At the reminder of why her friends were cursing Ethan’s package, Piper blinked hard. “You guys are great, but he’s your friend. I don’t hate him. It just hurts.” She tried to paste on a smile. “It’ll pass soon enough. Really.”
“Maybe. But I remember what it feels like to be Dom roadkill.” Lindsey’s jaw tightened. “May an evil sadist bronze Ethan’s balls and nail them up on Dark Haven walls.”
Dix’s eyes were hard. “With him attached.”
Oh, God, what had she done?
Dixon lifted his eyebrows. Her turn.
Don’t let the team down. Piper drank half the very tall, very strong drink and subbie-upped. “Before fun-time, may his erections shrink so much that even extra-small condoms fall off.”
A huff of a laugh came from Lindsey. “Wouldn’t that be disconcerting? Hmm. May his dick shrink until no one can find it in the forest of pubic hair.”
“A flea-infested forest, no less.” Dixon pretended to be pushing through tall foliage. “Where is the little worm? I know it’s in here somewhere.”
“You guys are crazy.” Piper felt the rum hit her bloodstream, and she slumped back on the cushions. Her eyes were irritated and swollen from crying, her makeup undoubtedly streaked down her face, and she didn’t care.
“My turn.” Dix bounced on the couch. “Wait for it…wait for it…”
“Spit it out, subbie-boy.” Lindsey grinned at Piper because…really, was there anyone more darling than Dixon?
Dix held up his glass and intoned solemnly, “May Sir Ethan’s balls shrivel to the size of walnuts right before an attack of zombie squirrels.”
As he pretended to savagely crack walnuts between his teeth, Piper busted into helpless giggles. Lindsey was laughing so hard, she was snorting.
They were so wonderful. And Ethan had been so cruel.
Piper started to cry again.
* * *
In the hallway, standing outside Piper’s half-open door, Ethan listened to the vicious curses in disbelief. Christ, he should don an athletic cup before going in there.
Beside him, Stan snorted. “Jesus, remind me not to piss off my boy.”
“Good luck with that.” Ethan glanced at the Dom. “Thanks for letting me into the building. Could you do me a second favor? Take your submissive and Lindsey home with you.”
At the sound of sobbing—Piper’s sobbing—Ethan froze. Guilt hit him like a gut shot.
Stan’s expression hardened. “I didn’t ask you what happened, but I get the impression you hurt Piper pretty bad. I consider her a friend—a damn vulnerable one.”
“She is, and I did.” The sound of her crying broke his heart. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m going to do my best to make it right.”
“Fair enough. God knows, we all fuck up at times. But…” The Homeland Security agent’s mouth went flat. “The walls in this building aren’t soundproof. If she calls for me, I will answer.”
“Fair enough.” He’d do the same for a female friend.
Pushing the door wide open, Ethan walked in.
Lindsey saw him first and stiffened.
Checking over his shoulder, Dixon scowled and jumped to his feet. “No, no, you will not be in here.” He made a grand sweeping gesture. “Get your aristocratic ass right out of here.”
When Piper turned, her eyes were wet, her face tear-streaked.
He’d done that. Dammit. How was he going to sort this mess out? Ethan moved to one side of the doorway. “Stan.”
The Dom stepped in. “Time to head home, my pretties.”
“No. Absolutely not.” Ignoring his Master, Dixon crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Ethan. “You’ll get to her over my dead body.”
Stan muttered to Ethan, “He’s the most loyal person I know—and so fucking cute.” Walking forward, he grabbed Dixon by the back of his shirt. With his other hand, he nabbed Lindsey’s wrist and yanked her to her feet. “Party’s over. We’re going to let these two battle it out.”
“You can’t leave him with her,” Lindsey protested. “He was—”
“Lindsey.” Ethan met her gaze. “Let me make it right.”
She hesitated before shooting him a threatening glare. “You’d better.”
Dixon wasn’t the only faithful friend. It said something about Piper to bring out such loyalty. After Stan dragged them out, Ethan closed the door.
