Mutual Release

by Liz Crowe

  All the stress, anger at himself, frustration with his friend Jack, and with Julie for her stubborn insistence on keeping some kind of distance between them, had worked him up to fever pitch. He let it take control, allowed the red rage to color his vision just long enough. Without allowing himself time to reconsider, he stripped out of his clothes as his brain darkened with lusty purpose.

  He crawled up between her legs and stroked into her without warning. She was more than ready, her wet depths enveloping him and making him have to use all his tricks to keep from blowing in just a few seconds. He slid out and then back in, going deep and hard, the way she liked, then retreating over and over again. Finally, he just let it happen, the sight, smell, and sound of her doing things to his libido he had no control over anymore. He groaned, shuddered, and came for what felt like an hour. Then when he looked down and saw the tears running down her cheeks from under the blindfold, he was struck with remorse so deep he nearly choked.

  Without a word, he pulled out of her, unlatched her ankle and wrist bindings, pulled off the eye covering, and unbuckled the gag. She sucked in a huge breath and curled into a ball on her side, away from him. He put a shaking hand on her hip, but had to bite back the urge to run to the bathroom and throw up. He had done the worst possible thing to her, betrayed her, taken her while she was vulnerable, without giving her any pleasure. He expected tears. What he heard was a deep, dark silence.

  “I am so sorry, baby. Please. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she whispered, standing and putting a hand on her collar. “Take this fucking thing off me, now.”

  “No, Julie. I’m sorry. That was…”

  “Don’t make me say the word, Evan Adams.” She crossed her arms, standing as far across the room from him as she could manage. “Get out the key and take this fucking stupid choke chain off my neck.”

  He stood, his whole body trembling. “I… I’m…”

  “You are a shithead, typical man. And I am a stupid, weak cow for letting you make me think otherwise.”

  He walked towards her but she backed away. The very real fear in her eyes made a fresh wave of nausea jolt him in the gut. He was no better than Damian. He put a hand over his lips and barely made it to the bathroom before losing his dinner. By the time he’d thrown up everything he’d eaten in the last month, he was shaking so hard he couldn’t stand. He sat crouched on the floor, head in his hands.

  “Evan.”

  The sound of her voice made him look up, hoping against hope he could somehow explain what he’d done.

  “What in the name of all that is holy is this?” She held the Tiffany ring box in her hand. She’d put her clothes back on and yanked her hair back in a ponytail.

  “A mistake,” he croaked. “Go, get out. Get away from me before I do something else I can’t ever take back.”

  What started as fury when she realized Evan had discovered the stack of mail from her mother she had kept and never answered morphed into the usual morass of regret knowing he was right. Then relief when he took over, had her strip down and lie on the bed, bound and “contemplating her actions.” Amy had emailed her a few days ago with news of the woman Julie claimed to despise but whose love she had sought for so long. Her mother’s third husband had died, leaving her wealthy beyond belief, but she had flown to Michigan and shown up at Amy’s door, weeping and begging for information about Julie – how she could find her and make amends. Julie had stared at the email so long it burned into her retinas. Weeping and begging, was she? Wanted to make amends, did she?

  The hours she’d sat a few nights ago, staring at the laptop screen trying to force herself not to tell Amy to let her mother know where she was, had solidified the small kernel of hatred she’d nurtured for so long. She pulled out the stack of unopened letters and cards and stared at them, biting her lip and wondering if Evan was right – she should get some closure by telling her mother how she felt about that final horrific betrayal. The phantom memories washed through her – pain, fury, embarrassment, isolation, all wrapped up with a nice bow of mother-induced guilt. She kept up her vigil at her desk, then rose, exhausted in mind and body, forgetting she’d left the email up on her screen and the large stack of opened mail on the desk.

