Forbidden: A Standalone (34 page)

He smiled. “Countertransference is when the patient fills a place for the therapist.”

Breathe. Breathe. You have to function. Breathe.

“That sounds like normal people,” I said. “You know, with needs. They meet each other and they fill needs.”

“When you left Westonwood, I saw you by the door. I asked you to wait.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?” He asked it as if he already knew the answer.

“I told you right there. I’ll destroy you. Men like you… you’re nice. I’d eat you up and spit you out. I’d fuck you and leave you and—look, this isn’t my ego talking. Nice guys don’t last in my world. Nice guys with boundaries and common sense? I’m not paying for your therapy bills.”

He laughed. I laughed.

Then he rubbed his eyes. “You knew how I felt. So you may feel vulnerable about what you said yesterday, but I opened that door. And the professional man in me regrets that.”

“What about the unprofessional man?”

It took him a long time to answer. Two hours. Two minutes. Time folded in on itself. Could have been no time at all. But I saw every single thought cross his mind. A war raged behind his eyes.

“I promised myself before you got here that I wouldn’t do this.”

I leaned forward, putting up my hand. “Don’t. You’re right. Don’t do this. I’m not worth it.”

He looked me dead in the face, his hair a little askew, an expression so certain that he could have told me black was white and I would have believed him.

“But you are. You’re worth all of it.”

I sat back in my chair. “What do you want?”

“This session is supposed to be about you.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

“We’re even then. In saying stupid things that are true.”

“No. We’re not.”

Another two hours passed while he looked at me, and I fell into him. Maybe my feelings were transference, like he’d said, and maybe I was filling some gap in his life, but that didn’t make it a lie.

Maybe it did, and I just didn’t care.

As if we were pulled on the same string, he stood at the exact time I stood. He put his hand on my neck. I didn’t realize I was cold until I felt the warmth of it. I leaned into his touch because it was so gentle, so firm, and I let him pull us closer.

“This is wrong,” he said softly, as if giving it a name, accepting that name, and continuing.

I knew what he was doing, and I let him. Let his lips brush mine. Tasted the lemon water on his breath. Moved into the softness of his mouth, the wetness of his tongue as it entered me. His groan rumbled into my throat. I let him push our bodies together because I’d craved him from the minute I saw him. He understood me and he still wanted me, not in spite of my failings, but because of them.

I pushed my hips against him. He was hard. Very hard. Ready for it, and Fiona Drazen never turned down a hard cock. He pushed me against the wall, moving his mouth along my neck, his lips fire to the kindling of my skin.

I pushed him away, and we stood inches from each other, panting as if we’d run miles. I wasn’t ready. I wanted more from him, but I couldn’t expect anything yet. Not unless I wanted to ruin him.

“I can’t,” I said.

He smiled. “No. You can’t.” He kissed my cheek, lingering there, and I knew with a little prodding, I would have been on my back. Instead he whispered in my ear. “Not today.” He ran his finger along my jaw and down my throat, leaving a path of tingling skin. “There’s no looking back for me. So when I finally do what I’ve wanted to since I met you, that’s it. No more fucking around.”

I nodded and kissed him again. I didn’t feel whole because of him. I felt whole because I’d chosen him.

fiona

W
hen I was a girl, I had one place where I felt at home. Where I didn’t feel eyes on me or pressure to be anything. I had to be perfect, but dressage had a set of rules for perfection I could follow easily and be done with when I got off the horse.

I got on the 110, down to Rancho Palos Verdes, where Snowcone lived. The smell of hay and horseshit was like home to me, and all the world slipped away.

“Hey!” I said when I saw Lindy arranging tack in front of the stables.

“Fiona!” She approached with a hug. “It’s so good to see you. You look great.” Lindy had Ivory Girl skin and straight brown hair she kept cut to the top of her shoulders. She hadn’t aged past thirty-five.

“Thanks.”

“I have the last of Snowcone’s things all put together.” She started walking inside, boots landing in a pile of mustard-colored horseshit. A true horse person, she didn’t even notice.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I love that horse, but she’s yours, and you taking her is—”

“Taking her?”

