AUTHOR'S NOTE: You guys all buckled in yet?

I don't know how this chapter will be received but it is what it is. Sometimes characters want things to go a different way from the way I intend, and this is one of those cases. We'll talk later. I'd love to hear what you think!

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Riley was lying on her side, her back facing the door when Ashe slipped into the bedroom, having showered in the guest bathroom, and now dressed in a t-shirt and lounge pants. Ashe slipped under the covers, grateful for the warmth that welcomed him. Sliding towards her and trying his best not to wake her, he reached for her, draping his arm over her waist, and loving the feel of the soft lace that covered her skin. This was home, he thought, inhaling the scent of her hair and her skin, and feeling her warmth permeate through him as he drew closer to her.

For a few moments, he lay next to her, though from the sound of her breathing, he knew that she was awake. She'd been waiting for him.

"Am I not beautiful enough for you?" She asked, not moving. "Don't I make you happy just the way I am?"

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me, Riley. And no one has ever made me as happy as you have," Ashe said. When she didn't answer him, he continued. "We need to talk."

"The corset was from her, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"When you refused to acknowledge it, I knew." She rolled onto her back to face him, anger flashing in her eyes. "I threw it away."

"Good. It's where it belongs."

"But that doesn't change the fact that I was made to feel like an idiot thinking it was from you, even after you've said you never wanted that lifestyle," she said, glaring at him. "I should have known, Ashe. You never wanted to play that game anymore, and then suddenly there's a gift, complete with a damn collar. Why can't she leave us alone?"

"She will leave us alone - after tonight," Ashe said. "I promise."

Riley frowned, sitting up on the bed with the covers tucked under her arms as Ashe leaned his back against the antique brass headboard. "You're seriously not thinking of seeing her in person, are you?"

"I am," Ashe said. "I'm meeting her on her territory. It's what she wants, and for now I will grant it, but she will stop whatever it is she is doing."

"You mean your territory, the one you both shared," she said. "And then what? Do you honestly believe she will simply leave us alone just because you meet her in her territory? Do you honestly believe that all she wants from you is a simple meeting?"

"That's all she's going to get," he said.

Riley scoffed. "Yeah, right! Do you really think that all it will take is a meeting with her and everything will be over? That she'll actually leave you alone? You can't even stop her from doing the shit that she's done to me - sending me that corset and collar, and dragging my past for the world to see. And not only that, now they're trying to find out who represented me in that case - pro bono, as my dad says. Did you know she paid my father twenty thousand dollars for information about me?"

"No, I didn't," Ashe said.

"What if she decides to go after Paige and Clint? And the triplets? What then?" She continued. "What if she finds out that they're not Clint's, that they're Gareth's? Do you know what that will do to the boys?"

"Riley -"

"Look around you, Ashe. You're the damn king on the chessboard - the one piece that can't do shit because it's everyone else's job to protect him. Me included," she said. "Maybe it's time you start playing the game, because someone sure wants you back in the game so badly that the longer you stay away from her, the more people she's going to drag down to hell with her. And I'm not going to let her involve the triplets, not even my sister, for all that she's done."

"And you know what hurts me the most, Ashe?" Riley continued. "It's the realization that Catriona and I are not fighting over the same man. She's fighting for someone I don't even recognize and I don't care if that's how you used to be in the past with her, but I want to see that version of you that she wants back so badly."

"She doesn't want me back, Riley," Ashe said. "It's all just a game of power for her now."

"Then why aren't you playing it? Am I stopping you from fighting fire with fire?" Riley asked. "Why are you so determined to prove to me that what she's fighting for - that Ashe that she used to know - is not who you are anymore? That the man she's willing to risk everything for is nothing like the man I'm talking to now. Because right now, I'm more inclined to believe her - that the man she wants so badly is not the same man I'm looking at right now, at least not the Ashe Hunter you've shown me since we first met."

"I am the same man on that elevator, Riley," Ashe said. An angry Riley was a sight to behold, her face and her chest flushed as she faced him, her fists clenched along her sides.

"I used to worry about who I really was," she continued. "Was I supposed to be known only as Paige's baby sister all my life, or a heroin addict she had to keep an eye on all the time? Was I going to be known as the girl Gareth Roman left behind? The one they couldn't even bother giving a name to? And now, I'm nothing but Ashe Hunter's girlfriend, his plaything, his toy -"

"You're not my toy," Ashe said. "You're the woman I am madly in love with. And you're going to be my wife."

Riley hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn't wearing her ring, not that he'd expected her to, at least not in bed. "Well, that's going to be a problem then, Ashe."

"Why would that be a problem?" Ashe asked, frowning.

