The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) (16 page)

Chapter 14

“New rule,” Declan said when they had managed to deactivate the heat from the peppers. He put two fingers under her chin and raised her face so they were looking into each other’s eyes. “You will tell me if I’m getting ready to put my cock in danger or if you detect any heat from my saliva. Furthermore, you will tell me if you have been eating anything that might contain capsaicin.”

“I wasn’t the one who introduced those chilies into it. I told you I don’t like spicy food.”

“Yes, but I can see by all these red splotches on your breasts that I was spreading it around long before I made it to your girlfriend. Or are you going to tell me you didn’t feel it?”

Nyxie chewed the inside of her lip. “It didn’t really occur to me that it would hurt you like that. I’m really sorry, sir.”

“Don’t apologize—not for this. This was my fault. I should have never introduced anything like that into any kind of play. But I think we are done for the night. Go up to my room and present until I can get up there. I’m going to clean up and shut off the lights before I come up.”

“Okay,” she said, and quickly corrected herself when she saw his brow lower. “Yes, sir.”

She headed toward the stairs on stocking feet, her arms still bound behind her back, while he retrieved the tray from the coffee table.

“Nyxie, come put on your shoes.”

She tried to keep from showing the annoyed attitude she felt as she returned for the impossibly tall shoes. She was beginning to hate those shoes, almost as much as he loved them. Declan helped her slip them on and watched her walk away until she disappeared up the stairs.

~*~

“Declan!” he heard her yell as he placed the last ramekin in the dishwasher. It was the kind of tone that instantly conveyed panic.

He took the stairs two at a time in his race up to his room, thankful that he had pulled his running shorts back on. Nyxie wasn’t on the floor where he told her to wait, but he heard her retching in the dark bathroom. He ran to her, nearly tripping over one of her shoes in the middle of the floor. He flipped on the light as he entered the large bathroom.

“Fuck,” he cursed, seeing her bent at the waist over the toilet, still bound with her arms behind her back. “I’ve got you,” he said, putting one arm around her waist. He could see it was too late to pull her hair back, but he scooped it back with both hands and held it anyway.

As soon as she finished emptying her stomach, she began fighting her bindings. “Asshole,” she shouted, erecting her posture. “Fucking asshole.”

He worked the leather strips through the cuffs’ buckle “Nyxie, I’m sorry. I had no clue how hot that pepper was until I kissed you.”

He freed her arms and she groaned at the pain of moving her shoulders after being immobilized for so long.

“No hot peppers in sex play ever again. Hard limit!” She shoved him away and began pulling at the corset still around her. “You should have known how hot that pepper was. You should have tested it yourself, asshole.”

“Stand still and I’ll get the corset.”

“Get away from me.” She pushed him again and walked awkwardly to the sink on one shoe. With a smirk, she reached into the drawer, pulled out
his
toothbrush and toothpaste, and began brushing her teeth and tongue. “That wasn’t just mean,” she said, pulling the toothbrush out of her mouth and spitting once. “It was fucking sadistic.”

Declan reached into the shower and turned on the water. One by one, he released her the garters from her stockings and reached for the front closures of the corset to remove it. She was rinsing her mouth when the leather garment fell to the floor and he divested her of the remaining shoe and her stockings.

“This is exactly why I don’t want to be married for real. At least if I’m your sub, there is an end in sight. Marriage has no finish date.” He guided her to the shower, reaching his hand into the water to test the temperature before he let her enter.

He gently pushed her inside, dropped his running shorts to the tile and stepped in with her as her tirade continued. She didn’t seem aware of him pulling out the butt plug, dropping it on the floor, or washing her hair. “This is all too new for me. I don’t have any point of reference. I don’t know anything about a normal relationship. I barely know how to have a friendly relationship with a coworker. I don’t know what it’s like to have friends. I don’t know how to be the person you want me to be. I don’t know how to be a wife.

“Do you want to know what I grew up thinking a wife did? She picks up her husband under his shoulders to put him in the bed when he passed out because she was the biggest one—or maybe cause Melinda and I were smaller and could only handle a leg each. She pours each kid a bowl of cereal before she goes to work and puts the box up high so no one gets into it while she’s gone, otherwise you won’t have any breakfast the rest of the week. She puts back two of the cans of beer from the case that she brought home the night before, one so the dad won’t be sick when he wakes up, and one for her. She opens the closet door when you start annoying her, and if you don’t get in it fast enough, she kicks you in the ass so hard you fall. She earns the money and pays the bills, and screams at everyone that she has to do all the fucking work and she hates everyone, especially the ugly buck-toothed rabbit and the drunk asshole.

“Sometimes, I wait on couples at the diner and they are so happy that you know they are in love,” she continued. “I believe my parents loved each other before I came along. I don’t know what happens in between the time when two people are in love and when they hate each other. Will a time come when we hate each other? How will that manifest? We argue and you punish me already. Will a time come where I’m trapped in a life I hate? Will it lead me to an affair with Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker?”

He squirted shampoo into his hand and work it through her hair before grabbing the handheld shower head and rinsing the foam.

“I don’t know if I like pain, but you’re right about being submissive. I’m a fucking wimp because I’m scared of everything. I always have been. It’s the part of myself that I hate the most and fight against every day. I cave on nearly everything. Part of why I married you, is because I didn’t know how to say no. You could tell me the sky is green and I wouldn’t dispute it, even though I know it’s not, because I would rather be wrong than stand up for myself. That’s just the way it is for Onyx-the-doormat. When we got married, I didn’t know you wanted a real wife. I thought you were just helping me to get my kids back.”

