by Cole, Tillie
“He must come for Sunday dinner,” Papa said and sat beside me, lifting my legs and placing them on his lap.
“I’m not inviting my boss to Sunday dinner.”
“He helped you, brought you home. We are Italian, Faith. We say thank you with food.”
“We do everything with food, it’s why my ass is the size of the empire state.”
“Men like women with a little meat on their bones, darling,” Mom said and handed me a bowl of soup. She always had a bowl of soup of some flavor on the stove. Said it was Scottish thing. That you never knew who might pop around at any moment and need to be fed. “They like something to be able to grab hold of.”
“It’s true, there’s a reason Botticelli’s Venus is so loved,” Papa said, as the first spoonful of vegetable soup slipped down my throat. “Invite your boss, Faith. He must come.”
I finished my soup and went to my old bedroom. As I lay down on my single bed, my cell chimed.
Sorry again about today. Please take care of yourself.
The text was from “Pompous Prick.” A laugh slipped from my throat and I felt weightless. The pain drugs were good.
FP: How did you program your name into my phone?
PP: I may or may not have used your fingerprint while you were sleeping to break into your cell.
I saw the dots telling me he was typing something else.
PP: That is all circumstantial of course. Would never stand up in court.
My heart was beating like a bass drum. Hell, it was beating so hard it was doing the drum solo to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. I needed sleep. And maybe an asylum. I knew I was going insane because I was suddenly finding Harry Sinclair amusing and not imagining his unfortunate death at the hands of my stiletto heel in the place he should have had a heart.
In for a penny…
FP: My parents want you to come to dinner on Sunday as thanks for today. They didn’t get a chance to ask you earlier.
I pressed send, quickly followed by instant regret. What the hell was I? Fifteen? Who the heck invited someone to their parents’ for dinner anymore?
FP: Okay, scratch that. No need to subject yourself to that kind of torture. Forget I said anything. I’ll tell them you had a medical appointment you couldn’t get out of.
I sent that. When I read it back, I panicked.
FP: Not like an STD appointment thing. There will be no mention of herpes or anything. I know your namesake was apparently riddled with syphilis, but that’s not what I was hinting at by saying that.
I sent that too. Oh, for fuck’s sake!
FP: Just forget the whole thing. Delete these texts, and while you’re at it, my number too. While you’re at it, delete this whole day, especially the ball in my face and the angel talk. Terrible, terrible day to have to think of. I—
PP: I’ll be there.
I stared at the three-word response like it was a new species of dinosaur that I had just discovered. He’d be there. He was accepting the invite. He was coming.
FP: Okay.
Tucking my cell under my pillow, I stared at my old One Direction poster on the wall, left over from when I was a teenager. “It’s your fault, fuckers,” I said maliciously to their smiling faces. “You and those accents that I had my first lady wank to.” I leaned up and smacked Harry Styles on his perfect hair. “You ruined me. Broke me! I’m Pavlov’s dog with all the English shit.” My head throbbed at my rather psychotic outburst. Lying back in my bed, I closed my eyes.
Blue eyes.
Heart-stopping smile.
Exceptionally.
Chapter Twelve
I tried to catch my breath, Maître’s fingers skirting up and down my spine as I lay across his chest. Every time I came here, he showed me more and more pleasure. The ropes that tied my wrists and ankles to the bed were still intact after tonight’s debauched offerings.
“I can’t move,” I whispered, each fiber of my tender muscles torn, just like the white lace panties hanging from a post on the bed. They oddly looked like a flag of surrender.
“That is the point, mon petit chaton.” I looked up at Maître and saw the mask move upwards, and I knew he was smiling underneath. He rolled me over onto my back, my arms and legs stretched at the head and foot of the bed. Maître turned me over and kneeled between my open legs. His hand rubbed over my behind. He moved it away before swatting my ass with one firm, hard slap.
