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His quiet, calm words felt like a thousand stab wounds. “I’ll try harder, I promise. I’m here now. I’m here because I want to get better. You were helping me feel better. If you drop me now—”
“I’m not dropping you. You dropped me first. And I quote: ‘All of this is stupid and pointless. Stupid games that mean nothing.’”
I put my head in my hands, letting out my breath in a long, slow exhalation. If Liam pushed me away now, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it. I looked up into his hard amber gaze.
“Please take me back,” I begged. “I’ll do anything. Please give me one more chance. I know you can help me. Don’t give up on me yet. I mean, I know I was the one who gave up, but— But I won’t this time. I won’t.”
“Why would you want another chance, if it’s just stupid games?”
I’d really hurt him. He was really hurt. “I’m sorry I threw all your wonderful things back in your face. I wish I could go back and not do that.” I took his hand, his big, rough hand, pressing it against my cheek. “When I’m with you, I feel like I’m getting better. I feel excited and turned on and…and…I want to be with you.”
He held his hand slack against my jaw. “Guess what, Twinkletoes? A lot of women want to be with me, and they’re a lot easier to deal with than you.”
Oh, wow. He could be a cold fucking bastard when he wanted to. This was what Rubio had tried to warn me about. I stood up, narrowing my eyes. “Did you just call me Twinkletoes?”
“Yes.” He took in my pugilistic stance. “Are you going to bitch me out again? Storm off?”
“I think I will storm off, if you’re going to be such a prick.”
He jabbed a finger at the door. “Be my guest.”
Of all the ways I could have left his house after this ill-conceived visit, storming out was definitely the most satisfying. I stalked toward the door in full flounce, but my dramatic exit was ruined when I slipped halfway across his glossy marble floor and fell on my face. Ow, that floor was hard. He made a sound and vaulted up off the couch.
“Jesus, Ashleigh. Such balletic grace.”
Tears gathered in my eyes. Not tears of pain, because I’d fallen plenty of times in my dance career. It was more tears of wanting to fade into the floor and die. “Don’t,” I said, pushing his hand when he reached for me. “Don’t touch me.”
“Let me help you.”
“I wanted you to help me,” I yelled. “You said no. You told me to leave!”
“I never told you to leave. That was your decision.”
“Because you called me Twinkletoes,” I bawled from the floor at his feet.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “You’re killing me.” A moment later he held out his hand again. “Get up. Let’s attempt to talk together like two fucking adults.”
I hated him and I loved him. Apparently I couldn’t even navigate a marble floor without his help. “I’m sorry,” I sniffled, as he led me back to the sofa. “I’m really stressed out.”
“Did you hurt anything when you fell?”
I shook my head. The only thing hurting was my shredded pride. Even if I’d managed to leave without the pratfall I would have been back again in a week. I knew that, and I was sure he knew it too. He went to get me some tissues and then sat heavily beside me, bracing his hands on his knees. “There have to be more rules this time. If we start up again.”
I nodded. “I know. I need rules.”
“Like, if you leave, you have to come back. You have to call me and talk to me within twenty-four hours. And no more…” He shook his head and grimaced. “No more emotional meltdowns. We’re going to stay on task. I don’t want girlfriend drama. I don’t want all these tears and big scenes.”
“No, I agree. No more drama. I don’t want that either.” But the word tears brought an old conversation to mind. He upset you tonight and I think he probably enjoyed this.
I stared at Liam, wiping my hands over my face.
“What? What is it?”
“Nothing.” I straightened my shoulders. “I’m done crying. It seems like you always make me cry. It’s like you enjoy it or something,” I pretended to joke.
I watched his face for some reaction to my comment, watched for some sign he was getting off on all this upheaval. Getting off on breaking me down. I’d willingly sought out the services of a player and manipulator, so if he was, I couldn’t really fault him for it. I tried to read him but his expression was carefully blank.
“I think I need a week,” I said, shrugging off my misgivings. “A week to get ready, to get myself in the right frame of mind. Is that okay?”
“Sure, it’s okay. Next Monday?”
I nodded. By Monday I’d be back with my emotional armor. Our thing was just supposed to be about sex, and I’d make it about sex, come hell or high water. I didn’t want the emotional bullshit either, just a functioning sex life. Thanks to Liam, I was halfway there.
“Oh, you know what?” I said as he was helping me into my coat.
“What?”
“Rubio cast me in this ballet he’s working on. It’s kind of a big deal. It’s for the spring showcase and also the summer tour. I’ve been helping him practice, and I guess he figured, since I already knew the steps…”
“Or he figured you’re totally underrated as a dancer and decided it’s time for the world to see what you’ve got. If you got the part, I’m sure you deserved it. I didn’t even know he was working on a ballet.”
I gave him a sideways look. “He never said anything to you about it? That I was practicing with him?”
Liam shook his head in a slow, fake kind of way. “No. He never said anything.”
I wondered why he was lying when I wasn’t allowed to. I wondered when I’d stopped trusting Liam Wilder. I thought maybe I’d never trusted him in the first place.
Because trust had always been a really touchy issue for me.
Chapter Thirteen: Progress
It had to become about the sex.
For me to survive handling her, for her to survive dealing with me, it had to become about hardcore, focused, balls-to-the-wall sex. I knew I didn’t want to get any closer to her emotionally, and I knew she was impatient to ride a cock that wasn’t attached to a soul-crushing rapist. We’d talked about boundaries and consent. Check. She had the tools, I told myself. It was time to up the game.
The stupid game, as she called it. It didn’t feel like a game to me. It felt like hell.
I wasn’t sleeping with other women. I couldn’t, and when I scened with them at the parties my performances were lackluster at best. Women still wanted to play with me, still came on to me, but my heart wasn’t in it. Ruby poked at me and mocked me, but none of that mattered.
All that mattered was Ashleigh and sex.
The first session back we focused on exploring each other’s erogenous zones. I turned off the lights and blindfolded her, exhorting her to feel her way through the exercise rather than worry about what she could see. I lay beside her in the guest bed and touched every part of her, and encouraged her to touch every part of me. I stroked, I explored. I ate out her pussy like a starving man and then gritted my teeth while she tentatively licked my cock.
The next session rolled around near Valentine’s Day. I used toys on her. Vibrators, ruthlessly. I made her climax over and over for a good hour, until she was too limp and exhausted to struggle any more, then I lubed up a small anal plug and worked it into her ass. She was scared and nervous, but once it was in, I could tell the feeling turned her on. Kinky. So kinky. I told her I wouldn’t take it out until she sucked me to orgasm, and that got her even more worked up. We discovered in the course of these sessions that foreplay-type activities didn’t bother her, since she didn’t have any experience with them in her abusive past.
The session after that, I helped her explore some of her masochistic fantasies. I took her down to the play room and showed her how it felt to be tied down to the various tables. I let her try out whipping racks and
spreader bars. I gave her little smacks with all the various implements so she could experience the differences between them. Even though she got extremely turned on, she never begged me to fuck her the way she had during the second session. We were going at my careful and deliberate pace; she seemed to understand that now.
After we left the play room I took her upstairs. I had an aching hard-on that needed attention. I made her stand against the wall with her back to me, so I could look at the collage of marks I’d made on her ass with paddle, crop, tawse, and whip, among other things.
“Okay, Ashleigh?” I asked her.
“Yes, I’m okay,” she said, shivering when I traced over a welt on the back of her thigh.
“Does it still hurt?”
