Sweet Addiction (6 page)

“I did it again,” she mumbled.

He nodded. “You did. You worked too hard and too long without a break. When did you eat last?”

She frowned and her lips pursed in concentration. “This morning, I think.”

He scowled and she smiled. She reached up to feather her fingers over his brow, brushing aside his hair.

He removed her jeans and stared down at her nearly naked body. She was down to only her panties. They wouldn’t last long. She had a drawer full of expensive lacy confections because he did love to tear them.

He ran his hands up her legs until his thumbs brushed over the thin material covering her pussy. He dipped one finger underneath the band, ran it downward and then he ripped, rending the material in two, the ends fluttering outward to bare her to his gaze.

The diamond teardrop glittered from her navel. Above the hood shielding her clitoris was a triangle of dark hair, trimmed short and neat. Her pussy lips were bare. Silky soft to the touch. Waxed smooth every week.

He warred with himself over how he wanted tonight to go down. There was a part of him eager to reassert his dominance. To take her to the very edge of her boundaries until they were both satisfied that he owned every inch of her body.

The other part of him wanted to be gentle with her. Shower her with tenderness. And ask her to bare her secrets.

The last gave him pause. Ask. Not demand. Somehow it seemed important that she willingly give him what he wanted to know. He could demand, yes. And she’d willingly oblige him. She was perfect in that regard. He’d never met a woman quite so comfortable in her skin. So open. So …at peace.

But now he wondered about that peace and what it had cost her. Her meeting with Cole had rattled her. He’d seen it. Known it. Hadn’t exactly known how to digest what he’d witnessed.

One thing he knew. He wanted to know more about the much younger Ren. The Ren who’d once belonged to Cole Madison, a man who clearly hadn’t forgotten her in the many years since they went their separate ways.

“What are you thinking?”

She lay beneath him, quiet, soft. Her gaze on him. Her attention focused solely on him. He leaned down and pressed a single kiss to the soft lips of her pussy and enjoyed the quick shiver that rocked through her body.

So responsive. So in tune with his wants and needs. He wondered if he’d ever find a woman more perfect for him. And yet, he’d never given much thought to the permanence of their relationship. Her role in his life.

Now he was going to be made to do just that, and he wasn’t sure he liked the circumstances that were going to force his hand.

He shifted his body up until he lay on his side next to her, his head propped in his palm as he stared down into her eyes. She was still staring oddly at him, obviously perplexed by his mood.

He touched his finger to the soft skin of her cheek and traced a line down to her jaw. “Tell me about Cole Madison.”

He didn’t miss the sudden flare in her eyes or the slight tension coiling through her body. She was tempted to look away but her discipline didn’t desert her. She kept her gaze steady and fixed on him.

Then she sighed. “We were childhood sweethearts. I say childhood. I was young. Just sixteen when we first met. He was twenty. In college. I adored him. He was everything a sixteen-year-old girl dreams of. Athletic. Gorgeous. Sweet. Protective and very alpha. Even then I knew I
wanted and needed a very strong man. I didn’t have an explanation or even a name for it at the time, but I was instantly attracted to him.”

Lucas continued to stroke her cheek, more to offer her comfort and to let her know he wasn’t threatened by the retelling of her first love.

“Were you intimate at such a young age?” he asked. “That could have gotten him into serious legal trouble in most, if not all, states.”

Ren shook her head. “He never pressured me for sex. In fact, he was adamant that we wait. It would probably make him sound weak or Beta to most people, but he was confident, self-assured. All he cared about was me and he thought I was too young for a sexual relationship.”

Lucas nodded in grudging respect. Not many young men would have cared whether their pretty girlfriend was too immature for sex.

“I thought perhaps we would consummate our relationship when I turned eighteen. I was positively breathless as my birthday neared. We’d been together for two years. He was about to graduate college. I loved him. I was sure he was the one I wanted to be with sexually and emotionally.

