I lean against the barrier in front of the race track, watching two exotic super cars scream past. There’s a small crowd of VIPs and some of my business partners present. I don’t fail to notice the men from the Dominican Republic are here as well. My temper may have gotten the better of me last night, but I still feel a slow burning fury toward Brianne. The problem is, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about punishing her for being dishonest with me. And for the email she sent. I imagine laying her out in my playroom, arms and ankles strapped to the bed while I take my time getting her to apologize.

Fuck.

I feel more than lust toward Brianne though. In the past that’s all it ever was. Maybe I had some fleeting feelings for my submissives beyond the need to dominate, but it was never anything lasting. But now, just thinking of Brianne makes my skin prickle and my heart pound. It’s not just a kink with her. Hell, I haven’t even had her in my playroom.

I can still see how gorgeous she looked with the blue light of the water tanks playing across her face, making her sapphire eyes nearly glow. And remembering the way she obeyed me so well stiffens my cock.

Hunter steps up beside me, looking out over the track. He’s wearing a racing suit like I am. His thick hair is a mess from the helmet and his cheeks are flushed, but the expression on his face is serious. Dark.

“I told you I’d keep my ear to the ground, Jackson,” he says quietly. “I’ve been hearing some nasty shit.”

“About?”

“About those Dominican thugs wanting to see you hurt. Or worse. Rumor is they are going to arrange some kind of accident. I think you shouldn’t race today, man. They could’ve fucked with the car or something.”

“I’m not backing out. These fuckers aren’t going to turn me into a tiptoeing coward. In fact,” I say, pushing off the barrier and striding toward them. “Maybe it’s time we put these fucking rumors to bed.”

I hear Hunter quietly urging me to wait, but I ignore him. I’m not about to play this he said she said bullshit game. If they have an issue, they can tell me to my face. No more games.

“Problem?” I ask, standing in front of the three men. Two are relatively tall with lean builds and the other is short with a beard and a thick, muscular frame. I don’t remember their names. I can barely remember drinking with them, for that matter.

“Problem?” repeats the shortest man in a thick accent. “No problem here, carajito.”

I pretend not to notice the slight. I spent enough time in the Dominican Republic to know carajito is basically a term for an annoying child. “If there was a problem,” I say, “I’m sure three grown men wouldn’t be afraid to say so to my face.”

One of the taller men, who has a faint scar from his eye to his mouth, smirks. “It sounds like you have the problem, pana.”

I let the silence that follows linger, meeting their eyes and giving them one last chance to speak up. When it seems clear they have nothing more to say, I scoff, walking away and heading toward the car waiting for me.

Hunter jogs to catch up with me, leaning into the supercar as I strap myself into the modified racing seat. “What happened?” he asks, having to yell to be heard over the engine.

I notice Dean Cartwell, a billionaire hedge fund mogul, getting into the car beside mine and starting the engine.

“Looks like they want to keep whispering behind my back,” I say, pulling the door closed and revving my engine.

“Think about it, Jackson. At least let someone look over the car before you drive,” pleads Hunter through the window.

I roll the window up, setting my jaw in defiance. I feel a faint sense of unease. I know it’s possible that he’s right, but I’m not about to let these men dictate how I live my life. I won’t let them make me show fear.

Fuck that.

The car is so minimalistic inside that I feel like I’m in some sort of cocoon. The engine roars powerfully, shaking through to the center of my being. All sound dies out. There’s nothing but me and my connection to the machine.

Of the many events I’m forced to attend because of my station, the races are one of my favorites. Billionaires find endless ways to waste their money, but I’ve always found a special thrill in riding the edge of danger on the track. I can feel the terrifying power of the car waiting to be unleashed. I look over toward Dean’s car while we wait for the previous two cars to pull off the track ahead of us.

I stick my arm out the window to signal I’m ready. Dean does the same. A scantily dressed woman stands between our cars holding a checkered flag. She slowly raises her arms, looks between both our cars, and then yanks the flag down.

Our cars scream into action. I’m off the paint faster than Dean, and immediately cut in front of him, establishing my position early and hard. The car drives like a possessed beast. I have the accelerator pressed to the floor, and the engine sounds like a demon from hell clawing its way to the surface. Everything but the road in front of me blurs, and I’m completely aware that even the smallest miscalculation could send me smashing into the wall at hundreds of miles an hour.

