“Julianne? Are you there? Call me.”
He ended the call and used the White Pages application on his iPhone to find Tom’s home number. It rang and rang and rang. Then the answering machine came on. He hung up without leaving a message.
Why isn’t she answering the phone? Where is she? And where’s Tom?
A dreadful suspicion took hold in his mind. Not wanting to waste a single second, Gabriel stormed out the front door without speaking to anyone. He started the Jeep and sped all the way over to Tom’s house, trying again and again to reach Julia or Tom on the way. And if a policeman stopped him for speeding, so much the better.
Simon’s victory was so close he could taste it. He knew that Julia wasn’t a strong person, and he was accustomed to using her weakness to his advantage. When she looked him in the eye and pleaded with him to believe that she didn’t have the photographs, he believed her. It was far more likely that Natalie was setting her up, trying to deflect attention from her own vindictive game. As he held Julia in his arms once again, he gave up his quest for the pictures. Now he was on an entirely different mission.
Undeterred by the ringing of the telephone in the kitchen, which alternated with a few bars of Message in a Bottle, as played by Julia’s iPhone, Simon continued kissing her, pulling her so that she was straddling him as he sat on her father’s couch.
She was still frigid. She was tolerating his advances, but barely, her arms and body limp. She’d never liked his tongue in her mouth. She’d never really liked anything of his in her mouth, and even now she squirmed in his arms. But her discomfort excited him, and when he slid his tongue over and around hers, he felt his arousal grow and strain against the zipper of his jeans.
He kissed her until she screwed up the courage to push against his chest with her fists, and he knew it was time to move on to other activities.
As he began to unbutton her shirt, she struggled.
“Please don’t do this,” she whimpered. “Please let me go.”
“You’re going to like it.” He chuckled as he leaned around to cup her ass, kneading and groping it while she tried to escape from his lap. “I’m going to make sure you enjoy it. Then I’ll let you go.”
He dragged his mouth across her jaw line and down to the left side of her neck, sucking on a patch of skin near the middle of her throat, above the pearls. “I don’t think you want a repeat of our last fight, do you Julia?”
She trembled.
“Julia?”
“No, Simon.”
“Good.” Since his eyes were closed, he missed the obvious love bite on the right side of her neck. It wouldn’t have mattered. He’d already planned on marking her. A nice bite mark so that her boyfriend back in Canada would see what his little girlfriend had been up to. A mark that would even the score between the two of them. He vacuumed her blood up to the surface of her skin and for good measure, sank his teeth into her.
She cried out in pain.
He licked the skin softly, enjoying her taste, salty and sweet and bloody and Julia. When he was finished, he moved back to admire his handiwork.
She’d have to wear a turtleneck to cover it up, and he knew that Julia didn’t like turtlenecks. The mark was monstrous, angry and red. It showcased his large ring of teeth. It was perfect.
Julia looked up at him through her impossibly long lashes, and he watched something shift in her eyes. He leaned forward in anticipation and licked his lips. Suddenly her palm connected with his cheek with a vicious slap. In a flash, Julia flew to the staircase to escape to the second floor.
“You f**king bitch!” Simon roared as he followed, easily catching up to her. Just before she reached the top stair, he caught her ankle with both hands and twisted. She collapsed on her knees, shrieking in pain.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,” he said, moving to grab her by the hair.
She howled as he yanked her head backward.
Flailing madly, she kicked at him furiously with her uninjured foot and miraculously made contact with his groin, releasing his grip from her hair and sending him careening down the stairs. She hobbled up to her bedroom and locked the door behind her while he doubled over in pain.
“Wait till I get my hands on you, you bitch!” he shouted, clasping his crotch with both hands.
Julia braced her bedroom door with a chair and tugged on a nearby dresser. Old framed photographs clattered against one another on top of the antique as she tried to move it, while a china doll crashed to the floor.
Ignoring the pain in her now injured ankle, she hobbled to the other side of the dresser, pushing it frantically with short, desperate attempts. Simon shouted expletives at her as he wrestled with the doorknob.
