My Control

by Lisa Renee Jones

  My Control

  Lisa Renee Jones

  * * *

  From New York Times bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones, an e-short that continues Mark and Crystal’s unexpected love story in the Inside Out series—told from Mark’s dark, controlling perspective.

  I have lost who I used to be, letting guilt and heartache define who I am, letting darkness control me. Only one woman has seen what no one else has seen in me: the man I do not wish to exist. His lack of control led to tragedy, and I cannot allow that to happen again. But even as she offers ease, she challenges me like no woman ever has—and my hunger for her has driven me to the edge of sanity. But no more. She is about to find out that the Master has returned

  * * *

  An award-winning, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, Lisa Renee Jones has published more than thirty novels spanning many romance genres: contemporary, romantic suspense, dark paranormal, and erotic fiction. In each book the hero is dark, dangerous, and sexy. You can find Lisa on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for regular updates.

  Romance - Pocket Star eBooks - September 2014

  978-1-4767-7240-0 - $0.99 U.S./$1.99 Can.

  Publicity Contact: Jean Anne Rose - 212.698.7579

  JeanAnne.Rose@simonandschuster.com

  The Inside Out Series by

  Lisa Renee Jones

  If I Were You

  Being Me

  Revealing Us

  No In Between

  Rebecca’s Lost Journals Vol.1: The Seduction

  Rebecca’s Lost Journals Vol. 2: The Contract

  Rebecca’s Lost Journals Vol. 3: His Submissive

  Rebecca’s Lost Journals Vol. 4: My Master

  The Master Undone: An Inside Out Novella

  His Secrets

  My Hunger

  Dear Readers:

  Though you can read My Control as a stand-alone story, it is a part of Mark Compton’s story that has been slowly coming to light throughout the Inside Out series. The reading order I recommend for the three novellas in Mark’s point of view is as follows:

  *The Master Undone

  *My Hunger, which begins the day after The Master Undone

  *My Control, which leads into a full-length novel in Mark’s point of view, which is titled I Belong To You

  For those of you who have been following the series, I am beyond excited to finally be sharing the secrets beneath Mark’s surface with you. Finally, you will know what I have always known about “Mr. Compton.”

  I hope you enjoy the journey and thank you for sharing it with me!

  Lisa

  Part One

  Guilt

  San Francisco

  Crystal

  I stare down at the key that was left for me at the hotel’s front desk, reading the note.

  My house is swarming with press. I’m in the room next to yours. We need to review the gallery’s business tonight. I’ll be in meetings all day tomorrow.

  It’s not signed, but I know it’s from Mark. I wonder if he isn’t sure how to sign it. Mark. Mr. Compton. Master. Just the thought that he might have expectations of me as a submissive has me balling the note up and clenching it in my damp palm. But no—he doesn’t.

  He’s caught in a nightmare, eaten alive with guilt over Rebecca and terrified for his mother. He’s not thinking about anything else at the moment, and I’ve just caught him in a few weak moments where I’ve been an escape. And that’s okay. He’s hot. Ridiculously sexy. And so damn arrogant he could win an award. The kind of man you sleep with and move on.

  Only I can’t move on. His family has become my second family.

  I can’t go into his room. I can’t end up naked with him again. It’s starting to affect me, beyond the fiery passion. He’s starting to get under my skin, and that’s dangerous. I am no submissive, and he’s all about power and control—truly a Master in all he does, in all he commands. Underneath that hardness, though, I’ve briefly seen a tender, sensitive man who has a sense of humor and a deep love for his family, his mother in particular.

  So I can’t ignore his note. That would be turning my back on someone who needs me, in order to protect myself, and that’s not who I am. And this isn’t about me, anyway. It’s about the police on the beach searching for poor Rebecca tonight, and it’s about a broken man who doesn’t even know he’s broken. And it’s about his ailing mother, who I love dearly, and who desperately wants him by her side. Despite how much she wants Mark to be a part of the auction house, Riptide, she’ll never forgive herself if Allure gallery falls apart because he’s distracted by her illness. He says he wants me to shut it down and tie up all the loose ends.

  But I need to do more. I need to save it. And not just for her—for him. For the man I’ve caught glimpses of, who has captured a part of me. The one who has let me see the wounds he’s denying, making him unable to heal. He’s alone inside his own personal hell, telling himself he can fight it alone. But he can’t. I know this with certainty.

  Right or wrong, decision made, I leave my room and turn toward his. I’m going to fight with Mark, even though I’ll likely end up hurt and alone. But life is too short for regrets. Another fact that I know too well.

  I reach up—and knock.

  Mark

  Sitting on my suite’s couch, I loosen my tie and refill my scotch glass before turning on the television. After flipping through several stations, I stop and turn up the volume at the sight of a newscaster standing on a beach with police cars—and pray like hell that he can tell me something that the expensive attorneys and investigators I’m paying haven’t been able to manage.

  Authorities are staying quiet about what’s being searched for on Muir Beach, but we know it’s the stretch surrounding the family home of a male employee who works at Cup O’ Café, the coffee shop owned by Ava Perez. For those of you just tuning in, Ms. Perez confessed to killing Rebecca Mason, an employee of the gallery next door to the coffee shop, only to later retract that confession. Police are not saying what they are looking for and what outcome they hope for tonight, but a press conference is planned for Monday morning.

