The Submissive's Last Word (The Power to Please #4) (16 page)

“I’m sure that’s not foremost in his thoughts. He wants a
happy daughter more than anything else. And you can turn on the charm, when
it’s in your best interests.”

“Right. Well, it doesn’t matter. I won’t be anyone’s bitch.
Not hers and not her father’s. I won’t be forced to marry anyone, and
especially not some stupid tramp. I’d rather stay in this hellhole.”

“That’s certainly your prerogative. If you change your mind
later and decide marrying Miss Castillo is a better alternative to life behind
bars, then all you have to do is inform the inspector. It’s simple. Glad to
have been of help. You’re welcome.”

Michael clenched his hands into fists, the muscles in his
neck straining. “You’re a real fucking bastard, you know.”

Gibson appeared bored by the insult. “You’re angry. It’s
understandable. You’ll want time alone to decide what to do. We should be going
anyway. Nonnie, shall we?”

He stood up and held out his hand for me. I took it and
stood beside him. When I tuned to say goodbye to Michael, I was taken aback by
the hatred disfiguring his features.

He glared at me, then at Gibson. He spat across the table.
“Go on, then. Get out and take your piece with you. I don’t blame you for
fucking her, you know. She’s an enthusiastic lay. I remember it well. So does
Kamun.”

I stiffened, as did Gibson. His hand tightened around mine,
then his other hand pressed into the small of my back and he gently propelled
me toward the door.

He stopped when I was in the hall. “There’s a few things I
have to clear up yet. Why don’t you wait in the front for me? These two will
escort you. Don’t leave their sides, okay?”

I nodded. Then he returned to the interview room, closed the
door and I was left with the two bodyguards who had been posted in the hallway.
I fumbled with my purse, a little shaky and keyed up from Michael’s last
insult. In a bumbling move, I dropped my purse and a few items shot out and
scattered across the floor.

The guards stepped forward and bent down to help me gather
up my things. I was just standing up straight when I heard a voice on the other
side of the door.

It was Gibson, muffled, but clear enough. He said, in a dark
tone, “Unchain him.”

I swallowed. The two guards caught Gibson’s command, too,
and in a heartbeat hustled me down the hall and around a corner. I wanted to
stay, but I wanted to leave, too. In the end, I let them take me away.

I didn’t have to wait long before Gibson arrived to usher me
out of the jailhouse section. He spoke a few words with the police chief, who
appeared disappointed at what Gibson said, likely because Michael didn’t accept
the offer of marriage. Then Gibson led me out to the black sedan, and we
settled into its cool back seat.

Our entourage pulled away and headed back the way we had
come.

I reached over and took Gibson’s hand, unwrapped the
handkerchief tied around it. Using a clean spot on the cloth and some bottled
water, I cleaned his bloodied, scraped knuckles as best I could.

I studied his face, and saw nothing more than a red spot or
two, one high on his cheek and one on his jawline. Clearly, Michael hadn’t
landed any serious blows in return. The rough state of Gibson’s knuckles declared
him the victor.

I re-wrapped his hand in a fresh handkerchief and lightly
kissed his swollen knuckles. He was stoic throughout the process.

I gave him a small smile and he returned it.

No man had defended my honor before. I wanted to crawl into
his lap and wrap my arms around him. But we weren’t alone, so I settled for
sitting beside him, touching his arm.

We rode in silence for a while, until I was sure of what I
wanted to say, not about his defense of me, but about something else entirely.

“Thank you for lying to me about the second video,” I said.
“I couldn’t have handled it back then. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Michael told you about the other recording?”

“I kind of tricked him into admitting it. I was ready to
know the truth.”

“I’m sorry. I never wanted you to know about it.”

“I appreciate that. But it’s okay. I had all these questions
about that night, and now I know the answers, so that’s a good thing. And it
helped me realize his feelings don’t matter, how he saw any of it. I can put it
away now.”

“Good. That’s what this trip was about.”

He put his arm around me and I leaned against him.

I couldn’t help my thoughts from returning to the jail.
“What about Kamun?”

“What about him?”

“What do you think will happen to him?”

“I don’t care.”

I heard the determination in his voice, felt the force of
his distaste for the man. I was more than aware of my own. I, too, didn’t care
if Kamun ever got out of jail.

