The Billionaire's Ultimatum: His Absolute Need (A BDSM Erotic Romance Novel) (Book One) (35 page)

"Step
back," Jeremy said, fording his way through and reaching Asher's side. 
"What did you do?  Is he dead?"

"He's not
dead, you idiot!"  She glared fiercely at Jeremy, but upon seeing us both,
seeing me, she softened.  "He's not dead.  I... I pushed Solomon aside
before he shot.  Asher fell, though.  He scraped his hand.  It's only a minor
cut, it's not deep.  It all happened so fast and Solomon left so I don't think
he really understood what happened.  You're alright, though, right?"  She
looked down at Asher, touching her fingers to his cheek.

Asher croaked,
his voice coming out in dry, harsh sounds.  "Is Jessika alright?" he
asked.

Beatrice
frowned, just for a second.  "She's fine.  Jessika is fine.  She came back
for you.  Jeremy is here, too.  Everyone is fine, Asher."

"I'm going
to call the police," Jeremy said.  "Don't think you're off the hook,
Beatrice."  He looked at me and added, "Jessika, watch her."

"I won't go
anywhere," Beatrice said.  She shuffled to the side, leaving me a space
next to Asher.  "Go ahead."

Jeremy left,
running through the backroom to the store to Robert.  I wandered over to Asher,
still scared, but so very happy.  He wasn't dead, he wasn't...

I knelt next to
him and sat on the backs of my heels and thighs, smiling.

"Jessika,"
Asher said.  "Oh God, I'm so sorry.  I didn't think something like this
would ever happy.  I just... I don't even know.  I shouldn't have put you in
danger like this.  We should have called the police.  We should never have come
here."

"No,"
I said.  "It's fine.  I understand.  You wanted to settle things without
resorting to that.  You had hope."

Asher nodded
slightly from the ground, his cheek shifting across the tile floor.  Then he
closed his eyes and remained silent.

"Did he hit
his head?" I asked.

"Maybe.  I
think so," Beatrice said.  "He must have.  I'm not sure.  I didn't
see it happen exactly.  Everything happened so fast."

"He tried
to love you," I said.  "He really did."

"Yes, well,
I never tried to love him," she said.  "Maybe I should have, but I
didn't.  You'll think that's mean, but I'm just telling you the truth.  I was
too angry to love him."

I tousled
Asher's hair.  If he had a concussion, he needed to wake up, and soon.  As
reluctant as I was to do it, I knew I should shake him awake and keep him aware
until medical help arrived.

"I think he
loves you very much," Beatrice said.  She looked sad and alone and I felt
a little bad for her, but she'd brought this upon herself.  She knew full well
what the consequences to her actions were before she started this.  "He
kept asking about you.  I didn't know what to tell him."

And then, as I
shook Asher's shoulder to make sure he was awake, Beatrice whispered, "I'm
glad Jeremy came.  I'm glad you're alright.  I never wanted Solomon to kill
anyone."  She held Asher's cell phone in her hand, squeezing it so tightly
that her knuckles turned white.

When we arrived
back at the Landseer estate after the police showed up, I immediately went and
sat on the couch in Asher's guest home, slumping onto it.  I was so tired, physically
and mentally exhausted, and I wanted to go to sleep.  But, no, I couldn't.  I
had things to do, and I needed to do them soon before I changed my mind.

Asher was
alright.  He'd declined going to the hospital.  After the paramedics checked
him out, they said he should be fine to leave, but to take it easy and be
careful.  If anything happened, anything at all, they wanted him to rush to the
emergency room.  Jeremy practically had to force him to agree while I stood and
watched on, too shy to say anything.

The truth of the
matter was, I didn't belong here.  I knew that before, but I knew it even more
now.  With all that happened, this wasn't the right thing to do.  Not just for
me, but for Asher, too.  I'd caused him so many problems, caused him so much
grief.  He'd say that it wasn't my fault, and I understood that it wasn't
entirely my fault, but to some degree it was.  I could have gone to the police
myself, could have prevented a lot of this.  I could have...

