“Fuck.” Jonathan pulls out, his hot cum streaking down my thighs. “Are you on birth control?”

I pull up to a standing position, even though my legs hardly hold me upright.

Jonathan releases my throat and my hands to tuck himself in. My wrists feel sore, empty almost, at the loss of his grip.

“You should’ve thought of that before, don’t you think?” I smooth down my dress.

“Answer the question, Aurora.” His face carries the same mask of unemotional blankness, but there’s a tic in his jaw.

Jonathan lost control by coming inside me, and he doesn’t like losing control. However, that’s not the only reason he’s ticked off. He doesn’t want any type of accident — a child. Which is understandable, considering he has Aiden, who is nineteen going on twenty, and his nephew, Levi, who’s a year older than his son.

That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off myself, though. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.”

“If you don’t quit provoking me, I’m going to spank your arse until you can’t sit straight.”

“Already done.” I extend my palm. “Give me my underwear back.”

“How about no?”

“Jonathan!”

“You can’t give me attitude and expect to get things from me.” He tilts his head to the side. “You’ll go back in there with nothing underneath your dress, and you’ll think of me every time you squirm in your seat.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Consider it already done.” He reaches a hand and wipes something at the corner of my mouth, a sadistic smirk grazing his sinful lips. “Also, you might want to freshen up. I don’t mind dragging you outside looking like this, but you might.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You look thoroughly fucked, wild one.”

I push his hand away, a flush of heat ascending to cover my already flaming cheeks.

Jonathan chuckles as he steps out the door. The sound of his rare laughter resides in the room long after he’s gone.

Why did he have to laugh, damn him?

I use some tissues to clean up and then sneak behind everyone’s back to get to the bathroom. He’s right, my hair is in a state of disarray and my eyes are puffy and watery. My lipstick has smeared a little from how I bit my lips.

It takes me a good ten minutes to make myself appear somewhat presentable.

When I go back, Kenza has already found her phone. She jokingly tells me she thought I was the one lost.

If only she knew how true that statement is.

We sit in tables of five for dinner. The dick, Layla, puts me with Jonathan, Ethan, Elsa, and Agnus. And Jonathan is right beside me.

“What?” Layla said when I almost strangled her. “I can’t deny requests made by those who write large cheques. Think of the cause, mate.”

She’s now waving at me from her table, where she’s seated with her parents and two old ladies from their community. Layla’s doctor brother is in Africa, her two British Army brothers are captains in Afghanistan, and her fourth brother couldn’t make it tonight.

While she gets to sit in a familial atmosphere, I’m stuck here. To say the atmosphere is tense at my table would be like saying my life is normal.

It doesn’t help that — true to Jonathan’s words — I can’t sit straight. My arse stings and the lack of underwear makes the friction at my core unbearable.

Usually, after one of Jonathan’s sessions, I sleep on my side or on my stomach until the burn goes away. Not now.

Agnus focuses on his mobile phone, seeming oblivious to the war of gazes going on between Ethan and Jonathan. If this were a few centuries ago, they would’ve gotten their swords out and gone at it right here, right now.

Elsa seems as bothered by the tension as I am. She digs into the couscous Kenza cooked and plasters on a smile. “This is so delicious. How do they make it?”

“Kenza says it’s a family secret. She won’t give away her special recipe.” I pick up my spoon and pretend I’m a functioning human and that Jonathan isn’t sitting beside me like a gloomy shadow straight out of a horror film.

“Do you like cooking?” Elsa asks me.

“Not really,” I tense as I say the words.

Jonathan leans over to whisper so only I can hear him, “One of the habits you gave up for your rebirth?”

“Shut up,” I hiss, then smile at Elsa.

Ethan takes a spoonful of the food and chews leisurely. “Alicia used to love these types of exotic dishes, too. Didn’t she, Jonathan?”

My tyrant remains unaffected, as if he were expecting the blow.

It’s Elsa who gasps, “Dad!”

“Was he supposed to ignore the elephant in the room?” Agnus speaks for the first time in the last hour, but he still doesn’t lift his head up from his screen.

Elsa glares at him from across the table like she wants to jump or punch him. Or both.

“It’s okay,” I try to calm the atmosphere. “I know I look so much like her.”

Ethan continues chewing, his attention never straying from Jonathan. “Is that why? You do know she’s not her, right?”

My grip tightens around the spoon as Ethan’s hostility rolls off my skin. It’s not that he’s attacking me directly. He’s saying those words to provoke Jonathan, and yet, I’m the one who’s stung by them with no warning.

But why?

I’m not Alicia. I don’t want to be Alicia.

Why can’t everyone stop comparing me to her? Or is this perhaps the karma I have to endure for abandoning Aiden when he was a young boy?

I was only sixteen at the time. I didn’t understand anything past the need to run, to shed my armour, and get the fuck out of Clarissa Griffin’s skin.

If I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d be there for Aiden. However, that means being in Jonathan’s entourage from such a young age. So thinking about it again…no, thanks.

I can barely handle him now. If at all.

A strong hand wraps around my thigh under the table and I jolt as I recognise the warmth of his firm grip.

Jonathan’s face has the usual coolness of a mountain so high, it’s toying with the clouds and reaching for the sky. “I don’t see why that’s any of your business.”

“Inquiring minds want to know, Jonathan. After all, Alicia left too soon.”