Forbidden Pleasures (NSC Industries Book 11) (9 page)

The smile on my face still refused to die. Although I
hadn’t returned Jay’s sentiment, he knew. It was different for me. After being
married before, I’ll admit I was scared, terrified that once I voiced what was
in my heart, another man had that sort of control over me. I knew I loved Jay
Carter but my broken spirit was reluctant to give him that amount of power.

Jay mumbled something in his sleep and I ran my fingers
over his cheek, soothing his nightmare in the only way I could. He sighed then
snuggled deeper into the mattress and fell into a peaceful slumber once again.

The luminous numbers on the clock told me it was late
into the night but with little sleep in me I slipped out from under Jay and
pulled on his fluffy white robe before venturing down to the kitchen.

After downing a glass of water, I tackled the coffee
machine sat taunting me on the worktop. I hated those things, they always had a
deep hatred for me, and after numerous attempts to make myself a coffee this
one also finally decided it didn’t like me and threw out a huge splatter of
brown muck that sprayed across the front of Jay’s perfectly pristine robe.

“Shit!”

My eyes widened on the mess as I snatched up a cloth and
attempted to scrub at the mess. It was having none of it, my frantic swipes
doing nothing but press the sludge into a deeper stain.

“Oh Christ.”

I looked around the kitchen for the washing machine, my
despair increasing when there appeared to be no such appliance. I wondered for
a moment if he just used the launderette but when I spotted a door to the rear
of the kitchen, I smiled. The man had a utility room.

Quickly pulling the door open, I frowned when I was met
with a steep slope of stone steps. “What the hell!” I mused as I started down
them. “Who in God’s name tramples up and down with their laundry?” I scoffed to
myself when Jay’s declaration of hating sports came to mind. Maybe this was how
he worked out, the steps providing him with the delicious abs he had. He had to
get them somehow.

It was dark and I felt my way along the deeper down I
got, my bare feet feeling for the edge of each step and my hands pressing into
the cold wall for a sense of direction. My skin prickled when I came to the
bottom and a single lone door sat foreboding and menacing in the small area. I
turned, looking back up the steps towards the kitchen. I knew I shouldn’t be
there, I felt it in my bones but I also couldn’t turn back.

Some part of me knew it wasn’t Jay’s utility room that
sat at the other side of the door, but the other part of me was too curious to
turn back. Taking another glance back up the stairs and finding myself still
alone, I gripped the door handle and twisted it.

I was surprised when the door opened, I had expected it
to be locked but when it swung open and the darkness inside met me, my heart
beat kicked up a gear and my legs started to tremble.

Taking a breath, I stepped inside. It was too dark and I
slapped my hand on the wall when my feet found a couple of steps. All of a
sudden, a soft light burst in the room and lit up the area for me.

My body froze completely, my eyes wanting to widen but
unable to with the shock surging in my veins. My stomach twisted as my lungs
worked overtime and forced my breathing to continue.

I took a hesitant step further in, my eyes zeroing in on
the set of three chains hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the otherwise
bare room. I approached it slowly. I knew what it was and why it was there.

Curling my fingers around the thick leather collar that was
attached to the bottom of the central chain, I shivered. Visions burst into my
mind of women hung, swinging precariously in mid-air while Jay wielded a whip
and tortured them until they couldn’t withstand the pain and dangled bleeding
and unconscious. The echo of their screams brought tears to my eyes and it was as
if I could physically feel their pain running through me.

A row of whips, floggers, canes and tails sat attached to
the back wall, the leather on each used and worn. I could almost imagine the
sound of them whipping through the air, the wall sprayed with blood as the
tears of pain from each woman was absorbed into the stone floor.

“Don’t allow your imagination to tell you a story that
isn’t true,” Jay spoke quietly from behind me.

I spun around. He was stood quietly watching me from the
doorway. Taking a step into the room, his eyes firmly fixed on mine, he walked
to the chain and held the collar in his hand.

Standing still, I watched him mutely as he studied me.
The sadness in his eyes was scorching my own and I started to pant when he
silently took the collar and slipped it around his own neck. It fit him
perfectly, the buckle fastening on the fourth hole. His face flushed red and he
closed his eyes before he slowly turned around. For the first time, I bore
witness to his strong, wide back… his strong, disfigured and scarred wide back.

