Camilla considered me, her skepticism evident. Her support was slipping away, and I didn’t know how I’d go about getting it again if I lost her now.
“I’ll do it, Edward,” she said, to my surprise. “Because these are bad men, and there are other young girls who need to be protected, and I would very much like to be a part of that. Not because I need any closure where our father is concerned, but for them. Is that clear?”
“Whatever you say. And thank you.” I didn’t appreciate the high-handed attitude, but I had her on my side. That was all that was important.
Except, I couldn’t let it lie there. “Have you truly never felt any relief from the other times I’ve sought justice on your behalf?”
Her expression pinched with frustration. “That’s an unfair way to frame the question. Of course I’ve slept better knowing Mitch can’t foster children anymore. And I’m much happier having our family money back in our pockets instead of in our cousins’. And how you helped with Frank...I’m always going to be grateful for that, and you know it. But am I a better person knowing that the people who have wronged me have also suffered? I can’t say that I am.”
“Well, I can say that I am.”
“Good for you then. I hope that’s really true.” She held my stare for brief tense seconds. Then she released me, standing up, an obvious dismissal before she’d even spoken. “You better get out of here if you’re going to get shopping done as well.”
“I already picked up her present earlier this week.” But I stood as well.
“Oh? What did you get her?”
Her curiosity seemed genuine, and I hated leaving on such a fraught note. I pulled my phone from my trouser pocket and flipped through my gallery until I found the picture that had been taken for insurance purposes then handed it over.
Her eyes went immediately wide as she studied the ruby drop pendant. It was a top quality Burmese stone surrounded by twenty-five diamonds and just the thought of what my wife would look like wearing it was worth the small fortune I’d spent.
“It’s absolutely stunning,” Camilla said, her expression telling me she finally understood why I had to do what I was doing where Celia was concerned. That she finally understood what the woman meant to me.
I expected her to say something to that effect, but instead, she asked, “Do you know how rubies are formed?”
Surely I’d known at some point. At the moment, I couldn’t recall the exact chemical process, so I shook my head.
“They’re from the mineral corundum, which is usually colorless, a combination of oxygen and aluminium atoms. But when the substance is exposed to intense heat and pressure, some of the aluminium atoms may be replaced by other substances and then the stone takes on other colors. Chromium is what makes the deep red of a ruby. They’re rare, though, because the presence of iron or silica prevents the formation, and the earth is abundant with those minerals.
“You’ve had bad things happen to you, Eddie. You’ve survived the heat and the pressure, and, trust me, I know what that does to a person. It can destroy us, if we let it. But it can turn us into gemstones too. Beautiful and solid and undestroyable.
“But you can’t reach the splendor of the ruby if you let the iron in.”
It was a pretty analogy, one she was too proud of for me to feel good about tearing apart. Thankfully, Freddie ran in then, distracting us from more serious conversation.
Still, I knew the truth. I’d accepted it a long time ago. I would never be the ruby in her story. There was no fear of ruining my color. There was no possibility of letting in too much iron.
I’d survived, though, solid and undestroyable all the same.
Because I was the iron.
Nine
Celia
I gasped, my knees buckling as Edward added a third finger to the ones already thrusting in and out of me. I’d already had two orgasms and my nerves were highly sensitized. My skin felt like fire and, if he weren’t holding me up at the waist, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to stand.
“One more,” he commanded, his thumb skimming over my clit.
“I can’t.” Despite my protests, my insides were clenching, preparing to go wherever he led.
“You can. You’ll do it for me.”
I clutched onto his stationary arm, needing more support. “I didn’t realize this was supposed to be a punishment.”
His chuckle was low, making his beard tickle against my cheek. “It’s not. But I enjoy that you can’t tell the difference.”
He was savage, and my love and hatred for that aspect of him mingled until I was in miserable bliss.
“Open your eyes,” he urged. “Look at us.”
I did as he said, my breath hitching at the sight.
We were standing in our en-suite in front of the full-length mirror. I’d been watching, until the last wave of pleasure had forced my eyes to clamp shut, but seeing our image anew sent me spiraling higher. He’d brought me directly in here after spending the evening at the opera. Though he’d stripped me to nothing but my heels and my jewelry as soon as we’d walked in the bedroom, he was still fully clothed in his tux, his undone bow tie the only thing to suggest he was in for the night.
It was an overwhelmingly erotic sight—him fully dressed, his head resting on my shoulder as his hand snaked between my naked thighs, the brilliant ruby pendant at my neck catching the light in our reflection.
We were sinfully beautiful together.
Was this how the serpent had looked tempting Eve? Was this how he’d enticed her to eat his fruit? In moments like this, he owned me completely, and it was hard to fathom anything I wouldn’t do for my ruthless devil.
My focus shifted to his face. His expression said he knew the power he had over me. It should have been frightening, but, instead, it only fueled my arousal. Only strengthened my desire to please him, and when his brutal smile appeared and he ordered me to “Come,” I happily went over the edge, spiraling into the abyss of my surrender.
