His Indecent Revelations (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire BDSM Erotic Romance)

• His Indecent Revelations (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire)
  
• Midpoint
  
• EPILOGUE
  

(Volume 5 of ‘Bound
and Shackled
to the Billionaire’)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by Aphrodite Hunt

Cover art by Aphrodite Hunt

1

Alia – Channing’s former love of his life – stands there like an avenging angel. The gauzy white veils of her ghostly attire tremble in the chilly draft that whips its way around the dungeons. The gleaming obsidian half-mask on her face makes her resemble a phantom.

Susan is beyond shock.

She blinks.

It can’t be. She’s dead.

Indeed. She has to be dead. This woman – this wraith standing there like the ghost of Baghdad past, like an entity who has been interred in her coffin, left for dead, but has somehow managed to struggle against her casings and escaped – is the cause of their entire predicament. The reason why Channing is the way he is; an emotionally damaged individual who is burdened constantly by his unspeakable past.

The reason why Hugh, his twin brother, hates him enough to destroy him.

The reason why she, Susan Chalmers, has been dragged into this unholy mess for the sole crime of falling in love with Channing Crawford at the wrong place, the wrong time.

The way Channing is staring at Alia sends both a pang and a dagger into Susan’s heart. Channing’s blue eyes are filled with excruciating pain, regret, sorrow, shock . . . and
love
. It is remembered love. A love of past promises and whispered declarations upon a pillow, made after fervent coupling. A love that has been shared, reciprocated and fulfilled. A love that has been unfairly wrenched away before its time.

And it’s all coming back to him now.

Except that Alia’s eyes blaze with hate.

“You,” she says in a low, dangerous voice.

“Alia.” Channing’s voice is strangled.

Susan can only watch on, helpless.

Alia says, “You did this to me.” She touches the side of her masked face.

Channing shakes his head. “Alia, no. It wasn’t like that. Please . . . I thought you were dead.”

“You made sure of it.”

She has a slight accent that Susan can’t place. Not exactly Middle Eastern, though Susan will be the first to admit that she is no expert in accents. But something is very wrong with Alia. Susan can’t put her exact finger on it, but it’s as if they are speaking to a person who is extremely psychologically damaged – and yet retaining all her mental faculties to do extreme harm.

And Susan knows – with the knowledge deep in her bones – that Alia will be capable of doing them extreme harm.

The Adam’s apple in Channing’s throat visibly runs from his jaw to his sternum. “Please, I need to know what happened to you.”

“What’s there to tell? You let my father do this to me.” Alia fingers her mask again. Her voice is full of penned-up but controlled rage.

“No. When your father found out about us, he went crazy. He threw me into his dungeon, which is pretty much like this one. And he tortured me.” Channing’s current bound state, with the gaping hole in his chair, leaves very little room for imagination as to what the torture might have been.

“I know,” Alia says.

She must have been beautiful and innocent once, Susan thinks. A sharp pain flowers in her chest.

Channing says in a broken voice, “I had no idea what he had done to you. Only that he came to me one day in my weakened state . . . and told me he had drowned you in his swimming pool.”

Horror washes through Susan. She cannot imagine having a father like that. She cannot imagine having a life like that – when you live in mortal fear of those who are supposed to love and protect you. No wonder Alia is so
fractured
.

Alia says, “He drowned my mother in the swimming pool when he found out she was having an affair with her bodyguard. He said she had dishonored him. I was two. He told me he was about to drown me for dishonoring the family too . . . except . . . ”

Susan sucks in her breath. Her fists are clenched so painfully that her fingernails dig into her palms. She wonders if they can make a run for it. But Channing is chained firmly to the chair. There’s no way she would leave him behind.

Alia goes on, “Except that I was with child.”

Now it is Channing’s turn to go pale.

“Wh-what?”

“My father spared my life because I was with child.
Your
child.”

Dust motes swirl in the compressed air of the dungeon, moving this way and that. The hairs on Susan’s arms stand on end.

“What happened to the child?” Channing has turned deathly still. It’s as though he has died a thousand deaths over the space of sheer moments.

Alia maintains the same neutral tone that can be used to describe the weather. “He sent me away into the mountains to live with an Order of women who shun men. But before he banished me, he did this.”

She removes her mask.

If the horror had only been lurking under the surface before, it manifests full-blown in Susan now. She crams her knuckles into her mouth and bites down hard.

It’s the only way to keep from screaming.

2

Susan can’t help staring at Alia’s face – or at least the ghastly half of Alia’s face which has been revealed. It’s as though someone has taken a blowtorch and systematically carved onto it with the master precision of a homicidal maniac.

