Page 137 of The Secrets That Kill

And my MIA Mercer?

I grip the remote tight in my hand, fighting the urge to fling it at the glass shelves above his bar when the elevator dings.

Mercer walks into the place in a different suit, clean shaven, hair slicked back. A knot lodges in the back of my throat.

If he’s been with a woman, I’ll kill him and then her.

The cut of his eyes is sharp.

“Here.” He hands me the box. “Your dress. Time to get ready, Cinderella. You’re about to put on the performance of a fucking lifetime.”

THIRTY-THREE

mercer

Ivy lookslike she’s ready to fight, so I give her major kudos for keeping her pretty mouth shut.

I feel like hell’s second cousin right now.

She takes the box and storms off. I follow but keep going to my own room to get ready.

When I come back downstairs, Ivy is there. She looks fucking stunning.

The sea-green dress is the exact shade of her eyes when she’s in the throes of passion or lust. The soft material skims her curves all the way to her ankles. And the shoes…I bite back a smile. She’s wearing those black heels I gave her.

I should make her change them since she’s got a ton of other shoes. But I think it’s a deliberate move. I don’t know, fuck, maybe she just likes them and the memories attached to them. Ivy also isn’t the kind of girl to have a billion pairs of shoes.

“Turn.”

She slides me a scathing look, her cherry red lips, plump and kissable even with their lipstick armor thin. It takes everything in me to try not to picture it stretched around mycock, leaving streaks of red in their wake. But she does as ordered.

I eye every inch of her as she twists. Where the front of the dress comes down in a modest plunge, the back of it is non-existent, exposing the smooth slope of her back all the way to the top of her ass.

She’s a work of erotic art.

The bruises are dark, some blooming other colors. Every lash of the whip, the floggers, my hand—I don’t ever remember hitting her with my hand—right at the top of her ass peeking out like I’m holding it, is unfettered erection territory.

Beyond hot.

She stays turned with her back to me. “I shouldn’t like it, Mercer, the pain you caused, the pain I begged for. The different pain I feel when I move or sit. I shouldn’t like seeing my back like this. I should be calling you an abuser.”

“Ivy.”

She hefts out a breath. “But I loved that pain. I got off on begging for more. I love how it hurts now and pulls me back to that whole scene. I love seeing my back like this and wish I could show off my ass, too. I?—”

Ivy stops. And she moves her arms. There are bruises there, too, those I wince at because they’re fingerprints from when I grabbed her during sex, when I must have gone a little far holding her down, moving her, fucking her. If too far is such a thing with her.

“I know you’re not an abuser.” There’s something hidden in her voice, her words, and it digs into me. “You gave me a safe word, and the man who takes and orders is mostly in your game. But you are one. An abuser, I mean.”

I wait because I’m not sure where she’s going with this.

“You left me. You just got cold and left and went away andprobably slept with someone else, and that’s fucking abuse. For me. That’s abuse. You want to break me so badly? That’s how you do it.”

“I didn’t sleep with anyone. I had work to do. On this, on everything.”

“I still don’t know what you do.”

“Sure, you do, Pollyanna, I’ve told you. Both sides of the fucking law. I make money on both sides.”

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