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  She put her hand on his chest, stopping him from lowering his shirt. “Even if you weren’t famous, you’d still be the center of female attention.”

  The wrinkles deepened and he shook his head.

  “You’re telling me that before you had a recognizable face, you didn’t draw women’s eyes everywhere you went?”

  He sighed, watching her finger trace the dip between his pecs. Yeah, she was touching him and he wasn’t flinching. But her relief was buried under insecurity.

  Could she deal with that? Constantly competing with women better looking and lower maintenance than her? “I don’t have a chance in hell,” she mumbled.

  He snapped his head up and glowered at her. “I only want your eyes, your attention.”

  “Oh, you have that. Trust me. You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met.”

  He scowled and shoved his shirt down the perfectly sculpted proof, knocking her hand out of the way.

  “Your sex appeal won’t hold my attention forever though.” She bit her lip, trammeled by the kind of hope she hadn’t entertained since she was a child.

  His frown fell away to blank confusion.

  “This will hold me.” She poked him on the chest. “You have the heart one expects to see at the center of a fire, bending and twisting like steel, but never breaking. If something happens to mine, yours would be stubborn enough to beat for both of us.”

  His lips parted. Then her back hit the door under the weight of his body and their lips collided in a desperate fusion. He clinched his arms around her waist and palmed her ass, crushing their hips together.

  The friction of their rubbing bodies, the heat from their lips, and the harmony of their breathy noises set her body ablaze in the clutch of his arms. His fingers slipped beneath her shirt and circled her tailbone. Hers pushed through his hair. The spiral in her womb returned as if it never left, winding her heart rate higher and higher.

  A fist knocked on the door, vibrated against her spine. They flung apart and stared at one another, gasping.

  Another knock, followed by Nathan’s muffled voice. “Charlee?”

  Jay grinned, his eyes glimmering. “He’s like your dad, ready to beat my ass on our first date.”

  “He’s nothing like my dad.” Her voice was sharper than it should’ve been.

  His face fell. “Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Stop apologizing.” She wiped her tingling lips with the back of her hand. “I’ll tell you all about Craig Grosky. Then you’ll know. Okay?”

  “Craig,” he mumbled to himself, rubbing his nape. A smirk slanted his mouth. He must have figured out her nicknames.

  As she turned toward the door, he smacked her ass. The echo bounced through the room, the sting lingering for long delicious seconds.

  His whisper caressed her ear. “We’re going to talk about that, too.”

  She shivered, inhaled deeply, and opened the door.

  Lips pinched in a line, Nathan leaned into his arm, bent on the door jamb, and scanned her face.

  She gave him a reassuring smile. “Everything okay?”

  He glanced over her head. She missed Jay’s expression, but the muscles in Nathan’s cheeks relaxed. He looked back at her. “They’re holding your dinner. You should eat.”

  “Thank you. How long till we land?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Three hours.” Straightening, he clasped the latch on the door, but didn’t move to leave.

  “What’s wrong? You seem…worried.”

  “Should I be?”

  Her lips turned up. “Yes.”

  He rubbed his eyelids, volleyed another glare at Jay, and closed the door.

  She locked the door and turned. Their gazes caught instantly. The physical connection was severed, but the magnetism between them pulsed, beckoning. She swayed closer. Their little vacuum crackled and heated.

  Stretching to wrap her arms around his neck, she froze mid-reach. “If I touch you again, will it be like starting over?”

  He took her hands in his and lowered onto the bench, guiding her knees to straddle him. “Let’s find out.” He jutted his chin out, the cords stretching in his neck as he stared at her, waiting.

  “You put a lot of faith in me.” Her fingers hovered over his throat.

  “If you stay close to me, Charlee, my faith will stay close, too.”

  Everything inside her melted as she molded her body around his and touched a fingertip to the hollow at the base of his neck. His eyes didn’t shift from hers, his muscles didn’t tense, and a smile lifted one side of his mouth.

