Breaking Joseph (20 page)

He’s
compromising for me, but I don’t want him to. Don’t think we have
to. I want to try it, to see what it’s like…

It was only
then that I realized we were in silence. Joe and Kenji stood bolt
upright against the kitchen wall, watching us with eyes like alien
moons. Elise blinked at me questioningly and then turned to look,
too. Had she forgotten who she was performing for? Unabashed, she
beamed at Kenji between our kisses.

And Elise was a
good kisser. Her shy manner had power there, turned a pause into a
moan-inducing tease. I could feel my clit puckering in my knickers
as she rubbed my inner thighs–maybe the same happened to her.
Oh
. When she’d proposed this little game, all I’d expected
was a bit of hesitant make out. A grope here and there. This
enthusiasm, coy and sweet as it was, painted her with unexplored
depth in my eyes. New skin. Fresh meat.

I pulled away,
breathing against her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah…are
you?”

“This is fun.”
I grinned at her, biting my lip.

“I feel a
little dizzy. I don’t know if I’m nervous or if I’m…you know…”

“Do you want me
to check?”

She didn’t
reply. Just closed her eyes again. I drew her skirt up over her
ample thighs and found them already parted. Her breath leaped as my
fingers walked over her mound and teased her thong upward, fleshy
petals blooming around the fabric. I watched the boys’ stoic
expressions as I caressed her pussy, and was torn between hogging
the view or putting it better on display.

She was sticky
and wet.

Elise mewed
softly before pulling my hand away. We’d reached her boundary, gone
as far as she wanted to go. Kenji shook his head at her, his
shoulders braced in possessive alert. He picked up his phone and
muttered quietly into the receiver about a cab. Joseph rolled his
eyes at me in a mixture of pride and amusement, and I peered back
at him with a playful smile.

Elise brought
my hand back to her breasts, and her mouth back to mine. The
shyness had dissipated now that she knew his limits, her limits,
and she no longer cared for her voyeur’s agenda. I wasn’t just an
experiment, but tested, proven and published for all to see.

“I wish they
weren’t watching.” She gasped.

I played with
the top of her bodice, her breasts firmly caught beneath it. “Told
you it was fun.”

“He doesn’t
look pleased,” she whispered, nodding to Kenji.

“Oh, he is. He
just doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

“Sure he’ll
think of something.” She pawed at the cutout panels on my dress,
her nails tickling the flesh beneath. “You…you’re so soft
here.”

“Oh?” I trailed
my tongue down to replace my fingers and licked along the swell of
her cleavage. “You’re pretty soft too.” I reached her nipple and
bit gently through her dress. “Not here though. Here
you’re…stiff.”

I wanted to
dispense with the clothes and suck her there, usher that seductive
tone into her voice–the one that made me shiver. When I’d agreed to
help her reward her fiancé, I never thought about my own feelings,
of what a tease it would turn out to be, and neither, I think, had
she. Playing in front of a partner was one thing, but longing to be
alone together was quite another.

“Lise.” Kenji
stood over us and cleared his throat loudly. “The car is here.”

“Car? Oh.” She
eased my head away. “Suppose I’d better go.”

She kissed me
goodbye then, made a point of sucking my bottom lip. I moaned
against her mouth and I swear I heard Kenji panting. When I glanced
up, he wouldn’t return my smile.

I tidied
Elise’s hair. One kitten grooming another. Such cool, smooth
tresses–what would it be like to have them trail down my belly and
settle against my inner thigh? They’d tickle, light and feathery,
and when her mouth hit–ah.

The moment she
rose, I tightened in mourning and whimpered under my breath.

“Catch you
tomorrow, Leila.” She smiled over her shoulder.

I’d never seen
Kenji drag her away so fast.

The door
slammed. Piano music crept back into my ears. I felt Joseph’s
scrutiny before I realized what it was, and then my blood turned
prickly with longing. I’d hardly go unsatisfied tonight. Arms
crossed, back straight, a beer bottle dangling from one hand:
hello, lover.
As I approached him, a very lazy, naughty grin
stretched my mouth. Such sweet tension, now we were alone. In the
past two weeks, we’d made gluttons of each other, never tiring of
the push-and-pull of flesh, of talk. If anything, my desire for him
had solidified. I wanted him with something more than
abandon–conviction.

