He’s coming, and there’s nothing we can do but wait.
I gasp, opening my eyes and raising a hand to my face. It’s calloused and powerful. Older. There are tubes attached to it, leading to beeping machines. I blink the bleariness from my eyes and try to lift my head, but a pain like an ice pick in my neck stops me. I’m still breathing hard. It was just a dream. A memory. A fucking unwelcome memory.
But when I think of Sarah, a panic that has nothing to do with the past settles over me. Fuck. How long was I out? She’ll be wondering where I was.
“Nurse!” I shout. My voice comes out gravely and thick.
A few minutes later, a tired looking woman comes in the room. She sees I’m awake, and looks like she’s about to go run for a doctor.
“No,” I say firmly. “Come here.”
She hesitates, but obeys. “You shouldn’t be trying to talk, Mr. Pierce. You had a very serious accident. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for close to a week.”
“I need to make a phone call. Someone give me a phone.”
“Mr. Pierce!” she says more firmly, moving to keep me from trying to sit up again. “You need rest.”
“Jackson?” asks a soft voice.
It’s not until she speaks that I notice her sitting in the corner of the room. My princess. Fuck, I don’t know if it’s the painkillers or the days we were apart, but she looks even more beautiful than I remember, if that’s even possible. Her big blue eyes are full of compassion, but also nervousness. “I came as soon as I heard about the accident. I know you probably don’t want to see me, but I…” she trails off, either losing her nerve or her train of thought.
I raise my hand to her cheek as she comes closer, wincing a little as the movement tugs at the I.V..
“Can we have some space?” I say to the nurse.
“Of course,” she says. She pauses at the door, eyeing us suspiciously. “No physical activity. He needs time to heal.”
Brianne blushes and shakes her head. “We’re just--”
The nurse closes the door before she can finish.
“Just what?” I ask.
She opens her mouth to answer and then looks down, shaking her head again. “That depends on you, I guess. If you still want to give me a chance.”
I let out a laugh, stroking her cheek. “Princess, I want to give you a hell of a lot more than a chance.”
She smiles, leaning into my hand in the most adorable way. “I guess I’ll just have to help nurse you back to health before you can try anything naughty.”
I bite my lip. “My mouth works. I wouldn’t be so sure I can’t do anything dirty to you.”
The door swings open and a stern looking man in a doctor’s coat walks in holding a clipboard. “Mr. Pierce,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt, Miss, but this will only take a moment,” he says to Brianne. “Frankly, you were very lucky, Mr. Pierce. From a crash of that magnitude, I would have expected broken bones and worse, but you somehow managed to walk away with bruises, scrapes, and a microfracture to your foot. You’ve already proven to be a fast healer, so I expect we should have you out of here in a week or two as good as new.”
“Thank you,” says Brianne. She gives me a relieved smile as soon as the doctor leaves, but the look is quickly replaced by something else. Fear, maybe. “Jackson,” she says suddenly, eyes growing hard. “There’s something I need to know. It’s--well--not really that important, I just feel like I need to know.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Did you really think my writing was prudish and forgettable?”
I laugh, but it hurts my chest, making me wince and cut it short. “I honestly don’t think I even read it.”
“So you just send out soul crushing response letters for no reason?”
Her tone is light, but I can hear the emotion just behind it. I hurt her with my letter, and I feel like shit for it.
“I haven’t been myself these past few months. It’s no excuse. It’s just the truth. To be honest, it has only been since we met for lunch that I’ve started to feel normal again.”
“Is that a line?” she asks. “Something you say to make girls feel special?”
“It’s the truth.”
“So, what happened?” she asks, sitting beside me on the bed. “You said you weren’t yourself.”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“Good thing you’re stuck here, then,” she says with a grin.
I chuckle. “You know, my chest is killing me. I don’t think I should talk anymore.”
“Faker,” she teases.
I bite my lip, feeling the grin fade from my face as I draw up the memories. Memories that would be better off buried, but no matter how much I might want that, I am who I am because of my past. I can’t bury it any more than I could bury myself.
She doesn’t need to know everything, though. If I told her my story from start to finish, she’d run off before I even made it to the middle. She deserves to know about Karen. I can give her that much, especially if she is still thinking about signing the contract. The contract. The thought sends a jolt of excitement through my sore body. Our relationship has already deviated so far from the norm that I had almost forgotten.
Another time though. I need to be at my full strength to completely enjoy her. Besides, Brianne is special. I can’t risk pushing her too fast and scaring her away.
“It has been close to a year since I was with another woman,” I say, not admitting I know exactly how many months, weeks, and days it has been. Not admitting I wake up every morning with the memory of what happened to her digging into my conscious like a thorn. “Her name was Karen. She was a few years older than you. She had an MFA in art and she loved to paint. I met her through the same site you found me on.
“I decided to call things off early. She was paid the full contract fee and I thought that was the end of it. But she was found dead in her apartment a few days later. Turned out her rebound boyfriend considered himself a dom. Except his idea of BDSM was...”
