“Who is Carolina?” Anna says sitting up, a puzzled look on her face.
Monique and Francesca say nothing and quickly get off the bed, rushing down the hall, murmuring to each other in French.
“Bruce, who is Carolina?” Anna asks again, standing and walking to him.
Bruce says nothing and leads Anna back to their suite. The silence makes Anna’s stomach turn, her mind races. What the hell was going on?
“Bruce. Tell me,” she says, her frustration clear. “You’ve never been this quiet, or this nervous before.”
He still says nothing.
“DAMMIT BRUCE. TELL ME.” Anna says loudly. He doesn’t look like the strong, confident man she’s gotten to know. He looks scared, nervous to speak.
“Carolina is…” he starts but doesn’t finish.
Anna takes his hand.
“Carolina is someone from my past,” he says looking not at her but seemingly through her. “Someone I never thought I would see again. Someone I never wanted to see again.”
For the first time Anna sees what shame looks like on his face. He looks away from her.
“Bruce, we meet people from your past all the time. This is your world,” Anna says, not sure how to react. “What is so different about this Carolina that has you all seeing ghosts?”
Bruce is silent.
He takes a deep breath.
“Well, for one thing, she’s Monique and Francesca’s mother,” he says.
Anna looks puzzled.
“Okay… I guess I can see why they would freak out a little bit then. I wouldn’t want my mom coming to a place like this” she says. “But what does that have to do with you?”
He is silent again.
She thinks. Then an idea hits.
“Oh God,” she croaked. “You’re not their… fuck, Bruce are you there father?!”
He looks at her an chuckles. “No. Definitely not. I know I started early with my sex life but not that early.”
Anna breathes a sigh of relief.
“And, before you ask, Wyatt isn’t either,” he says. “There are some lines that don’t get crossed, even in Paradise.”
“Then what is it, Bruce?” Anna says, beginning to worry again.
He lets out another deep breath.
“A long time ago…” he pauses. “Before you, obviously. Before Jennifer. Before I went back to America…”
He trails off again.
“What was before all of that? Just tell me,” Anna pleads.
“I was involved with Carolina. I loved her. I almost married her,” he says, the words rushing from his mouth. “We were going to get married and become business partners with Wyatt, living here full time. But…”
“But what?”
He lets out a sigh.
“But the day we were going to be married, she left,” he says, meekly. “She stood me up. Not a word. Not a note. Nothing. She left me standing at the chapel alone. And I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
Anna tries to take everything she just heard.
“Wyatt must have kept in contact with her without telling me. Fucking old bastard,” Bruce says, anger twisting his face.
He takes Anna’s hand. She’s shaking.
“I never told you about her because it hurts. She destroyed me. I don’t even want to think of her. That’s why I made your safe word her name. Because it hurts me,” he says, looking her in the face.
“I’m sorry.”
Anna’s heart fell, her stomach was in knots. As she heard his words, she didn’t know if she should be sad or angry or both.
“Bruce…” She paused. Still holding his hand, her body shaking with emotion.
“Her name as the safe word? You could have at least given me some context… I… I can’t lie. I’m hurt. You could have told me, I’ve told you everything about my past? You couldn’t tell me, the one person you said was worth a damn, about this?” her voice growing more frantic.
She let go of his hand and held her knees to her chest, her eyes welling with tears. If he didn’t tell her this, what else could he be hiding?
“I don’t know what to say to you, or how to help you. You are not the Bruce I know right now. I am hurt but I won’t abandon you like she did. That’s just not fair. I just… I don’t know how I will handle her. Or how she will handle me.”
She met his eyes again, her face one of concern. “I’m worried now. What if you leave me for her?”
Bruce rushes to be at her side, reaching out a hand that she moves away from.
“I will not leave you,” he says, trying to hold her gaze. “Not for anyone. Especially not for her.”
Anna says nothing, just looks at him, tears equally of anger and sadness falling down her cheeks.
He gets up and takes a deep breath. “If I wanted her don’t you think I would have found her? If Wyatt found her it couldn’t have been too hard. But I didn’t. I didn’t even look. Because I didn’t want to see her. And I don’t now.”
“After she left I realized she never wanted me. She wanted the money. The lifestyle. The wild sex and private jet and famous friends. I was just a thing to her. I was the magic lamp she rubbed to get anything she wanted.”
“She’s the reason I married Jennifer. Jennifer already had money. Had power. She didn’t need me for it. And she didn’t care about me either but I always knew she didn’t. In the end, I didn’t care about her either.”
He comes back to the bed. He tries to take her face in his hands but she pulls away. He pulls her back to him. “I care about you. I want you. For the first time in my life I am truly happy. Because of you.”
“Bruce…” Anna says as he continually tries to console her and explain herself. She pulls away again, she needs space to contemplate her next words. Her tears continue to roll down her cheeks as she speaks.
