Her plea was desperate and heart wrenching, and I wrestled with the lure of her body, the smell of her arousal, the nearness of her mouth.
“Stop,” I said, the word coming out tight and gritted.
Her lips pressed against my jaw. “What’s wrong? You have to be the aggressor? Are those the rules between us? Just let me know because I’m good at rules, but only if I know them.”
She was intoxicating. Hard to resist.
But the revulsion of her tale still hung in the air around us, and there was no way I could let this moment turn lustful. No matter how much she thought she wanted it now. She’d appreciate my restraint later, when she was thinking straight.
Abruptly, I flipped her to the cushion, pinning her wrists over her head. “I said stop.”
“Not good enough for you to fuck now, am I?” Her chest heaved with each breath, her fury wrapped up in the movement of air through her lungs.
There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to take her pain from her, if I could. But since I couldn’t, she had to actually feel it. It was the only way to get through it, and I’d be there for her every step of the way if she let me.
Just not like this. “I don’t want fucking me to be associated with this place you’re in right now.”
“You’re supposed to replace it.”
“And I will. But not yet. Not this way.”
She wrestled away from me, and I let her go, deciding that her retreat was progress, especially when she snatched the shirt off the ground and secured it around herself with two buttons.
But she was angry at me. Some of it misplaced anger, some of it masking other emotions. “What good are you then? Fuck you.”
She started to walk toward the stairs, and I jumped up to block her. “You shouldn’t be alone right now. If you want to go someplace else, that’s fine, but I’m going with you.”
“Confining me to this island isn’t enough? Now I’m a prisoner in this house too?”
“We can argue about your prisoner status at a later time. Right now I care that you’re my wife, and I’m not leaving you alone in this state.”
“Your wife?” She balled her hands into fists and threw them against my chest. “Fuck you.” When I didn’t budge, she hit me again. “Fuck you!”
I stood my ground, then, when she veered around me, I stepped in front of her and held her at her upper arms.
She struggled against my hold, the tears finally reaching her eyes with her frustration. “This isn’t fair. If you aren’t going to make it better then let me go. Just let me go!”
I pulled her closer, and spoke calmly at her ear. “I am going to make it better, but being alone is not what you need right now. And neither is sex.”
“It’s exactly what I need right now,” she said, wrestling against my grip. When she realized I wasn’t letting her go, she shoved at me with her palms. “Asshole.” Another shove. “Devil.” She pushed harder this time. “Fuck you, Edward. Fuck you for making me talk about this.” Her voice cracked, the dam about to break.
“Keep going. I can take it.” I braced myself for an onslaught.
Her next shove felt more like a punch. “Fuck you for thinking this would be good for me,” she said, the tears flowing freely now. Another punch followed. “Fuck you for making me feel special.” And another. “Fuck you for making me feel good. Fuck you for using me like that. Fuck you for breaking me down. Fuck you!”
I wasn’t sure anymore if her curses were meant for me or for the uncle who had damaged her so reprehensibly. Possibly she meant them for us both, it didn’t matter. I deserved her hatred and her pain, whomever the target was. I wanted to carry it all. It would fuel me in the future when I needed it. When my wrath was carried out appropriately.
For now, I tucked it away.
And when her bellows morphed into weeping, when her body convulsed with gut-wrenching sobs, I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, whispering sweet, soothing words while her tears soaked my skin, and she finally found release.
Twenty-Five
Celia
I swept my hair to one side, and held it out of the way so that Edward could fasten the chain at my neck. “Is this for my birthday or our anniversary?” I asked, watching him in the mirror.
With deft fingers, he worked the clasp, then trailed the tips along my nape sending a delicious shiver through my body before moving his hands down to grip my hips. He met my eyes in our reflection. “The necklace is for your birthday.” He pressed a kiss at the side of my throat. “The night out is for our anniversary.”
I fiddled with the bird charm, a pretentious showcase of colored gemstones and diamonds, normally too gaudy for my taste, but the most perfect gift because of its symbolism. “By wearing this, I feel like I’m giving in to something. I was supposed to be a dragon that night, not a bird.”
He chuckled. “It’s always the tiniest dogs with the biggest barks.”
I turned to face him directly, his man and musk scent smacking me so abruptly my thighs clenched automatically. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That the smallest creatures always think they’re scarier than they are.”
He leaned in for a kiss, and I leaned away. “You think you can just kiss me after you belittle me like that?” I teased.
His hand came to hold my chin in place. “I think I can do whatever I want with what belongs to me, so yes.”
I didn’t fight when his mouth took mine, eager for his lips despite my taunting. It was a thorough kiss, one I felt down to my toes, and I wondered briefly how hard it would be to convince Edward to celebrate at home.
Then I remembered our date was taking me off the island, for the first time in a year, and I wasn’t missing that for the world. I put my hands up to his satin lapels and pressed slightly, trying to keep some distance from him before he swallowed me up whole. As if he hadn’t already.
He took the hint and, after another deep swipe of his tongue, he pulled away. “Anyway, it wasn’t an insult. It was an observation.” He rubbed at the spot below my lower lip where my makeup had smeared. “This lipstick isn’t going to cut it. I plan on doing that a lot tonight, and you won’t be given the opportunity to fix it everytime I do.”
