31. Jamison #3
Her lashes fluttered. “I feel silly.”
“You’re not silly. You’re hurt.”
Her eyes shone harder at that.
I lowered my voice. “No woman has had me since you. No one in those rooms had what you think they had while you were sitting beside me. I should have told you enough that Harlan couldn’t write stories in the gaps. That failure is mine.”
She nodded, but it came unsteady.
“Say it back.”
Her brows drew together.
“Say what you heard.”
Her throat worked. “After the engagement, you weren’t with anyone.”
“Again.”
“You weren’t with anyone.”
“Who has me now?”
She stared at me.
“Say it, baby.”
Her voice barely rose above the water. “Me.”
“Yes.”
I kissed her forehead, then her cheek, and felt some of the panic loosen under my hands.
She leaned into me.
That was the part that broke through every ugly thing inside me. Even when she thought I had belonged to someone else. Years of me giving her every reason to stay guarded. Her body still came toward mine when I handled her carefully.
I had never deserved that.
I wanted it anyway.
“If you give me your submission,” I said against her hair, “you need to understand exactly what you’re giving it to.”
She went still again, but this time the fear was different.
I drew back enough to see her face. “I won’t be normal with it.”
“You keep saying things like that.”
“Because I mean them.” My fingers slid from her jaw down the side of her neck, stopping above her pulse. “I can be trained in restraint. I can negotiate, write rules, honor limits, stop the second you need me to stop. But I don’t want you in small portions, Sienna.”
Her breath changed.
“I’ll want rituals. Pillows for your knees in every house we live in.
In my study. Beside the fire. Near the bed.
In rooms where I work late and you want to be close without needing to talk.
I’ll want you kneeling because it settles you, and me.
The world can be chaos outside that room and still you’ll know where to place your hands. ”
Her cheeks flushed.
“You’ll have rules,” I continued. “How you ask when your head is too full. How you tell me when you’re drifting. How you say no. How you say yes. How you kneel, how you rise, how I touch your neck, how I bring you back to yourself afterward.”
She stared at me, lips parted, water moving gently around her.
“I’ll want you in my lap while I read contracts.
At my feet when you’re tired. In my bed every night I can get you there.
I’ll want your mouth, your hands, your voice, your trust. I’ll want you looking at me when you’re embarrassed.
I’ll want to know every blush I cause and every fear I need to dismantle.
And when I say mine, I won’t mean quiet, decorative, obedient in the way your family taught you.
I’ll mean watched. Chosen. Protected. Answered. ”
Her fingers tightened on the marble.
“I sound insane,” I said.
“A little.”
I laughed softly. “Good. Then you’re listening.”
Her mouth curved, but her eyes were still wide. “You said every house we live in.”
“Yes.”
“We would live together?”
“Where did you think you were going after the wedding?”
Her gaze dropped.
“Sienna.”
She rubbed her thumb along the ring again. “I thought you’d want the marriage settled. Publicly. I thought the rest would be… separate.”
“Separate.”
“You hate me.”
“I don’t.”
“You did.” She said it quietly, with no cruelty at all. “Or you acted close enough that I couldn’t tell the difference.”
I had earned that. Didn’t mean I fucking liked hearing it.
“I made plans,” she admitted.
“What plans?”
She sank lower into the bath, as if water could hide the life she had built around my neglect.
“When I become Crow, Bellemere money changes. My family cuts daughters off from accounts when they marry into another dynasty, especially if the marriage is debt-related. I wouldn’t have access the same way.
I thought Crow money would be yours, and I’d be foolish to assume you’d want me spending it. ”
My hand curled on the bath edge.
“So I was going to work more. Ballet teaching. Assistant rehearsals if Madame let me. Some paid performance work, though it’s unreliable.
Adrian said he could sublease me an apartment quietly in one of his complexes.
He said he’d support me, but he’s married.
He has a life. Eventually it would cause problems with his wife, and I don’t want to be that kind of burden.
” She tried a small smile. “I could babysit too. Sabine will have the baby, Liora has the twins, and the children already listen to me better than most adults do.”
I stared at her.
Something in my chest went fucking feral. The anger mixed with pain. I’d fucked up that badly.
“You planned to pay rent after marrying me.”
“Jamison…”
“You planned to live in Adrian’s apartment, work ballet hours, babysit your siblings’ children, and wear my name while I went back to the estate alone.”
