Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (16 page)

Men all over Asia would soon be wearing my accessories. I was creating a gold and diamond set for an A-list actress to wear to the Oscars. And yet here I was, curled in a ball of self-hatred and doubt. I wanted Price to love me. I wanted the questioning and jealousy to go away. I wanted us to fix each other, but some days it felt like we were only making each other more broken.

I’ll never be enough for him. Why do I even try?

I started to sob, and it wasn’t the sobbing from earlier, triggered by sustained and agonizing torture. No, these tears were from emotional pain. Oh God, it hurt. Everything fucking hurt, and I felt so fucking alone.

*

Shit. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

I lay in my bed and watched her on my tablet, because yes, there were cameras everywhere. Yes, I loved her that much, and yes, I’d beaten the shit out of her in the dungeon. I had to. Our relationship had rules. We had a fucking dynamic to follow. I was the Master and she was my slave, and she wasn’t allowed to be around hurtful people or get herself into hurtful situations.

Even if I felt like maybe I was the most hurtful person in her life right now.

She was crying, really crying. Unlike the smaller cameras in her studio, the guest room camera had audio, and I could hear the misery wailing out of her throat, even though she tried to muffle it in her pillow.

I put my hands over my ears. I could still hear. Sometimes I loved the sound of her crying. Sometimes I licked her tears off her face like they were expensive wine. Sometimes her tears got me hard and made me want to fuck her to oblivion, until she cried another kind of tears, from sheer exhausted pleasure.

Sometimes, like now, her tears made me feel like throwing myself out a window.

I got up and started to pace. I couldn’t go to her. Tonight was about teaching her to appreciate the connection we had by taking it away from her. Our connection, our relationship, our
dynamic
. My beautiful, sad Chere wore my collar even now, while she lost her shit in a fetal position.

Fuuuck.

I buried my face in my hands and then stalked back to the tablet. I could mute it. I could close out the camera feed and go to bed. Even then, I knew I’d hear her, like a dog could hear its owner’s car from two blocks away. Instead, I went and stood outside the door. Maybe I could just stand here. Maybe that would be enough. I thought I’d just stand here until she stopped sobbing, but while I was making those plans, I’d already turned the knob and stepped inside.

She was so naked, so sad and pitiful. I thought,
she understands our dynamic. She knows that when we aren’t together, we’re lost.

I knelt on the bed and pulled her into my arms. She turned into me the same way she’d curled into her pillow, and erupted in more tears.

“Please don’t leave me,” she said, clinging to my neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Hush.” I just wanted her to stop crying. I thought I would die if she didn’t stop crying, me, the sadist who reveled in tears. “You need to settle down,” I said.

“I can’t live if you don’t love me,” she whispered against my neck. “I know that’s weak. I know it’s stupid.”

“Shut up.” I held her against me and rubbed her back, and traced the welts on her ass. “I love you, which you already fucking know. But Chere…” I brushed the tears from her trembling cheeks. “I can only endure one kind of love. I can only have all of you. I can’t share you with anyone else, do you fucking understand that? Especially not him.”

“I wouldn’t. I wasn’t…”

I put a finger over her lips. I didn’t want another argument, not now.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I’m trying. I want to give you all of me.” Her voice sounded strained. “But not all of me is…perfect.”

Fuck
, I thought to myself.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I was the most imperfect person in the universe, and somehow I had this slave who wanted to be perfect for me, and I fucking wanted to fling myself from a window because I obviously wasn’t enough for her.

“You’re fine,” I said. “You fucked up, you were punished, it’s time to move on. You need to calm down now. You need to sleep.”

“Please don’t leave me,” she said again.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

“I’m not telling. I’m pleading.”

I sighed. “I’ll stay here until you calm down.”

But I stayed longer than that. I stayed until she finally fell asleep in a twitching, shuddering heap of exhaustion. Even after that, I stayed to watch her sleep, and tried to convince myself that it was okay to love her even if I hurt her. Did all my love for her cancel out the control, the sadism, the pain? Her apartment across the street haunted me. Someone else was renting it now, but should she have been there instead? Would she be happier there? Should I have stuck to my binoculars and let her find her own way?

What if she’d ended up with Cantor? Or back with Simon, or some other asshole who didn’t take care of her? At least I cared. I told myself that in the silence, repeated it like a mantra as a nighttime of minutes ticked by.

Then it was breakfast, and Vera was there, and Chere was dressed for work so none of her marks or bruises showed. In some way, the housekeeper was a chaperone, preventing things from getting any worse between us. I hoped things would get better. I slid a paper across the table.

You’re so beautiful
, I’d written. It was shorthand for a longer phrase, a poem, a piece of our past.
Look at what you do for me
, I’d told her once, as she regarded her wrecked reflection in the mirror.
You’re so beautiful.
Now it stood for all the sacrifices she made in our relationship, and my acknowledgement of them. She gave a soft sigh and placed it beside her plate. I imagined her collar around her neck, and then my hand instead, choking her, stealing her breath. Stealing everything from her. But I would always, always try to give things back.

Her phone buzzed on the table next to her.

She looked down at the message, then at me. She handed it across the table before I even reached out my hand. There was no name at the top of the screen, just a number. Another message came before I could read the first one.