What father can do this to his child? What human being can do this to anyone? No wonder Alia seems so broken, like a doll which whose mind has been shattered and can never be put back together again.

Channing blanches. Susan can only imagine the thought streams running through his head. Does he experience guilt? Anger? Helplessness? Does he blame himself for letting her father do this to her?

But he had no choice! He was a prisoner. He was forced into this.

He had no choice.

Yeah, she has to keep telling herself that. The man she loves is not the monster his brother paints him out to be. He can’t be. She loves him too much to let his past dictate what she wants to believe in.

And yet, the nagging doubt persists.

Did he do all that Hugh said he did?

Channing’s features are extremely strained, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry he did this to you.”

“No,” she says vehemently, “
you
did this to me. My father told me what you did before you killed him.”

Susan turns to Channing, mutely pleading.
Please prove her wrong.

He closes his eyes. “Yes, I did kill your father. But only because he would have killed us. It was a time of war. We were his prisoners.”

“Liar! My father said he gave you a choice. My life for your freedom. You chose your freedom. Yours and that of your men!”

Channing bows his head. He does not deny this.

A crack splinters Susan’s heart.

Now think this calmly through,
the rational voice in her head says. Be objective, not emotional. If it had been you, what would you have done? What if you were given the choice of Channing’s life . . . or your own?

The answer comes to her with brutal and blinding speed.

I’ll die for Channing.

The obviousness of her subconscious answer stuns even her.

Channing says, “I killed him . . . when I heard you had been murdered. I could have walked away. But when he told me . . . something broke inside of me. And he didn’t let me go. I escaped.”

The cold rage is startling in Alia’s tone. “You let him torture me. And you killed him. In spite of everything, he was my father.”

Once again, Channing does not deny this.

Suppressing the choke in her throat, Susan says hoarsely, “Please . . . Channing was a prisoner then. He had no choice.”

“He had a choice. He made it. After he killed my father in cold blood, he took everything my father had. All the gold, money and jewels he and his men could find in the citadel before dousing it in flames.”

Channing shakes his head. “We took only the gold. We did not burn anything down intentionally. The fire was an accident.”

“An accident which you in no small part caused. You left your brother in there to perish as well. It was premeditated . . . your murder of all those you claimed you loved.”

Channing closes his eyes. When he opens them, his fevered blue orbs are anguished.

“What happened to the child?” he whispers.

“The mountains were harsh and cold, and the way the Order lived was spartan. I gave birth to the child.”

It is clinical and detached, the way she talks about the child, Susan notes with dread.

“The child was a male, which accounted for why my father spared me. But he was born sickly. He had a large head and stunted limbs. So the sisters of the Order took him away to be put down with the other abominations who must not be allowed to live.”

She calls her own child an abomination.
Susan feels viscerally sick.

“So he’s dead,” Channing says flatly. The light has completely died in his eyes.

“Yes. As you soon shall be. Forgive me for what I am about to do to you. For you see, the love we shared has fled a long time ago when you left me in there.”

She turns from the doorway and disappears from view. Three burly guards enter the dungeon cell. One of them strides to Susan and seizes her arm.

“No, please,” she shrieks.

“Relax,” says the guard, “we’re not going to do anything to you.
She
has forbidden it. She says you’re his victim as much as she was.”

He pulls her, struggling, out of the cell. The other two guards remain and turn ominously to Channing. Susan cannot see what they carry in their large hands.

“No, please don’t kill him! I’ll do anything!”

Her cries go unbidden as the guard drags her away, her feet trailing on the hard stone slabs.

3

Susan spends the rest of her day (or is it night?) being hysterical. She has no idea of what they are doing to Channing. She pictures him beaten and tortured in all sorts of horrible, unspeakable ways . . . and worse, murdered in cold blood. Channing’s body lies cold in her mind’s eye – bleeding, pale, sprawled upon the merciless stone slabs.

That’s when she wakes up screaming uncontrollably, only to find herself in a straightjacket. Grim olive-skinned faces hover above her. She feels a prick on her arm, and she blacks out.

Only to sink into more nightmares of Channing’s demise.

No, no, no, no.

She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he died. She doesn’t care what he did in the past. He had reasons! He was justified in killing the warlord! It was a time of war!

He had to leave Alia behind. His arms were twisted behind his back.

But he didn’t leave
me
behind.

He came for me. He tried to rescue me.

No matter what happened in the past – what he did, what he did not do, what he was supposed to do according to the gospels of many people – he has changed for the better now.