Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (51 page)

“It means if there’s not someone else already, there will be soon. I can see it when she talks to customers.”

Debbie was always right about people. Usually, that was beneficial. Today, it was a problem. Today, I wanted to hurt someone, starting with myself. I left before Sam even got there. I could drink at home.

My phone rang as I turned onto my street. Margie.

“What?”

“Good evening to you too, little brother.”

“What can I do for you, Margie?”

“You have Will Santon’s team flying to Vancouver to watch Kevin Wainwright?”

Before I left the Stock, I’d called Will to let him know Monica’s travel dates. I had his team following Kevin, to make sure Monica was safe from him, as well as tracking the money behind the cameras in her house. He said he was close to finding out where they came from, as if I didn’t already know.

“Yes?”

“Has it occurred to you I might need to use him?”

“To do what? Have some movie producer followed to his mistress’s house?”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is a few million everyone involved can afford, and someone I care about getting hurt. Physically and irrevocably hurt.” I was yelling. That wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

“You know, Jonny, I don’t mind you getting paranoid and crazy, but you’re doing it on my dime.”

“You’re an attorney. You’re protected. If I get caught stalking, I fry. I’ll write you a check if you can’t afford to feed the kids this week.”

“Now you’re getting nasty.”

“Margie, sweetheart, please.”

“I gotta pull him, Jonny. I’m sorry.”

“Fine. Thanks for letting me know.” I hung up.

Things were not going well. My patience with Monica was wearing thin. I hadn’t considered her casting around for a new lover so soon. The thought of it made my fingers go cold. Will’s inability to trace the cameras before he got pulled, a mere week before Monica was going to Vancouver with that sicko, pushed me out of rational thought and into a place of frozen rage. The situation was getting more slippery than I could manage.

Then I saw Jessica’s Mercedes SUV in my driveway, and I thought I might break something. Aling Mira must have let her in before retiring for the night with Danilo.

My ex-wife sat on the back patio sipping coffee from a silver pot that had been on our wedding registry. I hated that thing. I thought about packing up all the shit of ours I hated and giving it to charity.

“Jess,” I said, “how are you?”

She put her hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek. Just one cheek, not a double air kiss. Somehow, that seemed more intimate.

“I’m fine.” She wore perfectly fitting blue jeans, cowboy boots, a white shirt, and a bandana around her neck. I used to find her country girl airs charming. She was raised deep in Beverly Hills, where tourists got lost looking for Olympic Boulevard. “I came to talk about something. I thought you’d be here this time of night, but well, I guess not. And my appointments keep getting pushed.”

I sat down. “If you came here to fight, Jess, I don’t have the time.”

“No. Of course not. I, uh… There were guys doing renovations to my studio? New plumbing? And I was confused.”

“There’s lead in those pipes—”

“I was just worried you were getting it ready to sell it.”

“I’ll let you make an offer if it comes to that.”

“I can’t, Jon. You know that.”

“You didn’t sell the trees?”

“I did. I got two million each for them, and the documentation was bought by the museum. But they cost a fortune. Keeping a dead thing alive takes a lot of engineering.”

I nodded. Jessica’s problem had always been that the cost and ambition of her work didn’t quite jibe with what she could ask for it. She didn’t have Kevin Wainwright’s way of turning something that didn’t exist into money. Art, for her, wasn’t about money, or professionalism, or business. Art was about art. I used to love the purity of her vision.

“You could make smaller things,” I said. “And more of them. Just an idea.”

She looked away. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She said, “Remember when you first took me in
that
way? Right there, by the shed. You pulled my hair back and bent me over the wet bar. Then you yanked my pants down and hit me.”

“I slapped your ass. Yes, I remember. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing at that point.”

“I was offended.”

“You were scandalized.” I was surprised to find myself smiling. Only in hindsight did how outraged she’d been seem funny. At the time, I was guilt-ridden and devastated over her reaction. “I believe you called me a pig and moved to a guest room on the other side of the house.”

“And you—”

“I jerked off. Do you have a point here? We’ve covered this.”

