Young, Allyson - Absolute Perfection [Aspire 3] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Allyson Young

  The sounds she detected behind the wooden panels made her back up and snatch her hand away. She just managed not to shove her fingers in her ears and stifled a giggle. A note it was then. There was no way she was disturbing the activity in that bedroom. Iris tiptoed downstairs and called for a cab before putting pen to paper and leaving it on the kitchen counter. She waited by the window in the foyer, and no one appeared on the stairs. She smiled to herself. Good for Haley. And now she had to take charge of her own life.

  The taxi dropped her at the Hilton in short order. There wasn’t too much going on that early on a Sunday. Iris paid him with nearly the last of her cash and made a mental note to take her bank card with her on the run in order to replenish her reserves. She decided to jog to the little bistro down the street and grab an energy drink if they were open. The lobby had a number of people milling around, probably a tour, and Iris worked her away around them. She came to an abrupt halt and a little old lady wearing a lanyard around her neck advertising Ladies Theatre Fund crashed into her. Iris righted the other woman and looked again at the man leaning against the wall near the elevators. He raised a hand and she walked over, puzzled.

  “Hello, Iris.”

  “Hello, uh, Mr. Casey.” It was really strange, meeting him here.

  “Jarrod, please, Iris. I guess you’re surprised to see me.”

  “I am.” Iris glanced around the lobby and saw the clerk behind the desk watching them. She felt uncomfortable. What was he doing here?

  “I had breakfast here with a friend and remembered you were staying here. I thought I’d look you up, but the front desk couldn’t get an answer in your room. I was just about to leave when I saw you.

  “My company is putting together a vacation package as a bonus for some of our employees, and someone mentioned you head up a travel agency. So I thought we could talk about it over coffee. What do you say?” There was a definite tone in Jarrod’s voice. That confident certainty Georgios, Gordon, and Warren had. He really wasn’t asking. He was telling her, or at the very least felt certain she would comply.

  Iris was amazed at the amount of information circulating about her in such a short period of time. That club was clearly a hotbed of gossip. A rush of blood suffused her face when she realized Jarrod would know about her and Georgios. Hopefully word hadn’t spread about what transpired since that night at the club, although she knew Georgios wouldn’t gossip. She thought quickly. She’d have coffee with Jarrod and land an account before she even started in Evelyn’s position tomorrow! It would be a confidence booster and maybe just what she needed to get her life straightened out. She pushed all thoughts of Georgios away and focused on her job.

  “I was just about to go for a run but needed to change shoes.” That would hopefully explain why she wasn’t in her room, although why it should matter to him Iris didn’t know. She just didn’t want him to think she’d spent the weekend with Georgios. Jarrod didn’t like Georgios. She’d felt that clearly the first night she met him. “I’d like to discuss this with you over coffee.”

  “That’ll work, Iris. I’ll escort you, and then we can have it here or go out.”

  Iris opened her mouth to tell Jarrod she would just be a moment, that she didn’t need him to walk her to her room, but he’d taken her elbow and the elevator door opened as though summoned just for them. She felt surreptitiously in her jacket pocket for her little evening bag and extracted her card key. They rode in silence to her floor in the company of a few other guests, and true to his word, he escorted her to her door.

  She let them both inside and excused herself to the bathroom where she deposited her bag and nervously washed her hands. Something didn’t feel right. Jarrod had taken charge and moved her right along. Iris knew where he’d learned that particular skill, or at least honed it, and she decided right then and there they’d be out of her room just as soon as she could put her other sneakers on. She wished she hadn’t let him inside, but could hardly have left him standing out in the hall. She took a breath and exited the bathroom.

  Jarrod lounged in the one chair her hotel room offered. His very presence screamed arrogance and entitlement, and it rubbed Iris the wrong way. She again regretted allowing him inside, even to wait for her, and rushed to get her shoes on, yanking the new ones off and leaving them in a careless heap. She felt him studying her.

  “You’re like her, but you’re not.”

  She froze in the act of tying the shoelace on the second sneaker, and then forced herself to act naturally. Jarrod continued in the same vein.

  “When I first saw you, I was freaked, and when George showed up to say he was your escort, it was even stranger. You know about his wife, right?”

  Iris made a noncommittal sound and straightened to cross to the door. Jarrod made no effort to get to his feet, although she wondered if his pose was actually hiding tension. He leisurely scrutinized her from head to toe, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Jarrod was looking at her like predator looks at prey, but with a hint of condescension. Iris had a well-developed gut instinct. It had served her well while touring all those far away places. She cursed her earlier distraction of landing an account and made ready to grasp the door handle and leave.

  “Jane was beautiful. Andreas never appreciated her, but I did. It was too late though because they’d married and she thought he had more money than I did. That wasn’t true at the time, but he fixed me.”

  Iris couldn’t resist. She had no idea what he was talking about, but her curiosity was piqued. Jarrod appeared to be speaking in a confessional. “Fixed you?”

  His face darkened with rage, and her gut clenched. Jarrod now looked positively frightening, all indolence gone. His mouth opened and closed, and he was no longer slouching in the chair. He looked as though he would punch someone, hurt them. She felt behind her for the door handle and eased it down soundlessly.

