Play Me Hard (Play Me 3)

“Maybe. But it’s also the truth. You need someone to take care of you. I want to be that someone.”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me. Just because I enjoy sleeping with you doesn’t mean you suddenly have carte blanche over my life!”

“That’s exactly what it means and you know it,” he snaps. But then I hear him take a deep breath, can all but see him rolling down his sleeves. Putting away the alpha guy and pulling out the suave businessman instead. “But you’ll have the same kind of control over me. Over what I do and who I do it with. It’s a two-way street, Aria.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is.” His voice is lower now, dark and aching and so, so seductive. I can feel my body responding to it even when I try to stay strong, stay aloof. “You have a lot to learn about being the master of your own destiny, Aria. Control is a funny thing. The tighter you hold on to it, the less you actually have. It’s only after you loosen your grip that you come to understand what it means to truly be in charge. Of your lover, of yourself. Of your life.”

Suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough air in the room. I pull at my nightgown, try to unstick it from my sweat-soaked body. “I suppose you’re the one who’s going to teach me that?”

“We’re going to teach each other, I

think.”

It’s the right thing to say when so much of what has come out of his mouth this morning has been wrong. But still, I’m more hesitant, unsure. What he’s saying sounds an awful lot like BDSM and I don’t think I’m into that, don’t think pain and collaring and orders will do anything for me.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I finally tell him. My voice is little more than a whisper.

“You know exactly what I want,” he counters. “It’s the same thing you want from me.”

“What’s that?” I ask, because that doesn’t sound like what I know about the lifestyle. Not that I know much, just Fifty Shades of Grey stuff, but still.

“Everything you have to give. And then more.”

His words echo, going around and around in my head like they’re on some kind of unstoppable loop. “I…”

“What, Aria?” His voice is achingly soft now but I don’t know what to say, how to feel.

And so I don’t say anything. When I disconnect the call a few seconds later, his words are still all I can hear.

—

I leave my apartment about an hour later, after a shower and a much more substantial breakfast than I’ve had in quite a while. I still don’t know how I feel about the groceries or Sebastian’s words or even Sebastian himself. But it’d be stupid to let all that food go to waste, so what else am I supposed to do with it except eat it?

I don’t even make it down the stairs before I run into Janet. She’s sitting on the bottom couple of steps, leaning against the rickety banister and rocking back and forth. She’s drunk, of course. She almost always is at this time of the morning.

“Hey,” I say as I crouch down next to her. “Can I help you to your apartment?”

She looks at me through bleary eyes. “Aria?”

“Yeah, Janet. It’s me.” I take the lit cigarette that’s dangling from her limp fingertips, stub it out on the ground. Then put an arm under hers and pull her to her feet. It’s not exactly hard—she’s little more than skin and bones, has been for as long as I’ve lived here. Of course, she’s pretty much been drunk as long as I’ve lived here, too. Which is a shame. She’s only about fifty, maybe a couple years younger, but she looks like she’s lived a hard, cold life.

“I lost my reading glasses again,” she tells me. “I couldn’t get the key in the lock.”

“You’d have a better shot at getting the key in the lock if you weren’t so out of it you can barely stand.” The words come easily—it’s part of a routine with us, one that has played out nearly every day for the last fourteen months.

“It’s my glasses,” she slurs. “If I had my glasses…”

“I know, Janet. I know.” We move slowly toward her door, inching along the passageway as she tries to walk on legs that are too tired and too wobbly to cooperate much. “Where are your keys?”

“My keys?” She looks bewildered, like she has no idea what I’m talking about. Like we weren’t just having a conversation about that very subject.

“I need your keys to open your door,” I tell her.

“Oh.” She still looks like she has no idea what I’m talking about. But then she gestures awkwardly toward the parking lot. “I think I threw them somewhere over there. Stupid keys. No good to me if they won’t open the door.”

Great. Awesome. Fantastic. It’s not like I’m already running late to see my sister or anything. Not like I have about a million other things to do than to hunt for her keys in the trash-strewn parking lot. But I can’t just leave her out here, either. She’s been beaten up more than once in the time I’ve lived here.