“Manipulative little brat. You know me far too well. Fine.” His hand soothed back her hair. “I had a woman I…cared about.”
Well, of course it was about a woman. And he wouldn’t talk about it normally. He would hide it. She was catching him in a vulnerable moment, but she thought he needed to talk. She didn’t know about any woman he’d really cared about except his high school girlfriend named Holly. From what she’d been told, they’d been engaged, but Holly had broken it off during his first stint in Iraq. As Alex explained it, one day he’d had a fiancée and the next he had a Dear John letter.
That was right about the time he’d discovered BDSM. Had he been mourning her loss for all these years? As long as Eve had known him, he’d always been surrounded by subs. He was a sub magnet, but she’d never seen him fall for a single woman. If he said he’d cared about a woman, then he had very likely loved her with his whole damn soul. “Is this about Holly?”
He snorted a little. “Holly? No. I thought Holly was the queen bitch of the world. Then I met Charlotte. No. I’m not pining over Holly. I wish Holly and mid-level lawyer husband number two all the fucking best in the world.”
Charlotte? She didn’t know a Charlotte, and she couldn’t very well push him. “Charlotte is a nice name.”
She could only soothe him. Any aggression or outright curiosity at this point would send him into his shell.
“Yes. A lovely name for a lovely woman. But she was a crazy bitch.”
For Ian, that was practically a term of endearment. He was a man who appreciated a righteous bitch. She softened her voice and hoped she wasn’t going too fast. “What happened to her?”
It couldn’t be good.
His expression never changed. It stayed a careful blank. He took a long drag off the Scotch. “I can’t make her leave. She’s in my head. I can’t get her fucking out. Never met anyone with skills like Charlotte. She could make me run in circles and I liked it. Do you know what’s it like to not be able to get a woman out of your head?”
So he’d been in love. God, Ian in love was probably a sight to see. “Why don’t you call her?”
There was a long pause. She couldn’t imagine that a woman wouldn’t fall madly in love with Ian Taggart. He was gorgeous and had that crazy, impossible wall up that seemed to call to most women.
He took a long breath before answering. “No point. If you and Alex can’t make it, there’s no hope for a dumb shit like me. You two had it all. You were what I was aiming for.”
She felt tears blur her eyes. Ian never talked like this. Just looking at him, she wouldn’t really guess he was plastered. His hands were steady and his voice was perfectly controlled, but the words coming from his mouth proved it. When Ian was sober, he would very likely never admit he wanted more than sex from a woman. “Well, we’re just human, Ian.”
“Nah. You were more. You were happy, and then shit happened and it all died.”
It was a little more than shit. She’d been brutalized, and Alex couldn’t handle it. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a good relationship.”
He laughed a little, but there was nothing humorous about it. “Good? You think I can find a healthy relationship with some nice woman out there? Maybe raise a few kids? Hey, we could find a four bedroom with a white picket fence and a dog named Cuddles. Who the fuck do you think I am, Eve?”
It was then that she noticed the envelope on the floor next to him. She recognized it from this morning. It had been delivered along with the flowers. “I think you’re one of my oldest friends and you deserve some peace.”
His eyes darkened. “That’s only because there’s so much you don’t know about me, honey.” His mouth flattened, and he let his head drift back. “I really do care about you, Eve. And not simply because you were Alex’s wife.” He took a long breath and looked back down at her. “Are you sure you’re done with him?”
She could answer that honestly. “No. I don’t know that I’ll ever be done with him, but I also don’t know that we can live together again. I’ve changed since we got married.”
“You got stronger. I actually thought you weren’t a good match for Alex. You were too submissive in the beginning. Alex needed a challenge. It’s one thing to have a sub in the bedroom, quite another when your partner, the woman you rely on, is utterly dependent on you for every decision.”
She felt her eyes narrow. “I certainly was not.”
“He picked out your clothes every morning, Eve.”
It had started out as a game. He would pick out her clothes for their dates and he always selected her lingerie. Somewhere along the way, they had fallen into the habit of him laying out her clothes and admiring her. “It was just for fun.”