  “Andreas did some work for my father and solved the mystery of our cash flow problem.” Jarrod laughed bitterly. “I was supplementing my allowance, and that bastard’s oh so clever investigation effectively cut me off. My friend was in on it with me and took the fall because I made it worth his while. Which made my financial situation even more tenuous!”

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “But I got the last laugh. I took his sub. I took Jane. And he’s been half the man ever since.”

  Iris forgot about leaving. She was flabbergasted. And then she had to know. She hesitantly asked, “Did you kill her?”

  Jarrod lurched to his feet, his eyes wild and staring. “That wasn’t the plan! It was an accident. I loved her, and she loved me! But she was going to go back to him! I haven’t been the same since, and it’s Andreas’ fucking fault! And then he finds you! It’s not fair! Bullshit! I won’t allow it!”

  She lost her nerve and yanked the door open with a strength born of self-preservation, slipping out the narrow opening and dashing down the hall. Taking the elevator was out. Jarrod was already shouting behind her. She’d run down the stairs. There was no way he’d catch her unless she slipped, and she wasn’t about to let that happen. Georgios needed to learn what happened to Jane.

  She ran into a solid wall of muscle, and the breath whooshed out of her. Georgios caught her up and looked past her to the lumbering figure of Jarrod. Iris found herself set up against the wall as Georgios squared off with the other man.

  Jarrod looked nothing like the suave, wealthy Dom from the club. His hair stuck out in all directions, and his face was mottled with rage, his eyes filled with insane fury. He slowed his advance and glared balefully at Georgios, who opened his mouth, perhaps to reason. But Jarrod lunged forward, and Iris heard the sickening thud of fists against flesh. She waited for an opening, slipped past the struggling bodies and rushed back to her room, but the door had locked behind them and her key was inside. She pounded on the door across the hall with no results and hurried to the one further down. A man in a business suit answered her frantic knocking and agreed to call the police after t
aking one glance down the hall. He urged her to step inside, but she couldn’t leave Georgios. Jarrod was insane. There might be some way she could help.

  She inched back closer to the fighting and suddenly Jarrod hit the carpet with a solid thud. He attempted to rise but sagged down and then collapsed. Georgios watched him warily before looking at her. They stared across his prostrate form for several moments, and Iris set her back once more against to wall to support her shaky knees. The movement obviously broke the spell because he started toward her.

  “Freeze!” The cavalry had arrived.

  * * * *

  Iris pushed back from the table in the interviewing room at the police station. It had taken an interminably long time for the officer to take her statement, considering the fact Jarrod had gained consciousness shortly after the police arrived and began haranguing both her and Georgios. He called her a whore and a cheat and went on about loving Jane, insisting he never meant to choke her, but that she was going to leave him.

  One astute officer had knelt beside him and calmed him, blocking his view of her and Georgios, and Jarrod literally confessed it all. He repeated what he’d told her and added details that might only be known to the killer. And Georgios stood, blank faced and stoic through it all. She hadn’t been allowed to speak to him, although she desperately wanted to offer him some comfort. Her heart ached for him as he hid his feelings from the rest of the world, and from her. Hearing his wife had left him for another man because she hadn’t loved him, but then thought to return to him before dying at the hands of her lover had to have had a terrible impact, and Iris despaired. Aside from one searching glance at her when she was told to accompany an officer to the station, he’d said nothing.

  She looked for the positives. At least Georgios had closure regarding his wife’s death and Jarrod had been caught before he had acted out again. Iris knew she might have been at risk even if she hadn’t connected with Georgios, seeing as Jarrod had met her at the club. Georgios may well have saved her, and that, too, would help him cope with what had happened to Jane. Iris knew him well enough to believe that. He’d come to the hotel to talk with her, and perhaps she would have listened, but things were different now. Jarrod’s actions made everything ugly, and Georgios would be wondering if Jane had come to her senses. He would need to grieve all over again.

  The officer manning the desk obligingly called her a cab, and she went outside to wait for it. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, but she fought against them falling and worked hard at not thinking about anything in particular.

  * * * *

  George shoved his way through the station exit and stared around him. All the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed in his statement, but official paperwork took far too long, and they’d told him she had already left. Warren’s phone call to him that morning upon finding Iris’s note had galvanized him into immediate action. George had no idea why he’d been worried and didn’t stop to analyze it. He simply acted. He was going to confront his woman and make her hear him out. The drive to the hotel seemed to take forever and he’d fought the need to push the accelerator through the floor. He’d left his car with the valet and crossed straight through the lobby to take the elevator to Iris’s floor, certain she would be there. What he’d seen in the hallway still had the power to constrict his chest. Seeing her running toward him down that hotel corridor had elicited the most incredible reactions. For a split second, he thought she was running into his arms, that all was forgiven, and his heart swelled, until he saw the abject fear on her lovely face. The sight of Jarrod Casey pounding along behind her, resembling nothing less than an avenging fury, spurred him into protective mode. He had seen something those nights at the club, and his instincts had raised a warning, but he’d been too besotted and distracted by Iris to see the danger. The man had been incredibly powerful in his rage but his blows and swings off-kilter because of how uncontrolled he’d been. George knew he’d have a few bruises on his arms where he blocked the punches, but the fight had essentially been one sided and over in fairly short order.

