Fifth Avenue Box Set: Take MeAvenge MeScandalize MeExpose Me Read online

  Not long into the drive it became pretty clear that the roads weren’t fine. It was cold enough that the roads were frozen, and with snow falling, the cars that had come before them had flattened it into a hard, white sheet.

  “How far is it to the freeway?” Katy asked, holding on to the door handle, like it might keep her safe if they slid off the road.

  “A ways. But we’re fine.”

  Except they weren’t fine because the road up ahead was closed.

  “There’s another route,” he said, his jaw set, that stubborn man-look firmly etched into his face. That look that meant he would drive them over a freaking frozen pond if it meant proving that he could handle it.

  No. Thank. You.

  “Another route that’s less snowy? Does this other route happen to take us through Bermuda? Because if not, please just release the death grip on your pride. Because I don’t want to die in an icy Aston Martin–shaped tomb.”

  “This isn’t about my pride,” he said, teeth gritted.

  “Bull, Austin. I’ve seen your penis. I know it’s big. So can you just find us a place to stay for the night so we don’t end up dead in a ditch?”

  He put the brakes on and the car slid for a few feet before stopping completely.

  “That!” she said, hand on her chest, her heart pounding. “That is why the stopping somewhere for the night.”

  “I know how to drive in ice.”

  “I don’t know how to be a passenger in it!”

  “Fine.” He turned the car around, the snow crunching beneath the tires. “We’ll see what we can find.”

  Chapter Ten

  What they could find turned out to be a nearly-booked-solid B and B in the center of town. An old Shaker-style house with an ornate entryway and a wreath on the door. It was like a Christmas card. And Austin hated that shit.

  Now he was staying in one room with the woman who was driving him crazy, slowly but surely.

  Today had beaten the hell out of him.

  He hated his father; he hated himself. Mostly he hated how much all of this was out of his control. It was a beast that was bigger than he was. Part of him had imagined he’d be able to control it. To turn it all so that only those who deserved it were hurt in all of this.

  But after seeing his mother receiving every hit quietly, after witnessing the hurt in Addison’s eyes, he knew he was lying to himself.

  He knew that this was a monster that would consume indiscriminately, and while part of him had come to that conclusion before today, it was only today that he’d truly seen it in action.

  And this place, so full of Americana and the woman he wanted like another hit of a drug, was getting under his skin. He would have rather chanced the blizzard.

  The room the owner had shown them to was as quaint and precious as the rest of the house. Solid oak floors with oriental rugs, a four-poster bed with ornate carvings in the wood. Stamped, cranberry-colored wallpaper and a matching blanket for the bed.

  “If the first room we stayed in together was a vampire brothel, what’s this?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching Katy explore the room.

  “A respectable vampire family home.”

  “Is it all vampires with you?”

  “It is when it has an edge of Gothic to it. And life in general seems to have that Gothic edge of late.”

  He planted his hands on the mattress and leaned back. “What’s my penthouse, then?”

  “Oh, you’re that slick urbane vampire who tried to pass himself off as a mortal. You lure women back to your penthouse and turn them into blood slaves.”

  He snorted. “Blood slaves?”

  “Sure. You make them crave things they’ve never wanted with anyone else. Things that are so very bad for them.”

  Her voice had gotten a little husky, her words reaching down deep into his gut and squeezing him tight. “If I were a vampire, I would, that is.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” She jumped, then reached into her pocket and tugged out her buzzing cell phone. “Hang on. Hello? Trey! What’s up?” She paused, her expression changing, her eyebrows locking together. “What do you mean your scholarship is being reviewed? What do you mean—” She started pacing. “I thought you said your grades were good.” She paused. “You lied to me? You little worm! You need to tell me these things so we can try to work them out! Yes, I know I’m not your mother, but news flash, your mother doesn’t care what you do! Or what I do! I do care, though. I care,” she repeated. “And you didn’t work this hard to— Fine, it’s just a review. Whatever. You handle it, then, since you seem to know everything.” He could hear her brother’s voice on the other end, the terse angry tone of a teenage boy who knew when it was his fault, but who wouldn’t admit it. “Did you know about this last time we talked? And you were B.S.ing me about it all being fine?” His response obviously didn’t thrill her. She let out a long breath. “Don’t pull this crap with me again. If you need me for anything, call me, you idiot.” She hung up the phone and pitched it onto the bed, letting out a feral growl.

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  “My brother is an idiot. He didn’t work this hard... I didn’t work this hard for him to lose it all now. I did. I worked so hard, Austin,” she said, her breath coming out on a sob. “I always worked. I had no personal life. No boyfriends, no friends. Nothing but work, and Trey, cooking him dinner, making sure I knew where he was, and then...getting high in my room at night to keep all the pain from crowding in on me when I needed to sleep.”

  “You what?”

  “I’m so stupid. I didn’t want to tell you. I’ve never told anyone.”

  “You told me you took drugs once on accident.”

