Being Hers (Irresistibly Bound Book 1)

by Anna Stone

  Mel crossed her arms. “Do you really have to do this, James?” Mel knew that James didn’t deserve her ire. But she didn’t care.

  “Yes. We do.” He threw his arms up in the air. “What the hell happened between you and Vanessa, Mel? You’ve been moping around here like a piece of you died. And I haven’t seen Vanessa like this since, well, Rose.”

  So James had seen Vanessa. That meant that Vanessa hadn’t completely disappeared. She was just avoiding Mel.

  “Look, I know that you two had a fight. But have you even talked about whatever it is that happened?”

  Mel shrugged.

  “Wait. Don’t tell me that Rose caused this. Did something happen the day that she came in?” James took Mel’s silence as confirmation. “Look, I still don’t know what happened between Rose and Vanessa, but I pieced together enough to know that you can’t trust her. Especially when it comes to Vanessa.”

  “It wasn’t Rose.” It wasn’t only Rose. Vicki had said the same thing. And Vanessa hadn’t denied any of it.

  James let out a frustrated groan. “Don’t you see it, Mel? You’re both exactly the same. Too stubborn to say what you’re really feeling. Afraid of getting your heart broken. Just talk to her, Mel. I’m sure you can work things out.”

  “It’s over between us, okay, James?” Mel yelled. “I don’t want to work things out. I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to see her ever again!”

  “Looks like you don’t have a choice.” He was looking over Mel’s shoulder.

  Mel turned. Vanessa was walking toward them. Mel sighed.

  “Talk to her, Mel. Your shift is almost over, anyway. Go.” James walked off into the back.

  Vanessa reached the bar. “Hi,” Vanessa said. “Can we talk?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” Mel turned away and began tidying up behind the bar.

  “I need to tell you the truth, Melanie. About everything. About Rose.”

  Mel hesitated.

  “Please, Melanie.”

  Mel balled her fists. She had never been able to resist Vanessa’s pleas. “Fine.”

  A few minutes later, they were seated at a booth at the quieter end of the club. A generous glass of whiskey sat before each of them. Vanessa had insisted on it. Mel was begrudgingly grateful.

  Vanessa took a long drink. She placed her glass down on the table. “I’m so sorry, Melanie. For the way that I treated you that night. For disappearing.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I’m…not very good at this. This is hard.”

  “This is hard? For you?” Mel’s voice cracked. “It’s been two weeks, Vanessa. Two fucking weeks since you yelled at me and told me to leave. And then nothing!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I tried to call you.” Hot tears formed in the corners of Mel’s eyes.

  “I know. I’m so sorry, Melanie. I was in a bad place and…” Vanessa closed her eyes for a moment. “I can explain. Or at least, I can try to.”

  Mel crossed her arms. Nothing that Vanessa could say would make her change her mind.

  “James told me that Rose came in here. He omitted the fact that she’d spoken to you until I pressed him. You never said anything.” She looked into Mel’s eyes searchingly, but Mel’s face was stone. “It was no coincidence that Rose came in here and spoke to you. She must have heard about you after I took you to the fundraiser. People gossip. Word gets around. She probably got jealous and decided to sabotage things. She’s like that. And for the past few weeks, she’s been… well, she’s the reason I’ve been so distracted lately.”

  For the first time, Mel noticed that Vanessa looked different. She was wearing jeans. A plain blouse. No makeup. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail instead of loose over her shoulders like usual. It was a far cry from the impeccably put-together woman Mel knew.

  “I’ll start at the beginning. I’ll start with what really happened with Rose. I didn’t abandon her, Melanie. I ended things because she was careless about her limits. And it nearly killed her.”

  Mel watched Vanessa take another drink. She was clearly struggling with this. Mel owed it to Vanessa to hear her out.

