I’d told myself I wanted him so I could win The Game, but it had been a lie. I’d just wanted him, and having had him, I wanted more of him, and for the first time in years—in a decade—I could see a future for myself that didn’t center around the games that Hudson had taught me so well to play, that didn’t involve lies and manipulation. A future filled with instead of the nothing that had lived so long inside of me.
I wanted Edward, but it was painfully clear that, no matter how much he might want me back, he wouldn’t allow it.
I was scared, yes, and pissed. But mostly hurt.
I remembered this emotion. I remembered rejection. I remembered this kind of pain.
I’d rather play The Game.
“Why did you call me that?” I asked again, more sternly, as though I had power to make any demands. So he’d made me feel things. I didn’t have to acknowledge that. I knew how to be empty. I could be empty again.
Edward rested his ankle on his opposite thigh, a more casual posture than I’d seen him take before, the nonchalant behavior adding to my unease. “Why did I call you that just now or why did I call you that before?”
Before. It was so vague. He’d called me “little bird” twice now in this conversation. His reference to before could simply mean the first time tonight, and not the time he’d said it to me outside The Open Door. It was a clever tactic, refusing to give anything away. Requiring me to be the one to admit that I’d been there that night or let the mention slide.
I considered it for only a handful of seconds. While I hated being backed into a corner as I had been, I wanted answers more. “How did you know it was me?”
My disguise hadn’t been perfect the night I’d attended the sex party and seen him there as well, but it was a stretch to think that anyone would have realized who I was. My hair had been dyed. My outfit had been specifically one I’d never wear. I’d worn a mask that fully covered my face. A feathered mask of a dragon that Edward had mistaken for a bird.
More likely it hadn’t been a mistake but a deliberate choice meant to knock me back a peg or two.
Still, as he’d demeaned me with the nickname, I’d believed he’d done so as a stranger. To discover that he’d known all along was the real blow to my esteem.
He studied me, his hand rubbing over the scruff of beard on his chin—the Van Dyke that I’d suggested he grow—and for a tense instant, I thought he might deny knowing what I was talking about. That would be just like him, wouldn’t it? Get me to confess and then refuse to acknowledge it.
But if the thought had crossed his mind, he didn’t go with it. “I think the better question,” he said, “is how did we end up at the same party together.”
The rhythm of my heart stuttered, two beats coming so fast that I could actually feel them against the inside wall of my chest. He hadn’t just known it was me. He’d known I’d be there.
Now that was terrifying.
And exciting.
And impossible. How the hell had he known? I ventured a guess. “You had me followed.”
“Did I?” His brows arched inward as though he were trying to recall the details of the event. So fucking performative. “I believe I was there first.”
“Then you figured out I was going to be there. Somehow.” I threw up my hands, already tired of the tug of war.
Perhaps in response to my impatience, he threw me a bone. A clue. “How did you end up at that party?”
“I was invited.”
“By whom?”
“By…” Oh, fuck.
I quickly went over the circumstances that had led me there that night. Having learned from Blanche that Edward liked kinky parties, I’d gone searching for one he might attend, putting a call out on kink-related forums under an anonymous username for such events.
One person had reached out in response, inviting me to join The Open Door, an underground organization that hosted weekly sex parties. I’d been wary about accepting, worried that the membership fee would be traced to my bank account, but I hadn’t for a minute been concerned about the stranger who’d invited me.
Had FeelslikePAIN been Edward?
I needed to sit down.
As soon as I sank into the chair facing his desk, I regretted it. My ass had cooled down, but sitting reignited the sting of his severe spanking.
Not a chance I was letting him know that.
“That’s impossible,” I said through gritted teeth, bearing down through the pain. “That couldn’t have been you. You couldn’t have known that username was me.”
“Are you sure?”
With my elbow propped on the arm of the chair, I ran my fingers across my forehead. “This is tedious, Edward. Would you just tell me?”
His lips twitched in a way that suggested my impatience amused him, which only made me more irritable. Of course. As he surely knew it would.
Abruptly he sat forward, setting his elbows on the desk and clasping his hands together, tucking all of his fingers in except the two pointers, which he steepled together and aimed in my direction. “How about you tell me something?” he asked, his expression wicked with curiosity. “How did it feel to watch me that night?”
“What do you mean?” Sneaky, exhilarating, conniving. Was that what he was after?
“How did it feel to watch me touching another woman? Making another woman come in front of you.”
My stomach dropped as simultaneously the space between my thighs began to buzz. Against my will the memories crashed into the forefront of my mind. He’d sat across from me, his eyes locked with mine as he’d assisted the woman on his lap in masturbating to orgasm.
“Sasha,” I said mindlessly. “Her name was Sasha.” Because concentrating on that point was safer than answering him. Even the question had heated my face, not because it was humiliating to be asked—though it definitely was—but because both the memory and the forwardness of his inquiry aroused me, much to my annoyance.
“Her name doesn’t matter. It only matters that she wasn’t you. Tell me how you felt.”
She wasn’t you. It came off as a deliberate slap in the face.
The pointed comment also brought my emotions from that night into vivid focus. I’d been vulnerable then. I’d felt exposed, and that was with a disguise. A pointless disguise, it turned out, but I hadn’t known that at the time.
Just thinking about what he must have seen in me in that moment made my skin crawl.
There was no way I could share those feelings with him. They were too personal. Too real, and here, under the intensity of his gaze, there was nothing I could hide behind.
“I’m not doing this,” I said, as I stood up and turned to leave.
“Sit down, Celia.”
The command was sharp and sinister, a verbal lasso wrapping around my torso, holding me in place. I was only a handful of strides away from the doorway. So close to escape.
And yet I couldn’t go.
I didn’t generally have a problem defying him. I could now. Easily.
Only, as blasé as I’d been throughout our conversation, I actually was scared. More than I wanted to admit, even to myself. I didn’t believe that he would kill me, necessarily.
Just.
What if I was wrong?
With my chin held high, I returned to my chair, wincing as my ass touched the surface. “There. I sat down. But only because you’re going to give me answers. How did you figure out that was me on that forum? And why did you want me to go to that party?”