Empire by Lili St Germain

Author:Lili St Germain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MARIANA

I was in the shower when I had my near-death experience. I mean, I almost had a goddamn heart attack. Washing shampoo from my hair, I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, letting the suds wash down my face until the water ran clear.

When I closed my eyes, I swear he wasn’t there. But when I opened them again, I jerked back in shock, my ass and palms hitting the cold wall tiles behind me as Dornan stood in my bathroom, watching me like a fucking creeper.

He seemed slightly amused by my Psycho victim rendition. All that was missing was the shower curtain to wrap around myself while Norman Bates went to town. My bathroom was all tile and glass, but besides that, I hoped Dornan wasn’t in here to murder me.

‘Sorry,’ he said, a faint smile playing on his lips.

Jesus, John hadn’t been wrong. Dornan looked like someone had run him over, thrown the car in reverse, and driven over him again, paying particular attention to his head.

I shut the water off, taking the towel Dornan offered me.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ I asked, feeling genuine worry for Dornan in the sea of bitterness that was getting higher and more treacherous to navigate with every passing day.

‘John happened to me.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Did you speak to him?’

Well, damn. It wasn’t worth lying. I’d only be found out, wouldn’t I? And lying about John was going to arouse a whole lot of suspicion. I wondered, briefly, if Dornan could see the cogs turning in my mind the way I sometimes saw them in his.

‘He came around asking for a first aid kit,’ I replied. ‘His head wouldn’t stop bleeding.’ I drew a line down the middle of my forehead with my index finger. Fucking fuck fuck, it was harder to lie when you hadn’t come up with the lie in the first place. Could he tell? Dornan was as sharp as they come, but as I studied his bloodshot eyes, it was pretty clear that there was enough of something bubbling away in his veins to dull his ability to read me.

Dornan watched as I wrapped the towel around my torso, tucking it in tightly. Normally this was the part where he’d rip the towel from me and fuck me up against the wall, but tonight he made no such move. I knew my suspicions had been right. He was getting it somewhere else. So was I, so I didn’t exactly judge him, but it was one more nail in our coffin.

My hair hung around my face, soaking wet and straight. I stepped out of the shower, taking the hand that Dornan offered me. It was an odd gesture, almost gentlemanly. And my Dornan was anything but a gentleman.

‘And?’

‘And . . . he said you guys got into an argument,’ I continued. Jesus, the circles under my eyes were getting darker. Too much stress. Not enough sleep. The bottle of vodka probably hadn’t helped, either.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.