Deep Domination (Bought by the Billionaire #2) (2 page)

Someone had hurt her. Badly. Her face was swollen from crying and her big blue eyes darted back and forth, unable to look directly at the person questioning her on the other side of the table. She was trembling so badly he could hear the legs of her chair rattling on the floor, a soft, percussive accompaniment to her words.

To the nightmarish words spilling out of her pretty mouth.

Comprehension hit like a bolt of lightning, sudden and shocking. Jackson’s lips parted, but no sound came. His throat closed and all the blood in his body seemed to rush away, leaving him drained and freezing in the room that, only a moment ago, had felt too warm.

But that was before he’d heard Harley describing a date on the beach they’d never had, before he’d watched her lifting her shirt to reveal bruises he hadn’t given her. Before she’d sworn that he’d raped her again and again, until she could barely stand and had been forced to call an ex-boyfriend to drive her to the police station after Jackson allegedly left her bleeding in the sand.

He watched the tape in stupefied silence and remained mute for several long minutes after Pearson turned off the television and stopped the DVD.

How…

How could she? How could she have done this?

How could she have told such horrible lies about him when all he’d ever wanted to do was love and protect her?

There had to be some mistake, some explanation.

She was confused. That was it. It had been dark on the beach that night. Maybe she hadn’t seen her attacker’s face, maybe he’d grabbed her from behind or—

Stop it!

She knew your body, your touch. She would have known it wasn’t you, even if she were blindfolded.

She’s lying on purpose.

She’s
lying
on
purpose
.

Finally, as his mind continued to echo the terrible truth over and over—like a scratched record stuck on repeat—and his heart continued to break he found his voice. “I didn’t do it. She’s lying. I don’t know why, but it’s all a lie.”

Red leaned in, his brown eyes flat and cold. “You might want to rethink that line of defense. The DNA results from the rape kit came in last night. We pulled yours from the Marine database. They’re an exact match.”

Jackson shook his head, anger and confusion warring inside of him. “But we always used a condom. Every single time except…”

His eyes widened as the flaw in Harley’s story suddenly became abundantly clear. “Those bruises were fake! Make-up or something. I saw her two nights ago, right before the crash. We slept together and she was fine. Every inch of her was clear and bruise-free. I swear there wasn’t a mark on her.”

“Do you have any evidence to support that?” Pearson asked, writing something in the tiny notebook she’d brought into the room, not even bothering to offer eye contact.

“No,” he said, voice tight. “Why would I? I was with my girlfriend, who I thought was in love with me. I didn’t think I’d have any reason to need to prove I hadn’t beaten her to within an inch of her life.”

He paused, watching Pearson show the note on her pad to Red, who nodded smugly.

“What is going on here?” Jackson asked, volume rising. “I’m being framed for a felony and you’re buying a woman’s lie without even giving me the benefit of the doubt. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Watch your mouth, soldier,” Red said. “Everything you say in this room is admissible in court. You’re the one who agreed to be questioned without an attorney.”

Jackson clenched his teeth until his jaw was so tight it felt like the muscles were about to snap in two. “I’ve changed my mind,” he finally ground out. “I want a lawyer. Now.”

“We’ll have a phone brought in for you. Might as well settle in, Staff Sergeant Hawke. You’re going to be here for a while.” Pearson smiled, a cold, victorious smile that made Jackson loathe her more than he did already, but not as much as he loathed Harley.

As much as he
should
loathe Harley.

She had conned him, played him, and framed him for a crime he didn’t commit, but he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.

Not that day. Or the next day, or the next.

But by the time he was sitting in a courtroom in front of a judge pronouncing him guilty of rape, he had begun to hate Harley Garrett with the same passion with which he’d loved her.

When the judge declared that he would be dishonorably discharged, stripped of all rank and pay, and sentenced to eighteen months in a military prison, the last ounce of his affection for Harley shriveled and died, leaving nothing in his heart except a burning hatred. His hatred was a roaring fire that he would stoke every day he spent behind bars, tempering himself in the flames until he was as heartless and remorseless as the woman who had ruined him.

The woman who had sentenced a man whose only crime had been loving the wrong girl to a fate worse than death.

He would never be the same. He would never love or trust anyone ever again. He would never be the man he was before.

That man was dead.

Harley had killed him and now all that was left was to return the favor.

CHAPTER TWO

Present Day

Hannah

Her stranger was clearly angry—furious—but Hannah couldn’t have stopped the smile blossoming across her face if she’d tried.

It was really him,
him
, the man she’d tried to convince herself she wasn’t obsessed with for six long years. The stranger who had laid claim to her body, captured her imagination, and haunted her dreams.

No…he had haunted her awakenings.

In her dreams, one glimpse of his face and she was electrified by pleasure. In dreams she was transported to the heaven of his arms, blessed by belonging to him in a way she’d never belonged to anyone, not even herself. It was waking up and realizing that the one night they’d shared had been a lie and that she would never see him again that was hell.

She’d always known that night was a lie, but now maybe he knew it too.

Maybe
that’s
why he’d come for her. Her smile vanished so quickly it sent a flash of discomfort through her cheeks.

Hannah stared up at him, watching his jaw clench and storm clouds roll in behind his dark eyes. She cringed, wishing she could melt through the floor or that she at least had a blanket to pull across her body to shield her nakedness. But the polished hardwood held firm beneath her back and she remained exposed to her stranger, his release cooling on her bare chest as he glared down at her, his hands tightening into fists.

