Slay Two: Ruin

Edward:

I’d never believed in idle threats. When I told someone I intended to harm them in some way, I was always prepared to back it up.

I was prepared to kill Celia.

I just hadn't decided yet that I would.

Rather, I had decided, and now I was having second thoughts.

I wasn’t a man who had second thoughts. I was a man who honored my commitments, both to myself and to others. Always. That was how I’d climbed out of the depths of poverty, how I’d risen out of nowhere, against all odds. I decided, and I did. Case closed.

There were always obstacles to overcome. Every goal worth achieving had some unaccounted for hindrance along the way, usually showing up at the most inopportune time. That was how progress worked. Steps forward, a step back. The trick was to not get caught up in the stumble. Take a breath, find balance, then proceed.

But Celia Werner wasn’t just a rock on the pathway. She hadn’t just tripped me up. She hadn’t made me simply stumble. She was a ledge, crumbling under my hold, and no matter how I dug my fingernails into the ground at her feet, I was beginning to fear I might fall.

It was possible I already had.

My mistake had been in fucking her. There, in the grip of her orgasm, when she was vulnerable and real, it was impossible not to see what could be between us. I hadn’t even topped her that first time, not really. I hadn’t probed into her psyche beforehand the way I normally liked, hadn’t brought her walls down, hadn’t taken her to ruin, and still I’d slipped in somehow. Slipped in behind her facade where she was unguarded and defenseless, and the authenticity of what I found there was overwhelming.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like that.

There’d been a plan. A scheme years in the making, an improbable scheme at that, and yet everything had fallen into place, as though even the stars believed in my operation of revenge. She’d accepted my ridiculous proposal. She’d been satisfied with a prenup. She hadn’t made a single bit of effort to redraft her will and trust.

It had been too easy. Every obstacle on the way had been met and breached without incident. When she’d shifted, I’d shifted with her. Without effort. It had been a cakewalk. Logistically, anyway. I’d known she’d be sharp and wily and fierce. I’d prepared for that.

What I hadn’t known was that I’d like it.

Like her.

Did I like her? It was hard to accept if I did, but I couldn’t deny there was something there. Something raw and out of control, yet identifiable as its own, unlike so much of what I’d grown accustomed to feeling in the near three decades that had passed since my parents’ deaths.

I hesitated to say it was a nice change, only because of what that would mean for the future of my scheme, but it was a change. And if I were honest, I liked the change.

Before her, there’d only been blackness inside. Not because I had felt nothing, but because I felt too much. Too much anger, too much regret, too much heartache, too much love. Too much responsibility.

Too much everything.

And it all mixed together, all the individual too much of emotion until it was impossible to distinguish one from another, the same way a child’s overzealous watercolor project turned into mud with the application of too many colors.

That was how my feelings existed inside me—as mud. Darker than that, though. An inky blob. A black hole. The perception of black holes very often is that they are large areas of nothing, but they’re just the opposite. They are the densest objects in the universe. They suck at the life around them. They tear apart any matter that comes close to them because of their massive gravity.

That was what I was inside before her.

My emotions had mass.

My emotions had gravity.

My emotions were capable of tearing a person apart to ruin.

Celia:

It was bullshit.

I called him on it too. “Bullshit.”

As terrifying as the words were coming from Edward’s mouth, “My little bird, I intend to kill you,” that’s all they were—words. He didn’t mean to kill me. Of course he didn’t. He wanted me off balance, that was all.

He stared at me for a beat, the anger he’d exhibited a moment before easing into something else. Something calmer, more controlled, yet just as vehement.

Without taking his eyes off me, he settled into the chair behind his desk. “I can understand why you’d choose not to believe me.”

“Because you’re dramatic and full of nonsense threats? Yeah. Pretty unbelievable.” Almost as unbelievable as the fact that I was standing before him half-naked, covered in his cum since only a handful of minutes before his ominous declaration, he’d fucked me, wildly, claiming my body as his as he did.

I’d loved it. I’d even loved the painful and intense spanking I’d received that had precipitated the fucking.

He’d loved it too. I had no doubt of that. He might hate himself for loving it, for whatever reason I couldn’t know, but there was no faking that he’d been into it.

Which made his stupid threat more hurtful than frightening. “You have regrets about fucking me, fine. But be a grown-up about it. Childish taunts are not your style.”

I snagged a fistful of tissues from the box on his desk and reached around my torso to wipe the sticky mess he’d made on my backside as best I could before pulling on my bottoms. Wadding the tissue up in a ball, I threw it into his lap.

So maybe childish taunts were my style. Quid pro quo and all that.

With my jaw set, I crossed my arms over my breasts and met his steady gaze.

Edward let the ball of tissue fall from his lap to the floor, barely giving it a glance as he leaned back in his chair. His lips curled slowly. “You continue to fascinate me, little bird. I’ll give you that. And you are correct. Childish taunts are not my style. Which is why you should be most assured that I mean what I’ve said.”