“I don’t know what to say to you right now. I have always put complete trust in you, I’ve had to. But .. I can’t…” She sighs before wiping her cheeks.
“I can’t understand how you wouldn’t tell me. I’ve told you from the beginning you can tell me anything. I’m hurt and I’m angry and the fact that she is going to be here makes me even more upset. Not because of what you haven’t told me, but because I know how much she hurt you. She hurt you enough to make you keep it from me.”
Anna stands and walks to the door, looking back at the man who freed her. “I just need some space… I need to think.”
And with that, she walks out the door, pulling a robe over her body. She doesn’t know where she will end up. She just needs to be alone.
“Anna…” he calls after her but the utterance seems to smash against the door as she closes it.
The person he cares about most just walked away from him. Another person he thought cared about him was to blame. This was Wyatt’s fault, wasn’t it? He was the one who brought Carolina. Hell, Wyatt may have invited her. Why?
He knew why.
He finally had something Wyatt couldn’t have. Something he couldn’t take. Wyatt always had to one up him. Show him up. Prove his dominance. Anna had initially been under the older man’s spell but she showed today she could say no to him. He didn’t own her. The old bastard couldn’t handle that, could he?
Bruce left the suite, descending the stairs. He needed answers. He was not going to lose Anna. He didn’t know yet what he would do to Wyatt. But this was not the time to play nice.
__________
Anna walked until she found herself in a small garden, she sat herself on a small bench and let herself cry, she let herself feel every emotion running through her body. She was angry, pissed, and hurt. Bruce was the one thing in her life she had complete assurance in, assurance that everything was real with him. She knew he had a troubled past and that he had been married. But he never once mentioned the one thing that hurt him.
Carolina.
She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath. That word she had uttered to say stop. That word she had said to say she wanted Wyatt the first time. It didn’t make sense to her.
Anna didn’t know how long she sat there, but she realized as the sun started to set that she had been sitting there a long time. She had to talk to Bruce and hear him apologize. If he could do that and stand up for her she could look past this. She could allow herself to forgive him.
Forgive him.
She was taught from a young age that forgiveness was hard to do when someone has hurt you so badly because you’re accepting the hurt and then moving on. She now understood what that lesson meant. Forgiving Bruce would be hard and it would take time.
She stood and walked back to their suite, opening the door and not finding him there. Instead she lay on the bed and waited. He would be back, wouldn’t he?
__________
Bruce charged up the stairs to the Treehouse. Throwing open the door, he saw Wyatt making himself a drink.
“You son of a bitch,” Bruce growled, standing in the doorway, hands balled into white knuckled fists.
“Problem, young buck?” Wyatt said, not bothering to look up at him.
“You couldn’t stand that she told you no. You couldn’t take knowing she wanted me not you. If you can’t have her, I can’t either. Is that how this is played?” Bruce’s words explode from him mouth, his face growing red, his body tensed.
Wyatt sips from his drink. “Sit down. Maybe fill me in on what the fuck you think I did now.”
Bruce doesn’t move.
“Carolina. Why did you bring her here? Why didn’t you tell me you kept in touch? Why would you bring her up in front of Anna?” Bruce shakes as he barks questions.
Wyatt sits down, sips his drink again. “Had you not told her about your long lost love? The woman who broke your little heart?”
Before he can answer, she appears. Walking out of Wyatt’s bedroom. Her shocking long red hair messed in such a way that told what she’d been doing in there. Her large, round breasts bouncing gently with her every step.
“Who were we not telling about little old me?” she smiles, walks over to Wyatt, kisses his neck, and sips from his drink. “Hello Bruce. Long time no see.”
__________
Anna sighed and kept waiting. She didn’t want to see Wyatt. She didn’t want to go back to the Treehouse right now but something in her gut told her she had to. She huffed and rolled out of bed, wrapping herself in her robe again and set off.
She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and she readjusted her ring on her finger before walking up the stairs and hearing a voice she didn’t recognize say, “Hello, Bruce. Long time no see.”
She paused and listened. Her breath was heavy and her eyes were welling up with tears again.
She leaned against the door and waited.
__________
“Not long enough,” Bruce says through gritted teeth.
Silence. No one speaks. Carolina steps toward Bruce.
“Why are you here?” he hisses at her.
“Me? Why wouldn’t I come to Paradise? Sunshine, freely flowing drinks, and all the dick a woman could ever want,” she winks at Wyatt on her last point.
“You’re sick,” he says, still not moving.
“Sure am, sugar,” she laughs. “Want to take my temperature?” She steps toward him, reaching out for his cock.
“Don’t touch me,” he growls.
“Oh come on,” she purrs. “You know I do it better than you’ve ever had it from anyone else. You miss my lips. My touch. My tight, tight…” she reaches again.
