Gold(46)

There was a soft knock on the already open door, and she saw Matt, a guy from high school that she hadn’t really had any reason to hate peeking his head in. He scanned the room until he saw her, then motioned for her to come over.

Ella looked at the family, then realized none of them were going to do anything about the visitor, and walked over to the door to peek out.

She saw Cliff standing there, surrounded by friends, as Matt moved back to join him.

“What’s this about?” she asked, staying safely inside, the door half open between them.

“Come out and we’ll talk,” Cliff said.

“No,” she said firmly. She’d promised Dante she would stay away from him. She wasn’t going to break her promise now.

“Get out here now. Or do you want us to call and bring your pretty boy down?” Cliff growled. “We can settle this now.”

She doubted it. He was pretty drunk, basically swaying on his feet.

That also made him less dangerous to her. “Fine,” she said, stepping out and shutting the door quietly behind her. “Say what you want and leave.”

Cliff walked forward, and she flinched as he reached for one of her wet curls. She jerked back, but he caught one anyway.

“Remember our night together?” he asked as the guys behind him snickered.

She slapped his hand away fiercely. “I’m not going to talk until you get rid of your cronies,” she snapped.

“Fine.” He dismissed them with a wave, and they grumbled as they went to wait in the SUV.

“So do you remember?” he asked,

“I don’t care about our night together. Or about anything that happened. I let it hold me back for too long.” She raised her hand to slap him, anger surging through her at the position she was in, but fear held her back, and she dropped her hand. “If you weren’t a shifter, I… would have made sure you got what was coming to you.”

“Why?” he asked in an oily voice, trying to get even closer as she took a step back toward the door. Toward safety. “All I did was try and ensure what was mine.”

“By what?” she snapped. “Telling me you loved me? Telling me you were the only one who could? Trapping me, making me think a boy actually liked me, when I was young and vulnerable and bullied and—”

He cut her off with a finger to her lips, shushing her. “Don’t remind me. Just thinking of you that night turns me on.”

She raised her knee to try to hit him in the groin, but he dodged, blocking the blow with a laugh.

“And then you wouldn’t even put out.”

“Yeah, because maybe I thought you wanted to date me, not trap me in the woods and tear my shirt off and grind up on me. You scared me to death.”

Even remembering it made her heart pound. She’d fought back, though, even as his words had turned uglier, as his hands had ripped at her clothing, as he’d told her just how worthless she was while he expected her to spread her legs for him.

He’d touched her, exposed her breasts, groped them painfully, but she hadn’t let him inside her.

That was her only consolation looking at this pathetic man now. Had she really ever wanted him to love her?

When she’d been a teen, the love he’d offered had been like something from one of her fairy-tale novels. And then romance had turned to ugliness in the woods, and the more she’d fought him, the more apparent it had become that he’d never loved her at all. Didn’t even like her.

She’d been so lonely that he’d seemed like a prince, coming to see her after school, telling her he secretly liked her but couldn’t tell anyone.

It had escalated to soft kisses in the woods behind her family’s house. Always gentle.

And then he had said he loved her. She hadn’t even had time to process it before he’d pushed her to the ground. As if love were an excuse for what he was about to do to her. As if love were a password to let him in.

At first, she’d told him to wait, that she wasn’t ready, but he’d torn her shirt open, and she’d been surprised by his strength as she fought him.

Like many of the handsome boys in town, he was a shifter. Her father was; her mother wasn’t. The fact of mountain lion shifters was an open secret in the town of Heber. They didn’t tell visitors, but they kept it amongst themselves.

She’d thought that was a bit hot about him, but she’d never thought it would mean he would use it to hurt her.

She knew better now.

At least she’d managed to still get in a good groin hit. Shifters had genitals like anyone else and didn’t like when they were crushed by a well-placed knee.

Then she’d run as fast as she could back to her family’s house, but he’d cut her off midway in his cougar form.