“Past what? Other men and women seeing your body, being privileged to your abuse, and you allowing them to worship you? What am I supposed to be past exactly, Aggie?”
“All of it. You said you were cool with me continuing to dominate clients. Remember?”
“Yeah, well maybe I’m not so cool with it.” Not if she’d been hiding things from him. He could take it all if she shared that part of herself honestly with him, but if she hid it—any of it—he wouldn’t be able to live with her not being his and his alone.
“It would be hard for me,” she said, crossing the room to grip his chin and force him to meet her eyes, “but I’d give it all up for you, Jace.”
She licked her lips and softened her hold, touching his cheek gently. He slapped her hand away. He didn’t want her goddamned tenderness. He was too pissed.
Her fingertips pressed hard into his chest. “One of the things I love most about you is that you don’t expect me to be someone I’m not. You allow me to be true to myself, but you’re more a part of me than the thrill I get from serving clients, Jace. I could give them up. I will if I have to. But I can never give you up. Never. The choice is easy. It’s you. It will always be you.”
“I don’t want you to have to choose, Aggie. I want—” What did he want? He wanted to be able to clearly express his feelings to her, to say what was in his heart, but as usual, words failed him, so he turned to face the wall, fighting the urge to punch it.
“What do you want?” Aggie said.
He was so acutely aware of her, the hand she laid on his back seemed to burn through his leather jacket.
And he knew she would push. She always pushed. It drove him fucking insane, but God he loved her for forcing him to face his deepest fears. For knowing that she wouldn’t walk out on him no matter what kind of weird shit he struggled through.
“Tell me about, Starr,” he said. “Don’t leave anything out.”
The hand resting on his back fell away.
“Starr?” she whispered. “How did you find out about Starr?”
Jace felt like the floorboards beneath his feet had vanished. His stomach and heart sank as if he were rapidly descending straight into the yawning chasm of Hell beneath his boots. He let Aggie have her way most of the time because he wanted her to be happy. But not this time. He should have realized that if he allowed her to continue working as a dominatrix that eventually she’d get personal with one of her subs. Have sex with one of them. Fall in love with one of them. Finding out about it the night before they were to get married wasn’t ideal, but he should have seen it coming.
“Jace,” Aggie said, “how did you find out? Did she say something to you? That stupid bitch. I told her I didn’t want you to know.”
Jace spun and grabbed her by both arms. He gave her a shake. “I’m sending her home. And you aren’t going to see her again.”
Aggie stiffened, and her eyes narrowed. “If you think you can dictate my life—”
“I gave you free rein and you abused it, Aggie. I allowed you to keep your slaves, allowed them into my fucking house. But not this. I won’t let you cheat on me.”
“You think I’m cheating on you?”
Did she think he was a complete idiot?
“You just said you didn’t want me to know about your relationship with Starr, Aggie.”
“My past relationship with Starr. Past! It’s been over between us for years. How could you think… Why would I ever…” Her brilliant blue eyes turned glassy with tears. “Jace Seymour!” She stomped on his foot. Hard.
“Ow!” Startled by her unexpected retaliation, he released his hold on her arms, and she spun on her heel—black hair flying out behind her—and stormed off into the bedroom.
He stared after her, trying to process what she’d said. Past relationship with Starr. Okay, he could live with that. He’d misunderstood. But why was Aggie angry and why had she been hiding a past relationship? That made no sense. They were completely open and accepting of everything about each other. At least he’d thought they were on even ground. Perhaps he’d been fooling himself into believing she was as open with him as he was with her. He puzzled over this revelation for a long moment before striding into the bedroom. He wanted the truth out of her, no matter how much it frightened him.
As soon as he passed through the bedroom door, Aggie tossed her thigh-high boots at him. He caught them against his chest and gaped at her.
“You will dress me before I punish you,” she snarled at him.
Yes, please. But not if her lashes were motivated by anger. She was the one who’d taught him the difference, after all. He craved her punishment, but wouldn’t tolerate abuse.
“Why are you pissed?” he asked, dropping her boots on the floor and moving toward her.
She yanked a cat o’ nine tails from his open suitcase and lifted her arm over her head.
“Do not hit me out of anger,” he said calmly.
Her grip went slack, and the whip clattered to the floor behind her. She slapped her hand over her mouth, her breathing erratic, eyes swimming with tears. That’s when he realized she wasn’t angry, she was hurt. Shouldn’t he be the one hurt? She’d been hiding things from him. It didn’t matter who should be hurting the most. Not when she looked so upset. No stranger to pain—emotional or physical—Jace was willing to endure any agony, but he couldn’t stand seeing it in her.
“Aggie, just tell me. Do you still have feelings for her?”
“No,” she said, her hasty reply muffled by her hand. She dropped it and took him by the arm, giving him a hard shake. “Of course not. I have feelings only for you.”
“Then why have you been hiding this relationship with Starr from me?”