As for Michael, whether he did or did not marry the Castillo
woman, I didn’t care about that either. I was done with it. With him.

I was through with the blame, the guilt and regret. I was
finished second guessing and wondering at the truth. It didn’t matter, in the
end. It was over.

Michael didn’t ruin me after all. I could only wonder that I
ever thought he could, that I imbued him with enough power that such an idea
was possible. He could never ruin me. Hurt me, yes. Ruin me, no.

And now, he couldn’t even hurt me again. It was finished.
The end.

So this was closure. Wonderful. And the feeling was immediately
followed by a freshness, a hinted whiff of beginnings coming my way. The
future.

The sedan bounced over the rutted roads and I squeezed
Gibson tightly. We were safe. No one could stop us. An hour later, we pulled
into the small airport without incident and boarded the plane that would fly us
back to Belize City, and I knew then that everything would be fine for certain.

Gibson was my future. And I was his.

To hell with the past.

Goodbye, Michael Weston.

Chapter 14

The next month passed in a serendipitous dream, the pieces
of my life tumbling together and combining into a new, exciting creation that
required little oversight from me.

A few days after returning home from Belize, Xavier
approached me with an offer. He had scavenged some of my sketches from the
guests at the picnic and taken them to a friend of his who taught at an art
school in the city. His friend liked my drawings enough to send them on to the
admissions board. Now, they wanted to interview me for possible late admission.

Xavier said that although I had said I didn’t want to return
to school, he thought I might feel differently if it were art classes. And it
wouldn’t cost me much, since there was a scholarship available for an older
student returning to school. He argued that while artists don’t necessarily
need college, they do need exposure to technique and theory, and this school
could give me both.

I was stunned, so surprised I couldn’t even be annoyed by
his high-handedness in submitting my work without my permission. The instant he
spoke of lessons in different mediums, a powerful desire rose within me.

I thanked him and the next day drove into the city for my
interview. By the end of the week, I’d won the scholarship and was enrolled in
classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I didn’t forget Isabel’s offer. She was supportive of
whatever I wanted, and when I told her about getting accepted into art school,
she congratulated me then suggested I work part time at Roundtree, on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. I happily accepted.

So just like that, I had a life again. A full life and a
fuller schedule. School and work, both new, both exciting in different ways.

School was a crazy, hectic rush, an adjustment of a major
sort. I was both out of place, because of my age, and exactly where I was
always meant to be, pursuing art.

This was the direction my life might have taken if I hadn’t
gotten pregnant when I was eighteen and chained myself to the wrong man. Or
perhaps, the change would have had to happen earlier, before I became one of
those sad young women whose self worth was tied to her man. And when might that
time have been? Far back, long before I became a woman, when I was still child,
staying on my grandparents’ farm.

This realization might have been sad, but I couldn’t be upset
by it, not when my life was finally coming together.

Work with Isabel was a pleasure. She drove me mercilessly,
but I enjoyed it. My biggest complaint about my old job as office manager at
Linton Cosmetics had been the tedious, repetitive nature of it. I certainly
didn’t have that grievance at Roundtree.

I fessed up to Isabel about my relationship with Gibson and
enjoyed a rare moment of seeing her shocked. She then resumed her usual
straightforward manner and told me to not expect special favors because of my
involvement with the owner, shaking her finger at me and making me laugh.

Every day was exciting with Isabel raising hell and wasting
no time letting everyone know she was there to make big things happen. Her new
employees loved her as much as her old ones did, or at least the ones who
weren’t terrified of her. Part of my new job was assuring them that Isabel
didn’t bite; or if she did, she didn’t break the skin.

Technically, I was Isabel’s part-time assistant. In
actuality, I was her arbiter, often her mouthpiece, and occasionally her
sounding board.

After the previous weeks of fear and misery, and the
mindless sort of mental and physical lethargy that depressed thinking can bring
on, my current busy schedule was a violent shock to my system. The first week
of my full schedule, I fell asleep each night before nine o’clock. By the time
the weekend rolled around, I planned to spend half of it sleeping.

Every moment I didn’t spend at school, working or sleeping,
I filled with Gibson. He supported my decisions, and never begrudged the time I
spent sketching or practicing new techniques for school. He suggested we
carpool to Roundtree on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that quickly became a
highlight of my workdays, as did our lunch breaks.

