“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Yeah, all the tantalizing details of my captivity, sexy torture, and first orgasms with the man I’ve always longed for. I hold her gaze, trying not to blush.
Fortunately Rachel is still trying to wrap her head around the details I have told her. “I can’t believe your father sold the patents.”
“It happened after my mother’s death. He was desperate.”
“So what are you going to do? Belladonna’s entire net worth is tied up in those patents. If we don’t have the rights to develop the research—”
“I’ve got it figured out,” I say and she blinks. I’ve never sounded so firm before, but I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. Belladonna is my company, and I’m going to steer her true. “For the first time in my life, I’m thinking clearly.”
“All right,” Rachel murmurs, her brow furrowing as she approaches our building. She’s right—there are press mobbing the front. I resist the urge to slide down in my seat as we pass them. “I’ll drop you off,” Rachel says as she pulls around back. “Go get ‘em. I’m right behind you.”
“Thanks,” I shoot her a smile and exit the car. My confident stride lasts until I’m almost to the lobby elevators. A tall man is waiting by reception, wearing a greatcoat. My steps slow when he turns. Smooth skin, blond hair sleekly combed back from his model perfect face. Adam Archer.
I wait, but there are no belly flutters. No excitement at seeing Adam. No, I’m disappointed. Even with his scars, Logan outshines Adam’s movie star good looks.
But when Adam sees me, he looks relieved. I feel a twinge of guilt. Weak, but it’s there.
“There you are.” He catches me in his arms. To my shock, he puts his hands on my cheeks and kisses me full on the mouth.
“Adam,” I break away. Guilt totally gone. “What are you doing?” I want to wipe my lips, it feels so wrong to have felt someone’s kiss other than Logan’s.
“It’ll be all right, Daphne. I talked to your father. I know just what to do.”
I scrunch my face, jerking back from Adam. Does he always wear this much cologne?
“Adam, that’s…very kind. But I don’t need—”
But Adam isn’t listening.
“Here she is!” Adam waves to someone behind my head. The elevator has opened and several board members are standing there, scowling at me. A committee of vultures, identical to the man with their glowering faces and dark suits.
“I’ve got her,” Adam says and turns me to face him. “Daphne, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Our press conference.”
“Wait.” Everything is happening too fast. “What press conference?”
“Just follow my lead.” He’s tugging me to the door. The security guards are opening it.
“No—wait—”
Cameras flash. I’m blinded.
“She’s here, everyone,” Adam is saying, laughing. He shines his toothpaste grin at everyone, basking in the flashing lights. He loves the cameras and they love him.
“Mr. Archer! Mr. Archer!”
“No—” I try to blunder back into the building, but the board is there, waiting just inside. Adam catches my arm and eases me into his side.
“She’s a little camera shy. But that’s okay. I talk enough for the both of us.”
Oh gods, no. I can feel it happening—the old Daphne surfacing. The people pleaser, the one who does whatever her father tells her to do. Smile for the camera, Daphne. Hold the award up nice and high so we all can see it. See what you’re worth.
You don’t see me. I want to scream. You never did. But Adam is waving to a TV crew, his arm around me as we pose. I move with him in lockstep. Everyone’s speaking over me and I just let them.
“Dr. Laurel, where were you? Can you comment on the state of the merger?”
“Enough, enough,” Adam waves his hands and the press settles down. I’ve always wondered how he could do that—magically calm the storm. “I have a question to ask Daphne. And I think you’ll want to hear it.”
My heart beats so loud I barely hear what he says next. But I don’t need to. I can guess. Because, in front of everyone, the ecstatic press and the somber-faced board members, Adam gets down on one knee.
No. My heart stops.
“Daphne,” Adam murmurs.
What, my lips shape the word but no sound comes out. From his pocket, Adam produces a small black box and opens it. A diamond flashes like a paparazzi's camera.
Over the rising roar of the crowd and the rushing in my ears I read Adam’s lips as he asks, “Will you make me the happiest man on Earth?”
Twenty-Six
Logan
Letting her go was the right thing to do. I pace the basement lab while waiting for the latest set of experiments to run.
Work is the only thing I can think to do so I don’t go out of my mind while she’s gone from the castle. She’ll like that I’m doing work on Battleman’s. When she gets back I’ll finally tell her what I’m working on. Maybe… Maybe we could work on it together. It could be our life’s goal together. I could prove to her she doesn’t have to carry the load alone anymore.
Still, other thoughts pop in, and they’re annoyingly loud.
You should never have let her go. The second they get her back in her clutches, she’ll—
No. She’s not like that. She’s strong. I’ve helped her become strong. She’s mine. She swore a sacred vow when she gave her body to me and me alone. They can never have back what’s mine.
My hands clench in fists but I force myself to breathe out. She’s my Daphne. Loyal to a fault. She’s the one person in the world who will never betray me.
But gods, I miss her face already.
I heave my large body down into an office chair in front of a research laptop and in spite of myself, can’t help but type her name in a search bar.
