TamingTara

Chapter Nineteen

They slept the rest of the night in each other’s arms until Joe felt Tara roll away from him as dawn brightened the edges of the window around the shades. She slid out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

He waited for her, thinking about what he wanted to do to her next. Or what he wanted her to do to him. Now that they’d broken down that barrier, he could take her further—his mind wandered away with thoughts that made him hard.

She emerged from the bathroom and began to dress.

“What are you doing, Tara?” He lifted his head and propped it on a hand.

“Getting dressed.” Her back was to him and he didn’t like the stiff line of her spine.

“Come back to bed.”

“No.” She dragged a shirt over her head. “I’m leaving.”

“The hell you are.” He threw back the covers and surged out of bed. He strode across the room to her, and laid his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. “What’s going on?”

Her eyes sparked fire at him, her mouth pressed in a pissed-off line. “I can’t believe you did that to me.”

“Did what?” What was she talking about? The anal sex? The flogging? The cuffs? What?

“All of that!” She shrugged his hands off and moved away. “You knew I didn’t want that and you did it anyway. I’m not like that. I don’t want to be tied up and used, I don’t want to…to…”

Ah fuck. He’d thought they were past that.

“Tara. You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what!” Her voice rose.

“Lying to yourself.”

“I’m not lying to myself! Maybe you’re the one who’s deluded! Did you ever think you might be wrong about me?”

She faced him, indignation pouring off her, hands clenched at her sides.

“I know what I saw in your eyes,” he said quietly. “I saw it, Tara. And you never once said the safe word. If you wanted me to stop, you could have said it any time. You are lying to yourself if you’re saying you didn’t like everything I did to you.” He crowded closer. “Everything. The beads in your ass.” He bent his face to hers, nearly nose to nose. “Your wrists in cuffs. Being flogged until you came.” Now he did rub his nose along the side of hers. “You can’t deny it.”

She stood there, saying nothing, her eyes flickering as she thought.

“I told you last night,” he murmured. “You need to face your fears. You need to be brave enough to do that. I thought you were brave enough. But if you can’t—then you’re a coward.”

“I am not a coward!” She stepped back from him, hands clenched, body rigid. But she didn’t meet his eyes.

He swallowed a sigh. “You submitted last night, so beautifully. It was truly beautiful, Tara.” He lifted a hand to cup her jaw. She blinked at him. “I just wish you’d trust me enough to give yourself to me completely.”

“I can’t give myself to you! I can’t do it, Joe. I just can’t. Don’t you know what I’d be giving up?”

He regarded her thoughtfully. “I do know. I know exactly. But I also know what you’d be getting in return. And if you can’t see that, then there’s not much hope. I’m not the enemy here, Tara.”

“Yes you are!”

He shook his head, still standing there buck-naked, uncaring. “No I’m not. You’re your own enemy. You need to face yourself.”

“I have. And I don’t want this. I want control.”

“Tara, haven’t I made it clear? This isn’t about me controlling you. It’s about controlling myself. Controlling myself so I can give you what you want…what you need. You’re the one with the power.”

“You’re talking complete bullshit,” she bit out, turning away again.

He came to a rapid decision. “Tara. Listen to me.”

“Don’t give me orders!”

A low growl vibrated in his throat. “I want to tell you something. Something important. Will you please sit down for a minute?”

She sighed. “Fine.” She sat in the arm chair, rather than on the bed.

“You think I’m the enemy why?”

“Because…”

“Honesty,” he reminded her tersely.

She paused. “Because you’re making me lose control.”

He studied her, her narrowed eyes looking at the floor, not at him. Her fingers twisted in her lap. “I can’t give up control,” she whispered. “It’s all I have. I’ve worked my whole life to take over the business and you’re taking that away from me.”

He blew out a breath. “I told you before, Tara. I’m not trying to take anything away from you.” He inhaled deeply, let it out slowly. “Let me tell you something.” Now he paused, his gut clenching. He searched for words. “Let me tell you why I came to Santa Barbara.”

She lifted her big amber eyes, darkened to a smoky topaz, and looked at him.

“I used to work for a company called NCC Technologies. You may have heard the name.”