“Did you guys get your signals crossed? Your boyfriend came and got her an hour ago. I went to see the Laurel Canyon space yesterday, and it’s perfect.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course it is. Thank you, Lindy. Thank you for everything.”

fiona

I
 had to remind myself why I was irritated with Deacon because I’d already forgiven him for taking Snowcone. I had nothing to offer my horse but neglect.

But that wasn’t the point. What the fuck was Deacon doing in Los Angeles? He couldn’t leave me alone for a minute. Who even knew what kind of clusterfuck he’d turned his back on in favor of watching me? Probably twenty journalists being held in a closet and his team was supposed to rescue them, but no. Fiona was on a bender. So he stayed to bring her horse to his stables.

Deacon was walking Snowcone around the pen. He was most comfortable in jeans and boots with a heavy button-down shirt. His forearms were wiry and taut, and his jeans hugged his hips as if they were made for him. Both he and Snowcone were well-muscled machines, and I sighed.

“Hey,” I said, falling into step with them. “I thought you had something to do over there.” I jerked my head in the way I did when I meant
Africa.

“It can wait.” He was full of shit.

“You couldn’t have gone there and back.”

“I didn’t go. I got off the plane before it took off.”

God. Fuck him.

“I’m mad at you.”

“Why?”

“I never agreed to let Snowcone move here. This pisses me off.”

“You don’t sound mad,” he said.

“I am.”

“You’re not. You’re relieved. You have an excuse to stay.”

He was so sure of himself. So measured. There wasn’t a woman in the world who wouldn’t fuck him, so why should I be any different?

“Does everything always make sense to you? Like, you want to keep me here, so you find a way to do it and that’s that? I mean, I don’t even know what I want, so you just think, ‘oh, let me want something for her’? Is that what goes on in your mind? Is that your power trip?”

“Stop pretending you don’t want to stay with me.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

He stopped, yanking Snowcone back. “You want to be here, and you need to be here. When you leave, you party. When you party—”

“I stabbed you to get away from you!”

“You didn’t stab me. The drugs did.”

I pushed him. He didn’t budge, but I pushed him again. I wanted to wake him up, to show him what he wasn’t looking at. “You trapped me. You trap me with shit like this.” I pointed at my horse.

“By being perfect for you?”

“By letting me run around like a whore.”

“That’s not what it was, and you know it.”

“By being perfect for all of my worst impulses.”

“They’re a part of you. What do you think you’re going to do now? Settle down in a ranch house in the Valley with a disgraced therapist? Have two kids and take Valium and fuck the pool boy behind his back?” His face jutted forward and his arm was thrown back, pointing at an imaginary house in a real suburb. “You’re better than that.”

“I’m not. I’m not even good enough for him.” I swallowed, because I hadn’t meant to say that. Not “for him,” but my emotions had swarmed until there was no stopping the words.

“Really?” he said. “Did you fuck him yet?”

“It’s not your business.”

“You’re right.” In a flash, he had me by the back of my hair. He yanked it until I was looking into his piercing blue eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It. Does. Not. You’re mine. Your home is with me. And you can stab me another hundred times, and I’ll bring you back. Because there is not another man on this earth who understands you the way I do and no woman who understands me.”

“Let me go.”

“Never.” He twisted my body under him. His teeth were clamped shut, making his jaw stronger, tighter, more square. He was beautiful when in power and anger.

“I forgot…”

He dragged me to my knees. “Forgot what? This? How much you need this?”

“My safe word,” I said. “I forgot it.”

His reaction was immediate, and he let me go. I was still on my knees, hands in the dried leaves and needles.

“What’s he going to do when you need to be broken?”

“Nothing.” I got up, shaking from nerves. “He’s not you. No one is.”

“Do you love him?”

I didn’t answer right away. I just stared at the face of the man I’d loved first, and would always love. I was hurting him. Every day I stayed with him, I cracked his armor, and if I left, I’d tear the armor away. It wasn’t fair. He was too strong, too confident to let me do this to him. I didn’t want to answer. I wasn’t ready to own how it would affect him.

“Do. You. Love. Him?”

“No,” I whispered.

He surprised me by smiling. “No, of course you don’t. You can’t.”

