Then I slipped back into a memory where I stripped my clothes off in front of Matt in his rugby locker room and demanded that he look at me. I’m still the same as when I was bought. Aren’t I?
“And she’s gone again.” Joseph tipped my chin so that I gazed at him. “Where have you been?”
He wasn’t talking about the last moment, about this evening, these few weeks and months I’d worked in his office.
“I don’t know.” I bit my lip. “But I got here in the end, huh?”
Can you catch a kiss; can it be thrown at you? It seemed to descend from a great height. I was reminded of my nakedness against the cotton of his shirt, of the meandering welts that rose on my back as he brushed them. I moaned on to him, half sweetness and half complaint.
When he stood back, he smiled.
“Undress me,” he said.
His buttons came apart in my fingers, his beautiful shoulders bare and strong. Trousers and pants were kicked away. I was very aware of his cock as it jutted between us, red and angry. A challenge. A threat.
“Now. Wait.” He strode to pull open a drawer from the same chest the flogger had come from. For a moment, I thought he’d returned empty-handed.
Then a slip of silver flashed between his fingers, and my pulse charged to bite at my wrists.
“What the hell’s that?”
He shrugged. Smiled with an eyeful of wicked. “A scalpel.”
No. Not tonight. Already, he’d drawn blood, and though a part of me longed to bear his name again…not with that.
“It isn’t for you, Leila.” He drew a fingertip along my collarbone. “Don’t look so terrified.”
“I don’t see any other girls in the room.”
He dropped the finger along my bare arm, spread my hand, and pressed the scalpel into it. Light and cool, it seemed a mere feather of a knife. It lied.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not with this. It’s–”
“Much easier than a bread knife.” He folded both hands over mine and bent to kiss me, where he sucked my bottom lip, rubbed his tongue across it. “You’ll be fine, sweetheart.”
“But–but I’ve never done this before, I…”
“I like that.” He edged back to the bucket seat and sank down. “Breaking you in.”
I took deep breaths. Forgot the pain that pricked me. In the scrape of light that spilled from the doorway, I studied the scalpel that sat so neatly between my finger and thumb: slight, steel, ribbed along the handle. A smooth triangle of a blade that curved inward along the edges, tapering to a whisper of serration. Just enough menace to cause my hand to tremble.
Charlotte gasped in the giddy haze of lust.
“See.” He cocked his head. “I think you like this present more than the shoes.”
“Not if you’re going to fuck me with it.” I said it before I could help myself, and he laughed at the twisted horror of my brows.
“Leila. Come here.”
I followed his gesture, knelt beside him on the floor while he flicked on a lamp. Fearful of dropping it in my ever-sweaty palm, I laid the knife on the carpet. “What do you want me to do?”
He leaned to cup my chin. “What would you like to do?”
“What if I catch an artery or something? Or I go too deep? I don’t know, I don’t want…ah…”
“I want to see you mark me.” Joseph reached for the scalpel and pressed it back into my grip. “And I think you’d like that, if you tried it. To see my blood on your fingers.” He bit his lip. “I made a pretty pattern on your back…it’s my turn.”
In time, I’d expected the knife to come out again, seduced by the flat canvas of my belly. I might have even hoped for it. But I never guessed he’d want the favour returned, that he’d let me play God with his skin. Breath burned in my throat at the thought.
“Where?” I managed.
He sat back in the chair and drew a fingertip across his belly. “Here’s good. Or…” He stroked the vague protrusion of bone at his hip. “Here.”
I caressed the same spot, drummed the flesh to check for the lithe spring of veins beneath. “Like a pattern? Or words. A symbol. What?”
“Up to you.” He winked. “You’re the artist.”
Joseph was the most fearful of teachers. He never warned of an exam–just thrust it upon me–and he expected homework that he didn’t take the time to ascribe. I was like him in many ways, but not once had I stared at his body and imagined the designs I’d paint in blood. Even when he’d done it to me that night in New York, it wasn’t with a scalpel. He scratched and grazed rather than cut so cleanly. Oh God.
