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  He was close, so close. And he could see that she was, too. In the flush of her skin, her short, quick breaths. She put her hands on his shoulder, her fingernails digging into his skin, a sharp spike of pleasure butting up against the pain, nearly sending him over the edge.

  Her hands hadn’t been free last time. And he hadn’t been able to watch her face. The way her brow creased, the way her lips formed an O, a silent scream working her throat.

  She arched into him, her breasts against his chest.

  “You have to come for me, baby,” he growled, “because I can’t last much longer.”

  He pushed into her again, pulling her up so that his body would make contact with her clit. And that was when she went over the edge, her internal muscles contracting around him, her fingernails digging in so deep, he was sure she drew blood.

  And he liked it.

  Mine. The word throbbed through his brain with every beat of his heart, with every thrust into her beautiful body.

  She was his. And he would make sure she didn’t forget it.

  He felt his orgasm rushing up on him and he pulled out of her, tugging the condom off and stroking his hand over himself as he came on her stomach, the strong need to brand her the only thing in his mind as he did it.

  His muscles turned to jelly then and he leaned forward, breathing hard, bracing himself on either side of her as he slowly came back to himself.

  As he started to see himself clearly again.

  A monster of some kind. Who used a woman in a vulnerable position. A man who unleashed his demons on someone who had enough of her own.

  He looked down at her, fully expecting to see disgust. Fully expecting to see her anger, her hatred.

  Instead, she was looking at him with a sleepy, satisfied expression. Not quite a smile, but then, they hadn’t had much to smile about lately.

  “I...I’ll be right back.”

  He went into the bathroom and found a towel, then came back. He stopped and looked at her for a moment, sprawled on the bed, looking completely relaxed and satisfied.

  He bent over and ran the towel over her stomach, cleaning her skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For...that. For hurting you. For doing a bunch of crazy shit without even talking to you about it first.”

  “I appreciate it. But it’s not necessary.”

  “No?”

  “I like it when you’re in charge. I figured the same rules from the first night applied. That if I told you to stop, you would. Am I wrong?”

  He hoped not. “No,” he said.

  “Okay, then.” She sighed deeply and rolled onto her side. “It’s midnight.”

  “So it is.” He wasn’t sure if he should get in bed with her or not. He wasn’t sure what the rules were, or what they should be.

  She scooted to one side and got beneath the covers, patting the spot next to her twice.

  He took a deep breath and made the decision. He got in beside her, covered them both, his arm draped over her waist.

  “Merry Christmas, Austin,” she said.

  He lay there, awake, listening to her breathe, watching the snow fall outside, his heart still beating like a bloody, raging beast in his chest.

  After an hour, he gave up sleeping and got up again.

  He could go burn off the tension in the gym. Hell, his muscles already felt like jelly. His heart was already on the verge of cardiac arrest. Why the hell not punish himself for a while?

  Like he’d punished her.

  The memory made his neck prickle with shame.

  He went to his dresser and tugged on a pair of shorts, heading down the hall to the room that had all of his workout equipment.

  Yes, working himself to the point of exhaustion was definitely better than getting back in bed with her. Than putting his hand on her bare skin, cupping her breasts. Covering her mouth with his other hand while he thrust into her from behind.

  He scrubbed his face with his hand and went toward the weight bench.

  This was what he had to do. Not that. He wouldn’t touch her again. At least not until he could get himself under control.

  He lifted weights until the bench was slick with sweat, until he was shaking. Then he ran on the treadmill until his legs were ready to give out.

  He wiped his chest and back down with a towel and went toward his home office, sat in the chair and leaned back, closing his eyes and hoping he might get a couple hours of sleep.

  “Merry effing Christmas,” he said.

  * * *

  Katy shifted and stretched, rolled onto her back. It was Christmas morning. That had never mattered to her very much. Christmases growing up had been inconsistent. When Sarah had gotten older she’d made sure they had trees and gifts. She’d come back home for the holidays often, bringing good food and her warm smile.

  Until that last Christmas. She hadn’t come home that year at all.

  For some reason, this Christmas morning felt different from most. She felt a sense of change. Of possibility. As if when she got out of bed, things would be different. Like there was even something to look forward to.

  It was a wonderful feeling. A perfect, newly formed hope that hadn’t met up against reality yet.

  She couldn’t recall ever feeling anything like this before.

  She burrowed down deeper into the blankets, desperate to hang on to the feeling. To put off reality for as long as possible. The bedding was so soft, so heavy and warm. She could feel the quality against her skin. Her bare skin.

  She didn’t usually sleep naked.

  Except... Oh, yeah.

  Flashes of last night popped through her mind. Austin and his intensity. The desperation with which he’d taken her, from the moment he’d first turned to her and said he wanted her, to that last moment when he’d come on her skin.

  He’d given her every feeling. Pain, pleasure, aching, deep need and satisfaction. For a woman who had spent years aspiring to numbness, seeking out this sort of thing, reveling in it, was foreign. And intense. He gave her so much more than she’d imagined sex could be.

  Oh, wow. She put her arm over her face and took a breath then rolled over onto her side.