He continued to hold me, coaxing the last of my release from my body until I was completely spent. Then he shifted me in his arms just enough that he could take my mouth with a vicious kiss. “Happy Valentine’s Day, my little bird.”
“I love you,” I said.
He responded with another kiss, sweeter though just as deep as the last. After he relinquished my lips, he brought his pussy-soaked fingers up to feed me instead. I sucked each one thoroughly, cleaning off every drop of my wetness.
“Now to clean you,” he said, his eyes dilated with want. After making sure I was able to stand by myself, he moved to the oversized clawfoot tub behind us and turned on the faucet.
“We’re taking a bath?” This night just got better and better.
“You’re taking a bath,” he corrected.
I frowned in disappointment. It was a large enough tub, and I was eager to make him feel as good as he’d just made me feel—repeatedly. He was yielding a pretty stiff erection, from what I’d felt poking at me as he’d made me come. Surely, he couldn’t ignore that.
But he was my master, and he decided my life for me now. It was hard, but I was learning to trust his decisions more than question them. I tried not to argue unless it really mattered, and this wasn’t one of those times.
I let out a breath as I gave the reins over to him, and focused on the sight of his tight backside, bent over to adjust the water temperature. A wave of euphoria spiked through me. He was so good-looking. And I was so lucky.
This was my life, this was my man, and I was in awe.
I had demons. I always would. Their hold on me diminished every day, though, thanks to therapy, diary-writing, and constant vigilance to mindfulness. And more than all that, thanks to Edward. In the two months since we’d been back in London, he’d pushed me and challenged me, ensuring I remained in the land of the feeling instead of sinking into the void of nothingness. He’d continued his sessions with me on occasion, which were tough and cathartic and helpful beyond expressio
n.
But perhaps what had helped even more had been giving him my submission.
God, it was hard sometimes. Not to fight and buck against his control. It was my default to protest.
But it also felt natural to give in.
And when I did, when I truly gave myself over to him, I felt more alive and whole and powerful than I ever had.
Satisfied that the water was hot enough, he returned to me. His eyes scanned hungrily up my body, halting at the necklace he’d given me earlier in the evening. He raised his hand to trace the pear-shaped diamonds that enclosed around the ruby. “I don’t think I can stand taking this off of you. You’re too stunning wearing nothing but my jewels.”
Submission be damned, I had to put my foot down. “I’m not wearing anything this valuable in the tub.” I hadn’t seen the price tag, but I knew luxury when I saw it.
He smirked, as though he were considering overruling. But then he moved behind me. His fingers paused at the clasp, the tips skating across my skin and making me shiver. “I feel like I’ve collared you.”
Goosebumps skated down my arms. I liked being claimed by him, in every way that he wanted to claim me. Be it with his words or his cum or his jewels, they all expressed the same thing—that I was his.
I swerved my head toward him. “I don’t need the necklace to feel the same.”
Content with my response, he undid the clasp. Then he handed it to me to hold while he took off his jacket, which he traded me for the pendent. “Hang this up, please, while I put these away.”
He turned toward my vanity where I’d left the box earlier in the night when he’d presented me with the gift. I went the other direction, to the closet. I hung up his jacket and took off my shoes before returning.
When I got back, he was ready for me, sitting beside the tub on my vanity stool. He’d removed his cufflinks and rolled up the sleeves of his tuxedo shirt.
Seeing him like that, from the back, hit me solidly with its familiarity. My stomach quivered with both unease and want. The two feelings often traveled in tandem, Edward frequently inspiring both in equal doses.
He looked up, noticing I’d paused. “Come get in.”
“You’re really not joining me?” I asked, hoping I was wrong about where this was going.
“Just you, bird.”
The unease turned into dread, my belly dropping. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Then get over here and let me do it.” He poured a dollop of body wash onto the oversized bath sponge, the vanilla fragrance taking me back to another time, to another man sitting by a bathtub waiting for me to get in.
I’d told Edward about the baths when I’d first told him about Ron, but only recently had he dug into that in one of our sessions, getting me to give him the details. They’d occurred nightly when I visited him, and began innocently enough. I’d always enjoyed the way it felt to be rubbed down and washed, loved the feel of hands scrubbing through my hair from a very young age. As I’d gotten older, he’d added sensual bath beads that made my skin feel like silk. The bathing became more drawn out then, his touch lingering when he washed the tiny buds of flesh on my chest, his fingers more exploratory between my legs.
The first time he’d brought me to orgasm, I’d thought he must be magic. There’d been colors across my vision and the sweetest burst of elation. With that one little trick, I’d been spellbound.
All these years later, I’d told Edward, the thing I found most shameful about those baths were that they’d been my favorite part of my relationship with my uncle.
And now Edward was recreating the experience. Like he always did.
“Sometimes he joined me in the tub,” I said, reluctant to spend the rest of our evening on an activity that would require a great deal of mental energy on my part.
Edward raised a skeptical brow. “Did he?”
“No.”
“Come on,” he said with a gesturing jerk of his head. “It will just be a bath. It will be nice, if you let it be.”