  I mute the sound of the same story I’ve heard at least ten times. Downing the scotch, I set my glass down and refill it. Hell, why not? I’m spinning out of control; I might as well do it the fuck right. On the coffee table, my gaze catches the only one of Rebecca’s journals that I’ve managed to keep for myself.

  I fight the urge to pick it up and start reading again; I know damn well that every word will be like salt in my open wounds. It’s that passage about her anger over her mother hiding her father’s identity from her that really slices deep. She’d tried to talk to me about it. I hadn’t let her. I’d shut her down to halt the emotions that she’d stirred in me that I didn’t want to feel.

  But I’m feeling them now. I’m living every last, bitter one.

  Lifting the glass to my lips, I stop at the knock on the door. Crystal is here—and it’s like a punch to the chest. She does things to me. The kinds of things Rebecca tried to do, and couldn’t. And not because I didn’t care about Rebecca, but because I was too removed from everything human inside of me. She woke me up, but it had been too late—and I wish like hell that I was the one dead now, not her.

  Shoving the journal into the accordion file on the coffee table, I sink back against the couch, my glass settling on my pant leg, listening as her high heels click on the hardwood floor of the foyer, and then go silent. She’s hesitating and I don’t blame her. She’d be smart to turn and run, but wrong as it is I find myself holding my breath, praying that she won’t leave. She quiets the storm inside of m
e and I’ll be damned if I understand it. She is as far as it gets from the submissive who I demand in my lovers—and perhaps that’s her appeal. A Master is supposed to protect his submissive and I simply don’t trust myself right now. I don’t know where that leaves me when control, my control, is what I’ve counted on keeping me and everyone around me safe.

  Crystal steps around the corner of the short hallway, stopping just beyond the rounded archways, a shadow in the darkness that I’ve allowed to consume the room—the way my guilt consumes me. She’s a curvy silhouette in the dark room, but I can make out her pencil-cut skirt, her long blond hair draping her shoulders, the flickering light of the silenced television catching here and there on her pale, perfect skin.

  “Hey,” she says softly, and her voice is electric, shocking my nerve endings.

  “‘Hey’?” I ask, sounding as cynical as I feel. “What kind of greeting is ‘hey’?”

  “My kind,” she replies, crossing the room to stop in front of the coffee table. “The only kind I know how to give.”

  It’s a typical Crystal answer. Direct. Uncensored. Honest. And damn it, I think that’s what draws me to her. The honesty. The absence of games that she won’t allow me to play, games I just don’t have the energy to give a damn about right now. We fall into silence, the air thickening between us, that current of awareness that’s always there sharper, edgier now. The television flickers behind her, casting her in a warm glow that guides my unapologetic downward skim over her slender hips to her stocking feet.

  “I left my shoes at the door,” she answers, drawing my gaze upward, over her black silk blouse and long blond hair. The only blonde that I’ve wanted in ten years. “My dad made us do it when I was growing up. It’s a habit.” She holds up the key that I’d left for her at the front desk with a note to meet me in my room after she settled in hers. “So the press is stalking you pretty badly?”

  “That’s an understatement.” But it’s not why I’m here. It’s the memories, not the reporters, that I wish I could avoid. “I had to have some covert help to rent me the room next door in an effort to stay low profile until I leave for New York on, I hope, Monday.” I tap the folder that I have sitting on the coffee table. “I need to go over the gallery business affairs with you tonight. I can’t risk being unavailable and you being unprepared.” I glance at the TV, and the news is still playing the same scene, as if it’s locked on a repeating loop that gives me nothing when I crave something.

  Anything. I’ll take anything.

  “Anything new?” Crystal asks, and somehow she’s crossed the room to claim the seat beside me without my realizing it. It rattles me that I’m this disoriented and unaware. So does the damn floral scent that she’s wearing.

  Inhaling, I force myself to concentrate on her question. Any news? No, there is not any fucking news. “I’ve been told to expect arrests by Monday.” A detail that I both dread and wish for. I need this to be over. No. I need it to be over with Rebecca alive—and I know that’s not going to happen.

  “Oh,” she says softly, sounding a bit awkward as she adds, “Then they’ve found something for sure.”

  “Yes,” I agree, finishing off the scotch in my glass. “They’ve found something.”

  I don’t look at her. I didn’t want to bring her here tonight. Not when I’m so unlike my normal self—-and yet, somehow, I needed her here.

  “I’m glad you took me up on my offer to run the gallery so you can be with your family,” she says as I reach for the bottle of scotch. “Your mother is going to be happy.”

  I pause mid-pour and set down the bottle to look at her. “She’s dying. She’s not happy.”

  Her hand comes down on my arm, and I feel the kick in my blood, the burn under my skin. “She’s not going to die,” she vows vehemently, her fingers digging into my arm. She adds in a hissed whisper, “Don’t say she’s going to die.”

  I don’t remove her hand, even though I let no one touch me without permission. “You really care about my mother.”

