Rising Read online

  Contents

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  The Entire Fixed Universe

  Let’s stay in touch!

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Acknowledgments and Author’s Note

  About Laurelin Paige

  Copyright © 2020 by Laurelin Paige

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Editing: Erica Russikoff at Erica Edits

  Proofing: Michele Ficht, Kimberly Ruiz

  Cover: Laurelin Paige and Melissa Gaston

  Beta Readers: Candi Kane, Melissa Gaston, Amy “Vox” Libris, Roxie Madar, and Liz Berry

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Visit my website for a more detailed reading order.

  * * *

  Man in Charge Duet

  Man in Charge - October 2020

  Man in Love - November 2020

  The Dirty Universe

  Dirty Filthy Rich Boys - READ FREE

  Dirty Duet: Dirty Filthy Rich Men | Dirty Filthy Rich Love

  Dirty Games Duet: Dirty Sexy Player | Dirty Sexy Games

  Dirty Sweet Duet: Sweet Liar | Sweet Fate

  Dirty Filthy Fix (a spinoff novella)

  Dirty Wild Trilogy: Wild Rebel Coming 2021

  The Fixed Universe

  Fixed Series: Fixed on You | Found in You | Forever with You | Hudson | Fixed Forever

  Found Duet: Free Me | Find Me

  Chandler (a spinoff novel)

  Falling Under You (a spinoff novella)

  Dirty Filthy Fix (a spinoff novella)

  Slay Series: Rivalry | Ruin | Revenge | Rising

  The Open Door (a spinoff novella)

  Slash (a Slay spinoff novella)

  First and Last

  First Touch | Last Kiss

  Hollywood Standalones

  One More Time

  Close

  Sex Symbol

  Star Struck

  Written with Sierra Simone

  Porn Star | Hot Cop

  Written with Kayti McGee under the name Laurelin McGee

  Miss Match | Love Struck | MisTaken | Holiday for Hire

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  DID YOU KNOW…

  This book is available in both paperback and audiobook editions at all major online retailers! Links are on my website.

  If you’d like to order a signed paperback, my online store is open several times a year here.

  For Amy “Vox” Libris,

  for always telling me my words are a blessing,

  especially when I fear they’re a burden.

  Prologue

  Five months before the end of Revenge, Slay Three: Celia

  Edward wrapped his arms around me from behind, complicating my attempt to tie the belt of my robe.

  “For someone who’s spent the better part of a week on a pleasure island, you’re awfully handsy.” I tilted my neck, encouraging him to nuzzle in.

  He nibbled along the skin I’d exposed. “A week with sex happening all around me while I slept alone in my cabin. You better believe I came home greedy.”

  “Hurry up with your shower then so you can have your way with me.”

  “You sure you won’t join me?” He was already undressed except for his boxer briefs, and the heat of his skin at my back as well as the hardness of his body made my belly curl low with desire.

  But there was a buzz in my head, and I needed a few minutes to sort my thoughts before abandoning them entirely to wanton ways. “If I join you, you’ll never get clean,” I said, nudging him to the task with the promise of what would come after.

  “That’s very likely true, bird.” He turned me into him and kissed me deeply, making his own promises before pulling away abruptly. “I’ll hurry.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  I wandered over to the sink to begin my nighttime routine of makeup removal and moisturizing, eyeing my husband in the mirror as he stripped from his underwear and stepped into the glass walk-in shower. He was magnificent to look at, and I admired the view with full attention until the whir of my thoughts grew too distracting, and I gave myself into them instead.

  Edward had said he’d come home greedy. Considering how highly he prized honesty, it was almost strange to hear the lie cased in the statement. Not that it was a bold-faced falsehood, and not that I didn’t understand his reasons. It was for me. He was romanticizing the trip on my account. He didn’t want me to have to think too hard about why he’d really been there, about the perversions he’d had to interact with. Didn’t want me to think about my uncle Ron and the sick things men like him were into.

  Grateful as I was for Edward’s desire to protect me, the shield only worked on the surface. It allowed me not to have to talk about it. I could avoid the questions that pressed like a heated iron at the edges of my mind, wanting to straighten the wrinkles of my imagination that were surely as terrible as the truth.

  But not talking about it meant the acrid thoughts remained inside me, seeds of poison ivy that would grow if given the right soil.

  Old habits dying hard, my instinct was to make that ground infertile, to close off. To become numb. I’d been working through the things my uncle had done to me, but as much as I trimmed and hacked at the memories, I could never cut them away completely. The pips remained inside me, sprouting unexpectedly in the sun, and the urge to withdraw would shiver through me.

