“Get the fuck off her,” I roar. My vision blurs in anger at seeing another man’s hands on what’s mine. Even though I walked away, Eva will always belong to me. Stepping into the office, I slam the door shut, pinning my glower on Carrick. He doesn’t look worried that I’m about to rip him a new asshole.

“Nate, please?” When Eva’s voice cuts through my anger, I snap my gaze to her. She’s staring at me like I’m the bad guy. Perhaps I am, but she pushed me to do this. To be here fighting for her.

“What? You want to fuck him?” I gesture to Carrick who’s standing there with a knowing smirk on his face. He did this on purpose. Overconfident fucking asshole.

“Carrick, please give us a moment?” She turns to him, looks at him like he’s her knight in Armani armor. He nods once, leaning in, he plants a kiss to her forehead, keeping his eyes trained on me. Taunting me. When he strides by me, his eyes never leave mine. He leaves us in his office without a word, but the warning was clear in the look he gave me. I know he doesn’t trust me with her. I don’t blame him. The door clicks closed behind me, but I don’t move. This is her doing, so she’s in control, for once.

When I finally turn to face her again, I meet her stare. “What did you do that for? Did you want me to come here and hurt you again?”

“No, Nathan. I wanted to see if you even felt something for me. And you being here, shows how much you care for me, and don’t fucking look at me like that.” She waves her hand in the air. “As much as you deny it, your racing here to rip me from Carrick’s arms shows how much you actually want me. So, why don’t you quit playing games and tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Her body visibly shakes. As the tremors shoot through her all I want to do is go to her and pull her into my arms where she belongs, but I can’t. I need us to sort through this shit to get to that point. “I can’t take the thought of another man touching you, Eva,” I confess honestly. It’s the most I can give her, I wish she’ll let it go. But I know her too well.

“That doesn’t make sense. You don’t want me, so nobody can have me?” I’m being unfair. I know this. Who knew it was so difficult to let go. “You’re happy to share yourself with other women while I watch, but if I went to another Dominant, it didn’t matter who, you’d be jealous. And we’re not even together. How is that fair?” She stalks toward me then, raising her hand, she swings, slapping me hard across the face. “Do you know what it did to me watching you fuck other women? Using them. Letting them suck your cock? Let me tell you one thing, Nathan, you’re a fucking coward. You can’t even get hard without hurting me. Without breaking me down. That doesn’t make you a Dominant. Or a Master. That makes you a fucking pussy ass coward. That’s what you are,” she spits the words at me, fire blazing through them, flames licking at me as she tears me down, and I deserve every fucking moment. “And until you decide to change, to give me the honesty you owe me, we are done. And I will go to Carrick and ask him to take me on as his submissive.”

Her words fuel the anger inside me, but I don’t lash out, I don’t respond because everything she says is true. I see our relationship through her eyes and I wonder how she doesn’t hate me. How she’s standing here talking to me.

“I’m a selfish bastard.”

“Yes, that you are,” she tells me confidently, in her raging, yet honeyed tone. Even when she’s livid she’s beautiful, a fucking diamond in my darkness. My jewel.

“I’ve had a problem for a long time. My greed, my addiction, it made me blind to everything around me. Including you. When I walked into Seven Sins, I saw you and I had to have you,” I tell her with more honesty than I’ve ever allowed myself to give anyone. I should tell her. She needs to know what I’ve done. Why I found her, but I can’t because she’s right, I am a coward.

“Look, I can’t be yours if you’re going to go out fucking other women. I can’t share you. I gave you me, all of me and you took it and flushed it down the drain. I watched with each scene how you enjoyed those women. Sadly, I can’t give you what you need. And I know that’s why you left. I—”

“NO!” I halt her words immediately. “That’s not why I walked out. I…” This is it. Do or die. If I tell her the truth, she’ll hate me, but at least she’ll know I did love her enough to leave. “I left because I’m not good enough for you. Because I lied to you when we first met.”

“What?” she asks, shock dripping from the word, burning through my heart. Her eyes are wide, big blue orbs filled with pain. “You mean the night you asked Carrick to send me to room one?” Her question is filled with confusion. I nod, looking out through the glass at the club below, I can’t help watching the people move around, sip their drinks, enjoy their time with partners, subs and Doms.

This life, it’s not for the feint hearted. It’s a cold, cruel world and I’ve turned into that. I’ve become closed off. But when Eva strolled into my life, she did something no other woman could. She broke through those high walls I’d built, she’d seen the ugliness inside me and she loved me anyway.

“Two years ago, I was in financial debt. I was about to lose the company, but it wasn’t just mine because my best friend trusted me enough to partner with me and if I went down, Asher would too. I didn’t have a choice, I was pushed into a corner and I made the wrong choice. My greed sent me spiraling down a dark hole and when I saw light, it was in the form of a check. Attached to that piece of paper was an agreement.” I allow my words to stop for a moment, for her to hear what I’m saying. To try to piece together my past.