“This lipstick will be fine,” I said, shooing him away. “You just need to give it time to dry before you do that again.”
He twisted his wrist to glance at his watch. “You get five minutes. Then we’re off.” In a rare show of consideration, he left me so I could touch-up what he’d ruined without interference.
I took a deep breath, an attempt to settle the nerves he’d riled up, and turned back to the mirror. After fixing the lipstick, I studied my appearance. The dress he’d chosen was black with gold touches on the arms and at the waist. Though it was floor-length and long-sleeved, it was definitely one of the most revealing outfits I’d ever worn, the neckline plunging all the way to my waist. A slit up the front of one leg went all the way to my upper thigh, and Edward’s refusal to let me wear panties made my pussy dangerously vulnerable to exposure.
“Better access,” he’d said, when I’d questioned him about the choice earlier.
“Does that mean you’re planning on taking advantage of that access?”
“We’ll have to see how the night plays out, won’t we?”
My cheeks reddened remembering the conversation, but even without the blush, my pallor was better than it had been in more than a month. Our session of confessions on the rooftop lounge had lanced open deep wounds. I’d been a wreck of myself afterward. Emotions that I’d smothered and ignored grew to vibrant life in the air, emotions that were toxic and corrupt and needed to be felt. Memories I’d buried resurfaced in waves. I spent days at a time crying, releasing the pain of a childhood I’d never been allowed to lament.
Edward had been at my side through the worst of it, holding me. Touching me. Forcing me to eat and move. Refusing to let me stay in bed and sleep away the agony. I’d tried more than once to make it physica
l, wanting his cock to distract me from my suffering, but he’d remained as chaste as he had in the earlier days of our marriage, insisting that sex would only confuse the things I was working through.
He’d been right, admittedly. Not that I’d wanted to see that at the time.
After a week of sobbing, I’d woken up with a new energy. Not better—not by a long shot—but determined to start moving forward. And that required something that Edward couldn’t directly provide. I needed therapy, and I needed time. He arranged the first without a debate, flying in a psychiatrist to stay at Amelie and give me one-on-one counseling.
The second, took more convincing. He’d insisted on staying with me, and I’d insisted that he leave. When I had pointed out that ignoring his business in favor of walking me through my mental health wasn’t any different than his father’s choice to abandon his career during his wife’s illness, Edward had finally seen reason. He’d been gone for almost four weeks, and while my therapist had pressed for it to be longer, my husband refused to stay away for my thirty-third birthday, which fell on our one-year anniversary.
Though we hadn’t talked about it, things had definitely changed between us. It was most evident in the lax of the rules that had surrounded my captivity before. Besides bringing in a doctor who spoke my language, I was now allowed on the internet, and Edward and I had spoken by phone several times a week. The conversations were always short, mostly perfunctory, but they’d made me feel cared for all the same. Never once had we discussed the nature of our relationship. He hadn’t given me rules of what to say or who not to contact. There had been an agreement of trust when I hadn’t taken his offer to walk away, and maybe I appreciated it too much to defy it or I was too absorbed in my PTSD, but I hadn’t once thought to use my privileges to “escape.” There wasn’t anything I wanted to escape from, except the scars that the past had inflicted upon me, and I truly felt I had the best shot at that right where I was.
Even so, I was beyond excited for the outing he’d planned.
“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked after we’d been in the air for an hour. I’d been surprised when he’d taken me to the airstrip instead of the dock, assuming he’d meant to take me to Nassau for a fancy dinner. Apparently, his plans were grander than that.
Though I was fully aware of the bedroom in the back of the plane, we’d spent the flight talking, mostly about my therapy sessions, which had been uncomfortable, at first, then better as we’d talked on. I’d told him a lot of the most terrible things my uncle had done to me that night on the roof, and the initial telling of it should have been the worst part, but in my game-playing I’d learned there was a human tendency to feel the shame after the words were out, and my reaction had been exactly that. It was easier to try to forget I’d said those things, forget that he’d heard them, but he refused to let me, digging in and picking up the burden of those confessions as if they were his own. He wanted to know it all, every detail of the horrors, every memory as I uncovered it, and I found myself wanting to tell him all of it as well. There was still so much to go through, so many parts to remember and process.
But now, the plane had begun its descent, and I wanted to put aside the awful and focus on our anniversary night.
“It was never a secret,” he said, linking his fingers through mine. “You just never asked. We’re going to Exceso, a private island between Cuba and Haiti. It’s owned by a wealthy man I’m acquainted with who knows how to throw a certain kind of party.”
I didn’t know much Spanish, but I took a guess anyway. “Exceso—excess? As in extravagant?”
“Muy bien, pajarita,” his Spanish accent doing things to my lower regions. When I frowned, he translated. “Very good, little bird. Esteban touts the island as a place for men with questionable ethics to negotiate business deals. While there is a fair amount of that occurring, it’s mostly a hedonistic pleasure resort.”
My stomach tightened. “Like The Open Door?”
“Yes. With fewer rules and more dubious consent.”