“Mm…” I moaned at the delicious sting. I pressed my head into the mattress, smiling as he rained four more highly addictive spanks onto me. When I could barely take any more, he flipped me to my back, once again laying my head on his chest. I cherished these moments. And over the past few visits, he had begun to talk to me. Not only orders and commands, but actual conversation. It only made me crave him more, if that was even possible.
Maître ran his hand down my body and cupped my still-tender pussy. He would always touch me, caress me, keeping me eternally on the edge of pleasure. He removed his hand from between my legs, and I breathed in his mahogany and tobacco scent. His hands ran through my hair, and I was content to just lie there on his chest with him stroking me.
“Why the club?” I asked sleepily.
“Are you feeling curious tonight, ma chérie? I could put that curiosity to good use.”
“Always. But I was just wondering how one goes about starting a sex club.” I stared at the expertly tied ropes on my wrists.
“You’re thinking of starting one?” The quarter of his lips that was exposed under the mask pursed. I liked him this way. After sex, when he began to talk to me. It was just as exciting to me as the pleasure. Some nights I craved it more. As the weeks had rolled on, I had relaxed around him. I spoke more. He got to see my personality more. And best yet, I saw flickers of his.
I rolled my eyes. “No. Just saying that I found it almost impossible to start a book club at my school, never mind an entire promiscuous empire for the sexually curious.”
“A book club?”
“Not just any book club, Maître Auguste. A banned book club.” I smirked at the sound of Maître laughing under this breath.
“Of course, mon petit chaton could not just do something normal, she must take it to higher heights.”
“And higher heights it was. Want to hear what book I was planning on starting with?”
“I’m all ears.”
“Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
“How erotically apt,” Maître said.
“I see your point there.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’ve always had a propensity for the racier side of life and just didn’t realize it.”
“And how old were you when you started this banned club? Sixteen, seventeen?”
“Twelve.” The deep, throaty laugh that spilled from Maître’s throat made me a puddle on the bed. “Have you read that book? It’s hot! A sex-starved upper-class woman having an affair with a lower-class gamekeeper.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“It is.” Maître leaned down and kissed the side of my neck. My eyes rolled at the feel. “We were talking about the club,” I said breathlessly, wanting to know about him.
“You were talking about the club, ma chérie,” Maître Auguste said, his lips leaving my neck.
Maître was quiet for so long I thought I’d pushed too far. “You want answers, you will earn them,” he said. Maître rolled off the bed and came back to me with a bag of what looked like wooden clothespins. I frowned in confusion.
Maître took a clothespin in his hand and ran it up and down my sternum. “These are not for domestic purposes.” He lowered one toward my breast.
I cried out, feeling the sting from the clothespin travel straight to my clit.
Maître flicked the clothespin attached to my nipple, and my body jerked at the short burst of pain, which made my skin heat. As if to soothe the second of pain he’d inflicted, he swiped his tongue over my clothespin-free nipple, and I moaned at the feel of his hot tongue swirling around my flesh.
“You’ve been suppressed?” I asked, sadness fueling my words. “You don’t enjoy your life outside of these walls?”
I couldn’t imagine him being anything other than larger than life. He didn’t answer with words. Instead Maître pinned a clothespin on my other nipple. I hissed in a breath when he flicked them both back and forth. I yanked on the ropes around my wrists, gritting my teeth against the rising pressure between my legs.
Maître crawled over me, silver eyes hovering right over my veiled face. “Do I like my life? Not always. It is not bad. Yet I am not so free. But as of late, it has improved.”
“How?” I whispered.
“He shook his head and reached into the small bag on the end of the bed. He pulled out another pin, but this one was all metal. Inching up my restrained legs, he stopped at the apex of my thighs. He held the pin in the air, making sure I’d seen it, then slowly clamped it on my clit.
My eyes rolled back in my head at the sudden, maddening pressure it brought. Addictive pressure. Mind-blowing pressure. Maître’s hands roved over my thighs, the tensing of my muscles causing the pins on my nipples and clit to sway back and forth, biting me with delicious pain.
