Broken Falcon, page 19
He texted her: Your site’s down. Everything okay?
She replied almost immediately: Fine. Technical difficulties is all.
He didn’t believe that for a second, but he wouldn’t get anywhere with her by pushing for answers she didn’t want to give.
Chase: Anything I can help with?
Eden: Not at the moment.
Chase: We need to talk.
Eden: No. *You* need to talk. You need to tell me the truth. Did you stalk me? Run a background check on me?
Chase: No. Never. Not even after the explosion when I should have asked Mothman to do it. It felt wrong. I couldn’t violate your privacy like that. I swear.
He doubted she believed him, but he had to try. Later, he’d tell her that Mothman had done the search, but he didn’t know what he’d found. But that kind of conversation had to be in person. There was too much nuance that would be lost in texts.
When she didn’t answer, he tried again.
Chase: Please meet with me? You pick the place. I need to ask you about Penny.
There was a long wait for her response, during which Chase tried and failed to identify the emotions he was feeling. He decided to name whatever it was tornado because it summed up what was happening in his brain quite well even if it didn’t hit upon an actual feeling.
It occurred to him he could use a cloud system for everything moving forward because at least clouds made sense. For example, today had started out very stratus but had shifted to cumulus when she responded to his first text. But now things were very, very tornadoey.
At last, sunlight peeked through the funnel as he read her reply.
Eden: Fine. Since I am apparently taking the night off, we can meet at my place. Better that we have this conversation in private. You’re bringing dinner. I want Thai food. There’s a good restaurant a few blocks from my house.
He smiled at her demands as the cloud began to turn fluffy and white.
Chase: Anything in particular you want?
Eden: I’ll submit an order online. Tell me now if you don’t like spice.
Chase: No more than two stars for me. When do you want me to show up?
Eden: I’m on the Metro now. Let’s say six, to give me time to decompress.
He wondered where she’d gone that she needed to decompress, but again, he wasn’t about to press her on anything except the identity and location of Penny.
Chase: Fine. See you then.
He tucked away his phone and looked at his watch. It was only four. He was done with his one-on-one training sessions for the day. The best thing for him to do to kill time was go to the gym. Physical exertion was the only thing that kept his brain from tying up in knots.
Spending too much time obsessing over how he was going to convince Eden to trust him might just destroy what was left of his cumulonimbus mind.
Eden paced her apartment, wishing she’d told Chase to come over earlier.
Better to get it over with. Better not to have time to think.
She was still trying to sort Chase from Falcon in her head. The confession of torture and abuse. That had to be real.
It was the kind of thing he would feel safer revealing as anonymous Falcon.
As scared and angry and hurt as she’d been, she felt new emotions surging to the surface. Empathy for the pain he’d gone through, warmth that he’d trusted her with his story after he’d met her in person.
It struck her then. He’d trusted her with his deepest wound after they’d met. She hadn’t been an anonymous camgirl to him in that moment. And he’d chosen to tell her.
She had to proceed with caution around that aspect. He’d shared something she’d bet he hadn’t told anyone he didn’t have to—prosecutors, psychologists for the prosecution—but he’d likely never volunteered the information to anyone else.
As angry and hurt as she was, she needed to make sure he felt safe with her knowledge.
She remembered him telling her he hadn’t shared the letter he received from his abuser and her suspicion it contained information he didn’t want anyone else to see. There was so much about his abuse he had yet to process.
She couldn’t turn her back on him there. Because dammit, she cared about Falcon.
She cared about Chase.
Should she continue seeing Falcon online? Did that even make sense?
But if online was the only way he could truly talk to her, maybe she should. As Falcon, he didn’t stutter. Would he be forced to talk to her in a whisper when they were face-to-face tonight?
The brain scientist in her found that piece fascinating, but he wasn’t an object of study and she couldn’t be thinking of him as such.
It was true that she’d kept notes on her clients from the start in addition to documenting the changes within herself as she embraced a freer sexuality than she’d ever imagined, but she’d always been careful to code the notes to protect the client’s anonymity. She had the basics of what they’d shared for the why of them seeking a camgirl for companionship and what they gained from the voyeuristic relationship. She knew for certain she hadn’t added to her notes on Falcon since before he returned from his business trip.
His business trip.
