Bind Me Before You Go (Entangled Brazen) (Serve), page 12
“You’re coming?”
“Are you shitting me? This is your big movie moment. I wouldn’t miss it for the end of the world.”
David handed him the second helmet. “Then you better hold on.”
A normal ride to the club took twenty minutes. He planned to be there in ten.
…
It was a Saturday night at Serve, which meant the club was especially packed. Wall to wall people of all shapes, colors, and spectrums of sexual proclivities.
David was ready to rip through the crowd, but he kept it together. Just barely.
Leo had asked around when they first arrived and found out that Ethan was in one of the private rooms upstairs. The top floor, to be more specific, which was significant because, at Serve, the higher the floor, the more intense and risky the play.
“Be cool, man,” Leo warned as they got on the elevator. “Remember, you let her go. You’ve got to win her back, and pummeling Ethan into a bloody pulp won’t get you to your goal.”
He gave a curt nod as his only response. They rode up the elevator and got out.
“Leo, I think this is where I have to finish this on my own.”
“I know. I’ll be right here, waiting, no matter how it goes.”
Then David walked down the longest hall of his life.
What was he was going to say to her? He didn’t want to talk. No, all he wanted was to shove his fingers through the golden honey halo of her hair and pull it back, expose her neck, and run his lips and tongue down the column of her throat.
By the time he pounded on the door, the pull in his dick was so strong he thought he’d pass out just from the sight of her. He waited for the door to open, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to shake off some of the adrenaline.
Then the door swung open, and it was a good thing David had taken a moment to collect himself, because he had been expecting that prick Ethan to open the door. He had mentally prepared himself to see his Cassidy all tied up in someone else’s ropes.
Instead, it was her. Cassidy was standing right there. And son of a bitch, Ethan was behind her, a set of ropes in his hands. And she wasn’t in one of her lingerie outfits. She was in jean shorts and a fitted T-shirt.
Just what the hell kind of scene was this, where Cassidy was still wearing her clothes?
“Tell me I’m hallucinating right now,” she asked, going from flummoxed to pissed off in about three seconds.
“I don’t understand,” David said. “What are you doing?”
She glared at him. “You’re not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?”
Ethan dropped the ropes and came toward her. “Is this okay?” he said.
She held up her hand. “It’s fine.” Then she turned back to David. “He’s instructing me on the correct ways to conduct a scene and help people open up to me. The way you helped me open up to you. Not that I owe you”—she pointed her finger into David’s chest—“any kind of explanation.”
God, she was even prettier than he remembered, and he had a very good fucking memory. Okay, so she was angry, but he’d expected that.
“No,” he said. “You don’t owe me anything. But I do owe you something.”
“I don’t want it. You don’t…” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “You don’t love me. So why are you even here?”
Seeing that hurt in her gorgeous green eyes just about slayed him. He tried to reach for her, but she took a step back from him, which cut him even further.
“I’m here to make things right. I fucked up.”
She brought the heels of her palms to her eyes, then glared at him. He’d expected tears from her, some sign of what she felt for him. Not this cold stare.
Ethan came over to her and touched her arm.
“Do you want me to kick him out?” He eyed David one more time, as if saying, Try me, I dare ya.
David’s jaw muscles twitched, but to be fair, he’d have done the same in Ethan’s position. If anyone hurt Cassidy, he’d have their ass handed to them. Hell, just knowing he’d hurt Cassidy tore him up with guilt. He wasn’t good enough to breathe her air, but he knew he’d spend the rest of his life working to earn the right to love her the way she deserved.
“No,” Cassidy said. “I can take care of this.”
“Okay.” Ethan glared at him. “Take better care of what’s yours, Cavill, and there won’t be a problem. Fuck up again and you’ve got no say.”
The prick was right and they both knew it.
“Neither of you has a goddamn say, do you hear me?” Cassidy said.
David shared a glance with Ethan, and then said, “You’re right. What do you want, Cass? If you want me to leave, just say the word. But please, don’t tell me to go until you’ve had a chance to listen to me.”
Ethan raised his eyebrows, then rubbed Cassidy’s shoulder. “I can see why you wouldn’t stop talking about him,” he said. “You’ve still got the room for another ninety minutes. More than enough time to make him work for it.”
David would have laughed if so much weren’t at stake.
After a moment, Cassidy gave a short nod.
“Okay,” Ethan said. He gave David one final look, then left them and closed the door.
Once David heard the click of the latch, he turned and caught a glimpse of the hurt in Cassidy’s eyes before she schooled her expression back to a blank version of herself.
He didn’t like that. He didn’t like it at all. After everything he’d done to help her break down her walls, he’d hurt her enough for them to be right back up again.
“Don’t shut down on me,” he quietly pleaded as he stepped forward, into her space.
She backed away again, denying him her warmth, even her scent. With her close but out of reach, he felt the hole she’d left. Was this what everyone meant when they talked about true love? How could he have ever thought he could live without this woman?
