Forbidden: A Standalone (37 page)

“I don’t want you to get involved.”

His phone rang, and he pulled it out. He looked at the screen, smiled, and showed me the readout.

FIONA

“Too late, princess.”

Shit, Deacon had my phone. I grabbed for Elliot’s, but he pulled it away.

“Hello?” he said as if he didn’t know who it was. “Yes, this is Doctor Chapman. We’ve met.”

“Jesus, Elliot, come on.”

I grabbed for the phone, but he turned away. Was he enjoying this?

“She’s here. She looks beautiful, by the way.”

“Do not bait him!”

He glanced at me then put his hand over the phone. “Why not? Are you afraid of him?”

“For your sake, I am.”

He shook his head and put the phone back to his ear. “She’s fine. You don’t have to worry.” Pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He leaned back in his chair again.

Fucking men. You’d think they’d both pissed on me like a hydrant.

“I would never take what wasn’t freely given. I think you know that.” Elliot just smiled as if Deacon had said something particularly amusing. “I’ll take that into consideration.” He handed me the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. “Deacon.”

“Come back. Come back now.” He used his cold, Dominant voice, and it went right to my very soul.

“I can’t.”

“Kitten, you are in no place to get your life under control, and that man you’re with is not qualified to keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“Yourself.”

Fuckhim- Fuckhim - Fuckhim - Fuckhim

I hit the red button to cut him off and plopped the phone in front of Elliot.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I left my car at Laurel Canyon.”

“I can get it for you.”

“No. I want to go to my condo in Malibu. Can you take me?”

“Sure.”

fiona

H
e took the 101 and dropped down through the mountains, over Las Virgenes because PCH was always a disaster. He didn’t even tell me he was going around the civilian route. He just knew the best way to get to my place the way he knew how to get to me.

Estates hid behind hedges, and Bentleys stopped at lights, next to circa 1977 Chevys. Elliot had one hand on the wheel, fingers articulated and active when he turned it.

I didn’t know what I wanted from the man. Maybe I wanted to destroy him. If that was the case, I’d certainly set on the right path.

“I don’t want to freak you out,” he said, “but I want to tell you something. Or some
things
before I even get you to your place.”

“I’m a captive audience. But Doctor Chapman?”

“Elliot. Please.”

“Whatever you say, it won’t change anything.”

Undaunted, he continued. “The first thing is, I’m as confused as you imagine I am. I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re considered my patient for at least two years after our last session. I shouldn’t even let you in my car, much less track you down in Laurel Canyon. Much less call you. I’m risking everything. My license. My reputation. My jobs. And I know I’m going to walk away with nothing. I’m fully aware that either you’re going to hurt me or I’m going to have to start my life over from scratch as a short-order cook or something. There really is no other way around it. I accept that. I’m a martyr for you right now.”

A big package wrapped up in a bow. Ten tons. No sound from inside. My name written in fancy script on the tag. That was his life, and he’d just handed it to me. It wasn’t even my birthday or Christmas or anything.

I didn’t know if I wanted it or not. It was just a heavy box. But I couldn’t give it back, couldn’t thank him for it, and I wasn’t ready to open it. Not yet. Its presence in my life was too overwhelming.

“Have you thought about why?” I asked. “Because there’s no reason you should feel this way. I couldn’t be more wrong for you.”

He stopped at a light and looked at me. “Do you play chess?”

“I used to play with my sister. She creamed me.”

The light changed, and he pulled forward. “The biggest learning curve in chess is the opening. Your first few moves. Your initial choices decide the game. With every move, nearly infinite options turn into fewer and fewer options until you’re cornered. Or your opponent is cornered. You go from infinite possibilities to despair in fifty moves as a result of the first five.

“Life isn’t like a game. Of course you go from board to board your whole life. You start over, make moves, options get limited, et cetera. I don’t want to make big analogies that don’t work. But I want to say, I was at my endgame until you walked into my office.”

He stopped. I looked out my window.

“Am I talking too much?” he asked.

Was he? I’d gotten lost in the sound of his voice. I heard the words, I listened, but something in the way he put his syllables together clicked for me. I could listen to him all day.

