Denial (34 page)

“Fuck me,” I pant. I hear him snapping off the glove and his bare hands caress my back and hips. He must be kneeling behind me now because his forehead is pressed into my ass cheek, his lips kissing the top of my thigh. 

“Not yet.” Shit. His tone has lost some of its levity.

“Please,” I’m whining. I want him so much. It would be the perfect moment, the first time since that night that makes me tear up whenever I think about how beautiful it was.

“Goddammit, Maya,” he hisses through his teeth. “You’re killing me.” The rough fabric of my favorite jeans teases my clit as he pushes himself against me, reaching forward and sliding his fingers under my collar. His weight pushes me into the bench as he leans down, his lips caressing my back.

“Fuck me. Please.” I’m not supposed to, but I bite my tongue to keep from calling out his name.

“I can’t,” he croaks. No. Not the sad, lost voice.

“I want you.” My own words crack with need as a touch of anger mixes into this cocktail of emotions. He wants it. I want it. The only person that should be able to tell him that he can’t is me. I take it back,
Luke. I belong to myself and I want him to have me. Now.

“Maya…” His breaths nearly sound like he’s crying. “I’ll be right back.”

I quake when his body peels off of mine. I look up to see him stumbling out of the room, leaving the door open. He screeches this awful sound, but it doesn’t scare me. That’s it. I’m ending this now. Even if it means he’ll never touch me again. I’m alone for far too long. Just as I’m about to call his name, he reappears in the doorway. My eyes tear away just in time.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says flatly. Did he just take something? Could it have worked that fast? “I just need to spank you, then I’ll fuck you.”

That doesn’t sound so bad, but he certainly sounds like it is. I stiffen. This is probably going to be worse than usual. His back is towards me as he approaches the wall where all the whips and paddles hang. I shudder as his hand hesitates over something that looks particularly torturous, but then it grabs a paddle that he’s used before. There is something off about his walk as he disappears behind me.

“I’m not going to hold back this time. Count if you can.” His words are hollow and flat. Where did he go?

It’s too late by the time I decide to stop this because the paddle slams into my ass with a loud thwack that barely masked the tortured groan rumbling from his throat. It’s shockingly painful and I bite back tears. He’s never hit me like that before. The next strike lands even harder, but somehow it isn’t nearly as painful, and I manage to squeak out a ‘two’. The third one feels almost pleasurable, shifting the plug in my ass and tickling a throbbing between my legs that gets stronger with every impact.

I’m slipping into a still place, that trancelike state when it feels like I’m everywhere and nowhere at once. This woman’s frenzied cries fill my ears and I know that it’s me, but there’s this strange disconnect. The pain slips further and further away, replaced by warmth and tingling everywhere. My heartbeat is drumming in my ears as this scorching energy builds deep within me.

I wasn’t counting, but I don’t think we got to fifteen, or whatever it was we were aiming for. I hear Isaac’s voice in the distance, trying to get my attention, but I can’t answer him. I’m standing on a cliff, waiting for one more strike to push me off. It doesn’t come and neither do I.

“Maya!” he screams at me.

“Sorry.”

“Are you al
right?”

“Yes.” He sighs but I don’t salute him.

“Were you going to come?” He sounds surprised.

“I think so.”

“Fuck!”

He drops the paddle. Now I’m very confused. I thought this is what we wanted to happen, what we’ve been working towards. The reason I’ve been unbearably horny these last few days. What the fuck? I can’t take this anymore. Just do it.

“We’ll have to wait for you to cool off.”

“Why?”

“Goddammit, Maya! A little fucking help here would be nice.”

“Okay. Sorry,” I peep. He lets out a frustrated growl. “Sir.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He leaves me hanging yet again. It’s a good thing I’m restrained because I’m so desperate to get off I’m struggling to free my hands so I can do it myself. This is a strange hunger. In the distance, the guilt is still gnawing at me, the urge to comfort Isaac so strong it should be overwhelming, but it’s so far away compared to the primal aching between my legs.

After an eternity of wiggling, my arms are jelly and he reappears in the doorway. Shit. I almost made eye contact. He walks in the room, assuming that composing himself posture that normally tears at my heart, but right now I just want him to get over his shit and give me what I need already. It’s not that bad.

He approaches me, his hand sliding across my jaw until he grips my chin harshly. He tries to say something, but it apparently won’t come out and he pulls away. I’m so bewildered. This happens over and over, but he can’t find his voice, any of them it seems. With each attempt his breathing gets heavier and frantic until the point where I flash on his near hyperventilation that night, which makes me think of how someone hurt him. That is enough to make me want to end this, but the words won’t come out.

He walks to the other side of the room, his entire body shaking. Fuck. This has to stop. Turning towards me, he takes a single step then drops to the floor, landing in a squat. His arms wrap around his knees as his head falls forward, rocking back and forth. I’m watching him, gathering my own composure as concern usurps my arousal. He looks up and our eyes meet. I can’t tear them away. His face contorts and he lets out this long, mournful sigh that fades to deep, even breathing.

Standing, he refuses to look at me, disappearing from my field of view. I feel his hand on my back and a tap on the plug. I’m not sure what that means until he starts to pull it out slowly and I start breathing the way that he taught me. Then he frees my feet and guides my legs together.

“I don’t understand.” I didn’t mean to say that.

“I can’t do this anymore. You have to find someone else.”

My insides liquefy. This can’t be over. He kneels before me, lifting my chin so that I can finally see his eyes close up like I’ve been dying to see them, but they’re so different. His pupils are huge but there’s only the faintest glimmer of life behind them. I move to touch his face, but my hands are still tethered and hooked to the floor.

“But I want you.”

His jaw clenches. “I’m sorry. I don’t have it in me. Not with you. I just can’t.”