  She had spent the months since that wild New Year’s Eve coming to terms with the fact that she was becoming dependent on another human being. Slowly accepting that while her basic urges to run away were valid based on years of practice, she also was ready to tell him this very weekend that she wanted to move in with him. The thought of spending another night sleeping alone made her paralyzed with unhappiness.

  They’d made it even more official by introducing her to the rest of the brewery staff and his buddy Jack Gordon, the guy he’d gone to law school with and who, in Julie’s opinion, was a very attractive, walking, talking full-on man-whore, a killer flirt, and a hell of a lot of fun to hang around since he was essentially harmless. He supposedly was caught up with some woman at the moment, a fellow real estate agent but was not about to commit no matter how obvious it seemed to her and to Evan that Jack was smitten.

  And, of course, her damn cat had decided Evan was his savior and would cry and howl so much every time he’d leave her condo, she just handed the damn thing over to him a week ago, telling him he could “practice” by living with Buddy first.

  But when she’d shown up at his place tonight, his face was hard, set in lines she hadn’t seen in a while. Chalking it up to a bad day in beer land, she’d taken a shower, come out wrapped in a towel and ready to have some wine and a nice long play session with her man. He’d merely sat there, holding a stack of something in his hand. Buddy sat next to him, seeming to glare at her just as hard. When he revealed them as her personal mail that he’d taken upon himself to read, at her condo, while she was busy doing something else, she had lost it. She’d gotten so furious at him and his infernal nosy bossiness she had yelled, screamed, called him any number of names, and invited him to do several impossible sex acts on himself, conveniently forgetting she had left the mail out. And the email from Amy open on the computer. He had watched, listened, dodged a couple of flying objects, then stood up and grabbed her arms and held her close a few minutes until she calmed.

  When Evan left her on the bed for so long, she figured he’d end the session with wax, or ice, or at least clamps, and she was squirming with anticipation by the time she sensed his presence. And she was even ready to acquiesce to the near-constant refrain of “reach out and have closure with your mother.”

  Then the asshole had just… fucked her, without preamble or anything resembling mutual pleasure. This was not how they operated. He did not get to just take what he wanted without some kind of giving back. She wanted out but at the same time was ready to fling herself into his arms.

  When she had walked into his study, looking for the key to the stupid collar around her neck, she’d seen it, the small ring box perched in the middle of the super tidy desk. She’d grabbed it, going with her emotions. Her head was a mess and her heart ached as she walked into the bathroom to find him sitting on the floor looking miserable. The silly cat wove around his feet making worried-sounding noises.

  At that moment she knew he had not meant to hurt her and probably felt worse than she did knowing what he’d done or what he thought he’d done. And he’d told her to “go?”

  “No, Evan. I’m not going. You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.”

  He gritted his teeth, turned his face away when she crouched down on the floor with him. “I’m not good for you anymore, Julie. I can’t even look at you. I’m sick about what I did. I’m no better than… him.”

  She flopped onto her butt and sat beside him, tugging him down and holding back her own tears as he shivered, clutching her skirt with his head on her lap. Something between them had broken tonight, no doubt about it. But she had come here prepared to make a commitment. And apparently he was ready for that too, if the box he had gripped i
n one hand was any indication.

  “Damn, We are a couple of basket cases, aren’t we?” She ran her hand through his hair somehow already knowing what he needed to purge from his system in order to move on with her. “Tell me what else Damian did, Evan. I know what happened to Olivia is horrible, but what else is there? Talk to me.”

  He heaved a huge sigh, kept his face turned away from her, and told her everything. About the early, immature, and scary BDSM experimentation, the girls who were terrified of Damian by the time they graduated. When he told the whole story of Caroline, the woman at the distribution company who Damian had attacked, Julie nearly had to shove him off her lap and take her turn puking into the toilet. But she held it back and let him keep talking.

  And then Olivia’s decision to turn down the New York ballet school offer because she wanted to stay around Damian, who in turn spent nearly four years emotionally abusing her before taking her virginity in a brutal attack. Then repeating it while Evan fucked around in law school, oblivious and of no use to his only sister, his twin.

