There it was. That guttural growl when he droppedhisfaçade and showed her the conniving monster behind the handsome clothes and sinful cologne. Somehow, that tone of voice evoked more memories than being in this place she called home for nearly ten years.Does it feel like a former home, though?No. It had become her prison, her tower patrolled by a dragon.
The Château was home. Warren Manor washome.
Yet her body remembered. Hersoulreacted. Her heart, meanwhile, remained broken.
I’m sorry, Henry.
“What do you want?” she coolly asked.
She saw his hand coming before her body sensed it too close, too near. But was she prepared for his smooth fingers to tip her chin, for his thumb to press against her lips?No. I never will be. Not again.Because that was not her husband’s tender touch. It wasn’t even her Dom’s steady but trusting hand.
It was the lion’s dangerous paw threatening to behead her.
“The other women since you…” He spoke as if he were at the end of his life, making amends to someone who was no longer there. And he touched her as ifshewere no longer there. “None of them have come close to your alacrity, or your beauty.” His knuckles brushed against her cheek, sending a torturous shiver through her entire body. It was disgust – rejection. Yet it was also the muscle memory of the younger Monica who had not yet met a man named Henry Warren.The one who told me he had loved me since I was with this man.The one who had rushed to France to find their daughter, the external symbol of their devotion to one another.
She refused to cry in front of the lion. She had walked into this den willingly, after all.
“You will always be the one that got away from me, Monica. I think you know that. You’re as aware of your perfection as a bird is as aware of its flight. You flew away from me.” One knuckle pressed into her cheek. She did not waver. “I’ve dreamed of the day you returned to this palace of our love.”
She fortressed herself against his words. “I did not come here to return to your arms, Jackson,” she said. “I came here for information on my daughter.”
“No, you didn’t come here for a burning desire to see me again. You’ve always made that quite clear.” He lowered his hand. “As feisty as you were when you were last here… ha! You only mademe love you more. My sweet, tender dove who flew the cage. What a fool I was for leaving the door open.”
“What do you want, Jackson?”
“In exchange for the very valuable information I now possess.” He grinned. “I think you have an idea. But do you know exactlywhat?No, I don’t think you do.”
She swallowed the self-admonishments she’d give herself later when forgiveness was all she could ask for. “Let’s just make this quick.”
“Quick?No, no. Listen, the info I have to give you… you can’t immediately act on it, anyway. It’ll be a few hours. Why don’t we spend that precious time together? The three of us?”
Monica glanced at the portrait of Paisley.
“No, not with her.” Jackson spoke of his current partner as if she were a fly buzzing in his ear. “With the other Warren you brought with you.”
The purse strap slipped from Monica’s finger and landed with a thud on the floor.
“No.” Eva lunged backward, nearly tripping over the edge of the throw rug covering Jackson’s bedroom on the second floor. “Absolutelynot,you freak!”
He was unperturbed as he sat on the ottoman before his bed. Like most other aspects of this home, the bedroom had not changed much, either. Everything was still to his particular tastes, from the golden bed covers to the beaded white curtains currently drawn across the windows. Although Jackson was visibly older than when Monica last slept in this room, he still projected the same power that suggested he was now, and always, incontrol.
“Those are my terms,” he said.
Eva attempted to rush at him with smoke fuming from her nostrils, but Monica held out her arm, hitting her sister-in-law right in the abdomen. Eva halted with a twist of her ankle and a flail of her hands.“This is what he wants,”she mouthed at Eva, and she didn’t mean her ex’s terms. She meant Eva’s anger. Her disgust.
This was when Jackson Lyle got off on the situation, and Monica must tread carefully.
She knew that Eva would react this way, though. Wasn’t that why Jackson locked the three of them in his bedroom, with instructions to the staff to keep Paisley preoccupied.I wonder how many times he’s done this to her.Or did he make a special exception for the submissive who got away with a gun in her hand?
There were no firearms now. Only the wits that Monica possessed.
“You piece of shit,” Eva spat.
“You sure are being rude to the man who holds all the cards,” Jackson said with a flick of his wrist. “I could have you both escorted off this property, and you wouldn’t get such fresh information from me. Then where would you be?”
“I don’t make deals with men like you.”
“Something tells me that the big lesbian in the room doesn’t make deals with any man. But Monica?” He gestured to her. “Shedoes.”
