Chapter Thirteen
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I’m sorry, Nick. Please, don’t cry.” Jackson flipped off the tattoo machine and stripped his gloves off with two angry motions. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I never should have tried to do this.”
Nicky felt him working to untie the ropes at her feet a few seconds later, but even knowing she was soon going to be free didn’t help stop the tears. If anything, it made them worse. She was crying so hard her entire body ached and her chest felt like it might explode. The sobbing sounds echoing through the room didn’t even sound like her. She sounded like a wounded animal, a creature that had been caged for too long.
All the pain of the past three years, all the fear and anger and despair, hit like a physical blow. Jackson’s tattoo needle had made a hole in her heart and everything she’d held inside was spilling out all at once.
“Please, babe. Please, I’m sorry,” Jackson whispered into her hair as he plucked the key to the cuffs from beside the bed and unlocked her wrists. “I’m sorry.”
Nicky wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, at least not all of it. His betrayal was only the cherry on top of a huge messy shit sundae of hurt. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, that he’d stopped in time and she wasn’t as wildly angry as she’d been before. She wanted to say it wasn’t the tattoo modification but the lack of respect for her free will that had finally pushed her into major meltdown mode.
But she couldn’t stop crying long enough to say any of those things.
So she did the only other thing that felt right. As soon as her arms were free, she rolled over onto her back and reached for him, holding both arms out like Abby did when she wanted her mommy to pick her up. She was still crying and could feel her nose beginning to leak, but for once she didn’t worry about what kind of face she was putting on for the man in her bed. She just needed Jackson to hold her, to wrap her in those strong arms and tell her everything was going to be okay even if that was a lie.
“Nicky.” All he said was her name, but she saw the shine in his eyes before he pulled her close, crushing her against his chest.
He loved her. He really did.
The thought made her sob even harder, more tears pouring out to soak his sweater. He was weirdly obsessed with their tattoos, thought she was a criminal, had kidnapped her— twice— and was probably a prime candidate for some sort of serious therapy, but he loved her. Jackson loved her in a way she could feel every time they touched, in a way that made her heart ache thinking about all the loveless years she’d wasted with a man who thought of her as nothing more than another decoration for his Bel Air mansion.
Nicky snuggled closer to his chest, reveling in the foreign sensation of being home. The urge to cry slowly vanished in the wake of that warm, safe feeling, the feeling she always had when she was this close to Jackson. He was the only man who had ever been able to turn her on and calm her down at the same time.
“I’m so sorry.” He dropped kisses onto the top of her head, the tension in his voice making it clear how grueling he’d found her epic crying jag. Poor Jack, he’d never been able to handle seeing a woman cry. “I’ve obviously lost my mind. I never wanted to hurt you, I never—”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, not wanting to lift her face from his chest.
“No, it’s not okay. But I’m going to make it okay. We’ll leave whenever you want and I’ll take you wherever you want me to take you. I’m just sorry I—”
“I’m sorry, too,” Nicky said. “This wasn’t all your fault, you know. That was coming for a long time. I mean, I’ve done my share of crying the past three years, but nothing like that.”
Jackson’s muscles relaxed a bit and one hand began to smooth idly up and down her bare back. “Your marriage was that bad, huh?” He reached over to the side of the bed and plucked a Kleenex from the box. Nicky took the tissue and did her best to mop up her face without moving too far away from Jackson. She needed to be close to him right now. It made her feel stronger for some reason.
“Yes, it was that bad.” She sighed, amazed that thinking of Derrick no longer summoned the familiar rush of hurt and rage. It was as if she’d finally cried him out of her system. Now she just had to get him out of her life and she would truly be ready to move on.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Not really, but I probably should,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone. I’ve been too ashamed.”
“I’m sure you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Oh, I do.” Nicky laughed, a short, sad sound. “I was really twisted, and really, really stupid.”
“Hey, you’re talking to the guy who kidnapped his high school girlfriend.” He hugged her and softly kissed her forehead. “You can’t get much more twisted or stupid than that.”
This time her laugh was genuine. Jesus. Only Jackson could make her laugh just a few minutes after crying her eyes out.
“So spill it, all the gory details.”
Nicky took a deep breath, not certain how to begin. So she started with the basics, how she’d met Derrick at one of the classier BDSM clubs in town. How he’d captured her interest from the start, seeming so much more truly dominant than any of the other men she’d met. She told Jackson how Derrick had swept her away for long weekends at posh resorts up and down the California coast, and then surprised her with a giant rock four months into their relationship.
“We were married two months later up near Santa Barbara at a winery,” Nicky said, feeling oddly detached from the story of her life. All of that just seemed so long ago, like it had happened to a different person.