  “I was scared because I could feel myself turning into him, wanting, or needing, violence in order to get off. So I stepped away from it, until I met Jack in law school, and he showed me how it was supposed to be. But of course, I’m doing nothing but… that… while he is… hurting her.” Julie felt his pain, like an unbearable pressure in her skull. She forced herself to stay calm, to let him lose it so she could comfort. “I am him after all…” he said. “I hurt you. Just now. I’ve betrayed everything you’ve given me. I’m – ”

  “No, shhh… stop it,” she insisted, taking stock of what had really happened. He’d been mad; she’d been a total raving lunatic bitch. He’d used the usual methods to calm her. Then instead of drawing multiple orgasms from her, he’d merely had one first. Nothing more nor less. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “No, it’s not okay.” Evan sat up, jumped to his feet and stomped out, returning with a tiny key. “I have to take this off you. I don’t deserve it, and you should find someone who does.” His eyes were wild with fury, his face a scary mask of intent.

  But she stood and faced him. “I’m exercising my female prerogative and changing my mind. I am not taking this off, Evan. Unless you are looking to replace it with something else.” She pointed to the box in his other hand. “Because I do want that. I want the real thing, the engagement, the giant wedding, and the house. Hell, I might even want kids, but that’s a conversation we can have later.”

  He flinched, took a step away from her, but she ignored it, tugged him close, and wrapped herself around him. The fact that he let her, that she was the one doing the comforting, made her feel even better about her decision to commit to him.

  “I’m hardly the easiest woman in the world, but you,” she looked up and kissed his cheek, “you have made me into someone I actually like. And I love you for it.”

  His whole body seemed to convulse, collapse in on itself, and he buried his face in her neck. “I’m sorry. I love you. I adore you. I…” He let go of her and dropped to one knee, right there on the tile. “Marry me, Julie.”

  She bit her lip, loving the sight of him. “Wow, right here in the bathroom? Romantic.” She shrugged. “Tell you what.” She tugged him up to standing. “I’ll move in with you and my cat, wear this admittedly awesome ring, and we’ll see how it goes for a while. No setting of wedding dates and no big announcements to anyone. Let’s take it to that level… first. Okay? But I get to keep this.” She put a hand on her collar, meaning it.

  He smiled, and she let herself drown in the familiar depths of his eyes as he slid a diamond and platinum ring onto her left ring finger. “Next level is exactly what I want with you,” he said, kissing her and picking her up and making the whole night up to her, many times over.

  Chapter Two

  Julie looked up from her computer, aggravated beyond belief Paul had let someone past him and into the inner sanctum without warning her. Dawson Associates was on the verge of acquiring one of its mid-sized competitors. The negotiations had been drawn up, and the whole process had proven beyond stressful. But she was so close to achieving her goal – obtaining control of the entire Michigan craft beer market by gobbling up the next biggest distributor – she could taste it.

  But the process had been awful, and she’d lost her sales manager because of it. He’d accused her of being a greedy bitch and taking her eye off the core business they had worked so hard to conquer. And while part of her thought he was probably right, the rest of her itched to get her hands on the contents of Cooper Distribution’s warehouse.

  “What the hell is it?” She glared at the tall, handsome man standing there, fighting the urge to smile at him.

  Jack Gordon took a seat, tented his fingers, and stared at her. “Drop the bitch act, sister. Sometimes I wonder what my friend sees in you beyond the obvious physical attributes.” He made sure to be obvious about looking down the front of her shirt.

  She flipped him off and kept studying her attorney’s latest volley back to Cooper’s owners. “I’m busy. Go away.”

  “I know you’re busy. But I need to tell you something.”