Bruce grabs her wrist.
Staring her straight in the eye he says, “I said don’t touch me.” He flings her arm aside. “Ever again.”
Before she can react Wyatt interrupts. “Anna, did you want to come inside or just keep watching through the door?”
Anna feels sick to her stomach listening to the way Carolina is speaking to Bruce. Her hands ball up and her nails dig into her palms. She decides she can’t go in there. She turns to leave before she hears Wyatt call to her.
She freezes and feels her stomach drop. She didn’t want to be here but there was no going back now.
She gulped and slowly opened the door and took in the view of the woman she already disliked.
She had red hair, clearly dyed at a salon to hide her grays, and her body was curvaceous, her large breasts round and her hips rounder. Her green eyes sparkled with an evil fire she had never seen before.
Anna avoided Wyatt’s gaze, but she looked to Bruce, reading his anger and concern for her. Wyatt had just thrown her into the lioness’s den and she was about to face judgement.
“My, my… Wyatt, is this the little gem you’ve told me so much about?” Carolina said, pulling her arm from Bruce’s grip and sauntering to Anna, looking her up and down.
“She is beautiful… And it sounds like you can barely keep Bruce happy…” Her hands pulled Anna’s robe from her shoulders exposing her breasts.
Anna doesn’t say anything but she quickly pulls her robe back onto her shoulders.
Carolina grabs her left hand and looks at the ring on her finger.
“Is… Bruce… This is the ring isn’t it? The ring you promised me and never gave me?” her voice dripping with contempt.
Anna swallows, waiting for Bruce to say something, but he just stands there. Quiet. Seething.
Wyatt leans back in his seat, smirking, clearly enjoying himself.
Bruce moves to stand between Carolina and Anna. Firmly between his past and what he still hoped would be his future.
“Don’t touch her either,” he growls.
“Oh you don’t like watching me touch other women now? You used to love it so much,” she cackles.
“So this is the piece of ass that has you all strung up now, hm?” she says, looking at both Bruce and Wyatt. “Have you taken her together like you used to do to me? Hm? One of you pounding from behind. One in my mouth. Mmmm those were the days, weren’t they, Bruce?”
She says his name “Bru-say” to mimic her daughter.
He doesn’t take the bait.
“Why are you here?” he says firmly again.
“Because I’m a free woman!” she says, dancing, shaking her red mane.
Bruce doesn’t say a word. He adjusts to keep his body between Carolina and Anna.
“Oh Bruce, baby, you know I was married. I was always married,” she giggles. “Or did I never mention that?”
“Must have slipped your mind,” he growls at her.
“Mrs. Caroline Elizabeth Marchaud,” she says, miming out a headline in the air. “The elegant wife of famed French socialite Felix Marchaud.”
She moves in close and kisses his cheek, “Your beloved Carolina.”
She dances away. “You were only ever supposed to be a bit of fun on the side. You got attached. I felt bad for you. Plus his dick didn’t work and boy, oh boy, did yours ever. Pity is a hell of a drug.”
She laughs.
“And now he’s dead, I’m rich, and I am here to tell my darling daughters,” she says. “That is why I am here.”
She leans back to Wyatt and strokes his half hard cock. “Among other reasons.”
Anna bites her lip. She can feel her anger bubbling up inside of her the more Carolina speaks.
As she reveals how she tricked Bruce and can’t help it. She has to say something.
“You’re a right bitch you know that?” she says loudly.
“Oh, she speaks! I thought you mute.” Carolina says, her voice tinged with jealousy.
“Oh, I can speak,” Anna says, “I just didn’t think I needed to speak to you.”
Carolina stands and storms over to Bruce and Anna again, pushing Bruce out of the way to stand face to face with Anna.
“You listen here, you ungrateful little girl. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to Bruce. Hell, I taught him everything he does to make you squirm and cum like crazy. You should be thanking me for making him into who he is.”
Anna glares at her, waiting for Bruce to stand up for her, to tell Carolina that everything she is saying isn’t true. That whatever he did to Anna was because he wanted to and because he loves her. Did he love her? Or was she just convenient for him?
Anna looks to Bruce, her eyes glistening with tears again, before looking back at Carolina who grins at the sight of’ her pain.
“Oh… Expecting him to save you are you? Bruce has never been good at sticking up for himself… His cock makes up for that but…” Carolina sneers.
*SMACK*
Anna’s hand flies through the air and strikes Carolina on the cheek.
“I am NOT someone to be used as the laughing stock of someone else’s jealousy. I don’t care what you think of me and my relationship with Bruce. But I do care what he thinks…” Anna turns to Bruce but Carolina’s hand grips her chin and turns her back to gaze at her.
“NO ONE TOUCHES ME THAT WAY!”