Deep down, I want her to fall into my arms once I’ve confessed and tell me it’s going to be okay. For the first time in all my life, I want to collar a submissive. I want to claim her and no other. My chest aches, tightens painfully as I recall how much Evangeline Gallagher means to me. And how much she’s about to hate me.

“I took the money, I agreed to come in here and find you. I agreed to hurt you in the voyeur room. I said yes to degrading you, humiliating you. In the same room where people can watch and get off on the shit going on inside. She knew I was a monster and she took that as her in to drag me into this sick plan of hers.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you talking about?”

I can’t look at her, so I drop my gaze to the floor. I watch her shoes move into my line of sight. She’s imploring me to meet her eyes, but I can’t. I can feel her heated stare on me. It’s burning a hole right through me.

“She wanted to see you suffer. I don’t know why, I didn’t ask.” I shake my head in frustration at my stupidity. “But after that first night, I couldn’t stay away from you, so I told her that I was done with you, that one night was a once off.”

I finally lift my head to face Eva. I want to reach for her, but it’s too dangerous. We’ll both hurt each other and that’s not what I want.

“She believed me until she walked in here last week. We were leaving after playing a scene. I received a call that evening at my office, telling me that if I don’t let you go, she’ll expose who I really am. She’s threatening to take my company, to tell you I’d taken money to fuck you, and I have no way to change her mind. I didn’t realize who she was to you until you told me your name.” 

“Nate, nothing you’re saying is making sense. Who is this woman? She’s blackmailing you. It’s illegal. Why me? I’m so confused nothing you’re saying is actually an explanation to why you left. What she’s doing is wrong, you can report her. You can go to the—”

“I can’t go to anyone. If I do, she will sell the photos and videos she has of me in the dungeon to the papers. I’ll lose everything.”

Eva steps forward then, she doesn’t reach for me, she only looks into my eyes. “It sounds to me like you’ve already lost everything that means something to you.” Her honesty is jarring.

“Yes, I have. I want you, Eva. You’re my everything. Since the moment I laid eyes on you, the only person who’s ever accepted me for who I am and not for what I can give them. The only woman I want in my arms, in my home, and in my bed. I need you, my beautiful diamond.” I implore her with a gaze. I pin her in place with a look that tells her I love her. I’ve never said the words to anyone. But I want to say them to her. Not now. This isn’t the right time. I want her to be with me because she wants to be, not because I’m telling her what she wants to hear.

“Then tell me who this woman is that’s doing this to you? Nate, if you want this to work, if you really want a second chance, then you need to trust me.”

She’s right. I do. I need to let go of the fear of people walking out on me. To steel myself from having that happen, over the years I’ve made sure that I was the one to walk out. Now, I have a choice.

“Marissa Gallagher,” the words fall from my mouth, effortlessly yet painfully. Slowly, her gaze glosses over, tears fill those beautiful blue orbs and they shimmer as she regards me.

“My… my fucking mother? Did you…? Oh, God…” she murmurs while stepping back, not finding the words I know she’s dying to ask. I should answer. Put her out of her misery, but I don’t. I’m an asshole like that, so I watch her stumble over the question. “You… Did you? You and her?” Her face is filled with torment so pained, that I feel it in my chest.

With Eva, every emotional scar I’m causing her, is one I’m carving into my own soul.

“Answer me!” Her screech is loud, it bounces off the walls causing me to step closer to her which is a mistake. Her hand comes out again, but this time I’m too fast. Before she can make contact with my face, I grip her wrist, pulling her against me. The tears she held back all this time fall, they race down her pink cheeks in trails of salty emotion.

“I have never been with her, never laid a hand on her. She and I never fucked. There’s this strange addiction that she has to seeing women, submissives she chooses debased. Degraded,” I utter, as bile rises in my throat, causing me to want to kill for the woman in my arms. She shuts her eyes to my gaze and I miss the blue, the pools of torment that I caused. “Eva, please look at me.”  

“I can’t, Nate. I can’t do this. That money that paid off your debt, that was money you took to fuck me. To hurt me. To humiliate me in front of her, all for what? Did she tell you why she was doing it? Did she explain why she is so angry at me?”

I shake my head, but I know she can’t see it, so I give her the honest answer. “No, I didn’t know who you were to her until you told me your last name. I had no idea why, or how, all I knew was I had to do what she asked.”

She’s silent for a moment, and I feel the tension radiating from her. “So you knew most of the time we were together who I was, but you didn’t once think to say anything?”

“Eva, I was scared of losing you. I realize now how stupid that might sound, but seeing you walk out the door was something I couldn’t bring myself to see.” My voice is raspy as the guilt chokes me with a vice like grip.

