The Gigolo's Bride (The Necklace Chronicles) by R.E. Butler Page A

about our future. Kasimir took you from me, and I
hate him for it, but I’m the one who set you up to be taken. I was
selfish and awful. Can you forgive me?”
    He pulled the edge of a towel over and
blotted the tears that dotted her cheeks. “There’s nothing to
forgive.” He put the towel back on the edge of the pool and fiddled
with the embroidered hem. “How can you love me, Ashleigh? You hated
the thought of whoring yourself to me, you were terrified of being
sent to the Bordelayz . I’m a whore, the lowest in our
society. I can’t give you the status you deserve.”
    She hated his self-deprecation, but she
understood it. “You’re not a whore anymore, not a brokah . I
don’t care about status, Eden, all I care about is you. You’re
mine, my husband and my soul mate. I still don't entirely
understand how I was chosen, but I know that we fit together, and I
don’t want to go anywhere but with you.”
    His brow arched. “You don’t want to go back
to Earth?”
    She returned to washing his skin, plunging
the sponge under the water and moving it along one leg. “I did, but
even if I could go home now, I wouldn’t. I would stay with you,
Eden, because I love you.” She stroked up the inside of his thigh
and watched his eyes close and his body relax. “When you’re rested
up and healed, I want us to make love. Not just so your hair will
change color and no one will ever force you like that again, but
because I love you and I want to be your wife.”
    He opened his eyes and smiled for a brief
moment before closing his eyes again in exhaustion. When she had
first heard he was having sex with another woman, her wounded heart
had screamed no, not again! But Eden wasn't willing. He was
a victim, plain and simple. And while it killed her to know he'd
been with that awful woman, she knew in her heart that it hadn't
been his choice. It had taken drugs and the bite of a whip to force
him to comply. That meant something.
    She washed his body tenderly, dismayed at how
bruised and battered he was. After she rinsed his hair clean, she
helped him from the pool and dried him carefully. She found a
healing ointment in one of the bathroom cabinets for the whip marks
on his back, and when she tried to help him towards the bed, he
offered to sleep on the couch, which she soundly rejected. She
straddled his thighs and palmed some of the ointment, rubbing it
until it was warmed in her hands and applying it gently to the
wounds.
    He groaned as she worked her way down his
back. "Did I press too hard?"
    "No," he rasped, "your touch is most
welcome."
    "I don't understand what happened last night,
Eden," she said, smoothing more of the ointment across one
particularly deep whip mark. They crisscrossed over the old
marks.
    "What don't you understand?" He rested his
head on his hands and closed his eyes.
    "Why wouldn’t Kasimir listen when you said no
last night? You set yourself free. You should be seen as free, no
matter what you used to do.”
    He grimaced in thought and then said, "You
know that my parents sold me?"
    "Sloan told me,” she answered softly.
    Eden's eyes squeezed tightly shut and his
body tensed. Ashleigh kept her hands on his back lightly, hoping to
offer him some comfort. "That first time, my first time,
when the governor raped me when I was with his wife, I told my
parents I wouldn't do anything like that again. They had plans to
sell me nightly to the wealthy elite, who get their pleasures from
dallying with whores, slumming it. My refusal was a roadblock for
my parents, so they sold me to the Bordelayz for a large sum
of money. But the owner didn't just give them money for me freely,
he gave me the money he had given them as a debt against myself. I
was forced to work to pay off the debt of my own slavery while my
parents spent the money on a house in a nicer area."
    Her heart cracked so sharply it took her
breath away. She struggled to rein in the tears. "How could they do
that to you?"
    "I don't know if they