Oh. Wow. It all clicked together. He’d gone to Portland to help train counterprotesters at the white supremacist rallies. He’d been there for the takedown of the White Patriot group. Had, in fact, played a key role in the arrests that were made.
Part of her wanted to pull out her old notes on Falcon and look for signs about his work. Hints about the abuse he’d suffered, but that felt wrong. He was Chase now, and she didn’t want to face him armed with the psychological profile she’d been building on him for the last several months.
Instead, she paced her living room, waiting for six o’clock. Bracing herself for seeing him again. With each step, she found her anger and hurt diminished.
Last night, he’d kissed her against the wall at the bottom of her stairs, and she’d wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone in her life.
There was raw heat whenever they neared each other. Was it because he’d responded to Desiree instinctively that first time they met in person? Or was it their undeniable chemistry? Did they have a natural combustion point?
If her brain was scanned using fMRI when he was nearby, how lit would the results be? Hook him up to the same scan and would his brain show matching fireworks?
If Chase wanted her—Eden, not Desiree—he could solve a lot of her problems. She wanted sex but wouldn’t sleep with a guy who didn’t know about Desiree. Check.
The guy couldn’t have issues with her job. Check.
Of course, that was a guess, but if he did have a problem, he’d be a pretty big hypocrite, and she didn’t sleep with hypocrites.
She’d been feeling so lonely these last few months, and then Falcon reappeared, and she’d gotten the fake cuddling she craved. But with Chase, she could have real cuddling.
Was she crazy to even consider this after what he’d withheld from her? Or would she be crazy not to go for it?
She glanced at her watch. He would be here in twenty-five minutes.
She sent him a text.
Eden: Adding one more item to the shopping list. I want Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Pralines and Cream.
Chase stared at the text in bemusement. Was a demand for ice cream a good sign or bad? Would he show up at her door with dinner and dessert only to have her take the food, then kick him to the curb?
He couldn’t exactly blame her if she did.
He faced the complex puzzle of priorities on the short drive to her place. If he bought the ice cream first, it would start to melt sooner, and if he ended up waiting for the takeout order, it could sit in the car too long on what had proven to be a warm early-fall day. He didn’t know he was going ice cream shopping when he left the compound, or he’d have raided the supplies for an insulated bag and ice.
If he got the ice cream after the takeout, their hot meal would cool before he reached her townhouse.
It wasn’t exactly the most difficult problem, but it was the kind of thing that he found he had to process carefully since having the chip removed. Basic logic came harder and was frustrating as hell.
Scary, even.
Each time he struggled to process a simple decision like this, he had to wonder if he could still be a functional adult. He could work for Raptor because his job was physical and he’d been building the muscle memory required since he was a toddler. His body wouldn’t fail him.
His mind was a different matter. He’d briefly tried living on his own but ended up back at the compound where basic living decisions, including most meals, were handled for him.
Sometimes he felt like he was a fucking toddler again. Only now he wasn’t training his brain to manage physical reflexes. No, he was learning the most basic adult functions.
He also realized in this moment how much his coworkers had been coddling him over the years. They’d probably figured out that he stressed too much over ice cream first vs. hot food first and never left decisions like that up to him.
He pulled into the grocery store parking lot, finding the decision made because the supermarket was on the way to the restaurant, not the other way around. This was a factor he probably should have considered in the first place.
Who knew there would be so many variables to picking up dinner and dessert?
Inside the store, he faced another dilemma. Eden’s message said “Pralines and Cream,” but the store didn’t have that flavor. They had Bourbon Praline Pecan and two flavors with cream in the name. But he didn’t think Rosé and Cream or Cookies and Cream were what she wanted.
He googled Häagen-Dazs flavors on his phone and discovered Pralines and Cream had been discontinued.
Now what? He could text her a photo and ask her what to buy. Was that a normal thing to do? Or did it show indecisiveness? Weakness?
He leaned his head against the clear glass freezer door. He could fight off three goons at once and send two of them to the hospital, but he didn’t know how to buy ice cream for a…date?
No. Not a date. A meeting with food.
There was only one logical solution. He grabbed a pint of every flavor that included the word praline or cream. But not cream as in ice cream, or he’d have to buy the entire aisle. Which, for a moment, almost seemed logical. But maybe that was because he was hungry.