I just need to see her face to tide me over. She should be calling any moment. She said she’d keep me up to date on how her father is and when she’ll be back. My phone is in my breast pocket but I don’t pull it out for the thousandth time to check the battery and whether or not the volume is at full capacity. It’s a weakness and I hate that she makes me weak.
But for Daphne, I’ll bear a little weakness.
So I pull up the page of results from her name, expecting the same old news articles from years ago with press photos.
But instead—
My fist pounds on the table when the first thing that comes up is a photo of the two of them.
Adam fucking Archer.
Holding my Daphne’s hand, grinning up at her with the smile his father paid a fortune for, down on one fucking knee.
The click-bait headline shouts: Magnate Playboy Adam Archer Finally Getting Hitched!
I roar and throw the laptop against the wall, smashing it to pieces. Then I stand and grab anything else within range. Raging. Destroying everything.
When I’m done, almost all the lab equipment is upended, there’s shattered glass everywhere, and my heart is on the floor among the shards.
She was just like the rest of them after all.
A two-faced liar who would’ve said anything to get away from me. To get back to her fiancé. How they’re probably laughing at me.
She’s made a fool of me.
And the Master is going to make her pay.
Epilogue
Daphne
There’s an engagement ring on my finger. How the hell did that just happen? I stare down in shock even as the click and flash of a hundred cameras go off, memorializing the moment. One second I was trying to think of how to do damage control and then Adam was down on one knee and then—
Logan. Oh gods. What did I just do? I’m going to be sick.
But Adam’s grabbing my hand and holding it up, grinning at all the reporters. I never actually said yes. Not the words. I just sort of stared at Adam and gave a head bobble and then he shouted
to the crowd that I did say yes and put the ring on my finger.
I do my best to keep the horror off my face. How could he do this? How could he put me on the spot like this?
Then I remember: Adam doesn’t know. No one knows I’ve spent the last two weeks falling in l— I mean, becoming extremely close with another man. A man I’ve let master me. It’s not hard to imagine Logan’s fury when he finds out about this.
But that’s not what’s gutting me. It’s knowing that underneath his anger and rage, I’ll have hurt him. Hurt him so deeply.
No, panic chokes me. No, I’ll be able to explain it. I didn’t have a choice. If I can just explain it, then he’ll have to understand—
Adam pulls me close and mashes his mouth to mine. His tongue tries to invade my mouth but I seal my lips stubbornly shut. I can only be pushed so far. I understand I lose the company if I don’t go along with this. I understand it might be the last shock that pushes my father’s health over the edge if I don’t agree with the farce.
But I can’t betray Logan any more than I already have. I turn my face away from Logan and pull back, smiling at the crowd and waving.
“We have business inside now,” I call out to the reporters. “Have to share the happy news!” And then I stride as quickly as humanly possible in these damn heels into the Belladonna offices.
* * *
“Oh Mama, it was awful,” I cry, tears leaking down my cheeks. I sit, legs folded, beside her grave and the beautiful statue of her likeness, just like I used to do by her bedside. Thornfield, my childhood home, looms in the distance like a comforting monument to sameness in the midst of all this change. This small ancestral graveyard is at the east edge of the property.
“I’ve made a mess of everything.” I look up at her, beautiful and serene, the sunshine lighting the cold planes of her stone statue. It’s nothing like her and yet better than anything else I have. Right now I’m clinging to anything of her I can get. I need her so much right now.
“Adam wanted to talk after the board meeting but I ran away like a coward after a few minutes. He’s sincere and nice but he treats me like he’s just going to come in and fix everything. Like I can’t do anything myself. And gods, maybe I can’t. Look at how I screwed it all up when I was CEO.”
“And when I tried to tell him I couldn’t marry him for real, he just said I was exhausted and that he’d take care of everything. Instead of fighting, I said he was right and I was going to go home and sleep. So then I was going to go straight back to Logan’s to explain everything but instead I came here.”
Thunder rumbles in the distance and clouds cover the sun, casting my mother’s beautiful face in shadow. Like she, too, is turning her face away from me, wherever she is in the heavenly fields of paradise.
I bend over her grave, my tears falling and salting the ground. “Please,” I beg. “Don’t leave me alone. You always knew what to do. You knew how to handle Daddy when he was being impossible and you always made me feel better no matter how bad things got and I—”
“So now you show up at your mother’s grave.”
I choke out in shock at the voice and swing around. Logan! He’s standing not five feet behind me. I jump to my feet and start to run towards him when I notice his face.
His features are cruel and angry.
He saw. He saw the news.
When he grabs my hand and holds it up, exposing Adam’s ring still on my finger, I know for sure. He throws my hand away roughly in disgust.
“You lied to me,” he spits.
“No, wait, Logan, it’s not what you think—” I start but he swiftly cuts me off.
“Are you engaged to Adam fucking Archer?”
“I- I mean, well technically, but not—”
Before I can get another word out, though, Logan’s crossed the few feet between us and his hand is at my throat. “Faithless whore,” he spits. “Our bed wasn’t even cold before you were off spreading your legs for him. I was just practice, I suppose, to break you in like a bitch in heat?”
