by Lily White
He lifted his eyes to stare at me like I was the dumbest ass to ever walk the planet. “Because she didn’t want him to touch her, Aiden. He’s not the man she loves.”
Bullshit. Rebecca would give her left leg to prove to me she was more than just a Courtesan.
Tossing my cards on the table, I finally gave in to my need to sulk alone, but before standing, I remembered another issue Anthony should be apprised of. “Paul paid Sarah the money to keep quiet. Apparently it wasn’t enough. I’m going to step in at this point. Eliminate the problem.”
“And how do you plan to accomplish such a task?” Setting his cards on the table, Anthony sat back in his seat, genuine concern written across his expression. “Perhaps it’s best we step away at this point, Aiden. What does the Society give either of us anymore? I’m a Master in name only and you haven’t trained a new Courtesan in over a year. Neither of us need the money. We have more than we can hope to spend in a lifetime. Isn’t it time you retire?”
I was on my feet before I answered him, bottle firmly in hand. It didn’t surprise me that Anthony was so quick to dismiss our lifestyle. He’d retired the moment he fell in love with Sera. But was I the type of man who could do the same? Being a Master had always been my life. I was a young man when first introduced to the Society.
“Regardless of my plans for life, the issue needs to be resolved. If just one of the Owners or Masters is exposed, we all would go down eventually.”
“I have a private island,” he reminded me, “in a country that won’t give much of a damn about demands made by the States. We’d be safe there to live out the rest of our lives in luxury.”
Trapped, he meant. We’d be trapped and unable to ever return to the States. Everything I owned was here. Everything I cared about tied to this place. My luxury in life included not being a hunted man.
“I haven’t yet decided what I plan to do about her, but I do know she needs to be silenced permanently. There’s too much at stake.”
Unable to continue arguing with him, I left the room, liquor sloshing in the bottle as I roamed the halls in route to my office. I was so pissed off at the clusterfuck my life had become, I didn’t think to check on Rebecca - to discover what bed she chose to sleep in tonight.
Closing the door behind me, I sat on the edge of my desk, head weary, shoulders tense. It felt like the walls were closing in on me, giving me no hope to escape being crushed.
The possibility of losing Rebecca.
A Courtesan whose game I hadn’t yet figured out.
A woman who threatened to destroy my livelihood all because she was far too greedy and couldn’t decide how much money was enough.
On their own, those problems wouldn’t have been enough to freeze me in place, but combined, they were a noose tightening around my neck.
The bottom of the bottle clinked lightly against the surface of my desk, the sound followed by the light rap of knuckles against my office door.
Lifting my head, I expected Anthony to come walking through, determined to convince me to give everything up.
“Come in,” I barked, not caring to conceal the violent frustration I was feeling.
The door opened slowly, a beautiful woman with strawberry blond hair stepping through.
“Rebecca,” I breathed out, hating how just her presence was a weight lifting from my shoulders.
She shut the door behind her, leaning against it while I took a moment to appreciate the powerful outfit she wore.
She even looked like a Master when she wanted. Strong. Formidable. Calm and callous.
Lifting my eyes to hers, I waited patiently for what she’d come to say.
A nervous twitch of her lips, hands moving to straighten the skirt down her legs, a roll of shoulders that was an outward sign she was building her resolve.
Pushing from the door, she crossed the room to stand inches from me, the scent of her bringing my body to life and chasing away my exhaustion.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “and after giving our situation a lot of thought, I think it’s time we had a long talk.”
Well, fuck.
I couldn’t be sure, but after the night I had, I hoped this wasn’t just one more shit hand the universe had decided to deal me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
REBECCA
It wasn’t often that Aiden surprised me with his behavior. Stoic. Reserved. A bomb with fuse lit and waiting to explode. That was the man who trained me. His temper was cold. His buttons few and far between. Only those who knew him well knew how to read between his jagged lines to understand clearly what made him tick.
Never once had I seen him stumble. Never once had I seen him frazzled. Never once had I seen him so inebriated that his cruel blue eyes were unfocused, an odd warmth creeping in to breathe him to life.
Taking advantage would be wrong.
But then, in this life, only the weak chose to do what’s right.
“You’ve been drinking,” I observed aloud, stepping close, breathing in the scent of scotch that mixed with his cologne. “You’re still in the same clothes as yesterday.”
Was it possible what I’d said to him last time I was in this office had actually breached his walls to sink in and fester?
Aiden Oliver would never be so rumpled, so haphazard, so out of control.
His gaze wavered, slipping down to my breasts, back to my face as a smile curled his sculpted lips. “What would you like to talk about?”
Braced against his desk, the tips of Aiden’s fingers slid against a half empty bottle. I plucked it from his reach, took a long swallow because in this moment I needed the liquid courage. I wasn’t sure where each of us stood. Not after last night. Not after I spoke the painful truth then left him to drown in the depths of it.
It had all been a game.
My game.
Yet I was the player who was cornered.
I placed the bottle down, careful to set it far from his reach.
My confession could affect him in multiple ways. Perhaps the alcohol was to my benefit.
