The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Jennifer Willows

  That was the reasoning she used to explain away her needy nature, but she knew then truth. It stared her in the face when they finished. Jonah didn’t look like the man she had gotten to know. He was someone else in these moments, and she was caught in the web of a stranger. His face was stern, and his nostrils flared as he carried her away from the scene of their mutual mental unveiling.

  Her eyes focused, and she watched as a single drop of sweat ran down the side of his face. The bead of fluid teased her to taste.

  Jonah bathed her along with a rubdown with fragrant massage oil. But when he walked away that night she was grateful to be left alone. She had admitted more than she wanted to already, and while she didn’t want to be enveloped in her own thoughts, it was better to be stuck within her own mind than to be lost looking at him.

  * * * *

  As time passed she kept herself busy with work as much as possible. The time was spent lost within development of complex combat scenarios and her attempts to understand the finer points of submission. The mornings were still spent training the home team members some new tricks. The afternoons were for her to learn more about her role, and Jonah gave her a generous gift of an e-reader. The device was preloaded with a dozen novels that he suggested she peruse to get herself in the mind state of a sexual slave.

  There was the Story of O, which took her awhile to warm up to. Then she read the Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, which she thought was an interesting take on the classic fairy tale, but she was not too fond of the extreme nature of the novel, considering the reason she read the stories in the first place.

  After that, she was ready for something a bit lighter in tone, and she chose to read a modern story of lust, love, and bondage called Bound by Accident. There were too many parallels to her current situation for her not to fathom why he downloaded that particular story, but she found that she enjoyed the light tone and chemistry the couple exuded in waves throughout the tale anyway.

  Although for her personally, she had the hardest time handling the training on week four. The purpose of the week was to show how desire could be derived from physical punishment, or as she jokingly dubbed it, Beat Me 101. The first day was devoted entirely to spanking. Jonah had placed her over his lap and rubbed each buttock until she was warm and content. Then he swatted her, every strike adding to the sensations, until she was trapped in layer after layer of pleasure chasers spiked with shots of pain.

  The next day he introduced his first implement, and she had her very first flogging. It was a sensual experience that she never imagined would feel so good. Jonah was as always gentle with his initiation. He let her handle the item before he used it on her, and she tested it with quick flicks of her wrist, watched the way the fronds rippled before she made contact with her own leg.

  It took long moments before she noticed the strength that actually framed each blow that spiked her flesh. Every strike made onto her skin increased in intensity. The change occurred over degrees so minute that it wasn’t until he was done that she realized how heavy the strikes actually were at the end.

  She was lucky. She knew Jonah could have hurt her if her wished, but he was even gentler with her punishments than he was with her pleasure.

  But the night she considered as the highlight of the week was the final night in her corporal punishment training. She learned the art of caning. The cane Jonah showed her on Saturday night was small, much thinner than she expected. It was made from bamboo, but she knew she was about to be in a world of hurt from the whiplike flexibility of the item when she swung outward with it.

  She tested the cane as usual, popped her wrists, and allowed the item to smack her upper thigh as a test. Jaden knew she could endure being hit with the item, but she doubted there would be anything for her to like about it, let alone find any pleasure in. But Jonah was wonderful at what he did, and not for the first time the thought struck her that he was made for just this type of sex. There was nothing greedy or cruel when he wielded authority over her, and in fact, he only fed her desire with his deliberation and patience.

  Before he would touch her with the cane he prepared her with a massage that had her mind clouded. When he was done with the shiatsu caresses, he restrained her, facing the wall of the third bedroom using a set of chains draped from a mount in the ceiling.

  “Calm down, Jaden.” She shook slightly and took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just…”

  “That’s okay Jaden, but you know I would never hurt you. You trust me that much, right?” She did. Nothing he had done to her these last weeks had felt degrading or painful. In fact, the orgasms she had were the better than she ever imagined, and she well knew what it felt like to scream herself hoarse from pleasure.

  “Yes, Master, I trust you.” It was in that moment the she was struck with the object, a swift merciless cut across her buttocks. The pain of the assault was numbing for a moment, but when he followed up with a series of smacks above and below the stinging welt, she felt the pain transform. The swelling hurt went somewhere else, and somehow the sensation was akin to ice over her flesh. The skin where he first smacked her was sore and hot, but the rapped series of blows there after seemed to cool her. The sensations were so unique she had no idea how to even categorize it.

  “How does that feel? Good?” he asked her, but she felt foggy. It was as if she left her body behind for just a moment then came crashing back without a free fall first. This time when she shook it was from the beginnings of orgasmic pleasure, and she couldn’t stop herself.

  His voice was harsher than the spark of pleasure burning at her spine. “You want to come, Jaden?”

  “Yes, please!” She cried the words out with no hesitation.

  “Please what?” Jonah stopped, and she was left to quake in the steamy air surrounding her.

  “Master!” she said, also with no hesitance, and he resumed. The subsequent strokes bit her deeper, and he rapped the thin wand up her back. Every blow was evenly spaced and perfectly covered every inch from hip to shoulder like a warm sweater in the winter. When he reached her nape, her head bowed, and she panted for the too-thin air that she couldn’t seem to get enough of.

