Claire: The Forced Virgin Of The Billionaire
Chapter 142

“No, that wasn’t it,” he made me look at him by grabbing my chin and staring right into my eyes, “I paid money so that the debt

was settled.

The debt being settled meant my Uncle wouldn’t meddle, wouldn’t think he had a right to do anything to your father again.

Because he’s your father I did that so that you wouldn’t have to deal with my uncle f*****g with your father’s life anymore. I know how Uncle’s brain works. If I hadn’t settled the debt, he’d still think he had a right to continue to settle the score. Stealing you wasn’t enough.

f*****g with Greg’s life wasn’t enough. It might never have ended. Never. And you’re not just a piece of property to me; you’re every fuckin’ thing to me.”

I couldn’t think straight, I wanted him to let go of me. I pushed at his chest again but he pulled me tighter against him. Instead of fighting, which I knew was useless, I just went limp. He held me close and rocked me for a long time and I was just limp. No tears, no expression, no thoughts. Just limp.

“Baby?” he finally said and touched his lips to my forehead, one hand threaded into my hair.

I closed my eyes tight, “I can’t.” I said.

“Claire” he hauled me back a few inches and held my face in both of his hands. I opened my eyes.

“I love you,” he said.

I nodded a little.

“Baby, I love you,” he repeated.

I opened my mouth but nothing would come out but a little sob that I pulled back. Azriel’s expression dropped and he let go of me and I dropped limply onto the pillows. He left the room, slamming the door. I’d promised him just this morning that I’d always say it back. I failed him.

Rosita was tapping my shoulder. I jackknifed up in bed, gasping.

“Sorry, Chiquita; you been sleeping 3 hours. Azriel has to go away on business. I need to pack a bag for him, he asked me to tell you. He’s in the office if you wanna go say bye. He says he’ll be gone a few days.”

I put my head back on the pillow and pulled the blanket up over my head. I didn’t fall back asleep; I just sort of laid there. I heard her leave a few moments later.

I didn’t know where Azriel was going and I didn’t care. Whatever. Him away instead of here meant I wouldn’t have to endure his mood swings, endure his wrath without the protection of his necklace.

Five Days Later…

For five days I stayed in the bedroom other than to make trips to the kitchen, the Ms. Pacman machine, and back. I read, watched TV, and played games on Facebook. I’d gotten my period for 4 days and now it was gone. I got a big zit on my chin that was now pretty well near gone, too. My knees were almost healed, my throat no longer had a bruise (not on the outside but I suspected I was scarred for life from it).

I was raging for sugar or something comforting other than ice cream, anything but ice cream, but Rosita had no other junk in the house other than sugary cereal, which was bizarre because she was a sugar hater but purchased several boxes of cereal with the word “Sugar” in a huge a*s font on the box so I threw myself headfirst into said sugary boxes of cereal, using them to drown out the emotions about my life, my parents, my future, my relationship. Rosita brought me food.

Sometimes I ate it, sometimes I didn’t. I woke up every night several times. I think I was looking for him but I wouldn’t allow myself to acknowledge it.

I ignored Rosita and the 4 guards at the house. Yeah, he’d left me here but doubled the security. Twice a day, at least, Rosita asked me if I’d checked my phone and I’d always say that it was charging. It was plugged in on the nightstand but turned off.

I didn’t want to turn it on because I didn’t want to know whether or not he’d messaged me. If he had, I didn’t want to read them.

If he hadn’t, I didn’t want to know either because that’d make me consider the fact that he hadn’t bothered to message me.

Stupid girl.

Yesterday Rosita had said that Tessa and Lisa showed up to visit me but I feigned a headache and made her get rid of them. I missed Luc’s baby shower. I knew Rosita went. She came up to tell me she was going but didn’t invite me.

I suspected Azriel didn’t want me leaving the house, anyway. And what good would it do for Azriel’s family and friends and everyone related to the Clarkes that I hadn’t met yet meeting Azriel’s fiancé, a member of the walking dead.