  Iris hadn’t frozen either. She hadn’t left him to handle it on his own. She’d found someone to call the police and then returned to back him up! He was a Dom, and she was a sub. She’d stepped out of her role, and damned if he didn’t appreciate it, despite how terrified he’d been for her. She was his, but more importantly, he was hers and he would do well to remember that in the future, because she wasn’t going to let him forget it.

  The police hadn’t let them communicate. He’d satisfied himself that she was physically okay, but knew she needed to talk about what transpired, beyond giving a statement. George was astonished at Jarrod’s confession and felt badly about Jane. George didn’t fool himself into thinking Jane had planned to return to him because she’d discovered she loved him. It was far more likely she was threatening Jarrod and look how it had turned out. If she indeed loved the other man, then she’d really had nothing in the end. Jarrod might say he loved Jane, but he used her, too, just as he would have used Iris to pay Georgios back again for doing his job. God knew how Iris had interpreted it all, but he hadn’t missed her anguish, and dared hope it was for him. But he understood he couldn’t let any more time pass before they spoke. Where was she?

  Iris was standing on the sidewalk, a straight, slender figure still wearing the clothes he had picked out for her. Her hair caught the sun, and he fancied that she glowed in the rays of light.

  “Iris.” He moved to stand beside her, and she jumped. She stared at him and lifted her hand toward his face in a shaky gesture before dropping it again. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and George wrapped her up in his arms.

  She crumpled against him and wept, sobbing like a child. He stood with her, her head tucked beneath his chin, holding her as closely as he could. Pedestrians flowed around them on the sidewalk like water around a boulder in a stream, some of them looking curiously, but most getting on with their business. He told her everything would be fine, that she was safe, and that he loved her. He told her she was his submissive and more than his submissive and he wasn’t letting her go. As he shared his heart, he could feel the tension begin to leave her body.

  When she quieted, he fished a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and helped her dry her face. His shirt was soaked and clung damply to his skin. He cherished the sensation.

  “I’ll take you home, sweet one.”

  Iris didn’t respond but allowed him to lead her to his car where it was parked in the lot. He’d followed the cruiser that took her to the station, worried for her, longing to be the one to comfort her immediately. He put her in the car and then hesitated. Where to take her? Both his house and her hotel room were places with bad memories. In the end he drove to the club.

  He took her to the room where he’d introduced her to BDSM for the first time and she accompanied him willingly, cuddling with him in the baby-making chair set in the corner. The one where a bound sub would have all of her sweet orifices offered and available. George was reminded that he needed to incorporate the issue of the faulty condom into their conversation.

  “Talk to me, Iris.”

  She shifted in his arms and looked at him. “I don’t know what to say. The past few days have been insane, and I have no idea where to start.”

  George smiled. “Indeed they have, sweet one. Then I’ll talk and you will listen.”

  At her nod, he continued, “I appreciate you think I chose you because you look like Jane.”

  “No.”

  He stared into her face. He hardly expected that.

  “I did, yesterday morning. Was it only yesterday?” There was a hint of hysteria in her deprecating chuckle, and he soothed her, rubbing his hands over her back and down her arms.

  “I saw myself looking out of that picture, Georgios. And I expect you saw it, too. At first. You must have noticed the resemblance, and I wish you’d said something. But it was Jarrod who really convinced me.”

  George was incredulou
s. “Casey? What are you talking about?”

  “He said I looked like her but I wasn’t anything like her. And I’m not. I would never have done that to you. I know she’d dead, and I don’t want to sound judgemental, but I wouldn’t have married you for anything other than you. And I wouldn’t have cheated on you and left you without telling you why. We are nothing alike.”

  George took a deep breath and pressed a kiss on Iris’s forehead. “I hate to think I’d want to thank Casey for anything, sweet one, but he is correct, as are you. I admit the resemblance struck me when I first saw you, but only for a very few moments. You aren’t like Jane. Thank god. I regret not mentioning you looked like her, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “I can see now that had I done so we might have avoided your strong reaction yesterday morning.” He heard the implicit threat of correction in his voice. He couldn’t help it. He knew trust was earned, as was respect, but her reaction had hurt and scared him shitless.

  Iris pulled out of his arms to struggle to her feet, and he let her go. She paced a few steps away from him and linked her hands in front of her. “I’m not apologizing for that, Georgios. You imply you know women. Well, if indeed you do, you won’t expect an apology and I won’t expect a correction.”

  There was his girl. His woman. Submissive, but not subservient. Absolute perfection. He lunged forward and caught her up to fall with her upon the bed, taking her mouth with his own. She softened against him immediately, and his arousal leapt. He just managed to hold it at bay to push up and balance on his elbows above her. Her eyes were huge, full of passion. And love. He recognized it because he, too, felt it. But he needed to tell her.