Now, this other
emotion blossomed and it gave depth to my desire. I wanted to know
every inch of him, to be his living map and his willing canvas. I’d
never thought of love as a want to submit, and yet there I was,
surrendered before I’d even touched him, and something other than
my pulse uttered the command.

A beat, and
then…he grabbed me around the waist and crushed me to his
chest.

I stood on
tiptoe to kiss him, but he jerked his head away. Those dubious
green eyes obliged me nothing.

“Are you
punishing me?” I asked.

“You didn’t ask
permission.” He spread his palm over my cheek and ran it into my
hair. “That was improper.”

“I see. Well.
Maybe you can have Sadie send out some memos on what is proper, Mr
Merchant.”

He wound my
hair into his fist and eased my head back, my jaw coming into line
with his. “I’m not in the habit of giving you the answers.” He
smiled faintly. “Am I?”

“I’m not so
good at finding them, either.”

“I’ll give you
a clue.” He nipped at my chin. “They’re in the bedroom.”

“An awfully
improper place to keep them, don’t you think?” I gasped as his
teeth found my earlobe.

“Little
heretic. Shut up.” His knee came up and parted my thighs.
“Now–bedroom. I think it might please the Gods of Propriety if you
lose the dress on the way.”

I laughed as I
eased down a strap. “That’s a bit of a contradiction.”

“You want to
talk contradictions? You’ve been alone with me for five whole
minutes and you’ve still got your clothes on. Blasphemy.” He held
my arms above my head and peeled the dress from my breasts. “Better
already.”

I turned,
shimmying out of the black silk as I strode toward his room. In the
doorway, I paused to slip my knickers off and flicked them aside.
When I reached his bed, it was instinctive to mount it on all
fours, and the stretch as I arched felt euphoric.

His sheets were
cold against my bare hands and knees, and a breeze swept over my
jutting ass as he closed the door behind him. A shiver claimed me,
as if the silence grew claws and grasped its way up the duvet for a
taste. Its tongue was sleek velvet, chilled and rough on the inside
of my thigh. Only my gasp scared it away.

Joseph knelt to
open a drawer. “Everything I am about to do…you have asked
for.”

There was a
creak and a rustle. A sharp
crack
split the air.

I watched with
wide eyes as the flogger settled at his side. The leather shone
like the skin of a panther, moon dusted in the near dark, and the
polished handle sat comfortably in his palm.

“Do you get
that out for all the girls?” I asked.

He titled his
head. “I think I told you to shut up.”

I had
administered the soft lick of a nine tails to many clients and knew
the saccharine power of twisting it aloft. I had been bitten and
spanked, kissed by a blade, not whipped. Never whipped. Glancing
over my shoulder at his broad silhouette, so tall and serene at the
end of the bed, I grew nervous at how merciless he might be.

“Are you
afraid?”

He must have
heard my breath quickening, noticed the quiver of my thighs.

“A little.” I
switched from knee to knee. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?
Always.”

“It’s what you
want. Why you’re here. Shall we purge a little more of whatever it
is you run from?” He flicked the whips lightly across my buttocks.
“Tell me: do you want to forget why you started running, or to
remember where it is you were trying to get to?”

“I’m not
running.” Charlotte was. Maybe.

“Yes, you
are.”

Another flick.
Harder this time, making me jump.

“You love it
when I hurt you because you think you deserve it.” Something
scathing crept into his voice, though I wasn’t sure if he
sympathized or mocked. “I’m your Opus Dei. You splay yourself out
on an altar, but I never asked for a sacrifice, Leila.”

“I know.” I
swallowed.

“I’m a man, not
a fucking religion.”

The flogger
fell over my flesh again and again. Sharp and crackling, whistling
and whispering. Nine hissing snakes. I mewed at first, a wounded
little whine. Then the tickle turned to hot pain and I gripped the
sheets with trembling fists. He wasn’t breaking the skin–he didn’t
need to. Each strip of leather bore teeth that were hungry, and I
knew my backside was a lattice and a harbinger’s feast.

“Is that
enough?” He panted.

