Tame me, p.1
Tame Me, page 1
TAME ME
COLLIDING HEARTS DUET PART ONE
ADELAIDE FORREST
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
1
HARLOWE
Some reactions were visceral.
They were all-consuming, and couldn’t be denied or distracted from. They tormented the soul without sparing a single thought for logic or reason, accelerating the heartbeat and slicking the skin with the first sheen of sweat as time seemed to stop altogether.
Classical music was mine.
If the next time I heard it was on my deathbed seventy years in the future, it would be too soon. Fresh memories of the Penthouse that I hated with every fiber of my being flooded my mind the moment the piano notes hit my ears. They were the kinds of memories that time and distance couldn’t spare me from.
The ones that were a part of me, forever and always.
It didn’t help that the Penthouse where I worked was so similar to the one that haunted my every waking thought. Sterile white lines and modern decor all looked the same after a while, with nothing to separate my memory from the present.
The familiar chords of Für Elise filled my ears as the elevator door opened in front of us. Emma giggled excitedly from her place in her stroller, happy to be home from the intense heat of the Miami sun, despite all the fun we had on our walk in the park. We would quickly reach the point of no return—when the summer heat became too much, and I wouldn’t be able to take Emma to the park to escape James.
The sound of male voices carrying from the office drew me from my reflection, sending me into a flurry to get Emma out of the stroller. Hauling her into my arms with a strained smile, I used my other arm and a foot to get it folded and tucked away in the coat closet where it belonged. Everything in the Siemens household had a rhyme and reason. Everything had its designated place, and Emma’s belongings were no exception. Their daughter was an accessory to be wielded when it suited their needs, nothing more and nothing less, until she reached the age where she could be useful in other ways as the apparent sole heir to their legacy.
The closet closed with a nearly silent click, and I turned a relieved smile toward the hallway that led to Emma’s bedroom, where we could safely hide away while we got changed for dinner. Mrs. Siemens stepped out from the living room, her arms crossed over her chest and her signature scowl painted onto the lines of her face. Emma stretched out her arms, seeking attention from her mother, who only sighed and refused to accept the three-year-old from my arms.
“James is waiting for you. You will apologize to him for the inconvenience you caused and remember your place if you want to continue working for us,” Mrs. Siemens snapped at me, ignoring Emma’s babbling as her daughter tried desperately to get her attention. “I will not tolerate you causing drama for Richard in his business.”
“I have to get Emma ready for dinner,” I said, keeping my tone polite to temper the disagreement. It wasn’t often that I stepped out of line or didn’t do exactly as asked the moment she snapped her fingers.
James was an exception.
“Julia can handle it today,” she replied, referring to the housekeeper who cared for Emma on my rare days off. She turned, striding back toward the living room and expecting me to follow her. With little other choice, I walked forward slowly and listened to Emma’s cute voice trail off as she realized her mom wouldn’t be interacting with her.
At some point in my brief conversation with Mrs. Siemens, James and Mr. Siemens had abandoned the office in favor of waiting for us in the living room.
“For fuck’s sake, get Julia or someone to take the kid,” Mr. Siemens grunted in annoyance the moment his glare landed on Emma, still propped on my hip like she was permanently attached there. For all purposes, she was. In the months I’d been her nanny, I’d learned to care for her like she was my own.
“Julia!” Mrs. Siemens shouted, the shrill sound of her voice grating on my ears. Emma winced in my grasp, leaning her head tighter into my shoulder until one of her ears was muffled by the pressure. The housekeeper emerged from the kitchen with a frenzied look of panic on her face, glancing toward Mrs. Siemens. “Take Emma to her room and change her for dinner. James needs to have a word with Miss Taylor.”
“Yes, Mrs. Siemens,” Julia returned, stepping over to me and taking the sleepy toddler from my arms. Emma looked up at me in concern, even too young to understand the implications of what was happening, she knew enough to be worried.
“It’s alright, sweetheart. I’ll be right there,” I reassured her as Julia rounded the corner and left the living room behind. The Siemens followed shortly after, clearing the room of all but the last person on Earth I wanted to be alone with.
James was over ten years my senior, something that hadn’t bothered me at the beginning of our somewhat inappropriate courtship. He’d treated me in a way none of the guys I’d gone to school with had ever bothered to do—bought me gifts, taken me to fancy restaurants, and made me feel like I was special. Like he somehow saw through the surface to the girl underneath, who was worth saving from her mundane, mediocre life.
But there was a reason people said that we shouldn’t strive beyond our station, and men like James were the epitome of that reason.
He stepped forward into my space, ignoring the way I retreated a step, and continued until his hands touched the place where my t-shirt brushed against the waist of my jeans. His steely gray eyes stared down at my face, as if he could sense the apprehension thrumming through my veins with every inch closer he came.