After five days, he came back. The door swung open and there he was. I was in bed with my laptop playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker online with fake money, a lot of fake money as apparently I was some sort of poker savant (ever since losing my shirt, literally, at strip poker to him).

My hand was inside a box of Sugar Crisp. It was 11:30 at night. I was in sweats, a messy bun in my hair. I’d had a shower that morning but I didn’t even brush my hair, just shoved it up.

The door had opened and he dropped his suitcase on the floor and threw his jacket on the chair in the corner by the window. He folded his arms and stared at me. I glanced in his direction and ignored him and looked back to my screen.

I unceremoniously shoved another handful of the sticky cereal into my mouth and pressed the button to fold from the game on the screen and licked my fingers.

The tension level in the room shot up to near nuclear as he spoke, no roared,

“Where the f**k is your engagement ring?”

My b***d ran cold.

Suddenly he was in my face, the cereal and the laptop swept off the bed onto the floor.

I looked at the nightstand where the ring sat and then up to him. His eyes landed on it and then he picked it up and shoved it on my sticky finger. I made a painful squeal and swallowed hard. My heart thumped painfully in my chest and in my ears. His face was distorted into a snarl.

“That never comes off your f*****g finger,” he glared at me, “It has a GPS in it. If anyone tries to take you again, it’s how I’ll f*****g replace you. I see that ring off your finger for any reason that tells me you’re planning to run. You planning to run?”

I shook my head No.

“No?” Heat and rage were all I could see in his eyes.

I shook my head again.

“Why was it off?” he demanded.

My head dropped to the pillow and I covered my head with the blanket. He ripped it right off me and tossed the blanket behind him so that it fell on the floor with the cereal and the laptop. I shrieked and pulled a pillow against myself and backed up against the headboard.

“What is your f*****g problem?” he shouted. He picked up my phone and turned it on and it made a whole bunch of bleeps. Obviously he’d been messaging me, lots, “Done feeling sorry for yourself yet?”

“You’re the one who left!” I yelled, my voice hoarse. It might’ve been days since I’d spoken.

“You’ve been f*****g catatonic. Obviously you didn’t care,” he retorted.

“I

don’t

f*****g care!” I said, “I’m tired of f*****g caring. Everything I care about means nothing. My father, my dead mother, you. Nothing.”

“Why am I nothing?”

“You’re not nothing. I’m nothing. I’m just…” I dropped back down to the pillow and put my hands over my face.

He sat on the bed and leaned forward and took my hands off my face and weaved his fingers through mine. His face was seriously pissed off-looking but his touch was gentle.

“I told you that you’re everything.”

“What do you want from me? You want to hit me? Go ahead and hit me. You want to f**k me? Go ahead—”

He let go of me and got up, “f**k,” he stared at me a beat and then said, “I’m taking a shower.”

I laid there for a second and then lifted the phone, which he’d tossed on the bed, and scrolled through the texts sent throughout the time he was gone.

“Come down to the office, baby.”

“Claire?”

“I’m flying to Italy with my brother for a few days. Tell no one. Just that I’m away on business. I’ll text when I land. Love you.”

“P.s Delete my texts after you read them.”

“I’m here. You okay?”

“I’m laying here wishing you were beside me, baby. I can’t seem to sleep without you beside me. I should’ve brought you. I know you’re upset. I’m sorry you’ve been through so much in the last month. I’m working on fixing things. I’m on that road to making things better. Promise I’ll replace a way. Love you.”

“I heard Etta James on the radio today in a restaurant and miss you so much. I didn’t know I was lonely without you until I had you. Now I don’t think I would want to live without you. Can’t wait to marry you and dance again with you to that song.”

Then there was a link to a YouTube video link. Then another text.

“I miss the smell of your hair & how you wrinkle your nose at me & the way I wake up every morning with you all wrapped around me. Love how you keep wearing pink since I bought that pink fishing rod for you. Miss you. Write back?”

That was 4 days ago. He’d given up on messaging me. I touched the link to the video and it opened a YouTube window and started to play the Etta James song and it was playing to images from the Disney Wall-e movie. I loved that movie.

