The Cartographer (The Compass series Book 6)

by Tamsen Parker

  A momentary freakout hits me, because we were so close, he was so close. He was in danger and because of me… But I’ve got to shut it down, send it away. It’s fine now, we’re fine, and the only things that are going to befall him are the things I’m going to inflict.

  As I explore him with my hand, I turn the dial degree by degree until every time my finger alights on his burnished brown skin he makes a sound. This glottal “teh” that, oh my, makes me hard.

  It’s starting to be a struggle for him, the sensation walking the tightrope between pleasure and pain, and I want to whittle down these vague feelings until it’s a distilled sensation of oh my god, yes and oh my god, no all at once. I want him begging for more of everything I can give him. Until those feelings of agony and ecstasy are so closely intertwined he’ll always crave one with the other.

  I’ve turned it up, up, up, until each touch is rendering a choked gasp. Lifting my fingertips away to have the pleasure of setting them back down and making him surrender more of his reactions to me. There it is—the sweat rising on his skin, his shoulders heaving with effort and his muscles bunched with strain. So enchanting, my Hart.

  It’s times like now I’m struck by a deep seam of wanting. It doesn’t happen often, but when I’ve manipulated someone into a state of fervor, I want to know. I want to plead with them to explain it to me: how does this feel? What does it do to the chemicals and the electrical pathways in your brain? Suddenly, I’m furious and I want to demand it from him, insist I be allowed to have this experience for myself.

  I have to tamp the beast down because this is one he can’t satisfy. The one he can, though… I turn the dial still further, and finally it’s the most thrilling sound in the world. Possibly the strongest man I know yelping in pain and subjecting himself to my every whim. I’m a lucky bastard, and I should be thankful for it. Take advantage of it. Express my gratitude for him.

  If only I could wrap my hand around his throat and let him feel the literal power pulsing through me reach its dominating tendrils into his body. But it’s not safe, so I won’t. Don’t think the temptation isn’t calling to me from the depths, though. I squash it with control and touch him where it’s safe. Make him feel me and the strength of my power—not just over him, but myself as well.

  One last twist of the dial, and I clamp my hand over his biceps. God forgive me for the heady rush I get as he’s driven to his knees, cursing and shouting as he doubles over and puts his hands, curled into fists, on the ground, knuckles grinding into the wood of the floor.

  He pants and screams, bangs his clenched hand on the floor, and yes, cries. I fling the wand, attachment and all, to the floor. It’s not going to hurt anything there, but what I’m going to do…

  I take the opportunity to unbuckle and unzip my pants, and it’s a quick few strokes before I’m coming over the broad plane of his heaving back. I let him know with an inarticulate groan how much he’s turned me on. That’s when he chokes out, “Thank you, thank you. Fuck, sir. Thank you.”

  Dropping to my knees behind Hart, I lay my chest against his back, feeling the thick strands of my release being pressed into my shirt, making us a sticky, sweaty mess. I reach around to his cock, and with a similar scant number of strokes, he blows his load, his release spurting out of him until the force lessens and the lusciously viscous fluid is dripping over my hand and onto the floor.

  “That’s better,” I murmur into his back while I hold him tight to me, my fingertips raking his abs because too soft a touch would be alarming. I’ll give it to you as hard as you need, Hart. I swear.

  *

  Allie’s head is resting on my stomach, one of his large hands draped over my thigh. His breathing is deep and even as I stroke his head. Such a foreign sensation still, the prickles under my fingertips. That’s one thing I like about women: their hair. I could pet a person for days. I should check in with India, see how she’s doing, when I can see her again.

  As I start to compose my mental to-do list, Allie shifts ever so slightly. “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said something. Right before…”

  Right before he ran away.

  “Right before I forced you to leave?”

  A sigh, his breath a quick burst of warmth toward my cock. “Yes.”

  “I said a lot of things.”

  “Yeah, but there was one in particular that stood out.”

  I marshal my breath and try to steady my heartbeat. I was hoping he hadn’t noticed.

  “And?”

  “You said they literally couldn’t hurt you. I thought it was a weird thing to say.”

  “What makes you think I wasn’t just being my typical egotistical self?”

  He shrugs, muttering, “You are an arrogant son of a bitch.”

  I take his earlobe between my fingers and twist until he gasps. Not nearly as hard as I’d wrenched the man’s earlier, because this is an affectionate admonishment. “I’ve told you how I feel about people disparaging my mother.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  His apologies are things of beauty. The man does genuine contrition very well. I let go, and he sits up, curling his legs to the side. When he’s settled himself, his childish posture at odds with his unbearably adult body, his brows draw together and his eyes narrow.

  “You’re precise with your language. I’ve watched you pause for almost a minute while you find the right word because you don’t want to say the wrong one out loud. Your brain’s like a live-action thesaurus. You definitely don’t say literally when you mean figuratively.”

  One fucking word. Why would my mouth have chosen to say that one fucking word? Literally. Because he’s right. Allie pays almost as much attention as I do, and he would know. It’s possible I’ve lectured more than one person about the precision of language, and should they use literally to mean figuratively in my presence, the price would be quite high.