God.
I jerked up to look at him. “Have you been cut before?” How, with whom, where? Why?
“No. Or at least…not because I asked for it.” He tucked stray curls behind my ears. “Just no swastikas or lame little smileys, okay? If you do this right, it’ll scar.”
My first thought: brand him with your name. It scared me how easily the notion materialized in my brain, letters carved in smoke and clinging to saliva. Like I had a right to do it, like anyone did. In an effort to be clean of the idea, I shifted my attention to his cock, still stiff against his stomach and obscuring his navel. When I dragged my tongue over the head, he groaned.
“Stop it.” He tugged at my hair. “I said, stop it. Leila.”
I licked my lips. Avoided his eyes, though I’m sure they were green as ever. For long moments, I caressed the expanse of his belly with its almost-tanned skin and brief skim of veins. There was little softness to it, not like mine; just a thin gauze of fat over firm muscle. I didn’t want to cut there.
He guided the scalpel, still in my fist, back to the rise of his hipbone. A neat wedge of flesh and sinew made an uneven crescent as it curved above. Here. So it was. With a breath drawn from heavy air, I bent to lick the spot, anoint it with a sucking kiss. He caressed me as I prepared him, swirled fingertips in circles on my scalp. His own breath came in short little jerks now. I sat at his feet and tasted the blunt flat of the scalpel, an acolyte of his own making.
“Are you sure?” I whispered.
“Yeah.” He caught my eye. “Are you?”
There was no going back from a wound, a cut. No altering what became of me once I turned Charlotte to a sculptress. The lash mark on my back stung, made me quiver; why did he want this? Why did I? What power did he have that I would go this far to please him?
All of this, it made me so uncomfortable. And he knew it. That was the only reason he asked me in the first place. That he would pretend I had the power, that we’d dance like this…oh, oh. You want me to use this, but you know full well that I don’t need it to hurt you.
But hurt didn’t come into this. Pain did. Pain wasn’t the same.
I didn’t need to give him an answer. Instead, I laid the blade tip just above his skin, a mere centimetre between me and a new breed of lover. So close.
“You won’t chop me in half, if that’s what you’re frowning over,” he said. “Treat it like a paintbrush. Stroke. It won’t go deep.”
I wanted to ask how he knew that, but right then, words seemed a waste of effort.
Stroke.
The first time, I barely brushed him with the knife. A chalk-white graze appeared and a flush bloomed either side, but a cut wouldn’t come. Still, his breath quickened.
“Sweetheart. Be brave.”
“I’m trying.”
He gave a tut. “Poor effort. Must try harder.”
“I’m holding a knife, y’know.”
He grinned like the villain stitched into him. “I know.”
I’d never manage more than a scratch if I didn’t calm the shake of my hand or the grate of my heartbeat. No more sketches in the air. Just guts.
So I cut him.
Oh fuck. The rush as his skin parted as if invisible fingers peeled; the ooze of glossy scarlet; the groan that escaped through his gritted teeth; fuck. With the first line–first incision–done, I bit my lip so hard just to find the c
omposure to curve the line. The iron perfume of his blood made me dizzy. I’d barely done half that second line when I realized my fingers weren’t just warm, but wet, and that I could barely see his skin for the oily map of crimson.
My hand wobbled. He hissed in pain. Then the knife fell from my fingers and I let out a pathetic whimper at the mess of red that caked us.
“I–I can’t–”
“All right.”
“But you’re bleeding…”
“Yes. I know.” He leaned forward with a grunt and peered at my haphazard design: an L just two inches tall half framed his hip bone, a flourished curve of a stem with a clumsy scrape of a foot. L for Leila. L for lilac. L for law, and for lo…ah. “You are brave.”
Not to cut him, but to brand him. Or both, perhaps.
Still…he liked it. I saw it in his flicker of a smile, the pride that jumped from his raised eyebrow. For a second, as we inspected my so-called handiwork, I felt bound to him on a whole new level. Like we’d found the gutter, split ourselves open and danced in the lava, oblivious of burns.