Her tone got hard, as if she feared I’d interrupt again. “You persisted, and I never considered your way. I never gave it a chance. Even when I was trying to reconcile, I still wouldn’t try things your way. I don’t think I was fair to you.” She smoothed a nonexistent crease in her jeans. It was the only crack in her poise.

“This because Erik left?”

She shook her head. “He’s back, sort of. We’re talking, but I can’t stop thinking about you… and kissing you again. You always knew how to kiss.”

I leaned back. Was she really going there? Was she really going to offer me my married life back with a little kink thrown in? Did she honestly think I’d take her back? I should have kicked her out right then, but something else was in play. Some other motivation I had to tease out.

“And you’re saying you want to try it my way?”

“I want to.” She looked me with those big sapphire disks, wheaten lashes blinking. She was so beautiful. Angelic, even. “We’d need to set some boundaries beforehand.”

Boundaries. The whole act was about tightly controlled boundaries, and she presented them as if they’d be concessions by me toward her. It was bullshit. The whole conversation. Her whole sudden pursuit of me. She was hiding something, and if she stayed tightly wrapped up, prim and proper, she’d never reveal it.

“No,” I said. “My way. Right now. Then you tell me if you can take it.”

She bit her lip. I didn’t know what to hope for, but the longer she waited, the clearer my plan became.

“Okay,” she said softly.

I didn’t move. Not a blink or a hair. “That’s ‘okay, sir.’”

“Doesn’t that seem a little silly?”

“You want to do this or not?”

“Yes, sir.” A nervous smile played on her lips. Part of me would have loved to wipe it off with my dick. The rest of me didn’t want to touch her.

“Stand up.”

She stood, leaning on one foot and jutting her hip out, hands on her waist. All attitude. It would take some poor soul ages to train the woman.

“Unbutton your shirt.”

She stuck her tongue in her cheek and swung her narrow hips, unbuttoning as though she was in a strip show.

“Stop trying to look saucy. This is a functional matter and not for your pleasure.”

Oh, the look on her face. I don’t think I could have forgotten it. When she told every mutual friend we had that I wanted to beat her and take away her right to say no, when she told them I had rape fantasies and that I hated women, she’d had no idea. The damage I could have done—but wouldn’t have—wasn’t to her body.

She unbuttoned her shirt completely and started to take it off.

“Stop.”

I could have told her how I wanted her to stand, how I wanted her to look, where her hands belonged, but it would have been a waste of my time. I got behind her and untied the bandana on her neck.

“This is what it is,” I whispered in her ear. “This is the kind of sex you’re agreeing to.”

As I slipped off the bandana, I considered binding her at the elbows like I’d done with Monica the night she got her voice back. But Monica could handle it. Even though I told Jessica I was going to show her what she was agreeing to, in all its pain and messiness, I had no intention of doing so. It would probably damage her psyche forever. Then she’d call the cops. Mostly, I really didn’t want to put my dick anywhere near her. I did, however, want to figure out what she wanted.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

She turned her head when she “obeyed.” Jesus Christ. Two commands and she’d exasperated the hell out of me. I never would have felt an ounce of control with her.

“Face forward, Jess.”

I didn’t tie her at the elbows. The wrists would have to do. I moved around to face her. Her open shirt showed off her white cotton bra and flat stomach. Her shoulders drooped. I couldn’t have tied her hands more comfortably, yet she looked awkward. “How does that feel?”

“Okay so far,” she said. “A little weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“Jon, seriously? What’s
not
weird? I’m standing here with my shirt open and my hands tied behind my back.”

“Is your cunt wet?”

“Do you have to be vulgar?”

I stood close enough for her to feel me whisper. “Yes. It’s about communication. It’s about saying what you want and don’t want, clearly, and sometimes with a filthy mouth. So let me get you on board with what you just agreed to.” I kicked her legs open. I righted her when she almost fell, but the annoyance on her face made me want to drop her. “The answer to my question is, ‘No, sir. I’m not wet. This sucks.’ I’ll tell you I don’t care how much this sucks for you. Then I’ll prove it.

