by Shayla Black
Anticipation gripped her. Raine held her breath. Was he finally going to let her in?
She’d asked him endless questions about himself and his past the first couple of years at Shadows. He’d refused to give her more than vague answers. He’d grown up in New York. He hadn’t been close to his parents. He’d gone to college but hadn’t finished. Hammer had never been willing to divulge more than that.
Raine quickly dished food onto the plates and walked them to the breakfast nook, surprised to see he’d already set out a couple of placemats and napkins.
“You and Liam planned for us to be alone tonight?” she asked as she set the dishes down.
“Yes.” He held out her chair.
She sat, unable to take her gaze off him. “I’m here. I’m listening.”
“Eat. Liam says you’ve done a poor job of that lately. The doctor will scold you at your appointment tomorrow morning.”
With everything going on, she’d completely forgotten. “Will you be there?”
“Liam and I both will. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
That filled her with a bit of relief. She mixed her food together and forked in a bite gingerly. With her stomach jumping nervously, she wasn’t sure how much she’d get down, especially if Macen wouldn’t end her suspense. “Thank you. Would you just tell me already?”
He smiled, relaxing a little as he swallowed a bite. “It’s good.”
“I’m glad,” she snapped. “You’re stalling.”
Macen shook his head. “No, I’m going to tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to know and more. I love you and I owe you. But you know I find your impatience adorable.”
Raine wanted to be annoyed, but part of their dynamic was this push-pull. A mutual poke. She mouthed off; he found a creative way to correct her…at least until they repeated the cycle because it was too delicious to ignore.
“You’re messing with my temper, Macen.”
He took another bite and shook his head. “Just hoping you still look at me the same way once you know everything. This will tell you a lot about who I am…and why.”
“You mean like having a condo in San Juan? I had no clue.”
Hammer waved that information away. “I haven’t been there since before Juliet died. I should have sold it years ago. It’s been nothing but rental property for a long time.”
Raine understood that it wasn’t meaningful to him, but Macen Hammerman knew everything about her—the vitamins she preferred, the fact that she got weepy on the anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, her obsession with Caramel Caribou ice cream, the way she liked to nap on rainy days. He’d known every one of her cycles for six years. Her bra size was a given. He’d even bought her shoes that fit like a glove without her trying them on.
Finally, this man who’d been such a mystery to her might let her solve him. It didn’t matter that she knew his favorite brand of underwear or could make all his favorite foods without looking at a recipe. She didn’t know the name of his childhood pet, what he’d been like as a teenager, or why he never spoke to or about his parents.
Hammer ate every bite she’d made for him. Raine could only manage to get down half. Her stomach was in knots when she pushed her plate aside.
“Tell me. Everything.”
With a sideways glance at her food, he frowned. “Will you promise to try your dinner again before bed? I’m worried about you.”
She’d promise him a quickie on the moon if he’d just tell her already. “I will. Just…”
“Get on with it.” He nodded and rubbed his palms together as if trying to decide where to start. “My parents were extremely wealthy. My grandfather was a physicist who worked with this brilliant guy named Noyce.” He studied her face. “Not ringing a bell? Patent 2,981,877? The world’s first silicone-based integrated circuit. My grandfather saw the potential and invested in the company that sold them, Intel. He also invested in the Texas Instruments version, too. Why not hedge your bets? He grew a few hundred thousand dollars into—”
“Millions.” She’d guessed he came from money but… “Wow.”
“Hundreds of millions,” he corrected. “The money began rolling in when my dad was a teenager, and he came to adulthood spoiled and entitled, a lot like I did. His dad had money, so why work? My grandfather died a couple of years before I was born, and my father inherited half his fortune. Apparently, I have an aunt somewhere I’ve never met who got the other half.”
Raine shook her head. “I had no idea…”
“The only other person on the planet who does is Liam.” Hammer tapped his fork on the table and gave her a tight smile. “And he only knows because I got drunk enough one night early in our friendship to tell him.”
