I met his gaze as I thought and ruminated over the soup of emotions churning inside me. “I don't think I was ready until today, and we haven't really been a proper team until this week. I think we both needed to come down here, together.”
“I'm sorry I've been so out of it today. I feel like I should have known what my father was capable of. But still, for some reason, the levels of his depravity hadn't sunk in until today. And then I just felt lost, adrift.”
I squeezed his hand. “The difference is, you're no longer a scared little boy. You are one of the most successful men in London. You have a family who really cares about you. Not just your mum and Darcy and me, but the lads, all of the London Lords team. We are the family we made. And when this is over and we look back on this, you're not even going to think twice about the old man.”
He wrapped his arms around me. “Someone needs to tell me what I did to deserve you. Come on, let's get out of here so I can take you to bed.”
”Not so fast. I want to know everything about the process. So you start here in the coffins…”
His chuckle was low. “Yes, some bullshit ritual about being reborn. Resurrection. They love that shit. We all do the awakening ceremony, and then we’re taken into the next room where we take our oaths. Finally, we all get our ring fingers tattooed, and then our rings go on top of them.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
He shivered. “For me and Ben and East and Drew, these rooms weren't about resurrection. It was a disaster and our greatest loss. The subsequent initiations we've done since then have been really difficult for all of us. Toby should have been with us. He would've gotten a kick out of it.”
I lifted my chin to meet his gaze. “What do you say we make a new memory?”
“Just what do you have in mind?”
I took his hand and pulled him out of the room. I had needed to see it, but now that I had, I wanted out. And I wanted to wipe those memories away with some new ones.
When I led him into the other room, I glanced up and around. “Is this where you have your wild sex orgies?”
Bridge coughed a laugh. “Back then? How I wished. Sex came later. But mostly it was lots of droning on about honor and tradition and rules. If I told you the number of times I had been bored to death in this room, you would take pity on me.”
I turned with a smirk. “Oh, it’s not pity I intend to put on you.”
Thirty
Emma
I had no idea what I was doing. But as I looked around the room, a room that had held so much power in name if not in function for me, I wanted to take some of that power. I wanted to wash it away and make something new, something different. Something I owned.
I turned in Bridge's embrace and looped my arms around his neck. "So, if you hadn't been forced to discuss honor and tradition and all those things, what would you rather have been doing? What would eighteen-year-old Bridge have done to me if I was there?"
He frowned at that. "Well, then you were underage."
I laughed and shook my head. "Oh boy. Okay, let's try this again. If you can go back in time and we were the same age, what would you have thought about doing to me?"
He grinned then. "Well, if girls were allowed to be inducted into the Elite, it probably would've been an entirely different landscape. I have a feeling those initiations would've been a whole lot dirtier."
I laughed at that. "You're probably right."
"But how about I show you what a present day induction would look like if you were going to be a member of my Elite?"
I laughed at that. "Ah, is that we're calling you now? The Elite?"
He glanced between us at his now very visible erection. "I like that. He's elite."
"You know, I don't know how elite he is. He was running around London jumping into everybody who let him just a few months ago."
Bridge raised a brow. "Jokes? You tease me now?"
"Well, I tease you always. That's kind of my MO. It's what I do. It's my thing."
He laughed. "What did I do to deserve you?"
"Well, hopefully you're going to show me, and I'll tell you if your performance is deserving of me or not."
He growled low. "You are a naughty thing."
"Yes. I am so glad to hear you say that out loud. So initiate me, Mr. Edgerton."
He leaned in and caught my lower lip between his teeth. He sucked on it gently before laving the tiny wound with his tongue. And then released me with a soft pop. "You are so desperate to know, aren't you?"
I nodded. "Oh, yeah. For example…" I released him and sauntered over to the raised platform. I looked around and pressed a button. Something rose out of the center of the platform that looked like a lectern of some sort. "What goes here?"
"The bible."
I frowned. "Ugh, how boring."
He laughed. "No, no, the Elite bible. Less boring but a lot more rules."
I laughed. "More rules than the actual Bible?"
"You would be surprised. And it gets added to every time a new Director Prime sets bylaws."
"Oh, fascinating." I twirled around. "You know, you guys could use some decor." And then I stepped up onto the platform. "So what do you say, Mr. Edgerton, am I going to be a naughty pledge?"
He smirked at that. "Emma, you really want me to initiate you down here?"
I nodded. I wanted to cut the tension between us, erase the reason he'd come down here in the first place. To heal the memory of knowing what had happened in the other room and what a dangerous pursuit we were part of. I wanted to play. To release some of that energy before it swallowed us whole. Before the darkness became part of our every waking moment. I wanted to banish it with some sunshine and fun and levity.
He walked around the podium, making the full circle. It was only about three feet in circumference. The new pledges were supposed to kneel around it in a circle.
"Are you going to kneel before me, Bridge?"
"More like you'll kneel before me."
"I mean, you know I'm down. But usually what happens is all that begging and hair pulling and, 'Emma, oh my God, Emma. Fuck. Bloody hell. Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma.' And then, 'Oh God, Emma.'" I waggled my brows.
His jaw ticked. And I knew before he even lunged at me that I was in for it. A spanking was—
He grabbed me around the waist and picked me up and twirled me.
I giggled. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. If you want me on my knees, all you have to do is ask nicely."
As he picked me up, he swatted one of his big hands on my ass, and I squawked. "Bridge Edgerton. Do you know what? Now you're getting spanked."
"Oh, I might like you spanking me, Emma."
I lifted a brow. "Really?"
He shrugged. "If you like it, I would like it."
"But that's not what we're doing right now?" I pouted. "Fine. Where do you want to induct me or whatever?"
His gaze searched mine. "You're trying to lighten this up aren't you?"
I bit my lip and nodded. "Yes. I am."