“You need to go, too.” Piper had scooted into a corner of the couch. Her knees were pulled up against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. “There’s nothing to make right. Nothing to talk about.”
The desolation and finality in her tone were concerning. How much damage had he done? Her arms tightened around her knees. She was shutting him out, physically and mentally. If he pushed too hard, she’d demand he leave. Which was her right.
He sat down close enough his thigh brushed her bare toes. Picking up her drink, he sipped. Rum and coke. Mostly rum. “Dixon and Lindsey are rather intoxicated. How sober are you?”
Startled, she lifted her gaze. “Mostly sober—not completely. They were drinking faster.” Her gaze was steady. Her diction was clear.
“Then, may I ask a couple of questions before I leave?”
He saw her submissive side—the need to please—warring with the need to shield herself from more pain. “Then you’ll leave?”
“If that’s what you want.” He picked up an open can of cola and took a drink, stalling as he decided where to begin. “Jerry said he was your brother. I didn’t think you had any family left.”
Her brows pulled together and then her mouth dropped open. “I did tell you that, didn’t I?”
He waited.
“Jerry is my stepbrother.” Her dark eyes were haunted. “And, as he told me almost daily when we were children, he’s not my family.”
The arse-licking wanker. “Does he live in San Francisco?”
“I—I don’t think so. I don’t know, actually. I haven’t seen him for years.” At Ethan’s raised eyebrows, she sighed. “Our parents died in a car crash. They left him the business and all the accounts except one mutual fund that’d been Mom’s, which came to me.”
Ethan pulled in a breath. “That was how you started your business?”
She nodded. “He gambled his inheritance away and came here to get me to hand over my money, too.”
“I take it you didn’t?”
“I told him to go away and never come back.” She frowned. “I don’t know what he was talking about with the tomorrow stuff. I never said anything about tomorrow.”
Ethan covered her foot, warming her cold skin with his hand. “He meant your plan was to blackmail me tomorrow, not today.”
Indignation, then anger, flared in her eyes. “I never. I wouldn’t.”
“No, I don’t think you would either, poppet.”
“You did, though. You walked away.” Her lower lip trembled. “You decided I was guilty without even asking.”
He’d hurt her right to the core. He was a gormless idiot, wasn’t he? “I’m sorry for that, Piper.”
She looked away. “You should go now. There’s nothing for you here.”
There was everything for him here. How could he get her to see that he’d been wrong—but not unforgivably wrong?
“Piper,” he said slowly, feeling his way. “After I punched your—” The tightening of her eyes warned him that brother would be the wrong word—“Jerry, I waited for you to explain. You never even looked at me. Only at him.”
A shudder ran through her. “You waited? I didn’t know…that you waited. I…there was blood.” She swallowed hard. “You hit him, and he made a noise, and the sound….”
Understanding punched him in the sternum. She’d been abused, often enough that the sight of blood and the sound of a blow would throw her into the past. Yes, he’d cocked this up royally. “You were fighting off a flashback.”
Not looking at him, she nodded.
He should be horsewhipped.
&nb
sp; “Why did you just leave?” Her eyes were liquid with tears. Her voice was filled with anguish.
“Because…” Piper wasn’t the only one to have a brain derailed by flashbacks. He squeezed her foot. “I have a story to tell you.”
* * *
A story? No. Why didn’t he go? Piper could feel the tiny hitches in her breathing that warned of another crying bout.
How foolish was she that her heart yearned for him to stay? Why did she love the way his warm hand felt on her bare feet and how he absent-mindedly stroked the top of one with his thumb.
“I was raised in Oxford, outside London.” He didn’t wait for her permission to begin his tale. Not this Dom. “My father was wealthy with extensive business interests in manufacturing. After finishing my MBA, I started working with him.” Beneath his dark mustache, his lips tilted up. “And then I met a woman. I fear I was rather gullible.”
Gullible. Her head came up. Oh, she knew how that worked.