  “Yes,” she whispers, her hand loosening and falling away. “Sorry. I just—I don’t—she can’t and . . . I can’t think any other way.”

  I feel the absence like a cold blast in the warm spot it had once been, and I want it back. I hand her my glass. “Have a drink.”

  She ignores the glass and glances at the bottle I’ve managed to do substantial damage to in the hour that I’ve been waiting for her. “Was that bottle full when you started?”

  My cock throbs with the soft rasp of her voice and how much that I want her when I have a long list of reasons not to touch her, most important among them her attachment to my mother. I consume my scotch before I answer with, “Yes. It was full. I don’t make a habit of drinking, but tonight’s an exception.” I refill my glass and offer it to her again. “Your turn.”

  She crosses her arms in front of what I know to be gorgeous, high, full breasts with perky little pink nipples that I shouldn’t be thinking about having in my mouth, but I am. “I don’t think drinking with you is a good idea, Mark.”

  My lips quirk. “You’re thinking too much. Scotch will set you free.”

  “So the answer’s losing control?”

  I set the drink on her knee, my gaze sweeping the exposed area where her skirt has risen a few inches up her thigh. “Isn’t that what you told me at the club?” I ask, my eyes lifting to hers.

  “Yes, but that was me—not something I expect uttered from your lips. Who are you? That doesn’t sound like the Mark Compton I know.”

  She’s right, which drives home how wrong everything in my life is tonight. “I don’t have a fucking clue right now.” And it’s as terrifying as her visibly blanching and looking as stunned as I feel by the admission that I didn’t mean to make.

  Two beats, maybe three pass, and I hear them in the speeding up of my heart before she reaches down and closes her hand over my hand and the glass. Touching me in a way that I let no one touch me; no one but her. What is it about this woman? It has to be the timing—the things I’m involved with and her intimate knowledge that no one else has of those matters.

  She downs the drink and sets the glass on the table, and somehow I know that she’s made the choice to level the playing field. Ironic, since everything I do as a Master is to always have an upper hand. But not her. She’s volunteered to be vulnerable, when she’s refused to be submissive.

  She turns back to me, her fingers curling on my cheek, evoking primal need, and I don’t try to hide it from her. I don’t try to hide anything from her, when I usually pride myself on being unreadable. Not now. Now I am on the edge of some high cliff and I’m about to dive into piranha-infested waters. And for reasons I can’t begin to understand, she’s all that stands between it and me.

  “Guilt,” she whispers. “You feel guilty over everything. Not being there for your mother. Not saving Rebecca. I don’t know what else. And guilt is normal—but if you let it, it’ll destroy you.”

  The words expose more than my internal battles. They expose the hint of heartache in the depths of her blue eyes, the touch of regret in her voice.

  “What do you know of guilt?”

  Her expression goes blank, a method of control to shield herself from what she doesn’t want seen. She tries to pull her hand back but I grab it, holding it to me. “What do you know of guilt?” I demand again softly.

  “Enough to know it when I see it in someone else.” Her voice holds the slightest tremble. “And it’s bleeding from every pore of you.”

  I turn away from her, my hand sliding through my hair, an open sign of frustration that isn’t who I am. I reach for the booze and my gaze lands on the television, where the screen flashes yet again with a view of police vehicles in front of a Muir Beach sign. How many fucking times are they going to show that scene? I refill the glass, wishing I could go to the beach myself and get answers, even though m
y attorney forbids it.

  Crystal scoots to the edge of the sofa beside me, bringing our knees together, and we both freeze.

  My hand closes over her knee and I hold it there, telling myself not to go further. She doesn’t deserve to be in the firestorm inside my head right now. Yet my hand is telling her not to move away. She’s in the middle of this hell, close to my family. Close to me in some way that I can’t get my head around. In a way I’d been on the verge of allowing Rebecca to get.

  That thought delivers a punch of guilt and I let go of her leg, my head swimming in booze and piranhas, the emotions I’ve denied scraping away at my heart and soul, one right after the other.

  I swallow the booze and refill the glass. Crystal takes it from me and drinks a small portion before handing it back to me, her fingers brushing mine. I grind my teeth, fighting my need to rip her clothes away and bury myself inside of her. Sex is how I deal with things, but sex has to be my way—and right now, nothing I do is my way.

  “She was my submissive,” I say, needing her to understand just how deep the waters are that she’s treading.

  “I pieced that together after I was at the club.”

  The club, where we’d ended up naked and I’d wanted her to the point of being wild with need, out of control. It defies reason how she manages to be here every time the axis tips for me. How and why that happens is as gray as everything else in my mind, the weight of the booze weaving through my thoughts, clouding my judgment.

  This wasn’t smart. Drinking and bringing her here. It’s as if I invited her to see me in the most screwed up of ways. My jaw clenches, muscles tense. My mind might be numb, but my body is one big live nerve ending. I’m coming out of my skin. I’m going insane. I did this. I created the monster that is Ava and now I want to torment Crystal by using her to deal with the guilt.

  I need to move. I need something before I lose my mind, and I try to push to my feet. Crystal’s hand closes over my arm, stilling me.