We slept together every night, either in his bed, or in
mine. The more I was with him, the more I wanted him. I was confident he felt
the same.

We worked out a flexible schedule between us, where we ate,
whose place we slept at, and so forth. It was a natural evolution when finally,
Gibson asked me to move into his house with him.

It didn’t seem that big a thing when he asked and I happily
accepted. I was already living on his property. Moving into one house was more
practical than anything else, and would cut down on all the juggling of
toiletries and other belongings that resulted from switching residences so
often.

On a Saturday morning in October, Gibson and I, along with
help from staff members, moved my belongings out of the lakeside cottage and
into the estate mansion. I was pretty blasé about the whole thing, going around
in a carefree manner, bantering with Gibson about how he’d have to give me more
drawers than he wanted.

It wasn’t until my boxes were piled in Gibson’s room and a
couple of housemaids were traipsing around unpacking and trying to find space
for everything, when it hit me. I was moving in with Gibson Reeves.

My God. This was my stuff in his room. Wait. Not just his
room. My room, too, now.

And all my art supplies were being set up in a different
room in the sprawling mansion, a room that Gibson was having altered
specifically for my needs, with special lighting and built-in cabinets, and I
couldn’t say what all since he had brought in an interior designer to take over
when it was obvious I wouldn’t have the time for it. My studio, my workshop.

When I went to sleep that night, I’d be in Gibson’s bed. My
bed. And the huge bathroom. Mine. The veranda. Mine.

If I wanted a snack, I’d have a long trek to the big kitchen
with the vast refrigerators and other industrial-sized appliances. Even the
toaster was intimidating in there. Or I could buzz up a servant and ask that a
snack be brought to me. Now that was a serious mind-blower.

The next time Elaine visited me, I’d be welcoming her into a
mansion. If we had coffee, there’d be a household employee nearby, expecting to
fetch and serve it.

These realizations were overwhelming. I needed time to
think, figure out what was going on. Why was my heart beating so fast?

I half-staggered to the door, feebly telling the maids to
put things wherever they thought best, then I rushed down the hallways and
stairs, seeking a quiet spot to hunker in. I found a small sitting room halfway
down the east wing, slipped inside and closed the door with hardly a sound.

I flopped down in a soft chair and stared at the carved
mantlepiece over the fireplace.

This was my home now. I lived here with a sexy, unbelievably
handsome, who-knew-how-rich man. And he was as crazy about me as I was about
him.

And I was in school, had a great job and friends that I
could be honest with about who I was.

I never had to worry about anything, really. Certainly not
money. The only small arguments Gibson and I had were always about money — him
wanting to buy me things and me saying no. Of late, though, he won those
arguments more often than not. He’d even managed, finally, to persuade me to
drive one of his new cars instead of my old clunker, a lengthy battle which I
still wasn’t comfortable surrendering.

Still, Gibson and I never fought, not seriously. He was so
even-tempered and reasonable I couldn’t imagine ever being in genuine conflict
with him. And best of all, none of the ease meant he wasn’t passionate. Oh, in
bed, he was as passionate as any woman could hope.

Here I was. Living with a wonderful man on a fancy estate.

So what the hell was I freaking out about?

I laughed out loud. Seriously. Who freaked out over this,
this, what was it?

I searched for an answer. What was this?

Happiness. Could that be it?

Good Lord. I wasn’t freaked out. I was happy, happier than
I’d ever been.

Hell, I was half-giddy with it. If I were a teenager, I’d be
jumping up and down, dancing around the room and squealing about it over the
phone to my best friend.

So this was what pure happiness felt like. No wonder people
wished for it so badly.

And there I was, stupidly hunkered in a sitting room, hiding
out because I didn’t know how to deal with being happy. I mentally shook
myself. I needed to get the hell up and out of that room and go find the man
who was responsible for creating this joy.

I smiled. And stood.

I’d left Gibson at the mercy of the maids and when I
reentered our bedroom, I found him backed against a wall looking distinctly
unamused at the questions the two women were tossing at him, questions about
where my panties and bras should go, and how my shoes should be arranged in the
closet.

