Show Me
Ashe brought Riley home to her studio apartment that evening, stopping first at Wayne’s apartment next door. Miss Bailey meowed noisily as Wayne handed her to Riley. He told them that the cat might be complaining now, but she’d actually had a great time with his own two cats. Those two cats happened to be Miss Bailey’s sisters, for it was Wayne who’d given Miss Bailey to Riley when she’d first moved into her apartment.
“Anytime, Ri,” he said as he bade them goodnight, giving a small wave toward Ashe and thanking him for the free tickets to Coriolanus.
“This is why I want you to move in with me,“ said Ashe as they walked into her apartment and she set Miss Bailey down on the couch. The cat immediately made her way onto Riley’s bed. “No more of this going from one place to the other in such horrendous weather.”
“I do want to move in with you, but I need to be alone right now. It’s not every day your dad tells your boyfriend that you’re not his daughter. I mean, why couldn’t he just tell me that?”
“Riley, I’m sorry,” Ashe murmured. Riley had barely said a word to him since he’d spoken the dreaded words that afternoon. After she’d wiped away her tears, she simply told him she wanted to go home before disappearing into the guest bathroom. It had taken them over an hour to make it out of the apartment and another hour en route because of the snow. He was expecting a phone call from his agent in L.A. any minute now, but at least Riley was speaking again.
“On one hand it’s great because that means all the crap things he’s said to me weren’t really about me, you know. At the same time, it’s sad because that means Mom cheated on him.”
Brilliant, lad. Now look what you’ve done.
“If anyone knows about this it will be Paige, don’t you think?” she continued as she removed her scarf. Ashe took it from her and hung it behind the door. “She was about eleven years old when my mother was pregnant with me. Mom used to take Paige to the city for her modeling gigs. What if that’s where it all started? What if Paige knows who he is?”
“She might.”
“But I can’t talk to her,” Riley frowned. “I don’t want to yet. Not after what happened.”
“Would you mind if I did?”
Riley turned away from him, unbuttoning her wool coat.
“As long as you don’t screw her.”
“What do you mean?” said Ashe indignantly, holding her by the shoulders and spinning her around to face him. “I would never do that to you.”
“I’m sure that’s what Gareth told me too, back then. Paige has her little ways. She always knew how to get men to do what she wanted,” she said, avoiding his gaze as he studied her face. It was as if a wall had sprung up between them, and this time Ashe could neither break it down nor climb over it.
“When did you stop trusting me?” he asked.
“Since I found out that you’re not the same man I fell in love with inside that elevator five months ago,” she said. “You lied to me, Ashe, all this time. You could have told me about your past, but you never did. Did you honestly think you could hide it forever?”
“But it’s not like you know me either,” she continued, forcing a dry smile. “I never got into detail about why I overdosed three years ago, or what started me taking drugs in the first place. Maybe you think you know because everyone believes they know me better than I know myself. It wasn’t all Gareth that made me do drugs, you know, though that’s what everyone likes to believe because it’s more romantic that way. Oh, look at her, falling to pieces over a boy; poor Riley. Let’s all take care of her, shall we? Let’s give her a place to work, one that she can call her own. Let’s give her a place to live, hopefully far from wherever she used to score her drugs.”
Riley was referring to her brother-in-law, Clint Caldwell III, whose company owned buildings throughout Manhattan. He and Paige had helped her to secure her apartment over other tenants who wanted the place that had been home to a chain-smoking Pulitzer Prize-winning author who now lived in Connecticut. Clint had also spearheaded the negotiations that had gained her half of the Library Café three years earlier, shortly after her overdose, the same café that she would fully own in a few months’ time. This time Riley had refused even Ashe’s help to obtain financing, although the amount she needed was something he could easily have given her.
“Riley—”
“It was an accident, Ashe, my overdose. I’m sure you’ve always wondered, but you’re so damn polite about it that you’ve never asked me. Well, I’m telling you right now. I was trying something new that Sammi was selling and I just didn’t realize how strong it was. But because you don’t bring up my drug use because you say you trust me enough not to worry about it or nag me about it like Paige always did, I have to do the same with you.”
“I don’t say anything about your drug use because it’s part of your past, Riley, not because I don’t want you to ask about mine,” said Ashe. “I don’t want you ever to censor yourself for my sake. I’m a grown man, and the last thing I need is for you to tiptoe around me.”
“Why tiptoe around me, then? You’re no different to the rest of them, coddling me because you’re all so damn busy hiding whatever it is you have to hide. At least my dad is man enough to say things to my face because he has nothing to conceal, unlike you who didn’t want me to know that you’d been with that woman and that you were her Sir or Master, or whatever it was you were. Were you so afraid that I’d fall apart if I found out about your past with that woman?”
