“I’d need you to be more specific before I answerthat.”
“I’ve done something, mon bien-aimé. And I’m afraid. I’m terrified that you’re going to hateme.”
My heart takes off in a rapid gallop. “You’re scaring me,Tristan.”
He turns to lie on his back, placing his arm over his face. “It’s bad, mon bien-aimé. And I don’t know how you’re going toreact.”
He is scaring the shit out ofme.
I crawl over him, pushing his arms above his head, restraining them with my hands wrapped around his wrists, the same way he pins me down sometimes. “Tristan Broussard. Tell me now what you havedone.”
“I love you, Emma Lia, and anything that I’ve done has been because of my love for you. Please don’t forget that as you hear meout.”
A million different things are racing through my mind at once. I have no idea what he could have possibly done. “Allright.”
“It happened about a month ago, when my father attacked you and Conrad told me the truth about my parents. You remember that I was in a bad place thatnight.”
“You were, but you handled it remarkably well for the news that you’d just gotten.” The sadist inside of him didn’t even need to hurt me to cope with what he was feeling. It was as though there was a flip of a switch in him thatnight.
“I handled it well because of you and our relationship. That’s where I gathered the strength I needed to get through that shit. Although you were unaware at the time, I already knew how much I loved and needed you in my life. The thought of losing you terrifiedme.”
I release his wrists and move my hands to cradle his face. “You aren’t going to lose me,Tristan.”
He places one of his hands on top of mine and turns his face to kiss my palm. “Things were different between us then. We weren’t in the place we are today. You were still pulling keys. There hadn’t been any talk of your staying. I thought that you were going to walk out of my life at any time. And I couldn’t let thathappen.”
“How were you planning to stop me if Itried?”
“That night, I bound you to the bed with the intention of fucking my pain away. But then I looked at you, and all I could picture was what my life would look like if you left me. And I hated what I saw. So right then and there, in my desperation to hold on to you and what we have together, I made a decision to do whatever it took to keep you. And that’s when I pushed my fingers inside you… and felt for the string of your IUD… and gripped it between my fingers… and pulled itout.”
I release my hold on his face and sit back, still straddling him, and my brain absorbs the words that he’s just toldme.
I reel my mind back in time and recall that night. He was going to do sinister things to me; that’s what he needed in the moment. I saw the raw urgency in his eyes, and I longed to be his relief. I wanted to give him the world, to hell with what it meant for me. Pain. Agony. Torment. I was willing to endure anything forhim.
My legs were bound and parted wide by the spreader bar. He pushed them up and went down on me. He licked me and played with my pussy, using his tongue and fingers. He finger fucked me. It felt different, and I recall thinking so at the time, but that’s all of the thought I put into it. Because he released me and we made love. We made love over and over throughout the night and the nextmorning.
He came inside me after the IUD wasout.
And he has continued to come inside me since that night. Without birth control. For over amonth.
Tristan has been trying to get mepregnant?
He places his hands on the outer edge of my thighs. “Say something, mon bien-aimé.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Because I’m so shocked. Because I’m so numbinside.
“I’ve betrayed your trust and made a decision about your life without your input—all for my own selfishdesires.”
This is Tristan Broussard, the control freak. The man who was so determined to prevent a pregnancy that he had an OB-GYN place a birth control device inside me while I wasunconscious.
And now he’s gone and removed it without tellingme.
“It was wrong, and I know that, but I did it because I love you so much.” He squeezes my thighs. “Please tell me that you seethat.”
“All I’m able to see right now is deception. And you can’t disguise that by calling it love. You are my Dom—the one person on this earth that I should be able to place every bit of my trust in and you’ve deceived me. You’ve broken one of our most absolute promises to oneanother.”
“I was wrong for doing it, and you’ll never know how sorry I am for breaking your trust inme.”
A month—four whole weeks—that he’s known. And he said nothing. Not a fucking word. “You were wrong, and you have broken my trust, but what’s worse is how long it’s taken for you to tellme.”