  She sighed and leaned back in her chair. The stunning diamond of her engagement right caught the sunlight, throwing brilliant prisms of color against the opposite wall. She had agreed to wear it and had been doing so for the last few years. They had agreed to continue the “next level” at a comfortable pace, without too much rushing, and so far, other than the typical conflicts inherent in a relationship between two very strong personalities, all was well. Especially since they were both keen about not pressuring the other into taking that final step.

  The fact she’d managed to stretch out her engagement three years was not lost on her. But she justified it by claiming she enjoyed him too much to ruin it by calling him “my husband.” Which, she knew, was wearing thin with the man himself.

  “My friend Evan is going ape-shit over the fact that you won’t set a wedding date. Which, as I tell him, is kinda girlie. But I’m curious, too. What is your problem?”

  She blinked, hoping not to betray her shock at his mind reading capabilities. “You know what, Gordon? You are in no position to talk to me about relationship fuck-ups. You are the one with a kid and have pissed off the woman who bore you that kid so many times she will hardly let you near her. So back away, Dr. Phil.”

  “Yeah.” Jack ran a hand down his face. “I guess you could make that argument. But seriously, Julie. It may feel like you just traded one piece of jewelry for another but,” he pointed to the large diamond on her left hand, “that means more than you might think to a guy like Evan.”

  Julie put her hands on the desk and tried to quell the quaking that had begun in her knees and was making its way up her spine. Jack was right, and she knew it. She’d been avoiding the whole thing, going through the motions of her life co-habitating with Evan without even considering what he might want.

  He had asked a grand total of three times in the last few years, each time leading to the sort of argument from which many couples would never recover. But she smiled and turned the ring around; she and Evan were hardly “any couple.” The bond they’d finally acknowledged was strong. Yet she still resisted it – that final moment. That last stage in the natural progression of a truly healthy relationship.

  And lately she was wondering why he’d stopped asking her to set the date, a little worried she’d had one too many temper tantrums over the question. She had requested and received an official divorce from James Dawson. She’d been terrified about how James’ mother would react, but he and Grant met with the woman in the south of France for a heart-to-heart ending with Mama Dawson in tears, claiming all she wanted was her boy to be happy. Well, that, and a monthly dividend check, which they all agreed Julie could provide. So the executed divorce papers rested in her desk drawer and her position as head of the company was still secure. She hadn’t told Evan yet but had planned to soon. Once the takeover of Co
oper was complete.

  “His mindset and mine are different but similar in many ways. And while the mistakes I’ve made in the last four years are so many I don’t even want to start counting them, Evan has a different agenda, one that’s way more focused than mine. Trust me.” He took her hand and used that oh-so-charming Jack Gordon smile on her. “Make this happen with him, Julie. I know you want to, and I know what you’ve been through to get here.”

  She pulled her hand away and frowned at him. “I assume if he has sent you to beg me, he’s pretty damn desperate.”

  “He didn’t send me. If he knew I was here on his behalf he’d probably never golf with me again.”

  She smiled at the man who had become as much a fixture in her life as he was in Evan’s. When she and Evan started going down to The Suite in Detroit, Jack had come along a few times, once dragging some horrible woman with him while he was still in denial over how he felt about Sara Thornton, the mother of his child. Julie leaned on her elbows, studying him. He had aged a lot in the last few years, coming to terms with his life as “Uncle Jack” to the little girl everyone knew was his daughter.

  “Tell you what, handsome. I’ll make you a deal.” She smiled, and he raised an eyebrow at her rakish implication. “I’ll set a date with your bestie for that walk down the aisle when you smack some sense into Sara, clonk her over the head, and drag her to your cave.”

  “Touché,” he said, getting to his feet. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  She laughed, turned off her computer, and went with him. Jack was the sort of guy who required other people around him, and she could tell he was in a mood. Evan was out of town for a week, at the craft beer conference on the West Coast, scoping out some new equipment. She was so comfortable in their current arrangement she almost didn’t want to change anything, nervous that becoming “husband and wife” would be a recipe for failure for them.