He paused on that thought. He should pick out a flavor for himself. After all, he was supplying the food part of their meeting with food. He could pick something he liked too.
What did he like?
He couldn’t remember. When did he last have ice cream?
He had no idea.
Better start simple. Find out what he liked. He grabbed a pint of strawberry. His gaze landed on a pint of Pineapple Coconut Häagen-Dazs, and his mind returned to the weeks he’d spent in Hawaii at Rav’s private estate between working in Alaska and moving to the DC area to work for Raptor’s home office.
He didn’t know it at the time, but Parks already had her claws into him, but she hadn’t yet put the chip in his head. Those weeks on Kauai, he’d been gloriously free of her. He’d loved every minute of the peaceful break. And he’d had pineapple ice cream on the beach, looking out at the vast blue ocean with the hot sun on his skin. He’d felt like the whole world was before him, his mind was clear—clearer even than it was now, he realized—and he’d been starting over, recovered from the nightmare of his months in Alaska.
Until he met Desiree, it might have been the last time he felt deeply happy. Full of hope. It was an emotion-infused memory that was all his own. Parks hadn’t messed with it because there wasn’t anything sexual about it.
He put the pineapple-flavored ice cream in the basket, wondering if taste could deliver memories with the same power as scent.
The Thai food pickup went smoothly, and he realized how ridiculous it was to have made it so complex in his mind.
Would he ever be normal?
He’d bet a shrink would say there was no such thing as normal, but he had no intention of ever seeing a shrink again, so he was on his own figuring it all out.
He pulled into Eden’s driveway, and the garage door opened automatically. She was inviting him to park inside. There was a metaphor there, but he would do his best to face her tonight and have the conversation they needed without showing signs of how much he wanted her.
She could well hate him.
He needed to assume her feelings toward him were on the hate end of the spectrum and work from there. Any movement to bridge the emotional chasm that separated them would have to come from her. All he could do was offer his apology and tell her the truth about everything.
Even his messed-up mind.
He climbed from the vehicle and grabbed the two bags of Thai food—apparently, she too was hungry—and the grocery bag full of ice cream pints and entered the interior switchback stairwell. She wasn’t there, so he locked the interior door and started up the stairs. She had an alarm keypad by the front door to reset the alarm.
He entered her apartment, but she wasn’t in the living room or kitchen.
“Eden?” he called out.
“Put the ice cream in the freezer and leave the food on the counter.”
He did as instructed, then paced the room, waiting for her next command. He paused by the front door to check the alarm system. Fully engaged. Good.
He liked that she was careful.
But then, he liked everything about her. He wished he knew what to say to convince her he was sorry. Or explain that his brain struggled with ice cream purchases, so the idea of him properly tackling how to tell his favorite camgirl that he was a pathetic guy who paid her money to do dirty things online for his pleasure was beyond him.
And that might be the crux of it. His biggest fear. That she found her clients pathetic. That she secretly looked down on them. Even despised them. Despised him for what he made her do. It didn’t fit anything he knew about her. He knew damn well she’d enjoyed their sessions. She’d opened up to him. But the fear remained.
After all, he was pathetic. Broken.
Ice cream incompetent, even.
He’d bypassed all the basic cloud metaphors and gone straight to cat four hurricane status. His brain was now buffeted by wind.
His deepest, darkest fear surfaced under the onslaught of the gale. He’d told her what to do, and she’d obeyed because he’d paid her. Was he any different from Parks? Was he, in fact, her Parks?
“Chase?” Her voice came from the end of the hall.
“Yeah?”
“I need your help. Come into my room.”
He strode down the short hall, his heart pounding as he approached the eye of the storm. He paused before the door, then took a deep breath and pushed it open.
There before him was Eden, lying on top of the king-sized bed, wearing a sheer purple teddy—one he’d never seen before—with both of her hands bound to the headboard in padded, matching purple wrist cuffs.
“I seem to have found myself tied up. Can you help me?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The look on Chase’s face made the hurry and difficulty she’d had in cuffing herself after resetting the alarm worth it. Thankfully, the cuffs had clips she was able to lock in one-handed, but it hadn’t been easy, and she’d had to take a moment to catch her breath and prepare herself before calling him into the room.
And now he stood in her doorway, eyes wide with surprise as his gaze traveled over her body. His gaze returned to her face, and the heat was unmistakable. Which was good, because if this didn’t turn him on, she doubted anything would.
