Commanding Her Trust (3 page)

The tattoo had to stay looking exactly as it always had if she wanted to get back into modeling for Damned Naughty Lingerie. And she
had
to get back into modeling. Tending bar at The Elbow Room was never going to make her enough money to fight Scott in court, let alone provide for the future. Being a single mother was hard enough, but being a single mother in a city like L.A. was even harder. Everything cost more than it had when she was growing up in a small town, and she was going to need a sizeable income to make sure her daughter Abby never wanted for anything.

Erin didn’t want to be dependent on Scott for a dime. She wanted sole custody of their daughter and preferably a restraining order keeping Scott at least ten miles away from them both at all times. Her ex had never hit her or the baby, but he was an emotionally abusive sociopath and the last man who should be entrusted with the care of a child. Especially an infant.

It was enough to make her physically ill every time she thought about Abby going to sleep in the same house as that bastard. She had to get her daughter back, even if it meant fighting the man who had made the past two years of her life a living hell. Even if it meant risking Scott following through with his threats that he would do something awful to Abby before letting her be raised by “a whore like you, Erin.”

Erin closed her eyes and swallowed hard, forcing away the memory of her ex’s voice screaming those words as he’d taken Abby away.

She still didn’t know how he’d found them. She’d paid the rent for her new apartment in cash, and even given the landlord fake names. But still, Scott had somehow tracked her and their eleven-month-old down and made it very clear the lengths he would go to in order to maintain control over at least one of the girls in his life.

“This is it,” Blake said as they turned the last corner and a small cabin came into view. “It’s not big, but it’s well insulated so we won’t freeze our asses off.”

He was right, it wasn’t big, but even with nothing more than headlights and the porch light to view it by, Erin could see it was gorgeous. Beautiful redwood planks were accented with white trim, making the cabin look like something out of a fairy tale.

“I don’t know about that. My ass is already half frozen,” Erin said, affecting a light tone. She had to focus, to stop thinking about Scott and Abby and focus on the immediate problem of getting away from Blake with her tattoo intact. “It would have been nice to know ahead of time I’d be visiting a winter climate. I could have brought my flannel pajamas.”

“Hmmm, flannel pajamas. Sounds sexy.”

“You have no idea,” Erin said, amazed at the tingle of awareness that swept over her skin simply from hearing Blake say the word “sexy.” A weekend spent seducing this man certainly wasn’t going to be a hardship. “They’re bright red with pirates and buried treasure on them. I think they’re technically supposed to be for little boys, but as soon as I saw them, I knew they had to be mine.”

“I didn’t have the creativity to think of something that fasci-smashing,” he said, “but I did bring a few things for you to wear.”

“Fasci-smashing?” She laughed, a real laugh that surprised her more than it should have. Blake had always been funny in his own, rather dry, way.

“I think it’s a cross between fascinating and smashing.” He laughed, too, a little self-consciously. “It’s something my office manager says all the time. It was added to my vocabulary against my will.”

“I don’t know what’s more disturbing, hearing you say a word like ‘fasci-smashing’ or learning you brought me clothes.” Erin watched Blake closely as he parked the car. “You thought this kidnapping thing through, didn’t you?”

He was silent, but Erin deliberately refused to take the hint.

“How long have you been planning to do this?” she pressed.

“A few weeks,” he said, all humor vanishing from his tone.

He was embarrassed, she could tell. He knew what he was doing was crazy.

Hopefully that meant getting him to give up on this plan would be relatively easy.

“Should I be freaked out? I mean, have you turned homicidal maniac on me in the past eight years?” she asked, a part of her thrilled to see Blake’s expression grow stormy.

He was wrong about the pushy bottom thing. She didn’t want to have control, but she did like to test the man who thought he could top her. When she and Scott had first gotten together, it had been one of the things that he’d loved about her, that she didn’t make it easy for him and would only be a good little sub if he was in top form. Though honestly, that wasn’t often. Scott hadn’t had what it took to master her unless she dialed back the defiance. Still, he’d seemed to treasure their relationship, once upon a time.

But oh, how quickly he’d stopped finding anything lovable about her once she’d gotten pregnant. She’d gone from an object of fascination to a thing of revulsion in less than a few weeks. Long before she’d begun to show, Scott confessed how revolting he found pregnant women, and that he doubted he’d ever be attracted to Erin again.

It was ironic in the extreme, as Erin herself had never felt sexier than when she first found out she was going to have a baby. She’d spent those first few months both unbearably aroused and horribly hurt as she realized her husband no longer wanted anything to do with her—in the bedroom or out of it.

“If you want to press charges against me when we leave,” Blake said, his deep voice rumbling through the car’s cabin. “I won’t do anything to stop you. If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“So you won’t kill me and bury my body in the woods?” Erin tried to laugh, but she suddenly wasn’t finding the situation funny.

No matter how well she had once known Blake, she didn’t know shit about him now. After all, she’d once believed Scott was her Dom in shining black leather, the man she’d be with for the rest of her life. When they’d first married, she couldn’t have imagined how quickly her devoted husband would become a monster she despised.

Even if she were right and Blake did still love her, who was to say he didn’t have the same capacity for cruelty?

If so, it would certainly prove that she should
never
date again. Her taste in men was decidedly lethal.

“Look at me,” Blake said, waiting patiently until she did so. “I would never hurt you. Do you believe I’m telling the truth?”

