by Dark, Aubrey
“Sure,” I said. “What do you feel like?”
“Sushi. I already ordered.”
“Well, thanks for making all of my decisions so easy,” I said.
“Did you want something else?” Jake asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Sushi is good.”
My stomach growled with the force of a thousand lions.
“And anyway,” I said, looking down at my tummy. “I definitely should have eaten lunch. Although I don’t know, maybe this is a good way for me to diet.”
“What, getting so engrossed in your painting that you forget to eat lunch?”
“I’ll call it the Artist’s Diet,” I said. “I’ll make millions off of the website with affiliate sales. Paint the pounds away.”
Jake laughed.
“Don’t get too skinny,” he said, coming around to place his palms on my hips. He caressed me gently and his voice growled in my ear. “I like this too much.”
The doorbell rang, and I started back, stepping on Jake’s feet. I jumped off immediately and bumped my hip against the table.
“Ow,” I said.
“That must be the chef,” Jake said.
“The chef?”
Jake returned with a Japanese man in a chef’s hat and apron following him. The chef had a black suitcase in tow. I watched as he placed the suitcase on the kitchen counter and opened it up. A row of gleaming silver knifes unrolled from one side, and in the other was an ice-packed array of…
“Is that fish?” I asked, leaning closer. Jake sat on one of the kitchen stools next to me. From here we could see everything the chef did.
“Fresh,” the sushi chef said. “Caught this morning. You like tuna?”
“I love tuna.”
“Good.”
The chef made his way around the kitchen like it was his own, and I realized that this must not be the first time he’d come here. Jake poured out three glasses of something clear and steaming from a ceramic carafe. He pushed one of the glasses to me and another to the chef, who was busy setting up a pot full of rice to boil.
“Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass. The chef held his glass up in appreciation and drank. I did the same. Then I bent over, coughing.
“Oh my God!” I cried. The drink had seared my throat, but not because of the heat. I felt the alcohol hit my system after the first sip. “What is this?”
“Sake,” Jake said, smiling at me. “Have you never had any?”
“Wow,” I said. “Not like this.”
“Very good,” the chef said, smiling broadly as he emptied his glass. Jake poured him another.
“It’s…uh… interesting,” I said. Not bad, but I would stick to rum and cokes in the future. This stuff was strong.
The chef quickly sliced up paper-thin strips of ginger into a small bowl and plated it next to some wasabi. With his knife, he sliced into the thick cut of tuna.
It was incredible to watch. The chef’s knife was as quick and precise as a surgeon’s, and he deftly sliced up a plate of tuna, serving it with the ginger and wasabi.
“Sashimi,” he said brusquely, and stirred the rice.
I sipped my sake and mimicked Jake as he picked up a piece of fish with his fingers and ate.
“This is delicious,” I said, my mouth around the sashimi. The fatty cut of tuna tasted like butter melting onto my tongue. It was light and fresh and perfect.
The chef kept working, and once he saw that I was interested, he began to narrate his steps to Jake and me.
“This is nori,” he said, holding out a dark green sheet.
“Oh man, I always just referred to it as that seaweed stuff,” I said. “Sorry. We don’t get much sushi in Iowa.”
The chef placed the seaweed sheet—sorry, the nori sheet—on top of a bamboo mat. He dipped his hands under the faucet.
“Cold water,” he explained. “It makes it easier to handle the rice.”
“Hmm,” I said, scrutinizing the way his hands moved as he worked. He spread the rice over the nori sheet, leaving part of the last edge uncovered. Then he took a large strip of tuna and laid it across the whole sheet.
“Some fresh cucumber as well,” he said. His chef’s knife moved like lightning over the cucumber, cutting it into nearly transparent tiny strips.
“Then,” he said, his fingers rolling the mat away from him, “you roll it up.”
He pressed down on top of the rolled up mat and then unrolled it. With his knife, he cut up the sushi roll like it was a carrot, producing a half dozen perfect pieces of sushi which he plated with two swoops of his knife.
“See?” he said. “Easy as pie.”
“Holy cow,” I cried. “That’s incredible! It looks like a piece of art.” The rolls were pink and white and green arced over the plate, and he garnished it with a few green sprigs and some pink fish eggs to top it off.
“Lacey, would you like to start a career as a sushi chef?” Jake teased.
“I’ll stick to making art art. I’m much better at eating sushi art,” I teased back, and reached for a roll.
Chapter Six
After dinner, Jake held out his hand.
“Where are we going?” I asked innocently.
“You know exactly where we’re going,” he said.
At once a flare of heat streaked through my body. The soft curve at the corner of his mouth made me ache to kiss him. But how could I, if that wasn’t what he wanted?
His fingers clasped mine and I followed obediently as he led me down the hallway. I was wearing a dress—one of his dresses, but I was barefoot, and the carpet rose between my toes as I walked next to him.
“You’ve been such a good girl, Lacey,” he said. “I’m going to give you a little reward. Would you like that?”