“I want you to teach me again.”
He laughed, his shoulders shaking once with the bark of sound. Lifting his hand, he traced the back of one finger down the line of my jaw. “Look where that got us last time. How many more secrets do you need in order to bury me?”
“You’re drunk,” I accused.
A glimmer in his stare, mischievous and secretive. “Not so much that I don’t see the threat standing in front of me.” A roll of his shoulders, eyes closing and opening again. “The question is how drunk am I? Are you willing to chance that it’s not enough to weaken me?”
“I need help, Aiden, and you’re the only person who can show me what I want to know.”
Voice husky and deep. “Get on your knees and beg.”
“No,” was my immediate answer. “Not tonight. Not when it goes against why I’m here.”
Pulling his hand from my face, he wrapped his fingers over the edge of the desk, his biceps taut beneath his dress shirt, cold fire burning behind sapphire pools. “And what makes you think I’d so easily give all my tricks away? Especially when you have nothing to offer in return.”
It was shameful to admit a weakness, my pulse thrumming in my throat to confess failure. “I couldn’t do it, Master.” Shaking my head, I hated how easily the word fell from my lips, but in this he had me beat. My heart wasn’t stone. Not like his.
He was exhausted, his voice so abnormally soft. “What couldn’t you do, Pet?”
Air rattled in my lungs. “I couldn’t let him touch me.” My head hung down as if the failure was too heavy to bear, the truth too pathetic to speak louder than a whisper. Aiden would cling to that failure on my part. Would sip on it like the finest of champagne.
Seconds passed in silent contemplation, my words hanging heavy between us.
Aiden sighed, his frustration thick, “Maybe the universe doesn’t hate me so much after all.”
I glanced up to see a slight
smile tilting his lips.
“What do I do?”
Pressing a finger beneath my chin, Aiden tilted my head to his, studying me for what felt like forever before admitting, “He’s playing you. The first thing you do is understand that. Chris isn’t the abused man you think he is.”
I didn’t need to hear it from Aiden’s lips to know it. Something about Greyson had been bugging me all along. His ability to go from crazed animal to perfect pet. His lack of fear to grab a razor from my hand but not kill me with it. His laughter following the visits from Aiden which would have made any person scream, or at least, cry. “I know. Any time I let him near me it feels like he’s somehow winning. As if I’m the prize and he’ll do whatever it takes to conquer.”
A thumb tracing the fullness of my bottom lip. “He wants you. What man wouldn’t?”
“You,” I answered, allowing the pain to bleed from my voice for him to taste. I learned something today. Something important. Something I hoped would end this game with Aiden just where I wanted him.
Aiden did want me, did care. He was just too fucking stubborn to see it. All this time he’d been telling me to see him when he was so blind he couldn’t even see himself.
Sometimes to win a game, all a person needs to do is stop playing it. Sometimes telling the truth is enough to knock your opponents off their guard.
Perhaps my truth would be enough to open Aiden’s eyes to what his ownership of me had meant all along.
“You sold me to a monster. He could have killed me before you found me again. He could have butchered me!”
No regret in his formidable stare, not one fucking ounce of it. “Do you hate me for what I did?”
“I should.”
He grinned. “Did you learn from it?”
The question knocked me off balance. “What could I have possibly learned?”
A gentle tap of his palm against my cheek. “The difference between a Master and a monster.”
No. It wasn’t enough, this bullshit excuse for his actions. Aiden had no interest in teaching me to be more than the woman who sat at his feet. He’d never intended for us to end up here. I wouldn’t allow his silky smooth lies to distract me. “You didn’t care what happened to me. Not then, and I’m finally understanding not now.”
Damn it, I thought, tell me I’m wrong.
On a groan that would have been comical if I weren’t so mad, Aiden scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m going to regret drinking before having this conversation.”
“It would be the first time you’ve regretted anything.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. By making the claim, you’ve only proven you haven’t yet gotten into my head.”
Or maybe I finally had. It was clear in that photo after I took more time to look at it, retribution paid not because Aiden was asserting his authority over me, but because he was angry that Greyson had dared hurt me.
All it took was for me to understand the truth of what Aiden had done.
We stared at each other for what felt like an hour, neither moving, neither speaking. As if the world itself had stopped turning so our souls could slip free of the miasma and detritus to take this one, heated moment to open our eyes and see.
“What do you need from me?”
Forbidding my lips to quiver with the pain and heartache surging through me, I made the choice to strip off my armor, to lay down my sword, and to do the one thing Aiden had never been able to accomplish. I spoke with utmost honesty.
My strength was in choosing not to pretend to be strong.
“I need to hate you. I need to stop wanting you. I need for you to do something so monstrous that I have no problem letting you go.” My voice shook over the confession, but I held his stare regardless.
How many times had I willingly drowned in glimmering pools so blue? How would I swim to the surface to save what was left of my life if I knew I would only drown again?