The moment Carolina’s hand touches Anna Bruce sees red. He can’t take any more.
He launches himself at her, tackling her, crashing through the coffee table. He pins her to the floor among the wooden debris, a decade of rage made manifest.
“I said you don’t touch her,” he roars. “The best thing that ever happened to me, to my life, to my sex life is not some devious, selfish, evil woman. It’s not you. And I am not letting you take her from me when she is everything you think you are.”
He leans down as if to kiss her. Anna’s eyes go wide.
Then he whispers. “Listen very closely. I don’t want you. I hope I never see you ever again.” He pushes himself off of her and stands next to Anna, suddenly realizing he is bleeding in multiple places. He pulls a large shard of wood out of his thigh, wincing. He tosses the shard at Wyatt.
“You can have her. She’s all yours, old man,” he turns toward the door. “Sorry about your table.”
He puts an arm around Anna. “Can we go back to our room? Together?”
Anna screams slightly as the two bodies go through the coffee table. Carolina whimpers in pain as Bruce’s weight lands on her.
Anna hears what Bruce says and feels tears fall down her cheeks. She’s afraid of this rage, she’s never seen it before.
Carolina rises from the table virtually unscathed, other than a few scrapes and bruises. Her eyes glare daggers through Bruce and at Anna.
Anna can’t speak. Wyatt can’t either. The tension in the room is so high even the sharpest knife couldn’t cut it.
Wyatt gulps and opens his mouth to speak but Bruce ignores him and asks Anna if they can leave.
Anna barely nods as she lets herself be led by Bruce out of the Treehouse and back to their room. Anna quickly and quietly goes into the bathroom and grabs some rubbing alcohol and bandages to tend to Bruce’s wounds. She can’t look him in the eye, but she can’t let his wounds go undressed.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, wincing as Anna tends to his wounds. “That was stupid. There’s only one person who makes me react that way. You just met her.”
He tries to chuckle but finds it hurts to try.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her. About all of it,” he says, wincing again. “She brings out something in me. Turns me into someone I don’t want to be. What you saw is how she is. Always pushing more. Trying to find my breaking point. So much of our relationship was screaming at each other and causing a scene and then having makeup sex. Always repeating the cycle.”
He stops and puts his hand on Anna’s shoulder. “There are reasons I didn’t try to find her. I thought I loved her but I didn’t love the person I was around her.”
Anna just nods and packs up the medical supplies.
“I never promised her the ring either,” he calls out. “Wyatt said he would never let me give it to a crazy woman.”
He limps to the bathroom. “Anna, I’m sorry. If you want me to leave you alone, I’ll find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I was wrong. I never wanted you to get hurt.”
He limps toward the door. He’s realized it’s more than bumps and scrapes he suffered. Something is very wrong in his leg. He is going to need a doctor. But he doesn’t care.
All that matters is Anna won’t look in his eyes.
Anna listens to what Bruce says and she starts to understand why he hid that side of him from her. It showed his vulnerable and emotional side, something he didn’t ever show her. So much of their relationship was built on his dominance and control that he barely ever showed his emotions. When he gave her the ring she wore, she never knew he cared that much. What happened with Carolina solidified it. He cared for Anna so much it scared him to admit it.
She lets out a small sob and turns, seeing Bruce walking away.
“Bruce…”
He stops and turns, seeing Anna’s face, her eyes puffy, her face wet from her tears she had been shedding all afternoon.
Anna’s heart was pounding in her ears again, she couldn’t say anything else. Instead she walks to him and hugs him, letting herself cry against his chest.
Bruce braces himself against the door frame, his leg preventing him from supporting them both on his own. He wraps his arms around her as he feels her tears against his chest.
He kisses the top of her head. “I love you, Anna,” he whispers. “I’m nothing without you anymore.”
Anna starts to respond but Bruce’s leg gives out and he collapses to the floor. He tries to get up but can’t. The fall opened up the wound in his thigh and blood is now pouring from it.
Anna doesn’t know what to do. Her emotions feel like they are completely changing every few seconds.
“Anna, get my phone. Call the infirmary,” he groans.
He grabs her wrist and looks into her eyes. “Please.”
She hurries to the cabinet where their phones are kept. She grabs his. She sees that since the last time she saw it he had changed his home screen to a photo of them together at the gala. She smiles weakly and dials the Paradise infirmary.”
Anna feels her face go pale as the blood continues pouring from Bruce’s leg. She is acting purely on instinct and adrenaline at that point.
She has no time to process the fact that Bruce told her he loves her. He hadn’t ever said that to her before. What mattered now was making sure Bruce was okay. Her hands shake as she holds the phone to her ear, waiting for a voice on the other end.
For the second time today she feels like she is losing him.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/p7dk1x/the_pleasure_of_business_an_erotic_novel_chapter