His Indecent Revelations (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire BDSM Erotic Romance) by Aphrodite Hunt

 
HIS INDECENT REVELATIONS
     
    1
     
    Alia – Channing’s former love of his life – stands there like an avenging angel. The gauzy white veils of her ghostly attire tremble in the chilly draft that whips its way around the dungeons. The gleaming obsidian half-mask on her face makes her resemble a phantom.
    Susan is beyond shock.
    She blinks.
    It can’t be. She’s dead.
    Indeed. She has to be dead. This woman – this wraith standing there like the ghost of Baghdad past, like an entity who has been interred in her coffin, left for dead, but has somehow managed to struggle against her casings and escaped – is the cause of their entire predicament. The reason why Channing is the way he is; an emotionally damaged individual who is burdened constantly by his unspeakable past.
    The reason why Hugh, his twin brother, hates him enough to destroy him.
    The reason why she, Susan Chalmers, has been dragged into this unholy mess for the sole crime of falling in love with Channing Crawford at the wrong place, the wrong time.
    The way Channing is staring at Alia sends both a pang and a dagger into Susan’s heart. Channing’s blue eyes are filled with excruciating pain, regret, sorrow, shock . . . and love . It is remembered love. A love of past promises and whispered declarations upon a pillow, made after fervent coupling. A love that has been shared, reciprocated and fulfilled. A love that has been unfairly wrenched away before its time.
    And it’s all coming back to him now.
    Except that Alia’s eyes blaze with hate.
    “You,” she says in a low, dangerous voice.
    “Alia.” Channing’s voice is strangled.
    Susan can only watch on, helpless.
    Alia says, “You did this to me.” She touches the side of her masked face.
    Channing shakes his head. “Alia, no. It wasn’t like that. Please . . . I thought you were dead.”
    “You made sure of it.”
    She has a slight accent that Susan can’t place. Not exactly Middle Eastern, though Susan will be the first to admit that she is no expert in accents. But something is very wrong with Alia. Susan can’t put her exact finger on it, but it’s as if they are speaking to a person who is extremely psychologically damaged – and yet retaining all her mental faculties to do extreme harm.
    And Susan knows – with the knowledge deep in her bones – that Alia will be capable of doing them extreme harm.
    The Adam’s apple in Channing’s throat visibly runs from his jaw to his sternum. “Please, I need to know what happened to you.”
    “What’s there to tell? You let my father do this to me.” Alia fingers her mask again. Her voice is full of penned-up but controlled rage.
    “No. When your father found out about us, he went crazy. He threw me into his dungeon, which is pretty much like this one. And he tortured me.” Channing’s current bound state, with the gaping hole in his chair, leaves very little room for imagination as to what the torture might have been.
    “I know,” Alia says.
    She must have been beautiful and innocent once, Susan thinks. A sharp pain flowers in her chest.
    Channing says in a broken voice, “I had no idea what he had done to you. Only that he came to me one day in my weakened state . . . and told me he had drowned you in his swimming pool.”
    Horror washes through Susan. She cannot imagine having a father like that. She cannot imagine having a life like that – when you live in mortal fear of those who are supposed to love and protect you. No wonder Alia is so fractured .
    Alia says, “He drowned my mother in the swimming pool when he found out she was having an affair with her bodyguard. He said she had dishonored him. I was two. He told me he was about to drown me for dishonoring the family too . . . except . . . ”
    Susan sucks in her breath. Her fists are clenched so painfully that her fingernails dig into her palms. She wonders if they can make a run for it. But Channing is chained firmly to the chair. There’s no way she would leave