“B-but this is j-j-just a meeting with food.”
She raised a brow. “A meeting with food?”
His eyes narrowed as if he were focusing inward. When he spoke, he didn’t bother with the whisper, but his words were clear. “This was supposed to be a meeting. Not a date.”
“What if I said I want it to be a date?”
Studying his face as she was, she caught the exact moment when he realized she was echoing his own words from the other night back to him. But still, the confusion remained in his eyes.
“But—you—I…” His nostrils flared as his gaze roamed her body. “I screwed up. And you were rightfully hurt. And angry.”
“Those are both true. But the way I see it, there are more truths for us to explore. One is that there was no way for you to tell me the first night we met that you’d recognized me. Not without revealing me to Tony, which I didn’t want. And definitely not when we were alone in the car together, because I probably would have panicked.”
He nodded. “And then when I went online, you said you wanted to fuck me. Me. And there was no way I could bow out of that private session. Or ruin it by telling you who I was.”
She licked her lips. She wore just light gloss and makeup. Tonight, she was Eden. “What did it do to you, to hear me talk about how I wanted to take you to a hotel room and have my way with you?”
He stepped into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed. “It was the most erotic moment of my life. Until this one.”
“Do you like this? Me tied up?”
“Very much.”
She’d suspected as much. He liked to be in control. It probably had to do with the abuse he’d suffered. With the cuffs, he was assured she wouldn’t touch him unless he wanted to be touched.
The bondage set was for sexual play, and she could get out of it easily if she wanted to. But it gave her limits. A reminder to keep her hands to herself until he was ready.
Plus, it would be fun. She liked the way he played.
She nodded toward the padded cuffs at the foot of the bed. They were two ends of a long strap that went between the box spring and mattress because the bed didn’t have a footboard to hook the straps to. “If you want to cuff my ankles, keeping my legs open for you, you can.” She spread her legs as she spoke, so he’d see the position she’d be in.
She’d exposed herself like this—not with the bondage toys, but still offering her body to men she couldn’t see—hundreds of times online. Even so, her heart pounded as she offered herself up for real for the first time.
She replied almost immediately: Fine. Technical difficulties is all.
He didn’t believe that for a second, but he wouldn’t get anywhere with her by pushing for answers she didn’t want to give.
Chase: Anything I can help with?
Eden: Not at the moment.
Chase: We need to talk.
Eden: No. *You* need to talk. You need to tell me the truth. Did you stalk me? Run a background check on me?
Chase: No. Never. Not even after the explosion when I should have asked Mothman to do it. It felt wrong. I couldn’t violate your privacy like that. I swear.
He doubted she believed him, but he had to try. Later, he’d tell her that Mothman had done the search, but he didn’t know what he’d found. But that kind of conversation had to be in person. There was too much nuance that would be lost in texts.
When she didn’t answer, he tried again.
Chase: Please meet with me? You pick the place. I need to ask you about Penny.
There was a long wait for her response, during which Chase tried and failed to identify the emotions he was feeling. He decided to name whatever it was tornado because it summed up what was happening in his brain quite well even if it didn’t hit upon an actual feeling.
It occurred to him he could use a cloud system for everything moving forward because at least clouds made sense. For example, today had started out very stratus but had shifted to cumulus when she responded to his first text. But now things were very, very tornadoey.
At last, sunlight peeked through the funnel as he read her reply.
Eden: Fine. Since I am apparently taking the night off, we can meet at my place. Better that we have this conversation in private. You’re bringing dinner. I want Thai food. There’s a good restaurant a few blocks from my house.
He smiled at her demands as the cloud began to turn fluffy and white.
Chase: Anything in particular you want?
Eden: I’ll submit an order online. Tell me now if you don’t like spice.
Chase: No more than two stars for me. When do you want me to show up?
Eden: I’m on the Metro now. Let’s say six, to give me time to decompress.
He wondered where she’d gone that she needed to decompress, but again, he wasn’t about to press her on anything except the identity and location of Penny.
Chase: Fine. See you then.
He tucked away his phone and looked at his watch. It was only four. He was done with his one-on-one training sessions for the day. The best thing for him to do to kill time was go to the gym. Physical exertion was the only thing that kept his brain from tying up in knots.
