“Because I wanted to forget about it. It should have never happened.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, rested her heels on the bedrail, and curled her body toward her knees, her hands pressed into her eyes. He could see the tremble of her body even at a distance.
Aggie didn’t tremble.
Aggie never faltered.
Aggie was strong.
Aggie was…
Aggie was human.
Her hints of weakness always caught him by surprise. And made him love her even more.
“A lot of things should never happen,” he said. He approached the bed cautiously, not sure if she wanted him to touch her, but the need to do so overwhelmed him. He stroked a long strand of silky black hair from her bare shoulder.
She slid her arms around his waist and rested her forehead against his chest. She talked to the floor, but at least she talked.
“We met when we were both in training under the same domme—Mistress Z.”
He already knew that. Aggie had told him about Mistress Z when he’d asked her how she’d gotten her own domme moniker—Mistress V. When she’d reached the end of her training, Mistress Z had given Aggie that name and she’d given her other pupil, Starr, the name Mistress X—apparently because Mistress Y and Mistress W weren’t threatening enough. Aggie had laughed herself silly when Jace had admitted he’d thought V was short for vagina or something.
“Starr and I trained together and if a client had enough money, we worked together. We became highly sought after in the BDSM scene in Vegas. As you know, they called us Fire and Ice. Starr was Fire for her red hair. I was Ice because, well, I’ve always been cold.”
“You’re not cold to me,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
She glanced up at him and offered a wavering smile. “Only because you melt me, Jace Seymour.”
He resisted the urge to kiss her, knowing that if he did, they’d ignite in passion and lose track of their conversation. He wanted to hear this. Needed to hear it.
“So is that when you two became lovers?” The last word squeaked out of him as if he was going through puberty again. He didn’t want to be the jealous sort, but the thought of Aggie loving someone else made his throat tighten and his chest ache.
She nodded. “Not right away,” she said, “but as you know, dominating puts me in the mood. And part of Fire’s act was to touch me. It made the clients hemorrhage cash to watch two dommes in training touch, so Mistress Z encouraged it. At first I tolerated the touches, but then I began to crave them. Crave her. And the friendship between us began to change.” She paused and her eyes focused on Jace’s. “Do you want all these details?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted details, but they both needed them out in the open. “Continue,” he said quietly.
“It took me months to get up the courage to tell her how I felt about her. I wasn’t sure if Starr really wanted me or if it was all an act for the clients. But when I finally confessed, she said she felt the same way about me, and we uh, had sex.” A blush stained her cheeks. “A lot of sex. I’d never had sex with someone I cared about before. I couldn’t get enough. Like with you.”
A hard, cold lump settled in Jace’s stomach. So he didn’t want the details after all. It must have showed in his expression, because she captured his face between her hands.
“Not like with you,” she amended. “She never got to see my soul laid bare the way you do. I never trusted her to love me enough to see all of me.”
“Aggie…” Saying her named threatened to pull his heart out of his chest.
“It’s okay, baby. This story doesn’t have a happy ending.”
He saw the hurt shadowing her eyes and knew that Starr had broken her heart.
“Once we became intimate, Starr began to get bolder in the way she touched me in front of our clients. Kissing. Putting her fingers… places.” She gave him a hard look, as if trying to telegraph her thoughts to him. “It made me feel violated. Like our sexual relationship wasn’t really about our love for each other, but only another way to make cash.”
“Maybe she just liked you so much she couldn’t keep her hands off you.” He knew what that was like.
Aggie shook her head. “I wish that had been the case. One night after a session, we were both really turned on. She’d seen the client out and we were alone in the dungeon—at least I thought we were alone—and she drags me to the floor and goes down. So I’m lying there and her mouth is on me and her fingers are inside me and somehow over the sounds of my own moans, I hear this other sound. I open my eyes and I see the client—who was supposed to be gone—peeking out from behind a velvet drape and he’s got his dick in his hand and he’s jerking it while he watches us.”
Can’t blame him, Jace thought, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to say that.
“I go after him—so mad I can’t see straight—and he says, I paid her to watch.” She quivered, but didn’t look away from Jace. “He was talking about Starr,” Aggie clarified, her voice hard with anger and betrayal. “He paid Starr to watch us have sex and not only did she take his money, she didn’t tell me.”
Jace tried to find something to say, but he came up lacking.
“I’ll never forget what she said to me in defense. What do you expect from a whore? Stop pretending you’re better than me, Ice. You’re just as much of a whore as I am.”
“But you’re not a whore,” Jace said.
Aggie released a derisive huff of air. “But if she hadn’t said that to me, I probably would have become one. So even though she broke my heart, she saved me. Even though she hurt me, I can’t hate her. She’s always had my back, and I’ve had hers. Is it strange that our friendship survived a romance gone sour?”