Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
JAMES
I ’m ashamed of myself. I behaved like a monster and punished Ana for something I had no control over in my past. She didn’t deserve that. I hate who I was and yet she pushed me to the limit, and I demonstrated exactly why I am better off alone.
As I hold her, I bury my face against her neck and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She nuzzles my chest and presses a light kiss on my skin, a simple act that makes me hold on a little tighter.
“Can you forgive me?”
“No.” She pulls back and stares deep into my eyes and says with determination.
“I want you to tell me your story, James, and not the official one. I want the one that caged you in hell, and I don’t want you to spare the details. ”
The fierce expression she directs my way causes me to smile, and she raises her eyes. “What’s so funny?”
“You actually.”
I stroke her face lightly and say huskily, “You should be running for the door and instructing your brother to finish the job. Why are you still here?”
“I don’t know.”
She shrugs. “Perhaps it’s because I like you, despite everything.”
“Like me?” I raise my eyes. “You’re a fascinating woman, Ana.”
“I am.” She grins and shifts off my lap and reaches for the discarded t-shirt.
“Okay. Truth time and you have until I’ve made us coffee to work out your story.”
She winks as she pads off in one direction and I say with amusement, “The kitchen is the other way.”
“Oh, um, thanks.” Her soft giggle does something strange to my heart, and as she disappears through the door, I lean back against the couch.
She wants my story .
I hope she’s a fan of horrors because it’s not exactly light reading.
With a sigh, I head into my bedroom and pull a pair of sweatpants out of the closet. If I’m going to bare my soul, I may as well try to make it decent.
When I head inside the living area, my gaze drops to the couch and the image of Ana on her knees in front of me brings a soft smile to my lips. She looks good here in my apartment. I can’t decide if I like her bound and spread out for my pleasure, on her knees with my cock down her throat, or wearing my t-shirt and making me coffee.
I don’t deserve any of it. I don’t deserve her and I’m still wondering why she is still here. It’s why I unleash my proclivities on the women at the club. My mask remains in place and they get what they crave. Ana isn’t of that world. She is innocent; she said so herself and yet she’s still here. That’s something good at least.
She heads back, holding two mugs of steaming coffee in her hand, and something shifts inside me. It’s as if this moment is the most intimate one we’ve shared, despite everything else we’ve done. Seeing her in my home, moving around it with an easy acceptance, tugs on what is passing for my heart these days.
She approaches and her hesitant smile is like a dart to my heart, striking it when it’s at its most vulnerable and as I take the coffee and smile my thanks, she slips onto the couch beside me and wraps her hands around the mug, her lashes sweeping against her cheeks as she gazes at me with curiosity.
“I told you about my upbringing.” I begin, hating stirring up painful memories but knowing I need this. I can’t move past them if they still affect me, and I’m ashamed of losing control around Ana.
“Well, it was tough being the kid that nobody wanted because my brother was wild. We came as a package and so a normal life was denied to us both. We shifted between foster homes until we were old enough to take control of our own lives and Dylan, as expected, headed straight for a job in a sleazy bar and I attended college in Washington.”
“How did you afford it?” Ana appears riveted to my story and I steel myself for what comes next.
“I was sponsored.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
She smiles her encouragement and I nod. “Of course. The catch was what they wanted in return.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was celebrating my eighteenth birthday with some kids from high school. We decided to splash out and head to a bar that was normally out of reach.”
“Understandable. It was a momentous occasion.”
Ana smiles her encouragement and I hiss, “I wish I had never walked into that bar.”
“Why not?”
“Because that is where I met her .”
“Oh.”
Suddenly, she doesn’t look so sure she wants to hear my story and I take a gulp of coffee and then set it down on the table.
“She was older than me. At the time I was inexperienced and just enjoyed make out sessions with girls from school, nothing ever reaching past third base. My friends were much the same, but we decided my eighteenth was going to change that. We would start off in the swankier bar attached to one where the girls charged extra, if you know what I mean.”
“I get the picture.”
She shrugs as if it’s nothing, and I run my fingers through my hair and sigh deeply.
“This woman sent a bottle of champagne to our table and, as expected, we drank every drop. I thought it polite to go and thank her and I’m not making excuses I flirted with her. She was older but classy and giving off serious interest vibes, so I sat with her and chatted for a while. Well, things escalated real damn quick, and we ended up grabbing a cab to her apartment nearby. By now my friends were desperate to move on and so I waved them goodbye and left with the woman.”
“You were brave.”
Ana smiles but I note the anxiety in her expression and she is right to be.
“When we got there she fixed me another drink, for the nerves she said. She left me under no illusion of what she wanted from me and I was curious. As I accepted her drink, she sat beside me and loosened my tie, placing my hand on her breast, and asked me if I wanted her. Of course I said yes, it was a given because I went to her apartment. She began to kiss me and I won’t elaborate on what happened, but she seduced me. I was willing, though. I couldn’t believe my luck and then as the drink began to take effect, I felt strange.”
“She drugged you?”
Ana’s eyes are wide and I nod. “Yes. I must have passed out because when I woke up, I was still naked in the room, but I couldn’t move. She had chained me to the bed.”
“You are kidding me!”
Ana’s expression of horror is nothing to what I felt at the time and it still occupies my nightmares, even to this day.
“It must have been a few minutes after I woke up that she returned. I begged her to release me and she told me I needed to be taught a lesson.”
I breathe a ragged sigh and say roughly, “She beat the shit out of me while I couldn’t defend myself. She whipped me, dragged a knife against my skin, and slapped me across the face. I had no way of protecting myself and the beating lasted all day.”
“No way!”
Ana’s eyes are misted with tears and I swallow hard. The emptiness I hold inside enabling me to speak about this as if it was someone else.
“She would leave and return with water to keep me going. Then she would resume her torture. She told me it was to break me and to rebuild me into the perfect man. I endured this for two days before she told me I was ready. When she released me, I was weak and she fed me something that contained even more drugs. I became dependent on her. She tore away my resistance and made me crave her attention. I became her toy and in return, she taught me everything she knew about sex. It became a craving, a violent need inside me, and the more pain she inflicted on me, the more I desired. It was a toxic relationship, if you can even call it that.”
“What happened then?”
Ana reaches out and just her hand resting on my leg is enough to calm my frayed nerves, and I sigh. “She got bored. She told me it was time to move on, but she would help me. She would pay my way through college in return for meeting her once a month and allowing this to continue. It seemed like the perfect arrangement, and it was to a degree. I honored my side of the deal and so did she. It became important to me. I needed the flogging she gave me every time we met, when she would accuse me of cheating on her with college whores. It was violent, destructive and raw and I became addicted to the rough sex.”
“What happened after you graduated?”
“She found me a job.”
Ana’s eyes widen when I say roughly, “In her husband’s company.”
“Her husband?”
“Yes, Ana, I worked for the man while screwing his wife on the side and rose through the ranks until I was promoted as the CEO of The Rose Foundation.”
Ana’s gasp of horror is well deserved and I hiss. “The woman was Adele Kenricky, and our arrangement is still in place.”