“So your dad inherited a lot of money. When do we get to you?”
“After he married a woman almost exactly like him, and they partied their way across nearly every continent, spending millions and millions. But somewhere through the haze of booze, drugs, and travel, she got pregnant. They were self-absorbed, and I cramped their style. So I was basically raised by staff while my parents circled the globe.”
“You grew up lonely.” She reached for him.
He set his jaw as if he didn’t want to acknowledge that, but he squeezed her hand, and Raine knew she was right. Her heart ached for him.
“I felt trapped in our house on Park Avenue. I couldn’t go anywhere without having to be carted around by our chauffer or jockeying with a billion people for the same inch of sidewalk.”
“I’ve only seen pictures of New York. It looks frenetic.”
“I like it better now that I’m an adult. But it will never be home for me again.”
Too many bad memories. She understood that. Same reason she’d never step foot into the Kendall house ever again.
“When I was thirteen, they sent me away to Phillips Exeter Academy. I thought I was escaping my hellhole of a house. Prep school was supposed to equip me for Harvard but…god, I hated that fucking place. It made me feel even more like I had no control over my own life.”
So he’d chosen an adulthood and a kink that allowed him not only to control most everything but to be master of all he surveyed. “I understand.”
“Not yet. I’m just scratching the surface.” He blew out a breath as if trying to decide where and how to continue. “Growing up bored and resenting my parents’ freedoms while I was stuck in school, I had this stupid, rebellious dream of being a rock star. I was going to be the next Kurt Cobain.” He laughed. “I knew every note on every Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Nine Inch Nails CD. I guilted my folks into buying me an electric guitar and amp one Christmas. They gave me a Fender Stratocaster—not because they believed in me, just to shut me up. I played the fuck out of that thing, full blast, whenever they were home.”
Raine frowned. “Did they cuss you out? Ground you?”
Hammer shook his head. “They just soundproofed my room, shut the door, and left for Rio. It was time for Carnival, after all.”
The bitter edge to his words made her angry on his behalf. What kind of parents took so little interest in their own son? She didn’t ask if he and his dad ever played ball or if his mother baked him cookies. Clearly not. He’d grown up solitary, used to swallowing down his emotions.
That was only just beginning to change.
“I’m sorry. At least I had my mother until I was nine. And my grandparents before her. I knew they loved me unconditionally. Who loved you?”
“Until you and Liam? No one.”
Not even Juliet? Raine wanted to ask but sensed he’d get to that part of the story when he was ready.
He swallowed, not quite meeting her gaze. “We spent summers in The Hamptons. Well, I spent summers there. My parents were…wherever. But I loved the beach—the breeze, the salty brine, the warm sand between my toes. Everything about that twenties Tuscan-style house just felt alive. It was sturdy, had character. At the end of every summer, I hated to leave and go back to that stuffy-ass s
chool in New Hampshire.
“The summer I was fifteen changed everything. It certainly changed me. I don’t know whether it was for the worst turn of events or simply inevitable.” He shrugged. “My parents announced one night at dinner—a miracle they were there in the first place—that they were going on a philanthropic quest in Africa. That was their fancy way of saying they were going on safari and dropping a lot of cash on the locals for booze and sightseeing. I wanted to go but it wasn’t ‘safe.’ That translated to I’d simply be in their way. Besides, I needed to brush up on my French. The A minus I’d gotten the previous semester wasn’t going to cut it if I wanted to get into Harvard, and my French nanny, Linnet, was staying over the summer to tutor me. Tom, our chauffeur, would teach me archery and improve my swimming because good extracurricular activities were so important on a college application,” he mocked.
“You were crushed,” she said softly, hurting for him again.
“Yeah. And I was pissed off. The last thing I wanted was to spend the summer being looked after by a nanny I was way too old to need, especially one I’d had a secret crush on for years. Or hauled around by the beefy chauffeur Linnet constantly stared at like he was a fucking god. I certainly didn’t want our housekeeper, Martha, who was older than Jesus and deaf as driftwood, poking around in my business. I’d spent a small fortune on contraband Playboy magazines at prep school and didn’t want her confiscating a single issue.”
