Page 7 of Karma

I freeze. You have got to be fucking kidding me.

“And,” he continues smoothly, “I’m willing to take you back.”

As his mistress?

“No,” I say. Quiet.Firm.

He cocks his head.

I shake mine.

Eric sucks in a breath. His cheeks sharpen. His jaw goes tight. “What did you say?”

He heard me. I know he did. It’s just that, as a partnered lawyer at Ward, St. James, and Marshall’s firm, he’s not used to anyone saying ‘no’ to him. Especially not me. I was his companion, his lover, his goddamn personal secretary after he convinced me to leave Mom’s event planning company three years ago so I could work for him instead as some kind of glorified note-taker… I wasn’t allowed to say ‘no’.

It feels pretty damn good to be able to do so now.

“I’m not coming back to you.”

His eyes turn frosty. “You forget who you belong to.”

No. I don’t. “It’s not you, Eric.”

Not anymore.

“You will do what you’re told. Come back to me and I’ll make it all up to you.”

Do what I’m told?

Iwon’t.

I chose obedience over love—and made the worst fucking mistake of my life. Before Eric seduced me into sleeping with him the first time, I lived for the moments when I’d earned hisapproval. There wasn’t anything he could tell me that I wouldn’t do. I was his from the moment he first complimented an event I’d helped my mother plan, and eventually he had a piece of every part of me: heart, body, and soul.

I obeyed, and then I loved him, believing that one would lead to the other. But there’s no love anymore. Not from the moment he tossed me aside like I was garbage and I licked my wounds by doing the most impulsive, reckless thing I could think of: stopping at the first dive bar I found outside of Harmony Heights, trying my first cocktail, then picking the most gorgeous guy in the bar to fuck the memory of Eric Ward’s cold blue eyes out of my brain if only for the moment.

It worked. I replaced Eric’s with a pair of soft brown ones, a charming smile, a dimpled cheek, and an inch-long scar over his eye that didn’t detract from his prettiness. Oh, no. In the smoky haze of the Last Prayer, it only highlighted how attractive my stranger was. Three months later, I still kick myself for not taking him up on his offer to go home with him, but I’d promised myself when I left Eric for the last time, I would never willingly obey a man again.

Not the man with the dark blond hair and a body made for sin—and not the man who is waiting expectantly behind my desk for me to give in.

Again.

No.

“You can’t fix something you broke. Not like this. Not with a snap of your fingers or one of your back room deals. I’m a person, Eric?—”

“You’re mine.”

I was. “If this is all you wanted to talk to me about, I should be leaving.”

“Talk? Sweetheart, I didn’t ask you here totalk.” He snorts softly. “Talk… no. This is my attempt to negotiate.”

Always the lawyer, I think. “Negotiate what? I made my terms very clear.”

“I know. You wanted me to Claim you as my Offering, forgetting the fact that I’m well past thirty, my dear, and I already have one. And you… you’re not an Offering, are you?”

TWO

A PLAN