Having Her: Lies We Tell, Book 2 (20 page)

But she wasn’t safe. She’d never be fucking safe.

Vin got in, slamming the door after him, rage, thick and hot and electric, coursing through him.

Gravel sprayed as he accelerated out of Hunter’s driveway, tires screeching as they hit the tarmac of the road.

He didn’t know what to do, how to get rid of this feeling. This fury.

First the baby, then finding out his best friend was screwing his sister. The best friend who’d been abused as a teenager, now doing the same to Ellie.

You know that’s not what’s happening. You know that’s not really what you’re angry about.

Vin swerved as a cat ran out onto the road in front of him, and he nearly hit a car coming in the opposite direction. The woman in the car hurled abuse at him as she drove past.

Christ. He needed to calm down, get a grip.

Still shaking, he pulled the car off the road and stopped, sitting there gripping the steering wheel tightly as the engine ticked.

He shut his eyes, watching the scene in Hunter’s garage play out all over again. Him trying to find Hunt because he had to talk to someone about the baby and his friend was the only one he trusted enough to talk to. Coming into the garage and seeing Ellie dressed in only a T-shirt, wrapped around his best friend.

He hadn’t known how close to the edge he was until that moment. Until that sight had kicked him in the guts. Perhaps if he hadn’t just had the news about the baby, he’d never have lost it like he had because violence wasn’t his thing. But seeing Ellie and Hunter together had been the last straw. His friend was a good guy but Vin knew how screwed up he was. Not someone you’d want banging your sister that was for fucking sure.

His hand ached at the memory of his knuckles connecting with Hunter’s hard jaw. The red mist that had descended in front of his eyes as he’d pulled the other man to the ground. He’d wanted to lash out, to hurt him. Full of rage at the betrayal.

But of course it wasn’t only the betrayal, was it? The issue wasn’t Hunter. Or Ellie.

The issue was himself.

He’s just playing out a fantasy, Ellie. A sick, fucked-up fantasy where he gets to be the one in charge.

Vin had yelled those words at her. Careless, unthinking words. He’d meant them for Hunter but they could easily be applied to himself.

Because it was him and what he was doing that was the problem. He was the one playing out the sick, fucked-up fantasies. Where he got to pretend a woman—his own sister’s best friend for God’s sake!—was his personal property, to do whatever he wished with. Treating her as his sex slave. Getting off on her obedience. Indulging his possessive streak, that fact that she was his and no one else’s. Giving her a collar with the word
mine
engraved on the padlock. Jesus.

Slowly Vin’s grip on the wheel tightened even further, the blood on his skin stark against his white knuckles.

He was supposed to protect people. He was supposed to look after them, make sure they were okay. His mother. Ellie. Kara. And to some extent Hunter. But they weren’t okay.

His mother was surviving in the community only barely. Ellie was opening herself to a world of hurt with a man who had more baggage than a 747 could cope with. Hunter had just stood there and taken the hits Vin had given him, as if he’d welcomed the beating. And Kara…

Kara was pregnant with his baby because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Because he’d put himself and his needs first.

Consequences. There were always fucking consequences.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t get it out immediately, a sudden foreboding twisting inside him that it would be Ellie telling him Hunter needed to be taken to the hospital or something because that was just the type of day it had been.

Getting it together, Vin finally pulled the thing out of his pocket and glanced down at the screen.

It wasn’t Ellie. It was a text from Kara.
The slave requests her master’s presence.

Shit. No way. She wanted this now? After what she’d told him?

Without his conscious permission, his body began to harden, not giving a crap what his mind thought.

Vin bit off a curse. His hands were all bloody and he was still full of rage and self-loathing, and compounding what had been a giant mistake in the first place by going back and doing it again was the very last thing in the world he should be doing.

And yet he wanted to. Wanted to escape from all this shit by being the master. Take control of his slave girl.

Your pregnant slave girl.

Jesus Christ, this was so fucked up. He began to type out a refusal and yet somehow the text that he sent wasn’t no. It was yes. And when he put the car into gear and pulled back into the traffic, he wasn’t heading back to the office to crash, but to Kara’s apartment.

She met him at the door in her slave costume and he didn’t miss the fact that despite his last order to her, she wasn’t wearing the collar he’d given her, only the cheap one that had come with the costume. She didn’t say anything as he pulled the door shut behind her, only turned without a word and went down the hall to her tiny, chaotic little lounge. He followed her, finding her kneeling in the middle of the room when he got there, her head bent submissively.

His cock was already hard, the shaking in his hands no better than when he’d left Hunter’s. All the rage seemed to have coalesced into a deep, raw hunger that felt like it had settled right down into his bones, become part of his DNA. A hunger that he would never be free of.

Kara knelt there, a figure painted in differing strokes of gold. Pale honey for her skin, rich tawny for her hair, gilt for the bikini she wore. Even the blue tips of her hair seemed stained with gold.

He didn’t know why it should be this way. Why he should want a sexual relationship that was as far from right and normal as it was possible to get. Why he couldn’t seem to escape the need when for years he’d managed to control himself. He’d never gone out to get trashed with the boys. Never spent his weekends getting laid or getting high. He’d never been able to and hadn’t had a problem with it. He had too many other responsibilities.

Yet now he was face to face with his own personal crack—Kara Sinclair in a slave costume with him holding the chain.

“This is the last time,” he said into the heavy silence. “I’m not doing this again.”

“I don’t please you, master?”

He’d almost never called her by her name while they were in their respective roles. But he did now. “Kara.”

“Don’t.” She raised her head and he saw she still hadn’t put contacts in. Her eyes were dark, the color disconcerting him. “I want the fantasy.”

