Chapter 26
She was still a hollow statue when she walked into Lucas’s apartment. He quietly closed the door behind him, on the phone with his PR agent.
“Pay them whatever they want to keep it out of the press. Send me the bill and I’ll make sure it’s covered. I don’t want there to be any evidence of what she said earlier today. Hang on. I’ve got another call.” He pulled his phone away from his head and hit a button. “Damon? Yes, yes, I heard. She’s here with me now. I’ll keep an eye on her. I think she’s having some kind of break. Well, can you fucking blame her? Don’t worry about it, okay? She’s not leaving my side until I’m sure she’s better.”
That’s never going to happen, Luke.
Sarah stood in front of his penthouse window, wondering what it would be like to jump. Could she spread her wings while she fell?
Lucas turned off his phone and tossed it onto his coffee table. “Tell me what to do, Angel.”
She pressed her hands against the glass. How could it be so warm? Was it really that sunny outside? “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying to figure that out for over a year now.”
“I know. I mean, I don’t know exactly, but…” The frustration continued to mount in his voice. Oh, Luke. Sarah tapped her forehead against the window. He was going to drive himself crazy if he continued to freak out over her well-being. When would he learn that it wasn’t his place to fix her? “Why are you telling people that we’re breaking up? That’s news to me, Sarah.”
She slowly turned around, fingers still pressed against the glass. “We should break up. All I am is a giant liability to you and what you want, Luke. I wish you would understand that.”
“Pretty sure I’m the only one who gets to decide that.” He scoffed. “Don’t you dare tear yourself down like this. Don’t you get it? I love you, Angel. I love you like crazy.”
“Crazy is exactly what you’ll get if you keep associating yourself with me. Please, let me go. I don’t do the relationship thing very well. When I hit a low, I fall so far through the Earth that I end up in another dimension.”
“When you’re high?”
“It’s not that great, really.”
“I will go crazy without you.” Lucas dared to put his hand on her shoulder. Sarah jumped, adrenaline infusing into her veins and screaming at her to run to the other side of the room. But she didn’t. Somehow, she was sane enough to control herself. “Maybe I’m a fool for wasting my time on a woman I love, but I’ve done more foolish things in my life.”
“I’ll hold you back. Victor will…”
“How many times do I have to tell you to let me worry about my son? Besides, he likes you! It’s almost like loving you is a Blackbourne family trait!”
“Not to Jill.”
“Fuck Jill.” Lucas released her and took two steps away from the living room. “You know what? Fuck this whole situation. You think I don’t know what it’s like to love someone who has demons in her closet? If being married to Jill taught me anything, it was that I’m the most patient man in the universe. I don’t care about your flaws, Sarah. I care about how you address them. Jill chose alcohol over our marriage. She made a lot of decisions without my input. The only thing I regret, though, is not being man enough to do better for her. You’re not the only one who stays up late at night wondering how things could’ve been if only I had more foresight.”
“Please don’t compare our pasts, Luke.” Sarah’s finger twirled around the tip of her blond wig, those synthetic tresses greasy from the humid air outside. Dust. Dirt. Sweat. It’s as unclean as the rest of me. How about that? “You don’t know what it’s like to have your power stripped from you. You don’t know what it’s like to lose your son. You definitely don’t know what it’s like to have every choice you used to freely make suddenly mean nothing, to be yanked from your grasp and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He was silent for a few seconds. Then, “You’re right, Angel. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Is that what this is all about, though? Your choices?”
Her hands tangled together in front of her chest. “I didn’t get to choose. None of it. Didn’t get to choose what happened to me or my son. Couldn’t even quit my job and get away from those memories because my brother and I needed the money too much.” She continued before Lucas had the chance to interrupt her again. “This was the only way I could reclaim any of it. At least when I was someone else, I had choices again.”
Lucas leaned against the back of his couch. “Angel is the one with all of the choices, is that it? And you feel empowered when you’re her?”
“When we met, that was my choice. I chose to approach you. I chose to have sex with you. I chose what happened after that.”
“Then your big dumb boyfriend showed up to work the next Monday and threw a fucking wrench into everything.”
“If that never happened, if we never…” Sarah swallowed. “I would probably be in New York City right now getting whatever I could get.”