  The mattress was big. And it was empty of anything but blankets and her.

  And her little happy glow waned a bit. Because Christmas morning would have been a lot sweeter if she would have woken up in his arms.

  But no, he wasn’t there. And she had a feeling there were reasons for that she wasn’t going to like.

  She slipped out of the covers and went into the bathroom, looking at her naked reflection in the mirror.

  She turned and let out a sharp breath when she caught the reflection of her butt. It was still a little red, but she found she liked the lingering evidence of his passion.

  Though, she had a feeling he didn’t see it as passion. Not the way that she did.

  He got all weird and self-loathing after they had sex.

  All two times.

  So strange. She felt like it had been more. Like there had never been a time when she hadn’t been intimate with him. Maybe it was because they’d known each other only about an hour before they’d gotten it on the first time.

  Or maybe because being with him was such a soul-baring experience. So it made her feel like they must know each other.

  Because she’d shared her body with him. And pieces of her childhood trauma, over noodles and diet soda. It was a level of intimacy she’d never had with anyone else.

  Still, Austin felt like a mystery to her. Even knowing what he was going through. Even understanding why he acted the way he did.

  There was something deeper. Something that she didn’t have a hope of reaching without a pickax. To dig through all the rock he had walled around his heart.

  Not that she wanted to reach his heart. Nope. She didn’t have the inclination for that. They had to see this through. To see through the destruction of Jason Treffen, and after that, she cou
ld start making a life for herself.

  But it wouldn’t be with Austin. It wouldn’t be wrapped up in Sarah’s death. This entire situation was too close to parts of her life she despised, and when it was over, she was leaving New York and never coming back.

  She was leaving all this to burn to the ground behind her.

  For now, though, she did have access to Austin’s triple showerheads. And she was going to take that.

  Chapter Nine

  “I suppose I should have realized by your lack of decked halls that you weren’t super into the season.”

  Austin turned in his chair and saw Katy, standing in the doorway. She was wearing sweats and had that just-showered look that made his cock jump a little bit. The only explanation being that thoughts of her being freshly showered put his thoughts onto her being slick, wet and naked. Which was in no way neutral territory.

  “No tree flocking or menorah lighting in the month of December for me, I’m afraid. I continue on in my dull, undecked, semi-heathenous existence.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since Sarah,” he said. “It’s left a bad taste in my mouth for Christmas.”

  “Oh.” She sort of shrunk back after that. “You did care about her, didn’t you?”

  “I told you, she was my friend. I was an asshole who failed her. But I did care. A lot.”

  “You didn’t love her, did you?”

  “Not like that. She was dating Hunter. I never looked at her as anything more than my friend. Sometimes I liked her better than I liked him.”

  “She had a pretty strong effect on people. A good one.”

  “Yes,” he said, his chest getting tight, “she did.”

  “So, to change the subject awkwardly and inappropriately, why weren’t you in bed this morning? And why do I get the feeling you weren’t there for most of the night?”

  “Because I wasn’t. I slept in here.”

  “Right...and why?”

  He looked straight ahead, his posture rigid. “Because what happened last night wasn’t okay.”

  “Why?”

  He felt like he’d been punched in the chest. “What the hell do you mean why? Does it not seem like some seriously sick stuff to you that your sister was in some sort of weird manipulative relationship with my dad and the minute I meet you...I want you. And now that I have you I suddenly want to turn you over my knee and spank you? Usually, I’m a huge fan of my penis, but lately, not so much.”

  “Interesting. I recently became a fan of it.”

  “Stop,” he said, his throat so tight he couldn’t breathe. “It’s not happening again.”

  “Because you know what I should want?”

  “Because I know what I should want, and it’s not this. I don’t like the fact that I’m using you. And that’s what I’m doing, Katy, make no mistake. I’m not going to fall in love with you and live dominantly ever after with you. I’m using you because I’m going through something hard. Because I want to control something, and right now, the only thing I can control is you. That is a special kind of screwed up.”

  “And you’re protecting me from it because...I’m just so normal and well-adjusted you’re afraid you’ll screw me up? I mean, seriously, Austin, I almost begged you to spank me harder. Because I liked it that much. Shall we psychoanalyze just why I enjoyed you punishing me so very much?”

  “No. Because I have issues of my own. I’m not taking yours on board, too.”

  “Fair enough, not asking you to. But just be aware that I was using you, too. Because I’m so damn sick of carrying everything. And letting you have the control? It lets me drop it for a while. So I can honestly say, your issues suit me.”

  “They don’t suit me,” he said, meeting her gaze. “This isn’t who I want to be. This isn’t what I want to do. I do not want to do anything that even remotely resembles... I am not my father. I don’t want to be, not even anything close. If I have to give something up to distance myself from him, it’s going to be this...relationship, or whatever you want to call it. The alternative is giving up baseball, and I damn well won’t do that.”

  She blinked rapidly. “Oh. Okay. So I rate somewhere beneath baseball?”

  “No, but my enjoyment of baseball doesn’t terrify me to my very soul. How about that?”