Spending too much time obsessing over how he was going to convince Eden to trust him might just destroy what was left of his cumulonimbus mind.
Eden paced her apartment, wishing she’d told Chase to come over earlier.
Better to get it over with. Better not to have time to think.
She was still trying to sort Chase from Falcon in her head. The confession of torture and abuse. That had to be real.
It was the kind of thing he would feel safer revealing as anonymous Falcon.
As scared and angry and hurt as she’d been, she felt new emotions surging to the surface. Empathy for the pain he’d gone through, warmth that he’d trusted her with his story after he’d met her in person.
It struck her then. He’d trusted her with his deepest wound after they’d met. She hadn’t been an anonymous camgirl to him in that moment. And he’d chosen to tell her.
She had to proceed with caution around that aspect. He’d shared something she’d bet he hadn’t told anyone he didn’t have to—prosecutors, psychologists for the prosecution—but he’d likely never volunteered the information to anyone else.
As angry and hurt as she was, she needed to make sure he felt safe with her knowledge.
She remembered him telling her he hadn’t shared the letter he received from his abuser and her suspicion it contained information he didn’t want anyone else to see. There was so much about his abuse he had yet to process.
She couldn’t turn her back on him there. Because dammit, she cared about Falcon.
She cared about Chase.
Should she continue seeing Falcon online? Did that even make sense?
But if online was the only way he could truly talk to her, maybe she should. As Falcon, he didn’t stutter. Would he be forced to talk to her in a whisper when they were face-to-face tonight?
The brain scientist in her found that piece fascinating, but he wasn’t an object of study and she couldn’t be thinking of him as such.
It was true that she’d kept notes on her clients from the start in addition to documenting the changes within herself as she embraced a freer sexuality than she’d ever imagined, but she’d always been careful to code the notes to protect the client’s anonymity. She had the basics of what they’d shared for the why of them seeking a camgirl for companionship and what they gained from the voyeuristic relationship. She knew for certain she hadn’t added to her notes on Falcon since before he returned from his business trip.
His business trip.
Oh. Wow. It all clicked together. He’d gone to Portland to help train counterprotesters at the white supremacist rallies. He’d been there for the takedown of the White Patriot group. Had, in fact, played a key role in the arrests that were made.
Part of her wanted to pull out her old notes on Falcon and look for signs about his work. Hints about the abuse he’d suffered, but that felt wrong. He was Chase now, and she didn’t want to face him armed with the psychological profile she’d been building on him for the last several months.
Instead, she paced her living room, waiting for six o’clock. Bracing herself for seeing him again. With each step, she found her anger and hurt diminished.
Last night, he’d kissed her against the wall at the bottom of her stairs, and she’d wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone in her life.
There was raw heat whenever they neared each other. Was it because he’d responded to Desiree instinctively that first time they met in person? Or was it their undeniable chemistry? Did they have a natural combustion point?
If her brain was scanned using fMRI when he was nearby, how lit would the results be? Hook him up to the same scan and would his brain show matching fireworks?
If Chase wanted her—Eden, not Desiree—he could solve a lot of her problems. She wanted sex but wouldn’t sleep with a guy who didn’t know about Desiree. Check.
The guy couldn’t have issues with her job. Check.
Of course, that was a guess, but if he did have a problem, he’d be a pretty big hypocrite, and she didn’t sleep with hypocrites.
She’d been feeling so lonely these last few months, and then Falcon reappeared, and she’d gotten the fake cuddling she craved. But with Chase, she could have real cuddling.
Was she crazy to even consider this after what he’d withheld from her? Or would she be crazy not to go for it?
She glanced at her watch. He would be here in twenty-five minutes.
She sent him a text.
Eden: Adding one more item to the shopping list. I want Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Pralines and Cream.
Chase stared at the text in bemusement. Was a demand for ice cream a good sign or bad? Would he show up at her door with dinner and dessert only to have her take the food, then kick him to the curb?
He couldn’t exactly blame her if she did.
He faced the complex puzzle of priorities on the short drive to her place. If he bought the ice cream first, it would start to melt sooner, and if he ended up waiting for the takeout order, it could sit in the car too long on what had proven to be a warm early-fall day. He didn’t know he was going ice cream shopping when he left the compound, or he’d have raided the supplies for an insulated bag and ice.
