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That day had come.
This couldn’t continue.
Porter squeezed her hand tight. “You have a choice: Continue acting this way or don’t. It’s that simple, Cora.”
Kyler jerked his chin in agreement.
Cora stayed silent, still unsure how to answer. It all seemed so simple, didn’t it?
Only problem?
It wasn’t simple at all.
With what she had to face, she knew the three things ingrained into her as a submissive would be destroyed—safe, sane, and consensual. What she had to do wasn’t safe for her. What she had to talk about wouldn’t be consensual. And as far as she was concerned, walking into all of that definitely wasn’t sane.
Chapter Twenty
The next Monday, outside of the Regional Justice Center, Aidan lowered his briefcase and suit jacket onto the ground. He hadn’t gone to Club Sin Saturday night, and after a telephone call from Kyler he’d learned neither had Cora. She’d had a girls’ night in with Kenzie and Presley.
That gave him peace. At least she wasn’t alone.
The sun beat down on him and sweat beaded his forehead as he sat down on the large stone stairs. He leaned his head back and embraced the outdoors, instead of the confines of a courtroom. He stretched his neck and noticed the ache of his body. Muscles he didn’t know existed were sore from the long workouts to ease his troubles with Cora.
Her rejection of his touch had made the passing days utter hell. His nights had seemed longer. Through those long hours, he had examined every event and considered each moment. Still, he had no understanding of what he’d done to break her trust. Nor did he understand why he felt so lost without her.
Was it his Dom pride?
Or was her pain just fucking with his mind?
Cora had always been such a ball of sunshine, and watching her struggle in their last scene had marked the worst day of life. His mood had been less than pleasant. His thoughts even more jumbled. He could not make sense of her actions, not a single one.
Aidan sighed. He was damn tired of running in circles.
“No wonder you get paid so much money, you work hard.”
At the tight feminine voice, Aidan lowered his chin. “The same could be said about you.”
The prosecutor he’d been up against today, Samantha, leaned against the palm tree at the bottom of the steps. Her red painted lips curved. “Touché.”
In her early forties, Samantha was prim, proper, a little stuffy, and also very vanilla. Aidan always noticed submissives had a look of yearning that never went away. Samantha had a gaze full of focus and determination. A hard look that suggested, Fuck with me and I will destroy you.
Aidan didn’t doubt she could.
Samantha placed her briefcase down. She ran her hand over her brown hair held tight in a bun. “Guess I should congratulate you on your win.”
Aidan might’ve been proud. That is, if he hadn’t known Samantha had all but thrown the case. “It worked out as it should.”
“I suppose it did,” was Samantha’s dry reply.
While Aidan’s client had committed theft by stealing jewelry from the wealthy woman she worked for, his client had been trying to support the two children her dipshit husband had left her with. Aidan thought sending his client to jail and putting her kids in foster care wasn’t a suitable punishment.
The judge agreed, and considering the case was all circumstantial, he’d dropped the charges. While Aidan didn’t doubt his client’s guilt, he also believed her reasons for doing it came from a good place.
Samantha regarded him with a long look. “It was a weak case.” The hint of a smile on her face twinkled in her brown eyes behind her designer glasses. “I did my best with what I had.”
“Of course,” Aidan replied.
His lips parted to thank her for not doing her job when the beep of his cell phone interrupted his thoughts. He reached for his phone in his briefcase. Once he saw the screen, he noticed it was from Cora. His sore muscles tightened within a single breath. He looked to Samantha. “I better take this.”