  Oh, thank God. Kissing his chin, the corners of his mouth, and lingering on his lips, she wedged her hand between their chests, smoothing her palm over his breastbone and absorbing his warmth. “Good?”

  “Now I am.”

  She went back to his mouth for a deeper kiss. He laughed against her lips and pulled back until his head bumped the wall behind him. “We need to talk.”

  Ugh. “Okay.”

  With an arm around her back, he laced their free hands together on the seat beside them. Moments passed as he watched his thumb bump over her knuckles, his eyes unfocused. Then he looked at her. “Please don’t be offended by anything I say or ask. I’m making no judgments. I just want the full picture so I can try to help, okay?”

  She nodded, hoping he was ready to hear the answers.

  49

  Charlee choked on the foreboding atmosphere, waiting for Jay to begin his questioning.

  “I’m surprised and relieved that you’re willing to be intimate with me after…what you survived.”

  She tensed against him. Where anyone else might’ve feared to step, he went rushing in.

  He watched her closely, caution gripping his voice. “Your sessions, your openness, whatever it is you’re doing, it works. I should take lessons from you.”

  The sudden image of him dominating her in a dungeon sent bolts of excitement through her body. “You shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know what you survived, but I recognized the pain eating at you the night we met. I suspect your abuser wasn’t so different from mine. Yet, here you are, willing to be intimate.”

  Without so much as a nonverbal acknowledgement, he held her through a comfortable silence. Eventually, he stirred, kissing her bottom lip. “I know it’s unfair to ask you to answer my questions and not answer yours. For now, let’s stay focused on you, on what happened between us, okay?”

  She nodded. “For now.”

  “I’m trying to wrap my head around your sessions. It would make more sense if you were the one with the whip. A submissive position seems like the last thing you’d want.”

  His gaze turned introspective and she kept quiet to see what he’d come up with.

  “I think you need the pain,” he murmured.

  Her throat tightened. Of course, he was right, but hearing it voiced made her want to shove him. “No. That’s not—”

  “No? Charlee, the harder I pounded you, the wetter you got.” His timbre remained soft despite the punch of his words.

  “The pain helps me focus. It’s just…”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And as soon as we both grasp what it means, and accept it, we can figure out how to make it work. Help me understand. Tell me why you aren’t doing the dominating to take back what Roy took from you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I have a handbook telling me what to do. I just go with what feels right for me. And it may seem like I’m yielding, but I’m not. I can stop it when I want. If I topped you—”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “You would have the control. You could say stop, and I would have to concede.”

  “Did this kind of thing appeal to you before you met Roy?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I was sixteen when he got me the first time.”

  His body turned to stone beneath her and his hands balled into fists.

  “No punching the bathroom wall.” She tapped his tense lips until they s
lacked.

  “How did he get you?”

  “Craig had a gambling addiction. Owed a lot of money to a lot of people. Most of his debt was owed to Roy Oxford.”

  “And you didn’t have a mom.”

  “Nope.”

  He closed his eyes and opened them just as slowly. “You and I have lived equally lonely lives. I wish we would’ve had each other growing up.”

  A light, hazy feeling drifted through her. He would’ve protected her, cherished her…loved her when no one else did.

  “What happened?”

  The dreamy sensation evaporated, leaving the heavy burden of reality. “One morning, Craig woke me, told me I wasn’t going to school. We were going on a trip.” She looked at the door. “I had no idea I wouldn’t be returning to Phoenix. Though, thinking back on it, I’m not sure Craig did either.”

  Jay’s fingers bit into her hip.

  She let her hair fall forward on her shoulders, hiding her face. She had been so gullible then. “We drove eleven hours to San Francisco. Straight to Roy’s penthouse. When we arrived, he made me change clothes in the car. Gave me a short black dress to wear and led me to the sixtieth floor.” And still she hadn’t questioned Craig’s intentions.

  Jay pushed her hair from her face, and turned her chin to see her eyes. “Go on.”

