Tender Mercies - By Kitty Thomas Page 0,29

not months. Suddenly everything in her body gave out, and if Asher said anything else, it didn’t slip past the barrier of unconsciousness for her to hear it.

Six

Asher stood in the kitchen, having downed his third cup of coffee because it felt too early for alcohol. Perhaps he should amend that rule. After her orgasm, he’d felt the light trembling, as if she was afraid she’d done something wrong. But she was quiet, retreating back into her head.

Which was when he felt like an evil bastard.

The unfortunate reality was that there was no real way to know the best course to take with her. He couldn’t simultaneously try two different methods, and he was still convinced his way was right in the long run. She was his, damn it. And he wasn’t harming her.

He hadn’t fucked her, and wouldn’t have even if she hadn’t fallen asleep on top of him. It was too soon. But it didn’t mean he wouldn’t touch what belonged to him. He’d waited until she’d drifted deeper into sleep and her breathing had evened before slipping from the bed. He’d covered her with the blanket and shut off the light on his way out the door.

His erection was still raging. She thought she was wrong? He was the one who got a hard-on every time she looked up at him with those desperate, brown eyes. Everything in his brain screamed: Prey. Take. Use. He wasn’t exactly proud of it, but there it was. He hadn’t even felt this way with Darcy. And he’d loved Darcy.

Lucas wasn’t the only one who told pretty lies. Asher had been lying to himself since the moment he’d decided he was going to take Grace to atone. He’d been kidding himself thinking he wasn’t ready to move on. He was ready. He hadn’t just wanted a slave who he may or may not bed. He’d wanted a lover, and he’d perhaps selfishly taken one who was too damaged to want that as much as he did. At the same time, he couldn’t deny the fact that selfish intentions or no, he had rescued her from a much worse fate.

“You fucker.”

William stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. He’d dropped the polite and civilized butler routine. Asher sighed. Of course William would be lurking nearby. That was his way. The only reason it hadn’t gotten him fired and deported was that he wasn’t just a butler, he was a friend.

William didn’t wait for a verbal acknowledgment. Clearly he felt his moral outrage trumped the propriety of his station in the house. “Why not just throw her down and rape her? You think molesting her is a solution to the trauma she’s already suffered?”

“She didn’t seem to be that upset about it while I was doing it.”

“She had no choice!”

“She’s a slave. Slaves don’t get choices! Darcy was a slave,” Asher said.

“But Darcy still had a personality. She wasn’t terrified. It was her kink.”

“And it’s Grace’s kink, too.”

William shook his head. “No. This is wrong.”

Asher rounded on him, growing weary of the insubordination. “Is it? If I’d treated Darcy more like property, she’d still be alive. But no, I was weak with her. She pushed too far. People talked. I had to get control of her, and instead of doing it myself, I gave the responsibility to someone else.”

Sure, he’d just been berating himself, but now that his butler was doing it, he found it easier to come up with endless rationalizations to prove he was the good guy. “I’m not going to buy someone and keep them like a cloistered nun. You honestly expect me to keep a beautiful woman in my home––a woman I own, I might add––and never touch her?”

“I . . . sir . . . but you knew the state she was in. If you’d wanted that, you could have bought someone else.”

“And then what would happen to Grace? I’m the best option she has, and you know it. You can be as self-righteous as you want to be. She’s safe with me. If I treat her like she’s broken, she may never recover, but if I treat her like any other slave, then maybe there’s a chance.”

William still had a disapproving look on his face, and Asher wanted to knock it right off. But he refrained.

“I still think you should give her time to––”

“She’s got to come to me emotionally in her own time, but I will have her body and her obedience on