  “I took Ecstasy once. And I never wanted to take it again. But I had a bad couple of years. When I moved out and took Trey with me. I was stressed all the time and depressed. Sarah was dead, and the payoff money was mocking me. A full savings account I would never touch because it was money I got in exchange for her blood. So I worked, and I did what I could to deflect all the stress and pain, and I used drugs to do it.” She sat on the edge of the bed next to him. “I felt like an idiot. And a hypocrite. But I justified it because I was just doing really mild stuff, like painkillers. They work for the pain inside you, too, and they’re pretty easy to get. My drug use was different than my parents’, so I told myself. Because they were legal drugs. I was just using them illegally, but hell, what did doctors know about my pain? And anyway, it’s not like I could afford a doctor.”

  He put his hand on her thigh, not caring if it violated their new no-touching, no-sex policy. “When did you stop?”

  “When I woke up passed out on the floor, totally disoriented and late to pick Trey up from school because I’d broken my own rule and taken some during the day. Because it was a hard day. Because it was the third anniversary of Sarah’s death and I wasn’t able to cope with it. Christmastime, right?” She turned and looked at him. “I almost killed myself, and not on purpose. Just with my own denial. I didn’t think I had a problem. I didn’t think I was taking too much. Just enough to relax, to sleep. To keep the pain away. I didn’t examine myself.”

  “And you never took them again?” he asked.

  “Mostly,” she said, the admission costing her, he could tell. “I threw them away. I kept a couple emergency pills. I used them, because sometimes...I could feel the numbness splitting open and without it there was just pain. I spent the year working my way off of them, but nothing was ever as bad as it was that day.... I just felt bad when I took them after that. Like a failure. Restarting the clock on your sobriety is tough. You get so many days, so many months...a year. And then you go back to zero because you were too weak to stop yourself.”

  “But you didn’t share it with anyone?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have anyone to share things like that with. I take care of my brother. I don’t need him to know how tragically human I am. I don’t want him to know I did that stuff because I don’t wa
nt him to think that people in our position have to. Because we don’t. But I’m part of the very large percentage of kids with our background who did get sucked in. But I got out. I’ve shared part of my story, not all of it. Because...I’m not really sure how to explain to people the way I dealt with my issues. It’s certainly not healthy.”

  “All right, how did you deal with it? How did you quit?”

  “Life hurts. It’s so hard and...I was using pills to dull that. But then...then I got angry. I figured out how to cover it all up with that. Every other emotion was like white noise because the anger was just so strong. And I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to make Jason Treffen pay for what he did to Sarah. To make sure the entire world knew he was the man responsible for her death. I had her letter, and even though it was hard to make sense of, I felt like I had an idea of what she’d been dealing with.”

  “So instead of wallowing in pain you went out for revenge.”

  “Without something to drive me I just sort of marinate in the bad stuff. Not that revenge is good. But my only regret now is that I wasted any time in going after him. Though, I couldn’t leave Connecticut until Trey was in school. Still, I started strategizing even then.”

  “You’re frightening. And kind of incredible,” he said.

  “Just angry. Anger is more productive than grief.”

  “Yours is, anyway.”

  “So,” she said, lying back on the bed and picking her phone up, before dangling her arm over the mattress and dropping it onto the floor, “the odds of us not having sex tonight are extremely low, so what do you say we don’t even pretend it’s not going to happen and just get down to it?”

  He almost choked. “What?”

  “Come on, Austin. We’re in this room. I just opened up to you. I’m feeling very vulnerable. There’s only one bed....”

  “All the more reason for us not to have sex. It’s practically forced.”

  “Good. Please just push me down and screw me senseless. That’s what I want.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to take control. I need...I need to not hurt. I just...hurt so bad. I’m afraid. Of what’s going to happen to Trey. What’s going to happen to your mom and your sister. And to me. When you touch me, when you take command, you make it all feel manageable. You make me feel like pain is a good thing. When you...spanked me...for a second it was like I could breathe again. It hurt, but only my body hurt, not my...not my emotions.”

  “That’s not normal.”

  “Who cares? It works for me. It’s about the only thing that’s worked for me other than drugs and being numb. I like what you make me feel a whole lot better than I like being high. I like it even better than being numb. Who cares if it’s normal? My whole life isn’t normal, so why should I care if the sex I want is normal? There’s no one else here. Just you and me, and I know what you want isn’t normal. You know it, too.”

  “No, it’s not. I want to own you. I want you to obey me. To be here for me. To do exactly as I say, no matter what. And what does that make me? My father? A monster of another sort entirely?”

  “What does it matter, if it works for both of us? Because tonight, I’d rather be yours than just plain me.” She rose up onto her knees and cupped his face with her hands. “I’m so tired. Make me forget it. Make me forget how much it all hurts. Make me forget I’m me. Take it all away until everything I am belongs to you.”

  Something inside of him broke free. A beast on a leash that wouldn’t be kept back any longer. She wanted it. She wanted to be his.

  And he wanted to make her his. There was no room for civility, or concern about how something might look. No thought given to what was politically correct or strictly acceptable in polite society.

  This wasn’t polite society.

  This was his domain, because she’d told him it was. She’d handed him the power and he would damn well use it.