I take the first turn, letting off the accelerator only as much as I have to, but as soon as I turn the wheel, I feel the steering column disconnect from the axle. The detachment only takes a fraction of a second, but I feel it play out like it takes ages. I’m hurtling forward on the track at blinding speeds and I just lost complete control of the steering column. There’s a grinding sound and the wheel jumps in my hands. I yank it hard to the left, but it’s pointless.

I slam on the brakes, eyes fixed on the wall ahead of me. The tires scream and the back of the car whips out of control, but there’s no stopping it.

I have a split second to feel the inevitability of the crash and the cost of my stubborn pride before it happens.

There’s a sound of breaking metal and a roar like a tsunami crashing over my head, and then darkness.

I’m sitting in a dark room with one window. Sarah is beside me. She’s young though. Far too young. She can’t be more than fourteen, and when I look down at my hands they are softer than I remember. Smaller. There are metal bars covering the window. Two simple beds with no blankets in either corner. There’s a foul-smelling hole in the floor just big enough for us to use the bathroom, but not to escape. We can never escape from here.

My heart beats faster and I feel like I can hardly breathe. I suck in rapid breath after rapid breath, unable to get enough air in my lungs. Heavy footsteps approach the door. Thump. Thump. Thump.

He’s coming, and there’s nothing we can do but wait.

I gasp, opening my eyes and raising a hand to my face. It’s calloused and powerful. Older. There are tubes attached to it, leading to beeping machines. I blink the bleariness from my eyes and try to lift my head, but a pain like an ice pick in my neck stops me. I’m still breathing hard. It was just a dream. A memory. A fucking unwelcome memory.

But when I think of Sarah, a panic that has nothing to do with the past settles over me. Fuck. How long was I out? She’ll be wondering where I was.

“Nurse!” I shout. My voice comes out gravely and thick.

A few minutes later, a tired looking woman comes in the room. She sees I’m awake, and looks like she’s about to go run for a doctor.

“No,” I say firmly. “Come here.”

She hesitates, but obeys. “You shouldn’t be trying to talk, Mr. Pierce. You had a very serious accident. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for close to a week.”

“I need to make a phone call. Someone give me a phone.”

“Mr. Pierce!” she says more firmly, moving to keep me from trying to sit up again. “You need rest.”

“Jackson?” asks a soft voice.

It’s not until she speaks that I notice her sitting in the corner of the room. My princess. Fuck, I don’t know if it’s the painkillers or the days we were apart, but she looks even more beautiful than I remember, if that’s even possible. Her big blue eyes are full of compassion, but also nervousness. “I came as soon as I heard about the accident. I know you probably don’t want to see me, but I…” she trails off, either losing her nerve or her train of thought.

I raise my hand to her cheek as she comes closer, wincing a little as the movement tugs at the I.V..

“Can we have some space?” I say to the nurse.

“Of course,” she says. She pauses at the door, eyeing us suspiciously. “No physical activity. He needs time to heal.”

Brianne blushes and shakes her head. “We’re just--”

The nurse closes the door before she can finish.

“Just what?” I ask.

She opens her mouth to answer and then looks down, shaking her head again. “That depends on you, I guess. If you still want to give me a chance.”

I let out a laugh, stroking her cheek. “Princess, I want to give you a hell of a lot more than a chance.”

She smiles, leaning into my hand in the most adorable way. “I guess I’ll just have to help nurse you back to health before you can try anything naughty.”

I bite my lip. “My mouth works. I wouldn’t be so sure I can’t do anything dirty to you.”

The door swings open and a stern looking man in a doctor’s coat walks in holding a clipboard. “Mr. Pierce,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt, Miss, but this will only take a moment,” he says to Brianne. “Frankly, you were very lucky, Mr. Pierce. From a crash of that magnitude, I would have expected broken bones and worse, but you somehow managed to walk away with bruises, scrapes, and a microfracture to your foot. You’ve already proven to be a fast healer, so I expect we should have you out of here in a week or two as good as new.”

“Thank you,” says Brianne. She gives me a relieved smile as soon as the doctor leaves, but the look is quickly replaced by something else. Fear, maybe. “Jackson,” she says suddenly, eyes growing hard. “There’s something I need to know. It’s--well--not really that important, I just feel like I need to know.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Did you really think my writing was prudish and forgettable?”

I laugh, but it hurts my chest, making me wince and cut it short. “I honestly don’t think I even read it.”

“So you just send out soul crushing response letters for no reason?”

Her tone is light, but I can hear the emotion just behind it. I hurt her with my letter, and I feel like shit for it.

“I haven’t been myself these past few months. It’s no excuse. It’s just the truth. To be honest, it has only been since we met for lunch that I’ve started to feel normal again.”