“Yes, I know that now,” he said, looking up from his task of squirting body wash onto a washcloth. Declan may have sounded distracted by his task but he didn’t miss a word of her tirade.

He lifted her arm and scrubbed the sudsy wash cloth over her arm brusquely and moved on to other parts of her body. She gave no resistance. So intent on what she was saying, she seemed only vaguely aware they were even in the shower, much less that he was washing her.

“You need to take the blinders off and see me the way I really am. I am just a high school dropout who neglects the kids I’m responsible for. But god-damn, I love those kids. I don’t understand how you can push your parents away the way you do. They obviously love you. Your mother wasn’t trying to hurt you by rejecting me. She was trying to protect you—that’s what normal mothers do. You’re too close to see anything clearly. But your parents see the truth. I’m not good enough for you. God gave me those kids because I’m not good enough for anyone. I’m supposed to be alone.”

“Are you finished?” Declan asked, wrapping her in a warm towel.

She didn’t even realize they were out of the shower until he spoke and barely remembered him washing her hair and body. She must’ve had an out-of-body experience, because she had no idea who was ranting at him in the shower.

“Did you put drugs in my food?”

He would’ve laughed if she hadn’t looked so perplexed. He only smiled indulgently at her. “No, baby. I didn’t drug you. Maybe you are just beginning to know me well enough that you can speak honestly with me. But what did I say I’d do to you if you talked about yourself like that again?” He used his Dom voice and the chill of apprehension shot through her.

Her shoulders sagged as she realized he meant to punish her again. “You didn’t hear a word I said.”

“I heard every word, Nyxie. I heard you say, I need to be a better Dom before you can trust me, and I know you’re right. I’ve made mistakes; tonight was one of them. Too many times, I’ve let my temper control my actions. But not all of this is on me. How many times have I asked you to stop hiding your pain from me? Even now, I don’t know if you’re still experiencing discomfort from the pepper oil.” He stopped and waited for her to tell him, but when she just stared at him, he lifted his hands in an open-palmed shrugged. “Nyxie,” he said very deliberately. “Are you still in pain?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“Mostly, I feel like I’m going to vomit again, and my girlfriend feels like she has a mild sunburn.”

The flash of anger in his gray-green eyes caused her to step back.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Onyx. You’re suffering needlessly,” he said. “I need to go shut off the lights. Would you like me to bring you back some antacid?”

Nyxie hesitated before nodding.

“What about your vulva. Do you need more first aid?”

“It’s fine.”

As Declan returned to the ground floor and finished straightening up, he thought about what she had said. What an ego he had, to have never considered that she would not wish to be married to him. Even now, he didn’t truly believe it. What woman wouldn’t consider him a catch, at least on a superficial level?

Nyxie
. He tried to get past feeling this was another of her self-esteem issues—although truthfully, he believed that was his biggest obstacle. It was all too soon for her. Unlike his love for her, her love was not just new to her, it was not something she ever envisioned for herself, except maybe in some fantasy she believed to be unobtainable. Declan shook his head. He needed to take a step back.

He rattled a pair of fruit flavored tablets from the plastic bottle, grabbed his phone and the sheet he had covered the window with, and headed back up the stairs, shutting off the lights. The whine of his blow-dryer grew louder as he approached his room and he found her in front of his bathroom mirror, dressed in a periwinkle silk teddy, her hair lifting from her shoulders like a model at a lingerie shoot. He stood in the doorway of his bathroom until she noticed him and turned off the hair dryer.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the two large tablets from his palm and putting them in her mouth.

“That looks pretty on you,” he said, fingering the spaghetti strap of the short silky teddy, the sheet tucked under one arm.

“Thank you, sir.”

He thought about telling her to call him Declan, but decided she might feel he was trying to narrow the gaping chasm in their relationship.

“Help me with this,” he said, holding out the wadded sheet.

“What are we going to do with this?” she asked.

“I used it to cover the window downstairs.” He watched her reaction—first anger and then relief. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Apparently not.”

They each took two corners and soon had the sheet folded. He set it down on the bench to put away in the morning.

“Do you really want to go back to our original agreement?”

Her head began bobbing up and down in small movements that grew larger as she gained confidence.

Declan picked up his phone and made a call. “Hey, sorry to call you on the weekend…. I guess I had a change of heart…. Do you mind putting together a contract for Nyxie and me? I don’t care what you call it. She wants to go back to our original agreement—one year for every twenty grand, then we will divorce.... Right…. She’ll agree to no distribution of monies after the divorce…. Have you figured out your billables yet?” He made eye contact with Nyxie. “Yeah, I think it’s only fair that the cost of the adoptions be included.”

Nyxie nodded her head in agreement.

“How much? Are you joking? Don’t include them. I’m not going to do that to her.”

He rubbed his temples as if he was getting a headache. “Hold on. She’s right here. He wants to talk to you.”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Onyx, I’ve got some news about the younger girl’s father.”

“Oh, God, does he want Reina?”

A slight chuckle met her ear. “It’s not bad news—as far as your case goes. My investigator started cold calling everyone in the phone book with his last name, and found Reina’s grandmother, Esmerelda Hinojosa.” His pronunciation of the Spanish last name was flawless. “Reina’s father died several years ago.”

“Oh my God. I don’t know if she knows. What happened?”

“Mrs. Hinojosa said it was a drug overdose, but she doesn’t think it was accidental. She’s an older lady, so I don’t think she wants to fight you for custody, but she would like to see them. Apparently, they all lived with her and her husband for years. But when her son’s drug abuse became a problem, she and her husband kicked him out. They told Melinda, she and the girls could stay, but she refused. She begged Melinda to leave the girls when she left with Isaac, but she wouldn’t do it.