I slap him. Hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His hand at my throat squeezes and he moves so that his face is only an inch from mine. And I can’t help it. My body is trained to respond to his dominance. I liquify beneath him. My curves soften to his hard muscle.
And he feels it. For a second, I see a glimmer of Logan, my Logan in his glittering blue eyes before they turn back to ice. “Is this how you were with him? Did your cunt soften and squirt when he touched you?”
He reaches down, roughly shoves up the skirt of my dress, and grabs my crotch. I have to fight my back arching into his touch.
“I ought to slap you again,” I grit out through my teeth.
“Is that a yes?” he all but yells, gripping my sex harder as fury flashes in his eyes.
“No one but you has ever touched me there, Master!” I yell at him, just as furious. I know it looks bad, but doesn’t he have any faith in me? In what we shared together? He wouldn't even let me tell him my side of things!
He just shakes his head at me. “I can’t believe a word out of your lying mouth.”
I deflate. So that’s how it will be. The truth doesn’t matter to him. Only his stupid, misguided vendetta. I shove him in the chest. “Then let me go,” I shout, rallying again. “If you won’t believe me, then there’s no point in any of this.”
He lets go of me and I stumble back.
“So that’s it?” he laughs. “You and Adam Archer ride off into the sunset together? I don’t think so, kitten.”
I glare at him. “What do you want with me, Logan? You won’t believe what I have to tell you.”
“No.” His dark eyes glare right back at me. “I won’t ever believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth ever again. But that doesn’t mean your debt to me is nearly begun being paid. I am your Master. And I get to say when you leave. Not you.”
What? What does that mean?
“I- I don’t understand,” I say slowly.
“You will,” he says darkly. “You will.”
And then he rushes me, picks me up and slings me over his shoulder.
“Where are you taking me?” I squeal, banging on his back with my tiny fists and kicking uselessly. He locks his thick arm around my legs, holding them down, and walks towards Thornfield manor.
“I’m taking you home.”
Beauty and the Thorns
I never thought I’d see him again.
My first love, back from the grave.
My captor and tormentor.
He holds my past, present, and future in his scarred hands.
He owns me.
No matter how far I run, my path leads me back to that lonely castle.
Back into the arms of the Beast.
One
Present Day
Daphne
There’s an engagement ring on my finger. How the hell did that just happen? I stare down in shock even as the click and flash of a hundred cameras go off, memorializing the moment. One second I was trying to think of how to do damage control and then Adam was down on one knee and then—
Logan. Oh gods. What did I just do? I’m going to be sick.
But Adam’s grabbing my hand and holding it up, grinning at all the reporters. I never actually said yes. Not the words. I just sort of stared at Adam and gave a head bobble and then he shouted to the crowd that I did say yes and put the ring on my finger.
I do my best to keep the horror off my face. How could he do this? How could he put me on the spot like this?
Then I remember: Adam doesn’t know. No one knows I’ve spent the last two weeks falling in l— I mean, becoming extremely close with another man. A man I’ve let master me. It’s not hard to imagine Logan’s fury when he finds out about this.
But that’s not what’s gutting me. It’s knowing that underneath his anger and rage, I’ll have hurt him. Hurt him so deeply.
Panic chokes me. No, I’ll be able to explain it. I d
idn’t have a choice. If I can just explain it, then he’ll have to understand—
Adam pulls me close and mashes his mouth to mine. His tongue tries to invade my mouth but I seal my lips stubbornly shut. I can only be pushed so far. I understand I lose the company if I don’t go along with this. I understand it might be the last shock that pushes my father’s health over the edge if I don’t agree with the farce.
But I can’t betray Logan any more than I already have. I turn my face away from Adam and pull back, smiling at the crowd and waving.
“We have business inside now,” I call out to the reporters. “Have to share the happy news!” And then I stride as quickly as humanly possible in these damn heels into the Belladonna offices.
Two
Present Day
Daphne
“Oh Mama, it was awful,” I cry, tears leaking down my cheeks. I sit, legs folded, beside her grave and the beautiful statue of her likeness, just like I used to do by her bedside.
Thornhill, my childhood home, looms in the distance like a comforting monument to sameness in the midst of all this change. This small ancestral graveyard is at the east edge of the property.
“I’ve made a mess of everything.” I look up at her, beautiful and serene, the sunshine lighting the cold planes of her stone statue. It’s nothing like her and yet better than anything else I have. Right now I’m clinging to anything of her I can get. I need her so much right now.
“Adam wanted to talk after the board meeting but I ran away like a coward after a few minutes. He’s sincere and nice but he treats me like he’s just going to come in and fix everything. Like I can’t do anything myself. And gods, maybe I can’t. Look at how I screwed it all up when I was CEO.”
“And when I tried to tell him I couldn’t marry him for real, he just said I was exhausted and that he’d take care of everything. Instead of fighting, I said he was right and I was going to go home and sleep. So then I was going to go straight back to Logan’s to explain everything but instead I came here.”
Billionaire’s Captive: A Beauty and the Rose Box Set Page 17
