by Adira August
Janet’s dark eyes flashed, and she tossed her mane of shiny black hair back over her shoulder. “Do you think I’m under some obligation to explain my orders to my employees? Do you always assume you are the smartest person in every goddamned conversation, Avia Rivers?”
“I’m sorry,” Avia said quietly. “I’m really sorry.”
J.J. finished her drink. They ate in silence for a few more minutes.
But Avia wasn’t ready to let it all go. “That’s why you fired me. Because I disrespected you. But why did you stop speaking to me?”
J.J. sighed. “Think about it. The trial was ongoing, you know that. I wasn’t allowed to speak to you, even if you were in the hospital, not while you were under subpoena. I had to get Geo to have corporate send you flowers to cover our legal asses.
“No one could get close to you; Ben had the hospital locked down.” She signaled the server to bring another round of drinks. “I went by your place after the trial, when the hospital said you were discharged.”
“You did?” Avia had been certain J.J. had cut her off entirely.
“You weren't there. Your neighbor said you hadn't been there. You never contacted me, Avia. Or Carson. We had no way to know what was going on. Ben pretty much quit speaking to me, and you never seemed to go back to your apartment.”
“That’s true. I was with him until a few days ago.”
J.J. blinked like she’d been hit with high beams. “You’ve been living at the castle?” Avia nodded, her mouth full of fresh margarita. J.J. put her fork down. “As what?”
“What do you mean?” Avia asked. “It was all over the news when Ben announced we were dating.”
“I thought it was a cover story because that Irene woman outed you. Benedict Hart doesn’t have long-term relationships.” Her eyes narrowed. “So. Now you’re back home and calling old friends. He must have dismissed you. I assume we’re having dinner because you need a job since he stopped footing your bills?”
J.J.’s twisted interpretation of her life and relationship startled Avia. Yesterday she might have burst into tears. Maybe it was just being around J.J. again in the place they’d eaten so many times, discussing her latest assignment, but Avia slipped into investigative reporter mode and exchanged indignation for insight.
“Why did you hire me back? After you fired me, you hired me back right away. Why?”
“Because Ben told me to. Just like he told me to keep you in the courthouse after the judge barred you from the courtroom. He wanted you inside until he got a security team in place.”
“Ben was in Macau,” Avia said.
“They have phones there, Avia. He called me.”
“And you just do what he says?” Avia waited for an answer but J.J.’s text alert sounded. She busied herself reading and answering.
“I remember now,” Avia told her when J.J. put her phone away. “You’d just found out I was sleeping with him. We’d kept it secret. Then you gave me the orders, the ones you didn’t explain, and fired me.”
J.J. ignored her and pushed her plate away, reaching for her purse. “I’ll get the check.”
“When you gave me the erotica assignment and sent me to interview him, you told me you were his instructor in college. ‘Old friends’ you said. How long were you lovers?”
J.J. left the table. The server appeared. “Can I get you anything else?”
Avia managed to find a smile for him. “No. Thank you. I’ve had enough.”
“YOU DO NOT HAVE a defiance disorder,” Ellis Rivers said firmly.
Avia had the cell in her skirt pocket and earbuds in place as she put away groceries. “How do you know, Mom? Srsly, maybe it wasn’t that bad when I was little.”
“Because you weren’t. And aren’t. In fact, you did what you were told without a lot of drama, as I recall. It was Talia who’d roll her eyes and sigh and drag her feet and procrastinate. You’d have thought cleaning her room was a medieval torture.”
“I offended pretty much everybody the last couple days.”
“Oh, well, that can happen. That’s not defiance; it’s just what you do. You’re a very determined, focused person. You always were. You set your eyes on a goal and don’t stop until you get there. Remember when Dad got the pool table?”
Geoffrey Rivers had remodeled the garage into a kind of adult playroom where the professor of medieval history built the castles and hovels and churches of the High to Late Middle Ages. Avia spent every moment she could in “Dad’s room.” When she was little, she stayed out of the way, handing him things until she was old enough to really help.
When she was thirteen, he made some room and brought home a pool table he’d acquired at a bargain price from an off-campus bar that had closed. Avia announced she would play until she could run the table. She played 8-ball for hours, before and after school for six months. One night, she called the family into the garage and demonstrated. Three times.
“You did exactly what you set out to do,” her mother said. “And then you were on to your next challenge. Look...”
Ellis paused. Avia stopped arranging cans in the cupboard and leaned on the counter. Her mother had that I’m going to say something difficult tone.
“I’m listening,” Avia said.
“Neither you nor your sister will tell me what happened, exactly, last fall. But it was a big thing. Talia struggled for a long time. I imagine she still does. As for you … When you were little you didn’t trust anyone. You didn’t trust me or your father to take care of Talia. You were a baby, too, Avienne. But you had to control everything around her. You remember that at all?”
“Not really, not back that far, but I’ve heard all the stories.” She moved to her dining table with an orange. “Go ahead.”
“Well, right around the time Dad got that pool table, you stopped following your sister around.That whole thing just faded away. Until your father passed. Then it came back, only super-sized. You had to control everything. You didn’t trust me to make a grocery list unless you checked it.”