“Oh.” I withdrew my hand from Edward’s so I could wrench it with the other in my lap. Anxiety bubbled up through my chest and my mouth suddenly tasted sour. It had taken a lot for me to convince myself to go to the party in New York, and that had been knowing the club was well-monitored and safe. And now, after all the focus on the ones Ron had forced me to attend, an unstructured sex party felt especially disarming.
No wonder Edward hadn’t volunteered the information sooner.
He reached over to my lap and took both hands in his, putting a halt to my fidgeting. “You’ll be with me, Celia, and that means you’ll be safe. Do you trust me?”
He’d shown over the past month that he trusted me. It felt ungrateful not to offer him the same.
And I did trust him. Didn’t I?
I mostly did, but that didn’t mean I didn’t question his judgment. “Is there a reason why you chose this event for our date?”
“Several reasons. First, some of the men who go to Exceso own the women they bring with them.”
“As in slavery?” My heart felt like it was beating through mud. My captivity had been nothing like the horrific situations so many other women were in. Situations where they were beaten and abused and forced into all sorts of sick, depraved sexual acts. “How can you be friends with a man who allows such a thing? Why don’t you do something?”
“I never said we were friends. Going against Esteban Merrado is not something a person does haphazardly. Besides, it’s difficult to differentiate those women who are willing to be owned and those who aren’t. It’s merely my suspicion that some may not be there of their own volition. If I ever witnessed any abuses that I was assured were real, I would most likely involve authorities—if I could safely—but I have not as of yet. The situation does give me an advantage, however. No one at Exceso pays too much attention when a woman cries kidnapped. In other words, it’s a place I can take you and not have to worry about you trying to get away.”
So much for having gained his trust.
I tried to remove my hands from his grasp, but he kept them pinned in place.
“Secondly,” he continued, “I owe you a response to your last session. It’s time I gave it.”
My eyes shot up to his, my spine tingling. I’d forgotten about the second part of those sessions. His responses, it seemed, were meant to replace the bad experiences from my past. Did he want to take me to a sex party where I had fun instead? So I wouldn’t remember the ones with Ron?
I didn’t know that it was as simple as that.
But it was a sweet gesture. And a sex party with Edward wasn’t entirely off-putting. Not at all, actually.
“Third, I enjoy seeing you uncomfortable, as you are well aware.” He gave me a smug smile. “It’s my anniversary, too. You shouldn’t get all the fun.”
I scowled at him, but it was hard to hold it. He was too charming, and though his charm was far from innocent, I liked the way he used it on me.
He was my husband. And I was in love with him, and for good or bad, that meant I would follow willingly where he led.
“Fine. I’ll go.” As though he’d given me a choice.
“Somehow I knew you’d come around. I brought you something that might make it easier.” He released my hands and reached down into the cabinet at the side of the couch where we sat and pulled out a familiar-looking box, which he handed to me.
“Another present?”
“Not quite. It’s already yours.”
Puzzled, I opened it up to find my red feathered mask, the one I’d worn at The Open Door. “My dragon mask!” I lifted it to my face and slipped it on.
“Pajarita,” he corrected, but I was too touched with the gifts and the moment to even pretend to be offended.
We landed soon after, onto an island that was probably twice the size of Amelie, from what I could see on the descent, and was a lot more built up with various structures. Edward had called it a reso
rt, and I could see why. I counted no less than four swimming pools, and dozens of cabanas lined the beaches.
From the airstrip, a planked path flanked with tiki torches led a short way through forest to an outdoor entertainment area. Evening was upon us, and the festivities were already in full swing. Spanish music played through speakers attached on pillars surrounding the space. Two open bars bookended a large wooden floor. Hammocks were hung at the perimeters and various seating arrangements dotted the expanse. Men in tuxes and women in cocktail attire were spread around, conversing and drinking the way people did at parties my parents hosted back home. There was no signs of debauchery. No signs of dubious consent. Innocent, by all appearances.
I relaxed, doubting suddenly the need for my mask.
Before I could reach to remove it, Edward had his hand at my back, guiding me toward a silver-haired man who was approaching us.
“Edward Fasbender!” the man exclaimed with a heavy accent, followed by some Spanish words that I surmised was a question of how my husband was doing based on the answer he provided.
“I’ve been well, Esteban. Busy, but well.”
“And your little project? How is that going?”
I shot questioning eyes at Edward.
“It’s, uh...delayed,” he said, his eyes darting toward me making me wonder exactly how much of his Werner revenge scheme he had shared with his acquaintance. “I’m preoccupied with other things, at the moment. Allow me to introduce you to my wife, Celia.”
He hadn’t included my maiden name in my introduction, making me suspect it was on purpose.
“Ah!” Esteban said, his eyes lingering too long on my very exposed cleavage. “Quite exquisite, I must say. Hard to tell with the mask, but it seems you’ve gone with a younger model.”
I already hated the man. He was smarmy and vile, and that could be gleaned just from his leer. If I spent more time with him, I could imagine how much more of his personality I would find I loathed.
“A younger model, yes. A better model, definitely.” Edward’s charm wasn’t enough to counteract the repugnant stranger, but I held my tongue, gritting my teeth.