I lower my head. The shame and guilt that are normally my constant companions rise to their full force, feeling as if they might break me at any moment with their intensity. To my surprise, Brianne puts a hand on my arm. Her touch is soothing. I focus on her hand against my skin and regain a little of my control.
“His idea of BDSM was beating her to death.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” she says.
I huff a dry laugh. “Turns out I can. It’s pretty easy, actually.”
“I’m serious, Jackson. You couldn’t have known that would happen.”
“Maybe if I had paid more attention to her. Maybe if I hadn’t been so jaded.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not your fault,” she leans down to hug me gently. “It’s not your fault,” she whispers.
Her words punch straight through the haze of darkness that surrounds me. I’ve spent a long time thinking of how horrible I would look to anyone who knew about Karen and I. I’ve thought of how they would see me as a cold, heartless billionaire playboy who used and threw away a young woman. They’d see that my carelessness cost Karen her life. They’d hate me, and I’d be right beside them in their hatred.
There’s no hatred in Brianne’s big blue eyes. Only compassion.
“You really are special,” I say.
She frowns, shaking her head. “I’m not. I’m just a college student who writes forgettable fiction.”
“I didn’t even read it. You bring me something you wrote by tomorrow morning. I’ll read it and give you my honest opinion.”
“Oh, God. No, no way. I only submitted it to you in the first place because I had to keep my grade. I could never--no. Thank you, but no.”
“I don’t remember making a request,” I say darkly.
The silence hangs between us and I love every second of it. I can see the full meaning of my words circulating in her head, raising questions, sparking images. She can feel it. I may have started soft with her. I may
have let her begin this slow, but if she’s going to be involved with me, she needs to learn sooner or later that I’m her Dominant. She needs to learn to submit.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll bring it.”
“Good,” I say, biting back the urge to order her to call me sir. Not yet. She’s new to this, and I need to make sure I don’t overwhelm her. “Now let me get some rest, Princess.”
She nods her head quickly, taking a step back at my tone. “Right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed so--”
“No,” I say. “I’m glad you came. I’d like you to keep coming when you have time. And that is a request, not an order,” I add with a smirk.
She smiles and bites her lip. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
She turns to leave, giving me a tantalizing view of her perfect ass, making me wish it didn’t feel like I just drove into a wall at two hundred miles per hour a week ago. As the door closes behind her, my mind circles back to the way the steering column detached from the axle. That’s not a normal car issue. Someone fucked with the car. Someone wanted me to crash. And I don’t think whoever did it was expecting me to survive.
I grit my teeth and clench my fists until the tender muscles in my arms burn with pain. Those fucking businessmen from the Dominican Republic tried to have me killed, and it nearly worked.
Fuck.
I’m not sure how this sort of thing usually gets handled, but I know one thing for sure. If they think I’m just some rich asshole they can push around, they are going to learn how seriously wrong they are. I’ll make sure of it.
9
Brianne
I rub my bleary eyes as I wait in the hospital elevator. I tried to cover my sleepless night with makeup this morning, but I look as tired as I feel. I spent almost all night agonizing over what part of my story I would show to Jackson. I know he said he didn’t read the original chapter I sent him, but there’s a chance he really did. After all, he said it was forgettable, wouldn’t it make sense that he doesn’t remember reading it?
So I picked a new chapter and spent hours tweaking and rearranging it until it was as close to perfect as I could get it. It still has a long way to go though, and I’m seriously fighting the urge to just turn and run while I still can.
I stop in a bathroom before heading to his room and look myself over. I’m wearing gray leggings and a long, loose t-shirt with an equal length cardigan. I tried to make it look like I wasn’t dressing to impress him, but I also didn’t want to look like a slob. I spend a few minutes second guessing my success before heading to his room.
I find him propped up, looking out the window with that distant, pained expression I’ve seen on his face a few times before. I still can’t believe he blames himself for what happened with the woman before me. I did feel a little uneasy hearing how he explained his relationship with her because, well, it sounds a lot like me. I guess I was just being naïve for not considering how many times he has probably gone through more or less this exact same routine before. After all, he’s in his mid-thirties and looks like a movie star. Of course he has been with tons of women.
It’s just harder to swallow that reality when he tells me I’m special and calls me things like princess. It makes me start to think I really am special to him and unique. I can live with being just the latest woman in his long list of conquests, though. The part I have trouble coping with is how it sounded like it was easy for him to cut things off with Karen. He didn’t say why he ended it. He just said he broke things off early.
I can’t even imagine how terrible I would feel if I put myself out there by signing his crazy contract, entering into the BDSM scene with him only to be cut loose. I can’t think about that. It’s selfish and pointless. I know I feel something between us. And every time I see the pain in his eyes it draws me closer, making me want to soothe it away.
Despite all my good intentions, there’s still the distant hope that being with Jackson will break me from the writing paralysis. I already got a taste of it when he came to my dorm and I was able to turn it into part of my story. The writer in me is so hungry for more that I can’t quite tell where that part ends and where the rest begins. I briefly consider coming clean and telling him about it all, but he already has so much on his plate, and I’m also terrified he will cut me loose like Karen if he knows the full truth.
