Faithless (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (94 page)

“Olivia, Bianca, and Sebastian are making their way here. Devlin will be meeting up with them shortly. Dalton, confusing the shit out of all of us, called the fucking FBI on all of his competitors- turned them all in. We’re mystified. He’s been taken into witness protection- at least he’s safe.”

“That’s what happens when you play people in a game, only they don’t know they are being played… that is exactly what happens!” I whisper shout. Frustration fills me, overcomes me, rolls over me, and threatens to be released out of my fists.

“I know,” Wil sighs. “When they arrive, we have to hold a meeting. We need you to get
him
to come.”

“Wil,” I sharply bark- at my wit’s end. My heart is heavy. I hurt for so many reasons. I can’t open that gaping wound, too.

“Pixy,” he firmly says back. “We need him. I know you guys communicate. You’re always upset after you hear from him. We need him at that meeting.”

“I’ve tried to see him,” I reluctantly admit, fearing that Wil will see my hunger to see him as a betrayal. “He wouldn’t see me- he will never go to a meeting,” I say with one hundred percent accuracy.

“You still need to try. I know he will see you- I know you are more determined than that- you don’t take no for an answer. Why are you taking no as his answer?”

“It’s not a good idea, Wil,” I practically growl- I can hear the bitch in me coming out.

“You’re worried that you’ll sleep with him,” Wil says with a chuckle.

“You bastard,” I hiss. I stand up on the bed and glare in his direction. Dark or not, I know he can feel my fury. “You want me to fuck him- whore myself out as a way to get him to the meeting!”

“Calm down,” Wil says, approaching me.

“I wouldn’t get too close to me, if I were you,” I warn
, the emotional storm is cresting.

“That statement was nothing about the meeting. I know you want to fuck him,” Wil says without judgment, “and I’m fine with it. Really, I am.”

“You’re fucking insane- this is fucking insanity. I’m running the fuck away and never coming back. Don’t push me. I will do it, so help me, God!” I lash out, because he is right. Why is Wil always right?

“Don’t see him or see him, whatever. But go see him for yourself.  I believe in soulmates,” he says out of nowhere.

“What?” I utter in shock. “What?”

“I said,” Wil loudly repeats, “I believe in sou
lmates. I don’t care if you screw him because I know you are my soulmate, just as I know who his is.”

“Who?” I ask, ignoring the fact that his is
rapidly approaching hearts and flowers territory- a territory that is unconquered by us.

“Nope,
I’m not telling you who he belongs with. But I know I belong with you… and pretend all you want, but you feel it, too. It’s why you don’t throw a fit when I go off fucking. So go see him for yourself. If he comes to the meeting, that’s great. If not, that’s fine, too. But you need to see him- he has plagued you for eleven years.”

“Wil, you are batshit fucking crazy!”
Frustration coils in my gut, the pressure increasing.

“I’m working on me- I know how much pain I’ve put you through. He’s healed you before. I don’t have the strength to heal you as I heal myself. I’ll work on me. You work on you. And we will meet in our bedroom, and hopefully, we can come together without too much pain.”

“Wil,” I strongly warn. He is crossing a line. We don’t talk about this stuff. Mr. Chatty is crossing too many boundaries. I’m upset, and he’s the only outlet I see in this room.

“Just always use protection,” he sincerely says, but I’m too far gone.
The frustration boils over. I lunge off the bed and take his ass to the ground.

~Chapter Eighty-Four~

Emotions assault me as I stare
at the red-lacquered door and its cheery gargoyle knocker. I see Caribbean blue seas stare up at me, I feel the warmth of sunshiny happiness, and I hear a voice that could only be described as orgasmic. The seas still roll and the sun still shines, but the music has faded to silence.

Being back here
releases so many memories I’ve locked away in my mind. Some of them pleasant… and one in particular splashes a crimson flush to my cheeks. It will forever be known as the Wicked Whip incident.

I haven’t been back here since…

I’ve avoided this Brownstone for many reasons, but a major one is the whip-wielding Sadist, Dexter Hayes. My palm still itches and a fierce hunger burns brightly. I want that whip… in my hand… not fucking my cunt like it’s trying to bore through my Cervix to gain access to my womb.

No amount of emotional conditioning can hide the shiver that wracks my body.

Even Dexter Hayes couldn’t have kept me away if I wanted to be here. This is the first time I’ve even driven down this street, let alone stood out front on the stoop.

Grant Whittenhower- he and I have so much strife between us that I get physically sick thinking about him. The last time I saw him was
almost eleven years ago. My life was chaos compared to the simpler times I am living now. Grant backed me into a corner, and I did all I could to keep him alive.

I was beyond distraught. I couldn’t witness what was to come. Stanton took me home. It had been a rough couple of weeks for all of us. We hunted Raymond Hunter for abducting Ezra, Cortez, and Aaron. A woman named Katya Waters was involved in the incident, being assaulted on a nature trail in rural Pennsylvania. I then came home to a political strategy meant to kill Grant, and in turn
, harm me.

It almost killed me. While Grant was being silenced
, the stress my OBGYN sadist had warned me about almost took my life. Within an hour’s time, I was vomiting, bleeding out, and unconscious. I almost lost Zane. I was in the hospital for weeks, and put on permanent bed rest. I was able to carry Zane until the seventh month. My premature son was in the hospital for six weeks before I could take him home. I’ve always wondered if it was the events surrounding his birth that made my son so cold.

I could blame Pierre Fontaine for orchestrating the events. I could blame Raymond Hunter. I could blame myself for not being strong enough for Zane. But I blame Grant Whittenhower.

While I was fighting for my life, my son’s life tied to mine, Grant was proving how little he thought of the saying
alive at any cost
. Grant disfigured his own face, and then tried to kill himself. No, he did kill himself.

