by Selena Kitt
“Sure you don’t want to yell at me for drinking too much?” Tilly slipped into it, putting the shot glass back down beside the bottle of tequila.
“No.”
“I think I’m going to have a headache tomorrow.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
Tilly blushed, thankful for the darkness, feeling her heart skip in her chest at his words. She was already pretty drunk, so the tequila hit her hard. It wasn’t something she usually had. In fact, she didn’t usually drink this much at all, except for the occasional “bar raid” with Frankie, and even then, it was Frankie usually doing most of the drinking. But Mark had been trying pretty hard to get what he wanted from her with more than a little help from alcohol. She’d known what he was up to, had enjoyed the attention up to a point, but had to eventually draw the line.
“If you were trying to get my attention,” Beast said, “it worked.”
Tilly shrugged.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean not exactly?” Beast sat up straighter, his jaw tightening. She could see it even in the shadows.
“Relax,” she urged, waving him back. “He didn’t rape me or anything. He just… wanted more than I was willing to give.”
Beast looked at her, eyes narrowed, still ready, apparently, to vent his wrath on Mark if he’d gone too far.
“Don’t worry about it,” she soothed gently. “It was my fault, really, for leading him on. I ignored the contract. I did something a submissive isn’t supposed to do—and I’m sure this is why. Anyway, I was just trying to make you jealous.”
“My God, if you’d gotten into trouble just to make me jealous...” Beast ran a hand over his head, shaking it slowly, disbelieving. Then he lifted it to look at her. “Sure you don’t want to take any more foolish risks today? You know, stick your hand in a buzz saw, set fire to a fireworks factory?”
Tilly snorted a laugh, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
“So that’s what you were up to?” he asked. “Making me jealous?”
Tilly nodded slowly, miserably.
“So, tell me the truth.” He leaned toward her, into the light, revealing the strong, square line of his jaw, and the fact that he was sitting there in the dark wearing only a pair of jeans. The sight of his big, inked shoulders bulging as he sat forward took her breath away. “Were you trying to make me jealous when you signed up to be a submissive?”
“Partly.”
“Partly?” He canted his head at her. “What was the other part?”
Tilly blushed. “The spanking you gave me.”
There was a knowing look in Beast’s eyes.
Tilly looked away from him, down at the purse in her lap. Her shoes were sitting on the floor where she’d dropped them. She felt him looking at her, but didn’t glance up. She desperately wanted to know what he was thinking, but she wouldn’t ask. Briefly, she thought about telling him that, in fact, when she’d signed up to be a submissive, she’d asked to be paired with him.
Beast had been sitting there, God only knows how long, waiting for her to come home. And he was being his usual angry, demanding, judgmental self. But there was something else behind his words tonight. Something softer, sadder, maybe. Of course, he’d clearly been drinking, because the bottle of tequila was more than half gone. And she’d been drinking, too, so perhaps she was misreading him, perceiving more emotion from him than he actually felt.
He stood, looking down at her. His form blocked out the light from the doors, leaving her in shadow. Tilly didn’t look up from the floor.
“I told your mother that you’d look in on her before she went to bed.” He picked up the bottle and his glass. Then he did something that shocked her. He leaned over and kissed Tilly on the top of her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the club.”
That was all, but that was more than enough.
See you tomorrow.
What did that mean? That he was giving her his stamp of approval?
As if she needed his approval?
Tilly sat there alone for a while. She listened as Beast padded down the long foyer and then went up the stairs to his room. Tilly felt exhausted. Utterly spent. She was almost too tired to get up and go to bed. The prospect of removing her makeup, brushing her teeth and otherwise getting ready for bed seemed too difficult a task to even contemplate.
Her thoughts went back to Beast. What had that look meant? That damned, knowing look? He looked at her like he knew her, like no time had passed. Like he could see right into her, past all the walls she’d spent months, years, building to keep everyone else out.
So, what? He was now okay with her becoming a submissive and training with Mark?
Somehow, all her energy around it had disappeared. She thought about getting up tomorrow and carrying on with her training at the club. Wouldn’t it just be easier, she thought, to sleep in late and spend the rest of the day at Starbucks reading a book? That would be so nice. Forget Beast and love and sex for a while.
She thought about calling Mark and telling him she didn’t feel well and had to cancel the session. After tonight, he might assume she was avoiding him, but she didn’t give a damn. She didn’t even want to see Frankie.
Goddamn him.
She glared up at the ceiling, as if he could see her expression through the floor. He was so predictable in some ways, and unpredictable in others. She’d been wondering, all night long, what Beast was doing. While she was out at the movie with Mark, and then when he’d taken her to The Block afterward, she couldn’t stop thinking about Beast. Frankie had spent an hour getting Tilly dressed and making her up for her date, while Beast fumed out by the pool. She’d seen a glimpse of him, still sitting in the lawn chair, his back to her, when she came down the stairs to the sound of the doorbell.