“Oh my God.” Tears burnt my eyes as my own strangled words
choked me.

He lowered his face to the ground when I walked up behind
him. Unable to control my thoughts or actions, I lifted my hand and pressed it
against the welts that sat angry and sore on the stretch of mutilated skin he
was baring to me. Each slash was deep and I had no doubt that each profound
mark penetrated not only his flesh but his soul.

“Who did this?”

I thought for a moment he hadn’t heard me when he kept on
staring to the floor. He lifted both hands and slid them into the cuffs that
hung from the other two chains. They snapped around his wrists automatically
and pulled taut until his arms were high over his head and the edge of his toes
scarcely touched the floor.

“What are you doing?” I panicked, slipping my arms around
his as I tried to pull him back down. I knew the angle his body was in must be
extremely painful, the pull on his shoulders aching every single muscle from
his neck all the way down to his fingers. “Jay!”

“You thought this was for women, that I hurt women,” he said
with a strangled whisper. “You wouldn’t have believed me if I had just argued
your thoughts.” His narrow eyes were watching me closely. “You need to see,
Bea.”

“Well I don’t want to see,” I snapped as I scrambled to
reach the cuffs around his wrists, attempting to snap them back open. But I was
too small, my tiny height once again hindering me. “Jay!” I pleaded as I started
to weep. “I don’t want to see. I don’t want to.”

“But you need to Bea. I not only like to do this to
women… I like them to do it to me. You need to see the monster inside me. You
need to witness it and accept that it’s there.”

“No!” I sobbed as I moved around the front of him and
grasped his face. The devastation and shame on his face fractured my soul.
Shaking my head at him, the anger mixing with the sadness, I coughed as I
choked on my tears. “Jay, please.”

“The bullwhip is my particular choice,” he whispered,
ignoring my protests as I still tried to free him. “Although it usually depends
on how hard I need to take the punishment.”

“Punishment?” I spluttered when my sobs became
uncontrollable and his own hatred started to drown me.

“Punishment,” he repeated mechanically as his gaze
remained on the stark stone floor. He was slipping away, the haze over his eyes
alerting me to his inner shield, the protection he slipped into when he needed
to cope with whatever hell his mind was tormenting him with.

“What the hell do you need punishing for?” He didn’t
answer me. “Jay!”

His head dropped and his body sagged. His knees bent, the
action causing him to hang from the three chains motionless and lifeless, his
body swinging with his dead weight.

“Jay!” I slapped his face but it only caused him to sway
harder, the collar around his neck pulling tightly. “JAY!”

I scanned the area quickly. There must be some emergency
release button but my gaze found none. Taking a deep breath, I pressed my hands
onto his shoulders and jumped, hoisting my body up his until I was climbing his
body. Hooking my legs around his waist I fumbled with the collar, wincing when
the tight pull made it difficult to release the prong from its hole. The cuffs
around his hands were the only things stopping him from strangling himself so I
knew I had to release the collar before the cuffs but it was too hard, the
weight of his comatose body and mine straining the buckle.

Finally after screaming with effort, I managed to release
it. The cuffs were easier, held my a simple clasp that had a release button for
quick access.

We both dropped to the floor and I sobbed hard as I
pulled his unconscious body onto my lap and held him tightly. “Jay,” I begged
as I lifted his face towards mine. “Jay, please. Come on.”

But he didn’t wake. His breathing was regular and he
looked peaceful wherever his mind had taken him to but my heart was breaking,
the overwhelming sadness possessing me pouring out of me in huge waves.

We lay there for what seemed like hours. It could have
been, yet it could have been mere minutes as I clung to him and he lingered
wherever his unconscious had taken him.

Eventually, I felt him stir in my arms. His eyes opened
and a deep misery looked back at me. He frowned and reached up to touch my
face, his fingertips stroking the tracks of my tears. “You didn’t punish me.”

I stared in confusion, his words aching my heart and
angering my gut. “What? Of course I didn’t!”

“You should have.”

“No!” I hissed, shoving him away when his need disgusted
me. “No, Jay. I will never punish you.”

“But why? I need you to.”