“Because I wanted to forget about it. It should have never happened.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, rested her heels on the bedrail, and curled her body toward her knees, her hands pressed into her eyes. He could see the tremble of her body even at a distance.
Aggie didn’t tremble.
Aggie never faltered.
Aggie was strong.
Aggie was…
Aggie was human.
Her hints of weakness always caught him by surprise. And made him love her even more.
“A lot of things should never happen,” he said. He approached the bed cautiously, not sure if she wanted him to touch her, but the need to do so overwhelmed him. He stroked a long strand of silky black hair from her bare shoulder.
She slid her arms around his waist and rested her forehead against his chest. She talked to the floor, but at least she talked.
“We met when we were both in training under the same domme—Mistress Z.”
He already knew that. Aggie had told him about Mistress Z when he’d asked her how she’d gotten her own domme moniker—Mistress V. When she’d reached the end of her training, Mistress Z had given Aggie that name and she’d given her other pupil, Starr, the name Mistress X—apparently because Mistress Y and Mistress W weren’t threatening enough. Aggie had laughed herself silly when Jace had admitted he’d thought V was short for vagina or something.
“Starr and I trained together and if a client had enough money, we worked together. We became highly sought after in the BDSM scene in Vegas. As you know, they called us Fire and Ice. Starr was Fire for her red hair. I was Ice because, well, I’ve always been cold.”
“You’re not cold to me,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
She glanced up at him and offered a wavering smile. “Only because you melt me, Jace Seymour.”
He resisted the urge to kiss her, knowing that if he did, they’d ignite in passion and lose track of their conversation. He wanted to hear this. Needed to hear it.
“So is that when you two became lovers?” The last word squeaked out of him as if he was going through puberty again. He didn’t want to be the jealous sort, but the thought of Aggie loving someone else made his throat tighten and his chest ache.
She nodded. “Not righ
t away,” she said, “but as you know, dominating puts me in the mood. And part of Fire’s act was to touch me. It made the clients hemorrhage cash to watch two dommes in training touch, so Mistress Z encouraged it. At first I tolerated the touches, but then I began to crave them. Crave her. And the friendship between us began to change.” She paused and her eyes focused on Jace’s. “Do you want all these details?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted details, but they both needed them out in the open. “Continue,” he said quietly.
“It took me months to get up the courage to tell her how I felt about her. I wasn’t sure if Starr really wanted me or if it was all an act for the clients. But when I finally confessed, she said she felt the same way about me, and we uh, had sex.” A blush stained her cheeks. “A lot of sex. I’d never had sex with someone I cared about before. I couldn’t get enough. Like with you.”
A hard, cold lump settled in Jace’s stomach. So he didn’t want the details after all. It must have showed in his expression, because she captured his face between her hands.
“Not like with you,” she amended. “She never got to see my soul laid bare the way you do. I never trusted her to love me enough to see all of me.”
“Aggie…” Saying her named threatened to pull his heart out of his chest.
“It’s okay, baby. This story doesn’t have a happy ending.”
He saw the hurt shadowing her eyes and knew that Starr had broken her heart.
“Once we became intimate, Starr began to get bolder in the way she touched me in front of our clients. Kissing. Putting her fingers… places.” She gave him a hard look, as if trying to telegraph her thoughts to him. “It made me feel violated. Like our sexual relationship wasn’t really about our love for each other, but only another way to make cash.”
“Maybe she just liked you so much she couldn’t keep her hands off you.” He knew what that was like.
Aggie shook her head. “I wish that had been the case. One night after a session, we were both really turned on. She’d seen the client out and we were alone in the dungeon—at least I thought we were alone—and she drags me to the floor and goes down. So I’m lying there and her mouth is on me and her fingers are inside me and somehow over the sounds of my own moans, I hear this other sound. I open my eyes and I see the client—who was supposed to be gone—peeking out from behind a velvet drape and he’s got his dick in his hand and he’s jerking it while he watches us.”
Can’t blame him, Jace thought, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to say that.
“I go after him—so mad I can’t see straight—and he says, I paid her to watch.” She quivered, but didn’t look away from Jace. “He was talking about Starr,” Aggie clarified, her voice hard with anger and betrayal. “He paid Starr to watch us have sex and not only did she take his money, she didn’t tell me.”
Jace tried to find something to say, but he came up lacking.
“I’ll never forget what she said to me in defense. What do you expect from a whore? Stop pretending you’re better than me, Ice. You’re just as much of a whore as I am.”
“But you’re not a whore,” Jace said.
Aggie released a derisive huff of air. “But if she hadn’t said that to me, I probably would have become one. So even though she broke my heart, she saved me. Even though she hurt me, I can’t hate her. She’s always had my back, and I’ve had hers. Is it strange that our friendship survived a romance gone sour?”
“I don’t think so. You’ve been through a lot together.”
Aggie nodded and lowered her gaze. “Yeah, we have. It’s hard to find people who don’t judge you when you lead the kind of life I’ve led. Someone like me has to hold on to those who care that they still breathe.”