If he got the ice cream after the takeout, their hot meal would cool before he reached her townhouse.
It wasn’t exactly the most difficult problem, but it was the kind of thing that he found he had to process carefully since having the chip removed. Basic logic came harder and was frustrating as hell.
Scary, even.
Each time he struggled to process a simple decision like this, he had to wonder if he could still be a functional adult. He could work for Raptor because his job was physical and he’d been building the muscle memory required since he was a toddler. His body wouldn’t fail him.
His mind was a different matter. He’d briefly tried living on his own but ended up back at the compound where basic living decisions, including most meals, were handled for him.
Sometimes he felt like he was a fucking toddler again. Only now he wasn’t training his brain to manage physical reflexes. No, he was learning the most basic adult functions.
He also realized in this moment how much his coworkers had been coddling him over the years. They’d probably figured out that he stressed too much over ice cream first vs. hot food first and never left decisions like that up to him.
He pulled into the grocery store parking lot, finding the decision made because the supermarket was on the way to the restaurant, not the other way around. This was a factor he probably should have considered in the first place.
Who knew there would be so many variables to picking up dinner and dessert?
Inside the store, he faced another dilemma. Eden’s message said “Pralines and Cream,” but the store didn’t have that flavor. They had Bourbon Praline Pecan and two flavors with cream in the name. But he didn’t think Rosé and Cream or Cookies and Cream were what she wanted.
He googled Häagen-Dazs flavors on his phone and discovered Pralines and Cream had been discontinued.
Now what? He could text her a photo and ask her what to buy. Was that a normal thing to do? Or did it show indecisiveness? Weakness?
He leaned his head against the clear glass freezer door. He could fight off three goons at once and send two of them to the hospital, but he didn’t know how to buy ice cream for a…date?
No. Not a date. A meeting with food.
There was only one logical solution. He grabbed a pint of every flavor that included the word praline or cream. But not cream as in ice cream, or he’d have to buy the entire aisle. Which, for a moment, almost seemed logical. But maybe that was because he was hungry.
He paused on that thought. He should pick out a flavor for himself. After all, he was supplying the food part of their meeting with food. He could pick something he liked too.
What did he like?
He couldn’t remember. When did he last have ice cream?
He had no idea.
Better start simple. Find out what he liked. He grabbed a pint of strawberry. His gaze landed on a pint of Pineapple Coconut Häagen-Dazs, and his mind returned to the weeks he’d spent in Hawaii at Rav’s private estate between working in Alaska and moving to the DC area to work for Raptor’s home office.
He didn’t know it at the time, but Parks already had her claws into him, but she hadn’t yet put the chip in his head. Those weeks on Kauai, he’d been gloriously free of her. He’d loved every minute of the peaceful break. And he’d had pineapple ice cream on the beach, looking out at the vast blue ocean with the hot sun on his skin. He’d felt like the whole world was before him, his mind was clear—clearer even than it was now, he realized—and he’d been starting over, recovered from the nightmare of his months in Alaska.
Until he met Desiree, it might have been the last time he felt deeply happy. Full of hope. It was an emotion-infused memory that was all his own. Parks hadn’t messed with it because there wasn’t anything sexual about it.
He put the pineapple-flavored ice cream in the basket, wondering if taste could deliver memories with the same power as scent.
The Thai food pickup went smoothly, and he realized how ridiculous it was to have made it so complex in his mind.
Would he ever be normal?
He’d bet a shrink would say there was no such thing as normal, but he had no intention of ever seeing a shrink again, so he was on his own figuring it all out.
He pulled into Eden’s driveway, and the garage door opened automatically. She was inviting him to park inside. There was a metaphor there, but he would do his best to face her tonight and have the conversation they needed without showing signs of how much he wanted her.
She could well hate him.
He needed to assume her feelings toward him were on the hate end of the spectrum and work from there. Any movement to bridge the emotional chasm that separated them would have to come from her. All he could do was offer his apology and tell her the truth about everything.
Even his messed-up mind.
He climbed from the vehicle and grabbed the two bags of Thai food—apparently, she too was hungry—and the grocery bag full of ice cream pints and entered the interior switchback stairwell. She wasn’t there, so he locked the interior door and started up the stairs. She had an alarm keypad by the front door to reset the alarm.