Vomit curled in my belly and I clenched my fists in
anger. “Is that what
she
does?” I spat out. I’d had it so very wrong.
What I thought was Jay whipping Belinda for his own sexual needs was completely
and utterly wrong. I knew he did need to dish out pain for sexual pleasure but
this, this was so very different.

I stared at him in both fury and pity. I wanted to hurt
Belinda for doing this to him. I wanted to hurt Jay for taking what he thought
he needed.

“Beatrice?” he prompted when I stood silent. I looked at
him sadly and shook my head.

“I can’t ever do that, Jay. Don’t ever ask me to.”

He nodded softly then looked away. “But this is me, Bea.
This – is – me!”

Gritting my teeth, I locked down my emotions and pulled
my shoulders back, quickly trying to protect my heart before it shattered
inside me. “Then neither of us can be what the other needs.”

The desolation in his bright blue eyes displayed every
single bit of the wreckage inside him, I could practically see his soul
breaking into pieces and crumbling into dust. He gazed at me, engraining me
into his soul before he gave me a simple nod. “Then I will say goodbye.”

The pain that tore through me made every single cell in
my body scream in agony. The blood in my veins froze en-route to my heart and
filled the organ with an ice that burnt so deeply I knew I would never again
feel it beat inside me.

Saying no more, I took one last look at the man I had
fallen in love with then left, leaving him weeping on the floor of his
self-created hell.

It had been three weeks since Bea had left me alone and
foolishly weeping in the depths of my hell. Although I understood why she
couldn’t give me what I needed nor could she stomach what I was, I would be
lying if I didn’t admit I was hurt and disappointed.

I had seen the horror on her face when I’d found her in
my basement, her fingers hesitantly trailing across the numerous tools I used.
Her mind had been telling her lies, I had seen it, images of women hung and
hurt from the chain terrorising her. I wasn’t sure now though if I should have
left her to continue with her own story she had made up. The disgust and pity
on her face after I bared who I really was would never leave my heart, the
torment of her tears something that will haunt me for a long time.

“Jay,” Miles my best friend sighed again. “Go see her,
talk to her.”

“I can’t.” Miles was the only one, aside from Belinda,
who knew everything within me. At first, his disgust had mirrored Bea’s but
he’d come to accept that side of me, and at the moment he was my only sounding
board. Belinda wouldn’t understand, nor would she accept Beatrice. I knew
Belinda was in love with me, she’d told me and if she ever knew I was in love
with someone else, the hurt I would cause her would be too much. Not only was
Belinda my punisher, she was also my friend. A valued friend who I cared about
a lot. “I haven’t seen her at work, Fran her assistant said she was holidaying
in Italy, although she did say she should have been back last week. Whether
that’s a lie is neither here nor there. She is obviously avoiding me and until
she can admit to herself what the truth is, there’s no point.”

Miles regarded me for a moment then sighed heavily. “But
you’re in love with her. Surely that is reason enough to fight for her.”

I scoffed. “But she doesn’t love me, Miles. I told her, I
told her I had fallen in love with her but she never reciprocated the sentiment.
I’m not enough and my shit life is too fucked up. There’s no fucking point!”

He shook his head. “How can you just give up?”

“Give up?” I shouted, my anger getting the better of me.
“I never had it to give up in the first place. She doesn’t want me Miles,
accept it. I have.”

I growled when someone knocked on the door. I wasn’t in
the mood for company, I had been wishing for Miles to fuck off and leave me
alone for days but the bastard refused to go.

I frowned when I opened the door and Jack faced me. He
was pale, his eyes as red as the river of blood that had seeped down my back
the previous night. “Jack”? Once again I was aware that something was seriously
wrong. I was starting to detest the man because all he ever brought me was bad
news. However, what I thought was
bad
news was so very wrong. It was
news that fucking terrified me.

“Bea is missing.”

Although my heart was beating through my chest, I managed
to voice some sort of coherent sentence. “She’s in Italy.”

He shook his head, the dark circles around his eyes
showing off his exhaustion. “She was supposed to be home last week but she
never returned. She caught her flight back, we checked with the airline and…”

“And?” I probed as the whole of my body shivered with a
chill.

“The police have checked the airport CCTV and Ollie went
through it with them this morning.”

“And!” I spat wishing the prick would get on with it.

His eyes filled with tears, one seeking freedom as it
burst down his face. “Someone took her, Jay. Someone took her.”