Page 74 of The Secrets That Kill

I believe him. One hundred percent.

He’s doing this for a girl he probably once loved, one who’s been dead a long time. And yes, I think he blames himself for that even though he knows he couldn’t have stopped it.

“People like Henderson hide behind their money and power. He gets away with horrible things because he’s not in the public eye…and because he’s rich.”

I swallow hard and grab my wine. “Like you.”

“Yes.”

I drink half the glass. My hand shakes as I set it down on the counter.

“But I don’t hurt innocent people. I don’t hurt women. At least, not in that way.” He cuts his eyes to me. “Believe me when I say there’s darkness in me, Pollyanna. And I’m sweet compared to him.”

He pauses.

“We both know I’m not fucking sweet.” He pushes his plate away and picks up his wine. “I want this fuck gone, and I’m the only one to do it. My skills will get the job done. But I need you to get me to where the information is. I won’t let him hurt you, but knowing what he did to Ruby, to what he would do to girlslike your sister—and yes, there’s a particular niche for the disabled—to pretty innocent things like you, he can’t live. I won’t let him.”

There’s something else lurking in his words. I’m not given to bloodlust, but I want to add Mr. Trenton to his kill list of one. I keep that to myself.

“Ivy, if I gave you the choice, if I hadn’t manipulated you into this, would you still have helped if I asked?”

My breath catches, not sure what he’s trying to get at. I’m here. I’m helping. Maybe a little against my will because walls keep crumbling, but I’m here. “To a point.”

“And forcing you to go down on me, letting me touch you and pleasure you, opening up those parts that you’ve hidden down deep, that maybe you weren’t aware of consciously?” He pauses, his eyes flickering with curiosity.

And I can’t help it, I lean in, captured by his invisible aura of power and sex and seduction. “Would I let you do all of that?”

“Yes.”

I sigh. “Does it matter? If I say no, nothing’s going to change. It’s done, and I have to follow through because I know what’s at stake.”

I’m lying. I know it. If he’d put one hand on me and not forced me into things, not twisted the hate we feel that’s loaded and complicated into something he can use on me, I’d still be here.

Because one touch is all it took.

I want him. Right or wrong, my body wants him, and those base parts of my brain want him, too. He’s poison and a drug. He’s damnation and salvation. He’s promises lost and kept, and the consequences that all brings. I want him. I want him however I can have him.

And if I’m being really honest, I want this.

I want to be his toy, his slave, his plaything. It turns me on even as it humiliates me to my core. Everything about this turns me on, even those spankings. Tonight at the club, I’d have ridden him if he’d asked. Right in front of everyone.

Hell, under his commands, I’d have let other men and women touch me, and I’m not into women or other men. But if it was him, guiding, ordering, it would be beyond extra. Beyond anything I could imagine.

It would be like him touching me through other people.

I ache for this man with a fever that borders on insanity.

Mr. Trenton used me because he could, Mercer uses me because I want him to. I like it. I love it. The former was the wrong kind of power imbalance. With Mercer, it’s where I need to be. It’s wrong, I know that, but so right, too.

I don’t like him.

He wants to destroy me.

And I think…I think I’d let him.

My heart lurches at that, fear wrapped in titillation.

“You took my choice, Mercer.”

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