“How long did you think you could keep doing that?”
“Until I had a compelling reason to stop.”
“Am I enough reason, Angel?”
While his voice didn’t sound defeated, per se, she still sensed the panic rising within him. “You don’t understand. It’s not only about being fulfilled. I need to know that something like that is never going to happen again. I have to learn how to trust someone all over again. If you think that’s easy…”
“You know of my own trust issues. While they may not be on that level, well… we’re both learning how to trust our potential lovers again.”
Sighing, Sarah turned her whole body toward him, eyes open and wide. “I know you’re a good person, Luke. I know you mean well and that you love me. Theoretically, anyway. I know that. But I’ve forced myself to become so apathetic that I can’t feel it. The only way I can feel anything good is if I dress up like this.”
“Angel.” When did it stop being her alter-ego and become her true pet name? “I love you. Beyond words. If that means loving both halves of you, then that doesn’t bother me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It bothers me.”
“I’m sure it does. I can look at you dressed like this and out of it and know that it’s the same woman. But do you know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you right now?”
Sarah glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Blond wig. Sultry black jacket. Thick, come-hither makeup and a pair of boots that would get her kicked out of the office. “I’m…”
“Do you even know?”
“I’m a mess is what I am.”
He took her hand, but did not entice her to come closer. That was her choice, wasn’t it? “I don’t want you to be a mess. I want you to be happy and healthy. If it turns out there’s no room for me in that equation, well…” Lucas looked away. “It will break my heart, but I will understand.”
“You’re too good for me.”
“Yet you’re the angel here.”
“When I picked that name,” she began, also looking away, the only thing holding them together their sweaty, linked hands, “I wanted something that was obviously not my real name. Something sexy and innocent, like men were going to get a specific kick out of me. But the joke would be on them. I wasn’t innocent. I knew exactly what I was doing. In a way, I wanted them to use me. I told myself that I was using them, but in those situations, they were still the ones with all the power. Look at that fucking video tape. I never knew about it. It’s been out there this whole time, waiting to be used against me. Powerless to stop it.”
Lucas squeezed her hand. “I used you too. I admit it.”
“I know.” Of course he had. Sarah offered no-strings-attached sex. He took it. As much as Sarah wanted to believe she could live in a world where casual sex gave her power, she had to stop thinking of it that way. Maybe it was fun. Maybe nothing bad came out of it. But every time she went out dressed as Angel, determined to get her freak on with the first semi-attractive man looking in her direction, she put herself at risk. Risks those men rarely had to think about.
She wanted the risks. They made her feel alive. They made her believe she was free from the constraints her brain put on her heart.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you.” Lucas gently turned her around to face him again. “What do you want, Sarah?”
This time she answered without thinking about it.
“To be whole again.”
It was the answer she had bitten back every time he asked her that asinine question. The answer she always knew was true but was afraid to admit – because then she was admitting that she had never been whole to begin with. That she didn’t have the power and free-will she craved.
“I know. I’ve been waiting for you to say it.”
He pulled her into his embrace. While they didn’t kiss – yet – Sarah felt every ounce of his love coaxing her to trust in him, to believe that he truly wanted the best for her.
“I love you,” he muttered. “I’m afraid that’s one matter you don’t get a choice in.”
She rested her cheek upon his broad chest. He was possibly the only man in the world who made her feel safe in his embrace. Too bad she was about to ask him to shatter that illusion.
***
Night had almost fallen by the time Lucas emerged from his bedroom. Sarah sat in the middle of the living room couch, looking past the TV and upon the glistening water weaving between brand-new high-rises and warehouses as old as her mother’s lineage.
He flipped the light switch connected to the living room lamp. Sarah was thrown into darkness.
“Come here, Angel.”
She had spent the past hour readying her mind for what she had asked him to do. Although Lucas sounded as confident as always, she knew him well enough by now to hear that slight tremor implying there was another way to go about this. No. There isn’t.
The only way Sarah would be whole again was by embracing both sides of herself. She was the one who had willingly split herself into two as an unhealthy way of coping with her trauma. She was the only one who could sew both halves back together – and if some of the bullshit was conveniently left out of the end result? All the better.
But that didn’t mean she had to do it alone. Having a man who loved her – and she could eventually come to trust – could make all the difference.