“Sounds pretty fairy tale so far,” Jackson said. “I mean, if you’re a submissive woman who’s into really rich guys.”
Nicky smiled. “Yeah, it was pretty good. We had a great time together, and he was always very nice to me. Derrick kept the dom thing going just about all the time, but he never pushed my limits. So I guess that’s why I had no issue with signing the paperwork he had his lawyers draw up before our wedding. And I was twenty-one and stupid— that was probably a big part of it, too.”
“A prenup agreement?”
“Well, there was that, but there was also a master-slave agreement. You ever heard of those?”
“I have,” Jackson said, the dark note in his voice making it clear he didn’t like the sound of them. “I don’t know too many long-term dom-sub couples, so I don’t have any personal experience, but I’ve heard of them.”
God, how she wished she didn’t have any personal experience with them. If she could go back in time and refuse to sign the thing, she’d do it in a heartbeat, even if it meant she had to relive those years with Derrick. No matter how awful they’d been, Abby had come out of that time, so Nicky could never count them as a total waste.
“From what I understand, there isn’t really a standard boiler-plate contract for the master-slave agreement. It’s either as open or restrictive as the dom and sub decide for it to be.” Nicky sighed, not in a hurry to get to the next part of the story.
“Let me guess. This guy wanted it nice and restrictive.”
“I signed over control of just about everything. My money, my right to drive a car, to leave the house without Derrick chaperoning— all kinds of things that should have rung alarm bells, but didn’t.”
“But those contracts aren’t really legal, Nick. It’s not like a dom-sub agreement would stand up in a court of law.”
“Oh, I know. But that didn’t really matter once we were married. I had no money, no car to drive. Basically no way out. Not that I wanted out, not then anyway. I started to get a little tired of the full-time control thing, but we were making it work,” Nicky said, her chest getting tight. It was time to drop the big bomb. She wondered what Jackson would think about her having a child. “Things didn’t get really bad until I accidentally got pregnant.”
She risked a peek up into his dark eyes, shocked to see he didn’t look at all surprised.
“You knew?” she asked, her brow wrinkling in confusion.
“I had a friend check up on you while you were getting ready. He told me you had a one-year-old little girl. Abigail is her name?”
“Abby, she’s going to be one in a few weeks,” Nicky said, anger spiking in her blood. “And I heard you talking to your friend, trying to see if I had a criminal record. What the hell were you thinking? I’ve never done anything illegal except get a tattoo without parental consent when I was sixteen. I never even drank until I was twenty-one.”
“Is that why you ran? Because you heard me on the phone?” He looked so hopeful Nicky couldn’t seem to stay mad.
“It made me feel like you didn’t trust me, and I felt I’d been pretty cool about trusting you even though you were the one who—”
“Abducted you and hauled you off to my mountain lair.” Jackson kissed her on the lips for the first time since they’d fought.
Electricity swept over Nicky’s skin, tightening her nipples, making her very aware that she was nearly naked in Jackson’s arms. By the time he pulled away, she could feel the hard ridge of his cock swelling against her stomach, and was tempted to forget the rest of her story and go straight for the zipper of his fly.
“I’m sorry I upset you, but I was only trying to help. You said you had secrets and I wanted to make sure that, whatever those secrets were, I could still make things okay for us.”
“You should have trusted me to tell my secrets when I was ready,” she said, “not gone behind my back.”
“I know that now. I’m sorry. And I should never have forced you to come back here with me. It was wrong. . . very wrong.”
“Well. . . don’t let it happen again,” Nicky said, trying very hard to resist the urge to wrap her leg around his hips and grind her center against his swollen length. After years of celibacy, her libido still hadn’t gotten enough of this man.
Celibacy. Unfortunately that brought her back to her story. Might as well finish it and get the damn thing over with.
“So I got pregnant with Abby and was so excited. She wasn’t planned, but I’d always wanted kids so I figured it was a happy surprise.”
“But Derrick didn’t?”
“He tried to convince me to have an abortion.” She gritted her teeth, some of the familiar anger she always felt when thinking about her ex returning. “When I wouldn’t, he just. . . shut off. He would barely speak to me and certainly wouldn’t touch me or sleep in the same bedroom. He said he found a pregnant woman’s body disgusting.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jackson growled.
Nicky laughed. “I think that was part of the problem. His mother is a real freak show and he was an only child. I think he equates women who are mothers with evil or something. At least that’s the hypothesis I came to in my freshman psych class.”
“You went to college?” He smiled, obviously proud of her. What a difference from Derrick, who had mocked her attempts to start school when she was already older than most of the graduating seniors. He’d insisted he made plenty of money and she was better off at home, serving her husband like a good submissive wife.