Yeah. The fantasy. Yet looking down into her eyes, somehow all he could see was the stark whiteness of her face as she told him she was pregnant. The fear there. The vulnerability.

And with that between them there could be no fantasy. Not anymore.

“We need to talk about this.”

“No.” The finality in the word was crushing. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She leaned forward, ran her hands up the backs of his thighs. “I want to be your slave. I want you to use me.”

And of course his bloody dick hardened even more at her words, at the feel of her hands, at the press of her body against his legs.

Sick, fucked-up fantasy…

“This isn’t the time.”

“The hell it isn’t.” Her hand moved, pressing hard against the fly of his jeans, finding the hard ridge of his aching cock, squeezing.

Pleasure turned on like a light inside him, the thrill of it shooting straight down his spine, the breath hissing in his throat. “Kara—”

“I’m not Kara.” She pulled at his fly, reaching for his zipper, tugging it down with one hand while with the other she loosened the tie of her bikini top, letting it fall off her.

And he, sick fuck that he was, couldn’t stop looking at her. The curves of her full breasts as she freed them, tight, pink nipples. She looked up at him again, her fingers pressed against the cotton of his boxers, her thumb running up and down the ridge of his erection. “I’m the slave.
Your
slave.”

He put his hand over hers, holding it down against his groin. Hard. So she couldn’t move it. “No. This has to stop. Things are different now.”

She stilled then leaned forward, her forehead pressing against his abdomen. “Please.” Her voice was quiet, devoid of her usual snark. “Please. Just tonight. I need…I need this.”

“Baby—”

She lifted her head and for a second he glimpsed desperation in her eyes. “Please. I’ll beg if you want me to.” Beneath his imprisoning fingers, her hand moved lightly over his aching shaft. “I just want a night.”

The hunger inside him began to shift and turn like an animal making a home for itself. Settling down to stay.

You want it. Don’t deny it.

Yeah, of course he did. Hell, he’d already made one catastrophic error with her—what was another? And shit, why not include beating Hunter to a pulp and nearly turning on Ellie too?

It wasn’t like the day could get any worse.

He moved his hand, gathering the softness of her hair into his fist. Then he pulled and her head came back, the sound of her sharply indrawn breath loud in the room.

“One night,” he said. “Then we talk.”

“Okay.”

“So what are you waiting for? Get naked.”

He didn’t miss the flash of relief that crossed her face as he released her and he didn’t try to kid himself he didn’t like that. Or the way her hands shook as she quickly undid the bikini bottoms she wore and stepped out of them.

His desire coiled tighter as she stood there naked. Soft and vulnerable and female. And all his to do whatever he wanted with her.

Yeah, it was sick. It was fucked-up. But it was his fantasy and he would live it one more time.

“Why are you wearing this?” He tugged on the chain attached to the cheap collar. “What happened to the collar I gave you? I ordered you to wear it.”

She didn’t look at him or offer any kind of explanation. “I’m sorry, master.”

He could push but he wasn’t going to. Not tonight. “On your back.”

She obeyed without a protest, lying down on the multicolored rugs that lay all around the apartment, golden hair spread everywhere.

“Spread your legs.”

Again she moved obediently, letting her knees fall open. She was looking up at him, eyes dark. She wasn’t wearing her glasses today and for some reason he was very conscious of the fact. As if her glasses were a mask she’d taken off, showing him the woman behind it.

He swallowed, his throat thick with an emotion he didn’t want to name.

God, she was so vulnerable. She hid it well beneath her snarky, prickly exterior but he knew. He saw just how vulnerable she was. And tonight he seemed to be even more conscious of her vulnerability. They’d pushed the boundaries with his anger once before but now it just didn’t seem right.

She deserved more than to lie on the carpet with her legs spread, waiting for him to screw her. She deserved to be looked after. Taken care of. Especially now. Because he had the feeling that Kara Sinclair hadn’t been either looked after or taken care of much in her life.

Vin shifted, aware that his hand was aching. That the rage had seeped away, leaving him feeling empty and tired and weirdly lost. He didn’t want to be the master, ordering her around. For the first time what he wanted was to wrap his arms around her and hold her soft warmth against him. Make love to her. Not screw her on the carpet.

Slowly he dropped to his knees. “Sit up.”

She blinked, then frowned. “What—”

“Don’t question me. Sit up.”

Kara pushed herself into a sitting position. “Master, I don’t—”

He pushed his fingers into her hair then leaned down and covered her mouth with his. She gave a little sigh, leaning into the kiss, lips parting, letting him taste her. He kept things gentle, kept it sweet, his tongue tracing the line of her lower lip. She tried to make it more intense, kiss him more aggressively but every time she did, he pulled back. He’d had enough of aggressive tonight.

Kara made a soft sound in the back of her throat. “More,” she murmured against his mouth. “Harder.”

He curled his fingers tighter in her hair, tugging her back again. “No. Not tonight.” He freed one hand to stroke her bare shoulder, caressing her.

She stiffened. “I don’t want that.”

He didn’t stop, his hand dropping down her spine, lightly stroking that too. “You don’t want what?”

“Gentle. I don’t want gentle.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

Her gaze slid away. “I just don’t want it.”

“This isn’t about you, remember? You’re here for me.” He trailed one finger down her arm, moving lightly over her golden skin, watching the goose bumps rise as he did so.

She’d gone still under his touch. He let his fingers trail over the dips and hollows of her collarbone, the graceful arch of her throat. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “You know that, don’t you? Kara, you’re—”

“Stop.” The word was hard and sure.