Taboo: A Dark Romance Boxset (Stud Ranch 1)

“I thought our feelings for each other went deeper than they obviously did. I guess I thought both of us doing her like that would be fucking her over somehow.” He shakes his head. “Turned out she was really into it. We kept it up all three of us for a little while but it fizzled. Dad got a new girlfriend and I guess I was still upset about the tutor, so I…” he trails off and his dark eyes come back up to me. “I’m not proud of this part.” He pauses like he doesn’t want to go on.

Hesitantly, I take a step forward. “Tell me. I want to know.” I swallow. “All of it.”

He looks down. “Well, I knew he had this new girlfriend, so I seduced her.” He glances up, eyes wary and obviously bracing for my reaction. “To get back at him. I told you I was really competitive with him for a while. So that’s what we did. We’d sort of compete with women, sleeping with women together but secretly each trying to one-up the other.”

I stumble back again. “Is that what you’re trying to do with me?” I think of how each of them have come to me separately, with their different seductive styles, and my stomach starts to churn.

“God, no!” Dominick says, finally moving away from the door and coming toward me.

I hold up a hand to keep him back, though. He seems so sincere, but can I really trust him after all he’s just admitted to me?

“Tell me about Janine.”

He swallows hard but doesn’t look away. I can already tell I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear.

“I was getting older, I’d started my residency at the hospital and Dad and I were trying to bury the hatchet. Change things between us. I wanted to just start dating women on my own, but Dad convinced me to keep doing what we were doing, but go about in a different way. We decided we’d go into a relationship with everyone knowing ahead of time what they were getting into. Dad obviously has certain kinks he likes to play out.” He looks at me knowingly and I nod, getting what he means. The whole Daddy thing. “So we went looking for a woman who liked to play the same way. We found Janine at a BDSM club Dad had heard about.”

My eyes obviously must’ve widened at the acronym because Dominick raises both his hands. “Neither of us are into the rest of that stuff, but it’s not exactly like you can put out an ad on Craiglist and say, looking for a girl who likes you to spank her and call you Daddy.” He winces. “Well, I’m sure you could, but,” he cringes. “…enough said.”

“Anyway, we thought we might find someone with similar, you know, appetites. But it was just a disaster. Janine was fun at first, but she was really needy. It was clear almost from the start. And soon it was bordering on stalking.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.” He nods. “She’d show up at our jobs, dressed up in these bizarre little girl outfits, crying and making scenes when Dad or I wouldn’t see her. We had to get restraining orders. It turns out she’s bipolar and has a coke habit on top of it. We paid for her to go to rehab once, but we’d only dated her for a month,” he lifts his hands, “and there was only so much we felt we could do for her that wasn’t just encouraging her obsession. We talked to the club where we met her and one of her old Doms said he’d talk to her family and see if they could help. The last time we’d heard from her was when we had to call the police on her a month before Dad married your mom.”

Which he’d done because he needed Grandpa’s influence and connections. I saw plenty of Grandpa’s friends around the ballroom tonight. Donors for the new wing when Dad had needed the last influx of new money to shore up the project. Because of Grandpa, I guessed, it was made possible. His old money friends had deep pockets.

“And then you met me?” I question, putting the last piece of the puzzle in place.

Dominick nods. “And you were like no one and nothing I’d ever seen before.”

I stand there, processing everything he’s said.

“Please, can I hold you now?” He steps forward before stopping again, eyebrows scrunched together as if pained. “You’re killing me here.”

God, does he think he’s the only one? Doubting him, wondering if everything I thought I knew was a lie? I’ve been dying inside ever since that woman put her hands on me in the ballroom.

But if everything Dominick’s said is true, then it’s just that—the past. It’s naïve to imagine that they would come to me with a completely blank slate. Dominick is twenty-four. And Dad obviously twenty years older than that. They didn’t know me. It’s not fair to judge them on the things they did then.