Bind Me Before You Go (Entangled Brazen) (Serve) (13 page)

Without hesitating—because after everything he’d done, hesitation would damn him—he said, “Whatever it takes.” Then he studied her face and added, “Really. Ask me. It’s yours.”

She lifted her chin, her composure returning, and with a steely gleam she answered, “I want you to be in my ropes this time. I’m obviously not an expert like you are, but it’s not about that, really, is it?”

She got it. She totally understood his version of Shibari…understood him.

“Is that what you were doing here?” he said.

She walked away from him, toward the ropes lying on the floor. “When you left, I realized I needed to regain a sense of control. I opened myself to you because I believed you would do the same. Instead, you shut me out. You rejected me. But I realized that I only learned one part of the equation with you. I learned how to open up to someone else. But I didn’t learn how to help them do the same for me. And I see now that I can’t have one without the other. I need that connection. That mutuality. And I think you do, too. That’s why you love Shibari so much.”

The veins in his neck and forehead started to pulse and bulge. He’d known Ethan for a while now, and he knew he usually fucked those he trained. David was desperate to know and not to know, but he had to ask. “Did you fuck him?”

Her gaze scorched his. “Would it matter if I slept with him?”

Would it?

He took in her beauty, the strength and grace in her stance, how she accepted all of him, even his family and his tainted blood.

“You can’t expect me to feel nothing about it, but when you come right down to it, it wouldn’t matter. Fuck, Cass, I’m lucky to even
know
you. Getting to love you, even if it’s you bringing me to heel…I’ll do it.”

She regarded what he said and gave the slightest hint of a nod. “I didn’t fuck him, okay? I never even met him before today. Leo set it up.” She shook her head. “It was never going to be about sex with him. I just needed to learn how to do
this
.” She picked up a length of rope from the floor.

He released the breath he was holding, relief washing over him in a mad rush.

“I’m going to change,” she said. “And when I return, we’ll begin. If that’s what you want.” She paused. “Is that what you want?”

His words coming from her mouth.

“What if it isn’t?”

“Then I won’t do it. I won’t touch you unless you tell me you want this.”

She was a quick student. He couldn’t help but smile.

“I want this,” he said.

And with that, she walked into the attached washroom and closed the door.

Meanwhile, he knew what to do, but goddamn it if it didn’t feel completely bizarre.

But he let that go as best he could, and he started with taking off all of his clothes, folding them neatly, and laying them by the door.

And then he did what he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles he would never do. He got down on his knees, naked, his ass resting on the back of his calves, palms up and eyes down. He heard her heels click on the glazed concrete floor, getting louder as she walked towards him.

“Get up,” she softly commanded.

He rose onto his feet, and she led him to the rings hanging from the ceiling, a setup he knew well—the Shibari setup.

Then she proceeded to do some very simple—but highly effective—rope cuffs, which she tied to a wooden ring above his head. And then he was naked, open, and vulnerable to whatever she had in mind. He had no control over anything. That thought made him start to sweat. Start to feel both pissed off and anxious at the same time. His breath was choppy, and he was on the verge of panic, until he remembered to open his eyes.

And there she was. His Cassidy. This was his woman, albeit a different side to her, but his woman all the same. The one he was going to trust with his body, his soul, his future.

Then it dawned on him…he’d never had any control. Not over his brother and his illness, not over the DNA in his body, not over anything. He could manage events, and he could continue to be reactive, but to what gain?

Wouldn’t it be better to share control with someone he thought the world of? Cassidy couldn’t do what he did—save a bunch of kidnapped girls from insurgents or negotiate a hostage release—but maybe she could help him find another way to live. Maybe having all the control meant he would only ever have part of the answers. By sharing with her, maybe she’d help him find the answers that had eluded him for so long.

He nodded, already bracing himself. Getting ready.

“I need your safe word, David.”

Wow, he had totally forgotten about that. As he looked at her—this woman of his, with so many sides and dimensions it would take his lifetime to discover them all—he tried to conjure a moment or a memory that made him feel totally safe. Something he could grab hold of if the pain got to be too much.

It was—of all things—the memory of Cassidy standing at his front door, with that tin of baked goods in her hands.

“Not the most masculine sounding word…but my safe word is ‘cookies’.”

She hadn’t expected that one. Her face demonstrated as much.

“Want to share with me why that’s your safe word?”

“Because I remember thinking how, when I was dealing with the latest shit from my brother, when I was treating you like fuckin’ garbage, you still loved me enough to come to my door with homemade cookies. And I remember thinking anyone who can be so good to me even at my worst, well, that’s where I want to be for the rest of my life. Those cookies are a symbol of your love. They’re what lets me know that when I’m with you, nothing will go wrong.”

She took a deep breath, and he knew she was hearing him. Taking in everything that he said.

“Before you start, I need to tell you about Marla,” he said.

The way Cass’s head jerked, he figured that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. But he knew that before he moved forward with her, he needed to share what had been dragging behind him all this time.

“Marla was my girlfriend in college. She was beautiful, smart, funny. Came from money. Came from a life out of a goddamn fairytale. She knew I had a brother that was mentally ill, but I didn’t tell her how severe. And that’s on me, I suppose. But I’d had girlfriends before, and they always left when they found out about him. About what being connected to me meant they had to accept. Over and over again, I’d find these women – or to be honest, they’d find me. Let me know how lucky they were to have me. Until I took them home. I’m part Italian so bringing a girl home to my family for Sunday dinner was expected. Can’t begin to tell you how many came in that front door smiling and how many left looking like a fucking bus hit them. When I met Marla? Fell so hard for her, I was determined to keep her as long as possible. So I kept him a secret.”