He didn’t bleed profusely, but blood wept from the lines enough to make me panic. If he needed stitches, how the hell would he explain that to a doctor? I groped around on the floor for something to clean him with and blotted at the mess with a fistful of crumpled shirt.
“It’s okay. It’s not bad.” He pulled my hand away. “Leila. Come here.” Weeks ago, he’d watched me with Isobel from the same place, but now he gestured to me, only me. It hurt to straddle him but as I slid down, as I let him stretch me…I came home. I was wetter than I’d noticed, primed by crimson, his clever fingers and his cruel lash, and I coated his cock in slow little strokes. They were all I could manage.
Joseph used my hips for leverage as he thrust up into me. I loved how his pupils dilated when he bottomed out, black eclipsing green, as if he was possessed for a few seconds at a time–a hundred demons attempting to dominate him and never winning, always smothered by heady sage. Could he teach me to do that? Could we rip Charlotte from her cage of bones and sinew to zip her into his eyeballs? She would feel at home, there. She and Joseph saw the world the same way.
He rocked against my clit and I was dizzy with the pleasure, blotting out the pain. When he stroked my back, he withdrew with hands bloodied and wiped them along my thighs in scarlet murals. It mingled with the sticky mess of his hip. War paint. I wrapped my arms around his neck, dug my fingers into his hair and let go of it all. The word spilled over and over until my voice became a strained hymn, a desperate prayer, and it was my orgasm that lifted it and propelled it toward gods in a thousand different directions. I squealed as it left me, as the pain infused me all over again and he made me work so hard that I felt fresh blood trickling warm on my skin.
He clasped the back of my head and tore me from the revelry for a kiss. I licked the sweat from his brow as he recovered, stroked damp blond wisps from his eyes, and noticed that he had let his hair grow a little since we’d become involved. The wolf, it seemed, was clawing its way out. We never made love, and we never really fucked anymore, but oh, we cast spells and fought battles.
The light in the bathroom was milky and pale, and the tiles glowed as the moon sloshed through the window. In the shower, I braced myself against the wall for a long time. He stroked the cold water across my wounded back, murmuring soft words as I squeaked–the hurt no longer underscored any pleasure and no numbing adrenaline soared in my veins. Afterward, when he poured disinfectant over wads of gauze and we took it in turns to tend each other, the pain was worse. I made a hash job of sealing his cuts with white paper tape–he’d need it looked at. It barely wept now, but looked raw all the same.
I found myself in his bed, on my belly with a cool, damp towel over the welts. I propped myself up on my arms to watch him read.
“Joe?”
“Mmm?”
“Will it take long to clear up?”
He peered beneath the towel, smiling faintly. “It looks a lot less angry. Does it still hurt?”
There was a faint sting as I shifted in experiment. “A bit.”
“You didn’t bleed half as much as I did. I’d apologize, but…”
“But.” I kissed his shoulder. “Shh.”
They felt strange, those words. He had hurt me quite badly, told me I’d asked for it, and a hundred chat show hosts bellowed in my ear that it was wrong.
But.
I did ask for it. Not with sounds. Like the plastic bouquet at the wedding, they seemed like such a poor representation of the sentiment and the power. No, my flesh had begged for it and my heart had yelped to be purged. It wanted so badly to open up, but the scar tissue needed defusing. It’s funny–I don’t remember anyone ever breaking my heart, but maybe it wasn’t exempt from self-mutilation.
Joseph ran a finger across my lips. “Smile for me.”
I obliged, though I couldn’t scrape conviction.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Did I fail to beat the misery out of you?” He rolled his eyes just a little, and then I saw it: he loved the lash for what it was. Chemical. He knew that I felt it and he wanted me to see it that way.
Somewhere within, the notion stirred that I might, soon. Because he asked for it, revelled in it, loved it. There it was again, the l-word. Ah.
“Do you think we’ll be able to go out eventually and not have everyone stare like we broke one of the Ten Commandments?” I sighed.