If he were going to wash me, as it seemed he most certainly intended to do, then it didn’t matter what else happened—it would already be more than just a bath. I’d be caught between what he was doing to me and what it reminded me of, warring internally for one to win out as more significant than the other.
That’s what all his redos were, though, weren’t they? And in the end, as exhausting as the mental battle was for me, he always ended up turning something bad into something nice.
I continued over to him, giving him my hand so he could help me into the tub.
“You even added the bath beads,” I said sinking into the extraordinarily soft water. At least he’d made it a decent temperature. Ron had preferred that baths be more on the warm side than the hot. This one was scalding, the way I liked it.
Edward smiled slyly as he brought the sponge up to scrub along my neck. “Shh, now. Let me pamper you.”
So I did.
He took his time, washing every inch of my skin with thorough deliberateness. He talked to me the whole time, as I’d told him Ron would do, but the words were all his own. He told me how attractive I was, which was perhaps generic, then told me how my attraction affected him. How he got dizzy from my scent. How his blood felt thick in his veins when he was around me. How he had to constantly remind himself that he was a civilized human and not a primitive being who was motivated only by his lust.
The very nature of the situation pulled me to the past, settling around me with eerie familiarity, but every time I thought the memories threatened to overwhelm me, Edward’s soothing praise and declarations of affection would anchor me to the present.
It was nice.
And weird.
And my emotions were all over the place, but mostly it was nice.
“It might take more than one go to erase this,” I said when he moved on to soap up my hair, teasing.
“Greedy girl.”
God, though, his fingers kneading into my scalp did all sorts of crazy things to my insides. Melted me and built me up, all at once.
Then the conversation took a turn.
“Have you thought anymore about joining me in going after him?” Edward asked, threading his hands through my hair.
“No,” I said instantly.
“Liar.”
He pulled the extendable nozzle from its holder and turned it on to rinse out my hair. I tilted my head back and let the water wash out the soap, the sound of the steady spray accompanying the thoughts his last words had stirred up in my head.
I had spent a lot of time thinking about Edward’s revenge on Ron. Of course I had. I still had no interest in participating, but I desperately wanted to know what he was planning, how soon it would happen, how badly it would disrupt my parents’ lives.
I worried too for Edward. That his actions would go too far and get him in trouble. That he’d be caught.
That concern always led me to the worst of my fears—how far would Edward go? What was he capable of? What had he already done?
“You said you’ve gotten revenge on people before...” I said, as he applied conditioner to the ends of my hair. I closed my eyes, pretending I didn’t want soap in my eyes but really not able to look at him while I asked my question. “Did you ever kill anyone?”
Behind the dark of my lids, the silence that followed was ominous.
“Death is far too forgiving for many people’s sins,” he said eventually.
I wanted to be relieved about his answer—murder was something I absolutely couldn’t get behind. But did that mean he tortured them instead? Because that was intolerable as well.
But also, he hadn’t denied killing anyone.
“What does that mean?” I pressed.
He sat back to let the conditioner sit and met my eyes. “There are other ways to bring people pain, bird. Generally, the punishment should fit the crime. But I do prefer ruin.”
“Okay. You ruin people.” I nodded. Then I shook my head because I still had
no idea what that looked like. “Ruin people how?”
“Well. Mitch, the foster parent who abused Camilla, for example. No one believed her claims were strong enough to pursue in court, despite the scars she wears. So instead, I framed him for embezzlement. He spent only three years in prison when he should have spent a lifetime, but he lost his wife, custody of his children, and the ability to foster any other kids, so I called that a win.”
“Oh.” I let it sink in. Framing a man for a crime he hadn’t committed wasn’t technically a good thing, but was it really that bad when the guy deserved some sort of punishment?
I hated myself because I actually didn’t think it was bad at all.
“Then the cousins who’d stolen our money,” Edward said. “I drained them of every penny they had, including taking away the restaurant they’d opened up with our funds as the seed. They should have gone to jail. Instead they went bankrupt and had to live off government handouts. Seemed fitting that they experience what Camilla and I had to, if you ask me.”
Sure. I could get behind that.
“When Hagan was still a teenager, he was approached by some men who pretended to run a modeling agency. Said he had a look that would sell. He believed it, and, unbeknownst to me or his mother, he drained a good portion of his savings account to pay for bogus talent agency fees. There were other victims as well, but the men left town in a hurry and were able to dodge any attempts at prosecution.
“I had the means to track them down. My people gave them the opportunity to pay everyone back and turn themselves in. When they didn’t, they beat them within an inch of their lives.”
My breath caught. I’d been a terrible person with questionable ethics for a long time, but violence was a different kind of terrible altogether. It was disgusting and vile.
Then why did I feel almost proud?
And a little bit turned on?
Edward picked up the nozzle again to wash out the conditioner. As soon as he was done and the water was turned off, he had more. “There’s another man I want to tell you about. A man I discovered recently who has been serving a life sentence for several accounts of rape and assault of a minor. He seemed to have a predilection for prepubescent girls. Some of the accounts were limited to just fingering and oral sex, but other girls he raped, brutally.”
Revenge Page 11