Riley’s anger caught Ashe by surprise before he understood what was happening. He knew that grief came in stages, having experienced it when Hazel died, his anguish driving him to disappear from Hollywood for months as he processed the denial and the anger that overtook him. He’d given up the career he’d worked so hard for until Gareth appeared at the farm five months later, dragging him out of his depression and telling him the sobering facts: if he quit the franchise, he would owe Reign Studios twenty million dollars at the least.
And where the hell are you gonna get that money, man? Out of your fucking ass? Snap out of it. She’s dead, and she’s not coming back. There’s a world out there, and it fucking wants you. Wasn’t that what Hazel was so proud of: that her brother had finally made it big? Make her proud, man. Don’t throw it all away.
“Why don’t you answer me?” Riley’s hands were balled into fists, and she was shaking, her eyes defiantly challenging him to reply.
“You’re right,” Ashe said slowly. “I have been hiding my past with ‘that woman’ from you and everyone else. It’s a past I’m ashamed of now, not because I lived the life of a Dominant—I’m not ashamed of that—but because I allowed it to rule me then.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Of course not,” he replied.
“Do you miss having someone wait on you hand and foot, doing whatever it is you want them to do for you?”
“No.”
“How can you say that if you haven’t tried it since? What if you do still like it?”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Riley; I don’t,” repeated Ashe, his jaw tense.
She frowned. “What we do together sometimes when you hold me down and bite me … isn’t that the same sort of thing?”
“No, it’s not the same,” he said, lowering his voice as the vision returned to him of the first time he’d taken her roughly. It had been in Atlantic City, after he’d surprised her with front-row tickets to see their favorite band, Aerosmith. Afterward, she’d said she loved the roughness of his lovemaking and wanted more.
“How can it not be the same? I let you do whatever you want to me. You bite, you hold me down, and sometimes you hurt,” she said, her voice a whisper; the steely gaze had gone from her eyes and realization had replaced it. “How is that different from what you did before?”
“It’s very different.”
“You’re lying,” she whispered, her eyes searching his face. “We’ve been doing it that way all this time, haven’t we, this domination/submission thing? I didn’t know it, but you did.”
“If that were true, then it would be abuse; but it’s not what we’ve been doing all this time. Rough sex, yes; I hold you down, I bite you. But without your consent? No.”
“Then show me what it’s like. This BDSM thing you had with her. Don’t keep me in the dark, Ashe.”
The phone beeped from inside his coat pocket. It was Pierce. “This is not a good time, Riley.”
Suddenly Riley put her hands behind his head and pulled his face toward her. It was a bruising, crushing kiss, all teeth and tongue, and heat. It seared through him, the roughness in the way she was kissing him and the anger vibrating through her body. It sent him reeling, his body responding as it always did with her.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” she demanded as he pulled away. Ashe was suddenly reminded of a petulant child refused a treat. This wasn’t the Riley he knew; yet it was, only now she was angry and hurt. But at the same time, he couldn’t let her go through with what she wanted to happen between them, not when it was for all the wrong reasons.
Ashe grabbed her wrists, holding them between their bodies. “If you want me to show you what I used to be, there is a time and place for it. Not now. Not here. And not for the reasons you want me to show you.”
“It’s always you who calls the shots. It’s always you who decides when and where and how. When do I get to decide?”
“You and I have always called the shots together, Riley, but not tonight, and not for the reasons you want,” Ashe said, easing his grip on her wrists when she winced. “I’m leaving now, and we can discuss this tomorrow. I am truly sorry for everything that’s happened … from Catriona to whatever your father told me. But there’s nothing we can do about it tonight.”
And sex, not even rough sex, would solve those problems, he almost added as he released her wrists and Riley sagged against the wall. Ashe felt his heart lurch. He wished he could hold her like he had for most of that afternoon. This was why he wanted her living with him, hating the thoughts that would fill him through the night after he’d walk out that door. Was she going to be all right? Was she going to return to what she knew best to deal with her pain?
But Ashe also knew he couldn’t fight all her battles for her. He had a life of his own to live, a career to build and maintain. She had his heart, true, and he’d do anything for her, but he also thrived under the limelight, doing what he loved and getting paid for it. Just how many plays had he done in the past without pay? How many roles did he let slip through his fingers because he’d put Hazel’s health first even when she begged him to keep going? Wasn’t that what finally drove him to succeed, so that his family, Hazel, most of all, who had seen him for what he was and still loved him, could live without having to sacrifice more than they already had?
Maybe he was better off leaving that bloody picture book alone.