“Is that a line?” she asks. “Something you say to make girls feel special?”

“It’s the truth.”

“So, what happened?” she asks, sitting beside me on the bed. “You said you weren’t yourself.”

“It’s a long story,” I say.

“Good thing you’re stuck here, then,” she says with a grin.

I chuckle. “You know, my chest is killing me. I don’t think I should talk anymore.”

“Faker,” she teases.

I bite my lip, feeling the grin fade from my face as I draw up the memories. Memories that would be better off buried, but no matter how much I might want that, I am who I am because of my past. I can’t bury it any more than I could bury myself.

She doesn’t need to know everything, though. If I told her my story from start to finish, she’d run off before I even made it to the middle. She deserves to know about Karen. I can give her that much, especially if she is still thinking about signing the contract. The contract. The thought sends a jolt of excitement through my sore body. Our relationship has already deviated so far from the norm that I had almost forgotten.

Another time though. I need to be at my full strength to completely enjoy her. Besides, Brianne is special. I can’t risk pushing her too fast and scaring her away.

“It has been close to a year since I was with another woman,” I say, not admitting I know exactly how many months, weeks, and days it has been. Not admitting I wake up every morning with the memory of what happened to her digging into my conscious like a thorn. “Her name was Karen. She was a few years older than you. She had an MFA in art and she loved to paint. I met her through the same site you found me on.

“I decided to call things off early. She was paid the full contract fee and I thought that was the end of it. But she was found dead in her apartment a few days later. Turned out her rebound boyfriend considered himself a dom. Except his idea of BDSM was...”

I lower my head. The shame and guilt that are normally my constant companions rise to their full force, feeling as if they might break me at any moment with their intensity. To my surprise, Brianne puts a hand on my arm. Her touch is soothing. I focus on her hand against my skin and regain a little of my control.

“His idea of BDSM was beating her to death.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” she says.

I huff a dry laugh. “Turns out I can. It’s pretty easy, actually.”

“I’m serious, Jackson. You couldn’t have known that would happen.”

“Maybe if I had paid more attention to her. Maybe if I hadn’t been so jaded.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not your fault,” she leans down to hug me gently. “It’s not your fault,” she whispers.

Her words punch straight through the haze of darkness that surrounds me. I’ve spent a long time thinking of how horrible I would look to anyone who knew about Karen and I. I’ve thought of how they would see me as a cold, heartless billionaire playboy who used and threw away a young woman. They’d see that my carelessness cost Karen her life. They’d hate me, and I’d be right beside them in their hatred.

There’s no hatred in Brianne’s big blue eyes. Only compassion.

“You really are special,” I say.

She frowns, shaking her head. “I’m not. I’m just a college student who writes forgettable fiction.”

“I didn’t even read it. You bring me something you wrote by tomorrow morning. I’ll read it and give you my honest opinion.”

“Oh, God. No, no way. I only submitted it to you in the first place because I had to keep my grade. I could never--no. Thank you, but no.”

“I don’t remember making a request,” I say darkly.

The silence hangs between us and I love every second of it. I can see the full meaning of my words circulating in her head, raising questions, sparking images. She can feel it. I may have started soft with her. I may have let her begin this slow, but if she’s going to be involved with me, she needs to learn sooner or later that I’m her Dominant. She needs to learn to submit.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll bring it.”

“Good,” I say, biting back the urge to order her to call me sir. Not yet. She’s new to this, and I need to make sure I don’t overwhelm her. “Now let me get some rest, Princess.”

She nods her head quickly, taking a step back at my tone. “Right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed so--”

“No,” I say. “I’m glad you came. I’d like you to keep coming when you have time. And that is a request, not an order,” I add with a smirk.

She smiles and bites her lip. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

She turns to leave, giving me a tantalizing view of her perfect ass, making me wish it didn’t feel like I just drove into a wall at two hundred miles per hour a week ago. As the door closes behind her, my mind circles back to the way the steering column detached from the axle. That’s not a normal car issue. Someone fucked with the car. Someone wanted me to crash. And I don’t think whoever did it was expecting me to survive.

I grit my teeth and clench my fists until the tender muscles in my arms burn with pain. Those fucking businessmen from the Dominican Republic tried to have me killed, and it nearly worked.

Fuck.

I’m not sure how this sort of thing usually gets handled, but I know one thing for sure. If they think I’m just some rich asshole they can push around, they are going to learn how seriously wrong they are. I’ll make sure of it.