Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 470

SCARLETT

I found my voice somewhere in the wreckage of my chest. "Wait. Let me get this straight. You are telling me Tasha walked into your room and asked you to whip her?"

"That is exactly what I am telling you." He said it the way other men announced the weather. Flat. Final. Boring enough to be the truth.

I laughed, and the laugh came out ugly. "We both know that is a lie, Sparrow. Tasha would never do something so ridiculous."

"Then let us go and ask her." He threw his cigar, stomped on it and started toward the house like the matter was settled, and I had to step into his path to stop him.

"Oh no. You are not marching into that girl's room tonight and putting her on a witness stand. She is sitting in there covered in blood and welts, and you want to interrogate her like she is the criminal?"

He stopped and looked at me with that patient, infuriating calm of a man who was convinced he was right and had all night to wait for me to catch up. "You are the one who does not believe me. I am offering you the only proof I have. Her own mouth." He paused. "You already know I don't like random people wandering into my room."

"She is not a random person." My voice rose. "She is Tasha. She is my niece. She may be your fake wife, but she lives in this house, and she is family to me. So what if she walked into your room? Does that give you the right to beat her bloody?"

"I take serious exception to you using words like that about me." His eyes went hard. "I do not hit women."

I stared at him. The man who had slammed me against a wall and wrapped his hand around my throat a moment ago was telling me, with a perfectly straight face, that he did not hit women. I would have laughed if I had not been so angry. "You do not hit women," I repeated slowly, letting every syllable drip with disbelief.

I tried to wrench free. He did not let go.

"Listen to me." His voice had dropped into that low register that made grown men go pale in his clubs. "Very few people in this world have ever raised a hand to me. And none of them are alive to tell the story."

The words went through me like cold water, and I stopped pulling.

"Do not think that because I am lenient with you and Tasha, you have the right to attack me at will." He leaned in until his face was a breath from mine, and his grip tightened on my wrist, hard enough to ache. "Do not forget your place. You serve me as a whore in my bed. And Tasha, she is just a convenient wife I show to people in public. That is your place. Both of you. And the next time you raise your hand to me, I will not be so forgiving."