“How has my life improved, you ask?”
“Yes, Maître,” I whispered, biting my lip, trying to focus on the question at hand when my body was begging for release.
“A siren,” he said, and I felt my heart almost stutter to a halt. “She came along, lured me in and woke me from mundanity.” His words crashed over me like the warm rays of the sun. Before I could say anything in response, he said, “Only a few questions more.”
“What don’t you like, your job or your home life?” I asked, trying to sway the conversation back to safe territory. I couldn’t let my heart be involved in this. I couldn’t like him like this. I had to keep it in this chambre only.
Maître reached into his bag, and ran a long, thin chain through his fingers. I stared at the chain, wondering what he would be doing with that. In time to Andrea Bocelli’s voice singing through the speakers about dreams, he wrapped the chain around the pins on my nipples and clit until it formed a perfect triangle. The chain pulled on the pins. I felt shivers race like dominoes over my skin, addictive pressure building inside me.
“Some of us are not free to live as we choose,” he said. “Some of us are bound by things out of our control. Bound to duties by blood.”
“You have to submit to someone else,” I realized, the pieces of Maître’s mysterious puzzle slotting together. “That’s why you need this control.” Maître reached into his bag again and pulled out a long, sleek black vibrator. I jumped when he turned it on and the buzzing sound filled the room.
Maître placed the vibrator against the clothespin on my clit. The second it pressed against the metal, I screamed, pulling on the ropes around my wrists. The vibrations traveled like earthquake tremors around the pins on my nipples and clit, a torturous kind of hell that I never wanted to stop.
Maître’s eyes were glued on me as I thrashed against the restraints, needing to get away from the pins but, at the same time wanting to drown in the vibrations. Then Maître turned up the vibrator, faster and faster, until I couldn’t take anymore.
“Do not come,” he ordered and, as I had for weeks, I obeyed his command. My orgasm built and built, but it waited on a hellish precipice for his permission to release. The vibrations were torturous, relentlessly pushing me further and further until I thought I couldn’t bear it. But I did take more. I took so much that my neck ached from tension, and if he didn’t command me to come soon, I was sure I would fracture apart.
“Come,” he suddenly ordered, and I did, breaking apart at the seams. The ropes pulled so tight at my wrists and ankles I was sure I would bruise.
In the numbness that followed my orgasm, I felt Maître taking the pins off my nipples and clit. I throbbed everywhere, my body one rhythmic heartbeat.
When the ropes had been untied from my wrists and ankles, I collapsed on the bed, strong arms wrapping around me and cradling me to a warm body. I tried to catch my breath, but air evaded me.
“You did well,” Maître praised. The rush of pride those words brought helped me breathe. I ran my hand down his perfectly cut abdominals and down to the V that led underneath his silk pants.
Sighing, he laid a single kiss on my head. Maître never did this. He never kissed me above my neck. Not my head, and never my lips.
Not wanting the connection to end, I nuzzled into his warm skin, closing my eyes. Then I felt a hand thread into mine. It took me a moment to remember we were in NOX and I was with Maître Auguste. But his hand reminded me of Harry and how he’d never let go of me at the hospital.
Harry, whose hand felt just as lovely as this.
Exceptionally…
Chapter Thirteen
“Too slutty, or ravishing in red?” I asked Sage and Amelia as I walked out of my bedroom the next day in my knee-length scarlet body-con dress. Today was the day of “the big dinner.”
“You’re getting all fancy for dinner with your parents?” Amelia said, a shit-eating grin pulling on her mouth. “You normally rock up in yoga pants and a hoodie.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said and reached into my bra, pulled out my hand, and showed her the middle finger. “I got this for you.” Amelia laughed smugly into her coffee.
I dropped onto the couch beside her and Sage. Sage, being a good buddy and pal, popped a square of milk chocolate into my mouth.