It was Cory and Wil who took the call, and they were the ones who brought Grant back from the brink several times over while a distraught Marcus Zeitler panicked in the back of the ambulance. Marc, having no idea that he stepped in
to the path of a game that he is unknowingly playing, feared for Grant’s safety and arranged him a new identity as James Atwater.

In the end, Grant got his wish. I remember hating him for years- despising him. I risked my honor as the Game Master, putt
ing my life on the line if the elders didn’t agree with my judgment. I fought for Grant’s life, and that is how the coward repaid my efforts, by killing himself.

Then the hate transformed into jealousy- that bastard got a reprieve from the game. Grant got to live the life he always wanted. Introverted in the extreme, he holed himself in his home, surrounded by his favorite people, and he lived his art.

Thinking back, I realize now that I was a child. I was a child who couldn’t get out of the life they were born into, making decisions, for not only herself, but all those around her. And this grown man got to walk away- from his family, his children, his responsibilities, the stress, the game.

While
Grant lived the life he wanted: I fought for my child’s life. I made the brutal game survivable. I spent years training to be a firefighter and a paramedic. I spent the years I should have been acting like a moron with the rest of my peers, raising a child and acting like a responsible adult.

The animosity was suffocating, and bene
ath the hate and jealousy, was sadness and regret. I regret losing my friend. I regret judging him. I regret begrudging him his happiness. I realized by being a martyr, you lose yourself. If his selfishness is a curse, so is my selflessness.

Somewhere, and I have no idea when, I’d forgiven Grant and understood him better. Then the letters started
arriving. The first note was one simple line:
It wasn’t the tone, but the words that were spoken.
It took me a long time to decipher that. Grant was telling me there was nothing to forgive. I remember thinking as I passed the judgment on his silence that the world was losing the best voice it had ever heard. But Grant will forever have a voice within the written word- it doesn’t matter if it isn’t spoken from his lips. His pen has more power.

Stanton and Roman always brought the letters, and upwards of five per day. If I didn’t respond, they compounded. I’d jot down nonsense and send it back, and the letters would abate for a few days. Corresponding with Grant could be a fulltime job.

…
And then the books started arriving- books without a title. The leather-bond books were embossed with a number and the name James Atwater. The dedication was always
Mistress
. Grant only ever had one mistress- the mother of his children, Regina Regal. But within the pages, that devious ass put private information. Many of my sexual experiences were spread across the pages of his novels, included our one and only massage and the night he taught me to masturbate. I wanted to die when I read the Wicked Whip incident in published print.

The ridiculousness is that he created a character for me, a character that has lived long in the past twelve books, and her name is Angel. How appropriate that Grant would name the Faithless sinner Angel.

No one ever understood me as well as Grant did, which made the pain all the greater. The character was named Angel for the Angel of Mercy.

One other character took me by surprise. Three books into Grant’s series, I figured out who Venus was when a twist revealed her to be Angel’s mother. There are currently twelve books in Grant’s series, and all twelve are heavy with Venus.
Venus: goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. It creeped me out.

“You gonna knock or just stand ou
t here and longingly gaze at my door?” Roman teases me.

“I don’t know, gorgeous,”
I purr. I still flirt with Roman because it unnerves him. “Are you gonna let me in?”

Roman snorts as he sits on the top step. Well, that answers that, now doesn’t it?

Access denied
.

“He doesn’t wish to see you. As you already know,” Roman says, as if he’s sick to death of repeating that same phrase day after day. And how do I know that, because it’s me he says it to, day after day. If Grant can send me naughty books and even naughtier letters, then he can see me. But my ass is never admitted into the Brownstone.

Today, I tried a new approach. I didn’t call or write first… and yet, I’m outside freezing my nips off in the bitter cold.

Access denied
.

“Who does he see? Riddle me that,” I snidely hiss.

Roman sighs like I exhaust him. “Me, since I live here. It is my house, as you know.” He loves to pull that trump card- the house is deeded to Roman Alexander. He doesn’t have to let me in, and since Grant never sets foot outside…

Access Denied
.

“Marcus, of course,” suspiciously sounds like
well, duh!
“Many people visit, but he doesn’t show himself if he doesn’t feel like it. Grant is very private. Only the game players and Marcus know of his reincarnation into Jamie. He ignores their requests to visit. He denies the request of any female, hating how he looks.”

“Regretting that, now, is he,” I sarcastically say, pissed at Grant for disfiguring that
priceless face.

“Who did you piss off today?” Roman hisses at me, eyeing my face.

“Not a soul,” I say with a shrug, pretending I don’t have a black eye and scratches down my cheek. I have to say, after we beat the shit out of each other, that was some epic sex.

“Is the other guy still breathing,” Roman tries to sound light, but the slight widening of his turquoise eyes says he’
s scared shitless of me… and that’s why flirting with him is so much fun- it terrifies him. Should I enjoy terrifying my friends… probably not.

“Oh, since my family was blushing at the breakfast table this morning, I’d say he’s feeling pretty dang fine- and proud of himself.” The fact that jealousy over Grant fueled our passions is something I don’t want to examine further. 

“I ask again, who does he see?” I need to reevaluate my strategy. I really don’t want to use the plan I came up with. I’m not that sadistic, but I can be if I must.

“I…” Roman thickly swallows. He really is scared of me, and while humorous, it makes me sad. “He only chats with Cort.”

“That worthless fuck,” I growl. “Why?” Who would choose to be around Cortez Abernathy, besides Ezra? He is the worse enforcer in the history of the game, and since it is his job to take care of my mother and son, that doesn’t sit well with me. Cort makes Wil’s job twice as difficult, just like the previous Hunter.