Harrison made it back to the house a little after two in the morning. He had left Wystan’s well before midnight, but he’d missed his turn on the way home because he had been concentrating on what he’d learned from Osric. By the time he realized that following the road had been stupid, he had wasted a lot of time.
Quietly, he crept into the house. A few lights were off. The lights in Paige’s tower were off. All the same, he thought it right to at least let her know he had come home if she was concerned about such a thing. As quietly as he could, he gently mounted the staircase up to her room. He opened the door a sliver and it cast dull light across the bedroom floor. Before he opened his mouth to say anything, he realized the bed was empty.
He turned on the light. “Paige?”
No one was there.
Pouncing, he checked the bathroom. It was empty too.
With less concern for noise, he slid down the stairs on his heels and walked with deliberate strides into the common rooms.
“Paige,” he called out.
He checked the bathroom, the kitchen, the conservatory, and the spare room, all the while becoming more and more worried.
“Paige!” he called out.
It was then that he remembered that he had changed her perimeter and she was now allowed to go as far as the town. She could have left while he was gone and he wouldn’t have known.
He pulled out his pocket watch that corresponded with her bracelet and punched the call button. A channel opened and he said into the watch, “Paige, where are you?”
He heard a weak reply from the watch and from the direction of his bedroom simultaneously. “Harrison?”
He hadn’t even thought to check his bedroom. Swinging the door open, he found her between his sheets, groggy from sleep and rubbing her eyes in the near darkness.
“You’re in my bed!” he exclaimed.
“Huh?”
He lowered himself next to the bed and said softly, “What’s going on? I know you and I have a really good relationship for a master and his slave, but if you get in my bed and wait for me to come home, I might not be able to maintain our status quo.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered, amused.
Harrison thought of all the reasons why he had not taken Paige as a lover. He was worried if he forced things on her, she’d snap. Later, he hesitated because he thought she was in love with another man. After having met Zaphier and having seen her dynamic with him, it seemed clear to Harrison that whatever she used to have with him, it was very over.
Harrison cleared his throat to answer her. “I mean that I’m a lonely mountain man and you should watch yourself.”
He meant it as a joke and she laughed. She reached for an old plaid shirt of his, with which she covered her tank top and bare shoulders.
Harrison flinched. The action was not meant to be seductive, but he found it so. Casually, she slid into his clothes, like they were the most comfortable things in the world.
“I’m sorry if my being here bothers you, but I didn’t feel safe anywhere else.”
“Why not?” he asked, kneeling on the bed beside her. He was going to make his move. He was going to kiss her. She was going to love it.
Except Paige was not looking at him. She had turned to the side table and was collecting a pile of paper scraps.
“What are those?” he asked, scarcely interested.
He took one of the paper slips between his fingers and read it. It said, ‘Did you find the money yet?’
“What’s this?”
“Zaphier left them for me—tucked in my drawers.”
“What does he mean, ‘Did you find the money yet?’”
Paige snatched it out of his grasp and crushed it between her palms with the other notes. “He’s a pig,” she spat.
Harrison stared at her strangely. She was acting weird. “He left all of those? Can I see them?”
“No,” she said. “He would only poison your brain and make you feel as bad as he makes me feel.”
“Why?”
“I think he wants to buy my contract from you.”
Harrison fell back on the bed next to her. “I won’t sell you.”
“I know you wouldn’t want to. He could offer you an insane amount of money for me and you’d still refuse. It’s just that… if he really wants me, he’ll find a way to make you miserable enough that you’ll want to sell me,” she said, flipping onto her back and expressing herself more to the ceiling.
It made Harrison resent the ceiling. “You know, Paige,” he vented. “If you didn’t belong to me, then you could deal with this on your own, but because you’re mine—you have to let me in on your problem. Can you show me the notes he left you?”
Paige relented and gave them to him.
Harrison didn’t like calling rank, but he took the slips and read them with a grave face.
“What money? If he wants to buy you, why do you have to find the money?”
“I don’t know what he has in mind… exactly,” Paige answered. “And I don’t care. I don’t want anything to do with that guy. I am going to burn these and forget I ever laid eyes on that sack of diffused crap.”
She paused and breathed. “Just think, Harrison. If I’d met you before I met him, don’t you think I would have fallen in love with you on sight?”
“You would have?”
She wasn’t listening. She was too exhausted. Paige normally went to bed at eleven. It was almost three. Looking at her now, he could tell that she hadn’t slept on schedule. She had probably only fallen asleep moments before he burst through the door. She had driven herself crazy looking at Zaphier’s notes. Her exhaustion was making her say things she wouldn’t normally say.
“I think I would fall in love with you if I didn’t have all these weird fears about being betrayed, about being sold again, about being abused. If I love you and you resell me…” She paused and rubbed her chest with the palm of her hand to ease the pain she felt there. “I don’t think I could take it. But if I act cool and like I don’t care, then when you get desperate enough to sell me… I’ll understand. I’ll realize that I was only ever a thing to you. And in a very real way, you were just a thing to me. Not a person, but a way to survive.”
Harrison paused before answering. She was clearly so sleep-deprived that talking to her about this now felt a little like taking advantage of a drunk person, but if he didn’t talk now, when would he? He cleared his throat. “I don’t think it matters when you meet people.”