He entered her apartment, but she wasn’t in the living room or kitchen.
“Eden?” he called out.
“Put the ice cream in the freezer and leave the food on the counter.”
He did as instructed, then paced the room, waiting for her next command. He paused by the front door to check the alarm system. Fully engaged. Good.
He liked that she was careful.
But then, he liked everything about her. He wished he knew what to say to convince her he was sorry. Or explain that his brain struggled with ice cream purchases, so the idea of him properly tackling how to tell his favorite camgirl that he was a pathetic guy who paid her money to do dirty things online for his pleasure was beyond him.
And that might be the crux of it. His biggest fear. That she found her clients pathetic. That she secretly looked down on them. Even despised them. Despised him for what he made her do. It didn’t fit anything he knew about her. He knew damn well she’d enjoyed their sessions. She’d opened up to him. But the fear remained.
After all, he was pathetic. Broken.
Ice cream incompetent, even.
He’d bypassed all the basic cloud metaphors and gone straight to cat four hurricane status. His brain was now buffeted by wind.
His deepest, darkest fear surfaced under the onslaught of the gale. He’d told her what to do, and she’d obeyed because he’d paid her. Was he any different from Parks? Was he, in fact, her Parks?
“Chase?” Her voice came from the end of the hall.
“Yeah?”
“I need your help. Come into my room.”
He strode down the short hall, his heart pounding as he approached the eye of the storm. He paused before the door, then took a deep breath and pushed it open.
There before him was Eden, lying on top of the king-sized bed, wearing a sheer purple teddy—one he’d never seen before—with both of her hands bound to the headboard in padded, matching purple wrist cuffs.
“I seem to have found myself tied up. Can you help me?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The look on Chase’s face made the hurry and difficulty she’d had in cuffing herself after resetting the alarm worth it. Thankfully, the cuffs had clips she was able to lock in one-handed, but it hadn’t been easy, and she’d had to take a moment to catch her breath and prepare herself before calling him into the room.
And now he stood in her doorway, eyes wide with surprise as his gaze traveled over her body. His gaze returned to her face, and the heat was unmistakable. Which was good, because if this didn’t turn him on, she doubted anything would.
“B-but this is j-j-just a meeting with food.”
She raised a brow. “A meeting with food?”
His eyes narrowed as if he were focusing inward. When he spoke, he didn’t bother with the whisper, but his words were clear. “This was supposed to be a meeting. Not a date.”
“What if I said I want it to be a date?”
Studying his face as she was, she caught the exact moment when he realized she was echoing his own words from the other night back to him. But still, the confusion remained in his eyes.
“But—you—I…” His nostrils flared as his gaze roamed her body. “I screwed up. And you were rightfully hurt. And angry.”
“Those are both true. But the way I see it, there are more truths for us to explore. One is that there was no way for you to tell me the first night we met that you’d recognized me. Not without revealing me to Tony, which I didn’t want. And definitely not when we were alone in the car together, because I probably would have panicked.”
He nodded. “And then when I went online, you said you wanted to fuck me. Me. And there was no way I could bow out of that private session. Or ruin it by telling you who I was.”
She licked her lips. She wore just light gloss and makeup. Tonight, she was Eden. “What did it do to you, to hear me talk about how I wanted to take you to a hotel room and have my way with you?”
He stepped into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed. “It was the most erotic moment of my life. Until this one.”
“Do you like this? Me tied up?”
“Very much.”
She’d suspected as much. He liked to be in control. It probably had to do with the abuse he’d suffered. With the cuffs, he was assured she wouldn’t touch him unless he wanted to be touched.
The bondage set was for sexual play, and she could get out of it easily if she wanted to. But it gave her limits. A reminder to keep her hands to herself until he was ready.
Plus, it would be fun. She liked the way he played.
She nodded toward the padded cuffs at the foot of the bed. They were two ends of a long strap that went between the box spring and mattress because the bed didn’t have a footboard to hook the straps to. “If you want to cuff my ankles, keeping my legs open for you, you can.” She spread her legs as she spoke, so he’d see the position she’d be in.
She’d exposed herself like this—not with the bondage toys, but still offering her body to men she couldn’t see—hundreds of times online. Even so, her heart pounded as she offered herself up for real for the first time.