She could picture him young, with a chip on his shoulder, walling himself off from everyone, taking solace with naked women who would never love him in return. “That summer set up a pattern that lasted for years.”
“Damn near two decades, and you have no idea.” He let out a rough breath. “I’m not going to lie. Now it gets hard.”
Raine rose to sit in the chair directly beside him so she could cup his face. “I know the man you are today. I know the kind of unflinching care you’ve shown me since you took me in. Something that happened twenty years ago won’t change anything for me.”
Her words seemed to set him at ease. “Thanks, precious.”
He’d needed that, and Raine was happy she could give him the love and adoration he hadn’t received as a child. “Go on.”
“With my tender fifteen-year-old feelings duly crushed, I tossed my napkin onto the dinner table, purposely scraped the legs of my chair across my mother’s antique hardwoods, and tore out of the house. I ran down the beach until I saw a light coming from the pool house. Neither of my parents ever swam, but Linnet liked it, and I had recurring visions of her skinny-dipping for me.” He snorted. “When I peered through the window where the blind was partially raised, she was in there, all right. She was naked, too. But Tom, our brawny, quiet chauffeur had her spread, tied down at her wrists and ankles with ropes attached to eyebolts along the back wall. He wore nothing but leather and held a nasty crop.”
Raine’s breath caught in her chest. “You watched them?”
“Fuck yeah. There was my sexy nanny playing out one of my dirtiest secret fantasies. In my inexperienced head, it was so twisted I didn’t even have a name for what they were doing. But I wanted to learn.”
“What did he do to her?”
“What didn’t he do?” Hammer gazed out the window, over their backyard. But he was far away, as if he’d gone back to that summer. “Linnet liked pain, and Tom didn’t hesitate to give it to her. When I first found them, he was raining blows on her nipples with that crop. They were purple, and he showed no sign of stopping. He fondled her pussy, bringing her to the brink over and over…” He shook his head. “My cock was throbbing so damn hard. I pulled it from my shorts, fisted it a couple of times, and lost my load faster than I ever had looking at a magazine. But the second Tom plucked her abused nipples and had to press his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, I got hard once more. When he attached clothespins and started in with the crop again, Linnet cried such pretty tears. And god, the begging… I could hear her through the walls. I imagined she was crying out for me. I came a second time, just as hard as the first. But my damn cock still wouldn’t go down.”
“Macen…” Certainly, he wasn’t still suffering unrequited love for this woman. And he shouldn’t be ashamed that he’d liked what he’d seen. “You were fifteen and—”
“Too damn curious. Tom untied her and forced her to her knees with a fist in her hair. She sucked his cock until her cheeks went concave and he’d buried every inch down her throat. Watching them, I came so hard a third time I got dizzy.” Hammer pressed his lips together tightly, still looking out at the wind rustling the palms around their pool. “Even after Tom filled her mouth and she swallowed every drop, they weren’t done. Neither was I.”
And didn’t he sound…bitter? Self-deprecating? Something Raine didn’t like.
“He tore off the clothespins, bent Linnet over the bar, and whipped her ass with the crop. Jesus, that turned me on again. I was nearly dehydrated, but I couldn’t stop pumping myself. When he lubed up his fingers and shoved them inside her ass, I heard Linnet moan through the glass for more. Tom was talking to her, but I didn’t know what he was saying. She just nodded and pleaded some more until he aligned the head of his cock against her little rim and inched his dick inside her. Watching them, I came so hard that time I growled.”
Surprise pinged Raine. “They heard you?”
“Tom did. He snapped his head toward the window just as I finished spraying the ground. But he didn’t do or say anything, just fucked her ass hard. When he came inside her, I climaxed again, but there was nothing left in my balls.”
“So…that started you on the path to BDSM?” The pair had been irresponsible to play where a minor could see, but if Macen was thinking that witnessing them once had warped his head forever, she was going to set him straight.