“But he surprised me by taking me to get the tattoo on my back. My parents were very strict and perhaps this was another reason Cole held off and didn’t pressure me. He didn’t want to cause problems for me with my mom and dad. They were very conservative. They forbade me from even getting my ears pierced until I turned eighteen.”

He tweaked one earlobe. “You never did get them pierced.”

She shook her head. “I got the tattoo instead. It was exactly what I wanted. I designed it myself. Cole insisted that I not go to some fly-by-night, back-alley tattoo parlor, so he took me into the city to a very expensive artist who did the ink. It was the best birthday gift I ever received. In a lot of ways it wasn’t just a tattoo. It was a mark of my independence. A new milestone in my life.”

So far Lucas wasn’t seeing the problem in her relationship with
Cole. He seemed like a pretty decent guy, which annoyed him, truth be told. He wanted—needed—a reason to back out of the decision he’d already made.

“Only after the tattoo was completely healed did we make love for the first time. It was so perfect. He was my first and he made it so very special for me.”

She went silent a moment and though she still looked up at him, she was no longer seeing him. She was somewhere else. Lost in her memories. Sadness entered her eyes and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to hold her and shield her from hurt.

“After that first time, we became inseparable. Cole took over. Not in a negative way. I welcomed it. I loved that he took care of me. He anticipated my needs. He provided for me. It was like a fairy tale. It was precisely what I wanted in a relationship.

“We began to talk about it. We didn’t just slip into it. We knew what we were was …different. And exciting. We were young and we weren’t even sure exactly how to define this type of relationship. We began to experiment. Sexually. We quickly discovered what we did and didn’t enjoy. We embraced what turned us on and satisfied us emotionally and quickly discarded what didn’t meet a need.”

Again she broke off and went silent.

“What happened?” Lucas asked.

“One night things went too far. It was an accident. He was using a whip and he didn’t have much experience.”

Lucas winced. A whip wasn’t for an inexperienced hand. Not at all. It took long hours of practice to be able to wield it without injuring your partner. He didn’t use whips. He didn’t like them. He liked leather. Crops. Belts. Or the flat of his own hand. He also liked wood. Smooth, treated wood so there was no chance of Ren being injured by splinters or rough surfaces.

Then he frowned as a thought occurred to him. He turned her so
the scar on her shoulder was visible. It was about four inches long, curving over her shoulder blade.

He traced the scar with his fingertip and then leaned down to kiss it. “Did he do this?”

She swallowed visibly and nodded.

Lucas gripped her shoulder, kissed her again and softly nuzzled the barely raised area of flesh. Had she been badly frightened? Had it broken her trust?

“It must have scared you.”

Ren rose up on her elbow so they were eye level. “That’s just the thing, Lucas. It didn’t frighten me. It hurt, yes. No doubt about that. Cole was devastated. I mean, truly devastated. He was so horrified that he’d hurt me. But I loved him. I trusted him. I knew he hadn’t meant to. I knew he’d cut off his right arm before ever willingly hurting me. I
knew
all of this. But he was the one who couldn’t get past it.”

Lucas’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“He was the one who walked away,” Ren said softly, pain evident in her voice. “I begged him. God, I begged him. He hated himself. I think it made it worse for me to tell him it didn’t matter, that I loved him and knew he hadn’t meant to. He made this comment about how often women forgave their abusers over and over and how they were willing to say it was an accident when they were hurt. In his mind, he crossed an unforgivable line and nothing I said could change his mind.

“He began to question every aspect of our relationship. How he had complete control and dominance. How I complied with his wishes. He worried I’d lost my individuality, that somehow he’d swallowed me up. He was horrified that he’d become this monster who held me on such a tight leash that I had no life outside of him.”

“Did he?”

Her denial was immediate and he believed her. She was honest in
all things. About herself. Her mistakes. Her shortcomings. If she truly believed that she’d been abused, she would tell him so now.

“He made a mistake,” Ren said painfully. “One mistake. We were young. We were inexperienced. We were testing the waters of a relationship we knew defied societal norms. We decided together what did and didn’t work for us. He and I were both drawn to the idea of pain as pleasure and how much pain was too much before it overrode all else and simply became …pain. He was always so careful and he simply made a
mistake
.”