  “I met Rose years ago at Lilith’s Den. We were instantly drawn to each other. We were both deep into the BDSM scene at the time, her even more so than me. She was older and more experienced, which was why I never expected that things could go so wrong…” She trailed off, a distant look in her eyes. “It started as the two of us just having fun together. Then, she became my submissive. And eventually, we fell in love, and she became my girlfriend too. It was the first and last time I had ever mixed love and BDSM.”

  Mel felt a twinge of jealousy, but pushed it away.

  “Rose was a BDSM junkie. She was always chasing that high. She loved bondage more than anything. I learned shibari for her.”

  Mel thought back to her birthday when Vanessa had bound her up in all those knots. It only aggravated her even more.

  Vanessa pressed on. “Over time, the things that she wanted us to do together became more and more extreme. There were many occasions when I refused to do something she wanted because I felt it was too risky. But Rose would keep pushing. Sometimes I held firm, but occasionally I gave in.” A wistful look crossed her face. “I’ve never been good at saying no to the people I love. I just want so much to make them happy.”

  Vanessa’s words from that night after the fundraiser echoed in Mel’s mind. All these things I do, all the lengths I go to. It’s all to please you.

  “There were so many red flags. Rose was irresponsible and reckless from the start. She was always pushing limits in every area of her life and our relationship. She didn’t take things seriously. Didn’t respect my boundaries or her own. But I ignored the signs because I was in love with her.”

  Mel couldn’t help but empathize. She knew what it was like to be blind to someone’s faults because of love.

  “It’s no excuse, of course. Her safety was my responsibility. I should never have done anything I felt uncomfortable with. But one day, I agreed to do a very complex scene with her. Rose wanted to be tied up, gagged, and suspended from the ceiling. Suspension bondage is not for beginners. By then, I was experienced enough that I felt confident doing something like that. But no amount of experience changes the fact that if anything goes wrong, getting out of all those bonds is a long and difficult process. And it requires an incredible amount of trust on both sides. Which, until that point, I thought we had.” Vanessa stared down into her glass. “But there was something that Rose had kept from me. And I found out about it in the worst possible way.”

  Mel watched Vanessa as she gulped down the last of her drink.

  “We were at my apartment. In the playroom. I had tied Rose up in a way that immobilized her entire body, and I suspended her from the ceiling, just like she wanted. I was teasing her with a flogger. She had a gag in her mouth which made it difficult for her to communicate. But we had come up with signs for situations like that. Simple signs she could make with her hands, for things like ‘I’m okay,’ ‘stop,’ and her safe word. Rose had given me the okay several times. Everything was going well. Suddenly, she started gasping for air. Like she couldn’t breathe. And she was shaking, and crying, and…” Vanessa’s voice was so quiet that Mel could barely hear her. “I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. She thought she was going to die. And maybe she would have if I hadn’t acted quickly. I took the gag from her mouth and cut her down. I always kept scissors nearby just in case, but I didn’t think I’d ever need them. It took far too long to get her out of all the ropes. Those seconds, they felt like hours. I didn’t know what was happening to her. I called 911, frantic. And I held her until the ambulance arrived.”

  The pain in Vanessa’s voice made Mel’s heart ache.

  “They took her to the hospital. They treated her. She was fine in the end. But I didn’t know this at the time because I was detained by the police at the hospital. The scene that the paramedics were faced with when
they walked into my apartment must have looked suspicious from the outside. Not to mention all the marks on Rose’s body. The police had questions for me. They interrogated me about my relationship with Rose as if they didn’t believe that I was her girlfriend of two years. They took the fact that I didn’t even know about Rose’s condition to mean that our relationship wasn’t what I said it was. Because I should have known if I was that close to her. It took several hours and a phone call from my lawyer to clear it all up. And once I was released, Rose told me the truth.”