“Angel.”
It was a command. A soft, stern command. Sarah stood, her aching feet pressing in her boots. She had touched up her makeup and wig while Lucas prepared in the bedroom. What had he done? What was he going to do to her? How deep would her brain be forced to go?
The moment she approached him, she turned on Angel’s charm. It was as familiar as a splinter that had stabbed her skin for one day too long.
“Yes, sir?” She drew one finger down his prickly stubble. “What can I do for you?”
“I didn’t invite you up here to sit on my couch and look pretty.” He pulled away from her, gesturing to his dimly lit bedroom. Candles flickered beyond the doorway. Candles and a neatly made bed, unlike the one she had seen when she first walked into his apartment that day.
“Of course not, sir.” She opened the front of her jacket, showing off her slinky dress beneath. “Where do you want me?” A giggle. “How do you want me?”
“You can start by taking off that dress and sitting on my bed.” He went into the master bathroom and rooted through one of his drawers.
“Hmph.” Sarah dropped her jacket on the floor and unzipped her dress. Getting out of it with a man helping her was far more preferable, but she wasn’t incapable of undressing herself. “Whatever you want, sir.”
She shimmied out of everything except for her underwear and garter. By the time Lucas returned from the other room, Sarah sat on the edge of his bed with clothes tossed on the other side of the bedroom.
“You’re confident for someone who’s here to do what I want.”
Sarah leaned back on her hands, pushing her chest up. That’s what Angel does. She entices, ensnares, and ensures that she’s ultimately the one getting what she wants. Angel knew how to seduce men into bed and leave them absolutely wasted. Lucas was no different when they met, and he would be no different tonight.
Nobody could eschew Angel’s charms.
“Even with that wig and makeup on, you’re still the same beautiful Sarah I’ve always loved, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “I’m whoever you want me to be.”
Lucas rolled up his sleeves. Hair as fine as the rest of him speckled his skin. His watch glistened in the candlelight until he had the sense to unlatch it and toss it onto his dresser. How much did Sarah have to pay to get this guy to unbutton his shirt next? Let me at him. I’ll nuzzle my nose against that chest and feel every breath of strength inside of him. Sarah wanted to draw upon that strength for herself. She’d make sure she wanted for nothing for the next 24 hours.
“Take off your wig, Angel.”
Her languid eyes snapped open. “Excuse me?”
“I told you to take off the wig. I don’t care how you act. Just take off the fake hair and let me see the real thing.”
She kept her chest puffed out while she pulled the pins from her scalp and left them on the bed. Didn’t take much to dislodge the wig from her scalp after that. Flattened black hair spilled out from the cap and fell limp against her face. Was this what he wanted? To see her post-Angel look?
“You don’t need this anymore.” Lucas gently took it from her hands and tossed it on top of her clothes. Sarah looked between it and him with a judgmental gaze. Even his hands caressing her face couldn’t ease the tension behind her eyes. “This is the real Sarah right here. And I’m going to treat her like any man would treat Angel.”
Sarah steeled herself. Those were fighting words to her subconscious.
“You’re going to see that neither of us need her. We only need each other, Sarah.”
He lowered his lips and kissed her forehead. Sarah stiffened even more, her legs on the brink of shaking. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. The last thing she would do was let him see a blink of weakness.
“You only need yourself. You don’t even need me.”
Lucas combed his fingers through her short hair. When he was satisfied with her appearance, he stood up straight, sincerity never leaving his stoic visage. “You’re not happy.”
She slowly shook her head.
“I’ve ripped off your mask. I’d apologize, except I can’t make a point with that thing around, now can I?” He let one finger trail down her cheek. “I love you. You know, right?”
She knew. She didn’t know what to say, though.
“Do you want to love me?”
Her old headshake turned into a timid nod. Now she couldn’t look him in the eye again.
“Sarah.”
If she looked up, what would she see? The domineering countenance of a man who wanted to take control? The sweet, sad face of the man who loved her and worried for her well-being? The indifference of a European billionaire who saw her as another sexual plaything?
What about all three?
“Are you afraid of me, Sarah?”
“No.”
“Do you trust me?”
She barely waited a second to respond. “Yes.”
“Do you trust me with your body?”
“Yes.”