Avia stopped peeling the orange, feeling her face warm. “Yeah. Sorry. I was really obnoxious.”
“No, you were grieving. And afraid, I think. Honey, there has to be some fallout from what you went through. It sounds to me like you stopped trusting everybody, again.”
They were both quiet for a minute. Avia loved this about her mom, that she was willing to wait for Avia or Talli—or anyone, really—to think things through.
“I don’t want to be like this,” Avia said, finally. “I feel so alone this way. What do I do?”
“I don’t know. Some people do therapy; that helped your sister. Some people just wait it out. I’m a fan of confronting things head-on. Do you know what you’re most afraid of? Is it being attacked again?”
“No.” She set the peel aside and pulled the sections apart. “The thing that scares me most is losing Ben. If I’m somebody who needs to control everything, I won’t be someone he’ll want to be with.”
“My impression at Christmas was he’s fairly bonkers over you,” Ellis said. “He was there, too, when all that violence happened. He went through something, too. He needs you, too, Avia. To believe in him, again.”
“I know. But …”
“You don’t stand on life’s platform waiting for the trust train to arrive, Avienne. Trust is a decision you make.”
Avia pushed the orange away. “You now what, Mom? Right this minute? I don’t want to make another decision. Ever.”
AVIA SHOWERED QUICKLY and brought her bed pillows out to her couch. She pulled her grandmother’s old quilt around herself and found something to binge-watch. She’d come to the conclusion as she’d dressed in old flannel pjs, that she was suffering from an extended bout of emotional flu. The only difference was she didn’t have a fever and she wasn’t coughing up something disgusting.
As she lay there, watching comfortingly familiar characters do familiar things in an old nighttime drama, she thought about Ben.
She thought about how much she wished he were there, lying behind her, arms around her, just being there. How much she wished she’d fallen in love with a guy who wasn’t a billionaire. Who didn’t attract evil people eager to make their fortune off his fortune. How much she wished he lived in a house that wasn’t called the castle and didn’t resemble a fortress.
How much she wished she wasn’t so sad.
More, she wished she didn’t know the reason she was sad. She wished she didn’t know she’d told her mother the truth and told a lie to herself.
Do you know what you’re most afraid of?
The thing that scares me most is losing Ben. If I’m somebody who needs to control everything, I won’t be someone he’ll want to be with.
She knew it was true, that the thing she was most afraid of was losing him. But not because he wouldn’t want her. The truth, she knew while tears flooded down her face, was that she didn’t want him.
The terrible pain of it tore at her heart and cramped her stomach. She sobbed into her grandmother’s quilt, in agonizing grief for the loss of the man who’d been perfect. The strong, caring, thoughtful man who would, she knew, do anything for her or her family or friends. The sexy, smart, decent man she liked so much. The confident, experienced Dom who’d opened her up to herself. The only man she’d ever want to be with.
But she couldn’t.
Repeated loud knocking at her door finally broke through. Ben was shouting in the hallways. “Avia! Open the door. At least let me see you’re alright.”
She dragged herself off the couch and opened the door a crack. He was there. Of course, he was. Bigger than life, compelling and concerned, holding all the answers to her every need. Ben who loved her. Ben who would die for her sister. Ben …
“I’m okay. You have to go.”
But he was already inside with his arms around her, dragging her to the sofa, sitting down, pulling her against his chest, kissing her hair. “It’s okay; I’m here.”
He’d said exactly that, just that way, when he’d swept into the lawyer’s office and got between her and the cops who thought she could be a murderer. He had taken over, gotten her away, dealt with them himself. He’s here, everything would be okay.
Except that he was here, and that’s why nothing was okay.
She pushed away from him and he didn’t try to stop her. He was perfect that way, also. He always let her choose how much space she needed. She huddled up at the other end of the sofa, the sofa so small there was barely six inches of space between them and wept into her knees. She clutched the quilt and pulled it over herself.
Ben waited until she quieted, and her sobs turned to small heaving gasps and hiccoughs. He got up and brought her a cool, damp. hand towel and bottle of cold water.
She looked away from him, at nothing. “I always laughed at the idea of love at first sight. But then there was you—in the sunlight on the terrace, the breeze teasing the curls that always fall down on your forehead. Easy grin, dimples, intelligence, humor. Powerful and honest … You scared me. Right away, I was so scared of liking you so much so fast.”
She opened the water.
“Love at first fuck, maybe? You were perfect. In everything. In the way you touched me and knew what I needed and wanted, even when I didn’t. In the way you cared for me. What did it take, Ben? A week for us to commit? For you to give me the collar and your word you’d be faithful to me?”
There was a long pause as she unwound herself and crossed her legs, facing him, finally looking at him. “And then all that awful shit happened. And we came out the other side. Only I have the recording, you see. Not the one Hunter gave me, the one in my head. You know the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness? The last thing I felt?”
He shook his head.
“Total despair. Terror. Absolute terror. Because the last thing I saw was a guy shooting at you, following you with the muzzle of his automatic, flashes with every shot, you diving for the floor, gun held out in both hands, the look of a fearless killer on your face. Only you weren’t shooting back at him.”