Even though she didn’t speak, he nodded. “Yes, I thought you’d understand.”
He took a drink of the cola. “While in university, I experimented with BDSM, but Nicola was far more experienced. She introduced me to the Master/slave lifestyle and eventually became my slave.”
His eyes were haunted, and his jaw set as the memories drew him away. Hurting him. Had the woman broken Ethan’s heart? Piper curled her fingers around his hand on her foot to tug him back to the present the way he did so often for her. “What happened to her?”
He blinked and focused on her. “She was murdered before the police could arrest her.”
“Wh-what?”
“Nicola and I had been married two months when police detectives showed up in my office.”
Married? Piper felt a jolt of jealousy, but it faded under the pain radiating from Ethan. “What did the police want?”
“They’d started investigating Nicola after her third husband died. Her previous three—wealthy—husbands had died within a couple of months after the nuptials. It was a pattern. She and her partner—her cousin, Bradley—would run through her inheritance, then target a new victim.”
His lips curved in a mirthless smile. “I was the latest dupe. The police didn’t have enough to arrest her and couldn’t track down her cousin so they asked for my help.”
Oh, God. Piper stared. What would she do if the police said Ethan planned to kill her? What a horrible dilemma. “Oh, Ethan.”
“I couldn’t accept it, even though they showed me pictures of her with her previous husbands. But then they gave me her actual history, and none of what she’d told me was true. The police said she and Bradley would research their target, and she would become whatever kind of woman would be most appealing to him. It worked, I must say.” His voice roughened “I loved her.”
Piper tried to imagine Ethan as a young man, just out of college. He’d have married that woman, thinking of a forever love. “That’s despicable.”
Unable to be so far from him when he was hurting, Piper lowered her legs, slid closer, and pressed against his side. She stroked his chest slowly, trying to soothe him. “What did you do?”
He sighed. “I let them tap our phone. During a call to her cousin, they spoke in a convoluted code, one that gave very little away. The detectives made some guesses and thought my murder was planned for a Halloween costume party we were to attend. I agreed to go and bait the trap.”
Of course, he had. Even knowing it’d all happened in the past, she still wanted to shake him.
He lifted Piper’s hand and rubbed it over his cheek. “When we arrived there, she was so loving I couldn’t stand it.”
His laugh was bitter. “Using the Dom skills she’d helped me hone, I pushed until she confessed everything. Their plan was that Bradley would knife me during the party. She’d be sure to be in a group of people across the room.”
“Murder you during a party? Seriously?”
“It was a crowd. Loud music. People jostling each other. I had on a black pirate costume. Her cousin was to dress as a rival pirate captain and pick a mock-fight with me. Not realizing his intentions, I’d have played along, of course.”
Ethan ran his thumb over his lips and shook his head. “By the time anyone realized I’d really been stabbed and was dead, he’d have changed to a new costume and left. It was a good scheme.”
A chill ran up Piper’s spine. “An awfully cold-blooded scheme. I can’t believe she didn’t care at all.” How could anyone be with Ethan and not care for him?
“Actually, she did care, or that’s what she said. She loved her cousin more.”
That bitch. “You said she died?”
When his face tightened, Piper couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Grief? Regret? Maybe even guilt?
“Nicola and I were leaving when the police spotted Bradley. He saw them closing in, put his knife to a young woman’s throat, and told the detectives to stay back. He backed up toward me and Nicola, probably thinking his cousin would aid him.”
It had been years in the past…and yet Piper had to hold her breath.
“Someone screamed. While Bradley was distracted, I yanked his arm away from the girl’s neck. As the girl scrambled away, Bradley attacked me.” Ethan’s mouth drew unto an unhappy line. “I blocked his swings—he wasn’t that good—then Nicola grabbed my arm. To help him.”
If his wife had still been alive, Piper would have killed her. “What happened?”
“I got loose, pushed her toward him, and dived away. I didn’t realize…” He shook his head, his jaw tight. “He grabbed Nicola, maybe to hold her for a hostage instead, but she panicked. The knife sliced her carotid.”