  It was a funny thing, the fight or flight response. Most people who knew me would probably say hands down that I was a fighter in every instance. I would have said the same before Edward. It was ironic that he showed me the error in that presumption considering how often he drew me to fight with him. I certainly did deal with many threats with a bulled head and sharp tongue.

  The truth, though, was that when the threat was severe, when it brought on intense levels of emotional pain, I didn’t fight at all. I flew. Like the bird that he’d always seen me to be, I abandoned feeling and took flight to a sky of gray and numb. It had been a practiced skill, one I hadn’t been very good at on my own. I could still clearly remember the day I’d begged my friend to be my mentor, when the baby boy inside me had decided to make a much too early appearance to the world. I’d been nearly twenty weeks along, one day later and his death would have been called a stillbirth instead of a miscarriage. Whatever the appropriate term, the result had been the same—my womb had once been full of life and with that life gone, it was full of pain.

  “Teach me, Hudson,” I’d said when I’d woken from sorrowful dreaming to find him at my hospital bedside. Even the burn of the IV at the back of my hand was intolerable, and his games—experiments, as he called them—beckoned to me like the whispered praise of a magic healing elixir
. “Experiment with me.”

  “What? Why would you want me to…? I’m not experimenting on people I know anymore.”

  “Not on me,” I’d corrected. “With me. I want to learn how you do it. Teach me.”

  “No. That’s absurd.”

  “Please.” It wasn’t just in the wording that I begged. My entire body leaned forward in supplication, as though he were my messiah. The only one who could release me from my heartache.

  “No.” But his features had furrowed as if he was thinking about it. “Why?”

  “Because I want to be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like someone who doesn’t feel.”

  He’d had mercy on me then, and he’d taught me. He’d taught me so well that not feeling had become second nature. And even after Edward had tethered me with an invisible collar, forcing me to stay grounded when the pain grew too great, the impulse still niggled inside me, and I had to take deep breaths and center myself so that I wouldn’t thrash against my leash, longing for the gray, numb sky.

  Tonight, the urge was especially strong, a driving beat pulsing in my blood, increasing in volume as if to drown out the myriad of memories accompanied with Ron’s grooming. The swing, the baths, the first orgasms. The attention from strangers, their eyes, their hands, their mouths. The look of disgust and disbelief when I tried to tell my father. My wings fluttered. The wind called.

  Deep breath in.

  Deep breath out.

  Feel the feeling, find the anchor, stay on the ground.

  I dropped the dirty wet wipe and my hands went instinctively to my belly, ensuring my breaths were full and from my diaphragm. The pain washed in like the tide overtaking a dry stretch of land, but then it slowly began to pull out again, and a newly familiar desire was left on the shore. The desire to replace emotion with emotion. To relieve the fullness of anguish with the fullness of joy.

  I wanted a baby.

  And Edward would allow it, but only on his terms, terms that I was unable to concede to. He believed too deeply that unburdening my sorrow required balancing karma. I supposed I did too, in a way, we just had different ideas of how to go about that balancing. He wanted to make the people who’d hurt me in the past suffer for their sins. I wanted to look forward and replace the pains of the past with happiness in the future.

  We’d fight about it again, he’d promised me that. After Ron was taken care of, which would happen soon if all went right. But Edward fought dirty. He fought dirty, and he always won, so this time I promised myself to fight just as dirty in return. I thought of it as an act of love, really. He needed the challenge from me, and I wanted to be able to deliver.

  So when he got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself, I set the trap. “You have the nurse practitioner on the schedule to come by Tuesday for my birth control, but I have a meeting with a vendor at the same time that can’t be changed.”

  Edward had been arranging my shots for me since I’d been living on Amelie, when I’d been his prisoner. He took care of me in many ways now as he did then, because he liked it and because I liked it, so I didn’t automatically believe that he continued this particular arrangement because he didn’t trust me.

  I was about to find out for sure.

  “No problem. I’ll have Charlotte get it rescheduled.”

  “Thank you.” I waited a beat then turned toward him. “On second thought, could Charlotte make me an appointment for a full gynecological exam in the office instead? I’m due for a pap smear and all of that. The doctor can renew my birth control at the same time.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and for half a second, I thought he suspected. “I didn’t realize the time had flown so quickly. Of course you’re due for your yearly. I’ll get that scheduled immediately. Sorry I hadn’t thought of it myself.”

  I turned back to the mirror and smiled at his reflection behind me. “You would have,” I assured him. “Don’t beat yourself up. Let me have the rare victory of thinking of it before you.”

  Again he wrapped himself around me, the scent of his body wash making me weak in the knees. “Yes. Have your victory. I do know how you need those wins.”

