His to Command
She hesitated, clearly uncertain. A long silence fell between them.
Watching her now … seeing her vulnerability … his heart clenched. Ever since he’d strode from her room, he’d only thought about himself, and his pain. But now he thought about her gut-wrenching scream. He didn’t know exactly what happened to her that night at Illy’s, but clearly it had traumatized her.
Fuck, what had the guy done to her? He’d been so angry that Kate hadn’t trusted him that he’d blanked out thinking about what Kate might have endured. Did the guy have sex with her? Did he overpower her? His heart thundered in his chest as his heart rate accelerated.
“Kate, what happened?”
Her questioning gaze flicked to his. “As I said, Ileana lied to me and told me—”
He held up his hand to stop her words. He didn’t need to hear it again. “What did this man do to you?”
Her gaze immediately dropped from his and his chest compressed.
“I … really don’t want to talk about it.”
Fuck. She’d turned white as a sheet. An overwhelming protectiveness jolted through him.
“Well, I really need to talk about it.” He patted the bed beside him. “Come and sit down.”
She drew in a deep breath, but stepped forward and sank onto the bed beside him.
“He took me to the room I told you about. In the basement. It had a thick door and the walls were of big, concrete bricks. He chained me to the wall.”
She spoke in a halting voice, clearly struggling with telling him, but she obviously felt she owed him this.
“Did he … force you to have sex?”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that. He made me face the wall before he chained me up. I thought he was just playacting at first. That it was a game. He said he was going to punish me.”
Matt and Kate had often played the punishment scenario, and it made him jealous now that she had even agreed to play a scenario with someone else, but she’d already told him she’d thought he had arranged it, so essentially she’d done it to please him. And if Ileana had told her Matt had ordered her to do it, she would not have argued.
“And he did,” Matt said.
Kate just nodded while she stared down at her hands.
“Tell me.”
“He used a whip. It…” She hesitated, then swallowed. “I never realized how much a leather whip would hurt.”
Damn it. She must have thought Matt a monster to arrange such a thing.
“God damn it, Kate, how could you believe I would even allow such a terrible thing to happen to you, let alone arrange it?”
She gazed up at him, her eyes shimmering. And, to his surprise, a little defiance flickered in those blue depths. “You did let it happen.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re angry with me because I believed you’d let it happen, yet you believed Ileana when she told you I’d left with another man. If you hadn’t believed her, then maybe you would have looked for me. Maybe you could have stopped it.” The vulnerability in her eyes tore at his heart. “Matt, why did you think I would do that?”
Damn it. The woman had no right to turn this around on him. “The evidence was there. You clearly enjoyed dancing with the guy. You disappeared with him after that. And when I still gave you the benefit of the doubt and tried to talk to you afterward, to find out exactly what did happen, you wouldn’t take my calls.”
Her lips compressed in an appropriately contrite expression, and he realized he couldn’t leave the blame hanging on her.
“And it didn’t help that I already felt you were slipping away from me. I sensed you wanted to end it between us for some time, but something held you back. So when I saw you in that man’s arms on the dance floor, then when Illy told me you had left with the guy … it seemed to confirm my worst fears.”
Guilt prickled through him. He’d handled so many things badly with Kate. Let things get out of control. And it had led to disastrous results for her in so many ways.
* * *