“I’ll undo your jeans. I’ll pull them down to the middle of your thighs so it’s hard to walk. You’ll be uncomfortable, and that will please me. Then I’ll get behind you, and I’ll grab a handful of your hair at the back of your head and bend you over that table. I’ll take off my belt, loop it once, and slap it across those sweet white cheeks until you’re pink as a rose and your face is covered with tears. I’ll stop when I can stick two fingers in your cunt and feel how sopping wet you are. Then I’ll fuck you until you beg me to let you come, which I may or may not let you do. That going to work for you?”

The color had drained from her face.

“Didn’t think so,” I said, stepping away.

“Do it,” she whispered.

“Jess, really.”

“Do it! Start with the hair. Or the pants. Whatever.”

“No.”

“Do it!” she said.

“Stop, Jess.”

“Are you a fucking
man
? Or do you just beg and cry for what you can’t have? Is that how you get off?”

I threw her over the table. She fell onto it, bending at the waist with a grunt, ass out and arms bound by her own scarf. God, how many times I wanted to hear her grunt, to cut through the thick layers of refinement and find a woman past careful words. The woman I met so many years ago, before she’d built her walls.

I stuck my knee between her thighs and yanked the hair at the base of her neck. Her mouth hung open, and her chest heaved. She wasn’t aroused, that I could tell, and I didn’t care.

“Choose a safeword, Jessica.”

“Do we need—?“

“Question me again and I’m fucking your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit.”

I almost heard her teeth grinding. “Declan,” she said.

“Interesting choice.. Avoid it all and tell me what you really want, coming here. I’ll stop for either the safeword or that, but nothing else until I’m satisfied.”

I undid my belt after turning her head so she could watch me snap it out of the loops. I put her cheek to the glass. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a sharp triangle of white porcelain by the chair leg. One of the broken plates had missed the broom the morning after I made Monica recite “Invictus.”

“No yelling, Jess.” I shifted to her side, still holding her hair and my belt. “No crying. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered so softly, she was barely audible.

I hit the edge of the table with a
smack
of my belt. She jumped at the sound.

“Yes, what?”

“God, Jon—” I hit her ass. The belt landed with a satisfying
thwack.
She stiffened and ground her teeth. “It hurts. You’re hitting me.”

“You asked for it, Jess.” I pulled her hair in my fist. “And that’s, ‘It hurts,
sir
.’” I laid into her ass again, and she yanked her head, making a sound like a bad brake shoe. “Now tell me what you want.”

“I want you.”

“Bullshit.” I whacked her again. That was three. Too many. And I wasn’t holding back much. They had to hurt. “This started a month ago. You chased Erik away. Why?”

“You.”

I pulled back my arm, yanking her hair She screamed.

“Fuck, Jess. Stop lying!”

I pulled her hair and looked in her face. Her cheeks were wet with streams of mascara-colored tears. Her lower lip quivered. I had been a white hot ball of anger. If I had been thinking, I would have stopped. A dom should never, ever have an ounce of anger in his heart when spanking a sub. That wasn’t fun. That wasn’t all right. But between losing Will’s services and Debbie’s advice about Monica, I wasn’t functioning. I was a panting, heaving mess looking into my ex-wife’s tear-filled eyes.

“You used to have such a tender heart,” she said through her sobs. “Do you remember when I miscarried? You took me to the hospital, and you were joking the whole way? Trying to make me laugh. But when we got there, you were crying. And you fell asleep in the chair next to me with your head on the bed.”

“What do you
want
, Jessica?”

“I want to go home.”

I pulled her up and untied her. She was miserable from the experience, and so was I. She wasn’t ready for something that hard, even if she’d had any proclivity in that direction, and I wasn’t sexually stirred in the least.

“Go take Erik back. He’s good for you.” I handed her back her bandana. “You know the way out.”

I didn’t look back when I went through the house, bolted up the stairs, and closed my bedroom door.

My god. Three strokes. That was stupid.

MONICA

W
orking with Kevin and Darren had been intense, and I was grateful for the distraction from my beaten wreckage of a love life. We fought. We drank. We made music and art. I brought my pain to the table, using it to color and nuance a work of art that was basically about heartbreak, loss, and grief.