My space wasn’t my own, not when he insisted on occupying it as if it was his to own. There’d been a time when I’d thought that just maybe that could be the case. That maybe he could be the man I’d dreamed of as a stupid, foolish girl who was bored in her life, with parents who worked too much.
The tips of his long, manicured fingers brushed against the swell of my rear, an unwanted touch that I’d stopped allowing as soon as I discovered the truth of his intentions for me. I would never be his wife. I would never be good enough for the man who had everything and wanted for nothing.
Except for a high society wife that would never be me.
“Do you have something you’d like to say to me?” he asked, his tone intentionally careful. There was nothing cruel or twisted in it, all traces of the anger he’d shown when I’d ended our brief affair after overhearing his conversation with Mr. Siemens removed from his features.
Despite the way the words felt like poison on my tongue, I swallowed around them and the thickness in my throat. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience I caused in dating you,” I said, tearing my eyes away from him and looking at the floor. His chest blocked my view of it, but all that mattered to me in that moment was the fact that I no longer had to stare into the gunmetal of his eyes and wait for the sharp edges to cut me deep once more.
The memory of jagged edges slicing through the tender, fresh bonds my heart had crafted from nothing sent a phantom pain through my chest. It left me with the steady thrum of an ache that felt like it might never go away.
Not being marriage material had been bad enough, a heartbreak I hadn’t deserved. Being someone ‘fun to play with’ hinted at my naivety, the vulnerability I tried to hide away thanks to my lack of experience with men.
“Dating me wasn’t the problem, sweetheart. Refusing to take me to your bed again was,” James said, a hand leaving my waist to rest on the curve of my shoulder. His thumb stroked over the cord of my throat, rising bit by bit until his nail dug into the fleshy underside of my chin and forced me to raise my eyes to his once more.
Triumph shone back in those menacing eyes, twirling under the surface like a sea monster beneath the waves of the ocean. Barely there, a mirage of my worst imaginings, but something I suspected was more real than any kindness he’d ever shown me.
“I’m not a whore,” I said, lifting my chin away from that offending thumbnail that continued to press against my chin just sharply enough to leave a mark. To stain my skin with the hint of his torment.
“Of course not,” he said with a scoff of indignation. He glared down at the defiance on my face, hating what he must have seen shining in my eyes as I pursed my lips and refused to allow them to tremble. This was not a man worthy of my tears. He was not a man that I would allow to ruin me.
He was nothing.
“You were all but a virgin when I fucked you for the first time, but whore or not, I very much miss being inside you. Let’s fix that,” he said, dropping his hand from my chin and moving to take my hand in his. He tugged on it as he backed away, trying to guide me toward the hallway that led to the tiny bedroom that I slept in.
“No,” I argued, shaking my head and wrenching my arm away. His grip was unyielding, steadfast despite my refusal and desire to avoid the altercation that I knew would come if he maneuvered me into that room. Being alone in an open space was one thing, alone behind a closed door, another altogether.
He stepped into my space, grasping my jaw between his thumb and fingers until my cheeks hollowed under the pressure. Pain bloomed inside my skin, a relentless reminder of what was at stake if I didn’t find a way out. “You’re hurting me,” I said, my voice muffled by the force that he used to squeeze my face.
His eyes shifted, the darkness in them flar
He tipped his head forward, resting his forehead against mine as he waited for the apology to take. “I want a man who will love me. Who’ll be proud for me to be his and will want the world to know it,” I said, holding his gaze and willing him to understand the words.
He may be able to offer me the world from a monetary perspective. He may be able to give me the kinds of things that I could never dream of otherwise.
But he’d never give me the most important thing in the world to me when it came to a man I might spend my life with.
He’d never give me him.
“That’s not how my world works,” he said, his voice softening as if he pitied me for the fact that I didn’t understand. But I pitied him, because he’d lived a life that led him to be so accepting of a future without love.
“So I’m supposed to just keep sleeping with you until you find a wife? Then what happens to me? You leave me to pick up the pieces of my life alone?” I asked, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Presumably I’ll have a child soon after. You can come and be our nanny…” He trailed off, finally seeming to catch onto the look of sheer shock on my face.
The utter audacity of what he was suggesting seemed impossible, but after what I’d learned about wealthy men like James in recent months, I would put nothing past the man who thought he was entitled to have his cake and eat it too.
“You want me to be in a relationship with you and raise the child you’ll have with your wife?” I hissed, the seething inside my head becoming too much to bear. There was too much at stake for me to lose my shit completely, but with every moment that passed, I was one more step toward quitting and walking away from it all.
Only Emma and the thought of suddenly abandoning her kept me quiet.
“Marriage isn’t the same for us as it is for people like you. It’s a business arrangement. She’ll have her life, and I’ll have mine, and that will include you,” he explained, reaching up a hand to cup my cheek. The warmth in his eyes hinted at the deception that he might cherish me.
