Grounded (Up in the Air #3)(71)

He tensed against me. “Jolene.”

I nodded. Somehow I had known, though that didn’t make me happy about it. “So she made the video, and leaked it. Obviously.”

He shook his head. “I can’t rule that out completely. And yes, she obviously set the thing up. But I just can’t see her leaking it, not with the kind of money I was offering to keep it under wraps. And this will ruin whatever she has with Scott. She’s too mercenary to do this just for spite, and with nothing to gain.”

I took his word for that, since he obviously knew her better than I did.

He brushed my hair back from my face, and the light picked up those scars on his wrists. I caught his hand, bringing it to my lips. I kissed the inside of his wrist softly.

“Are you ever going to tell me what these are from?”

His eyes picked up a certain vulnerable glint that I was coming to recognize. It was going to be bad, though I had always assumed that the scars on his wrists were deep wounds.

“Spencer used sharp handcuffs. They cut me. It was one of the first things I noticed. These cuts on my wrists started appearing first. I hid them, because that’s a conspicuous and embarrassing place to have a cut, especially being fourteen, and feeling self-conscious of every little thing to begin with.”

“I can’t say if he used that kind of cuff to make me hold still, or if he just wanted to make me bleed. If he was trying to keep me from struggling, it didn’t work. If I could have cut my own hands off to get away from him, I swear I would have. I certainly tried.”

He let me trace those tiny scars, then kiss every inch of them, very carefully. Tears ran silently down my cheeks. I couldn’t hear what he was saying and not be affected by it.

He traced my tears with a soft finger. “It was about that time that I got real promiscuous. I didn’t go a day without hooking up indiscriminately. I wasn’t analyzing it back then, but I suppose I was trying to regain some control, since I’d lost so much of it. And it didn’t help that I was one giant hormone at the time. It all just sort of escalated, and by the time I was an adult, it didn’t get better. I preferred the most casual of hookups, so I almost always went out of my way to find women who were hot, but who I knew I wouldn’t feel bad leaving, which I guess would explain Jules and Jolene, though I didn’t stick exclusively to raging bitches.”

I had to hold back a comment about that one. He was talking now, and I wanted him to get it all out. The last thing I wanted to do was stop the flow of information.

“It was never straight vanilla for me, but the really kinky stuff developed over time. I knew that I liked things a little more off-color than the norm, and I was always pushing it a step further. At about the age when a normal kid was getting excited to drive his first car, I was running a worldwide hotel chain, obsessively learning to tie knots, and f**king every female in sight. I got better when I started going to therapy. I became more focused, more controlled, but that took time. Getting into the BDSM scene when I was eighteen helped a lot, too. There were rules there, and people that were willing to sort of mentor me about how to do it right, and I got the proper training.”

That was a bit of a shock to me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t experienced with the scene, but his control was so perfect that I should have assumed that he’d had some sort of training.

“That was when I met Frankie. She’s three years older than I am, and she knew her stuff. They don’t accept you into that scene until you’re eighteen, for obvious reasons, so the three years she had on me were three years of experience with BDSM. I hit on her at first, tried to turn her into a sub, and ya know, straight, but she laughed in my face. Even after that, though, she went out of her way to mentor me—to teach me the rules. In that community you aren’t even allowed to approach a woman until you’re properly vetted. To this day she’s one of my closest friends.”

“I was still indiscriminately promiscuous for years, but the BDSM was so much more satisfying for me, and eventually I went all in, but even my contracted subs were strictly a sexual thing. There’s an entrance to the fourth floor aside from my elevator, and most weren’t even allowed into my home outside of that floor. You can’t imagine what an anomaly you were for me, Bianca. Intimacy was unbearable to me before I set eyes on you. You’ve changed so many things for me, and I never dreamed that could be such a wonderful feeling. I feel like I’ve been brought to life, like I’m a real person now, instead of a pretender.”

I knew all too well how that felt. I doubted many people could have understood as perfectly as I did just what he meant by that.

“Yes,” I whispered, watching those exquisitely tarnished eyes. “I feel that way too. I know exactly what you mean.”

He gave me a desperate kind of look. “I know you do. I’ve told you from the start that we were made for each other, and I truly believe that. Things are going to be extra rough for a while, because of this video, and particularly with the press. I’m begging you, Bianca, please stick it out with me. Don’t withdraw, don’t take a break. Not even a little one.”

It stung a little that he didn’t trust me, but I knew that was my fault. My eyes and voice were steady. “I won’t, James. I’m staying. I love you.”

His face went a little slack, as though the words were still a shock to him. “Thank you. I love you, too. More than life, Bianca.”