He gave her a noncommittal shrug. “The next day, I could barely piss without screaming, but wasn’t going to let what I’d seen go. So I found Tom alone in the garage and demanded to know what he’d done to Linnet in the pool house. He spent the next several hours explaining BDSM to me. He took me step by step through their dynamics. He was her Master. Linnet was his slave. Any desire he had, she fulfilled. It was an intoxicating thought, to get whatever you wanted—no questions asked—simply because you wanted it.”
“To a kid who’d never had any affection, I’m sure.” Raine wanted to reach for him but sensed he wasn’t ready to return from his trip down memory lane yet, so she waited. “Tom mentored you?”
“You could say that. I blackmailed him. Tom agreed to teach me if I swore I’d never tell my parents about their kink. So that summer he taught me how to make my nanny kneel and be a good girl for me.” He scoffed at himself. “The first time I ever had sex, I’d tied Linnet to my parents’ bed. Tom buried himself in her ass and whispered in my ear exactly how to get her off, how to last. And for weeks, the three of us locked ourselves away from dusk to dawn. They made it their mission in life to teach me everything, especially how to fuck harder, faster, better, longer—in every way known to man. In return, I had Linnet’s power almost completely at my disposal. It was so fucking potent, staggering. I’d never had a drop of booze, but I knew what it meant to be drunk.”
Raine hurt for Macen. He wasn’t the pedophile. They were. He’d been a kid, ripe for their picking. He might have been a hormonal teenager and thought he wanted all that, but had he really been ready? Mature enough to deal with the fallout? How much had their abuse cost him? “Then what happened?”
“I went back to school a changed man.” His tone was harsh, disparaging. “I still made great grades because my parents expected it, but puberty had set in with a vengeance. I shot up, grew a beard, met a guy who made fake IDs. So for a couple hundred bucks, I was in business. The dance clubs in Boston were rich with women who fell easy for charm, money, and a hint of Dominance. I was going home with women ten or fifteen years older than me, tying them up, spanking their asses, and fucking them blind before I was a junior in h
igh school. And every summer, I had Tom and Linnet and a lot more kink to look forward to.”
Raine’s mouth gaped open. “That continued?”
“For three years. Summers, holidays…oh, yeah. The Christmas I was sixteen, we fucked so much I thought my cock was going to fall off. I went back to school limping.”
“You were a child.” She blinked, stunned, weirdly wanting to hug him and soothe him and heal him all at once.
“Yeah, with more experience than most grown men.” He raised a brow. “Anyway, before I knew it, I was packing up and heading to Harvard. My parents gave Linnet a hefty bonus for putting up with their ‘demanding child,’ then let her go. Tom soon gave his notice, and the two of them took off. I don’t even know where. They left without a single word. I thought I belonged with them, but…”
Raine’s heart twisted for him. They’d crushed Macen, whether they’d meant to or not. “Were you in love with her?”
“No. But we were bound by our ‘dirty little secret.’ No one else understood me quite so well, and I just never saw it ending.” He sighed. “I was wrong. So after licking my wounds, I conquered as many subs as I could find to give me that exhilarating power. It fed the need inside me…but I could never really sate it. Something was always missing.”
And Raine could just guess what happened next. A little bit of math told her that Macen had married young. She’d always found that at odds with the confirmed bachelor and manwhore she knew. “Enter Juliet?”
“Not quite. As I was starting my second year of Harvard, my parents flew to Barcelona for La Mercè, another giant street party. Anyway, they were standing on the balcony of their hotel room, watching the festivities, when the terrace collapsed and they fell to their deaths. I had to fly to Spain and identify their bodies, then make arrangements for them to be flown back home, plan the funeral, meet with my parents’ lawyers, and settle their estate. It was grueling and confusing and extremely frustrating. The first thing I did was sell that fucking prison on Park Avenue. The house in The Hamptons—with all those memories—wasn’t far behind.”