He laid his hands on my crossed arms. Bone and sinew, with a squared joint at the base of the thumb. The hands of a man. Hands that bruised and tied, fingers that disappeared into my body. I couldn’t deny them. My arms dropped to my side. I practically groaned when my throbbing pussy woke up. Elliot had left me unsatisfied, and here was Deacon, ready to take me.

“I don’t want to be saved,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“You never needed to be saved. You only ever needed to be broken.” He touched my lips with the pad of his second finger. “Remember this. Remember that you are not an average woman. You don’t have average needs.”

He leaned in until I could smell his rough scent, his dominance, and I went liquid.

“Open your mouth,” he whispered.

I parted my lips. He put in two fingers, pushing to the back of my throat. I was mush. Oatmeal. The thought of his ministrations left me powerless.

“Anyone can fuck you,” he said, fucking my mouth with his fingers. “I’m the only one who can break you.”

I groaned against his fingers.

“Pull your pants down,” he commanded.

I unbuttoned them and yanked them to mid-thigh. Cool air hit my ass, and I had a moment of worry that was chased away when Deacon spoke again.

“Pull your shirt up.” He jammed his fingers down my throat, and I took them, choking as I pulled my shirt over my tits.

He grabbed a pierced nipple and pinched, pulled, twisted all at the same time, using the silver ring as leverage. The pain went right between my legs. He slid his wet fingers out of my mouth and put them between my legs, roughly running past my clit and hooking them into my cunt. I squealed. The pleasure was like a gunshot.

“You want me to fuck you, Kitten?”

“No,” I gasped, every breath a lie.

“What does your wet little cunt want?”

“Break me.”

He twisted my clit, and I screamed in pleasure and pain. I was close. So close, and when he rubbed my clit again, I came, standing in the middle of the yard.

“Get on your knees,” he said.

I fell as if pushed by invisible hands, knees landing on the soft earth.

“Crawl to the stables.”

Pants at mid-thigh, shirt hoisted under my arms, I crawled, eyes on the leaf-strewn ground, ass out in the air, a man behind me.

The last time I’d been like this—

I’d said no.

The last time I’d been on my hands and knees in a little forest, I was being ass-raped by a psychopath. But I didn’t have to think about that. This would be different because I was with Deacon. I felt a pressure on my back. He pushed me with his foot. It was humiliating, but I was safe, and I was aroused with a heavy tingling below the waist.

In a way, I was also bored. I wanted to walk because it was more efficient, and I wanted to talk through my annoyance with him. I wanted to just fuck. Just get on with it.

The stinging pain on my ass was a surprise.

“Crawl, Kitten.” He thwacked my ass with the belt again. “To the door.”

I was lost in the act. My pussy was heavy with wetness and lust. Giving up all pretenses of control, I was exploding with desire.

As I crested the doorway to the stables, the leaves and dirt turned to wood planks.

“Stop,” Deacon said.

I did. He walked around me, and I could see his muddy boots and the cuffs of his jeans. He swung the end of the belt in my sightline.

He crouched. “Look at me.” His face was perfectly calm and in charge. His voice was even and sure. “I’m not threatened by any man. Not when it comes to you.”

“Yes, Master.”

He looped the belt around my neck tenderly, threading the end through the buckle. He reminded me of the safe sign we always used when I was gagged. “Snap your fingers to safe out.”

And with one motion so swift and sure, he yanked it closed until I couldn’t breathe. He pulled me up to kneeling, unbuttoning his jeans and releasing his beautiful cock.

He let me breathe. “Your face is mine to fuck. Open your mouth.”

He tightened his grip on the buckle at the back of my neck and thrust his cock down my throat. It tasted of sweat and skin. I kept my mouth open while he thrust into it, using the belt as leverage, pulling my head where he wanted it. Keeping it still when he wanted to push his cock down my throat in repeated bursts. The world went black, and he loosened the belt, moved his dick, let me breathe, and started again.

I wasn’t even there. God, I did need this. I needed to not have a will, not exist outside his pleasure.

He came down my throat, sticky and hot. I breathed through my nose and took all of it, because it was mine.