  I appreciated that he could laugh at himself, and I chuckled with him, but the humor I felt was for an entirely different win. Because, while I had every intention of going to that doctor’s visit, I knew that changing the scope of the visit would make it much easier to hide the fact that I had no intention of getting that shot.

  I’d have my baby just as Edward had had his revenge. It would be on my terms. No obstacle too great to overcome, even if the obstacle was my husband. I knew that once I was pregnant, he’d come around. The same way he’d ruined me, I’d ruin him and we’d both be better for it.

  This time when I met his eyes in the mirror, the urge to fly felt different, as though my wings were unfurling and readying to fly toward something, not away. The sky above me wasn’t gray or numb—it was sunlit and cloud-free. I was no longer Edward’s little bird. I was a phoenix, and I was rising.

  One

  Edward

  A suit-clad arm shot out to hold the lift doors open as I approached.

  “Thank you,” I said in earnest as I slid inside the crowded car, the words out of my mouth before I had time to assess who the saintly gentleman had been. “Ah, Pierce. Edward Fasbender. It’s a pleasure to finally have a real meeting.”

  I held out my hand to Hudson Pierce, the CEO of Pierce Industries. We’d seen each other in passing before, maybe even shaken hands once or twice, but we’d never really spoken. We had plenty to speak about, though, which was why I’d made the four o’clock appointment with him.

  Subtly, I glanced at my wristwatch. Was I running early?

  Three forty-seven. Perhaps he was just returning from lunch.

  Hudson smiled as he took my hand, an expression that didn’t reach his eyes. Not because he was cold, necessarily, but because he was guarded. The way men in his position had to be in order to survive the dog-eat-dog environment they existed in. I imagined my own expression was as severe as his.

  “Yes, I’m glad for this opportunity as well,” he said. “I must admit, though, if I’d known it were you I was holding the elevator for, I might have let the doors close. By the time you arrived upstairs I would have been safely in my office, and you would have had no idea how late I was running this afternoon.”

  Stoic but had the ability to laugh at himself. I appreciated that in a rival, if that’s what he was to be. Hopefully, I’d know by the time I left his office later this afternoon.

  “I’ll make a stop at the little boy’s room, if you’d like. Pretend I never saw you.”

  “Ah, but that would never do. You and I would both know the truth. I have to accept that my first impression has already been made. Excuse me for a moment.” He pulled out his mobile and hit a contact that must be called frequently since it was at the top of the list. “Patricia, it’s me. I’m headed up now. Edward Fasbender is with me. Would you make sure the coffee is fresh and…” He looked to me, an eyebrow lifted in question. “That there’s water for tea?”

  I shook my head. “Coffee’s fine.”

  “Nevermind the tea. See you shortly.”

  The doors opened and half the people in the car emptied out before they shut again.

  “It hasn’t been a bad impression,” I said when Hudson had pocketed his mobile again, moving to occupy the space that had opened up. “You did hold the door to the lift for a stranger.”

  “I’m surprised I had enough sense about me for even that.” Hudson’s features relaxed, and now I glimpsed the man underneath the mask. There were shadows under his eyes, his lids appeared heavy. “Twins,” he said in explanation. “I went home for lunch, hoping to sneak in a nap. They’re only a month old, and I haven’t timed it for sure, but I don’t think a full hour passes that they both stay asleep. It’s why I sent my brother in my place to your gala on Friday. I would have been a zombie if I’d gone myse
lf.”

  Being a parent with a newborn brought an exhaustion like no other. I’d been spared much with Hagan and Genevieve. Because I’d been the type of asshole father who left the upbringing to my wife and the children’s nurse. Marion’s insistence on separate rooms only helped feed into my detached style of parenting—I didn’t have to be disturbed by the sound of a baby’s cries over a monitor.

  Still, I hadn’t been immune to the fatigue. It had spread through the household like a contagion. I remembered it vividly, lethargy setting into my body at the thought like muscle memory.

  “You didn’t miss anything at the gala.” The charity auction had been merely a diversion for Celia, something to keep her mind off the press about her uncle’s arrest as well as something that would show her name in a good light. “I did see Chandler at a distance. I didn’t get a chance to speak with him directly, but my daughter connected with him. I suspect it was more of a social conversation than anything pertinent.”

  “Knowing my brother, I’d suspect that as well.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about Genevieve hitting it off with a Pierce, but at least it was something to keep her preoccupied. Hagan had pressured me to bring her to the States as we aggressively pursued Werner, and though I’d conceded, it had been reluctantly. Perhaps she’d be focused on this boy now instead of trying to involve herself in what would likely eventually become cutthroat business.