  I can practically see the thoughts bouncing around inside his head while he tries to figure this out. There are people I’m willing to fib shamelessly to, things I readily lie about, but I won’t lie to him, not about this. I don’t want to widen the circle, but I don’t particularly feel as though I have a choice. I could ask him to leave and never see him again, but something inside me wilts at the idea. There are a lot of people I care for, fewer of whom I care for deeply, and an even shorter list of people I would concede the status “loved” to.

  Allie has somehow worked his way quite quickly from being an acquaintance to someone I not only care quite deeply for, but who I genuinely enjoy. The idea of telling him to walk away and never seeing him again doesn’t sit well with me, not at all. So I smile, a wry reluctant thing that curls the corner of my lips.

  “Can you keep a secret, Hart? Because I’m very good with secrets.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

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  He nods, and I briefly consider giving him some bullshit answer. I could tell him I was lying—they would have hurt me very badly, I would have felt each and every blow, it would have been agony. I could tell him I had lied to get him to go because I would have. But I didn’t have to.

  It’s comical we’re having this conversation while we’re both naked. I could draw the sheet up to cover myself, but I’ve never been terribly modest. Physical nudity is nothing compared to the raw vulnerability I’m about to visit upon myself.

  “Have you ever heard of a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain?”

  He blinks, parsing the words before nodding slowly. “Yeah.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “Yeah. It’s when you can’t feel—”

  His eyes get wide, wider than I’ve ever seen them, and I hold back the sigh that’s dying to escape. Wait, just wait.

  “You’re trying to tell me you don’t feel pain?”

  His words are doubtful, and the narrowed eyes and cock of his head echo the sentiment. Yes, I know it sounds like science fiction or like some madcap government experimen
t gone horribly awry or like a plot point of a middling police procedural. It’s likely all those things, but it also happens to be my life.

  “I don’t feel physical pain, no. And no, I won’t demonstrate.”

  His complexion takes on a greyish cast. I’m thankful for it. “People ask you to do that?”

  “When I was a kid. Before I learned to keep it to myself.”

  And I had. Slicing my arm open with a proffered pocket knife. Taking a swing of a bat directly to the gut. I’d been perfectly willing to let a kid slam my fingers in a door, but a teacher had realized what was about to happen and stopped it.

  “Who knows?”

  “My mother, obviously. My doctors. Matthew.” My grandparents and my father had too, but they’re gone now. It’s possible some members of my father’s family might know, but I’ve never spent much time with them and never once after my father died. Pretty sure that was my grandparents’ doing.

  “Does India know?”

  “Yes, although I honestly think she forgets sometimes.” I smile and shake my head, recalling how she’d kicked me under the table the last time I saw her. Matthew had scolded me for the bruise. “Do you want to talk about India instead of the very private information I’ve shared with you?”

  His eyes have narrowed, brows creased, and he’s staring into space as if he’ll find the answers there. He won’t. I’ve looked. “No, I’m…I’m trying to get my head around it, you know? It’s hard to imagine what that would be like.”

  “I understand.”

  It’s precisely like me trying to imagine how pain feels. I can’t. I have no frame of reference.

  “But you’re a sadist.”

  “I suppose.”

  “How can you enjoy causing people pain if you have no idea what it feels like?”

  A question I’m not thrilled to answer, but it’s better than him vaulting out of my bed and calling me a freak, so I’ll take what I’ve been offered. A chance to explain.

  “It fascinates me. Always has. I understood from an early age I had best learn how to fake it convincingly. To do that, I had to watch people very, very closely. Something that was an instinct for everyone else is a learned response for me. Something as simple as saying ‘ouch’ when I stub my toe took I don’t know how many hours of practice. The timing, the pitch of my voice, what my face was supposed to look like—all of that I had to learn.”

  My most vivid memories of my father are of him pointing out people in pain. He taught me how to watch people, to record endless details and use them to my advantage. To move in a world I don’t belong in.

  I took in all that information, filed it away. Practiced endlessly in front of a mirror and tried to figure out what the scale was. Papercuts and stubbed toes were the hardest to learn. They don’t look like they should hurt so much, given how minor the injury, but those are what get people cussing and hissing in pain.

  “But you like to hurt people?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  I’d like to turn it back on him, ask him why he enjoys being hurt, but I know what he’ll say. It’s what most of the masochists I know tell me: I don’t know. I’ve always been this way. It feels good. It turns me on.

  I could say the same. I’d like to think if my parents’ genes hadn’t combined in this particularly freakish way, I’d still enjoy it. It’s not just that, though. It’s difficult to untangle the threads, but I’ve tried.

  “Some of it’s the same as you. I enjoy it. But I suspect some of my motives are more…sinister.”

  “You don’t have a sinister bone in your body.” His scoff pulls up the corner of my mouth in a skeptical smirk.

  “Says the man I had in so much agony you were begging me to stop?”

  “Not the same. You’re not malicious.”

