Mastered by Malone (Haven, Texas 6)

He was supposed to be different now. He wasn’t supposed to break people anymore.

“You’re going to have to elaborate on that one, babe. Just what exactly was I right about?”

“I might be a sub. I don’t want to be a slave. I could never give up full control. I don’t want that. But there are times when it would be nice not to have to worry all the time, to think. Especially during sex. I’m not sure about the whole spanking thing. Paddles, whips, floggers, whatever else you use. I don’t know about any of that. But I think I might want to try. I think you’re right. I think I need to know if that’s who I am.”

He was having a slight problem keeping up with her.

“When I was twelve, my parents died,” she said. Her voice still held very little inflection.

He knew this about her, of course. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about her. He was nothing if not thorough. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to hear about it from her.

“But you probably know that don’t you? Because a man like you doesn’t let a stranger into his life, into his house, near his family, unless he knows her. I didn’t get that before. I didn’t get how you could look at me and see something that nobody else did. You already knew me, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know you,” he told her. Not at all.

For the first time she looked animated. A flash of anger filled her face. The relief he felt at seeing that was immense. Because he thought he’d changed her. Turned her into the emotionless being sitting in front of him. He thought he’d done what he’d been trying not to, that he’d tainted her with himself.

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not lying,” he told her with a narrowed gaze. “Because no amount of looking into you could have told me that when you get mad, your eyes sparkle. And when you get tired, your eye gets a small tic above it, and that your freckles stand out even more against your skin. It couldn’t have told me how infectious your laugh was, or that you’d have the balls to take on my brothers and try to teach them some manners. No background check could ever have told me that.”

She was staring at him hard. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“I wasn’t aware I was.”

She huffed out of breath. “Is that because you don’t recognize what being nice feels like?”

“No doubt,” he said dryly. “Nice has never been a part of my life.”

“So, you knew that my parents were dead?”

He nodded. “Killed by some drunk driver who ran through a stop light. You were sent to live with your aunt and uncle. Your dad’s brother and his wife. Mike’s parents.”

“Do you know anything about my life there?”

He thought back to the file. Trying to think of something that might give an explanation for the shuttered look on her face.

“I know that the day you graduated you moved out. Moved into the same apartment as Mike.”

She nodded. “I didn’t have anything. My parents were heavily mortgaged, after their house was sold, there was nothing left. My aunt liked to tell me that all their spare money had to go towards keeping me fed and clothed or to buy school supplies. That I was the reason they never got to go on vacations overseas. I was the reason why it took them longer to pay off their mortgage then it should have. I was the reason they didn’t have the life they wanted.”

Shit. Enough.

He sat back on the bed, leaning against the headboard. Then he reached over and grabbed her, pulling her onto his lap. She let out a squeak of surprise, sitting rather stiffly on his lap, as though she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. So he tugged her in against his chest.

He’d never wanted to kiss and cuddle and erase old hurts. Never wanted to hurt a woman quite as much as he wanted to hurt her bitch aunt.

“Baby, you know that none of that is true, right?”

She had to know. She had to know it was bullshit. That for some reason, her aunt wanted to spit venom at her. To break her down. To hurt her.

“But it was true, they’d never planned on having me. I was a burden. I tried to make myself useful. I took over all the cooking and cleaning. The cooking wasn’t a hardship, I enjoyed it. I tried to make her like me. But nothing I did ever worked.”

“Because she was an evil bitch,” he muttered.

“The day I graduated high school, my aunt came to me and told me to get out. I didn’t have anywhere to go, I didn’t have any other family, so I went to Mike’s. I became his burden.”

Fuck me. Fuck me now. Because wasn’t that exactly how he’d made her feel? How often had he been grateful she didn’t complain? Or ask him for anything? Her only rebellion had been going to rescue Jaret and that had been for completely selfless reasons. She’d been taught that burdens didn’t get to complain. They just had to make themselves useful.