She looked away.
I caught her chin, unable to stop myself. “Look at me.”
Her eyes came back, wet.
“You thought I’d abandon you.”
She swallowed. “You already did.”
Every word in the room died.
Outside, someone laughed faintly on the lawn. The sound drifted through the open windows.
Sienna’s voice stayed quiet. “You slammed doors in my face. You left me at events. I lost count of how many times you said you needed whiskey to deal with me, or before dealing with me, or because I was there and you had to tolerate it. Sometimes you forgot I even came with you.”
The bathwater moved against the stone as she shifted.
“I wasn’t stupid enough to think marriage would make you want me in your house.”
I stood.
Too fast.
She flinched.
The movement killed me.
I turned away before the sight made me do something useless, bracing both hands on the dresser near the wall.
The wood pressed hard under my palms. I wanted to break it.
The dresser, the cottage, every past version of myself who had left her under awnings, beside bars, on marble steps, waiting for proof that I remembered she existed.
She said nothing behind me.
Good. If she apologized, I might have put my fist through the mirror.
“No one touches me.” My voice came out low.
I kept my back to her because the truth had to leave somehow and eye contact would make it worse.
“No one has since I was seven.”
The water shifted behind me.
I breathed once. Again. Controlled. Ugly.
“I was taken. My father got me back. Fast enough, by Crow standards. Too late, by mine.”
“Jamison,” she whispered.
I turned then.
“I came home and couldn’t stand hands on me.
Doctors. Guards. My brothers. My mother.
” My throat tightened around that one. “She was affectionate. Always touching our hair, kissing our faces, dragging us close even when we thought we were too old for it. After they took me, I couldn’t bear it.
She would reach for me and stop herself. ”
Some memories still haunted me. That one never left my brain. My parents death lived behind my eyelids.
“She hated that. She looked at me every time as if she could remember holding me before and had to relearn loving me from a distance.”
I walked back to the bath and sat on the edge again, close enough that she could reach if she wanted.
“The night she died, there was a shooting at the casino.” My voice roughened, and I hated it, but I kept going. “She reached for me.”
Sienna’s fingers found mine on the marble.
“I held her,” I said. “For the first time in years, I let my mother touch me properly while she was bleeding out on a casino floor. And she looked at me as if it was a miracle.”
Sienna’s fingers pressed firmer into my hand.
“I hate touch,” I said. “In my clubs, every touch is discussed before it happens. Subs’ hands were tied because that suited the scene, yes, but also because I needed clarity. No one grabbing without permission.”
Her thumb moved over my knuckles. That loving little ritual.
“My hand with you,” I said, voice dropping, “was different.”
She looked at me through tears.
“You held it out in public as if it cost nothing. Hand, please. That sweet voice. Those eyes. You would take my hand into your lap and trace the ink while half the room watched. You made me choose between refusing you and letting you touch a part of me no one else got near.”
“You looked angry every time.”
“I was angry.” I turned my hand beneath hers and laced our fingers.
“Because it made me vulnerable. You could ask for that hand and I would give it to you while pretending I hated it. Because every time you traced my knuckles, my body stopped waiting for the room to attack. You made me feel safe, and I had no use for that feeling, so I punished you for giving it to me.”
She stared at our joined hands, crying quietly.
“And when you took it away,” I said, the words rough now, pulled from somewhere I had buried under work and years of resentment, “when you stopped asking, touching me, stopped calling me Jamjam, I missed it. Like fucking crazy.”
Her breath hitched.
“I missed your hand in mine at tables. I missed you tracing my tattoos. I missed your voice. I missed the way you looked at me before I taught you to stop. I told myself the silence was better because I’m an idiot. It wasn’t better.“
She whispered, “I thought you were relieved.”
“I was never relieved.”
“You seemed…”
“Cruel,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
I deserved her honesty now.
I slid my free hand to her cheek, wiping tears.
“You are not living in Adrian’s apartment.
You are not scraping together rent while wearing my ring.
You are not babysitting to survive unless you want to because you love those little tyrants.
You will have money in your name before the wedding, property in your name after it, and rooms in every house I own because my wife will never wonder where she is meant to sleep. ”
“Your wife.”
“Yes.”
“You say that as if it’s already real.”
“It is. The paper is catching up.”
“You can’t just decide I’m moving into your house because you feel guilty.”