  Oh, my darling Allie.

  “No? What if I told you I fantasize about beating people to death? That there is the thinnest thread that keeps me from violence at any minute? That I take only men as play partners not just because I prefer them for sex, but because their bodies can take more abuse? There’s an animal inside me, Hart, and it should scare you. Because it sure scares the living hell out of me.”

  He studies me, his eyes so dark in the dim light I can barely tell the irises from the pupils. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “That’s the only answer you’re going to get.”

  He stares at me, unblinking. If he thinks he’s going to intimidate me into answering, he’s wrong. His jaw tenses, the fine muscles flexing, his broad chest rising and falling too far for normal breaths. Frustration pours off him.

  “Could you, for once, tell me you want me?”

  “I tell you that all the time.”

  “Yeah, you want me for sex. You want to hurt me. Control me.”

  I swallow the “everything” that wants to push out of my mouth, and instead I let that cold, indifferent part of me show. I don’t like that he’s rendered me so vulnerable, and though I should be seeking his affection and sympathy—because that will make him like me, he won’t hurt me if he likes me—I can’t do it. “What else is there?”

  “You feel affection for people. I know you do.”

  “I’m quite fond of you. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “No.”

  I expect him to climb out of my bed, pull his clothes onto that beautiful body of his, but he sits there, his gaze unwavering. How has he not left yet?

  “How’d you get so good at this? If you don’t know what it feels like?”

  My eyebrow tugs up, and I smile. “You think I’m good at this?”

  “You know you are, you narcissistic bastard.”

  True on both counts, I suppose. He should try walking around effectively bulletproof and see if that doesn’t give him a bit of a swelled head. I should scold him for his impudence, but we’re not playing right now. He can, and should, ask me whatever he likes, however sick it makes me.

  “I think that’s precisely what makes me so good. I can’t rely on how I would feel. I have to pay attention to how my partner is actually feeling. That’s the only information I get.”

  I gather up the scraps like a magpie. A starving, bewildered, wrathful bird.

  “How’d you end up doing this, anyway? It’s not like it’s a major in college or something that would come up during career day or some shit.”

  It surprises me that he’s taking us down this path instead of steering me back to more prying questions about my-so-called “condition.” Makes me grit my teeth when anyone refers to it that way. If I have to deal with this thing that makes me extraordinary, then let it make me exceptional instead of afflicted. The big cat’s out of the bag now, so may as well let the kittens follow. “Well, it was either this or be Batman.”

  I’d given that a try while I was in high school. I was angry, so goddamn angry for being different, for being separate, for not being allowed to confide in anyone other than my mother for fear it might literally get me killed. My mother, god love her, was trying to keep me safe. Had moved to Philadelphia after I was old enough to know better than to tell anyone so I could have a normal life. Well, as normal as life gets for the inexcusably wealthy.

  I missed my father. And because I was an idiot—okay, teenager, but honestly, same difference—I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t talk about it. No, instead I got it into my thick skull to devote my days to making a dead man proud. So I played vigilante around 13th Street in case some idiots wanted to prey on the less-than-sober leaving the gay clubs.

  Hadn’t been half-bad at it, really, though it’d almost killed my mother. Coming home looking like I did—bruised and bloody and so keyed up she must’ve thought I was on some crazy good street drugs—would’ve scared any parent shitless, never mind mine, who didn’t have the same tools at her disposal to make me knock that shit off. Pain is an excellent deterrent, and I wa
s completely undeterred. How do you bargain with a kid like that?

  That was how I’d met Brandy. He’s the one who’d made all the difference. In all probability, I would’ve gotten myself killed eventually.

  Allie’s teasing voice reminds me of what we’d been talking about. “Seems to me most of your clients already think you are Batman. Also, you do kind of look like a Bruce.”

  I shoot him a withering glare to cover up the bloom of pleasure that Hart thinks I’m good at my job, and he grins back. “At any rate, yes, that’s how I ended up doing this. Prep school by day, kink by night. I was lucky I looked older than I was and that I had a friend who would vouch for me.”

  Friend is perhaps a strange word for my relationship with Brandy, but the closest to what Allie would understand.

  One night when I’d been playing paladin, I’d happened upon some assholes who were roughing up a skinny kid in an alley. Naturally, I went all early Steve Rogers on the guys and earned myself a few broken ribs and a quality shiner before it got broken up by a couple of cops. Despite my injuries, I managed to give them the slip and ignored their threats to shoot, because what the fuck did I care? Fucking shoot me.

  The next night I was at it again, and one of the cops managed to run me down, tackle me. After he’d cuffed me and dragged me up to standing, he…stared. Dark eyes and hair I could tell was red even in the glow of the streetlights, he looked me up and down and not in the way I’d gotten used to men looking at me in this neighborhood.

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

  Of course my bluster didn’t make him blink, and the fucker still wouldn’t stop staring at me. “You grow up in Philly, kid?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Your dad a cop?”

  “None of your business.”

  “If you want to get out of here without a record, it fucking is. Answer my question.”