He met my gaze with no small relief, and my heart gave a few
quick thumpity-thumps in response. Whatever it was that brought me to this
moment, I thanked it with everything I had. I couldn’t imagine anything being
better than this.

Nothing, I thought, could be better than living with Gibson
Reeves.

Our first week co-habitating passed smoothly except that I
began to have some questions which only Gibson could answer.

I didn’t notice anything missing, at first, I was so
thrilled to be with him. But now that certain facts had come to my attention,
they needed addressing.

I waited until Friday evening, after we ate dinner and after
he released the house staff for the night. We were tucked away in Gibson’s
study. He was at work typing on his computer and I was stretched on the sofa
reading my art history textbook.

I looked up from a photo of a Doric column. “Are you busy
right now?”

“Give me a second.” A flurry of typing followed before he
turned in his big leather chair to face me. “I’m all yours.”

I laid my book on the table in front of the sofa. “I was
wondering if you’d tell me where your dungeon is.”

He blinked once, twice. “You sound certain that I have one.”

“I am. I’ve been going through every room in this place
trying to find it. No luck. But there are some locked doors. Give it up. Your
dungeon’s behind one of those doors, isn’t it?”

“You sound convinced of it.”

“You have one. Come on. You had to have a place where you
took your subs for, you know, BDSM action.”

He grinned. “I think it’s adorable that you call it BDSM
action.”

“You can’t distract me with flattery. Okay, you can, but
don’t.”

“Fine. If you insist. I usually met my subs at Private
Residence. There are rooms there, the no-audience kind. I had one on permanent
reserve.”

“You didn’t bring them home?”

“No.”

“Sleep in a bed with them?”

“No.”

I paused to consider his answer. “It’s so impersonal.”

“With most of them, it was like a business arrangement. We
bargained about what each of us wanted, reached an agreement and signed a
contract. It wasn’t romantic, if that’s what you mean by impersonal.”

“Did you never bring a sub here?”

“Almost never.”

“You’ve had relationships before, though.”

“A few.”

I plunged onward. “We haven’t had any BDSM action ourselves
yet, not since we started up again.”

He nodded, his features still. “That’s right.”

“You had to know I was going to start wondering why you
aren’t tying me up and spanking me. It used to be something you couldn’t get
enough of and now phhht. Nothing.”

His mouth twitched. “Are you offering to become my
submissive partner, Nonnie?”

“I didn’t know you needed me to.”

“The last time we spoke on the subject, you were unsure
about continuing as a submissive.”

“Just because I didn’t want to do training at Private
Residence doesn’t mean I’m unsure about doing stuff with you. Anyway, you’re
always large and in charge no matter what we’re doing, and I pretty much do
what you want, don’t I?”

“Pretty much.”

“So you’re not making sense. Do you want me to ask for it?
Because I will. I’m not shy, you know.”

“I’d noticed that. Come here.” He uncrossed his legs and
patted his lap.

I clambered off the couch and settled onto his lap. He
pulled me close to his chest, circling me with his arms.

“I’m not playing games,” he said. “It’s not about forcing
you to ask for it. I haven’t wanted to push you after what you’ve gone through.
You’ve been reticent and that’s understandable. If you never wanted to delve
deeply into BDSM again, I won’t lie to you and say I wouldn’t miss it. I
probably would, but I don’t have to have it to be happy with you.”

I watched his face closely, the fine crinkles at the corners
of his dark eyes, the shape of his moving lips. It declared sincerity to me. “I
haven’t ever considered giving it up, not for long. I want that with you,
Gibson. I love what we do together now, but I want it to be like it was during
our weekend at the condo, too.”

“You’re sure? Don’t do this because you think I have to have
it.”

“I’m not. Maybe I’m the one who has to have it.”

“My greedy little sub.”

“That’s right.”

“Then if you’re ready, I am too. We’ll do it properly this
time, though. I’ll pull out the paperwork and we can go over the limit lists
and set an initial negotiating —”

I sighed. “Right now? I really don’t want to do that right
now.”

“It’s past time we approached this in a formal manner,
Nonnie. We should discuss limits and expectations and everything that goes with
it.”

I wiggled my rear in his lap. “I agree. But I don’t see why
it has to happen tonight. Right now.”