  “She’d had asthma her entire life. Serious asthma that had her in and out of the hospital. No one ever thinks of asthma as something that can be life-threatening. But it was for Rose. It almost killed her as a child on a few occasions. It was very traumatic for her. I think those memories are what had her so afraid that day in my playroom when she started to have trouble breathing…” Vanessa gripped her empty glass, her knuckles white. “Rose said that her asthma improved as she got older. She still had to take medication for it daily. And she still occasionally had attacks. But she hid it from everyone, including me. I don’t know why. Perhaps she deliberately kept it from me because she knew that I would never do anything extreme with her if I knew. Or perhaps she was just in denial about how serious her condition was.

  “But her secrecy made everything so much worse. She had an inhaler in her purse the entire time. It was on the coffee table, just a few feet from the playroom door. But I didn’t know it was there. And she was too incoherent to tell me about it. It wasn’t just the asthma. All the adrenaline running through her veins seemed to trigger a panic attack, which made everything worse. Not to mention she was already deep in subspace. You know what it’s like when you’re there. How detached you feel from reality, how hard it is to think, to feel.”

  Mel knew Vanessa was right about that. It would be terrifying to have something go wrong while in that headspace.

  “That incident shook us both to the core. I know in my head that what happened wasn’t my fault, but in my heart I can’t stop feeling like I failed to protect her.” Vanessa’s eyes were wet with tears. But she wouldn’t let them fall. “Rose wanted to keep going. To continue with our life, our relationship, like nothing had happened. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it. Every time I looked at her it was a reminder of how I let love cloud my judgment and nearly killed someone I loved. So I ended things with her.

  “She didn’t take it well. She’d show up at all the places she knew I’d be and beg me to take her back. But I couldn’t let it happen again. So I locked that playroom door forever. And I locked up my heart forever. I banned her from all the places I owned, hoping it would keep her away.

  “But it didn’t stop her. She kept calling me, begging me to take her back. Eventually, she stopped. I thought that was the end of it. But now and then, for whatever reason, she starts again. The phone calls I keep getting that I never answer? They’re not from work. They’re from her.”

  Mel spoke for the first time during Vanessa’s long confession. “Why do you put up with it? You could have changed your number, you could have blocked her. You don’t even answer her calls.” Mel didn’t mean to sound like she was blaming Vanessa, although she likely did. She just couldn’t understand why someone as strong as Vanessa would allow Rose to hold her hostage all this time.

  “Because I know her. I’ve seen firsthand the lengths she was willing to go to get me back. It bordered on stalking. So when it stopped, and all that was left was her calling me once in a while? I was relieved. I figured that if this was all I had to deal with I could handle it. And I think there was a part of me that saw it as a kind of penance.”

  Mel’s surprise turned into empathy. She knew what it was like to feel the guilt of something that wasn’t your fault. Her father leaving. Her mother’s resentment toward her. Kim’s unpredictable anger. She knew now that none of it was her fault. But it didn’t stop her from feeling like it was.

  Vanessa picked up her glass to drink and saw that it was empty. She placed it back down and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Rose ended up escalating her behavior again in the end. The night that she came into The Lounge and spoke to you wasn’t the first time she’d tried to slip past security recently. That night long ago when I came in to see you and ran off after talking to James? It was because she’d tried to get into the club just hours before. I was far too shaken to talk to you for the rest of the night. I never did apologize to you for that.” Vanessa smiled weakly. “It seems silly in comparison now.”

  Mel didn’t know what to say. She had no idea that any of this was going on.

  “Everything with Rose? It happened years ago. And it took a long time for me to get over it. Initially, I stayed away from BDSM altogether. But eventually, I found myself back at Lilith’s. And since then there have been other women, some of them submissives. And yes, there were a lot of them. I suppose I gained a reputation because of it, which is what Vicki hinted at when she spoke to you. I’m not proud of the way I behaved. But it was all because I didn’t want anyone to get too close. I felt that if I developed feelings for them, I couldn’t trust myself to be responsible. So I cut them loose before they could get too attached.” Vanessa looked up at Mel. “But then I met you.”