“I’m not a cold hearted bastard like you. I want to be. God, you have no idea how badly I want to be. There is so much freedom in not giving a damn about what you destroy, but that’s not who I am, Aiden. It never has been. I care. About everything. About you. But mostly about me.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Tears that would have shamed me a few days ago but I now shed with pride. I can feel. I can have compassion. I can burn with so much fire that I’ll never be dead inside.
Argue with me, Aiden. Tell me I’m wrong!
His throat moved on a visible swallow, his jaw ticked beneath unfathomable eyes. Aiden could go one of two ways in this moment, both of which frightened me, but only one would set me free.
Would he open my cage, or would he clip my wings?
Crossing his arms over his chest, he erected a wall between us, the man I knew on the first night he had me bubbling to the surface. I could see it in his blank expression, the professional mask, the apathetic state that meant I was being assessed. Pulse pounding in my throat, I met that stare, refused to crumble beneath it. I wasn’t the timid woman anymore that feared abuse.
I’d survived him.
I’d loved him.
I’d remained who I’d always been despite his belief that he’d changed me.
Aiden had been a wake up call in that dark room five years in the past and I was the wake up call now, letting him know that he’d been outclassed.
“To be named a Master within the Society, you must successfully train a Courtesan to acquiesce to their new owner. You must not break them into a pitiable slave, but create in them a desire to serve.”
Damn him. “What does this have to do with anything? You’ve been telling me this since Christopher arrived.”
He blinked, his expression unchanging. “Because to be named a Master is to be set free, Rebecca. You can’t be Courtesan and Master both. If you succeed, the Society will tie my hands. At least when it comes to you.”
Stumbling back, I caught myself with the heavy thud of a heel against the floor, shaken by the admission, scouring to understand why Aiden would have let any of this happen if that were the truth. “But Anthony said this type of situation had never happened before.”
“They’ve been looking for a way to cripple me for a long time. How best to do that than to threaten the only possession that mattered enough for me to keep? They can’t touch my money, Rebecca. They can’t soil my reputation. The only weak spot I’ve ever had was you.”
Aiden grew quiet, his eyes softening. “We all have our choices to make. And if you need help, Pet, I’ll give it to you.”
Pushing away from the desk, he backed me away, cocking a brow before commenting, “Never let anyone force you to give up your personal space. Lesson number one. Stand your damn ground. Now jump up to sit on the desk so I can teach you a few things.”
Thoroughly confused by his behavior, I found myself walking to the desk as instructed, stopping when I’d planted my hands on the surface to hop up. “Wait. What are you teaching me?”
Having crossed the room already to stand near the office door, Aiden turned my direction and met my gaze. “I’m teaching you the art of seduction. Not from the mind of a Courtesan, not from the position of the one being trained. But from the position of the one doing the training.”
“But that’s the problem. I couldn’t let him touch me.”
“Because you’re still associating sex with emotion. Cut that shit out right now. They are two different things.”
Shaking my head, I argued. “I didn’t feel anything for him when I fucked him in the bathroom.”
Sorrow saturated his face. “Yes you did, Pet. You were fucking him to get even with me. You were tugging at the end of your leash instead of demanding I let go of it.”
I hopped up to sit on the edge of the desk. “Is that what I just did? Did I demand you let go?”
Or was I begging for you to promise me freedom while asking me to make the choice to stay?
Nodding his head once, “I’m sure it’s the best thing for both of us. I never inten
ded to keep a Courtesan. I’m not the man who needs entanglements.” He paused, the space between us heavy. “You have sharp claws, Rebecca. Sharp enough that you don’t even know when you’re digging your way under a person’s skin. But none of that matters now, does it? What matters is that you prove yourself worthy enough for the Society to set you free.”
Why was my heart breaking when he was giving me exactly what I thought I wanted? “And what will you do?”
Aiden clasped his hands behind his back, his expression hard and unreadable. “What I do best. Take another woman, train her, sell her, rinse and repeat.”
Not if I could help it.
Aiden wasn’t being honest with himself, wasn’t being honest with me. What I’d said to him had been intended to make him see me as a woman he couldn’t stand to let go, but instead of admitting the truth, he’d erected his typical wall. I was ready and willing to tear the damn thing down, brick by brick, if it meant I could end this fucked up game.
I needed two things from Aiden Oliver. The first was to set me free. He’d given me that, or at least the promise. But the second was for him to ask me to stay. To return the choice to me he took so long ago. To realize that even though he’d never said the words ‘I love you’ in the five years we’d been together, all of his actions had proven he does.
He’d given me revenge on my ex-boyfriend and his father. Two men who’d worked hand in hand to hurt me in the most vicious of ways.
He’d discovered who I was inside and provided me a life to explore it.
He’d kept me when everything inside him had wanted to toss me away.
He’d always carried me to our bed because without me by his side, he would never sleep.
He’d punished Greyson not for stepping on his toes, but for hurting the woman he loved.
Aiden loved me. He was just too fucking stubborn to admit it. So to get what I needed from the man standing in front of me, I needed to tear apart the bastard he believed himself to be and rip out his soul to show him who he really was.
“And if I told you I would stop you from training a new Courtesan, would you believe me?”