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I was ending a lot of things. I was also ending it with St. Martin for the time being, because events had caused him to turn vicious. As a sexual sadist he gloried in control. Not just controlling his submissive.
Exercising iron self-control so he knew he could hurt me and not hurt me. He'd lost that due to a series of events. When the couple he sent me to stay with proved even more violent and dangerous, I'd called off the whole thing, contract and all.
There's something highly not legal about a contract that bonds one into sexual submission. He didn't press me.
Now I was here to make sure Mark didn't press me anymore either.
"I told you I was in town."
Mark continued to glower at me. He also hadn't come into the apartment. He stood in the doorway watching me. That was probably a bad sign.
"I told you I'd be here when you got back from work." I'd been guessing work was where he was because that's pretty much all he'd done when we were together: Med school. Rotations. Or in the apartment trying one more time to convince me I needed to give him my emergency contact number before I left for undercover work.
He was the last person in the world I'd give that number to because his idea of an emergency was a little too fluid for my liking. Like, When are you coming home for a visit? Are you safe? I miss you. Where did you leave the waffle iron?
Mark nodded at me. "I got your message."
Then why are you asking what I'm doing here? I wondered.
"So is this how it's going to go?" he asked. He ran a hand through his hair. He'd recently had it cut and it looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. It was a good look on him, one I'd have enjoyed if he'd tried it while we were together. The faintest unease sneaked through me, the wonder if he was seeing someone else.
I had no right to wonder that. Every time, I'd been the one to leave. Even if I'd recently had an epiphany that his refusal to call us off, his insistence on waiting for me, was controlling and less loving than – well, controlling, I still felt for him. If he was seeing someone, that was fine. I was living with someone who knew more about me than Mark ever would. I'd betrayed him a lot more than just physically.
I was here to break off the engagement.
It still bothered me. I'm a fairly controlling person myself. Of course I am. I'm a cop, a black belt, I go undercover all the time which cuts me loose from the rules of the police department even as I'm still working for them.
Or I had been.
And in the flip side of my life, I kneel naked to a billionaire of undoubted brilliance but perhaps questionable sanity and call him Sir and let him do things to me.
All of which flashed through my mind with the speed of thought. None of which helped quell the anger. "Is what how it's going to be?"
Mark gestured around as if I'd done something to the apartment. I had, but it was only to start collecting those few possessions I wanted to take with me. Now I was wondering if someone else had been here, with him, the petty part of me was starting to think I needed everything. Every item that was mine. Everything in the place I'd purchased.
It was stupid. It was petty. It was human. I didn't need or want a waffle maker. I'd bought it because Mark liked waffles. Why should I leave it so some other woman could make him waffles using it?
Because you don't like waffles and you don't want Mark?
I licked my lips. "I'm in town to quit PD," I said and instantly knew I'd started at the wrong point. There was hope, even now, flashing in his eyes, and even if he used his dogged devotion to control me, he still cared.
Damn it.
"You're quitting?"
I sat down. I'd been standing with my legs spread, my hands in my pockets, my stance aggressive. Now I sat. "Mark. I'm moving to Las Vegas and going to school."
"With him." He said it flatly and for a second I thought he meant was I going to UNLV with Cole St. Martin before I realized he meant something different.
"No. I'm not with him anymore."
Mark sneered. My sitting down had done nothing to even things between us. "Then why go to university there?"
"Because I'm through here," I said gently. "We're not together anymore, Mark. Not me and St. Martin. Not me and you. You can see that." Can’t you?
"So that's it?" His face was incredulous, his eyes big and dark, his mouth uncertain. "You're just going to go?"
Pick one, I thought. Either why am I here and do I think I still have the run of the place, or please don't leave you.