  “I terrify you?”

  “The things I want to do to you? The things I have done? That terrifies me.”

  “You know,” she said, “inexperienced though I am, I do know there are plenty of normal people who have relationships where they do this sort of thing. And there’s nothing wrong with them. Not if it’s mutual and consensual, and you can’t doubt for a second that what we did was just that.”

  He let out a sharp breath. “Yes, that’s true. But this has nothing to do with them. It has nothing to do with anyone but the two of us, and as far as we’re concerned? There’s nothing normal or healthy about it. You’re Sarah’s sister. I’ve never done things like this with a woman. What my father enjoyed doing to your sister didn’t need handcuffs for there to be a power differential, and I’m afraid... Sure, there are plenty of people who do this and it’s not screwed up, but between you and me? It is.”

  “I guess right now isn’t the best time to be exploring something like this,” she said, her eyes on the ground.

  “Everything is horrible right now,” he said, hating to admit it. Hating to admit just how deeply all of this affected him. Just how utterly hopeless and out of his hands it all was. “I can’t change that. I can’t stop it. I have to go and ruin my mother’s life sometime next week because...because it’s for the greater good. You know...it’s not personal for them.”

  “For who?” she asked, her long, delicate fingers curling around the doorframe.

  “For Alex and Hunter. I mean, they loved Sarah, too. The revenge, though... It doesn’t hurt them. It heals something for them, atones for things. And nothing else. Jason Treffen being brought low doesn’t change a thing for them. It just gives them the ability to look at their hands and hopefully...not see her blood there anymore. For me? For me it’s different.”

  He didn’t know why he was telling her this. Why he was pouring all this onto her. But he supposed if he could spill himself on her stomach, he could try to explain what was going on inside of him.

  “I can’t destroy him without hurting myself. I can’t let him go on without hurting other people. But this... When I was a kid my father seemed perfect. My family was perfect. My life was perfect, and nothing went wrong because...because things went wrong for other people, not for me. It’s like I’m paying for that now. Like there’s only a certain amount of good you can have before it all goes bad.”

  She laughed, the sound hollow and bitter. “Does that work in reverse?”

  “It should.”

  “Then stick with me. I’m about to win the mother-effing lottery. I’m sure of it. I may also find out I’m the long-lost princess of some little-known island nation. Probably I’m also an heiress to a shipping magnate, too.”

  “Been that bad, has it?” he asked. He felt like an ass going on about all of his stuff when she’d never had a good day in her life. At least, it didn’t sound like she had.

  And how fair was that?

  Katy was a hard worker. Someone with a strong backbone, a sense of loyalty. And what was he? Just a lucky guy who’d been born into money. Without it, what would he be? Nothing. Without his family name? What was he?

  Maybe nothing. But at least he’d still have his money. So there was that. He wasn’t sure what else there was, to be honest.

  “If I covered it up...” he began, his voice ragged as he tried to voice his deepest, dirtiest desires. And why not? She’d seen his dirtiest physical desires. Parts of himself he’d never wanted to expose anyone to. Because that wasn’t respectful. It wasn’t right. And he’d grown up believing in that. Dominating a woman went against so much of what had been instilled in him, so he’d done his best to ignore the fantasies. Even though he hadn�
�t always managed.

  But this was more shameful than a desire for spankings and bondage. Much more so.

  “If I covered it up,” he began again, “things could be like they were. My mother wouldn’t lose her husband. My sister wouldn’t suffer any repercussions. She’s in college, you know. Tearing her way through Columbia, continuing on the tradition. She’s part of the legacy that I’m about to destroy. And what will happen to her when I do? But if I don’t...she can go on like she always has. And I...I can, too. When people hear my name, when they hear Austin Treffen, they’ll think of a legacy of good works. Of achievements and advancements made for women. That’s what they’ll think of.”

  He looked at his hands, not really able to believe he was saying this out loud. Not able to believe how well-formed it all was. That it had been building in him like this.

  “But if I go ahead with it...my mother loses her marriage. My sister potentially becomes a target at school. And every time someone hears the name Treffen they’ll think of prostitutes and abuse.”

  He heard Katy swallow, saw her throat working. “I do understand how hard that would be, Austin. And I get that it’s costing you. More than it is them, more than it is me. But as it is, my life is so damned expensive. It costs me all the time. Because I can’t rest until this is fixed for her. I am truly sorry that people will think bad things when they hear your name, but what do people think when they hear Sarah’s? They barely hear it. They barely think of it. And if they do, they think of some stupid drunk slut who jumped off a building. Not the woman who gave me sanity. Who taught me how to love people. Who instilled in me the value of hard work. She was my example.” She swallowed hard. “When I lost her, I lost my way. I lost everything. She was the person who showed me that you could make it out of a situation like ours and go on to bigger things. And I know I haven’t done that. I know I haven’t done a lot of bigger and better things. But I believed I could. Just believing that brought me through more than you can possibly imagine. But no one knows that. They only know that she was a nobody from nowhere who just couldn’t handle any measure of success, ’cause you know those dirty poors just can’t.”