“Are you feeling any stronger today?” I ask.
He turns his head toward me. His dark and gorgeous features are even more stunning with the sunlight streaming from the window across his face. Even battered from the accident, his body is still a statement of power. Broad shoulders, chiseled arms, and lean, muscular legs. He’s stronger than any man I’ve ever seen, and not just physically. I remember the way his voice had the power of a whip to compel me. His command was iron. It was steel. Unbreakable and unapologetic. And obeying him gave me a thrill I don’t fully understand. All I know is I want more.
“Good girl,” he says, ignoring my question. “You brought the story.”
I nod, clutching the pages tightly to my chest.
“Bring them here,” he commands.
It’s that tone again. My feet are moving before I even decided to obey. My chest tingles with warmth. There’s an excitement in obeying him that I can’t describe. I hand him the papers and swallow hard, waiting.
He smirks up at me and starts to read.
“Wait. You’re not going to read it right now are you?”
The look he gives me stops me short. There’s fire in his cold blue eyes. Without saying a word, he silences me. I sit in the chair at his bedside and wait, feeling the reality of what kind of man he is start to settle around me like a dark haze. Am I really ready for this? Maybe he was just playing nice to get past my defenses, to get his foot in the door, and now he’s going to take the gloves off and see if I have what it takes to be his… I don’t even know what signing his contract would make me. His slave? His pet?
After a moment, he looks up and the hardness in his features softens. “Don’t worry, Princess. I can already tell from the first few sentences your writing isn’t forgettable. Not by a fucking long shot.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, slumping forward slightly with relief. Maybe he’s just being kind because he can see how nervous I am, but I don’t know. Jackson Pierce doesn’t strike me as the type of man to sugarcoat things. I think he might really tell me to my face that my writing was garbage if he believed it.
I wait for ten minutes as he reads the chapter, enjoying the opportunity to study his perfection. The longer I look at him, the better he looks. I remember in my freshman year of college, we had to visit an art museum for art history class. When I looked at paintings by some of the masters, the first glance took my breath away, but the longer I studied the details, I was continually more impressed. I was able to understand the perfection by smaller degrees and break it down detail by detail.
Jackson is no different.
From the thickness of his eyelashes to the powerful lines of his profile, he is perfection, and studying him only makes me wonder more and more how in the world I ended up involved with him. I’m practically just a girl compared to him. If this thing between us progresses to where he seems to want… he’ll have to teach me everything. There will be nothing I can do to surprise him or that he hasn’t already seen.
I’m about to descend full-force into a whirlwind of self-doubt when he puts the pages down and raises his eyebrows at me. “It’s good. Really good. If I was your publisher, there would be some details I’d want to work with you on to make this more on target with the market, but fuck. Your descriptions are incredible. The way you can describe the smell of the trash can and juxtapose that with the trouble in the relationship a few lines later was masterful. Seriously.”
I rush over to the bed and hug him tight. He sucks in a sharp breath and I realize I’m hurting him and pull back.
“I didn’t say to stop,” he chuckles.
I smile, blushi
ng. “Sorry. I just… thank you. My parents always… they just never--” I put a hand to my forehead, shaking my head. “I’m not making any sense.”
“Your parents don’t like your writing?”
“No,” I say. “It’s not that. My mom works for minimum wage at a grocery store and my dad unloads trucks in a factory. I am the first one to go to college in my family, and I guess they just thought I’d go on to get a degree in engineering or something. You know? They thought because I had the grades to get in, I could do anything and get a career and make a life better than theirs.
“They’ve always been supportive, so I feel like a brat for even saying anything. I just knew they were disappointed when I said I was going to be a writer. They saw all the potential they never had an opportunity to reach for and they think I’m squandering it I guess. I know you’re not saying you’d publish me or anything. It’s just good to hear something positive about my writing for once.
“To tell the truth, I’m running out of time to declare a major. If I can’t prove to myself I can finish a book, I don’t see how I can let myself major in creative writing. I guess I’d have to go after something like, I don’t know, statistics,” I say.
Jackson’s mouth pulls up in a faint grin. “Who knows what could happen if you keep at it. I’d have to read the whole book, of course, but I think there’s potential. It’d be a fucking waste to let you become a statistician. Besides, there are too many guys in those classes. I can’t have them gawking at you.”
The whole book. The only way he’s reading that is if I take things all the way with him. But now the slight guilt of feeling like I could be using him feels more real. Can I really live with myself if I do this? I just wish it didn’t have to be all or nothing with him. He hasn’t said as much, but I feel as though he’s only keeping me around because he hopes I’ll sign the contract. And if I do that, what’s to stop him from throwing me aside like he did Karen?
He’s like a predator. He’s trying to capture me, but the moment I sign myself over to him, what’s stopping him from getting bored?
Bad for the Billionaires: A Bad Boy Billionaire Bundle Page 36