“None of it bothered me.”
“I overheard Matt bitching about us with his brother–”
“He’s sore because you dumped him, Leila. He’ll get over it. You did an honest thing.”
“And then Poppy and Isobel were all cosy in the corner, glaring at us with these big cat eyes,” I complained.
“If they had big eyes, it was probably from all the coke.” He tittered to himself and then appeared to stiffen.
“Um. What?”
“Pretend I didn’t say that.”
“Hardly very…proper of you,” I managed. “She never seemed like–I mean, either of them–”
“This is the City. You’ll learn.” He patted my head. “There aren’t many prissy girls like you and Elise left.”
I grinned. “I’m not prissy.” Hardly felt like it.
“You know what I mean. Still. You two made a lovely couple earlier.”
“Oh, you liked that?” I lay on my arms again, suddenly very coy.
“Of course I liked it. What surprised me was that apparently, so did she.”
I brought the fingers that had toyed with her pussy up to his mouth, and knowing, he sucked on them. “She wanted to go further. Alone, though.”
“God. That would have been something.” He bit my finger. “Poor Ken was about to combust.”
“I’ll be surprised if she can walk in the morning.”
“Will you be able to?”
I wriggled. Sharp heat danced over broken skin. “I’ll manage.” I closed my eyes for a moment, sinking into the pillow. “Joe, will you call me a cab before I fall asleep?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going anywhere in that state. Besides.” He nuzzled at my hair. “Thought you’d stay with me tonight.”
“My best friend is waiting at home,” I said. “I promised her I’d be back. She’s having a really tough time right now.”
“Really?”
“She’s splitting up with her bloke. They were together for ages. Poor Clemmie…she’s really upset, Joe.” I was fighting to keep my eyes open.
“You’ve got clothes here, it’ll be fine. Let me take care of it.” His voice loomed from far, far away.
“What d’you mean…?”
“Shh. Sleep tight, now.”
I succumbed to the dark.
* * * *
I hadn’t been in the office long next morning when an email landed in my in-box. Two photographs were attached. One was of a huge bunch of wildflowers wrapped in netting and paper. A bottle of Champagne nestled beneath the green
overspill. The second was of the card, which read: Clemmie, thank you for letting me keep her. J.
Below the pictures, Clemmie had written:
J, mmm? I like him already. Slut x
Chapter 11
At the train station, Dad greeted me with a warm hug.
It was a gorgeous Saturday, better weather than we’d seen in weeks. Sun cut through the smog of the station and painted everything in liquid gold, including me. The debt was settled, I was no longer selling myself to pay for it and my parents had no worries left in the world. Charlotte’s step had more than a spring–it had the buoyant bob of a victory march.
“Finally got your contract, then.” Dad smiled proudly.
“Yep. Still need to finish going through it but I’ll start in a few weeks, all going well.” It was hot in the car and I fiddled with the air-conditioning, waiting for him to scold me. It didn’t come.
“What will you be doing?”
“I’m staying on the corporate team. Dealing with acquisitions, tax issues, that kind of thing. I know it sounds boring but it’s not–”
“You don’t have to justify it to me, Leila. I’m just glad you’re happy.”
“You think it’s boring, Dad.” I laughed.
“I’m sure it’s riveting. It’s not wine making and it’s not an indigenous fern, but there you go…”
I elbowed him and he laughed heartily.
At home, Mum had actually cooked. Of course, she’d ruined the chicken–nothing had looked quite so dead before–so we took sandwiches out to the garden instead.
I arranged a blanket under my favourite tree and picked handfuls of lilacs to sit in a pint glass. Dad cracked open a bottle of his elderflower wine, Mum passed around plates of bread and cheese and we enjoyed the sunshine together, just the three of us.
“I’m so pleased New York went well for you,” Mum said. “We were worried after the trouble with that boy.”
I shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of Brie. “It’s okay, seriously. We’re talking again. We’re friends…sort of.”
Mum eyed me suspiciously. “Sort of?”
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