He opened the door to the room I’d woken up in. I walked in. After having been here before, it seemed strangely familiar. The mirror taking up the whole wall behind the bed. The chains leading from the bedposts. The art—
“Is this Kage?” I asked. I’d seen lettering on the side of one of the walls that I hadn’t noticed before. It reminded me of the painting in his art gallery, the one by the famous street artist. I stepped closer to the wall, drifting my fingers along the lines. “It looks like his stuff. Did you get him to come—”
“On the bed,” Jake ordered.
I turned around.
“Oh, so you can’t answer a simple question.”
“There are no questions in here,” he said blankly. “And you’ll be spanked for that one.”
“Really?” I said, pulling away from the wall. A thrill ran through me at the memory of his hand coming down on my ass.
“That’s another question,” Jake warned.
“Well, if I’m already going to be spanked, I might as well ask—”
Jake was across the room in a split second. He yanked me by the arm, sat on the bed, and pulled me off of my feet. All of a sudden I was bending over his lap. My feet scrabbled for purchase, but he had me completely off-balance.
“Ahh!” I cried. “I’m sorry, okay? Okay?”
He didn’t listen. Or if he did listen, he didn’t care. In the mirror I saw him pull up the hem of my dress roughly, exposing my bare ass. He raised his hand and then I didn’t see anything more. My eyes were closed.
His hand came down with a hard clap on my ass. I squealed, writhing involuntarily with the pain of the blow. Then again, again.
I grabbed with my hands but there was nothing to grab, nothing except his leg. I held on for dear life as his hand came down, sending sharp echoes through the room that bounced off of the mirror and came back to my ears in reverberations that thrilled me almost as much as the real thing. The sound filled my ears, and I moaned along with it.
After only a minute of spanking, a minute that felt like an hour, I became aware of a threading feeling between my thighs. He would spank me hard, then run his fingers between my legs, grazing my slit.
I was already wet. I didn’t know when it had happened, bu
t his fingers sliding over me spread my moisture over my folds, over my clit that was already pulsing with desire.
God, he could make me aroused so quickly. I didn’t know how, but the pain of the spanks sent equal shudders of pleasure through me, building the pressure inside. With every clap against my skin, explosions of red burst behind my eyelids and I cried out. I didn’t know if I was crying for him to stop or crying for him to spank me harder. By this point, I didn’t care.
His hand slid roughly between my thighs, kneading me with an ungentle touch. I squealed and grabbed again, tearing at the bedsheet hanging off of the side of the bed.
Jake tossed me onto the bed. I rolled out of his arms and landed on my hands and feet on the mattress. I was astonished at how strong he was, that he could pick me up like I was nothing. He stripped off his jacket and threw it onto the floor, then began to unbutton his shirt.
I squealed and tried to crawl away, but he was too fast. He grabbed my ankles with his hands and flipped me over bodily. I landed on the soft bed and clutched at the sheet as he dragged me to the edge.
“You’re making this terribly difficult,” he said. Without another word he plunged his tongue deep into me, his hands wrenching my thighs apart. I squealed as he thrust his tongue into me, bursts of pleasure exploding along my nerves. I couldn’t stop myself from raising my hips to meet him.
He sucked hard at my clit, then pulled away just as I was reaching release. His lips slid along my folds. Then sucked hard, then pulled away. It was impossible for me to know what was coming next, only that when I was on the edge of reaching pleasure, he didn’t give it to me.
I moaned and arched against the bed, needing him utterly.
“Please,” I moaned. “Please take me. Please—”
He jerked back his head and I cried out with need. I was hollow inside, desperately wanting him to fill me.
Instead, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me up, locking the handcuff around my wrist as he did so.
“Jake—”
I’d said his name before, but this time his eyes flashed with pain and I felt his hurt as though it were my own. How could a single word have so much power over him?
He said nothing as he grabbed my other hand and pulled it out, locking it in place. His hand pulled the chains, and I was jerked upright to my knees, my arms stretched out to the sides and slightly upward.
“Please, I won’t say it again,” I said. “I promise, I swear. I’ll swear on anything I won’t.”
I was babbling, needing to say anything to fill the silence. He couldn’t leave me like this, unfinished. He couldn’t. And yet, when he turned away, my words trailed off to nothing. I could see his hurt and it shamed me.
My heart sank as he turned away from me to the mirror. He looked up, and although his eyes saw me, they weren’t seeing me, and I wasn’t seeing him. Not really. We were both just reflections.
I panted, catching my breath, unwilling to move my gaze from his. I wanted him so badly, but I wanted more. I wanted to know why he was like this. I wanted to know him.
The real him.
Chapter Seven
“I’m sorry,” he said. His green eyes burned in the reflection of the dim light. His arms were tense at his sides, the muscles drawn tight against his skin.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
“I can’t… I don’t know how to explain.”
He stared at the mirror. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking ahead into his own reflection with an accusatory stare.
“Does this have to do with your family?” I asked softly. I wanted to know. I needed to know. And at the same time, I was scared to ask. Scared that he might not let me into his private life.
Scared that he would.