So he was going to cling to that then. How immature.

Unless he actually meant it.

A shiver crawled up my spine. I shook it away. He was trying to get under my skin. He’d only win if I let him.

The best move was to ignore his scare tactics and focus on what he’d given me—an admission.

“Why did you call me that?” I knew the answer, but there was a chance I could be wrong. That the nickname was a coincidence.

“I’ve just told you I plan to kill you, and you’re more concerned with the name I’ve given you. Fascinating indeed.” He was good, I had to give him that. I’d often held onto a ruse way past the time it should be surrendered, but never with such commitment.

Never so convincing.

“Just stop. You don’t mean it.”

Edward cocked his head slightly. “Don’t I?”

“You don’t. You’re trying to scare me.” But my mouth felt dry and my hands were sweaty despite the fact that I was only wearing a bikini in an air-conditioned room.

“Is it working?”

Yes.

But what I said was, “No. Now I’m just pissed off.”

His grin widened. “That makes two of us.”

He didn’t need to tell me. He’d been mad before I’d even entered the room, deservedly so, after I’d pushed him all day, openly flirting with his staff. It had gotten me what I’d wanted—him. Inside me. Unleashed and unbridled.

I’d told myself I wanted him so I could win The Game, but it had been a lie. I’d just wanted him, and having had him, I wanted more of him, and for the first time in years—in a decade—I could see a future for myself that didn’t center around the games that Hudson had taught me so well to play, that didn’t involve lies and manipulation. A future filled with instead of the nothing that had lived so long inside of me.

I wanted Edward, but it was painfully clear that, no matter how much he might want me back, he wouldn’t allow it.

I was scared, yes, and pissed. But mostly hurt.

I remembered this emotion. I remembered rejection. I remembered this kind of pain.

I’d rather play The Game.

“Why did you call me that?” I asked again, more sternly, as though I had power to make any demands. So he’d made me feel things. I didn’t have to acknowledge that. I knew how to be empty. I could be empty again.

Edward rested his ankle on his opposite thigh, a more casual posture than I’d seen him take before, the nonchalant behavior adding to my unease. “Why did I call you that just now or why did I call you that before?”

Before. It was so vague. He’d called me “little bird” twice now in this conversation. His reference to before could simply mean the first time tonight, and not the time he’d said it to me outside The Open Door. It was a clever tactic, refusing to give anything away. Requiring me to be the one to admit that I’d been there that night or let the mention slide.

I considered it for only a handful of seconds. While I hated being backed into a corner as I had been, I wanted answers more. “How did you know it was me?”

My disguise hadn’t been perfect the night I’d attended the sex party and seen him there as well, but it was a stretch to think that anyone would have realized who I was. My hair had been dyed. My outfit had been specifically one I’d never wear. I’d worn a mask that fully covered my face. A feathered mask of a dragon that Edward had mistaken for a bird.

More likely it hadn’t been a mistake but a deliberate choice meant to knock me back a peg or two.

Still, as he’d demeaned me with the nickname, I’d believed he’d done so as a stranger. To discover that he’d known all along was the real blow to my esteem.

He studied me, his hand rubbing over the scruff of beard on his chin—the Van Dyke that I’d suggested he grow—and for a tense instant, I thought he might deny knowing what I was talking about. That would be just like him, wouldn’t it? Get me to confess and then refuse to acknowledge it.

But if the thought had crossed his mind, he didn’t go with it. “I think the better question,” he said, “is how did we end up at the same party together.”

The rhythm of my heart stuttered, two beats coming so fast that I could actually feel them against the inside wall of my chest. He hadn’t just known it was me. He’d known I’d be there.

Now that was terrifying.

And exciting.

And impossible. How the hell had he known? I ventured a guess. “You had me followed.”

“Did I?” His brows arched inward as though he were trying to recall the details of the event. So fucking performative. “I believe I was there first.”

“Then you figured out I was going to be there. Somehow.” I threw up my hands, already tired of the tug of war.

Perhaps in response to my impatience, he threw me a bone. A clue. “How did you end up at that party?”

“I was invited.”

“By whom?”

“By…” Oh, fuck.

I quickly went over the circumstances that had led me there that night. Having learned from Blanche that Edward liked kinky parties, I’d gone searching for one he might attend, putting a call out on kink-related forums under an anonymous username for such events.

One person had reached out in response, inviting me to join The Open Door, an underground organization that hosted weekly sex parties. I’d been wary about accepting, worried that the membership fee would be traced to my bank account, but I hadn’t for a minute been concerned about the stranger who’d invited me.

Had FeelslikePAIN been Edward?

I needed to sit down.

As soon as I sank into the chair facing his desk, I regretted it. My ass had cooled down, but sitting reignited the sting of his severe spanking.

Not a chance I was letting him know that.

