Without the vibe, her nipples ached with nothing to balance them, but that reminded her what life with Beck had been like. Pleasure and pain. Mostly pain.
Except the last few days had felt like a new beginning.
He kissed her forehead. “I can’t treat this like sex. I know I said I would, but it’s too important. I love you. You’re in my soul and I’m empty without you. If you don’t want to talk here, let’s go to therapy and talk it all out there.”
He was pushing her every button. “You want to relive some past history, Beck? You’re such a hypocrite, and you don’t even realize it. You get me all hot and bothered and then think I’ll do anything to please you?”
“No,” he replied. “It’s the attempt of a desperate man. Say you’ll go with me and I’ll do my best to get this scene back on track.”
He wanted to bargain? When he’d just broken their last one? “Or it’s proof that you never change. Not ever.”
His eyes were oddly soft as he stepped back. “How do I not change?”
Apparently she had to say it. Maybe it would feel good to say it. She was naked and clamped, and he’d done it all to her. “You’re always a bastard. You’re the one who tells someone you want them and then it turns out to be a trick.”
“That’s not all I did.”
Was she falling right into his trap? “No.”
“Say it, Kimberly,” he said quietly. “Say what I did to you.”
She wasn’t going to do anything he told her to. “Fuck you.”
He stepped in and lowered his head to her forehead, cupping her cheeks and whispering to her. “You can’t heal until you acknowledge the wound.”
Had he been talking to Eve? Was this one big conspiracy to force her into fucking therapy? “Let me out.”
He didn’t move, simply kept stroking her hair. “Baby, you can walk away from me. Maybe I don’t deserve a second chance, but you do. You deserve a chance to find a man who doesn’t hurt you, who stands by you no matter what. I want to be that man, but more than that, I need to know if that man shows up, you’ll give him a chance.”
She was not doing this with him. No. He was being a manipulative fucker and she wasn’t doing this. He didn’t get to put her in a damn corner. “Let me out. This is over. Get these stupid things off me and untie me and I am leaving. Do you understand? Roman and I are going to be on a plane tomorrow and you can fuck yourself.”
“I don’t want that. I’m trying so hard to avoid that.” There was a stubborn gleam in his eyes. “If you get on a plane, I’ll be behind you. You need to understand that. I won’t leave you again. Even if you never let yourself love me again, I’ll be your friend.”
“You were never my friend. You wanted to use me until I proved I wasn’t worthy of you.”
“I was cruel to you.”
She wanted him to fight, wanted him to argue that he’d been justified. The fact that he was agreeing with her made her even madder. “Get me out of these ties, Beck. I’m not playing with you this way one second longer.”
But the thought of not getting one last night out of him threatened to break her.
He looked like he wanted to argue. “Please talk to me. We can’t go on this way. We have to find a way through this.”
“I told you what I wanted. Or was this one more trick? Beck gets what he wants. Beck gets to do whatever he wants and everyone forgives him. Beck fucks me over and still comes out of it with a family. I do everything I can to save his brother and do you know what I get?”
“Left alone. You get left alone.” He smoothed back her hair. “If I’d reacted differently you might have trusted me enough to tell me the secret.”
She struggled against the bonds, needing desperately to fight something because he was so close to the truth. “If you’d shown one moment of love to me, I would have told you. I would have broken my promise to Ezra. Do you know how alone I felt? Do you think I wanted all that responsibility? I had to smuggle him out of a foreign country. I had to keep the fact that he was alive a secret or he would have been killed. Do you think I wanted to fucking do it alone?”
“No.” He was staring down at her, a stark look on his face. “No. You didn’t. You saved my brother and I never thanked you. All I did was tear you apart. I made you the bad guy because I didn’t know how to handle my grief. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d lost most of my family by that point. My stepdad. My brother. My mom was sick. It was good to be angry with you. It was good to lose you, Kim, because if I went ahead and broke off that piece of myself, I could get on with my life. If I could cut you out of my heart, I didn’t have to mourn you, too.”
“You fucking coward.” The world had gone watery and she couldn’t even feel her nipples anymore. “I’m doing it. I’m saying my safe word. You let me out of here right now.”
A hollow look came into his eyes. “Kim, please…”
She was going to have to use his language. “Red. That’s my safe word. Get me out of these bindings or I’ll make sure Tag never lets you in this club again.”
“I won’t come here without you,” he said, but his hands were working the ties that held her to the cross. “I won’t be here without you. Baby, we need to talk.”
Naturally now he wanted to talk. And Beck always got