“When my father died he left all his assets to me. Money beyond my wildest imagination. A week after his funeral just after they read the Last Will and Testament, that’s when she reappeared in my life. It was sudden that she was back in the picture. After all those years, leaving me with him, walking out on her family. Apparently, somehow, she had heard through the grapevine that I was about to inherit a fortune, she decided to play the doting mother.”

Eva doesn’t look at me as she tells me her story. Her truth. And I have a feeling this is going to gut me more than anything I’ve ever been through.

“She had lawyers who fought that she was my legal guardian which allowed her to take hold of all that money I had from my dad. Slowly, she swindled it into foreign accounts I can’t find. I never told anyone about this, Carrick knows what she made me do, what she and her vile filth of a partner made me do. I had to stop him from murdering them in cold blood that night. I was forced out of the home my dad gave me when Carrick found me.”

“What did they do to you? Why are you so broken, my beautiful diamond?” I ask. When I reach for her, she doesn’t move. “I want to know. I’ve trusted you, please trust me. This,” I gesture between us as I cup her cheek in my hand, “is not ending. I can’t live without you, Eva. I know I can’t. But I want you to tell me what happened to you. We can work through this, if you can forgive me, if you can find it in your heart to see past my mistake, we’ll figure this out.”

She darts her gaze to me. For a moment, I think she’s going to deny me, but she closes her mouth again, as if considering my words. It feels as if I’m standing on a goddamn cliff about to jump. If she refuses me, I’m not sure how I’d walk out of here. But I’ll never give up fighting for her.

“Eva, you are my everything. Mine. No one else’s. You know that and so do I. Even if you walk out here right now, I’ll find you, I’ll fight for you, and make no mistake, I’ll hurt, maim, or kill anyone who stands in my way.”

She inhales a deep breath, and then utters her confession with raw, agonizing honesty. “When my mother brought home her partner as she called him, Morgan was nice, he was friendly. But I didn’t realize what they’d gotten themselves into. He slowly became more…” Her words trail off and I know immediately what she’s not telling me. My blood pressure hits an all-time high as I see red. I see fucking death before me and it’s going to be by my hand. “It was the night of my sixteenth birthday everything changed. They said they were throwing me a party. But it was the night my mother really started showing her true colors. They had invited so called friends that…”

She breaks then, Eva fucking shatters and falls into my arms like a rag doll. I’m holding her up, scooping her into my arms, I walk over to the sofa and sit down with her curled in my lap.

“Morgan had a few friends over, they were sniffing coke off the dining room table. The same table where my father and I used to have dinner.”

“Eva—”

“Th-they paraded me in front of those men, six of them sat and ogled me,” her voice cracks and I feel the pain in my own throat. “Their hands… Morgan said he’d make sure when by the time I was eighteen that I knew what a whore felt like.”

“What the fuck did your mother do?”

Her gaze lifts then, meeting mine with acute torment in those blue eyes. “Nothing. I was forced to watch her fuck those men while they groped and grabbed me. She enjoyed it. That’s when I ran.”

I’m close to exploding, to fucking breaking something, someone. And I know who’s going to help me sort this bitch out. Marissa will fucking pay and when she does I’ll be there to watch her fall so far down the abyss of degradation and torture. And I’ll smile.

Her confession cracks through the concrete walls that I’ve built around my heart and I know it’s time. Right here, right now. I need to do it.

“I love you, Eva. I want nothing more than to call you mine. I swear on all I’m worth, I’ll make her pay for what she did to you. Her and that piece of filth. But I want us to do it together. Be mine. Please? Let me be your knight this time, not Carrick, not anyone else. I’ll prove to you I’m worthy of you, your submission, and everything that comes along with it. But most of all, I want to hold that beautiful heart you keep locked away in my hands. To keep it safe from breaking. Will you give it to me?”

A moment of clarity attacks me with vengeance and I know what I need to do. I lift her, setting her on the sofa and for the first time in my life I drop to my knees. I kneel for a woman. I submit to her instead of the other way around.

Her gasp is soft, a gentle sound that seems to lull me into a cocoon of safety. Confidence soars as I reach into my pocket and hold up the long velvet box which holds the gift I bought before I walked out and left her. I was always too scared to give it to her. Too scared to admit I wanted her as mine.

“Nate,” she says in a tone filled with surprise. Sadness no longer lingers in her blue eyes and I intend to keep it that way. Forever.

“Eva,” I respond. We don’t need words. Since the first night we met, we never needed to say anything. Our souls converse in ways that our mouths cannot.

My own fear of loving her is gone. Now, all bets are off. She takes the box, snapping it open. An inhale of surprise is the only thing I hear. A smile lingers on her full pink lips. The silver collar with a small heart locket that’s been engraved for her sits nestled in the black velvet. Nate’s Sweet Slut. It’s the only name I’ve ever called her in our scenes because she is mine.