Page 18 of Learn My Lesson
It’s too much and too little all at the same time. I don’t know what I expected when I said yes to him, but this isn’t it. He’s throwing me in the deep end, and there isn’t a single person who will help me if I drown. Tink might feel a little bad, but honestly, I can’t get a good enough read on her to know for sure. She could just as easily shrug and move on to the next new recruit with the same amount of crankiness.
But as I fall into the familiar rhythms of taking drinks orders and moving through the tables and bar, things start to unwind for me. This is familiar. I know how to do this, even if it’s a relatively new skill. The rest of it will figure itself out, but I can get through tonight.
Or so I think, right up until I catch a familiar profile out of the corner of my eye.
I turn to find Meg standing near the bar. She’s wearing a pair of tailored slacks and a deep purple bra-like top that I can almost see through. Why is she here? She should be well on her way to freedom. Not haunting this place where I’m currently trapped.
Unless…she came for me?
My chest feels tight as she strides toward me on wickedly high heels. There’s no familiarity on her face, nothing to indicate her thoughts. The warmth she showed me in that apartment above the restaurant is nowhere in evidence. This woman could be a stranger for the cold way she studies my body, lingering on my chest and cock before trailing down my legs.
“What are you doing here?” I don’t mean to speak. I really don’t. My intentions don’t seem to make a difference. “If he broke his word…”
“Hades never breaks his word,” she says absently. “I’m here because I want to be.” Meg tilts her head to the side, causing her hair to cascade over her shoulder. I want to run my fingers through it, to tug her face up to meet mine, but I know better. I still have to clench my fists at my sides to keep myself from doing it.
“He wants to see you.” She turns and walks away, leaving me to follow in her footsteps.
As I do, my confusion hardens to something significantly uglier. I’m here because I want to be. She does whatever she wants to do. No one is forcing her into anything. That’s what her words translate to, both her words before, in my new suite, and here on the floor. Several truths settle over me, each a jagged shard in my throat.
Hades isn’t forcing Meg to do anything. He didn’t force her to fuck me. He didn’t force her to her knees. He isn’t keeping her like some princess trapped in a tower.?3 She consented to the entire thing. If she didn’t, then my deal would have set her free and she wouldn’t be walking through the lounge like a queen moving through her subjects.
He played me. They both did.
By the time she leads me through a tall set of doors into a monochromatic gray office, I’m furious. I stop just inside the door. “You screwed me over.”
“You screwed yourself over. I didn’t even know you were here until you’d already made the deal.” She keeps walking, moving to stand at the shoulder of the man sitting at the desk.
Hades steeples his fingers and watches me with deep, dark eyes behind the black frames of his glasses. He’s wearing his customary black-on-black suit, and I hate that I respond to him. To them. He leans forward as if only casually interested in this conversation. “Are you going back on your word?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You went back on yours.”
“Did I?” He still sounds so fucking distant, I can’t stand it. He glances at Meg. “I gave my word that you wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want to, love.”
Her mouth twists, but she smooths out her expression almost immediately. “I have my safe word for a reason.”
“I don’t respect many rules, but that one is sacred.” Now Hades focuses all his indomitable will on me. “Time for you to pick a safe word, little Hercules.”
Little Hercules. As if I’m not several inches taller and significantly heavier than his slim frame. Somehow, it doesn’t matter. Even across the room, even so furious and betrayed that I can barely draw a breath, I have to fight not to hit my knees for him.
I want to tell him to fuck off. That I didn’t sign up for this. That I never would have given him this power over me if I wasn’t stupidly playing the hero for a woman who wasn’t interested in being saved. In the end, all my assumptions don’t matter.
I gave my word, and I intend to keep it.
My honor is the only thing I have left, and I can’t let something as shortsighted as my own mistake get in the way of it. If that were an option, I’d still be enjoying my pampered life back in Olympus. I’ve already turned my back on so much. Why not turn my back on my fucking freedom too?
“Olympus,” I grind out. It’s as good a safe word as anything.
“Good boy.” He pushes slowly to his feet. “Then we can begin.”
“What?” That shakes me out of my anger. “But I’m in the middle of my shift and?—”
“Tink can manage without you.” He moves around the desk and toward the couch situated on the left side of the room. “Meg.”
She follows him, and with each step, she loses some of the dominance that drew me to her in the first place, shedding it like a second skin until she’s a single step behind him with her eyes downcast. It’s the exact same transformation I witnessed in that apartment after Hades showed up, but I have a term for it now.
Switch.
Both Dominant and submissive, all wrapped up in a package I still desire even though I know better by now.
