Lust & Lies Box Set-Sexual Awakenings, Excess, Predator & Prey

“Yes, but she did it for her own selfish reasons, too, the evil bitch. Crap,” he said, lowering his voice so his son didn’t hear him curse. “That’s twice today.” He sighed. “I met her at The Barracks. That was the original place that we had to go to. She was looking for new business. The Barracks was the place for most of the originals, and for a lot of years that was home to me as far as a meeting place for subs. When she opened The Rabbit Hole, a lot of the regulars from The Barracks flocked to it, but the reason I did was because of her. She intrigued me. She was very matter of fact, to the point. I knew she wanted me, but what I didn’t know was the price I would pay for my curiosity.”

“Okay,” I said, having a hard time keeping the jealous edge out of my voice.

“You’re jealous,” he said, picking up on it immediately with a smug grin.

“You’re stalling,” I said, annoyed he knew me so well.

“I had been doing the Dom/sub thing for some time when I met her. I was kind of growing numb to some of it. I was—”

“Bored,” I stated and he nodded.

“She was sick, and when I say sick, I mean she would make it her mission to ruin the lives of others. If she saw someone she wanted or someone else’s sub she had her eye on, she would go all out to make it happen.”

“Wait,” I said, my mind reeling, “are you telling me you were her sub?” My eyes widened and I felt a little bit of my excitement for Rhys stifle.

“Fuck no,” he said sternly, which tickled me and made me want to cross the distance between us.

I hopped on the counter facing him and started to pull my t-shirt down to cover my underwear.

“Don’t cover it up. He can’t see, but I want to,” he said heatedly.

“Um, no,” I said, pulling it down further as he rolled his eyes. “Okay, so she wasn’t the motherly type?”

“You’re skipping ahead, which is fine with me, but—”

“No, no, finish. I’m sorry. Shutting up now,” I said, begging him to continue.

“She was versatile and I was pure Dom, so she insisted we work together to make the club better. We ended up tangled in a mess of our own shortly after the opening and kind of became exclusive.”

“So you fell in love?” I said, my eyes hitting his chest. I couldn’t look at him when he told me he loved someone else. It was immature on my part, but I couldn’t do it.

“No, I fell victim.” His voice was now low with a hard edge. “Remember the thousand ways I told you things could go wrong in this lifestyle? She made sure to cause nine hundred of them between us, between other couples at the club, before I finally broke free. She was so subtle about what she did, and I have to admit, I let myself get sucked into it for a while. When I couldn’t handle her games anymore and I broke it off, she ended up pregnant and I had to—”

“What?” I said, praying he wouldn’t stop.

He hesitated before he looked straight at me. “She was extreme and I mean extreme. She liked to be flogged, and often. It’s not for everyone. She liked a lot of things that I had an issue with. She wanted to be bled, raped, tortured, beaten in different ways, and I didn’t have the stomach for it. When I wouldn’t do it, she would find someone who would. Basically, during the pregnancy, I found her in several situations that you would never want to see any woman in. When she was five months along, I found her gagged and beaten badly at the club. She was bleeding from every orifice of her body. The guy had pissed on her before he left. I wanted to finish the job he’d started and knew then I had to break free. That was the night I decided I wanted out of the club. I almost filed a suit against her and that’s when we struck a deal.”

“Which was?” I asked.

“I would have to take care of her until she delivered.”

“Take care of her?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“Violet, don’t make me go any further.”

“I won’t,” I said, convinced I couldn’t hear any more. “Sexually, you had to take care of her sexually. I get it. Why did you have the vasectomy??

?

“She demanded I get one. I think she thought Bryce wouldn’t make it to term. She wanted me sterile for putting her through the task of carrying him. I don’t really know all her reasons, but they were always for control, the one thing she never really had over me until she got pregnant. I damn sure didn’t want the procedure. She had me at her complete mercy. I guess she assumed that after the baby was born we would continue our situation. I had to look out for my son. She didn’t care at all about his wellbeing. She moved in with me at my insistence, and I did whatever she wanted within reason to keep her sated enough to have him. When he was born, she didn’t look at him, not once. She had moved out a week before she delivered, after I told her she would never have me again. I had my son and I didn’t want a damn thing from her. He was healthy and I could finally breathe again. Her career was starting to take off and she had alienated most of the regulars at The Rabbit Hole, so she signed over the club to me as a kind of payoff. I didn’t want it at first, but she insisted, saying I wasn’t going to get her for child support later, so we made another deal. She signed away her rights and I would take the club.”

“Jesus,” I said, looking over at Bryce, who looked back at us as we stared at him.

“You would never suspect her to be this way in passing. The way people hide who they truly are sometimes is fascinating. She was beautiful, smart, articulate, and deep down, the most disgusting human I have ever known,” he said, gripping the counter top behind him. “When he was born, I ordered a paternity test just to confirm. I didn’t want to challenge her while she was pregnant and give her a good excuse to abort. I went through hell, but for good reason,” he said, looking over my shoulder at Bryce.

“Oh, he’s all you,” I said, waving at him as he banged on his Play-doh workshop with a plastic hammer.

Rhys grinned. “Don’t I know it.” I turned to him and watched him watch his son.