“That’s impossible,” I said through gritted teeth, bearing down through the pain. “That couldn’t have been you. You couldn’t have known that username was me.”

“Are you sure?”

With my elbow propped on the arm of the chair, I ran my fingers across my forehead. “This is tedious, Edward. Would you just tell me?”

His lips twitched in a way that suggested my impatience amused him, which only made me more irritable. Of course. As he surely knew it would.

Abruptly he sat forward, setting his elbows on the desk and clasping his hands together, tucking all of his fingers in except the two pointers, which he steepled together and aimed in my direction. “How about you tell me something?” he asked, his expression wicked with curiosity. “How did it feel to watch me that night?”

“What do you mean?” Sneaky, exhilarating, conniving. Was that what he was after?

“How did it feel to watch me touching another woman? Making another woman come in front of you.”

My stomach dropped as simultaneously the space between my thighs began to buzz. Against my will the memories crashed into the forefront of my mind. He’d sat across from me, his eyes locked with mine as he’d assisted the woman on his lap in masturbating to orgasm.

“Sasha,” I said mindlessly. “Her name was Sasha.” Because concentrating on that point was safer than answering him. Even the question had heated my face, not because it was humiliating to be asked—though it definitely was—but because both the memory and the forwardness of his inquiry aroused me, much to my annoyance.

“Her name doesn’t matter. It only matters that she wasn’t you. Tell me how you felt.”

She wasn’t you. It came off as a deliberate slap in the face.

The pointed comment also brought my emotions from that night into vivid focus. I’d been vulnerable then. I’d felt exposed, and that was with a disguise. A pointless disguise, it turned out, but I hadn’t known that at the time.

Just thinking about what he must have seen in me in that moment made my skin crawl.

There was no way I could share those feelings with him. They were too personal. Too real, and here, under the intensity of his gaze, there was nothing I could hide behind.

“I’m not doing this,” I said, as I stood up and turned to leave.

“Sit down, Celia.”

The command was sharp and sinister, a verbal lasso wrapping around my torso, holding me in place. I was only a handful of strides away from the doorway. So close to escape.

And yet I couldn’t go.

I didn’t generally have a problem defying him. I could now. Easily.

Only, as blasé as I’d been throughout our conversation, I actually was scared. More than I wanted to admit, even to myself. I didn’t believe that he would kill me, necessarily.

Just.

What if I was wrong?

With my chin held high, I returned to my chair, wincing as my ass touched the surface. “There. I sat down. But only because you’re going to give me answers. How did you figure out that was me on that forum? And why did you want me to go to that party?”

Edward sat up to his full height, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me. Into me. “Let me be clear,” he said with cool authority. “You are not in a position to ask to see my cards. It’s your turn to show yours, and if I’m satisfied after I see them, I may choose to show you some of mine.”

I swallowed hard.

Though his face remained perfectly composed, his hands were in fists resting on the desk, and I couldn’t help but suspect that he was trying very hard to control his rage. “Now, answer my question.”

“And if I do you’ll give me answers?” My voice sounded weak, and for good reason, since I’d basically just been told he was in charge and stop defying him or else.

I seemed to have a real problem with authority.

Edward appeared to find that problem amusing. His lip twitched as though trying not to smile. “Perhaps. But I’m not answering anything you ask until I’m happy with what I hear from you.”

“Nothing,” I said stubbornly. “I felt nothing.”

“If you’re not going to be honest, then you might as well leave, which will not only end the discussion now but any possibility of discussion in the future.”

Whether he meant that this was the only time he’d be willing to talk or that, later, I would be unable to talk, I didn’t know.

Either way, he’d trapped me once again into answering.

“It was hot,” I said, with obvious annoyance. “Okay? The way you touched her was hot.”

“And?”

Jesus Christ, he was impossible.

“And dirty.”

“And?”

“I don’t know…” I shook my head, trying to guess what he might want me to say. “Unsettling.”

“And…?”

“And mean. And manipulative. And exciting. And if you want something different from me, then I don’t know what it is because I haven’t read the Guide to Pleasing Edward Fasbender, and I’m going to need the CliffsNotes.”

“I want you to be honest.” His tone said his patience was wearing thin.

Well, mine was too. And honesty? That wasn’t something I’d been good with in a long time, let alone emotions.

At my hesitation, he prodded. “Close your eyes, Celia, and stop trying. Just imagine I’m touching her now. I’m kissing her. My mouth is on her breasts. My hands are on her cunt. Inside her cunt. Now, tell me what you’re thinking.”

My eyes were closed, and I could see it all like it was happening right then. I could feel the twist in my stomach, the rush of blood in my ears, the pang of envy.

I opened my mouth and let the words fall out. “I wished it were me you were touching.”

And with that admission, I knew in my gut that whatever answers he gave me, if any, or whatever move he made next in this stupid fucked-up game, it didn’t matter.

I’d already lost.