“If you care about me at all,” she whispered, looking down at the ground, “then please don’t do this to me.”
He cupped her chin with his hand and lifted it, making her meet his gaze. “What do you think I’m here to do?”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “Look, I know you’re about to leave town for this job. So you probably figure it’s okay to hook back up with me one last time. But I can’t do that. I can’t be your girlfriend of convenience, one you can toss aside when you’re done. I won’t be treated like some cheap fuck.” She finally looked at him, her eyes begging. “I won’t survive that. So if you care about me at all, then just go. Okay?”
“You’re not a girlfriend of convenience.” He swallowed. “You’re not just some cheap fuck.”
“Then what do you want me to be?” She looked him in the eyes. “This is your last chance. Tell me.”
He couldn’t take it anymore—her pain, the sorrow he’d laid on her doorstep.
“Oh, Cassidy,” he said. “Don’t you know? I want you.”
She walked forward and placed her hands on his chest, at first tender, but then she pounded her fists against him. “That’s not fair. Not after everything else you said.”
He took every impact she made against his chest. He deserved each blow. Every single one.
“What will it take for you to trust me again?” he asked. “To believe in me? In us?”
She pushed him back a step, then looked at him, as though she was building her courage. “Will you do anything I ask?”
Without hesitating—because after everything he’d done, hesitation would damn him—he said, “Whatever it takes.” Then he studied her face and added, “Really. Ask me. It’s yours.”
She lifted her chin, her composure returning, and with a steely gleam she answered, “I want you to be in my ropes this time. I’m obviously not an expert like you are, but it’s not about that, really, is it?”
She got it. She totally understood his version of Shibari…understood him.
“Is that what you were doing here?” he said.
She walked away from him, toward the ropes lying on the floor. “When you left, I realized I needed to regain a sense of control. I opened myself to you because I believed you would do the same. Instead, you shut me out. You rejected me. But I realized that I only learned one part of the equation with you. I learned how to open up to someone else. But I didn’t learn how to help them do the same for me. And I see now that I can’t have one without the other. I need that connection. That mutuality. And I think you do, too. That’s why you love Shibari so much.”
The veins in his neck and forehead started to pulse and bulge. He’d known Ethan for a while now, and he knew he usually fucked those he trained. David was desperate to know and not to know, but he had to ask. “Did you fuck him?”
Her gaze scorched his. “Would it matter if I slept with him?”
Would it?
He took in her beauty, the strength and grace in her stance, how she accepted all of him, even his family and his tainted blood.
“You can’t expect me to feel nothing about it, but when you come right down to it, it wouldn’t matter. Fuck, Cass, I’m lucky to even know you. Getting to love you, even if it’s you bringing me to heel…I’ll do it.”
She regarded what he said and gave the slightest hint of a nod. “I didn’t fuck him, okay? I never even met him before today. Leo set it up.” She shook her head. “It was never going to be about sex with him. I just needed to learn how to do this.” She picked up a length of rope from the floor.
He released the breath he was holding, relief washing over him in a mad rush.
“I’m going to change,” she said. “And when I return, we’ll begin. If that’s what you want.” She paused. “Is that what you want?”
His words coming from her mouth.
“What if it isn’t?”
“Then I won’t do it. I won’t touch you unless you tell me you want this.”
She was a quick student. He couldn’t help but smile.
“I want this,” he said.
And with that, she walked into the attached washroom and closed the door.
Meanwhile, he knew what to do, but goddamn it if it didn’t feel completely bizarre.
But he let that go as best he could, and he started with taking off all of his clothes, folding them neatly, and laying them by the door.
And then he did what he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles he would never do. He got down on his knees, naked, his ass resting on the back of his calves, palms up and eyes down. He heard her heels click on the glazed concrete floor, getting louder as she walked towards him.
“Get up,” she softly commanded.
He rose onto his feet, and she led him to the rings hanging from the ceiling, a setup he knew well—the Shibari setup.
Then she proceeded to do some very simple—but highly effective—rope cuffs, which she tied to a wooden ring above his head. And then he was naked, open, and vulnerable to whatever she had in mind. He had no control over anything. That thought made him start to sweat. Start to feel both pissed off and anxious at the same time. His breath was choppy, and he was on the verge of panic, until he remembered to open his eyes.
And there she was. His Cassidy. This was his woman, albeit a different side to her, but his woman all the same. The one he was going to trust with his body, his soul, his future.
Then it dawned on him…he’d never had any control. Not over his brother and his illness, not over the DNA in his body, not over anything. He could manage events, and he could continue to be reactive, but to what gain?
Wouldn’t it be better to share control with someone he thought the world of? Cassidy couldn’t do what he did—save a bunch of kidnapped girls from insurgents or negotiate a hostage release—but maybe she could help him find another way to live. Maybe having all the control meant he would only ever have part of the answers. By sharing with her, maybe she’d help him find the answers that had eluded him for so long.
He nodded, already bracing himself. Getting ready.
“I need your safe word, David.”
