Page 75 of Bought

There was an almost accusatory note in Fox’s voice, but I decided I wasn’t going to rise to it. He was angry and there was no point making myself a target.

“I worked with her for a month or so while she was interning at Cross,” I said. “And I got to know her pretty well. She’s…really great. I like her a lot.”

His intense blue gaze held mine for a long moment, then he let out a breath and shoved a hand through his black hair. “You know her better than I do then. I just never thought… Never even had the slightest hint that…”

Ah, so that’s what the problem was, his relationship with his daughter.

I closed the distance between us again, not actually touching him, but nearly. “It’s not the same, Sir,” I murmured. “It’s not the same as you and Sir George. Izzy had a choice and she made it, and I think you should trust her to know what’s right for her.”

He was silent, but he put his hands on my hips and pulled me even closer.

“Don’t do anything rash now, not while you’re still so angry.” I placed my palm on his hard chest. “Let your sub please her master.”

For a long moment, he remained quiet, then the expression in his eyes changed, became focused, intense. Dominating. “I want to restrain you,” he said, his tone hard. “I want to blindfold you, gag you. I want you helpless before me. I want you to submit to me in every way there is.”

He’d never restrained me since that first night. He’d never even held my hands. All he’d done was order me to place them on a wall or above my head and to keep them there.

If it had been Friday night I would have refused. But now I trusted him. I trusted him completely and if he needed this then I wanted to give it to him.

So, I didn’t think twice. “Yes, Sir,” I said.

28

Tennyson

The little sub was brave to approach me, especially when my rage was strangling me. The way it had choked me that day with that bastard Wyndham, after he’d threatened Isabel, told me that I was too old for him, that he thought she’d be ‘easy meat’.

I’d always known there was a devil inside me, just waiting for the chance to break free. Juliana’s death had taken the padlock off the cage I kept it in, and grief had worn away the door. So, when Sir George had made the threat to Isabel and told me that there was nothing I could do to stop him…

That devil of mine had stepped out of that cage.

I’d given him everything he’d demanded of me, but I would rather die than deliver Isabel to him. A red veil had descended, and I’d given myself up to it, punching him in the face. He’d fallen back and hit his head on a table, knocking himself unconscious.

I’d stood there, staring down at him, full of rage and hatred, desperate to protect my child, and that’s when I’d made the decision. I hadn’t questioned it. I’d picked up a pillow from a nearby chair, held it over his face and kept it there.

He’d died so easily, so quickly.

I’d been in shock afterward, but even then, I knew I couldn’t involve Caleb, that Atlas was the only one who could help. He knew people who could make any incriminating evidence vanish, and that’s what had happened. I didn’t ask how. And I didn’t regret what I’d done to Sir George. He’d been a predator, a threat, and so I’d eliminated him.

But that didn’t change what I was deep down. A killer.

If Zara had any sense she should be running for the hills, yet she only stood there, her warmth and softness against me, staring up at me. She must have seen what was in my gaze, but she didn’t flinch. She wasn’t afraid.

She should have been.

All I could think about was my daughter with my best friend, and how it was wrong on every level. Caleb had looked after her when she was a kid, when I was away and didn’t trust Sir George an inch with her care. I’d trusted him instead. I’d trusted him implicitly.

He’d told me that it was her who’d seduced him, that she’d had a crush on him, but that didn’t excuse it. He was the one with the experience. He was the one who should have resisted, and it was far too reminiscent of my own experiences with Sir George’s manipulations for comfort. The power an older, more experienced person had over someone much younger and certainly in Isabel’s case, more innocent.

Caleb didn’t know about what Sir George had demanded of me — I’d never told him — but still. Caleb’s past was as dark as my own and he should have resisted Isabel for her own good. But he hadn’t, and now I wanted to fucking kill him. I probably would have that morning if Zara hadn’t turned up in the hallway, disobeying a direct order of course, and distracting me.

A good thing for Caleb’s sake.

Not so good for Zara.

Fury boiled inside me. At Caleb for how he’d betrayed our relationship and at myself for how badly I’d let my relationship with Isabel deteriorate to the point where I had no idea what her feelings were or how she thought, no idea what kind of woman she even was. And not a small part of me was furious with Zara herself, for not only pointing out that Isabel was the same age as she was but also that Isabel was in love with Caleb, something I’d had no idea about.

Giving orders as a Dom while I was so close to the edge was a mistake, as was getting anywhere near Zara. Yet I felt so powerless in this moment that all I wanted was to exert my control.

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