Page 100 of Carnal Wagers

“Because I do, but I won’t risk your life.”

She let out a sardonic laugh. “I think that’s the best and worst rejection I’ve ever received.”

“Alice…”

“You said you don’t have sex with women more than once, but we have.”

“I’m not talking about the number of times I fucked you that night.”

“Neither am I.”

I blinked.

“The night when you soothed me in your car and then took me to bed wasn’t the first time I welcomed you inside me.”

“What?” I must have heard her wrong.

“Twelve years ago, at a masquerade gala, in New York.”

My brows furrowed, unsure what she was getting at.

“You reassured a young woman wearing a dark silver-and-gold mask in a satin off-the-shoulder dress of the same color.”

My jaw very slowly slacked.

“She confessed to you that she was responsible for the death of a friend. You advised her to either make the best of the circumstances handed to her and rise above hardship or let it crush her beneath its weight until there was nothing left of her but pulp. The choice was hers.”

“How do you know this?”

“And if she was interested in free-falling into the unknown with both arms wide open, you would make it worth her while. You could help take her pain away.”

Those words rang warning bells, but it wasn’t possible. That woman had been blonde.

“You escorted her to an office upstairs. You bent her over a desk, lifted her dress over her hips, and spanked her. You whispered to her that she needed to learn to turn her pain into pleasure. And when her butt burned, you buried your face between her thighs and made her see stars. All that before you took my virginity.”

My head shook on its own, detached from the rest of me, cast into stone. “That woman, she didn’t have a French accent.”

“You mean she spoke like this?” Alice’s French accent vanished, her voice twisting into the flat tones that matched a speaker from the West Coast. “It takes effort, and it’s exhausting, but I can do it with enough motivation.”

A sudden heaviness chilled me from head to toe and cleaved me in place. “Can’t be.”

No matter how I delved through those memories for any lies, I kept coming up empty.

“Tell me that’s a lie. Right now!”

She glared at me, nonplussed. I gripped her face and put her forehead to mine.

“Tell me that’s not true. Tell me it wasn’t you.”

“It was, and you know it.”

“No,” I muttered.

I grappled onto the top of the locker and bit into my fist, my chest heaving. The floor spun. The truth minced my insides to bits, then seared the leftovers with the acid raging through my bloodstream.

Everything was tight and suffocating.

“Talk to me,” she whispered. Her nails skittered up and down my nape.