Page 35 of Bad Enough

We weren’t a couple. We were just researcher and interviewer.

Keep telling yourself that bullshit. Someday, you might convince yourself.

Even if she never complained, it’s not fair to her. I am not relationship material. I’m selfish and don’t like answering to anyone else. Besides that, I don’t want to change the way I live my life for someone else.

Yeah, because living in your sterile apartment upstairs and spending all your time working is such a fantastic life.

Fuck off. To top it off, relationships require compromise. I don't compromise.

How would you know? You’ve never tried.

This is a pointless argument. I’m not relationship material.

Again… how would you know? You’ve never been in one.

Relationships are fine for people like Waters. He still has some humanity left in him. I do not.

Right. Humanity. We’ve talked about the handsaw, right?

“Ugh.”

Okay, Waters did have some dark spots. He had some shady as fuck shit in his past that was part of why he’d been on the verge of a dishonorable discharge before he got his insides rearranged by a member of the Taliban. Stuff that rivaled TB’s methods. Despite that darkness, he had started a relationship everyone had been rooting for. He was genuinely in love with that woman. If Waters could do it, who was to say he couldn’t?

TB snorted at the stupidity behind that idea. He could play the role of an attentive partner if he had a reason to do so. He could even sustain it for a while if the project needed it. But he couldn’t be that person. He’d gotten to know Flame too well, and he couldn’t unlearn who she was and later, when it didn’t work out, put her in the same category as some stranger that he cultivated in order to get to his mark. It would be cruel to put her in that position. She deserved better.

What could it hurt to try? It would be so easy to put her first.

Nope. You did the right thing. You just went about it the wrong way. Just officially cut the cord, and you’ll feel better about it.

Entering through the external door into the marble foyer, TB approached the information desk. Frost, the receptionist, sat behind it, her sleek blonde hair up in a bun so tight, it looked like it was painted on her head. Her tortoise shell framed glasses covered ice-cold blue eyes. “May I help you?”

He leaned on the high countertop. “Mistress Tabitha called me.”

Without a flicker of emotion, she keyed in an extension on her phone.

“Mistress Tabitha, Master Lobo is here.”

He heard a clicking noise, which meant the hidden door had opened that went to Tabitha’s office. He knocked once on the high counter he’d been leaning on and strode over to the wall, where he slipped his hand into the crack that appeared and pulled the door open enough to move into the inner sanctum, shutting the door carefully behind him. On this side, it functioned as a bookcase.

The room he was now closeted in had the appearance of a Victorian library in an English country estate. Leather furniture in deep browns, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, complete with the rolling ladder to reach the uppermost shelves, cut crystal decanters and glasses at the bar trolley, and the soft glow of fake gaslights lit the deep-colored hardwood floor and Oriental rugs. Behind a Victorian desk in a pool of light from a green, shaded lamp sat Mistress Tabitha, owner of The Library.

She stood up from behind the desk and crossed over to the bar trolley. Deep chocolate brown hair that curled slightly beyond her shoulders, dark brown eyes beneath perfectly shaped eyebrows and thick, sooty lashes, and pink, glossy lips over perfectly straight white teeth complimented skin that glowed with a healthy tan. Her body was tightly encased in a black leather corset that had a velvet collar and sleeves attached to it, a keyhole cut out from throat to armpit. Not a speck of cleavage showed, but it didn’t have to. The cinching of her waist and the tight fit of the corset gave rise to more than enough imagination, helped by the tailored fit of the black leather skirt that molded to her backside and fell to below her knees, plus her signature heels, with ribbons tied perfectly around the ankles.

He could admire her looks and her business savvy, but she had always reminded him of a cobra. She could be venomous to people who pissed her off. He remembered one particular instance where she’d bordered on cruelty with a female sub, and it had never sat right with him. The pretty candy coating didn’t always agree with the inner bitch. They had scened in the beginning, when he had first joined the club, always with her as a submissive, but those days were long gone.

She poured herself a whiskey, then went back behind her desk and sat down, ignoring him.

Nothing like a power play between a Dom and a switch.

“Thanks, I’d love a drink, Tabitha.”

“You don’t deserve my expensive whiskey,” she explained without looking up at him.

He crossed to the drink trolley and poured his own drink, then moved to the bookshelves behind her desk, perusing the titles as he sipped, feeling the burn of the rich liquid as it hit the back of his throat. Her pen continued to scratch over the page on her desk, letting him know she was still not paying attention to him. He let the warmth flood through his veins as he continued to study the book titles. “Why did you drag my ass down here just to give me the silent treatment?” he rumbled.

“I didn’t drag your ass anywhere.”

“Tabitha—”

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