She stopped hitting him and looked up, despair replacing anger in her eyes. Tears she had sworn never to shed again began streaming down her cheeks.
"I lied, okay? I lied about everything. I don't want you to be happy with someone else. I want you to be happy with only me. Please don't choose another woman over me. I'm still figuring out how to be the best version of myself for you. I can't let you go, James. I won't let you go."
Her voice broke on the last words, all pretense of strength crumbling away.
"You're right, I'm still selfish and a narcist and outrageous. I haven't changed a bit. There can only be one woman in your life, and that woman is me. I won't let you move away from me. I am Victoria Sharp. After me, there can only be me!"
The last words came out as a yell, all her desperation and fear pouring out in a torrent of emotion. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the leather couch in the corner of his office.
"Victoria..." James tried to speak, his heart breaking at the sight of her unraveled composure.
"Shut up," she snapped, her tears flowing freely now. "I told you before, if you wanted to do this so much, then come to me." She pulled him around to face her, her eyes wild with need and desperation. "I'll take care of you."
With that, she pushed James down onto the couch, leaving him looking up at her with a mixture of concern and confusion.
Victoria leaned down and kissed him with desperate hunger, pouring every emotion she had been suppressing into the contact. All her love, her fear of losing him, her anger at his perceived betrayal, everything she couldn't put into words.
James was caught completely off guard, his mind reeling from the sudden turn of events. He returned the kiss instinctively, his body responding to her even as his mind struggled to process what was happening.
Victoria broke the kiss abruptly, her hands working at his clothing with shaking fingers. "Wait, Victoria..." James tried to protest.
"It's Tori!" she snapped, her eyes flashing with renewed anger. "Call me Tori!"
She worked with urgent desperation, her movements frantic as she prepared them both. When she finally climbed onto him, they both moaned at the contact, the familiar electricity between them as powerful as ever.
"This is the only way I know how to love," she whispered as she began to move, her voice breaking with emotion. "Giving you my body. I'm sorry I don't know what else to do. I'll make you feel good and remind you exactly what we can create together."
She moved with increasing desperation, her head thrown back as tears continued to stream down her cheeks.
"Look what you've done," she whispered, meeting his eyes with a gaze full of anguish. "What have you done to me, James?"
The question hit James like a physical blow. The proud, unbreakable Victoria Sharp was gone, replaced by this vulnerable, desperate woman who was willing to abandon every shred of dignity to keep him. The realization of what his actions had done to her, how his leaving had broken something fundamental inside her, filled him with overwhelming guilt.
Victoria collapsed against him, burying her face in his shoulder as sobs wracked her body. "How can you move on from me already and love someone else?"
James wrapped his arms around her, holding her trembling form against him. He tried to speak, to explain that she had misunderstood everything, that his words to Gaia had been about her, not someone else.
"No, you got it all wrong. You appeared..."
"I said not to talk!" she snapped suddenly, her grief transforming back into anger. She began moving again with renewed urgency, as if she could somehow force him to understand through physical connection alone.
James wanted desperately to correct her misunderstanding, to tell her that she was the woman he had been talking about, that every word had been about his love for her. She wouldn't give him the chance, covering his lips with desperate kisses every time he tried to speak.
Finally, James resigned himself to letting her do what she needed to do. He could see the pain driving her actions, could feel the desperation in every movement. This wasn't really about physical pleasure, it was about connection, about proving to herself that what they had was real and couldn't be replaced.
Toward the end, as her movements became more frantic and her tears flowed more freely, Victoria suddenly went limp in his arms.
"Victoria?" James called out in alarm, catching her as she collapsed against him.
She had fainted, her body finally succumbing to the emotional and physical exhaustion she had been fighting. James felt his heart stop as he gathered her unconscious form against him, instinctively knowing that something was seriously wrong.
His hands shook as he quickly dressed them both, his mind racing with possibilities he didn't want to consider. Victoria's health issues, the ones she had been neglecting and avoiding treatment, suddenly seemed much more serious than he had realized.
Moving with practiced efficiency, James lifted Victoria in his arms and carried her toward the back exit of his building. He couldn't risk the main entrance, where reporters and cameras were still documenting his company's successful launch. The last thing Victoria needed was to have her vulnerability splashed across every entertainment news outlet.
His car was parked in the private garage, away from the media circus outside. James settled Victoria gently in the passenger seat, her head lolling against the headrest as she remained unconscious. Her face was pale, almost translucent in the dim light of the garage.
As James drove toward the hospital, his hands gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, one thought kept echoing in his mind: he couldn't lose her. Not now, when he had finally realized what she meant to him. Not when he finally understood that everything he had been searching for had been right in front of him all along.