As the song filled the air so much emotion surged through me I thought I was going to fall over.

When she sang about her heart wrapped up in clover the night she looked at him I thought about us in that field on his farm with me in the grass, him over me with sunrays practically bursting from him and how much emotion I’d felt in that moment.

I thought about him dancing with me and singing this song in my ear. I pushed away thoughts of him screaming in my face with his belt in his hand and then I saw that couple on the stage in Vegas embracing one another after he gave her what she needed and she gave him what he needed.

I thought about how amazing it was when I declared I was his in the bathroom in the hotel that night. The look in his eyes, the heat, the emotion.

The freedom in being his was something I wanted now. Right now. When I gave into being his I didn’t have to feel anything but the bliss of giving myself over to him.

I put the phone down and ran to the bathroom and hit the brakes when I got to the shower door.

He was still in the shower. Did I want to climb in there with him and bridge the gap between us?

I was so f*****g scared of what I felt for him, of what he’d made me into in such a short amount of time. I was so scared of who he could be.

Did I embrace our relationship and take the good with the bad? Or did I stay in this shell, this sub-existence I was in for the past several days?

This man bought me and at first I was so infuriated about it because it made me a thing that could be bought but thinking about him doing it to end his Uncles’s hold on my father, it was something that spoke more of him thinking of me instead of himself.

But it was still me being traded among these men like property.

But was it so awful to be the property of Azriel Clarke? He loved me. He wanted a life with me. What kind of life we’d have, I didn’t really know, but I was the one he wanted to seesaw through light and dark with.

He’d sent me lovely messages while he was gone. He’d missed me.

I was here feeling sorry for myself while he was off trying to fix things to make our lives better and missing me while I was ignoring him. Regret lanced through me.

I pulled my sweatshirt up and over my head and unhooked my bra. I took my pants and panties down and pulled my socks off and then I opened the shower door.

He turned around and looked at me and finger combed his wet hair out of his eyes and sighed. I pulled the elastic out of my hair and dropped it and then wrapped my arms around him and put my cheek against his chest.

He didn’t put his arms back around me, just stood there, and I thought maybe I’d pushed him too far.

My heart squeezed painfully.

“Azriel,” I whispered into his chest and then touched my lips to his wet skin.

“What?” his voice was cold.

“I’ve been a naughty girl.”

His torso stiffened.

“I’ve been cold and distant and living in my head and I need you to bring me back to life. Show me who I belong to, that it’s not okay for me to be like this, to feel like a robot.”

His hands gripped my shoulders and he stared right into my eyes, straight into my soul, even. I needed this. We needed it.

“You’re free to go,” he said.

I frowned, “Huh?”

“You’re free. Go.”

He left me in the shower.

He just left me there.

I pulled my chin off the floor and got into a bathrobe and when I came out of the bathroom, he wasn’t there. I exited via the patio doors and hurried down the stairs, water still dripping off me in just the long white robe and nothing on my feet and saw that all the garage doors were shut. The gates were closed and there were guards mulling about. I didn’t think he’d left that fast so I went back into the house through the main floor patio doors.

Not in the kitchen. Not in his office. Not in the family room. The door to the back hall was open.

I went down the back hall and heard thudding downstairs. I ran back up to the bedroom and queued up the song on my phone I’d been listening to multiple times a day from the laptop during my poker playing on the YouTube and quickly blotted up the water in my hair with a towel, then as I got to the bottom of the basement steps I slipped it into the pocket of the bathrobe.

I could hear the thud, thud, thud very loudly. I found him in the gym. He was in just a pair of black gym shorts and he was beating the ever-loving life out of a big heavy bag, his skin still wet from the shower or maybe wet with sweat; I wasn’t sure.

I stood behind him.

“Hey,” I said softly.

He flinched and then started hitting the bag harder.

“Azriel.”

“You have until the count of ten to get outta my sight,” he said, not turning around.

“What? Why?”

“Go upstairs, pack your s**t, and go. The guys’ll open the gate. Go. You’re free.”