  “You may come now, Jaden.” He used the tip of the cane with unmistakable accuracy as he slid the bamboo down her spine in one slow caress that rasped her nerves past raw. Jonah wrapped his arm around her. The knowing fingers rubbed over her soft sex and burrowed quickly within her pussy. The scrape of cane was all she needed to send her feet-first into the universe. But when his fingers plumbed her cunt, there was nothing on earth that she could do to hold back her screams.

  “Ahhhh—” The ability to even grunt was stolen from her as she crash landed back into the here and now.

  The two digits stole her ability to reason, and then when his thumb pressed down onto her clit, she was sent back into space with no landing gear. A dam in her lower half broke, and her legs no longer worked.

  When she came to and took stock of herself, she was a mess. Jonah had released her sagging frame from the manacles. Jaden was coated in heavy sweat, and her legs dripped as if she had wet herself. He took the time to dab at her with a plush towel, and when she was mostly dry, he gave her yet another bath.

  The weeks remaining before their op had come to a close, much faster than she had thought possible. She had endured many lessons and learned more about herself than she thought possible. Jonah had introduced her to a lifestyle that she had never imagined loving or liking. She was always the one in control of her life, and the crash course she had been thrown into was more than education. It was a more than mere knowledge, and the beauty of being dominated was how open she felt.

  She was open to herself, to Jonah, to life. She was nose wide open in the midst of a dive-bomb to earth with no parachute and self-actualization. And if she was honest with herself, she loved being controlled, even if she would never tell Jonah as much. But after the weeks of toys and titillation, she wasn’t sure if plain vani
lla was her favorite flavor anymore. Vanilla was just fine for women without issues, but she had more baggage than Louis Vuitton.

  The days turned into nights, all a mesh of lust and fire, longing, desire, and cravings. So it was little surprise that when Jaden looked up from her required reading there was only one week left to go, and she still wasn’t sure about the feasibility of their recon at the auction. Not that the plan for the duration of the op was unsound, but she was sure that something was going to go wrong. It always did. The only question was what would the problem be?

  But she chalked her nerves up to the fact that she wasn’t sure how she was going to go back to her life when this was over. Really, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. There was only one reason to go back, and it wasn’t the bakery. Kris was the only roots she had to real life, and she couldn’t abandon the woman that she helped foster into adulthood. Otherwise, she would have run and started over when this was done for sure.

  Somewhere that she could have an endless spree of umbrella drinks and sunshine with no distractions. A place without a man so delectable that she forgot everything she had worked so hard for these last years. A place where she could just be a woman without all of the baggage she’d carried for so many years. She needed a place where she could get her mind right instead of dealing with the insufferable strain of near insanity from too many emotions.

  But for now, all she could do was the same thing she had done for too many years. Work, and when that didn’t help, work harder. But this time there was no place she could hide from the fact that she was falling for this man. There was no place she could shelter her heart inside, and after the years of duck and cover, she was a pro at creating pockets no man could sunder within herself even under torture. However, all of those places had been filled with Jonah, and she was unable to make another hole to withdraw to. She was incapable of crafting the sane spots, that sacrosanct space that no one else could touch within her. Not from him, and that was the part that gave her the most fear despite everything else.

  No matter what, she would protect Jonah’s back with her life, but she was even more terrified that he felt the same.

  By the time she was over the idea of her nervousness, she was disgruntled. Jaden had never felt this kind of fear, where she could make all of the difference between life and death. She had lived the fear of losing someone she loved, yet as an adult she knew there was nothing she could have done to save her mother or father. She was a woman with nothing to lose, as she had no real family left. The few members were extended family. She let everyone assume she was dead for too many years to go back now and expect open arms or any hospitality.

  The saying was wrong. One can’t always go back home.

  And until recently, she had no lover either. But now she was afraid that every heartbeat she had left was a time bomb ticking the inevitable end of her happiness. There was nothing she could do at this point except to be prepared, and her body was as always at the ready. But her mind was a different story.

  No amount of meditation could abate the feeling that this op was the last. She was prepared to die, but that was no surprise as she had been ready since she was ten.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Prison Break from Hell

  A week later, Jaden knew and plotted for almost every facet of what she was about to walk into, but that didn’t make a difference to her nerves. Her palms sweated as if she faced her sensei all over again. She had never had another set of people depend on her this way before. Jaden knew she was directly responsible for the success or failure of this venture, and she had to get it right the first time around. If she fucked this up, dozens more women would be reduced to slaves, and several people would get away with crimes beyond nature. Human beings were not created to be enslaved, and the idea that she could fuck up everything weighed heavily on her. There was nothing she could do, save her best.

  The final day was spent in meditation on the back sparring grounds, and she rooted herself into the packed earth. One balance chi after another, the poses melded into a rote dance she had done too many times before, though the physical operation never mattered so much on any of the other occasions. She let her mind melt into another frame of reference, used her mind’s eye to view her success, and let every happenstance possibility from the variables in the plan play through her thoughts. She saw many ways that the op could fail, but there were just as many ways to emerge victorious.

