Page 32 of Hawke

“Damn it all to hell. He doesn’t want you, but he sure as fuck needs you.” My blue eyes rose to his in confusion. “I’ve seen the effect you have on him, Charlotte.”

I laughed at that sentiment. “So you’ve enjoyed watching him dismiss me as if I’m nothing? Or have you enjoyed watching him pretend I’m invisible even more?”

“Both, Charlotte. Whether you believe it or not, you have Hawke tied up in so many knots. I’ve known him for several years and nobody, I mean no one, has ever affected him the way you do. I see it, and anyone with even one good eye can see it, too.”

I stared incredulously at him, then shook my head. “He treats me as if I’m a nuisance, so surely you’re mistaken.”

“You’re under his skin, and I’ve never seen anyone do that to him before.”

“I’m under his skin so deep he’d rather fuck some random girl here at the club?” I was starting to wonder if Ryder wasn’t toying with me after all. It was starting to piss me off.

“It’s because of you that he does.” I rolled my eyes as he continued to talk. “Just the mention of you had him wanting to do someone else just to shut me up. He can’t accept the truth, and I suspect it’s because he hasn’t been confronted with it. That’s where you come in.”

It did sound a lot like the Hawke I had come to know. “He’ll leave me alone,” I finally murmured as I remembered that night at The Box. “Again.”

“Then you need to give him a reason to stay,” Ryder replied, still unfazed.

“If being tied to one of those cross things naked wasn’t incentive enough, then I don’t know what I can do now to make any difference.”

“When did that happen?”

I realized then that Ryder probably didn’t know I had met Hawke well before he’d ever hired me to plan the masquerade party.

“I met him a year earlier at a Washington, D.C., club. Someone extended me an invitation much like you’re doing now. I agreed, and after I’d gotten naked, I was tied up and blindfolded.” I stopped, needing a moment to ward off the tears that this recollection was bound to create. “I wasn’t gagged, so I ended up talking when he’d told me not to.” The memories were becoming too raw, so I just stopped even trying. After swiping angrily at my eyes, I continued. “He walked out on me right before he had me thrown out onto the streets.”

“Damn,” Ryder said. I had probably stunned him so much he’d just find someone else for Hawke. Not wanting to stand around to see that, I made another attempt to move past him. “I’d heard about an incident, but I didn’t know who the female was.”

“Well, now that you do, you can see why Hawke would rather fuck anyone else in this damned place other than me, so I’ll just be going.”

“No,” he said once more, and a bit more emphatically. “You’re fucking perfect. You’d gotten under his skin even then. Now I know exactly why he’d rather sit in his office and whack off to memories of you instead of being in his dungeon with someone else.”

“Wait! What?” I asked. He had to be mistaken about Hawke.

“He’s an asshole. We both know that. Something you don’t, however, is that he’s obsessed with you, and has been for an entire fucking year.” Ryder’s voice sounded genuine, but what he was saying made absolutely no sense to me.

“Obsessed? Okay!” Maybe Ryder was drunk or on something. Hawke never struck me as the type to gather around his male friends and sing “Kumbaya,” or in this case, share his feelings about anyone, least of all me.

“You’re the reason he wouldn’t scene with another blonde again. In fact, he had made that a prerequisite when sending any of us to find him a submissive. No blondes!”

I was sure he was pulling my leg, and a smile curved my lips. My eyes darted around us as I waited for Hawke to jump out of the shadows and tell me this had all been a joke, leaving me to cry as they laughed. The very idea that he was nearby and watching, however, did set my body aflame. It was for that reason that I even had to ask.

“And tonight would be different how?”

“Because you’re not any blonde. You aretheblonde, Charlotte. Hawke needs you more than you’ll ever know.” Ryder then looked behind him before turning back to me. “So you’ll do it, right?”

Against my better judgment, I found myself slowly nodding. “But what happens if you’re wrong, and he tells me to leave?”

That was more than a certainty. From what I knew about Hawke, that’d be a guarantee. I wasn’t sure I could put myself through that kind of rejection again.

“Fight for him. I doubt anyone in his life ever has.”

What the hell does that mean?

I almost asked, but Ryder pulled at the arm he was still holding, and I pitched slightly forward. After, I clumsily followed him down the long hallway that would bring me either pleasure or pain. In a matter of minutes, I’d know which one for sure.

23 – CHARLOTTE

Calm down, Charlotte. You’ve done this before.

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