by CD Reiss
“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 ocean open wide before me.
27
FIONA
It 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 on hard on the lips and got out of the car.
28
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 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?
“You’re my property until I release you.”
“Yes.” I agreed through all my questions. Habit. Need. Desire. The drug of Deacon Bruce.
He put his cock on my seam, sliding it from clit to bruised asshole. Every sensation went through my body, electric pleasure to sharp pain. He slid into me. First stroke down to the balls, pressing me down by the sternum. I stretched my arms over my head. I was still well-trained.
He put his thumb between my legs with his other hand. “No one hurts you unless I say.” He ran circles around my clit. “No one. You’re my property. When they hurt you, they offend me. And when you lie to me, Kitten…” He slammed his cock into me. “It offends me.”
I was so caught up in pleasure I couldn’t even speak. I came around him, sucking him into me. His hand moved constantly, and the orgasm went on forever, breaking me apart with pleasure. He came in me at the end of it, pushing me down on him.
He flipped me onto my stomach and put all his weight between my shoulder blades. I was pinned.
“Who took you?” He slid his free hand between my ass cheeks.
“No one.”
He found my asshole, and with a finger wet from my cunt, he pressed forward, sliding the finger inside my ass.
I loved ass play, but this hurt in a way I hadn’t experienced. The shredding was more emotional than physical. I smelled wet leaves and soil. Heard the dribbling of the creek behind Warren’s delighted voice.
Oh, you’re so fucking tight for a slut.
I like it dry.
I’m going to get you for this.
Deacon’s breath on me, so close, watching my face as he slid in a second finger.
“This hurts you,” he growled, taking his fingers out. “It shouldn’t hurt. Who did it?”
“Take me, Master,” I said with my face smushed into the carpet. “Fuck me in the ass.”
I dared him to do it when he knew it wasn’t what I wanted, because these were our roles. He did what he wanted to my body to exhibit his dominance. Usually, that worked out just fine for me, because it pushed my limits. But in my walk-in closet that day, it was I who pushed boundaries, and Deacon, like the Dominant he was, would not be pushed.
He got up on his knees. I leaned on my elbow, crying, face knotted in tight red tension. I swallowed a mess of tears and gunk, wiping my cheeks with my wrist.
He looked helpless, on his knees with his dick out. Abandoned by his most valuable skill, the ability to get what he wanted.
“Who are you protecting?” he demanded.
“You.”
His face fell before the last vowel left my lips. I’d just turned his whole world upside down with a thoughtless and honest word. I would have been gentler if I’d realized what it would do to him, but after the orgasm and the emotional violence of it, I didn’t have the brain power to lie.
“Me?” He asked it as if I’d shocked him so badly he had to repeat it to understand it.
“You.”
I didn’t know how to make him believe it. I didn’t know how to make myself believe it either. But the words hung there, suspended between us, and to leave them unsaid was to lie about what we were.
“I don’t think this is the right thing for me anymore,” I finished. “I’m using you, and it’s not right for either of us.”
I couldn’t look at him while the world slipped through his fingers. I got up and ran to the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the shower.
Jesus Christ. What had I done? I looked at the shower knob too long, wondering what was next. Where I would go? Who would love me the way I needed to be loved? Would I spend the rest of my life in a state of free fall, doing everything I could to find out where the bottom was?
“I hear you on the other side of the door,” I said. “I need you to just go. I’m not playing.”
I got in the shower. By the time I’d scrubbed myself raw, he was gone. My apartment felt as big and lonely as five thousand square feet could, and I longed for company away from Deacon, away from Elliot, away from parties and drugs. Just company.
I scrolled through my phone and found Karen’s number.
29
FIONA
Karen’s pool was inside a heated glass building. The roof retracted in the spring and fall, but in the summer, they just used the outdoor pool on the other side of the house. Her parents were gone. Her brothers were in school. The house was empty, as always. Her bikini was hooked around her hip bones, and she wore a huge T-shirt to cover imaginary fat. She smoothed it out so it didn’t touch her skin. I wore a bikini top and shorts to cover the pink paddle marks.
“I used to want to be a fashion designer,” she said. “I thought it would be so cool, you know. The runway shows. Getting girls all dressed up all the time. The parties.”
“You could still do that.”
“I’m too tired. I hear they actually work really hard.” She bit her lip. “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
I was twenty-three years old, and I’d always wanted exactly what I had. Always been perfectly happy to be Fiona Drazen.
I said what I always said as if by rote. It all felt cold and hard in my mouth. “I want to be the girl all the paps want to shoot. The girl all the guys want to fuck. The girl who does what she wants. That’s what everyone wants to be.”
And it wasn’t any more true by the pool than it had been in the weeks before Deacon showed me that what I wanted and needed were the same thing. Boundaries. Control. Rules. I’d been so happy to give myself to him, but I hadn’t thought about what to do without him.
“You were always so happy with who you were,” she said. “I hated you.”
I laughed. “Sorry.”
“Nah. It was me being jealous. Now I’m too tired to try to be you.”
“Doesn’t the I
V drip help with that?” I popped my sunglasses to the top of my head.
“No,” she said. “And I hate it. Even the stuff in the tube makes me feel full, and then it’s like I can feel the fat getting on me.”
It was no use telling her that she needed fat on her. I’d tried that. At the core of her being, she didn’t believe it.
She laid back. “My nurse got me to take a bite of banana yesterday. I could feel it going down my throat. In my stomach. I felt dirty. It was like I was being invaded. No one gets it. I feel good when I’m hungry. I feel, I don’t know, pure. Clean. It’s the best feeling in the world. I’m not giving that up for a bite of banana.”
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you spit or swallow,” I joked.
“Don’t even get me started. Westonwood put me off men forever.”
I froze, a million questions on my lips, but I knew asking any of them would only clam her up.
A few seconds later, after she put her head back and her face to the cold, glass-blocked sun, she spoke again. “Fucking Warren. I told him I wasn’t taking his dick in my mouth. I said, specifically, no mouth. That stays clean. So what did he do? Fucker. I hate him.”
“Shoulda bit it off.” I said it as if it was nothing, but my heart was racing and my skin crawled.
“He got his buddy, what’s his name… with the tattoos and the piercings he takes out? The orderly?”
“Mark.”
“He held me down and pinched my nose. And Warren put his thing, like, way down. God, it was disgusting. I gagged, but I was empty. I had nothing to puke. He just kept putting it in me. His balls were on my lip. His literal gross balls. Ugh. And then when he came… I breathed and I said, ‘Come on my face,’ because I didn’t want that shit inside me. But he shoved it back in and came down my throat. He held my mouth shut and made me swallow. And when Mark fucked me, he made him put me on my back so I couldn’t puke it up.”