Frankie had practically shoved her out the door on her date with Mark, telling her not to worry about Beast. Tilly had laughed, but the truth was, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. She had wondered if he might wait up for her, like he had. Or maybe he would lock himself in his room and she wouldn’t see him for days. She had looked for him at The Block, wondering if he was downstairs, although Mark didn’t take her to The Bottom Floor. They’d stayed up in the mezzanine, drinking and talking.
She’d been thinking about Beast, wondering what he was doing, while he spent the night with a bottle of tequila. That had surprised her, probably more than anything else he could have done. Beast didn’t drink that often. He didn’t like to dull his senses in any way. He’d always been like that. He didn’t get high, he didn’t drink, he didn’t put anything in his body that he was unsure of.
She sat and looked at the chair she’d found him in, wondering how long he’d been there, and what he’d been thinking. Was he sitting there fuming about her deception, angry about her sneaking into The Bottom Floor under his nose, signing a contract without him knowing it? Had he finally come to some sort of acceptance of what she’d done? Had he, perhaps, been thinking about her the way she wanted him to think of her?
Tilly closed her eyes and forced herself not to cry. There was no use hoping for that, she thought. She looked out the French doors and noticed how big the moon was. She could picture it, shining into Beast’s bedroom window. If she closed her eyes, she could see him sleeping alone in the middle of his big bed.
She picked up her shoes and walked barefoot through the foyer, up the stairs. Instead of heading toward her room, she went the other way, to the west wing, toward her mother’s room. The light was still on, the door open just a crack, the television still blaring. Tilly looked in, finding her mother sleeping, the book she’d been reading on the verge of slipping out of her hand. It looked like the oxygen tank and the mask next to the bed hadn’t been needed that evening, which was a good sign.
There were nurses who came during the day in shifts to help, but Liv refused to have “strangers” sleep over. Tilly worried all the time that something would happen overnig
ht, and she would be too far away to hear her call out. Their rooms were on opposite ends of the house. Liv did have a call button that went straight to the servants’ quarters, but they were even further away than Tilly was.
The book slipping out of her mother’s hand was some enormous novel by Stephen King. Another of her mother’s guilty pleasures. Tilly reflected wryly that it took some strength just to hold this up, so that was a good sign as far as her mother’s energy was concerned. Her mother was a fast reader, but even so. The book was as thick as a doorstop. It would take a long time to finish.
Tilly derailed those thoughts. She didn’t like to let her thoughts go too far into the future, as far as her mother was concerned.
As far as anything was concerned.
Tilly gently took the book from her mother’s fingers and put it on the nightstand. Her wig was off, and her hair, once a thick, long, luxurious auburn, was completely gone. The skin of her scalp was pale pink, delicate blue veins crossing her skull. Liv’s eyes fluttered open as Tilly leaned over to kiss her forehead.
“Goodnight,” Tilly whispered.
Her mother smiled sleepily and closed her eyes again. Tilly turned the television off with the remote and turned the light out, leaving the room. She left the door open just a little, though. Just in case.
She went to the bathroom to wash her face, removing all traces of her makeup, and brushed her teeth. Beast’s door was closed, the light out. Back in her own room, Tilly got undressed, putting her phone on her night table, and thought about calling Frankie. But Frankie would want to know about her “date,” and Tilly didn’t want to talk about it.
Tilly just wanted to fall into her bed, sleep, and forget everything.
And that’s exactly what she did.
She hadn’t set her alarm. She distinctly remembered not setting it before she climbed into bed and passed out. But that was all she remembered about the night before as she stuck her hand out from under her covers and patted around on her night stand, searching for her phone. The chime wouldn’t stop going off. She realized, as she pulled her phone into her little comforter tent, that it wasn’t her alarm, but her text chime.
Frankie, she thought, as she blinked at her phone screen and tried to get her morning-eyes to focus. Had to be. Tilly hadn’t called or texted her to tell her she wasn’t going to The Block. She was probably downstairs waiting for her right now. Fuck.
Then she saw the time in big letters on her phone’s screen. It was too early for Frankie. Only eight a.m. And when she squinted, she saw the text wasn’t from Frankie at all. It was from Beast.
You made a commitment. Follow through with it.
“Follow through with it,” she murmured out loud to herself. “Fucking follow through with it, he says. Asshole.”
Beast had no business being able to guess she was going to give up. Typical marine, she thought with a sneer. He believed everyone should think like and be like a marine. Tilly considered texting back, fuck off, asshole, but instead dragged herself out of bed for a shower.
Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to cancel her appointment with Mark after that text.