Her voice was tight and high, and everything she’d kept inside so many months came out in the scream of rage. “You were shooting at the guy who was running at me!”
Ben’s head jerked back as if she’d struck him. Avia jumped up off the couch. “You were dead! I saw you die! You came in here and shouted at me because you were afraid? I saw you die!”
The tears came flooding back. “You didn’t protect yourself! You died for me! I can’t do it; don’t you get it? I can’t sit around waiting for planes to crash or assassins to shoot or cars to blow up. I can’t spend my life waiting for you to die!”
Avia sank to the floor. And it wasn’t crying that consumed her now, but a deep wailing grief for all she’d lost, because she knew she must let him go. Yet, he was her life and her heart. And she was a coward who could not breathe or think or live alongside the fear of the pain that would come when he died, as she knew he must.
Ben grabbed the pillows and the old quilt and got down on the floor with her. When she tried to pull away this time, he wouldn’t allow it. He put the pillows under their heads and the quilt over them and pulled her back against his front.
The TV light flickered over them as she keened and wept. After after a long time, she quieted. Her body relaxed into his, and in a while her breathing told him she slept.
When he was sure she was deeply asleep, Ben disengaged from her, propping a couch pillow against her back. He texted Woodward and made some arrangements. Afterward, he managed to move her, still mostly asleep, from the floor into his arms and carry her into the bedroom. He set an alarm for five a.m. and the phone to vibrate.
Then he wrapped Avia in his arms and they both slept.
Friday, March 10th, 2017
In the predawn darkness, Ben met Woodward and one of his security people in front of Avia’s condo. He handed his car key to the security man.
“Take the Volvo back, Blakewell. I’ll have Ms. Martinson take care of the rest,” Ben said, referring to his chief of security.
The young man’s lips pressed for a moment, but all he did was nod and get into the car.
After he was gone, Woodward handed Ben a garment bag. “The special items are inside, also.”
“You disapprove,” Ben said.
“Of the items?”
“I didn’t fire him, Wood. That’s as much as I can manage right now.”
“So there might come a time when you’ll trust him to carry a simple instruction to his boss?”
“Wood.” Ben’s voice carried a warning.
“He did everything right. Exactly as he was trained. If you or I or Henry Eustace found an apparent teenager cutting across the property at night like so many kids have done, I doubt any of us would have seen that kid as a suspicious person.”
Ben’s stare morphed from ice to fire.
Woodward saw it, ignored it, and went on. “I work for you for money, sir. I can work for someone else, for money. But Blakewell admires you, just like he admired Henry Eustace. Keeping him on this way? Reminding him every time you see him how much you blame him—don’t trust him? He needs to move on.”
“If you can work for somebody else, why do you work for me?”
“It’s really interesting around you.”
Ben tossed the garment bag back at Woodward and made a call. “It’s Hart. You awake enough? … Good. Woodward’s not going on the Macau trip, he’ll be here staffing Ms. Rivers. … Move everybody up one and put Blakewell on the detail. … He can sleep on the plane; it’s a long ride.” He clicked off.
Woodward remained impassive, holding the garment bag.
“C’mon.” Ben led the way back inside Avia’s building. “Take a station in the hall until I call you. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me that damned bag.”
AVIA AWOKE ALONE to the smell of coffee from the apartment above her. Then the memory of the nig
ht before swamped her every feeling and thought; every cell of her body seemed to ache.
Ben was gone. She was alone. The dull weight of it pressed down. Someday she might think of a reason to get out of bed. But at this moment—at this moment …
She got up so she wouldn’t pee in her bed.
She dragged herself the few steps to the bathroom. But emptying her bladder and bowels didn’t make her feel more hollow. Nothing could do that. She sat on the toilet for a long time. Not crying, just not motivated to move. One of her legs went to sleep, so she got up and wondered why she was bothering to wash her hands. Who’d know?
The smell of coffee was stronger. It made her mouth water. Life calling from a stranger’s kitchen. She stepped into the very short hall and turned into her bedroom.
The soft rustle of a newspaper page being turned reached her. Avia froze. She couldn’t possibly have heard that through a wall.
It was three steps to the kitchen/living area.
Ben Hart sat at her dining table with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. He looked up. “Get some coffee and join me.”
It was an order. She wondered briefly if she walked away or just stood there or went and turned on the TV, if he’d spank her. Put her across his firm thighs on the sofa or on her bed. Make her pull her own pants down. He liked that, watching her expose herself to him. Submit to him. Humiliate herself for him. She wasn’t wearing panties under her flannel pajama bottoms.
A warm energy grew and spread from the center of her body outward. Her face and even her hands heated. He’d spank her to orgasm, pausing now and then to stroke and probe and tease. Then continue with her spanking. Another layer, always somehow balancing the pain with the arousal. Breaching every defense she mustered against him. The deeply urgent ache of being denied her orgasm would heighten unbearably, making the pain of his wide palm connecting with each of her buttocks recede, even as that pain became more acute.