I ground my
teeth. It was the frustration that sought to flay me, not the
pain–though that simmered steadily, like pins and needles with salt
rubbed in. “I don’t know. How will I know?”

Cool fingers
stroked my inner thighs lovingly. “Remember your word?”

I nodded.
Lilac
. The flowers that reminded me of home, and of him. Is
that where I was going? Were they still two separate things?

“Well
then.”

The fingers
walked upward, spread my soaked lips, eased inside. Flexed. I
moaned as I arched on them.

Now the whip
landed around my pussy, painting my thighs in scarlet. Heat that
spread outward now shot back inside like an electrical charge.
Contradiction swung like a pendulum in his hands; he soothed my
aching spot with one and lashed me with the other. I went from
bracing myself for the tearing heat of each new blow to giving up,
sinking back against him, trying to take his entire fist, and far
from wanting to break with my word, I was resigned to the
suffering, indulging in it.

So he tried
harder.

I swear I heard
my skin split before I felt it. The gush of wind that preceded was
reassuringly light, but it brought a searing shock, and as the
first little rivulets of blood wept from the lash lines, I stifled
a scream.

I only uttered
the word as an afterthought, panicking as I felt the next sweep of
air; then his arm stiffened, his fingers slid from me and though
the nine tails landed like the wings of a butterfly, it was a
razorblade on my open wounds.

I sagged
forward on my arms, gasping. I couldn’t quite believe he’d done it.
“Is it bad?” I croaked.

“A little. It
looks worse than it is, I think…but then I’m not a doctor.”

“Feels…bad.”

“Are you
okay?”

The sheets
began to rustle as my hands trembled again. “I don’t know,
Joe.”

“I can’t cure
you, sweetheart. You want me to use this–” He brought the flogger
up. “But you know full well that I don’t need it to hurt you.”

“You’ve been
thinking about it.” I tried to rise, but fell back to the bed as my
wound twisted and stung.

“How can I
not?” He laid the whip on the floor and took my hips, easing me
back. When I yelped, he bent to whisper instead. “I think about you
all the time.” They were the gravelly words of a prayer.

Slowly, I
turned on my knees and came to sit in front of him on the bed. He
helped me up, his hands steadying, and then I stood before him:
naked and bleeding, I was more of a sacrifice now than I’d ever
been on my hands and knees.

Then I slipped
back into a memory where I stripped my clothes off in front of Matt
in his rugby locker room and demanded that he look at me.
I’m
still the same as when I was bought. Aren’t I?

“And she’s gone
again.” Joseph tipped my chin so that I gazed at him. “Where have
you been?”

He wasn’t
talking about the last moment, about this evening, these few weeks
and months I’d worked in his office.

“I don’t know.”
I bit my lip. “But I got here in the end, huh?”

Can you catch a
kiss; can it be thrown at you? It seemed to descend from a great
height. I was reminded of my nakedness against the cotton of his
shirt, of the meandering welts that rose on my back as he brushed
them. I moaned on to him, half sweetness and half complaint.

When he stood
back, he smiled.

“Undress me,”
he said.

His buttons
came apart in my fingers, his beautiful shoulders bare and strong.
Trousers and pants were kicked away. I was very aware of his cock
as it jutted between us, red and angry. A challenge. A threat.

“Now. Wait.” He
strode to pull open a drawer from the same chest the flogger had
come from. For a moment, I thought he’d returned empty-handed.

Then a slip of
silver flashed between his fingers, and my pulse charged to bite at
my wrists.

“What the
hell’s that?”

He shrugged.
Smiled with an eyeful of wicked. “A scalpel.”

No. Not
tonight. Already, he’d drawn blood, and though a part of me longed
to bear his name again…not with
that.

“It isn’t for
you, Leila.” He drew a fingertip along my collarbone. “Don’t look
so terrified.”

“I don’t see
any other girls in the room.”

He dropped the
finger along my bare arm, spread my hand, and pressed the scalpel
into it. Light and cool, it seemed a mere feather of a knife. It
lied.

“No.” I shook
my head. “Not with this. It’s–”

“Much easier
than a bread knife.” He folded both hands over mine and bent to
kiss me, where he sucked my bottom lip, rubbed his tongue across
it. “You’ll be fine, sweetheart.”