“Better?” he asked.
“No,” I groaned and took hold of Sage’s hand. “He held it like this.” I demonstrated Harry’s hand in mine, showing the exact grip and tightness. “And he never let go.”
“We know, baby girl,” Sage said placatingly and kissed the back of my hand.
“But what does it mean?” I cried and jumped to my feet. I caught my reflection in the mirror over the TV and at least felt happy with my choice of attire. I wore my hair down and in loose waves. I didn’t particularly like my hair in one style over another, but Maître loved it down. Demanded it of me. So I assumed it was the better look on me.
And that was the annoying part of this whole thing. I actually cared what Harry thought of me. The man I’d sworn was my archnemesis. But here I was, waiting for him to collect me to go to my parents’ home for Sunday dinner. Not even in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d be here.
“Maybe just don’t overthink everything, Faith,” Amelia said. “Just go with the flow. If something happens, then it happens.” She smiled. “I, for one, am living for this. You know my favorite trope in romance is enemies to lovers.” Her eyes became lost to her fantasy. “It’s like you’re in a modern regency novel. He’s the swarthy viscount and you the pauper scullery maid.”
“Oh my god! I thought that as we ascended my parents’ steps after the hospital. How I felt like I was in a period drama or something.”
“Ascended the steps?” Sage said, lips pursed.
“Hush, heathen! I am still in scullery maid mode.” I sighed. “But my fantasy was cut short by the mention of labia.”
“By Harry Sinclair?” Amelia shrilled, choking on her coffee.
“Sadly no.” My cell hummed on the coffee table.
PP: I’m outside.
My heart started thudding out of rhythm, and I got to my feet. Just as I did, the buzzer to our apartment sounded.
“Chivalrous bastard, isn’t he?” Sage said, crestfallen. “You sure he doesn’t swing for my team? I could get used to an English gent romancing me.”
“Afraid not, my fair-weather friend. But he said he has a cousin.”
Sage stood and gripped my shoulders. “We need intel, Faith. We need to know if he is a cock in a hen house, or a cock in a h
ouse of cocks.”
I blew out a breath. “That was a lot of cock talk, Sage. Even for me.”
Sage slapped me on my ass. “Get him, baby girl.”
Waving to my friends, I caught the elevator to the ground floor, and as I opened the door, I saw Harry Sinclair leaning against the stone handrail on the steps, looking out onto the busy street. One hand was in his pocket, and the other held a bouquet of red roses. He looked like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Wait. Would that make me—
Suddenly, too busy not paying attention, I tripped over the entryway and plummeted toward the ground, just in time for Harry to see, and thus dive forward and catch me in his arms.
“I’m not a prostitute!” I shouted as I crashed into his chest. My hand found purchase on his blazer pocket and I heard a loud rip.
“Good to know,” Harry said dryly and righted me where I stood. “I would dread to think of the calamity you would cause to paying customers.”
“Oh shit,” I said seeing that, in my fall, I had also decapitated the roses.
Harry followed my gaze, first to his pocket, then to his roses. “Miss Parisi, you appear to have deflowered me.”
My mouth fell open at Harry’s unexpected dirty joke. Sidling dramatically to his side, I pressed against his chest, idly noticing his pupils dilating at the contact. “Deflowering, Viscount Sinclair? How terribly naughty of you,” I said, imitating his accent.
Lowering his head to mine, making me lose my breath, he said, “You must be rubbing off on me.”
Seeing this as too good an opportunity, I said, “Oh, Mr. Sinclair, I can most certainly rub off on—”
“And we’re done,” Harry said, cutting me off, and stepped away from me. But he was smiling. That friggin’ wide, stunning smile he’d shown me at the hospital and the one that was about to make me hit the ground again with the impact it had on my heart. “You’re incorrigible.”
“So you keep saying. But you teed that one up for me. I had no choice but to take the hit.”