  Mel’s heart skipped a beat. The sudden affection in Vanessa’s eyes made her resolve waver.

  “I never intended to start anything with you. But I couldn’t help it. I was drawn to you. That night in the Scarlet Room, the first time I took you to Lilith’s Den? That was when I realized I was falling for you. And it terrified me. I considered ending things. But I couldn’t stay away.”

  Mel thought back to when she had been agonizing over whether she had scared Vanessa off. She had been wrong about the reason, but at least now she knew it wasn’t all in her imagination.

  “And that night two weeks ago at Lilith’s when you were angry with me. It reminded me far too much of the way Rose used to push boundaries. And once again, I found myself in a position where someone I cared about was behaving recklessly in a situation where I could potentially hurt them. That’s why I reacted the way I did. And when you said Rose’s name? I fell apart. I couldn’t handle being reminded of how I’d failed to keep her safe.”

  Mel suddenly remembered something that Vanessa had said the night of their fight at Lilith’s. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with that sort of guilt? Mel felt sick to her stomach. She hadn’t caught it back then, but now it all made sense. And she’d made it so much worse by throwing Rose’s name at Vanessa without knowing the gravity it held. The horror of what she’d done and said hit her at once.

  “So I pushed you away. I shut the world out. I got lost in my own head. Which is why it took me so long to realize that I’d done the one thing you feared more than anything.”

  Mel looked down, her vision blurring with tears.

  “Oh, Melanie. I’m so sorry. For lashing out at you, for disappearing when I should have been there. I never meant to abandon you. I need you to know that.” Vanessa took Mel’s hand across the table. “I will never leave you again, Melanie. You mean more to me than you could ever know.”

  Mel’s heart slowed. Vanessa’s hand felt heavy in hers. She looked into Vanessa’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Vanessa. All those things that I did, all those things that I said to you—I had no idea. I should never have said any of it. I was angry, and careless, and stupid.” Mel wanted to say that everything was fine now. That they could just go back to the way things were. But Mel was far too overwhelmed by everything. So she did what she always did. She retreated. “I just… I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” Mel pulled her hand away.

  “Melanie, wait…”

  “Goodbye, Vanessa.” Ignoring the pleading look in Vanessa’s eyes, Mel stood up and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “That’s it for the day, everyone,” Professor Carr said. “And for the year. Congratulations on making it through your first year of law school.” She
crossed her arms and leaned back on her desk. “Don’t get too excited. Your second year will make this year seem like kindergarten.”

  The class broke out into chatter. Mel gathered her things and followed Jess to the door absently. Now that school was over for the year, she had nothing to distract her from what was really on her mind.

  “Melanie, can I see you for a moment?” Professor Carr waved Mel over to her desk.

  “Sure.” Mel told Jess she’d catch up with her later.

  “Melanie. How would you like to be my intern this summer?” Professor Carr asked.

  “What?” A smile broke out on Mel’s face. “Seriously?”

  “Yep. Your performance in class impressed me. Plus, you aced your final exam. Top of the class by the way. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, Professor.”

  “So is that a yes?”

  “Yes,” Mel said. “Of course.”

  Professor Carr smiled. “I’ll be in touch over the next few days. Enjoy your free time while you have it because you’re going to be working hard all summer.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Professor.”

  Jess was waiting for Mel out in the hall. “So? Did you get the internship?”

  “Yep,” Mel replied.

  “That’s great, Mel!”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” Mel gave Jess a weak smile.

  “That’s more like it! Let’s go out to celebrate. Now that school is over, you have no more excuses. And I know you don’t have work tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. “I just want to go home and relax.”

  “By relax, do you mean ‘sulk about Vanessa?’” Jess asked. “When was the last time you left the house for something other than work or school?”

  “I went for a run yesterday.” Mel had taken it up again in the past few weeks. She needed the distraction.

  “Come on, one drink. I’m not letting you sit around and mope any longer.”

  “Fine.” Mel didn’t have the energy to argue.