Finally, she managed to place the dresser in front of the door. She only hoped she could buy herself enough time to make a phone call before Simon came bursting into her room. She limped over to the telephone that sat on her nightstand, but in her haste she knocked it to the floor.
“Shit!”
She picked up the phone and with trembling fingers, began dialing Gabriel’s cell phone. It immediately went to voice mail. As she waited for the beep, Simon’s body came hurtling against the door. Julia watched in horror as the old door sagged and began to come away from its hinges.
“Gabriel, please come to my dad’s house right away. Simon is here and he’s trying to break down the door to my room!”
Simon cursed and growled, pounding relentlessly against the door.
Once he smashed his way in he’d tip the dresser over to get to her.
This is it. I’m dead, she thought .
She couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she escaped without sustain-ing serious bodily harm or worse. Realizing that she couldn’t wait another second, she dropped the phone and opened the window, preparing to crawl out onto the roof and possibly to jump. Just as she was trying to swing herself over the windowsill, she saw Gabriel’s Jeep screech into the driveway.
He left the car running and tore across the lawn.
Gabriel shouted her name and Simon swore at him. Light, quick foot-falls reverberated from the staircase followed by the sounds of flesh hitting flesh and a torrent of curses. Something heavy fell to the floor. Someone tumbled down the stairs.
Julia crept over to her nearly destroyed door, straining to hear. The noises seemed to have moved outside. When she limped back to her window, she saw Simon lying on the front lawn. He was cursing and holding his nose.
She watched breathlessly as he lurched to his feet, blood pouring down his face. In the blink of an eye, blood from Simon’s nose mingled with blood from his mouth as Gabriel’s right hook split his lip, dislodging a few teeth.
“Asshole!” Simon spat out the teeth and lunged at Gabriel. Despite his obvious impairment, he was able to land a punch on Gabriel’s chest.
Gabriel reeled back, winded. Simon took another step forward, eager to capitalize on his opponent’s weakness. Gabriel recovered quickly, plow-ing into Simon’s stomach with his right and his left. Simon doubled over in pain and fell to his knees.
Gabriel straightened his shoulders slowly and cracked his neck to one side. He looked remarkably relaxed in his tweed jacket and Oxford shirt.
He looked as if he was on his way to a faculty meeting at the university and not presently kicking the ass of a senator’s son from Philadelphia.
“Get up,” Gabriel said in a voice that made Julia’s blood cool.
Simon moaned.
“I said get up!” Gabriel stood over him like an avenging angel, beautiful and terrible and absolutely without mercy.
When Simon didn’t move, Gabriel grabbed a fistful of his hair, jerking his head back.
“If you even think about going near her again, I’ll kill you. The only reason you’re still alive is because it would upset Julianne to see me go to prison. And I’m not about to leave her alone after what you did to her, you sick motherfucker. If a photograph or a video of someone who even looks like her ends up on the internet or in a newspaper, I’ll come after you. I’ve gone ten rounds with a few Southies in Boston and lived to brag about it.
So don’t think that I will hesitate to smash your skull in next time.”
Gabriel reared back and his left uppercut shattered Simon’s jaw. Simon slumped onto the ground and remained perfectly still. Pulling a handker-chief out of the pocket of his wool trousers, Gabriel nonchalantly wiped the blood from his hands. At that moment, Julia appeared at the front door and hobbled out to meet him.
“Julia!” He caught her in his arms as she nearly fell down the stairs.
“Are you okay?”
He swung her to the ground carefully, clasping her to his chest.
“Julia?” He pushed her hair back so that he could see her. Her lips were red and swollen, there were scratches on her neck, her eyes were wild and was that…a huge bite mark?
That animal f**king bit her!
“Are you all right? Did he…?” Gabriel dropped his eyes to her clothing, fearing what he might see. But no, her clothing wasn’t ripped, and she was still dressed, mercifully, even though her shirt was unbuttoned.
He closed his eyes and thanked God that he hadn’t arrived any later.
Who knows what he would have found.
“Come with me,” he said firmly, removing his jacket and placing it around her shoulders. He quickly buttoned up her shirt and carried her to the passenger’s seat of the Jeep, closing the door behind her.