“Then hold on to me,” he whispered and pulled her against his chest. “Hold on and never let go.”
Chapter Eight
Aggie tried to slip into her dominatrix frame of mind, but she was just too damned emotional to pull off anything but a smile as Jace knelt at her feet and slipped her foot into one of her boots. She should’ve told him about Starr ages ago. It was as if the final demon that haunted her had been sent back to Hell and she was truly free to love this man with all her heart. She’d been certain that he wouldn’t understand her strange relationship with Starr, but as usual, Jace surprised her with his empathy, his compassion, his acceptance. And the man was hers.
Jace tugged the supple leather up her leg and then tightened the lacings of the boot, starting at the back of her ankle and working his way up. She’d always loved having a man at her feet, but she never would have guessed how much she enjoyed Jace helping her dress in her corset and boots. There was something intimate about him assisting with her transformation from Aggie to Mistress V. With her slaves, she’d never let one see her with her guard down like this, but Jace had never been her slave. At times he was submissive, at other times he was completely in charge. He could make love to her with absolute tenderness or fuck her until she begged for mercy. They were constantly exploring the dynamic between them. She never knew what to expect from him, and it rocked her to her core that neither of them adhered to a specific role.
But roles were for games, and this wasn’t a game to her. It was her heart. Her soul. Her life. Her love.
He tied the lacings of her boot at the back of her thigh and grinned up at her. “Does this please you, Mistress?” he asked, looking about as submissive as a caged tiger when his gaze met hers in challenge.
“Yes,” she whispered. Everything he did for her pleased her.
He buried his face in her crotch, caught her black satin panties in his teeth, and gave them a tug. When she didn’t demand that he stop—because frankly she didn’t want him to—his teeth nipped at the flesh beneath the fabric, sending sparks of pleasure and pain along her nerve endings. Heat flooded the emptiness between her thighs, making her swell and throb with anticipation.
He grabbed the top band of her panties, tugged them down in front, and slid the tip of his tongue into her cleft. He teased her clit just enough to make it tingle and tilted his head back to look up at her. She saw the defiance in his eyes. Knew exactly what he was after.
“Did I say you had permission to lick me there?” she asked.
“It’s mine,” he said, lifting both hands to grab her ass. “I can lick it if I want.”
“I think someone needs to be punished,” she said, forcing herself not to hold the back of his head and encourage him to lick her more rigorously.
“Is it you?” he asked.
He nibbled her mound and then sank his teeth into her throbbing flesh. Her knees buckled.
“It’s definitely you,” she said breathlessly, trying to find the hardness in her demeanor, but only finding her soft spot for the man at her feet. “Put my other boot on.” The demand sounded too much like a request, so she half expected him to refuse. He did enjoy his punishments for not obeying, but he reached for her boot and carefully lifted her foot to slip inside it. She rested her hands on the top of his head for balance and tried to control the quivering in her thighs and belly as he slid the boot up her leg and tightened the laces up the back. The little licks and kisses he bestowed on her flesh as he nuzzled her crotch were driving her mad with need, but she tried not to show her eagerness for his attention. He was doing as she’d instructed—dressing her in her boot—so he obviously wanted this dynamic to continue a while longer.
He tied the lacings at the back of her thigh and lifted her panties to cover her aching pussy.
God, she wanted him. Would that lessen with time? Not if her body had a say in the matter.
“I was rather enjoying that,” she said.
He grinned up at her and then rose to his feet. He cupped her bare breasts in his palms and massaged them gently.
“Do you need your corset?” he asked. “I like to watch your tits bounce when you hit me.”
“Did I ask you what you like?” she asked. This time her voice managed the hard edge of Mistress
V, and Jace shuddered.
She stepped around him, tossing her long hair back over her shoulders as she strode to the open suitcase on the dresser. Her Mistress V persona took another sentimentality hit as something in her suitcase caught her eye. Among her instruments of torture rested a familiar, lacy white and blue garter, the one she would wear on her thigh the next day when she made Jace her husband. She smiled at it and touched it gently with her fingertips. It was a bit out of place in her mix of leather and nylon, but she had to wear it—wanted to wear it. She knew how much it meant to Jace to be part of Sinners, so of course she’d wear the girly thing with pride to carry on the lady Sinners tradition. Every member of Sinners had peeled that same piece of lace and ribbon down his new wife’s thigh, and she knew Jace would want to be a part of that bond. She moved the garter aside, because it had no business being witness to what she was about to do to her man. She could feel his interested gaze on her as she selected a long wooden paddle and a flail with three lashes.
“Take off your shirt,” she demanded quietly. She didn’t bother to look at him and hid a smile when she heard the rustle of his clothes as he obeyed. He always wanted to obey and sometimes he did so without argument, but boy did he struggle with it at times. She loved the challenge he presented. She doubted she would have ever fallen in love with him if he were truly submissive. She set the paddle aside on the dresser and turned to approach him, slapping her flail against the leather of her boot. Each time it cracked, he