Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
“And these conditions are nonnegotiable.”
“I’m listening,” she whispered.
“You come back with me—as my prisoner. You forsake your previous life completely. I’ll fuck you when I feel like it, spend time with you if I’m in the mood, but I don’t owe you anything else. I’m free to do what I want, when I want.” I was offering her the life I offered her in the beginning—one without promises. If she wanted to be with me again, she’d be the one to make all the sacrifices.
Her eyes narrowed in disappointment. “You’re asking me to be your slave?”
I nodded.
“To have no voice? To have no rights?”
I nodded again. “Take it or leave it.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a loathing look, the same kind she used to give me when we first met—when she hated me. “You’re being serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Then I’ll leave it. No man in the world is worth it—certainly not you.” She left the table and carried her dishes to the sink, dismissing the meal even though our plates were still full. Her back was turned to me, so I couldn’t see her face.
I waited for her to say something else, to tell me what she was thinking. But nothing else came.
She walked back to the table, looking indifferent as she grabbed my plate. “You can go, Crewe. We have nothing more to say to each other.”
I’d successfully pushed her away. I’d successfully made her give up. “You don’t have any of your own demands?”
“You said it was nonnegotiable.”
I could just walk out, but my ass didn’t leave the chair. “Everything is negotiable.”
She threw my plate in the sink, where it shattered loudly. She turned back around, all her love and affection gone. “I thought things were different, Crewe. I thought you actually loved me, and when someone loves someone, they treat them like a human being. The fact that you want to keep me under your thumb, to boss me around like you own me, tells me that nothing was ever real between us. I’m not a thing, a possession, a pawn in your world. Your constant need to own and control everything is despicable, especially when you think you can apply it to me. Now I know this never would have worked, that I should have left when I had the chance. I don’t feel bad for leaving—because there was never a reason to stay.”
I put on a good face for my weekend in London, talking to old friends, acquaintances, and people with astute business minds. When I was surrounded by like-minded people familiar with noble aristocracy, I was in my element.
But all I thought about was her.
I pushed her buttons—hard. Freedom was a hard limit for her, a topic she wouldn’t negotiate, and I disrespected it.
But she disrespected me when she lied to me.
I shouldn’t feel bad about what I did because I’d accomplished what I set out to do. I pushed her away so she wouldn’t come back. She would finally leave me alone and leave our relationship where it belonged—in the past.
At the end of the weekend, I retired to my hotel room alone. When I was away from Scotland, I usually entertained myself with a beautiful woman. Sometimes she was a regular, and sometimes she was someone I bumped into at the bar. I wasn’t picky when it came to choosing a partner. There were lots of degrees of attractiveness, and if she had a pretty smile and soft skin, she usually fit the bill.
But now I didn’t want anyone.
I drank alone then went to bed alone. The last time I slept well was when London was with me. Ever since that night, I tossed and turned in the enormous bed with cold sheets. I didn’t listen to her melodic breathing as she slept. Sometimes she talked in her sleep, and that always made me laugh.
But I didn’t want anyone to join me.
Sasha helped with the loneliness, but she also made it worse sometimes. I constantly compared her to London, the woman I truly wanted to have. No matter how much she hurt me, my cock missed her pussy.
He missed her more than I did.
I lay in my bed and looked out the window. A stormy sky had just spread over the city, and slowly, drops of rain began to pelt the glass. The rain came slowly, and then it pounded against the glass as the storm picked up. Soon, it became background noise, the only soothing thing in my life right now.
I missed Fair Isle. I hadn’t been there in a long time, too busy working in Scotland to return. I only slept with London once while we were there, and now I wished we could both hide away there and forget the rest of the world—with Finley, of course.