“Your mind?”
“Yes.”
His finger hooked behind her ear, gently tugging on her cartilage. “How about your heart, my love?”
Sarah didn’t want to answer that. She could barely answer with her soul. Wouldn’t it be better if she encircled her arms around his torso and inhaled his cologne? Nothing was more reassuring than that.
“Take me, please,” she begged him. “I want to feel better.”
“I’m not going to simply make you feel better, Angel.” He accepted her kiss with unrelenting desire. Between words of adoration, he said, “I’m going to liberate you.”
***
She was bent over his bed, her boyfriend’s hand massaging the skin he intended to spank if she didn’t fess up to what bothered her so much.
Had she asked for this? Hadn’t she? When she told Lucas she needed to be freed from the crushing weight on her heart, she knew something like this would happen. In fact, she welcomed it, even with the trepidation fluttering in her chest and rocking her stomach back and forth.
She had been spanked before. Lots of men got off on lightly tapping her jiggling ass and sometimes getting a little rougher, if the moment called for it. However, this would be her first cathartic spanking, and she had no idea what to expect.
But in Lucas’s expert hands? She should have known there was nothing to fear.
“Name one thing that troubles you,” he growled.
Sarah braced herself on her arms, hands clasped together in front of her face. “My heart hurts, sir.”
He lightly spanked her left cheek. Sarah gasped, her thighs quivering from the impact.
It had felt good, but it wasn’t hard enough. She needed to be smacked out of her mind. She needed to transcend the aching regrets in her heart and embrace a higher plane of pleasure and freedom.
The people who went to her former boss’s club called it subspace. While Sarah never considered herself the submissive type in the bedroom – not like those other people referred to it – she knew it was the only way to restart her system.
Angel would have embraced it. So should Sarah. All a part of becoming whole again.
“Why does it hurt?”
She winced. “Because someone hurt me first.”
“Latch onto whatever ails you, my love, and let it go when you feel the pain. That’s the poison leaving your soul.”
He spanked her hard enough to send her across his bed. Luckily, Lucas had his hands on her bra and wasn’t likely to let her get away from him.
“Good.” His voice never wavered, unlike Sarah’s, which cracked beneath the sudden pain swarming around her midsection. “Who hurt you, Angel?”
She clenched her hands together, biting her lip. “A cruel man.”
His fingers dug into her malleable flesh. “How did he hurt you?”
“He…” Sarah dithered between the ache in her skin and the ache in her heart. “He didn’t treat me like a human being. He used me. That wasn’t the worst thing he did.”
Lucas gently yanked on her underwear. “Do you want to tell me the worst thing he did?”
One tear fell down Sarah’s cheek, and it had nothing to do with how hard her boyfriend spanked her. “He took the only thing I cared about away from me. He took away my ability to decide my own fate.”
Even though she knew it was coming, Sarah was still not prepared for the spank that forced a yelp out of her throat.
He had smacked so hard that her mind completely blanked on her. All she could think about was the pleasure now manifesting in various parts of her body.
Like between her thighs, and definitely beneath Lucas’s firm hand.
“You like it, huh?” The purr returned. How many days had it been since she last heard this gorgeous tone to her boyfriend’s voice? “You like it when I spank you, don’t you, Angel?”
Her legs wobbled. I can’t stand it. It feels so… Angel was used to a good spanking that got her wet enough for whoever she was with that night. Sarah, on the other hand, viewed spanking as that thing she saw at her former boss’s nightclub and tried to ignore.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you feel better after I spank you?”
“Yes…”
“Or maybe you simply like it when I touch you, Angel.” Lucas rubbed the breadth of her pussy through her underwear. Such a gentle touch compared to what she had experienced on her ass. “You’ve always been pretty easy, haven’t you?”
She lowered her chest to the bed, arms reaching out for nothing in particular.
“Remember when we first met?” His finger dipped inside of her. Didn’t think it would be that easy for him to do. Fuck, how wet am I? Apparently, she was wet enough to take his finger with no friction whatsoever. “You threw yourself at me. Demanded that I pay attention to you. So confident, so beautiful… how could I resist you?”
Dare she say it? “You tried to resist me.”
