Waking Kiss (BDSM Ballet 1)

“Yes.”

“Why him?”

I stared down at my plate. “Because he pushed me, I guess. And because I trusted him. I guess he was the first person who made me feel safe enough to do it.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Wilder said slowly, “you can be that person for him.”

Chapter Eighteen: Fear and Anger

I didn’t think about Ashleigh. I refused to. Instead, I plunged myself into work. Work and partying, my eternal shelters. I skulked around the play room Saturday night but chose not to play with anyone. Rubio wisely didn’t show up. Maybe he was with Ashleigh. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Ruby knew when to hang around me and when to stay away, which was a key part of our friendship.

Because I couldn’t fucking stand him sometimes.

It wasn’t jealousy. I wasn’t jealous over Ashleigh or anything like that. It was manners. You didn’t fucking kiss girls during threesomes, not like that, and he knew it.

But Ruby was the least of my problems, and Ashleigh…she was past tense. I didn’t need complications like that in my life, not with a new office opening next month in Amsterdam and the ongoing clusterfuck in Washington, D.C. I had real shit to worry about. So I wasn’t pleased when, Monday at noon, my phone buzzed on my desk.

Little Ishi is here.

I glanced at the message, pushing down the sudden, crippling desire to see her. She was here. She was right downstairs.

I’m busy, I typed. Send her away.

I didn’t read the next text, or the third. When he texted the fourth time, I pushed back from my desk and headed for the stairs. I had no hard feelings toward Ashleigh, I just needed her to move on with her life so I could move on with mine. I found her with Mem in the living room, sitting on the couch in a cute little black and white dress. She had a pink rose in her lap, balanced across her knees. It pained me to look at it, just like it pained me to look at her, so I glared at Mem instead.

“I was working. I was right in the middle of something.”

“Ashleigh has come to see you.”

“Yeah, I got that. You texted me four fucking times.”

Rude. Very rude of me. I flicked a glance at Ash, pale and agitated beside him. Mem gave me a scathing look. “Why don’t I leave you two alone?” he said.

He touched her hand and stood to go. Neither of us said a word, even after the door closed behind him. Ashleigh fingered the stem in her lap while I sat in the chair across from her, leaning my head back with a sigh.

“I’m sorry I disturbed your work,” she finally said. “But I needed to see you. To talk to you. I wanted to bring you this.”

I didn’t take the rose when she held it out to me. I felt embarrassed for her. “Very nice gesture,” I said instead. “Great sense of symmetry you have.”

She put the rose on the couch beside her and pushed her hair behind her ears. She didn’t seem angry or offended by my coldness. No, there was something else in her gaze, some enduring tenderness. I needed to stomp out those tender feelings once and for all.

“Look,” I said in a hard voice. “You have to face when something’s over. I don’t want you coming over on Mondays anymore. From the way you acted last Saturday, you’re cured. More than cured.”

She lifted her chin. “There was no reason to wig out on me and Rubio. We’re just friends.”

“I don’t care either way,” I lied. “I told you from the start we were going to keep things casual. No strings attached, for both our sakes.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I think the whole idea of it is sad.”

“You know what’s sad?” I asked, nodding toward the flower. “That rose I brought you, to replace the other one—it wasn’t from the performance. I bought it at a florist near my house and gave it to you because I wanted to get you into bed. Because I wanted to fuck you. That’s all I really wanted from the start.”

I waited for anger, for histrionics, but she only asked very calmly, “That’s all it ever was? All the stuff you did for me? Just to get laid for one lousy weekend? Wow.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry for you then. No wonder you’re so angry.”

“I’m not angry. I just want you to understand—”

She stood, raising a hand to silence me. “I understand. I understand a lot more than you know. I understand that you have problems and they make you act like a jackass. That’s what I came here to talk to you about but now I’m feeling pretty negative toward you so I think I’ll just go. Oh, and…” She shoved the pink rose into my hand. “You can take this and give it to someone else. Whoever it is you want to fuck next. Maybe this time it won’t be such a fucking hassle for you. Good luck.”

Her little tirade aroused me. Why did she have to arouse me with everything she did? When she started across the living room toward the door, I reached out to stop her. “What did you mean about my problems?”

“I know why Mem calls you Ishi,” she said, turning back to me. “Someone finally had the courtesy to explain what the fuck is going on with you.”

I regarded her suspiciously. “What do you mean, what the fuck is going on with me? Nothing’s going on with me, except that you can’t seem to move on.”

“I talked to your father.”

Her words took the wind right out of me. I stared at her. “You didn’t— How— You don’t even know my father.”

“Mem gave me his business card. I went to see your father and we had lunch, and he told me where you came from and everything you went through when you were a child named Eric. And now I know.”

God damn it. I was going to kill Mem, the prying, manipulative ass. Her voice softened and her pale eyes searched mine. This is exactly what I hadn’t wanted, her sympathetic gaze seeking out the damaged, broken little boy inside me. “I’m sorry, Liam. If I had known—”

“I didn’t want you to know.” I would punish them both for this, Mem and my father too. My past was my past. It was something I’d left behind, something that had no place in my current life. I felt stricken. Exposed. “My dad shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have told you. I don’t share that with anyone, ever. It’s nobody’s business but my own.”

“But Liam—”

“You shouldn’t have gone to see him. It was none of your fucking business!”

“None of my business?” Her fragile sympathy turned to anger. “It’s none of my business, really? When I told you everything about me? When you pried it out of me, sneaking around and looking into my past? I told you everything, every horrible, wrenching detail, and you hid everything from me, everything that makes you the person you are. Everything that makes you—that makes you”—she threw out her arms angrily—“behave this way! You even use a fake name. Jesus, Liam! Or should I say Eric?”

“Don’t call me that.” I bent the rose stem and flung it over toward the kitchen. “I took a new name, yes, to start a new life. My dad and my therapist agreed that I should do it. I didn’t want to live in the past.”

“You completely erased yourself. How is that healthy? How come I had to be fixed and you didn’t?

I balled my hands up in my hair. “You asked me to fix you! Because you couldn’t have sex, remember?”

“And you can’t have love. Or any relationship besides being someone’s dominant. Someone’s casual sex partner. Are you really happy like that?”

I shook my head. “Stop it, Ashleigh. Just stop.”

“You made me face everything. You made me accept what happened to me and move on. So how come you don’t have to? Why won’t you give me a chance to help you now?”

“Because I don’t want your help. I don’t need it.” I took her arm and dragged her toward the door. I had to get her away from me before I lashed out again. “I have work to do. You need to go.”

She dug in her heels, struggling against me. “Don’t box me out, Liam. Talk to me. God, what your mother did to you was so much worse than what my father did to me. So much worse, but you never said anything. You never shared

anything with me.”

“Because you didn’t need to know. Damn it, Ash. I put that shit away a long time ago.”

“I only wanted to know why,” she said, her eyes wide and pleading. “Why you pushed me away. Why you keep these rigid walls around you. I understand the pain, the impulse of hating yourself. Of believing it was your fault when it wasn’t really. I understand how risky it feels to let someone in when your trust has been broken so badly—”

I spun and walked away from her, back toward the living room. I wasn’t prepared to have this conversation, not with her, not with anyone. “Leave my past alone,” I said, putting distance between us. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I want to talk about it.” She followed after me, like a dog yapping at my heels. “We need to talk about it, because I love you.”