I know you said not to call, but it’s been almost a day now.

Chere, please. I’m searching for peace.

I let out my breath in a huff. “He’s searching for peace,” I said. “Asshole.”

A moment went by before she spoke. “I guess sobriety’s hard, especially when you have demons.”

“He’s a fucking demon.” I pushed a few buttons and blocked his number, then put the phone down beside me. “I’m going to keep this for a while.”

I could tell she wanted to argue, but the memory of last night was still brutally present between us. She bit her lip and looked down at her plate. “For how long?”

“Until I’m sure he’s moved on.”
And until I’m sure you’ve moved on, you and your kind, codependent heart.
Did I really think she wanted to get back together with Simon? No. I might worry about it every once in a while, but I knew it wasn’t realistic.

Did I think he might fuck her up again, while fighting his demons? Yes, I absolutely did. I think he wanted nothing more on earth than to get in some parting shots now that Chere was happy and successful without him.

“What if someone else tries to call me?” she asked.

“I’ll give you your messages.”

“I think Simon needs me.”

“Like he needed you before?” I frowned at her. “Like he needed you when he sucked the life out of you and used you for his own fucking weakness? No, Chere. Not again. I’m taking this phone for your own protection, and I’m warning you…” I waited until she met my gaze, because this warning was serious as shit. “Do not dare let him draw you in again. No contact. Zero contact. Do you understand?”

This was why I’d punished her so harshly last night. To get her to the point where she would look up at me and say, in complete and utter surrender, “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

“Promise me,” I said.

“I promise.”

And that was more than surrender. That was her word.

A Place to Hide

I
kept Chere’s
phone for the rest of that week, relaying messages when she needed them, making sure Simon didn’t try to contact her again using a different number. He did, twice, but she didn’t need to know that. Listening to his begging, his insistence on her attention, I realized that yes, Simon still wanted her. He wanted her back in his life because she’d always made things easier for him. I deleted his pathetic, whining messages, which were all the same.
I need you. I’m suffering. Help me.

As fucked up as I was, I never used Chere in the selfish way that Simon used Chere. I gave back to her in whatever ways I could.
I’m better than him. I’m better.
Simon Baldwin was a low bar to measure myself against as a boyfriend and lover, but I was trying. I wanted to get better.

Simon wants to get better too.

But hell, he needed to do that for himself. He’d taken enough from Chere, and it wasn’t her business or my business if his life was starting to fall apart again. I felt secure in this line of reasoning until late Sunday night, when Andrew sent a barrage of texts.

Chere was drifting to sleep beside me when her phone started vibrating on my side table. “Is that Andrew?” she asked with a half-smile. Her friend texted her a lot, about his work, or his relationship. He could be counted on to supply a vast stream of amusing minutiae. But these texts weren’t amusing.

OMG BABES

JUST HEARD ABOUT SIMON

CHERE!!!!!

And I knew. I just knew.

“What’s he saying?” she asked drowsily.

I didn’t answer. I typed Simon’s name into a search engine and watched the slew of headlines come up about his shaky sobriety and sudden overdose. Yahoo. CNN. Huffington Post. Twitter.
#RIP #SIMONBALDWIN #TOOSOON

I sat up in bed, leaning over the phone. I had the craziest urge to destroy it, like that might make this go away. My next thought was, how do I hide these texts? How do I hide the fact that this has happened? But that would be impossible. Andrew would keep texting until Chere responded. If she didn’t respond, he’d call, and if she didn’t answer, he’d come over, because this was a big traumatic fucking deal and what the holy fuck was I going to do about this?

It was eleven o’clock at night. I looked down at Chere, almost asleep, and thought, I’ll give myself one last night of peace before this shitstorm breaks wide. I texted back to Andrew,
Chere’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake her with this news. I’ll tell her tomorrow.

He didn’t text back. I wondered if she told him that I’d barred her from helping Simon. I wondered if he blamed me for this. I knew Chere would blame me, even if Simon’s fucking addiction problems weren’t my fault.

*

I awakened before
dawn in a pleasurable haze, with Price’s fingers roving over my body. “I want you,” he whispered.

It was still dark out. He was a shadow looming over me, stroking me, bringing my body to languorous life. His touch was bizarrely gentle, at least at first. He kissed me endlessly, pinching my nipples and tracing over my hips. It felt weird not to fight him, but there was no violence in his touch, just a possessive warmth.

He made me stretch my arms over my head, and then he kissed me everywhere. He went down on me, making me twist and jerk and whimper through two orgasms as dawn started to brighten the room. I peered down at him, drifting in pleasure. Was I dreaming? Had I died and gone to heaven? God, he was so good with his mouth. “Wow,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

“Shh.”

He started kissing me again, running his fingers up and down my arm. His body felt hot against mine in the winter chill and I snuggled closer. His expression was strangely intense as he tipped my face up for another kiss.

Come inside me, please.

I wasn’t allowed to issue demands, but I arched my hips against his thick, hard erection. His intent expression relaxed for a moment into a smile.

“I know you want it,” he said in the half light. “You’re always wet for me, beautiful girl.”