  “There were five men gathered around a poker table in Roy’s game room. Wealthy, if their suits and piles of chips were anything to go by. I knew Craig owed Roy money. I didn’t know how much, but I thought he’d win back his debt.” She sighed at her naivety. “I later figured out I was there as collateral in case he didn’t.”

  “To barter you?”

  “For one night. Craig was a selfish prick and an absent father, but I don’t think he intended to leave me there permanently.”

  “I want to kill him, Charlee.”

  A small smile shook the corner of her mouth. “Roy beat you to it.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Nothing worked out the way Craig planned. He certainly hadn’t expected Roy’s…reaction to me.”

  Red splotched his cheeks and the torment in his eyes blistered in her chest. She tucked her chin and let her hair cover her face again.

  He gathered it with one hand at her neck and used it to tilt her head back. “Stop hiding from me. I want to hear all of it.”

  The concern in his soft expression and his mere proximity bolstered her.

  “The moment I arrived, Roy watched me…in the oily way he does. Eyes sliding up and down. Smile oozing across the table. I wasn’t used to that kind of attention. I was inexperienced, completely unaware of what it meant. I couldn’t have guessed at the things he was thinking about doing to me. Over the course of the night, his glances grew more intense, more possessive. I should’ve figured it out and run.”

  His eyes, glassy under the fluorescent lights, cleaved straight through her heart. “You were a child, had zero power to change the outcome. You did as your father told you, trusted him the way every child trusts her parent for protection.”

  She nodded. “Then three women sashayed in. They were beautiful, with boobs out to here, and dressed in undergarments. They flocked around Roy, so confident in their bodies, and very acquainted with his.” She blew out a breath. “Christ, I was so young. The way they touched him and kissed him, I was both mesmerized and sickened. Yet, he never took his eyes off me. He eventually waved them away and called me over to sit on his lap.”

  The sound of wood cracking rent the air. “Motherfucker.” The cabinet handle broke off in his hand and he tossed it into the sink. After a few calming breaths, he asked, slowly, “What did he do?”

  Shaking her head, she stared at a rip in the wallpaper over his shoulder. “As soon as he pulled me into his lap, I knew. Even as stupid as I was, I knew Roy had decided to keep me, to do whatever he wanted to me.” He’d demonstrated it, right then and there, under the table, touching her in ways no one had before. And she had been too damn frozen in fear to fight him. She’d frozen like that for two fucking years.

  Jay’s body shook. “And your piece of shit father?”

  “He didn’t notice. He was too busy losing his card game. Within a couple hours, he’d lost our house and the car we drove there in. And still, I thought he’d win everything back. When Roy asked everyone to leave and it was just Craig and I left, he told Craig to wager me. If Craig won, he’d walk away with everything and his debt would be cleared. If he lost…”

  Jay’s chest heaved, his arm holding her to him.

  “I understand why Roy did it. He’s the big scary boss man no one wants to fuck with. He was flaunting his power over Craig. And what he wants…”

  “He gets.” His voice was quiet, inconsolable.

  Her throat swelled. “Craig didn’t even think about it. Didn’t even negotiate the terms. Maybe he assumed it was one night. Maybe he thought he was going to win, and it didn’t matter.”

  “And the stupid fucker lost everything, including his daughter and his life.”

  “When they walked him out, he didn’t say good-bye. Didn’t look at me. Probably too afraid to draw Roy’s attention.”

  He cupped her face and kissed her lips. “It’s unfathomable. You are so precious, how could anyone walk away from you?”

  She rubbed a finger over the deep lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes. Roy shared Jay’s sentiment, but Roy’s was a sick selfish kind of obsession. “So that’s it. Took me two years to escape. Met you four years after that.”

  “Charlee.” He shook his head. “We need to talk about those two years, and whatever happened in your second kidnapping.”

  Full disclosure. She’d vowed not to hide from it. “Ask me then.”

  “You were a virgin?” The low dangerous level of his tone said he already knew the answer.