“We’re not on the clock,” I said. “It’s your turn to talk.”

He paused as if considering the next part of his speech. “I was cornered. I had nowhere to go. And when you came in, I didn’t understand it, but you felt like a way out. An open window. When you came in, the traffic cleared and I had an open road in front of me. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because you were an escape hatch, or maybe because we’re doomed. But you feel like a puzzle piece, and when you talk or move, there’s something about it that clicks in place with me. I can only feel it, and no piece of paper or degree or job or anything is going to turn me back.

“The game changed when I met you. God help me, I am not going back to checkmate. I’m playing this board. I’m making my opening moves. I have never felt so awake, so alive, and yes, I’m going to call it like I see it. I’m not making you any promises. I’m not pretending this makes sense. But I feel closer to God when I’m with you, and that has meaning to me.”

Inside the hum of his voice, breathing the comfort of it, I felt the weight of my responsibility to him.

I waited until he had to stop at a light before I answered. “I’m very hard to love, Elliot. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll let you do it, but I’m not going to make it easy.”

“I’m not sure where I am with Deacon.”

He looked me in the eye and squeezed my hand harder. “He’s in your past. You get a new board too.”

Did I? Would I ever get a fresh start? I hadn’t considered that I would ever deserve one, but there I was, with the light green and the freeway open wide before me.

fiona

I
t was night when Elliot pulled up to the Markham.

“Thank you,” I said.

“What are we going to do about Warren?” Elliot asked. “He’s getting out next week.”

“Once he does, I lose control of the situation, don’t I?”

He tapped the steering wheel. “No. I do.”

“I’m not dragging you into this.” I turned in the passenger seat so I could see him. “The reason I didn’t tell Deacon was because he’d hurt himself trying to kill Warren. I don’t want that for you.”

“And I don’t want you going after him.”

His eyes lost their color in the shadows, but his jaw became more defined. Straighter, stronger. I touched the line of it, down his neck, flattening his collar. He took me by the back of the neck and pulled me toward him. Our lips crashed together, tongues twisting, groaning, bodies finding each other. He put his hand between my legs and pressed my pussy through my jeans. I was damp through the fabric. He curled his fingers along the seam, and I threw my head back and moaned.

“Fiona,” he said, his voice husky, “I want to see you come.” He pinched the front of my jeans under the fly, pressing my clit.

I wanted him to make me come. I wanted him inside me. He pulled me to him until his lips were at my ear.

“Leave him,” he whispered.

I knew that if I said I would, he’d take me right in the car, and I’d bring him upstairs and we’d fuck all night.

And would I leave Deacon?

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Not yet,” I said, backing away.

“When?”

I kissed him hard on the lips and got out of the car.

fiona

You told me you could see the connections between people. Just like an observational thing. The time you did my aftercare. Remember, Debbie?

Yes. I remember it.

Have you seen a connection with Deacon and me?

***

I
 went into my bedroom and strode right to the closet. It had double racks of clothes and two rooms with windows. I’d had it lined in camphor, and the sharp scent woke my sinuses. I opened a floor cabinet and spun the dial of the safe.
Whush
. It opened, and there sat some jewelry, a black card, and a few envelopes of cash. I also had pills, mostly tranks, and a few vials of flake for emergencies. Was I going somewhere?

I needed money and my car. Right. The black card was right in front of me, and the keys to the car were with the valet downstairs. Which car? Did it matter?

It did. I didn’t want to go back to Laurel Canyon. I wanted my freedom. I wanted to get control of my life without Deacon’s little rituals and rules. That was fake. It had all been fake. He’d put me in a straitjacket then complimented himself for keeping me still. Now I had to crawl into the straitjacket myself. I had to cruise downhill at my own speed, and with my own purpose. I had to be better, stronger, more regulated than even Deacon could make me.

I took the card, slapped the safe closed, then the cabinet, and walked to the outer room, where I caught a view of myself in one of the closet mirrors.

Who the hell was I kidding?

I peeled off my clothes as if they burned me, tossing them aside to look at myself naked.