She half expected him to strike her, to drive his fist into her stomach as punishment for the smile she hadn’t been able to control.

Instead, he squatted on his heels beside her, moving with a slow, easy grace that sent a chill across her flesh. She felt hunted, but there was nowhere to run. He owned her. He had bought and paid for the privilege of enacting his revenge and now her life was in his hands.

He would decide whether the next month would pass in pleasure or pain.

He would decide how she would pay for her sins and whether she would leave this island alive.

The thought of him beating the life out of her with his large hands made her whimper, even before he brought one of them to her throat. His grip was loose, but his fingers were so long they completely encircled her neck, bringing her claustrophobia surging back with a vengeance, making her blood race and her head spin as he leaned down to whisper inches from her face.

“I will tell you this one time and one time only, so listen closely,” he said, his voice thick with rage, but so smooth and controlled it somehow made his next words even more frightening. “I am not the man I was before. There is no softness in my heart for you. There is no heart left to soften. I am beyond your reach. I own you and I intend to break you and nothing you do will change your fate. Do you understand?”

Hannah nodded as she swallowed convulsively, fighting to keep her breath under control as anxiety electrified her nerve endings.

“You can smile while I break you or you can cry,” he continued, a smile curving his lips. “But the ending will be the same.”

His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to make Hannah’s anxiety creep toward full-blown panic. She was seconds from clawing at his fingers, when he suddenly released her and stood, wiping his hands on his neatly pressed pants, as if touching her had dirtied them in some way.

“Clean up. The bathroom should have everything you need,” he said, pointing toward the opposite side of the room. “After you shower, you will stay in this room until granted permission to leave.”

He turned to go, but stopped before he’d taken five steps and spun back to face her, making Hannah’s slowing pulse lurch back into high gear. “And if I learn you’ve disobeyed my order—any order I give you while you’re here—all the promises I’ve made to you will be invalidated. Think about that before you try to run. Because I will find you, Harley, and my punishment will make it clear how gentle I’ve been with you so far.”

Harley?
Hannah’s brows drew together, but she didn’t say a word.

She didn’t know what to say, what to think. She only knew that she wouldn’t be able to organize her thoughts as long as he was in the room. His rage was a fire that sucked all the oxygen from the air and left her gasping, as shocked and confused as a fish dangling from the end of a fisherman’s hook.

It wasn’t until the heavy door closed behind him and she heard his footsteps moving away down the hall that she dared to drag her trembling body into a seated position. Her movement set his seed sliding down the front of her chest. A wave of self-loathing turned her stomach as memories of their brief time together raced through her head.

He must have thought she was Harley from the beginning.
That’s
why he’d kept insisting that she say her name and been so angry when she maintained that she was Hannah North. She’d thought maybe he was one of her family’s enemies and wanted confirmation that she was a Mason, not a North, but he’d been waiting for her to confess that she was her sister.

Somehow, he didn’t know that her twin was dead and was clearly committed to punishing Harley for whatever sins she had perpetrated against him.

Hannah would have liked to believe her sister was innocent of whatever had turned her commanding, but once beautifully passionate, stranger into a terrifying man bent on revenge, but she knew better. She would always love her sister and grieve the fact that Harley had been taken away from her too soon, but she didn’t believe in revisionist history.

Dying hadn’t changed the person her twin had been before she was murdered. And Harley had been a spiteful, inexorable, often frightening force of nature. She had played with men’s hearts like a twisted child who enjoys torturing animals before putting the poor creatures out of their misery.

Their shared psychiatrist had said Harley’s rough handling of romantic relationships was her way of protecting herself from becoming the kind of broken woman their mother had become, but that didn’t make Harley’s treatment any easier for her victims. Hannah had seen more than one strong man shattered after learning the woman he’d fallen in love with was an illusion and the reality was a sociopath who seemed to gain succor from breaking people’s hearts.

Harley had always managed to walk away from the wreckage and disappear before her victim’s grief could transform to rage. But now her sister’s bad love karma had caught up with Hannah, who had been paid a million dollars to give a man a shot at vengeance.

Hannah couldn’t tell her stranger the truth. If she told him that she was Harley’s twin, not the woman who’d hurt him, she would endanger her and Sibyl’s future.

He wouldn’t want her if he learned the truth. Obviously a surrogate wouldn’t suffice or he would have taken out his frustration on other women years ago. He wanted Harley, the “vindictive, psychotic bitch he’d bought” and no one else would do.

“What did you do to him, Harley?” Hannah whispered as she drew her knees in to her chest, shivering despite the evening sun streaming through the floor to ceiling windows behind her, warming the large room.

Sometimes Hannah would swear she could feel her sister’s spirit lingering nearby, not ready to leave until they could go out of the world together, the way they’d come into it, but now the air remained quiet, empty. She was alone, defenseless, and had no choice but to play a dangerous game with a man incapable of compassion.

But maybe Harley didn’t deserve compassion. Maybe she’d done something so horrible, so unforgivable that retribution was the only fitting response. And maybe Hannah would have no choice but to pay the price for Harley’s mistakes.

As she came to her feet and padded silently toward the bathroom, she hoped she would find a way to survive being shattered by the only man who had ever made her dream about what it would be like to belong to someone—body and soul.

CHAPTER THREE

Jackson

Jackson stormed out of the master bedroom and through the kitchen, where the petite housekeeper with the steel-streaked hair was in the middle of cooking something he dimly realized smelled wonderful.