“Hmm.” Paige turned her head and her eyes met his. “I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.”
“It’s against the rules?” Harrison asked.
“Sort of. A Sleeping Beauty model is not allowed to convince her owner to free her. If my bracelet hears certain chains of words spoken together, I’ll be in trouble. I can’t even give an example of what one of those word chains sounds like because if I do, I’ll be reprimanded. If a Rose Red becomes a liability rather than an asset, then the owner may return her for a partial refund.”
Harrison smirked. “I should really read that manual some time. As your owner, I’m allowed to ask you to do anything, right?”
“You’re not allowed to ask me to hurt myself or others. Hot dishwater is the limit for how much I’m allowed to suffer, but I’m sure an owner could think of a million legal ways to be cruel to their model if they put some effort into it. I’m sure that’s how I was treated when I was with Zaphier. You know,” she said quietly. “I don’t love him anymore. All it took was one glance across the dining room and poof—I didn’t love him anymore.”
“That’s good to hear,” Harrison said—relieved that she said something like that before he launched in on all the things he’d learned from Osric. “He’s married, you know.”
Paige tucked in her knees and mumbled, “That’s just like him. I’ll bet she’s rich.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet she was beautiful, but now she looks like a washcloth that’s been used too many times.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet he fools around on the side and she can’t do anything about it and instead of getting ticked off, she just takes it.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll bet she used to love something about him, but now she can’t remember what it was.”
“Stop,” Harrison said sternly. “Come here,” he said, pulling her close so that she was tucked under his arm with her head on his chest. “Zaphier is not going to get you. It doesn’t matter how much money he offers me, I’m not going to sell you to him. The version of you that was with him doesn’t exist anymore. Tonight, you can let yourself unclench. You can sleep here and you’ll be safe all night.”
“Really?” she asked, raising her head to look into his eyes.
“Yes, but just for tonight. If you ever get in my bed again, I will interpret that as an invitation I can’t refuse.”
“What?” Paige asked.
“I’m not saying that twice. In the morning, I’m going to take you to town for breakfast. There’s someone I want you to meet. He’s a private investigator and he wants to talk to you.”
She paled and clearly forgot Harrison’s warning in the face of his plans for the next day. “I don’t think I have anything to tell him, and I don’t want to get mixed up with any of Zaphier’s messes.”
“What about me?”
Paige looked at him quizzically as if to ask how he was involved.
“I want you to talk to him,” Harrison said persuasively. “Zaphier is asking you to find the money? What money? Money here? Money that I have? Money from somewhere else? Will he be back expecting you to show him where you have hidden money from back when he owned you? What do his notes even mean? We need to find out.”
Paige’s cheeks were ruddy and Harrison’s heartbeat felt like a jackhammer while he waited for her to answer him. When she finally spoke, she said, “Whatever the story with that money is, we’ll never get our hands on it.”
“I’m not expecting to,” Harrison answered calmly.
“Then what are you hoping to get out of this investigation?”
“I’m hoping that the feeling you have will disappear. You know the one, the one where you’re afraid to love me. This whole master and servant thing cannot go on forever. You know it can’t. Deep down inside, you know that I didn’t buy you because I wanted an assistant. I want a partner in every sense of the word. I know me being completely in charge is comfortable for you right now. You have anxiety about so many things, and doing exactly what I say reduces your fears to sizes you can manage. You did what I asked perfectly, so everything must be fine… but it isn’t. The thing is, I will never ask you to love me with the firm order of a master.”
“Never?” she gasped.
“You were hoping I would?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“I won’t. You have to decide if you want a life with me and I won’t order it.” He felt his heart fall the way it falls when you say the unhappy truth you’ve been hiding.
“What will a life with you look like?” she whispered.
“Well, it will look a lot like the life we already have. Except there will be a few marked differences. For starters, the bracelet will have to go. Maybe we’ll get you another one, but not a Sleeping Beauty linked chain designed to show everyone that you don’t make your own decisions.”
“What else?”
“What do you think? Bookings will come in and you’ll decide whether or not we’ll accept a booking without asking me. You’ll decide on a renovation project and you will tell me what you plan to do, but this place will be your home as much as mine, so you’ll do it or not based on what you want.”
“When money is so tight, that seems like too much responsibility for me,” she whined quietly.
“Eventually, you’ll learn that what pleases you can please me too, even if I never would have thought of it on my own. I’ll like things I don’t like because pleasing you is more pleasurable for me than caring what color a wall is.”
He realized she was crying. They were very quiet tears that he never would have noticed if the wetness hadn’t soaked into his shirt. “Do you want to hear more?” he asked.
She nodded without speaking.
“When you’re sick, I’ll bring you soup and cover you with blankets. If you’re hurt, I’ll fetch and carry for you.”
“And when we’re alone?” she suddenly questioned.
“It will be better than it is tonight.”
She clutched at him. “It feels very good tonight. Very warm. Very safe.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Go to sleep and see if you can let your imagination uncurl wide enough to show you what I can’t show you until I get your answer.”
He slid his hand over hers on his chest and the two of them fell asleep.
Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! See you Saturday!