“I only did two semesters. One when I was pregnant with Abby and one after. They had a really good child-care room at the community college and it was close enough for me to walk there from our house.”
“Still, that’s great and you could go back. You always were so smart.”
“Thanks,” she said, her eyes tearing up at the simple compliment. Jackson was the only man she’d ever known who seemed to value her brain as much as her body. Hell, the only one who even realized she had a brain.
“Oh, god, don’t cry.” He laughed, but she could tell he meant every word, so she did her best to pull it together. “So what happened after Abby was born?”
“Derrick didn’t like my after-pregnancy body any more than he liked my pregnant one, but that was fine by me. At that point I was looking for a way out.” Nicky traced the pattern on Jackson’s sweater, concentrating on the swirls instead of her own words. “But Abby was so tiny and helpless and I was scared. I didn’t know how I’d survive with a newborn, no job, and not a dime to my name. And to be fair, Derrick did seem to love her in his way, once she outgrew the colic and started smiling and playing a little more.”
“But that doesn’t sound like a very good life. For either of you.”
“It wasn’t. Derrick had grown even more distant with me after Abby was born. At first he just ignored me, but then he started to. . . say things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Anything that would hurt. I think he blamed me for ruining what we had by getting pregnant and wanted to punish me for it. He’d talk about how my looks had gone downhill, how I was a lazy housewife— even though he had a maid come in twice a week so there wasn’t much cleaning for me to do. He’d say I was a high school dropout not fit to teach Abby anything and—”
“He’s a piece of shit. Where does he live? I’ve suddenly got a strong desire to punch his face in.”
“No!” Nicky immediately realized her response was too strong, but it was too late.
“You’re still afraid of him,” Jackson observed, rage in his eyes. “You don’t have to be. Not anymore.”
God, could she tell him? Would Jackson help her, or would he think she was a piece of shit herself for letting Derrick get his hands on her child?
“I promise you, Nick. I’ll make sure he never hurts you again.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said, rushing on before she could second-guess herself. “When I finally left him, I took Abby. I changed our names and tried my best to hide, but I didn’t run far enough, I guess. He found us and he. . . took her.”
“Took her? How could he just take her? You’re both her parents, no court in California is going to—”
“We haven’t gone to court and we probably won’t. Derrick had his lawyer draw up a divorce decree that he expects me to sign as is. It gives him full custody of Abby.”
“That’s bullshit. You and your lawyer will fight him. I’m sure a bastard like that will—”
“I don’t have a lawyer.”
“Why not?” Jackson captured her face in his hands, urging her to look up and meet his eyes. The doubt she read there made her sick to her stomach. He wasn’t sure she wanted her own child. Just another case of Jackson not knowing her nearly as well as she’d hoped, no matter how much he loved her.
“Derrick is a dangerous man,” Nicky said, trying not to let his doubt cut her too deeply. He didn’t understand the situation. And he wouldn’t understand until she got up the nerve to tell him. But for some reason, it was nearly impossible to bring herself to say the words. As if saying them out loud for the first time might make the danger to Abby more real.
“I can understand that, but you can’t let this creep bully you out of your child’s life. I can understand that you’re scared, but you have to fight for her.”
“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more, Jackson. I love Abby more than anything in the world and I want her with me. I promise you that.” The back of her throat grew tight, as if it would physically prevent her from telling Jackson anything more. “I know living with Derrick isn’t a good situation for anyone, especially a baby.”
“Then let’s go get her. I’ll drive you there tonight. We’ll walk in and take Abby and I’ll beat the living hell out of the man if he tries to get in our way.”
“Great, Jackson. And then he’ll call the police and you’ll be arrested and I’ll look like an unfit mother for bringing my boyfriend to beat up my husband. This is not something that can be solved with fists. We’re not in high school anymore.”
Jackson sighed. “You’re right. I just can’t stand to think of that man having your little girl. I’ve got a bad feeling about it. I know you used to think I was crazy with the bad vibe shit, but I swear I—”
“No, I didn’t. Your vibes were usually dead-on. And they’re definitely right on the money in this situation.” Nicky swallowed past the lump in her throat and licked her dry lips. “Derrick said he would kill Abby before he’d let me be a part of her life.”
“What?” Jackson’s voice was thick with equal parts rage and disbelief.
“If I fight for custody in court or try to take her again, he promised me he’d kill her. That he’d do it in a way no one would ever suspect was murder and not an accident.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s just bluffing to—”
“No, he’s not, Jackson.” Her voice shook and her skin suddenly felt the chill lingering in the cabin. “If there’s one thing I learned about Derrick Sakapatatis in the years we were married, it’s that he always keeps his promises. Especially the scary ones.”