  “Don’t hold back,” she said. “I’ll know if you do. I don’t want your restraint. I don’t want that white-collar bullshit. I don’t want you to be all starched and together. Take what you want. Not what you’re supposed to want or allowed to want. Make me yours. Make me beg.”

  Her eyes were level with his, no shame on her face, no hesitation. And he wanted to give her everything. He wanted to obey her in his domination of her, and if that didn’t sum up their twisted little relationship, nothing did.

  She was demanding his domination, and in return, she would offer perfect submission. But he had to rise to that challenge. Give her what she wanted. If he didn’t, he failed, because he was the one in control.

  He had failed too much lately. He would not fail again.

  “You want it all, Katy?” he asked. “Every dark thing in me?”

  “Every one.”

  “New rules tonight, baby,” he said, starting at the buttons on his shirt. “‘Stop’ won’t be good enough.” Adrenaline fired through his veins, his body on fire, burning with need for her. It had never stopped. Every day since the last night they’d been together he’d wanted her. But he hadn’t allowed himself to cross that line.

  Now he couldn’t remember why. Why the idea that he might somehow beat this need for her had ever been a serious consideration. Why? When he could indulge it. When he could use her as he saw fit. Tie her up and pleasure her until neither of them could think, much less hurt.

  But first, he had to get to the rules.

  “If you need me to stop, I want you to say ‘Help,’ not ‘Stop.’ If you say ‘Stop,’ I’m not going to. That’s part of the game. It’s a test of our trust. But if you need help? If you need help I’ll always give it. Say ‘Help,’ and I will. Do you understand?”

  She nodded slowly, her full lips parted slightly, her beautiful eyes round. He hoped he wasn’t pushing it too hard. Hoped that he hadn’t abused his power.

  That was the thing with being in charge. He had to make the moves, but she had to allow him. His control was nothing more than a vague facade around them.

  If she said no then he was the one left standing there with a hard dick, looking like an idiot.

  “I understand,” she said.

  Her acquiescence was a weight lifted off of him. A gift he needed, so very desperately.

  Katy felt a shot of adrenaline spike through her, a desperation that made her shake. This was what she wanted. For him to take her like this. To make her feel something that took over her body, so that she didn’t ache quite so much inside.

  So she didn’t feel so much like the Katy Michaels she’d always been.

  So that she could choose to give up her control and have it feel good, instead of having control wrenched from her and getting nothing back but devastating consequences.

  Life stole her control and gave her nothing but heartbreak and loss. Austin took her control and gave her pleasure that shattered her world.

  She didn’t wait to be asked to remove her clothes this time. She knew what he liked. Knew he liked to watch as she took off each piece of clothing.

  When she took off her bra, his eyes dipped to her breasts and his tongue slid over his top lip. But he didn’t touch her. He only looked, his power leashed, his control held tightly in check.

  She unsnapped her black dress pants and pushed them down her legs, taking her panties with them. She wasn’t embarrassed to be naked in front of him. Not when the glint in his eyes made it very clear that he not only liked what he saw, but he was also starving for it.

  “Now...give me your hands,” he said.

  Katy stretched her hands out in front of her. They were trembling, not from fear, but from excitement.

  He stripped off his tie and, like he’d done their first time together, started binding her hands together. This time he looped the heavy silk around her thumbs, then around both wrists, up her forearms before tying it off.

  “All mine,” he said, the roughness in his voice, the feral light in his eyes, sending a sensual shiver through her body.

&n
bsp; He leaned in, his rough cheek scraping against hers, the day’s growth of beard thick and nearly painful against her skin. He followed up with a light bite on her jaw, then one on her chin.

  He wrapped his hand around her arms and pulled her so that she was up straight, before guiding her onto her back on the mattress, her arms stretched high over her head, her breasts offered up to him like a sensual sacrifice.

  “Stay just like that,” he said.

  She loved him like this. His jaw set, his sexy mouth set into a grim line. Every part of him was devoted to it. To her. To being the master of her body. There was no hint of teasing, no hint of the man he could be, so sophisticated and polished.

  No. There was no room for that man here.

  He bit his lip, as if he were concentrating on making a very important decision. And the second it was made he acted. He planted his hands on her knees, driving her legs apart, exposing her to him. Utterly. Completely.

  He leaned forward, his eyes never leaving hers as he bent to touch his tongue to her clit, circling the impossibly sensitive bundle of nerves.

  Her hips shot up from the bed and he grabbed on to her thighs and pulled her back down to the mattress, pulled her hard against his mouth as he continued to pleasure her. Deep, long strokes of his tongue sending sharp, white-hot sparks of pleasure through her.

  He pushed two fingers into her, working them in time with his tongue, pushing her higher, harder, then drawing back, stilling his movements entirely. Just enough to let her blood cool a little bit, before he started again, pushing her even higher, even closer to the edge before pulling her back.

  She was so close, and he was arousing her even more intensely than she’d imagined possible. The pleasure was so acute it was almost pain. And when he added a third finger, it was pain. Not because it was too much to handle, but because the well of need it opened in her felt too deep to satisfy.

  Because she was close to satisfaction, and yet so far, she thought she might die.

  “Austin...” she said, the word a sob she didn’t want to get out all the way.