“But we almost did. I was right there.”

“Maya, I said that I can’t.”

“It didn’t even bother me. I liked it.”

He flops down crosslegged. “That first time.” We both inhale deeply. “It fucked this up. There’s no coming back. There never was.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maya, I know that you love him, but you don’t want this.”

I tense up. I hate thinking about
Luke in here. Obviously, that is a bad sign, one that I’ve chosen to ignore. “It has nothing to do with him. Not anymore.”

“It has everything to do with him,” he snarls back. “Fucking
everything
.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not for me. Not anymore.”

“Then you and I have radically different tastes, baby.” He strokes my hair in that way that makes me tremble. “There’s no way I can go from fucking you the way that we did that night to fucking you the way I hate to fuck everyone else.”

My eyes close from the guilt and I choke out a sob that might have been his name.

“I will not call you a whore when I’m inside of you.” His voice, his real voice, quakes and cracks. “I will not teach you how to orgasm while you feel like a slut. I
can’t
do it. I tried the first time we were in here and it still kills me. I
can’t
.”

My head spins. “What?”

“I’m sorry Maya, I will not degrade you. It’s nearly impossible with a stranger that I know truly enjoys it. It’s unfathomable with you. Not after that night, and everything that’s happened between us since then.”

I’m not hearing this. “What?” I get a flash of
Luke’s eyes that night he let his friend make me cry.

“I’ve known the whole time that this would happen. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you because you’d leave and I just wanted a little more time. I’m sorry.”

“That’s what he wants?”

Isaac’s breathing turns from panic as mine runs toward it. “You said that you knew, that he told you. You said it was embarrassing but you kind of liked it.”

My stomach lurches forward, pulse quickening as I pull on my restraints. “I—”

“Wait a second, Maya. What the hell did you think we were doing?”

“The pain. He said that I’d like it if I let myself.”

Isaac snarls, his shaking head dropping as his fists clench until the skin looks like it will tear around the white bone beneath it. “No,
Rookie. That’s not what he wants. That’s not how he is.”

“I don’t understand.” My words are cloaked in shaky sob.

“Maya, if he hurts you when he…” His anger bubbles visibly to the surface, but he pushes it back down. “He
wants
it to hurt. For real. He does not want you to like it. Not even close. Luke doesn’t play with girls who get off on pain. Ever. No exceptions.”

“What?” This shiver starts in my feet, rolling through me until my teeth start chattering loudly, so hard it hurts.

“Maya?” Isaac sticks his finger into my mouth, keeping my jaws apart, but now I’m biting him shakily.

I pull away. “Let me go.”

“Maya?”

“I said let me go!”

“I did.” He sounds confused. I look down to see my hands are free. “Maya, breathe.”

That’s what
Luke wants? That’s what he thinks of me? All this time? It’s so obvious, how did I never see it? How the hell could I have been so fucking stupid? I hear these wild cries and frenzied sobs, but I can’t see anything. Isaac keeps calling my name but he sounds far away, like he’s shouting at me from at the end of a metal tunnel, the words bouncing off of the walls until the echoes wrap around each other and they aren’t words anymore.

I’m going to puke. I heave and wretch until my throat tears itself apart, but nothing comes out. My heart is beating so fast it’s going to explode. I can hear that I’m breathing loudly, but there isn’t any air. It’s here. I can’t run anymore. That black hole, that horrible, sinking sensation that’s been sitting ignored since it first appeared that day I checked
Luke’s phone. Actually, it’s been there forever. It’s a part of me. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel some trace of it, deep in the pit where most people have stomachs. It’s expanding, shredding me as it finally pulls me in. I can’t get away. I keep falling but there is nothing to stop me and there never will be. It’s bottomless.

27

“Maya!” I pound on the door until I feel a sharp pain in my hand, which could indicate a major problem considering how medicated I am right now. “Open the door.” She keeps making these awful sounds, and I think there was some form of ‘leave me alone’ in there. That is not going to happen. “Open the goddamned door, Maya!” Smart, asshole, freak her out a little more. “Please.”

That sound. It makes me shiver. I can’t stand it. I’ve heard it before but I can’t remember where. I’ve got to get in there, I’ll kick this fucking door down if I have to. I’m pulling my thigh to my chest, knowing that this probably isn’t the best idea, when I remember that I have a fucking key. Get your shit together, man.

But where the hell is it? Taking those k-pins was clearly a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking, I knew it wouldn’t get me through. Even if I was able to call her those horrible names, my dick is fucking useless when I’m this high.

I find the key to her bedroom in the most obvious place, on my key ring, which of course was the last place I look. That horrible sobbing gets louder as I get closer to the door, and I steel myself for what I’m going to find inside.

“Maya, I’m coming in.” She doesn’t answer me again. Here goes.

I was expecting something more critical, like she’d be throwing things around or hurting herself. I don’t know, something like I would do. But instead she’s just curled into this tight little ball on the bed around one of the pillows. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.

That pillow was muffling her cries and the sound of them full force when she lifts her face to look at me is so horrible my head spins. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t remember where and I don’t want to. It makes me want to put as much distance between me and that sound as I can, but instead I have to get closer because it’s coming out of her. I have to stop it.

I am totally out of my element here. I’ve seen my share of nasty panic attacks when subs lose it if they get scared during a scene. And I’ve watched abandoned, scorned women beg brokenheartedly to be taken back by some asshole that never felt anything for them in the first place. Probably the worst thing I ever heard, that I can remember anyway, was that girl screeching and crying, begging, safewording, as I tore through Miranda’s harem to get to her. There were too many of them and we didn’t have enough security. It took so long before I could stop it. Somehow, Maya sounds worse right now.