything on the cabinet gets swiped away violently, until his hands get a hold of the bag of rice I placed there when I first came in to change.