Page 70 of Bitter Desire
My eyes dropped to his hand. I wanted to take it. But the weight of every lie ever told to me, the heartache given by every lover lost, or disappointment endured pushed down on me. Keeping me where I was. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
It would be easy to cross the space between us. Take his hand and do as he said. We would leave this place together. I knew what Law was offering me now, but that way only pointed me to willful ignorance. If I went with him, I would be turning my back on discovering the truth. I’d always done that and look where it had gotten me.
In the same pitiful place as usual, but now my mother was here to witness it.
Something had to change.
“Honey…” Law came closer to me, his hand extended as if he were soothing a skittish animal. I could tell he was working a different tactic. I’d known him well enough in our power play. Our dynamic had always been a flow of push and pull. “You have to listen to me. Yes, it was a job, okay? But it's not like that anymore. It hasn’t been. Not for me.”
“This whole time? This whole time I was a job to you?” I whispered. The lump in my throat made it impossible for me to speak in anything but a whisper even though I wanted to scream. I wanted to wail and shriek and force Law to make what was happening make sense.
He shook his head, hands moving down to his sides. “No, not this whole time-”
“Then when?” I asked, cutting him off and waving the papers in front of him. “When did you know you were getting part of the club? Is that why you brought us here? Were you delivering me to these two?” I gestured at my mother and Zeus with the papers.
Law moved back from me. It was just a step but I noticed it and I found myself hating that small fucking step that put distance between us. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to come close to him. The papers I held in my hand, the deed, the letter describing me as a job, felt like they were fire, singeing my fingertips, and I fought the urge to throw them at him.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Law’s voice was low, a growl, one that I had heard that night in the Catskills when he’d been talking to the man that had tried to kidnap me. He’d never used that voice on me.
“Did you bring me here to her?” I asked, the question surprising me. Not for the first time that night was I surprising myself. My eyes left Law and I looked to the side to see my mother had moved to stand beside Zeus. She had a glass in her hand and was sipping from it, hiding her mouth from me, but I could see her eyes.
Her eyes were dancing with joy. She loved this.
“Fuck that,” Law said and now he was coming towards me. All pretense of soothing me with his words gone now, and I saw anger rise up in his eyes. It spilled out from him, filling the room with scary energy that made me want to turn on my heel and run. I stayed where I was as Law stalked closer. “She’s got shit all to do with us. This is between you and me, and we need to go rightnow.”
The voice he was using to speak to me was the one he used when he went all Dom. When he was my Daddy. When the lines were clearly drawn and understood between us. It was the voice that had me falling in line, dutifully following his lead. But all those other times had only worked because I’d craved it.
“No,” I whispered, but this response wasn’t surprising. I couldn’t go with him. I hadn’t known what was going on when we set foot in this place, not other than the fact that I was mixed up in something bigger than me. “This is why you said it had to do with you.”
“He wouldn’t have noticed you if it wasn’t for me. We both know that. I don’t like that you being with me makes your life more dangerous.”
I hadn’t known it then but Law had been telling me in his own way that this—what we were, what we had—was all connected to Zeus. Connected to this job. I felt bile rise up in my throat. No, not this job, but me. This was me being a job Law had been paid to do, and now he was getting paid.
“You aren’t going to be safe for as long as you're with me. You have to get away from me.”
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t.”
I’m not good for you, Honey. This is all fucking proof of it. Everything I touch goes to shit. You have to get clear of me.
He’d been telling me that morning, I just hadn’t been listening.
“You knew this was happening!” I screamed at him, my voice finally coming loose, forcing its way past the lump that had silenced me. “You knew!”
Law moved, catching me around the arm and pulling me towards him. “I didn’t fucking know.”
“In the Catskills you said you didn't know why or what was going on. What was that? You were-”
“He was following orders, Honey,” Zeus purred.
I whipped my head to look in his direction while Law pointed a finger at him. “You don’t fucking talk to her.”
Zeus sighed and leaned an arm against the fireplace mantle beside him. “And why not? I made sure she was safe. There’s nothing Honey has to fear fromme.” He smiled at me. “You’re utterly safe with me, my flower.”
“Why?” I asked, trying to pull my arm from Law, but failing. “Why did you hire him?”
“Zeus didn’t. I did.” My mother’s familiar voice shut me up. I looked her way, hating that I had to and glared. “Your little boyfriend is on my payroll.”