Erin looked deep into his dark brown eyes, the eyes of the first boy she had ever loved, of the best friend she’d regretted losing for eight years. And for a moment, she was fourteen again—lost and afraid after the foster mom she’d loved so much had died and she’d been placed with a monster. The only way she had survived was by putting on her best tough-girl act and pretending she didn’t feel like she was about to shatter into a million pieces. Blake’s eyes, and the kind, loving boy they belonged to, were the only things that had gotten her through the day.

No matter what madness had made him formulate this plan to alter her tattoo, deep down, Blake was still that boy. He would still die before he hurt her, still risk the fists of their foster father or worse to keep her safe. She truly believed that.

“I believe you,” Erin whispered, willing the tears she felt pricking at the backs of her eyes not to fall. She wasn’t going to cry over old memories. The past was the past. She had to concentrate on the future and her little girl. Nothing else mattered.

“Good.” Blake held her gaze, looking near to tears himself, but then a smile spread across his face, making her think she had imagined that moment of vulnerability. “Then let’s get inside and I’ll find something to cover that frozen ass of yours.”

As he exited the vehicle, Erin did her best to pull herself together and figure out the first step in her plan. She believed that Blake didn’t want to harm her, but he was still dead set on accomplishing the mission he’d set for himself. And Blake was nothing if not stubborn. It was going to take some intensive persuasive efforts to convince him to change his mind, and she didn’t have a lot of time. It was already nearly Saturday morning and she only had until Sunday afternoon.

She was going to have to launch operation Sex Blake Into Forgetting He Owns a Tattoo Gun as soon as possible.

Guess there was no time like the present…

CHAPTER FOUR
Erin

Erin watched Blake walk around the car and grab a large suitcase from the back before she opened her own door and stepped out into the cold night.

“Shit!” She squealed and ran as fast as her high-heeled feet could carry her to the door of the cabin.

It was freezing up on the mountaintop. The wind cut through what few clothes she was wearing, making her feel like she was naked in a snowstorm.

As soon as Blake opened the door to the cabin, she dashed inside, grateful that the heat was already running. If it had been this cold when she and Blake had pulled over for their quickie, even nearly two years without sex wouldn’t have been enough to convince her to bang out in the elements.

But it was for the best that they’d broken the ice. He’d already let his guard down and done something he’d freely admitted he hadn’t intended to do.

Now it would only take a little push to get them back in bed together.

If the cabin
had
a bed…

“This is gorgeous,” Erin said, covertly scanning the small space as Blake went around turning on lights and cranking up the heat.

Just inside the entrance, there was a small kitchen that opened out into a living area. A comfy-looking sectional filled nearly every inch of the carpet, angled so that it faced both the fireplace in the corner and the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out across a valley and the dark face of another mountain. It seemed the cabin was built right on the side of a cliff, which would usually have been enough to give her a case of the shakes. She wasn’t a big fan of heights, but for some reason she felt safe here.

It was Blake. He had a way of making her feel safe, apparently even when he was the thing she had to be afraid of.

“Thanks. I designed it with the help of a friend of mine.” He finished with the lights and came back to fetch the suitcase he’d left by the door. “The bedrooms are upstairs.”

Erin followed him, finally noticing the circular staircase that was hidden behind the bathroom to their right. Blake had no trouble navigating the narrow stairs, even with his bulk and carrying a large suitcase, but Erin stumbled twice in her heels. She told herself it was just her normal klutziness coming through, but the truth was, she was nervous.

Touching herself in a dark car or succumbing to maddening lust and leaping out for a quickie on the side of the road was one thing. But starting something from nothing, especially with a man who suddenly seemed all business, was something else entirely.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to give you the smaller room,” he said, tossing a friendly smile over his shoulder. “It has a view of the gorge, and you’ll have to come through my room if you decide to make a break for it in the middle of the night,”

“And I suppose you still sleep light,” she said, finding the situation oddly amusing.

“I wake up if a pinecone drops outside,” he said, tramping through a masculine master bedroom, into a bathroom, and through another door to a second bedroom decorated in deep pinks and bright greens.

Those had been her favorite colors in high school, and for a second Erin wondered if Blake had remembered.

“My interior decorator made all the decisions for the furniture and fabrics.” He sat the suitcase down on the floral bedspread and opened it. “Hope this isn’t too girly for you. I know you’re not a big fan of flowers.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” she murmured, pushing aside her childish disappointment that Blake hadn’t remembered the preferences of her teenaged self. “It’s much nicer than what I’ve got on the bed at my apartment. Watch out or I might steal the bedspread when we leave.”

“You can have it,” he said, turning to her with a serious expression. “You can have the entire cabin and the fifteen grand I’ve got in the glove compartment. All I want to do is work on that tat.”

Erin sighed, tempted for a moment. Fifteen grand would pay for a lot of legal advice and having a rent-free place to live would certainly jump-start her and Abby’s new life. But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to take Blake up on his offer. She’d meant what she’d said in the car—she believed the tattoo was vital to resuscitating her flagging career—but there was more to her reluctance than that.

The tattoo meant something to her, always had and always would. It reminded her of a time when she’d felt truly loved, like the most important thing in the world to one boy.

“Come on, Erin,” Blake urged as if sensing her hesitation. “Don’t make me use force.”

“But you’re a Dom, right?” she teased. “Don’t you enjoy using force?”

It was now or never, time to get Blake thinking about her skin in a way that had nothing to do with ink. Holding his dark eyes, she moved her hands to her shirt, slowly working open the buttons, one by one.

“What are you doing?” His tone was casual, but his shoulders tensed as he stepped away from the suitcase.

“I like force,” she continued playfully. “If it’s used properly.” She slid the shirt off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor as she began working on the front of her bra, her own excitement building so fast it made her head swim.