Page 43 of Twisted Enemy
But in my world, in the world we’ve built together,punishmentmeans one thing: The dungeon. Where she’s refused to go for a week.
I shouldn’t take her down there tonight. Not while I’m still smarting from losing control.
But she’s asking. And shedidcome up with a story on the spot. She covered for me. For us.
Plus, I need to prove to myself that I can be the Dom she needs.
So I point to the floor with one stern finger. “On your knees, then. And beg for what you really want.”
She sinks to the marble tile like a ballerina. Her glare is fierce as she looks up through the tangle of her hair. She needs this as much as I do. She needs to prove to herself that what we have works, that we belong together. Here. Now.
“Please,” she says, tossing that mane over one shoulder. “Take me downstairs. Take me to the dungeon.”
Those words would have been enough yesterday. But today, I need something more. I lost control, and I need to build it back. I need to be stronger than I’ve ever been before.
“Master,” I say.
She frowns in confusion.
“Take me to the dungeon,Master,” I prompt. And I wait to see if she’ll comply with this new rule.
19
KATE
Acid paints my throat. My lips refuse to move.
He doesn’t know what he’s asking. He can’t know how that one word breaks my brain.
Not one month ago, he apologized after putting me on a feckin’ leash. He admitted he went too far. But now he’s forcing me to go miles further, to weave my own leash, to snap it around my own neck with my own fingers, to submit in ways he’s never required before.
This is Cole, not anyone else. It’s one feckin’ word. I can say it. I can lie.
But it’s a symbol of who he is, of who we are. It’s an admission that he owns me.
I can’t do it.
I won’t do it.
But if I refuse, he’ll never take me to the dungeon again.
I know I’m broken. I’m my own worst enemy. Half the time, I act without thinking about the consequences—as I did tonight. The other half, I think, but I still arrive at a flawed conclusion, one that’s bound to harm me in the end.
Mam says I’m a bad seed. She hates me because I didn’t fight back the wayshedid when she was in harm’s way. She shoved the tale down my throat every chance she got—how three pissed Englishmen caught her outside the Forge and Anchor one moonless night in Athgarven. She fought her way clear even after the first shitehawk carved her face with his butterfly knife. She crushed his bollocks in her fist and broke the voice box of another and head-butted the third so he fell on his arse in the middle of the road. So there’s no room in her heart for a daughter who failed to fight her own battles—even if that daughter was barely eight when the Bad Men came.
When I was a child, I made bad choices. I chose to run for the merry-go-round, causing my nanny to die. My choices rang in the Dogfight. I’m the reason so many good Lynch men were buried for years.
I made more bad choices tonight. I listened to my devil. I could have destroyed my husband. I nearly caused pain to the Andersons, whose only sin has been loving a boy who needed them years ago.
I don’t want to make any more choices. I want to be told what to do. I want someone else to be responsible, to be in control.
I wantColeto be in charge. He knows my body. He understands all the crossed circuits in my brain. He binds together all my broken pieces, turning me into something whole.
He makes me come so many times and so, so hard.
My decision was made before I ever picked a fight tonight. It was made before I threw a glass of champagne in Cole’s face at Fiona Moran’s wedding. It was made years ago, when I did my best to save my innocent sister.
“Take me to the dungeon,” I say. “Master.”