Her forehead creased and she nodded. NCC had been all over the news a year ago, so he wasn’t surprised she’d heard of them.

“They manufacture some very popular OTC and prescription medications. They have a large research and development department. They’ve developed some drugs with huge promise for treating several types of cancer. I worked there for five years.”

He grabbed for his boxers, stepped into them, then sat on the bed. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.

“I loved working there and I was doing well, getting promoted. I was ambitious and intended to work my way up to VP. Maybe higher eventually. And I was on a fast track. They liked me there. When I did some good things in operations, they decided I should have cross training, so they moved me to finance. I really liked that.”

She smiled faintly.

“Yeah, you know I like numbers. Anyway, I started seeing some things that made me worry. Things like apparent loans the VP and CFO were taking out. But they were manipulating the loan program so they didn’t pay any interest. At first, I just figured there was something I was missing and everything was okay. Then one day I couldn’t ignore it anymore. So I went to my boss, the director of finance, and told him what I was seeing.”

He paused. “He heard me out, told me he’d look into it and sent me away. So I kept working hard. But nothing happened. I was still seeing stuff that didn’t look right, so I went back to him, asked what he’d done about it. He talked a whole lot, kind of indirectly warned me about being too inquisitive and again showed me the door.

“Then I was really suspicious and I actually started looking for stuff. And holy shit, did I find it.” He shook his head. “It was sickening. They were taking all that money and I knew what they were doing with it. Les Swenarchuk had had a big party at his home one night. He lived in an unbelievable mansion and was always taking off on trips to Bermuda or Italy. None of those loans were being repaid, plus they were giving themselves bonuses nobody else knew about. It was millions of dollars. I felt sick.”

“Whistleblowers usually end up screwed, despite everything that’s happened in the business world,” she said in a near whisper. “Did you do it? Did you blow the whistle on them? Is that why you got fired?”

He shook his head again. “No. I never had a chance to blow the whistle. I got fired before that.”

“But…why? Did they know you were going to?”

“Maybe. They accused me of stealing. They showed me documents with my name on them that made it look like I was the one who was manipulating the loan program. I don’t know how they did it, but they set me up. They knew I was onto them and they set me up to take the fall.”

“Oh.” Her eyes went wide.

He smiled without humor. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it could easily have been me and I’m just claiming to be framed. And you know what? I can’t prove it. If I could, things would have turned out much, much differently.” He grimaced.

“I was charged with corruption and grand larceny. You have no idea how crushing that was. How completely mortifying and humiliating. How frustrating to not be able to prove my innocence. How furious I was at the people I’d trusted, the people I’d committed my career to.”

He closed his eyes for a couple of slow breaths, trying to relax the hands that wanted to clench into fists.

“I got a good lawyer,” he continued. “I had to sell my condo to pay the legal bills. My family helped as much as they could, but it cost a hell of a lot. Then somehow, the shit hit the fan. I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know what happened, but I gather Swenarchuk and Burton got greedy. You’d think,” he said, shaking his head in wonder, “when I caught it, they would have cleaned up their act. But no. They kept going. Stupid assholes. My only consolation is they ended up in jail and I didn’t.”

Her eyebrows lifted in the unspoken question.

“I had to make a deal. My lawyer advised me it would be the best thing to do. I couldn’t prove my innocence and it looked bad, so we cut a deal that I’d testify against them in exchange for immunity. I was a small player in the company. And they had one problem with their case against me—they could never figure out what I did with the money.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Because there wasn’t any. So I got off. But…I didn’t really get off.” He bowed his head. “Just try to find a job with that hanging over your head. Not a chance. I spent months pounding the pavement. I’d had to sell my condo so I moved in with my folks. Not a happy situation for any of us.”

“I needed to start over, so I decided to come to Santa Barbara. Nick was here, he offered to let me stay with him while I got on my feet.”

Tara watched him intently, taking it all in.

“It was…humiliating,” he admitted, looking down at his hands. “And to be honest, when my grandma told me it was an olive company, I kind of went, holy shit, olives? But the truth was, I was desperate. I figured if I could just work for a while, I could do up a new résumé and in a while, when everyone’s forgotten about NCC, I’d be able to move back to San Francisco and find something new.”