“Was that the only mark?” Lucas asked. Cole’s reaction seemed extreme, but then he’d been a much younger man and it appeared as though he’d had a deep sense of responsibility toward Ren even at that young age. It was hard to know if Lucas would have felt the same if he’d made such a mistake in his youth with a woman he hadn’t cared for as deeply as Cole had cared for Ren.

Ren frowned and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “No. But it was the only mark that left a scar. My back was striped. The skin was broken in three places but the place on my shoulder was the worst. The whip sliced open the skin and I bled a lot. Cole took me in to be stitched.”

Lucas pulled her in closer, offering his warmth and the strength of his body. He knew it was something that comforted her, and her sadness was unsettling to him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes or the sound of her voice.

He felt …helpless and it was an odd sensation. Not at all one he was accustomed to.

She was getting to him. Worming her way deeper and he found it perplexing. Why her? What was it about her?

“So he left?” Lucas finally asked.

Ren sighed against him and again, her unhappiness struck a chord deep inside his chest. “Not at first. He took care of me. Dressed the
wound every single day. Went with me to have the stitches removed. But he didn’t touch me sexually. Not even once. He drifted further and further away. It was like he felt he wasn’t worthy of me anymore. It was so frustrating. I tried to talk to him but I just couldn’t get through. The harder I tried, the more convinced he was that he wielded too much power over me and that he wasn’t responsible enough to shoulder it and wield it properly. He blamed himself for ‘pushing’ me into the lifestyle. He seemed to forget that it had held as much interest to me as it had to him from the very beginning. It was a need I had, one I recognized, even before we ever embarked on the sexual side of our relationship. But he didn’t see it that way. He thought he’d forced me into something I didn’t want. That I’d done it all just to please him. And I know I’m making him sound like a martyr and that now, years later, it may sound ridiculous, but you have to understand, this affected him profoundly.”

“Yes, I see it did,” Lucas murmured.

“He truly felt like the best thing he could do for me was to walk away when in fact it was the one thing that hurt me far worse than any whip to my back. Cole changed me. He awakened something within me that has never died. He is a large part of who I am today.”

“I think you don’t give yourself enough credit,” Lucas said.

She shook her head. “I know what you’re saying. I do. But the thing is, he was my introduction to dominance and submission. Would I have gotten there eventually without him? Oh yes, definitely I would have. It was a need inside me before he awakened it. But through him, I tasted what it was like to have a man utterly cherish me. Protect me. Love me with everything he had. Would my experience have been the same with another man? Absolutely not. What if I had chosen the wrong man? What if I had experimented with someone who didn’t care for me as much as Cole did? Or someone who wasn’t as patient as he was. Or even someone who wasn’t willing to listen to what I liked and didn’t like, and
what I needed and didn’t need? Because of him, I knew exactly what I wanted and needed from a relationship and I refused to settle for less. I’m honest in my needs and wants because of
him
. Because he showed me that there are men who will give me exactly what I want sexually and emotionally.”

Her impassioned speech shook him. Her eyes had darkened and she leaned forward, her voice cracking with emotion. This wasn’t a woman who’d moved on and forgotten the man she’d once given her very soul to.

A sensation that felt very much like dread settled heavily into his chest. The weight was uncomfortable, like a rock pushing down on him.

Cole had said he’d want Ren to be happy. Could Lucas say the same? He’d told Cole as much. But were they just words? A week ago he would have said without question that her happiness was everything to him. He spared no expense to ensure she had everything she could possibly need or want. He anticipated her moods, protected her, cared for her and yes, he cherished her.

But could he really take that step to ensure her happiness? To give her a choice?

His mouth was dry and he loathed the indecision that racked him. He’d already taken the first step. Ren was his. She wouldn’t question what he chose to do with her body. But he couldn’t control her heart and that realization unsettled his carefully ordered existence.

What he planned to do could very well mean losing her, and he wasn’t at all sure he could ever live with that.