It was healed but it still looked a mess.
Five scars riddling his thighs, both front and sides, three on the left, two on the right, in various shapes and lengths. She didn’t know what made them but the wounds had clearly been deep and also not tended well.
All of this seemed to highlight the now-healed tears, cuts and slashes all over his arms, ribs and legs that were far more minor but so abundant, it felt like each and every one of them were opening on her skin, wide and gaping, causing her pain, making her bleed.
“Jesus, fuckin’ Aryas,” his deep, grating voice sounded in the room, yanking Evangeline out of the frozen stupor she’d fallen into and hadn’t even noticed while examining him, “he can pick ’em.”
He was moving, turning, dressing again and Evangeline saw his back.
She sucked in an audible breath.
Now those, those could be from the life.
Crisscrossing his back and some on his upper thighs (but oddly, none over his ass) were profuse signs he’d been whipped.
Repeatedly.
Over a length of time.
And severely.
When he yanked his cargo pants over his ass, she came back to the room.
And herself.
“Did I say you could dress?” she asked.
He turned to her, shrugging his shirt on. “I wanted a bleeding heart to kiss my scars, I’d pay a whore.”
She stared in shock at his words.
This guy was a sub?
“What did you just say to me?” she demanded incredulously.
“You heard me,” he grunted. Shirt on but unbuttoned, he bent to pull on his socks and boots.
“Stop moving and hear me,” she snapped.
He straightened and stalked her way.
She felt a curl of fear sicken her stomach even if his gait wasn’t aggressive.
He was getting close.
And he was a man in a playroom at the Honey.
With her.
And no cameras.
“You’re in the way,” he bit out, coming to a halt in front of her.
Quickly, Evangeline sorted herself out.
“We’re not done here,” she told him.
“We’re totally done here.”
“I like what I see and I’m in the mood to play,” she pushed.
“Sorry, don’t give a fuck,” he returned.
“Step back, Branch,” she said softly, holding his eyes, “and take your damned clothes off.”
“I’m thinkin’ you don’t get this so I’ll spell it out for you,” he stated.
And it was then she noticed he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t impatient.
He wasn’t anything.
He was just looking down at her and speaking.
“I don’t need your brand of lame-ass shit,” he finished.
Ouch.
She suffered that without a wince but marked the fact that an insult hurt worse when it was delivered by an amazing-looking man who looked like he not only didn’t care that he hurt your feelings, he didn’t care you existed at all.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t done.
“What gets me off, you don’t got in you to give me.”
“You won’t know that unless you,” she leaned toward him, “step back and take your fucking clothes off.”
“I’d laugh, but you playin’ Mistress isn’t that funny.”
Her head moved like she’d been slapped.
“Now, woman, stop wasting my time and get outta my way.”
She stared in his eyes.
They were void.
She stared some more, doing it harder.
And at what Evangeline saw (or more to the point, didn’t see), she made a decision.
A decision she knew might change her life.
But staring in his eyes, even with all that had befallen her with Kevin, in that moment, she did not care one … single … bit.
She stepped out of his way.
He sauntered out like he was leaving a fast-food restaurant once he’d been given his burger and fries.
She stared at the door he’d casually tossed closed behind him.
“You’re terrified,” she said to the door and stood there, breathing deeply. “Utterly paralyzed by it,” she whispered.
She stopped speaking and drew in an annoyed breath.
Aryas.
Damn the man.
Damn him.
“I have exactly what you need and it scares the pants off you,” she told the absent Branch whatever-his-last-name-was (if Branch was even his real first name).
She continued staring at the door, knowing she’d been played.
Played by Aryas Weathers, her friend and the man who wanted to see her be exactly who she was meant to be.
And find her way to happy.
But she didn’t care.
No way it was going to be fun and done with Branch whatever-his-last-name-was.
No way he was going to walk out of that playroom without looking back and vanish from her life.
No way.
She was going to hunt that big boy down and she was going to tear him open and then she was going to shatter him.
He liked to be pushed to the edge?
She was going to take him there.
Shove him right over.
And go over with him.
And when they landed, they both were going to explode.
All over the place.
And love every bit of it.
four
The Pound
EVANGELINE
Evangeline got out of her car and threw her door shut.
She stood in the graveled lot in the dark of night in the pit of nowhere that was whatever the area of Arizona was called beyond Buckeye.
And she stared across the vast space filled with cars at the large, dilapidated warehouse, the only building within miles, and decided if Branch whatever-his-name-was wasn’t in there, when she eventually found him (and she would find him), she’d do something she vowed she’d never do.
She’d strip her own scars into his back.
(But of course, she’d make him come while doing it.)
With that thought, she stomped in the gravel in her platform heels toward the building.
* * *
To say the last month had been frustrating was an understatement.
It started with an idea.
A good one.
No.
A delicious one.
One she carried out immediately after book club the night after her failed meeting with Branch.
A book club, incidentally, that had been precisely what Amélie had said it would be.
Taking up where they left off.
One big happy family.
No one said a word or cast a glance.
Sure, the hugs Evangeline got when she arrived were longer than they’d normally be. And perhaps Mira’s eyes had teared up a little.
But after that, it was just …
Family.
Book discussion had ended, wine consumption and life discussion had ensued, with Romy yanking out her laptop and sharing a new online store they all had to know about immediately.
She was not wrong.
It was tremendous. Nirvana in the form of a discreet, online adult store.
The wares were pricey, but they were fabulous, and in some cases, works of art.
One case in particular, Evangeline had to have it.
She had to.
And she had to have it to make things clear to her submissive (who didn’t yet know he desperately wanted to be her sub, but she was going to show him the way if it killed her) just how things were.
And so, when she got home, she didn’t hesitate to go right to her office, fire up her computer and then take forty-five minutes adding and deleting from her basket two different styles of the same toy.
One had an ice-blue jewel at the end of it, much like the color of Branch’s eyes.
One had a sapphire-blue jewel at the end of it, much like the color of Evangeline’s.
In the end, the heavy, sleek, gleaming aluminum plug she’d bought had the sapphire-blue jewel because, she decided, it was going to be her she’d slide inside him. It would be her that filled him. It would be her he’d hold deep.
It cost a mint, and when it arrived, she found it was hefty and slightly larger than she expected, but Evangeline decided that was perfect too.
He wouldn’t forget she was there.
Right there.
Buried deep.
And as she took her nights to search for him, she kept it in its custom-made velvet bag in her glove compartment.
Ready to stake her claim.