Wow, he had totally forgotten about that. As he looked at her—this woman of his, with so many sides and dimensions it would take his lifetime to discover them all—he tried to conjure a moment or a memory that made him feel totally safe. Something he could grab hold of if the pain got to be too much.
It was—of all things—the memory of Cassidy standing at his front door, with that tin of baked goods in her hands.
“Not the most masculine sounding word…but my safe word is ‘cookies’.”
She hadn’t expected that one. Her face demonstrated as much.
“Want to share with me why that’s your safe word?”
“Because I remember thinking how, when I was dealing with the latest shit from my brother, when I was treating you like fuckin’ garbage, you still loved me enough to come to my door with homemade cookies. And I remember thinking anyone who can be so good to me even at my worst, well, that’s where I want to be for the rest of my life. Those cookies are a symbol of your love. They’re what lets me know that when I’m with you, nothing will go wrong.”
She took a deep breath, and he knew she was hearing him. Taking in everything that he said.
“Before you start, I need to tell you about Marla,” he said.
The way Cass’s head jerked, he figured that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. But he knew that before he moved forward with her, he needed to share what had been dragging behind him all this time.
“Marla was my girlfriend in college. She was beautiful, smart, funny. Came from money. Came from a life out of a goddamn fairytale. She knew I had a brother that was mentally ill, but I didn’t tell her how severe. And that’s on me, I suppose. But I’d had girlfriends before, and they always left when they found out about him. About what being connected to me meant they had to accept. Over and over again, I’d find these women – or to be honest, they’d find me. Let me know how lucky they were to have me. Until I took them home. I’m part Italian so bringing a girl home to my family for Sunday dinner was expected. Can’t begin to tell you how many came in that front door smiling and how many left looking like a fucking bus hit them. When I met Marla? Fell so hard for her, I was determined to keep her as long as possible. So I kept him a secret.”
“Oh God,” Cassidy said. “Did she find out about him?”
“Eventually. We were both going to go to law school, and then we were supposed to join her father’s firm. Well, long story short, one day—while looking for me—she came to my parents’ house in Williamsburg. Dante was the only one home. He encouraged her to wait for me in the house. When she told him she was my girlfriend…he flipped his lid. Started screaming at her, barricading the front door, telling Marla he wasn’t going to let his little brother get ‘trapped and tracked by the government, no matter how clean and pretty her pussy happened to be.’”
“Jesus,” Cassidy murmured.
“By the time my parents and I got there, she’d locked herself in the bathroom, crying and scared out of her fucking mind, to the point I thought she’d collapsed. When I brought her out, she insisted she was okay. Even had a kind word for my brother. I remember thinking I had the most amazing woman in the world. I was going to marry her. But as soon as we were alone, she told me we were through. All this time, I hoped if she’d accept me, she’d accept everything about me. Including my family. But she told me it was her or them. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t abandon my family.”
Cassidy put her hand on his back. “She had no right to ask you to do that.”
He shrugged. “That was it. I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing her in class every day, so I walked away from Georgetown Law. Once we got my brother stabilized and on yet another medication protocol, I joined the Marines and became a member of Special Ops. You know the rest.”
Once he was done talking, he tuned into what she had been doing. He’d been so focused on exposing his secrets that he hadn’t noticed that she’d not only tied some beautiful rope cuffs on his wrists, but also around his ankles, anchored by a spread bar.
She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Hang on,” she said.
With a simple pull on the bar, she caused the ropes to tighten and pull at his limbs.
It was a simple yet profound choice she had made, because every part of his body was open to her. He took in a shaky breath. Not out of grief or pain, but because the release he was experiencing was nothing less than transcendental. He was bound up and hanging from a bunch of rope, but he was finally free.
“I love you,” he said. “For the rest of my life, I’m going to give you everything you deserve. You’ve got my heart, my body, my soul. And I’ll keep you safe and loved and with me for as long as you let me.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. And then she eyed the way she had tied him. Her eyes widened and her hand came up to her mouth.
“I made you completely vulnerable, didn’t I?”
He couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “I’ve been through much worse in my life. Untie me so I can show you.”
She lowered the ropes and knot by knot untied him.
He rubbed his wrists to bring back some of the circulation as she unzipped her boots and kicked them away.
Then he brought her to him, stroked her hair, and rocked her in his arms.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she said.
He beamed down at her. His Cassidy. His woman.
“Never been better. I swear on my life.”
She nodded, seemingly relieved. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Did she have more questions? He didn’t blame her for hesitating. He’d been a total and complete asshole. But now he wanted her to ask her questions, because he needed to give her the answers.
“I want to open up to you,” he said. “I need to.”
“You said you didn’t love me before,” she whispered. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I thought I was doing you a favor. Letting you go to a better life. To find someone without schizophrenia poisoning his DNA—like a sick crapshoot. I always thought I wanted kids of my own, but I can’t go through that again. I can’t take that chance.”
She sat up and faced him. “Baby, did you ever think to maybe ask me what I wanted?”