"How do you expect me to marry someone I don't really know? How can I marry someone who's only shown me half of what he is, while he's so busy burying the other half so he's always going to look good to me?" She said. "Look at me. I'm a bastard, a drug addict, a girl who never went to college, whose claim to fame is attached only by who she's fucked -"

"Riley, stop it -"

"You know all about me, Ashe, and yet you're still here," Riley said. "Don't I deserve to know all about you, too - even the part of you that's not so pretty, the one that comes with whips and chains and God knows what else? That part of you that Catriona is fighting to get back? Don't I deserve to see that and know who the hell I'm really fighting for?"

"I don't want to lose you -"

"You're going to lose me anyway, Ashe," Riley said and this time she swung her legs off the side of the bed, but Ashe grabbed her arm, stopping her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what you think it means," Riley replied. "You're going to lose me anyway. So make your decision. Are you willing to lose me without a fight? Or are you brave enough to risk it all and show me who you really are?"

"Is that a threat?"

"I don't care what it is," Riley replied. "All I care about right now is seeing all of you, because the longer you fool yourself into believing that I'm better off not seeing what you used to be just so you can keep me, then I really am just a toy to you. And right now, between you and Catriona using me as a pawn in your games, that's exactly how I feel."

Ashe let go of her arm and she got up from the bed, walking around the bed towards the door.

"Stop right there," Ashe said, his voice cold and deep, and Riley did as she was told, stopping right in front of the bed. There was an unmistakable charge in the room, one that made the air crackle with its intensity. It made Ashe's skin tingle, the hairs at the back of his arm standing on end.

He got up from the bed and stood in front of her, not saying anything more, at least not yet for the sudden silence between them spoke volumes. Even Ashe was grateful for her silence, for it told him that she knew what was going to happen, even as her body trembled and goosebumps rose from her skin, along her shoulders and her arms.

There was no turning back now. If he was going to lose her anyway, she might as well see all of him. It was, after all, what fueled everything else in his career. It was the very energy he harnessed for that purpose, that focus he needed to be on top of his game.

"Are you cold?" He asked in a low voice.

"No," Riley replied, her gaze directed away from him.

"Look at me."

As she looked up at him, Ashe was struck by how blue her eyes were, and by the way her body trembled, suddenly uncertain of what was about to happen. She was wearing a fitting black slip constructed all over with French Leavers lace and with it, its matching thong. It was an outfit that usually spent less time on her body than on the floor, before he'd toss it aside and make love to her. Ashe loved seeing her in things he purchased for her, and he loved how she often surprised him by giving him a little peek whenever she'd wear them under her clothes. As his eyes traveled down her body, her nipples hardened against the thin fabric and Riley brought her right forearm to cover them.

"Don't cover yourself," he said. "You're never to cover yourself, never in front of me. Do you understand?"

He saw Riley's brow furrow, though she brought her hand down, just as she was told.

"Do you really want to see how I used to be?" He asked, feeling the sides of his jaw clench as excitement coursed through him.

"I want to see all of you. Even the part that she," she paused, taking a deep breath, "- that she brought out of you. Especially that. I want to know who I'm really fighting for. I want to see that everything I'm going through - and will go through - is worth being with him. Or without him."

As she finished speaking, she lowered her gaze, biting her lip as she waited for Ashe to speak. He lifted his hand to her side, running his index finger softly against her arm and seeing the goosebumps that rose on her flesh as he traced her soft skin.

"Are you afraid?" He asked, his finger moving upwards to her shoulder, tracing the line of her left collarbone and down the valley between her breasts.

"I trust you."

"That was not the question. Are you afraid? Yes or no," he said. "Look at me when you answer. I want to see your eyes."

She looked up at him, the blue of her eyes lighter now, though Ashe knew it was simply a trick of the light. Yet it was more than just the trick of the light that had managed to slip between the thick curtains that covered the windows, for he could see her innocence, what he loved most about her. She'd been sheltered so much by the people who loved her, though they did so for their own selfish reasons - Gareth, in his guilt over what he'd done, and Paige, over her betrayal. And then there was Clint, doing everything he did for his children, and his reputation. Yet inspire of it all, what they left - who they left - was a naive and sheltered Riley. Even among the thorns, the rose bloomed.

But even that was going to change.

"No," she whispered. "I'm not afraid."

"Give me a safe word," he said and she frowned, confused. "A word to tell me you can't take anymore, that you want me to stop whatever it is I will be doing."

"I don't need one -"

"You will need one, my love," Ashe said. "And you will use it before I'm finished."

She swallowed and Ashe saw her chest rise and fall slightly faster as the realization dawned on her.

"Safe word, Riley," Ashe said, tilting her chin so that she was looking straight at him. "Or this stops right now, and you're free to go. There's no turning back from here."

For a few seconds, she was silent, her eyes searching his face - for what, Ashe didn't know. A change of mind? Mercy? Maybe searching his face for the Ashe that she knew, the one whose smile always reached his eyes?

Ashe exhaled then, the realization of what Catriona was really doing hitting him like a punch in the gut. This was exactly how she had wanted the innocence he shared with Riley to self-destruct.

"Red," Riley whispered. "My safe word, Master Ashe, is Red."