He raised his head and met her gaze head-on. “I never intended to stay here, Tara. So you can rest assured, your job—and your company—are safe from me. I’m not trying to take them away from you.”

She nodded. Emotions flickered over her face, so quickly he couldn’t get a sense of what she was thinking. For a moment he thought he saw the gloss of tears in her eyes and her mouth tremble. But she quickly tightened her expression and nodded.

“Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “I suppose you know I have to tell my grandfather about this.”

He lifted his chin, tightening his jaw. “You don’t have to. Once again, Tara, I’m asking you to look inside yourself and ask—do you really think I would steal from my employer?”

She didn’t answer.

Fuck. She didn’t trust him. He knew that already—because of her refusal to submit totally to him. That required complete trust and if she believed he could actually be a lying thief—there wasn’t much hope she would ever trust him with everything she had.

“Please. Take me home now,” she said in a low voice.

He sighed. If she couldn’t come to him freely, knowing herself, accepting herself and accepting him—then there was no point in pushing it.

The drive back to Santa Barbara was excruciatingly quiet. Joe didn’t try to talk to her, to convince her of anything—his innocence, that she shouldn’t tell Grandpa, that they had more than just sex and bondage.

She’d listened to Joe’s words and had felt them like small stabs of a knife. He’d been fired from his last job for stealing from the company. He hadn’t told Grandpa about that. And he was planning on leaving.

What should have had her jumping into the air and pumping a fist—all of it—instead had her slumping into a disappointed, hurting lump.

She could go to Grandpa, tell him the truth about Joe and he’d have no choice but to fire him. He’d be gone and she’d be back on her own again, on track to taking over Santa Ynez Olives all by herself.

And he’d never intended to stay. That too should have had her jumping for joy.

Instead she felt a small crack in her heart, a painful, splintering crack.

And why was that?

She didn’t even want to analyze that. The pain in her chest terrified her. Surely to God she hadn’t had some crazy idea they could actually have something together?

That would just be insane. They’d had sex. Nothing more.

And she didn’t want anything more.

This was so not what he’d planned on happening when he moved to Santa Barbara.

Getting all tangled up with a woman—and not just any woman, but the woman he had to work with—hadn’t been in his plans. Even when he’d gotten the idea that if he could tame her, help her find herself, it would make things easier at work, he hadn’t foreseen that his emotions would get all snagged up in the sex and the domination. That her lack of trust would be so agonizingly hurtful. Shit.

Why the hell was that, anyway?

What had just happened between them was something he’d never experienced before. He’d had women who learned to submit. And some who did it naturally. He’d shown them pleasure, taken his own pleasure, taken their gift, but this…was something different. He cared about Tara. He wanted her to find herself and know herself for her own sake—so she could know the joy of submission and how freeing that was.

She was all bound by her own expectations, her grandfather’s expectations, society’s expectations—she needed to be set free like no one he’d ever met and he knew he could do it. If she’d only let herself go. A deep sadness filled him that she wouldn’t, that she wasn’t going to let herself know the freedom of submission.

And they still had to work together. As long as he still had a job, which likely wasn’t going to be much longer.

Sasha flipped through the newspaper Saturday morning, eyes hurting, head pounding, when a classified ad caught her eye. It was a job advertisement for a community outreach representative at the Southern California Museum of Art. As she quickly scanned it, she realized she actually met the qualifications, other than the fact she had no real experience.

A job. She bit her bottom lip. Maybe that’s what she needed. Despite the charity work she did, her life felt so empty lately. She needed to do something real. Something that had meaning for her. Like at the center—working with the kids and seeing the good things the center was doing for them made the fundraising work more meaningful. She’d actually be earning a paycheck and doing something she enjoyed.

Grandpa would have a heart attack. It drove him crazy that Tara worked and that was a family business. If she went out and got a job—he’d probably cut off her allowance or something. Except—if she had a job she’d have her own money and wouldn’t need to depend on him for every dollar. The job probably didn’t pay much, but it would be her own money—it would be her independence.

It was a crazy idea. She didn’t need to work. She’d just keep doing what she was doing. It didn’t matter.