Free Oliver by Caitlyn Willows

pregnancy. To this day, Lucas thinks I was in for appendicitis. With laparoscopic surgery, there was no visible scar to say differently.”
    “You lied?”
    She kept eating, something to do to keep from looking at him. “What good would telling the truth do? By that time, he’d started college classes and was wrapped up in that. We weren’t stupid. We knew our sudden run of luck came from you. I felt not telling him was the least I owed him for screwing up his life so badly. But I didn’t want your money. You’ll be glad to know many charities benefited from your generosity.”
    “You were punishing yourself.”
    “Apparently I still am.” This time she did look up. “I’ve been caught in a downward spiral for so long I don’t know how to crawl out. This last mistake only put me further into the pit.”
    “You’ve taken an unpaid sabbatical from work.”
    “Because I couldn’t bear to walk back into a job that I’ve hated from the start. Because I was afraid to leave my apartment and risk running into those men again. Because I hated the person I’d become.” She swallowed the growing lump in her throat. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
    He slipped his palm under hers and laced their fingers together. “I can’t tell you who to be, Merideth.”
    “No.” She held on tight. “But you can help me purge the old so the new can find me. You can help me jump-start myself and find direction. Retrain me, Oliver. Please. My safe word is Red Rover, but this isn’t a game. This is my life . Trust me to call a stop to anything I discover no longer works.”
    He drew breath to respond. She jumped in before he could. “I know it’s asking a lot for you to trust me.”
    Oliver stared at their clasped hands. Seconds ticked away. Time in which her heartbeat thumped against her ribs while she waited for his response.
    “You want me to trust you, when it seems you can’t trust yourself. When it’s obvious to me that you don’t trust me ,” he finally replied.
    “I do trust you.” She tried to jerk away. Oliver held fast.
    “Do you? I was very specific. My way. My rules. Only one Master. Yet every time I turn around, there you are, trying to top me. Trying to tell me what you need. I am in charge. I am the Master. I decide what you need, not you.”
    Merideth racked her brain, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. The shower? He hadn’t uttered one protest, one reprimand. What she’d just told him? He could have put a stop to her ramblings at any time. Both incidents? Had he been giving her enough rope to hang herself? Somehow she didn’t think it was a good idea to point any of that out to him.
    She pressed her lips tight to keep her mouth shut. At this point, even yes, sir might have sealed her fate in a way she didn’t wish. Instead, she forced her gaze downward, assuming a subservience that didn’t sit well on her shoulders.
    “I see.” Oliver released her hand. More like threw it from him as if he could no longer bear the feel of it.
    “Very well. Since it seems you feel you need discipline, we’ll start there.”
    The stool scraped the tile. Merideth watched him stride from the room from the corner of her eye, heard him trot up the stairs. Good, they could get this over with. She wanted spanking, craved the burn, the release of emotion. A clean slate to start fresh. And she needed it from Oliver, the person she’d wronged in the first place, the starting point to her descent into a hell of her own making.
    Oliver returned quickly. She would have assumed the position if she could have figured out the where and how of the punishment to come. Merideth looked up, searching for some indication of where he wanted her. His hands were empty. No strap. No paddle or cane.
    “Stand up. Face the counter. Bare your ass,” he ordered.
    Merideth almost defied him. A look in those cold green eyes changed her mind. Oliver meant business. She slipped from the stool and followed his