Ethan took a slow breath. “She died. He went to jail.”
Her Dom felt his wife’s death deeply. Felt guilty. She could see it in the way his shoulders slumped. Nicola had died, and he’d survived without a scratch.
No, wait. Had he? She’d seen the long white scar on his chest. “He cut you, didn’t he? When Nicola grabbed your arm, her cousin got you with his knife.”
Ethan didn’t answer, but she saw the truth in his eyes. His “beloved” wife had almost gotten him killed. God.
Heart aching for him, Piper crawled onto his lap so she could bracket his face and make him look at her. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t start the fight. You didn’t take someone hostage. You saved that young woman’s life.”
“Maybe.” He rested his forehead against Piper’s. “I’m not sure lives and deaths balance out on a scale. Nicola died.”
Had she ever known anyone she could respect like this man?
She didn’t want to care for him. No, she didn’t, but she did. That stupid wife—how could anyone live with Ethan and choose someone else?
After a second, she realized his arms were around her. What in the world was she thinking? She started to slide off, and he gripped her hips. “Not so fast, poppet. We’re not quite done yet.”
“Um. What’s left?”
“You know how you were thrown back to the past when I pounded on Jerry? You weren’t thinking at all, just fighting old memories.”
The blood. The pain. She nodded.
“That’s what happened to me. When Jerry said you two wanted money from me, I fell into the past.” A muscle tensed in his cheek. “Nicola said she liked me, might even have loved me, but Bradley was her cousin, and she’d do anything for him.”
The bitter, wry tone in his voice registered after a moment, and Piper’s eyes widened. “Is that what Jerry told you I’d do?”
“I’m afraid so, yes. I’d already left everything behind once because I’d been foolish about a woman.”
Damn Jerry to hell and beyond for deliberately doing his best to destroy what she had with Ethan.
“You believed him, of course you did.” Exhaustion pulled the strength from her muscles, and she slumped against Ethan’s chest. “So why are you here?”
“Like you, I was caught in the past,” he pointed out gently. “Then my brain k
icked back in. You’re not a blackmailer. Or a liar.”
“You were taken in before. What makes you think that I’m not…” Good grief, was she really arguing for the wrong side? “I mean, never mind.”
“I’m not twenty-two this time around, pet.” Chuckling, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “With age comes clearer sight.”
He’d definitely acquired clear sight. She’d never met anyone who seemed to see right down to the bottom of her soul.
“Reasons or not, I hurt you, Piper. My temporary idiocy made you cry.” His arm tightened around her. “I am very sorry.”
God, he was a good man. “Forgiven. I didn’t do very well either, after all.” She hauled in a breath. “Now what?”
“We continue on.” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip, and the following kiss was tender enough to make her heart ache. “I can spend the night here if you wish. I’d rather you come home with me. We’ll clean up, have another drink, and have vanilla sex all night.”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “You? And vanilla sex? Wait, does that mean I get to give orders?”
“Don’t push your luck, poppet.”
Chapter Fourteen
Out of foggy, cold San Francisco, Ethan had driven inland to where there was blue sky and warm air, rich with the scent of pine. As he led Piper toward the clusters of tents and cabins, he tipped his face up to the sun. It looked like a good weekend for kink camp.
An electric golf cart, the only vehicle permitted on the grounds, whirred past them, the attached trailer piled high with luggage and toys. Ethan and Piper’s bags were on it and would be delivered to the Dark Haven area.
Only half-awake, Piper yawned adorably, then smoothed down her black capris and tugged her dark red tank top straight. “You said we’d be camping out with people, but not much more than that.”
“I tried, but someone fell asleep five minutes after she got in the car.” Ethan grinned at her indignant scowl.
“Someone kept me awake most of the night.”
He had. The realization he’d almost lost her had left him needing her badly. They’d made love, talked, and made love some more. “I thoroughly enjoyed it, too.”
I Will Not Beg Page 18