I don't know
exactly what I should have done, but there were a lot of things I could have
done, and almost every single one of them seemed better than what I had done. 
I wasn't the sort of person Asher needed in his life, whether he thought he
loved me or not.  And, it didn't matter if I loved him, because that was beside
the point.  If I truly loved him, then I'd do whatever I could to make him
happy, including leaving so he could move on with his life and become a better
person without me.

I waited, laying
against the couch, staring up at the ceiling.  I saw the slight gap where the
projector came out and pointed to the screen that descended above the
fireplace.  We'd watched two movies on it—his favorite movie, and mine—but no
more.  I teared up a little thinking about that.  I'd see plenty of movies in
the future, but none of them with Asher.  I couldn't.  It was impossible.

I stumbled off
the couch and staggered towards the stairs.  Shuffling up to the second floor,
I went into the master bedroom.  Neither of us had bothered to make the bed
after we left it this morning, so it was still a mess.  The silken shirt Asher
had used to tie me to the headboard lay in two ragged pieces on the floor, and
he'd tossed the blankets into a pile by the foot of the bed, too.

We left a stain,
I noticed, smiling.  Nothing too obvious, but I knew where and what to look for
and saw it immediately.  I laughed thinking about it, thinking, and...

I burst into
tears.  This was really too much and I needed to stop doing this to myself.  I
ran into the bathroom and grabbed my things, then ran out just as quickly and
shut the door.  Making a beeline for the bureau, I held my hand up to the side
of my head to block my view of the bed.  I only had a few of my own belongings
here and I snatched them up from the bureau, then stuffed them into my empty
duffel bag laying limp near the bedroom door.

That was
everything, that was it.  I left the bedroom and closed the door behind me,
unwilling to look back.

I raced out of
the house as quickly as I could, out and into the open air of the estate
grounds.  I wanted to ask Jeremy to drive me home, but I realized I couldn't. 
I needed to walk, because otherwise he'd tell Asher and I didn't know what
Asher would do.

I trekked to the
front gates, quick and frantic, and tried to push them open but they wouldn't
budge.  Jeremy always opened them with a remote on the dashboard of the car,
but they should open some other way.  Some button, or something on the inside,
right?  I dropped my bag and went to the side of the gate to look for the
opening mechanism.

I found it,
pushed the button, and the gates began to open.  As soon as I picked up my bag,
the gates began to close again.  I dashed towards the button and pushed it once
more, but before the gates even opened an inch, they started closing again.

Off to the side
I saw Jeremy, remote in one hand, phone in the other.  He was doing something
with his phone while making sure the gates remained closed.  I tossed my bag
onto the ground and stomped over to him.

"What do
you think you're doing?" I asked.

"What do
you think
you're
doing?" he replied.

"I'm
leaving."

"Why?"

"Because,"
I said.  "I don't belong here, Jeremy.  I shouldn't stay here.  Asher's
better off without me.  I don't deserve any of this.  This isn't..."

Asher stumbled
out of the house.  He wasn't in any serious pain, nor did he have any serious
injury, but I knew he was more than a little out of it after what had happened
only an hour or so ago.  He sprinted across the grass, along the driveway,
towards where Jeremy and I stood.

"What's
going on?" Asher asked.

"She's
leaving," Jeremy said.  "Apparently.  I don't know."

"That's
right," I said.  "I'm going home."

"Why?"
Asher asked.  He looked so upset.  Why was he upset?

"I can't do
this, Asher.  I just can't do it."  I was crying.  Why was I crying? 
"I want you to be happy, but I can't do it!  I need to leave before I
change my mind.  Please tell Jeremy to open the gate for me."

Asher grabbed
me.  He bent down and swooped me into his arms and I kicked my legs and flailed
my hands.

"Let me
down!" I screamed.  "You're going to hurt yourself!"

"If you
don't stop moving so much, not only will I drop you, but yes, I'll hurt
myself."

Because he was
an idiot and wouldn't listen to reason, I stopped moving.  Why did he have to
do this?  It didn't change anything.  I bawled, tears streaming down my face,
completely and utterly lost in my depression.  This shouldn't happen.  It just
shouldn't.