“You’re right. I did. I knew you were fucking trouble, Sarah. I knew giving in to my lust would doom me to more than pleasure for one night. I was right, too. I never once stopped thinking about you that weekend.” Lucas unzipped his trousers with his other hand. Meanwhile, his finger continued to slowly fuck her, making her wetter and opening her up for something bigger. Sarah gasped into the bedspread beneath her. He’s going to fuck me, and I won’t be able to stand it. Her neurons were already on fire from that hard spanking. Her brain wasn’t as purged as she wanted it to be, but would it ever be? “I tried to forget about you because you were nothing but a one-night stand. Yet there you were Monday morning, as captivating as you had been dressed as another persona.”
He pulled her hair back into a single, manageable fistful. Sarah’s head went up the moment the head of Lucas’s cock touched her opening. She immediately shuddered.
“Did you think about me too?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. “But I thought I would forget about you like all the others.”
“But the universe didn’t let you forget about me. It made sure you knew that you and I were meant to be together, didn’t it?”
“Yes…”
“What was that? I can’t hear you, Angel.”
“Yes, sir!”
He teased her with the promises of hard sex. Yes. Give it to me. Make me wild for you, Luke. Make me lose my mind and not care about who I am anymore! Just fucking take her!
But Lucas didn’t enter her. He pulled away, also releasing his grip on her underwear.
“If you could have anything right now, my love.” He could use that voice to drive her wild anyway. Sarah was quickly reaching the boiling point with her insatiable lust. Who knew I had this much desire in me when I was… like this? “What would it be?”
“Use me.” She turned, sitting back on her legs, eyes glancing between his chiseled jaw and his half-erect cock hanging out of his trousers. “Make me feel like I did in that video.”
He chuckled, the most lighthearted sound he made all night. “I’m only one man, Angel.”
“Not to me you aren’t.” She pressed her hands against his chest. “Have your way with me. I need it. Go at me hard. Take me places you’ve only fantasized about.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Angel.”
“You gave me a safe word before we began.” New York. Where they met. “You have to understand, Luke. It’s eating away at me in ways I can’t explain. I need to feel that. I need you to take me down to that level before I can build myself up again.”
“I could never debase you.”
“That’s the secret, isn’t it? You won’t be. It’s all role-playing.” She wouldn’t tell him that she would be far from playing a role to begin with. This was reality for her. A reality she was desperate to dismantle and rebuild anew. “Please, Luke. You don’t understand. Where my mind was back then… where it could be now… I have to know I can feel something like that and honest to God enjoy it. I’m fucked up, you know? The fantasies I have, the kind of things I used to go out and do… they’re so fucked up! How else will I get through them if I don’t have someone I trust helping me?”
“Angel.” He smoothed back her hair and brushed away one of her stray tears. “You’re not fucked up. You’re not broken. You were handed a bad hand and you’re trying to make the best play possible.”
“So what does that make you? The dealer?”
“Let’s hope not. I’m terrible at poker.”
They shared a soft kiss that would usually make Sarah smile. Now, all she could do was sigh against his lips.
“Please,” she said again. “Give me what I need. I know my limits. You know me.”
“I’m still getting to know you little by little.”
“Now’s your chance to find out a lot about me.”
He kissed her again, this time with more power behind his mouth. Oh, he wanted her. He must be dying beneath his skin to fuck her like a beast would in the wild. Yes, yes, oh my God, yes! Sarah held onto him as she attempted to draw him down onto the bed.
That wasn’t good enough for Lucas, who soon gave her what she wanted.
“Not yet,” he snapped. Sarah fell forward toward the edge of the bed. “You earn something like that, Angel. Now, who are you tonight?”
She held her hands behind her back. Where had this sudden vulnerability come from on her part? “I’m yours, sir.”
“Yes. You’re my dirty princess who throws herself at strange men to get what she wants. Tell me, what’s stopping me from using you as if you were born to be my slave in the bedroom?”
The snap in his words kept her on her knees. Please, for the love of God, tell me to get you off. She yearned to feel that power inside of him. For him to share it with her. Please. I need it. I’m so weak on my own.
“Absolutely nothing, sir.” Nothing but her safe word, and she had no reason to use it yet. “Take from me whatever you want. Make me feel like you’re five men in one.” May the universe have mercy on her and make him feel like the last man she would ever need.