  She could feel Jonah, when the sun was at its zenith, approach the grounds with a meal to offer her. Jaden never acknowledged his unspoken request to dine on the food he’d brought her, and she smelled him when he brought the platter along with the absence of the scent when he left. She had lost all reference of time, but it must have been hours, as when he came back to her, the sun was lower in the sky. He sat with her, and her senses told her that he mirrored her lotus pose. He didn’t speak, and she did the same. His silence was the sole thing she needed at that moment, and she was grateful that he was able to understand her enough that he saw her desire for quiet.

  When the sun began to descend and give way to evening, she opened her eyes for the first time and saw Jonah’s face. He was beautiful to her. The leftover sun glinted across his exposed skin. He was covered only from the waist down with a pair of gi pants and allowed her arrested vision the opportunity to appreciate the sight. A bronze gleam roved his pectorals and divided her attention.

  They made quick, hurried love against the beaten earth before it was time to get prepared. Jaden let Jonah dress her before the event. The only part of her wardrobe left to her was her NuvaRing, a birth control device she needed to insert and position at the wall of her cervix. The benefit to the device was the fact that she could wear it up to a week, so it wasn’t time sensitive, and she didn’t have to use it beyond the seven days. There was no guarantee that they could be able to feasibly explain away the use of condoms, and Jaden chose this option just to be on the safe side during the execution of the op.

  He seemed somber, and she knew he was worried. Not for himself, but for her. She appreciated the concern, but they couldn’t let emotions get in the way. There was a job to be done, and she needed him to do it, even if it meant she got hurt a bit. She could handle that. But what she couldn’t deal with was the idea of being so close to what they required to succeed and not getting it in the end. She didn’t sign up to be sent on a wild goose chase and end up with only a mouthful of feathers for her hard work.

  The ride to the helicopter was made in silence. One wrong move could spell the death knell for the mission at hand, and Jaden knew it. Even with their earlier pep talk, lovemaking, and Jonah’s hand resting on her thigh the entire ride, major butterflies laid larvae in her belly. Nothing would go wrong, she thought. This was perfectly planned to the tee. This meeting was for medium-sized fish gathering in an even bigger pond, and if they played their roles to the hilt, they could get into a better auction with bigger fish. It was all a game of mathematics, and Jaden was ready to get the whole thing over with.

  She had never been one to be part of a team, and now she had to trust people to watch her back. And she had to be worth their trust in return that she would take care of them if it was called for.

  The first half of the ride would be on a helicopter that would pick them up from the privacy of the beach. From there they would be lowered to a boat and dock just outside of the national park reserve. The extra precautions were made due to the fact their stolen aliases were American. They couldn’t fly in legitimately without a bunch of red flags popping up, unlike the arrivals of the other purchasers, who would debark at Santiago de Cuba, followed by a short helicopter ride to the edges of the island.

  Meanwhile, because the of the strained relationship between the United States and their destination, HIT-U had to have conclusive proof that illegal activities including American citizens had even taken place before any branch of the US government would touch the topic or soil with a ten-foot pole.

  The crime w
ouldn’t be in the actual auction, as the women could have given consent to a mock sale, but they needed proof of the kidnappings, brutality, or any other charge that could be rustled up based on what they found tonight. The prosecution would be a nightmare of red tape, as the abducted women were likely to be from numerous countries, and each nation would want the rights to prosecute on their own soil. But that wasn’t for her to worry about. What she had to worry about was the here and now.

  She climbed down the lightweight metal ladder after Jonah reached the deck. He supported her exaggerated sway caused by the ridiculously expensive designer high-heels she wore to complete her whore-chic look. Jaden kept her head low, and when she was stationary, Jonah commanded her to remove her coat. She unbelted the trench-style jacket and folded it carefully before she waited for her Master’s directive. He gave her a nod to let her know it was okay to hand the folded garment to the huge, no-neck security guard who took the liberty of his position to dig through the pockets and wave over the fabric with a handheld.

  Jaden assumed No Neck was checking for bugs and weapons. But the only defense she had aside from her own two hands was a simple garrote, and even the thin wire in the bandeau top could be explained away with the construction of her garments. Anatta was a weapons genius with the construction of her shoes, but the plastic explosives and fuse were only good for small damage. But the wand or gate wouldn’t detect any of that she was sure. He used the device again over Jonah’s coat, and the briefcase filled with fifty thousand in specially marked euros.

  The money was carried to a counting machine where the funds were tallied before the hulking guard pulled out half of the bills.

  “For the house,” No Neck said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Whatever. Jaden dipped her head lower to stop him from seeing any change in her face. The security guard led them to a bedroom and left them there to await the trip to the island. She knew there were a few privately owned beaches the team had located, and she scouted for activity. But there was no way of knowing where the auction was held until they arrived. It would make a big difference as to when they could have backup, and Jaden had to consider that they would be on their own for now.