  She nodded. “That night, I learned that sex didn’t require my permission. He took it, regardless of how hard I fought. Anal, vaginal, oral. In that order. Most of the scars you saw were inflicted in the first few hours.”

  His body vibrated beneath her, rotating the air with the violence of his breath.

  “It’s in the past, Jay.” She smoothed her hand over his jaw. “The only things he got from me were what he took from me. Even the orgasms.” The last word was a whisper.

  Heat reddened his face behind hard eyes. “Tell me about that.” He seemed to be hanging onto his anger by a fragile tether.

  “Jay, I don’t think—”

  “Tell me, goddammit.”

  A swallow scorched down her raw throat. “When I wouldn’t come or feel anything when he fucked me, he hit me harder, fucked me harder.” The words clawed at her throat as she forced them out. “It made him so mad when I hid inside myself. He wanted to possess me in every way and had found a way to draw me out. He used my body against me, made me feel, and forced me to orgasm when I tried to hide from his touch.” Her mouth went dry. “He’d had plenty of practice over the first two years and learned how to control my body better than I could.”

  For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the grinding of his teeth. “And you can’t come now?”

  “I can. On my own, when I concentrate on remembered pain. Or in my sessions, when I have the physical pain to focus on.”

  “Because you’ve been conditioned to associate pleasure with pain.”

  What did he think of her? She trembled. No one would want such a damaged, ruined girl. He could do so much better. “Yeah.”

  “What kind of pain do you need?”

  Was he considering doing this for her? “A backhand across the face. A choking restraint. Dry penetration. Those are mild forms, but they might work.”

  “Mild?” he croaked, shoving a hand through his hair. “Christ, Charlee.” He stared at her. “Maybe when you’re with me, you could try to just think about the pain like you do when you’re alone.”

  He wanted honesty. “Do you want me thinking about Roy when you’re fucking me?”

&nb
sp; He flinched like she’d punched him, and she realized she’d just implied she had to think of another man to get off while with him.

  “Jay, I didn’t mean you don’t turn me on, because I’ve never felt as good as I do with you. But when I recall pain, I instantly think of—”

  “I know, Charlee. I don’t like it, but I understand.” He hugged her, resting his lips on her forehead. “We’ll figure out another way.”

  In the warmth of his embrace and the stillness of the confined room, her swirling emotions abated. When she leaned back to look at him, his face was clouded in thought.

  “What is it?”

  His eyes cleared and found hers. “Does Roy have other women he dominates or enslaves?”

  She shook her head. “He’s tried with others, but he told me I was the only one it worked out with.”

  The emotion rolling off him was stifling. He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her wrist, and his other hand clenched her waist. “Maybe Roy saw something in you. Something a sadist cannot resist possessing. And if I were honest, Charlee, I have an overwhelming need to possess you, too. What’s that make me?”

  “Someone who will hold me so close Roy will never be able to wrench me away.”

  He squeezed her to him. “Damn straight.”

  “Good. We’ll figure out the rest, okay?” Her stomach growled. “We should eat.” She sagged against him, finally giving into the weariness of the long day. “Then I’m going to face plant somewhere.”

  He kissed her nose, chuckling as he hoisted her to her feet. She noticed his hands remained on her hips, supporting her, making sure she wouldn’t fall. She had a feeling he’d never let her fall.

  50

  Jay carried a sleeping Charlee through the spacious living room and toward his wing of the band’s Los Feliz home. They had both fallen asleep on the jet after dinner, and she conked out again on the way from the airport. The fact that she didn’t wake when he lifted her from the car was a testament to how long the day had been.

  And what a fucking day. He woke that morning with the same ache he always had, Charlee’s death at the forefront of his mind. Then there was his drug-induced meltdown after discovering her alive but in bed with another man. And the shooting. The dead man. The fans and paparazzi. And Roy. Concluding with the most intimate moment of his life while flying across the country. Through it all, he’d only used blow twice. Hadn’t even crossed his mind in hours. Why would it? Everything he wanted was alive and in his arms.