Page 142 of House of Cards

When did she figure it out? It shouldn’t matter…but it does, because I’m caught off guard. Something shifts inside me. Not guilt, not shame…but a strange sense of forced exposure.

Which is fucked up, because Iwantedher to know it was me.

I wanted her to feel every lash, because pain is how I communicate.

I lay my heart bare to her that day.

But instead of feeling relieved, proud, fuck-knows…there’s just a sudden emptiness where my psyche used to be.

All I can do is watch the hurt play out on her features, watch the betrayal and confusion and anger roiling in her eyes as she challenges me, even now. Throat tightly arched, powerless.

“You whipped me till I bled, but you expect me to want to stay?”

“I didn’t draw a drop of blood.” I turn and drag her inside my suite, sliding the door shut behind me. My ears hum in the sudden silence, and I only now realize how cold I am when the warm air wraps around me.

Zoey’s disdain is fucking blatant in the suite’s warm, diffused lighting. There’s a mark on her jaw—no doubt from her mad scramble over the railing.

I untangle my hand from her wet hair, skate it down the side of her body, and give her ass a hard squeeze. She winces, but I know it’s for show.

“Not a fucking drop,” I murmur, scanning her face, settling on her lips. “But, Christ, I wanted to.”

“Wow. Such restraint,” she says, her hand tightening around my wrist again, nails digging in deep. “But you’re still a sadist. Still a fucking liar. If you’d wanted to let me go, you’d have done it already.”

There’s no use trying to explain to her that I only reached my epiphany a few moments ago. No use trying to salvage a situation that’s already so thoroughly fucked.

So why do I keep trying?

“You’re right. I lied.”

There’s a spark of victory in her eyes, quickly gutted when I add, “I don’t enjoy giving up my pets.”

I release her throat, take a step back, tug my clothes straight, run a hand through my hair and carefully take off my glasses.

“I’d rather break them.”

Her throat moves with a swallow. I’m not sure what she sees on my face, in my eyes, but it makes her bottom lip tremble as she whispers,

“Fine. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You said you were gonna let me go? Then let me fucking go.”

I’m struggling to find a dry piece of clothing on my person to wipe my glasses with. Turning my back on her, I walk over to the nearest closet and open it, pulling a dress shirt off its hanger so I can use the sleeve.

“I will.”

“When?” There’s a frantic edge to her voice.

I glance at her over my shoulder, fully expecting her frown, the hard set of her mouth.

“Are you in a hurry?”

“To get away from a psycho like you? Yeah.” She tilts her head. “Huge hurry.”

My hand comes out of the closet holding a belt. I prefer suspenders, but there’s something so satisfying about the feel of thick leather. The clatter of the buckle. The way it whistles through the air. The crack of leather meeting flesh.

Zoey’s eyes dart to the belt and stick, going rounder and rounder. Even when I step closer, she stays rooted in place.

My heart hammers against my ribs, not just from the effort of pulling her over that railing to safety, but from the fear I felt when I saw her dangling from that shitty makeshift rope.

If she’d fallen…if I’d lost her…