“Oh God,” Cassidy said. “Did she find out about him?”

“Eventually. We were both going to go to law school, and then we were supposed to join her father’s firm. Well, long story short, one day—while looking for me—she came to my parents’ house in Williamsburg. Dante was the only one home. He encouraged her to wait for me in the house. When she told him she was my girlfriend…he flipped his lid. Started screaming at her, barricading the front door, telling Marla he wasn’t going to let his little brother get ‘trapped and tracked by the government, no matter how clean and pretty her pussy happened to be.’”

“Jesus,” Cassidy murmured.

“By the time my parents and I got there, she’d locked herself in the bathroom, crying and scared out of her fucking mind, to the point I thought she’d collapsed. When I brought her out, she insisted she was okay. Even had a kind word for my brother. I remember thinking I had the most amazing woman in the world. I was going to marry her. But as soon as we were alone, she told me we were through. All this time, I hoped if she’d accept me, she’d accept
everything
about me. Including my family. But she told me it was her or them. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t abandon my family.”

Cassidy put her hand on his back. “She had no right to ask you to do that.”

He shrugged. “That was it. I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing her in class every day, so I walked away from Georgetown Law. Once we got my brother stabilized and on yet another medication protocol, I joined the Marines and became a member of Special Ops. You know the rest.”

Once he was done talking, he tuned into what she had been doing. He’d been so focused on exposing his secrets that he hadn’t noticed that she’d not only tied some beautiful rope cuffs on his wrists, but also around his ankles, anchored by a spread bar.

She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Hang on,” she said.

With a simple pull on the bar, she caused the ropes to tighten and pull at his limbs.

It was a simple yet profound choice she had made, because every part of his body was open to her. He took in a shaky breath. Not out of grief or pain, but because the release he was experiencing was nothing less than transcendental. He was bound up and hanging from a bunch of rope, but he was finally free.

“I love you,” he said. “For the rest of my life, I’m going to give you everything you deserve. You’ve got my heart, my body, my soul. And I’ll keep you safe and loved and with me for as long as you let me.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. And then she eyed the way she had tied him. Her eyes widened and her hand came up to her mouth.

“I made you completely vulnerable, didn’t I?”

He couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “I’ve been through much worse in my life. Untie me so I can show you.”

She lowered the ropes and knot by knot untied him.

He rubbed his wrists to bring back some of the circulation as she unzipped her boots and kicked them away.

Then he brought her to him, stroked her hair, and rocked her in his arms.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” she said.

He beamed down at her. His Cassidy. His woman.

“Never been better. I swear on my life.”

She nodded, seemingly relieved. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Did she have more questions? He didn’t blame her for hesitating. He’d been a total and complete asshole. But now he wanted her to ask her questions, because he needed to give her the answers.

“I want to open up to you,” he said. “I need to.”

“You said you didn’t love me before,” she whispered. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I thought I was doing you a favor. Letting you go to a better life. To find someone without schizophrenia poisoning his DNA—like a sick crapshoot. I always thought I wanted kids of my own, but I can’t go through that again. I can’t take that chance.”

She sat up and faced him. “Baby, did you ever think to maybe ask me what I wanted?”

“I’m scared shitless of opening myself up to you, to anyone.”

She raised an eyebrow and tried to hold back a grimace. “Well, you’re not most men, and I’m certainly not most women. I always thought if I did end up having kids, I’d adopt. And not some infant, but someone who really needs it, an older kid. Someone like me who just needs a stable family.”

His chest swelled with his heart and his breath. Not even ten minutes after his revelation, and she was already proving him right. All this time he’d been afraid to open up to her. Time he’d wasted.

He wouldn’t waste any more.

“Is there anything else you want to do to me?”

“No, but there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Anything, babe.”

Her face grew serious. Solemn. Like there was a lot riding on his answer to her question. “You still going on that mission tomorrow?”

Without hesitating for a second, he answered, “Fuck no. I’ve got too much to lose now.”

Her whole body seemed to relax, to ease into what he just told her. “I really like hearing you say that,” she softly said, her expression melting into something even more beautiful than it already was.

She bit her bottom lip and her gaze darted off to the side, obviously considering what he was telling her. But she still looked unsure.

“I know I was afraid. And I let that keep me from opening up to you. But nothing matters now except for what you and I want. From now on, where you go, I go. You’re the first thing I wake up to in the morning. You’re the last thing I see at night. Fuck two weeks. By the time we’re done, we’ll be talking about forever.”

He took a wobbly breath, as the realization of what he said fully hit him.

“Scaring yourself?” Cassidy teased while giving him a squeeze.

He brushed the apple of her cheek with the warm pad of his thumb, staring into the green of her eyes, feeling lost and found in the span of a heartbeat. He let out a whisper of a laugh and shook his head.

“Nothing about being with you scares me.”

“Well, is it okay if I admit that I’m equally ecstatic and terrified about everything you just said?”

“Cass, haven’t you figured out yet that I’m the one person in this completely fucked up world that you can tell anything to?”

She nodded and leaned her forehead on his muscled chest. “I know. It’s just happening so fast.”

“Hey,” he said while taking hold of the sides of her face in his hands and tilting her head to look up at him. “This is me. This is
us
. And that means we don’t do anything unless both of us are totally on board. Okay?”