He carried me
inside, all pretense of following the paramedic's orders gone.  He carried me
through the hallways, to places I didn't even know existed.  I hadn't spent a
lot of time in his main house and it was all so foreign to me, so fancy. 
Pictures on the walls and elegant carpets under our feet.  Expensive vases on
fancy tables sitting in front of windows as pure decoration and nothing more;
no flowers, just vases.  Asher carried me through his house until we reached
one large set of doors, then he kicked them open and marched inside.  Only then
did he put me down.

"I don't
understand why you did that," I said.  "I wish you hadn't."

He went back to
the doors and closed them, pulling on the ornate, gilded handles.  Clicking a
latch shut, he locked us inside.

"Look,"
he said.

I looked, for
all the good it would do me.

He'd brought me
to a library.  It was nothing like the one in his guest home, and yet something
like it, too.  Entirely different, but still very much comfortable and cozy.  A
hearth off to the side, large enough for four people to lounge in front of it,
lay waiting for winter and a cozy fire, with people sitting in front of it and
toasting marshmallows.  The bookcases were different, extravagant, with rolling
ladders perched on the sides like something out of classic literature. 
Mahogany tables cluttered with books and candelabras with half-used candles,
and writing pads and old-fashioned quills, plus new pens and a few pencils.

Plus books; a
million books.  Hidden in a corner was an ancient-looking card catalog, with a
desk and a reference computer next to it.  Did Asher really have a computer
just to keep track of all of his books?  Probably, yes, and it did seem useful.

The library in
his main house was massive, a two-story affair with an open center.  I glanced
up for a moment and saw catwalks on the second "floor" of the
library, with stairs leading up to them, going all the way around the perimeter
of the room.  More shelves up there, more books, more everything.  It seemed so
magical and I thought for a second that I'd fallen asleep on the couch in his
guest home and dreamed all of this.

In the center of
the library I saw a small dais with a broken book placed reverently atop it.  A
glass dome covered and protected the book.  It was a copy of
Dante's Inferno
,
the one I'd ruined the first day Asher and I ever met.

"You can't
leave," Asher said.

"Why
not?" I asked, somehow managing to push aside my tears.  "There's no
point for me to stay," I said.  "Every reason I initially came here
for is gone now, so I think it's best for me to go."

"No,"
Asher said.  "I want to hire you."

"Hire me for
what?  I don't want to be your assistant anymore, Asher.  I don't want to do
that.  And even if I did, I can do it from my own home.  I can go into work
like everyone else.  I don't need to live here."

Asher furrowed
his brow.  "Jessika, I..."

"What, Asher?"
I asked.  "Give me one good reason to stay, because I don't think there
are any."

"I love
you," he said, fast; too fast.  "I do.  I thought you knew that,
and..."

"You
don't," I said.  "You love the idea of me.  You loved that I was
willing to give you children, and you love that I... I don't know what you
love, but you don't love me."

"No,"
he said.  He moved towards me but I moved away.

"Stop,"
I said.

He didn't stop. 
He kept coming and I tried to back away, but there was nowhere to hide.  I
stood pressed against a bookshelf, trapped, with nowhere to go.

"Jessika,"
he said.  "I don't care about any of that.  I don't care about children,
or money.  If I lose everything, so be it.  I understand that it could happen. 
I take that risk every single day and I realize that no matter what I do,
sometimes it's impossible to succeed.  You risk everything, but for what?  I
enjoy it, my work and my business, but if everything suddenly came crashing
down, as it almost did today, I could live without it."

"I don't
understand," I said.

"I don't
want to live without it, but I could," he said.  "I couldn't live
without you, though.  Not now, and not ever.  You mean so much to me.  I want
to know everything about you.  I... will you go on a date with me?"

"You're
asking me on a date?" I asked, trying not to laugh, crying as I did. 
"I think it's a bit late for that."

"No,"
he said.  "It's never too late.  It's always possible.  I want to go on a
date with you now, and next week.  In a month from now.  In twenty years.  I'd
like to ask you out on a date when we're both old, with gray hair and
wrinkles.  Good wrinkles, though, from smiling too much and laughing."

"Asher,"
I said, hesitant.  "Please don't do this."

"I'm doing
it," he said.  "I need to know your answer.  I'm sorry for pressuring
you, but I need to know."