“What do you know about them?”
I shook my head slightly.
“Nothing. Lucas mentioned it. When we were at the restaurant. He said I should ask you about it.”
A long, dreadful pause followed.
“My family is dead,” he said.
“Dead?” I echoed the word in surprise. That was one thing I hadn’t expected. Maybe it was that I couldn’t imagine my own family dead, my mother and father, my brothers. To hear him say it so calmly made the thought even more frightening.
“It was a long time ago. I was a child.”
I waited for him to continue. He stared into the mirror, not looking at me, only looking at his own face. His expression turned to hatred.
“My name is Jake Carville Jr. My full name. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“No. After your dad?”
He nodded.
“My dad was the one who left me this fortune. He was a rich, abusive drunk who hated his employees. But he hated me more.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to continue his business. He worked as an insurance executive. Do you know how bad it was? All he talked about was his work. About how much money he could scrape out of people. How he could scare people into buying insurance they didn’t need. Life insurance, car insurance, home insurance. He trained his salesmen to bully and threaten customers until they bought more, more, more.”
He paused for a moment, his face turning red. He breathed slowly. He was standing so still that I almost couldn’t see his chest rising and falling.
“He beat me,” Jake said, and although his voice stayed calm I saw the corner of his eye twitch when he said it. “He beat me, and if he had enough to drink he’d beat my mom, too. One time my little brother was crying and he screamed at her to make it stop. She tried to shush him, but nothing worked, not even his pacifier. I remember he started to shake the baby—”
His voice broke, and I longed to go to him. Tears stung my eyes. I wanted to put my arms around him, to hold him, to tell him that it was alright. But I was tied to the bed and I couldn’t. Maybe he had planned it that way.
“She grabbed his arm to try to stop him and he swung at her. Not with his hand, either, but with a fist.”
Jake’s eyes glazed over. He was lost in his own world of memories. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want him to stop, although it hurt me to hear his pain. My chest clenched as he continued.
“And her nose broke with this awful crack—I remember thinking I had never seen so much blood before. She was screaming and he just kept hitting her and hitting her, and she had her arms around the baby and she was bleeding all over him.”
He released a shaky sigh.
“Afterwards he had his private doctor come and stitch her up. The doctor didn’t say anything. My father paid him well enough that he didn’t say anything. My mom lay in bed and cried. And I cleaned up my brother in the sink. I washed all of her blood off of him.”
Now I was crying, trying not to sob aloud, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Still, I listened to him remember his family.
“I’m telling you this so that you’ll understand… what I did. Or what I didn’t do, I guess. So that you’ll know why it happened the way it did.”
I waited, unable to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
“One night, after my mom had put me to bed, I snuck out to go get a late night snack. My dad had drunk enough that he’d passed out in his office. I don’t remember why, but I went by the hallway and saw smoke coming from under the door.”
“It was stupid, maybe, but I was curious. I was always a curious little kid. And I pushed the door open.”
Jake’s voice grew rasping. Like he was crying, but without the tears.
“And the whole room was on fire. He had passed out on his desk, and I could see the papers burning from his cigar, and the carpet had caught fire behind him where one of the papers had blown off. There was smoke everywhere.”
He bent his head down suddenly, shaking it from side to side. For a long minute he said nothing.
“What happened?”
It was the first question I’d asked. I wasn’t supposed to ask questions. But he turned and looked at me, and his eyes were hollo
w with pain, so hurt that he didn’t even care.
“I didn’t save him,” Jake said.
“Your dad?”
“No. My brother. I— I ran to my mother’s room but she wasn’t there, and I didn’t see my brother anywhere. I thought I heard her voice calling but I must have imagined it because I didn’t see her anywhere. I’d left the door to his office open and the smoke was billowing out of the door too fast and I couldn’t see anything. So I ran away. I ran down the stairs and let him die. I let them all die.”
My mouth dropped open. Jake looked up at me, and there were no tears on his face but his eyes were burning with hurt.
He turned back to the mirror and looked at himself, but I knew that he was looking at his dad.
“The firefighters found me in the stairwell, huddled in the corner. All I could say was that it was my fault, my fault. They took me away and put out the fire, but everything had burned to ash. My family. Everything.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“How old were you?”
“Four and a half.”
My face contorted in grief. Imagining Jake as a little boy running through the fire and smoke, finally fleeing… I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.
He breathed in and out again, the vapor of his breath misting the mirror.
“It was my fault they died,” he said. “I tried to save them but I couldn’t find her quick enough. I couldn’t see—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
Suddenly he slammed his fist into the mirror. It cracked into a spiderweb of fractures where his hand had hit it.
“They’re dead!” he yelled. His voice filled the room and when he turned on me there was a fury in his eyes that chilled me to the core. “Dead!”
My breaths hitched but I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything I could say.
Chapter Eight
For the next few days, Jake didn’t speak to me again about his family, and I didn’t bring it up.
He left me during the days to paint, and tied me up at night in the mirrored room. When he tied me up, I remembered not to call him Jake. His father’s name.