She looked into Beast’s room on her way to the bathroom, seeing it empty. It was also as neat as a pin. She knew it was the help who cleaned up, not Beast—she often came home and found her own room straightened, bed made, if she had neglected it. But there were personal things they left alone, and in Beast’s room, those were arranged neatly on his bureau and night table. He acted like he was still living in the barracks or something, expecting an inspection.
And of course, he was gone already. No lazing in bed for him, even if he could’ve gotten away with doing nothing all day. Even though he’d been drinking heavily the night before.
Mr. Fucking Perfect.
“Follow through with it,” she snorted angrily.
Fuck him. She brushed her teeth with a vengeance, actually making her gums bleed. Why was she doing this again? This stupid training thing? She’d thought it was inspired, brilliant, when she first decided to do it. But it had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.
I mean, wasn’t sex supposed to be fun? What was she trying to prove? She wondered, getting into the shower and adjusting the water to make it a little hotter. She shampooed and soaped up, feeling a little better as she got cleaner. But she was still mad.
Commitment. Mr. Marine. What did he know about commitment? He could commit to a troop of guys in the middle of the desert, yeah, great. But could he commit, one-on-one, to another human being? Frankie had called him a panty-key and she wasn’t far off. Girls dropped their panties for Beast faster than Tilly had dropped third period chemistry in ninth grade. Which was, well—fast.
All the girls love Conrad. That’s what Tilly’s mother always said about him in high school. Of course, the woman had no idea just how often and how much they loved her stepson, Tilly thought darkly. She’d ignored the rumor that had gone around about Beast and the entire cheerleading squad for a long time, until Frankie had told her that Liz Mallon had told her that Sara Heinz said it was actually a thing that really happened. Beast had just shrugged when Tilly confronted him about it, neither confirming nor denying it, but there was a little twitch at the corner of his mouth that had given him away. She’d told him she hoped he used condoms, and he’d just pointed to his bureau where, lo and behold, there was a giant fishbowl full of them just sitting out in full view. Trojan. Magnum. Bareskin.
She’d never asked him about his sex life again. Until she was part of it, anyway. And even then, he hadn’t been one to answer questions.
Tilly got out of the shower, drying off, trying to shake her thoughts of Beast. She was tired and still hung over. What she really wanted to do was just go back to bed and sleep it off. Surprisingly, her hangover wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, but still, her head ached, her stomach revolted at even the thought of food, and her tongue felt two sizes too big in her mouth.
The last thing she wanted to do was go to The Block and see people—let alone have sex, of any kind.
She wondered what Beast did with that bottle of tequila, as she passed by his room. She didn’t see it out anywhere, which was a disappointment, because a shot might just be the perfect hangover cure. Wasn’t there something about the hair of the dog that bit you? Like taking in a little bit of the illness, in order to cure it? Sort of like a vaccine?
An entire bottle of tequila. And it had been Patron—which wasn’t in the bar, as far as she remembered, at least not the last time she and Frankie had raided it. Had he gone out to get it? Had it been in his room? Beast just wasn’t a drinker. But maybe he was now… Maybe there were all sorts of things she didn’t know about him anymore. Like the fact that he was a dom in a secret, underground BDSM nightclub.
Still, she’d found him sitting in the sunroom, drinking alone. Waiting for her. Was she getting to him? Was she finally breaking through, at least a little?
That thought got her dressed. She still slammed drawers and didn’t pick Scrabble up when she opened his cage to make sure his food was full, but her anger was beginning to fade.
She checked in on her mother—still sleeping—and went downstairs to the kitchen. Food sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, so she just grabbed a bottled water from the fridge. Her phone went off—another text—and she stopped to read it. Frankie said she’d spent the night at Erich’s and was going into The Block with him. Could Tilly get a ride with Beast to the club?
Ha. As if.
It’s fine, Tilly texted back. I’ll borrow my mother’s car.
Hanna came in to make coffee—she was one of the “new servants” her mother had referred to. She’d only been with them for a few years. Hanna had been the one who had taken on the caretaker role, when Liv’s health had started to deteriorate. She had some medical experience and training that she hadn’t finished, which made Tilly feel a little better about leaving her mother in Hanna’s care.
The two of them discussed how Liv h
ad been the previous evening, and what was on the agenda today. They talked medications and upcoming doctor visits, but Liv had been tired recently—Hanna thought she might be anemic and was going to ask the doctor to check her iron levels—so today she was going to try to get Liv to stay in bed for some much needed rest.
Tilly tried to ask as casually as possible when Beast had left that morning, but Hanna said she hadn’t heard him. Tilly told Hanna she had a hot yoga class with Frankie, and then they were going to see a movie, and to be sure to tell Liv.
Then she took the keys to her mother’s Mercedes and headed through the kitchen to the door to the attached garage. It didn’t sound like Liv was going out—not that she was doing any driving herself these days—but if she needed to, Hanna would have their driver, Jack, take her out in the Bentley.