Did he own this?

He’d laid claim to me a hundred times, and I’d relished it. Now suddenly, I didn’t need that anymore? Only if he was right and I wasn’t truly submissive. And if that were true, who was this woman?

My A-plus tits perked up from the cold. I rubbed them, and the pink nubs got rock hard.

Was I a freak?

With everything going on in my life, all I could think about was sex.

Elliot’s kiss had warmed me up, and pushing him away had turned me on, the disappointment sending my libido into a rage. And Deacon’s paddling had left its wounds on my ass, which I saw when I sat on the carpet and spread my legs in front of the mirror. I saw the raw redness on the backs of my legs when I bent my knees, and I rubbed my hands along the wounds to make them hurt.

I made it last, stroking myself slowly, then quickly, watching myself in the mirror in a haze of pleasure. I wanted to see how long I could hold it back. How long I could delay my gratification.

And I imagined my safest place. Deacon knotting me up until I couldn’t move, and Elliot taking me in his arms and putting his cock in me.

“Don’t come. Don’t—”

I pressed down harder, rubbing faster, gathering juice from my cunt to make my clit all the more slippery.

I felt the door opening behind me, and my eyes flew open. Behind me, in the mirror, stood Deacon.

I bit back shock and fear. Pushed away annoyance.

He didn’t say a word as we stared at each other in the mirror. I didn’t move my hand away from between my legs. He didn’t break our gaze while he undid his belt and took out his dick. I still had the taste of it on my tongue.

“Who did it to you?” he asked.

“Did what?”

“Who raped you?”

Telling him was as good as killing Warren. Not a bad idea, on the whole, but it wasn’t what I wanted for Deacon. I loved him. I wanted him to be safe from his own impulses, because he’d made me safe from mine.

“It wasn’t rape.”

“Put your hands on the mirror,” he said as he kneeled behind me.

I swallowed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Take what belongs to me?” He lifted my hand and put it on the mirror.

“Not my ass. You don’t have to reclaim it. Please. It wasn’t Elliot.”

His mouth tightened. “I didn’t come for that.” He pressed my lower back down and lifted my ass, running his fingers along the welts he’d made. “But your tone tells me more than your words.”

He took a bottle of lotion from his pocket, and I almost wept. He’d paddled me, and we hadn’t had any aftercare. No cuddling. No cathartic tears. No salve on my physical or emotional wounds.

He popped the top and squeezed a lump of lotion into his palm. It was my favorite. Vanilla-scented. I let my head fall into a relaxed position as the cool cream soothed my bottom.

“You’re not submissive,” he said.

I raised my head and watched him in the mirror as he carefully tended my bottom.

“I still mean it. When you’re strong and safe, overall, you can be whatever you want. You’re so complex. Deep and wide. I know there’s no one like you, but you remind me of that constantly. You’re not submissive unless you’re weak from drugs, or needs, or a hurt you won’t tell me about. Then you need it.”

Gently, he pulled me up and gathered me in his arms.

This was wrong. I should not be accepting succor from Deacon after kissing Elliot. I was never so dishonest in my life as when I leaned into his chest and let him stroke my hair.

“You need a sub,” I said.

“I do.”

“I don’t know what I need.”

“You need to submit when you feel weak and not when you feel strong.”

Was he right? Did my bad days just require a good paddling? Was he some kind of medicine for what ailed me? If he was right, then I couldn’t leave him. I was done. Put a fork in me. I’d always be sick.

Given the choice between being a true submissive and someone who used submission to regulate herself, I wished for the real thing or nothing.

“You’ve done so much for me,” I said. “I want you to know I’m grateful. But I’m confused right now.”

“No.” He was firm and Dominant again, as if I’d pulled a switch. “Someone’s getting to you. I saw you in the car. He had his hands on what’s mine.” He turned my face to the mirror. “Look at yourself. This is mine. No one takes your ass without me there.”

He pulled my legs apart, and the very act of showing him my cunt made me wet for him. My back arched for him. I ached for him to subjugate me. Was he right? Was that desire a key to my weakness when it should have been the key to my strength?