Page 23 of Worthy: Cassius and Faith 3

A heavy silence descended over the room.

Once again, a sour-looking Cassius Blackwood and I faced each other.

CHAPTER TEN

obey

Cassius

I’d messed up. Losing my mind over Faith and beating the shit out of one of our members was unwise, to say the least.

You know what that means, Sterling said.

And I did. It meant I didn’t have a lot of options. I could pretend that Faith meant nothing to me and that becoming unhinged was a relatively normal occurrence in my daily activities, but that would scare our members off. My only other option was to admit that Faith was special to me. I needed to buy out her contract if I wanted more than our three allotted encounters.

Which meant having a relationship with her. One without a contract.

Fuck. The whole reason I’d opened the club was to satisfy my cravings without a relationship. How had I ended up here, beating a patron bloody because he’d touched my virgin?

I stared at Faith. The image of her dancing with the other patron flashed in my mind. No. I’ll fucking drown him in the grotto before he ever touches her again. Him AND Darren Payne, that fucker.

“If you want me to leave the club, I will,” Faith said quietly, breaking my reverie. She lifted her chin.

“No.” My voice was hoarse.

“You’re the one who sent me back to the club,” Faith said. “I was just doing what you told me to do.”

I eyed her. I’d hardly told her to go and get felt up by another man, but she had a point.

“I don’t… I don’t know what you want me to do,” Faith said helplessly.

“I do.” I might not have all the answers, but I knew what I needed at that moment. Fighting the other patron off her and declaring her mine had awakened my inner caveman. And my caveman only cared about food, and fire, and fucking what was his.

“I’m going to take you again.”

Her eyes lit up. “But we’re not supposed to. Your brothers just said?—”

“I’m the fucking boss. I make the rules. And apparently, I break them.” I reached out to take her hand.

“No one has to know,” she said. She looked up at me with her big, wide eyes. “Bring me into a closet and fuck me. I don’t care where we do it.”

“I have something else in mind,” I said darkly.

And I did have something else in mind. Something I prayed would cleanse the girl from my system once and for all.

I was desperate.

If I bought out her contract, we’d be forced to try things in the real world. And the real world had never been kind to me.

Once Faith encountered my darker self, she’d want nothing to do with me. That was precisely what I needed. I needed her to break it off because I couldn’t seem to walk away.

I dragged Faith out of the office and down a private, dark hall in the back of the dungeon. I had plans for her. There were red flags everywhere, but armed with my contract—even though it seemed to be going up in smoke—I decided to say fuck it one last time. I’d already broken so many rules. I might as well add another one to the pile, lying to myself all the way home.

Deep down, I knew the truth. Faith had somehow become the only thing I cared about. I’d thought of little else since the afternoon I met her. My brother was right; I was obsessed with her. Watching her on the security cameras had been a mistake. As soon as I saw another man breathe in her general direction, I’d lost my shit.

So I’d taken her, hard, in my office. But I had to keep lying to myself, so I’d sent her back out there. Idiot. I wanted to punish myself for taking her again, for breaking the rules, for… feeling.

There was so much fucking feeling.

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