Like I would be the treasure he kept locked away, and his wife the distraction to keep people from knowing the truth of where his heart lay.
But I knew the real truth, and my eyes were no longer blinded by the infatuation I’d felt for a false man living a life of lies. James didn’t have a heart or the capacity for love.
He had nothing at all.
“No. That is never going to happen,” I said, my nostrils flaring with the effort it took to restrain my tantrum. The urge to scream in his face, to act like the lesser, irrational person he seemed to think I was, overtook me.
My throat ached as I swallowed it down.
I turned, taking the first two steps away and leaving James in my rearview. When I’d ended our false relationship, I’d thought it would be permanent, but nothing in that moment had felt like this. Like this moment, suspended in time, would live on as a turning point in my life.
There was the Harlowe who had existed before—naïve and vulnerable to the vultures of Miami—the girl who would never see the predator lurking in a den of beauty. But in that moment, something shifted within me, and that girl was a thing of the past.
All that remained was someone hollow, someone bitter and distrustful. Someone who saw the world for what it was.
Ugly.
Fingers wrapped around my wrist, grasping the narrow expanse of flesh tightly and pulling me back until I lost my balance and my feet slipped out from under me. James’ chest at my spine was all that kept me from landing on my ass on the floor, his other arm wrapping over my chest to grasp my opposite shoulder and pin me still. That hand on my wrist tightened, squeezing to the point of bruising. “It will,” he asserted. “Soon enough, you’ll realize exactly what I’m offering you. To take care of you—financially and sexually. To give you a child to raise where you don’t have to worry about the baby daddy abandoning you. It will happen, Harlowe. That’s what you’re worth.”
“Let go of me,” I said, struggling from side to side to the best of my ability in the tight grip. Lifting a foot and slamming it down on top of his, I reveled in the pained grunt that tore the breath from his lungs.
“Do you know how many women would be honored for this opportunity?” he asked.
“So fuck one of them,” I snarled, jerking my arm out of his grip and twisting away in his moment of shock. My wrist throbbed, the telltale pain of a bruise blooming beneath the skin, but I forced my head high and turned my back on the wealthy man who would never be worth another moment of my time.
Making it out of the living room safely in a brief reprieve, I made my way to Emma’s bedroom and the moment of refuge it would offer me.
With Emma safely settled into bed later that evening, I avoided my bedroom in the staff quarters like the plague. Sleeping there didn’t feel safe with James on a rampage and demanding access to my body when I didn’t want to give it.
I didn’t trust that he had any boundaries when it came to taking what he wanted.
Julia often worked late in the kitchen, preparing whatever she could for the next day’s meals, even if the Siemens didn’t appreciate her constant effort. She was only fifty, but she’d aged even in the months I’d been working for the Siemens. I chopped vegetables at her side in mostly silence, something that I’d grown to dislike in my time working in the Penthouse. A home with a child should be full of laughter and smiles, not with those happy moments tucked away out of sight and out of mind.
Children here were to be seen, not heard, just like the staff.
“I know you don’t want to leave Emma, but I don’t think you can stay here. He will never stop, and he’s getting more violent with each visit since you ended things,” Julia said, setting her knife on the butcher block and turning my way finally. The frustration she felt trying to warn me to take his escalation seriously was written into every line of her face, and I knew she would soon reach the end of her patience.
She pried my fingers off the hilt of my knife, placing it on the counter and taking my hands in hers. Her eyes landed on the angry, mottled skin of my wrist pointedly. “I know a woman who cleans for a man in New York. He’s a good employer, with a sweet daughter, and he’s never laid a hand on any of his staff in that way. The nanny is retiring, and I think you should apply for the position.”
“New York is so far,” I argued, glancing out the small window in the kitchen to the ocean just outside the high-rise.
“I only hope it’s far enough,” Julia said, tugging me into her chest until my head touched her apron.
My bottom lip trembled, knowing she was right. James would never stop, and even if the thought of leaving Emma was enough to bring the sting of tears to my eyes, she wasn’t my daughter. I would never have a say in her life aside from keeping her out of the way.
I couldn’t take her with me, and I couldn't guarantee that I’d be allowed to be a part of her life, regardless. The Siemens could end my employment any day, and the longer I spent angering James, the more likely that became.
Without Julia’s connection, I had nowhere else to go. I’d be a fool to pass up what may be my only chance to escape a man who thought he owned me.
“Okay,” I whispered against her chest, wrapping my arms around her waist and snuggling in for what might very well be the last comfort I received from the woman who had quickly become my rock.
2
ALEKSANDR
Another night in the darkness. Just another evening in the void that existed surrounding the violence of my life. I stepped closer to the chair in the center of the room, the chains that strapped my latest victim down to the ramshackle, bloodstained wood clinking against one another as he fought against the restraint.
