by Jordan Bell
I froze. The fire in my hands extinguished and I suddenly understood exactly where this story was headed.
“I followed you out of curiosity. You went outside and I only had to listen for a second to recognize you were talking to Kat. She inspires us to be young and ridiculous, you know? You were smiling and relaxed and far, far from the Master I’d just watched laying out his lovely toys. You were out there for more than an hour talking to her in the middle of the night. By the time you came back to the party, it was more or less wrapping up. And I don’t think you even cared.”
Kelli paused then and absently tugged at her bottom lip while she worried over some troubling thought. It took her several long minutes before she continued.
“That’s when I knew you were just passing the time with Michelle. With any of us. How could we compete with a girl you’d abandon a house full of your closest, half-naked friends to just chat with? I knew that you didn’t care if Michelle was into the scene or not because you were just killing time until you could be with the person you actually cared about. It’s sort of twisted, really. Most of us pretend to be happy in our vanilla lives while we dream of spanking the hell out of our lovers, and here you were with the most creative pleasure at your fingertips, dreaming of spending your Sunday morning making breakfast with the girl next door.”
“Kat’s not…”
Lie.
“She’s not…but we’re not…”
Lie.
I growled, frustrated. “You don’t know anything about us. I don’t think about her that way.”
Kelli laughed. “Like hell you don’t. In the fifteen minutes you spent trussing up her fully clothed arms, you demonstrated more profound empathy with that girl than I’ve seen you experience with any other capable, beautiful sub before. I’m betting it was the only time you’d ever actually experienced true connection with your partner instead of just going through the pretty motions.”
The damn woman dropped her deference and crossed the deck to stand right in front of me, five foot nothing, and stared me right in the face.
“Look me in the eye, Josh, and tell me you didn’t go cosmic in that room tonight. Tell me you even noticed the rest of us existed.”
“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” I pointed at the wall of windows. “She was my friend. I cared about her and now we will never be able to go back to how things used to be. You’ve destroyed our friendship, even before I tied her up. Just by being in the same room together you unmade the last ten years of our lives. We’ll never be able to take that back.”
“Oh boo hoo.” She dismissed me and turned away. “You know how rare it is for any of us to find unconditional love and support in a committed, healthy relationship? That girl in there, the way she looked at you tonight? You only have to ask and she’d give you her heart and soul, the moon, the stars, and her whole universe. She’d take your collar and fall in love with you all over again every night. You get to have everything any of us ever wanted, so you get no sympathy from me.”
“Damn it, Kelli, I don’t want her collared!”
She jumped and my voice seemed to carry for miles and miles out over the lake. We both glanced guiltily towards the sleeping girl on the other side of the glass doors. Kat stirred but didn’t rouse. Her lips parted, still stung red from my earlier abuse, and I watched her chest rise and fall in slow, deep cadence. Her blanket had fallen slightly askew and I badly wanted to go in and tuck it back under her chin the way she liked it. I wanted to run my fingers through her blonde hair and inhale the scent of her skin. The scent I now feared might fade away.
“Josh…” she started, but I held up a hand to stop her.
“I don’t want this for her,” I said quietly. “I don’t want her here.”
“That ship, my darling, has sailed. She came to me. She wanted this adventure, just like we did once upon a time. And I think she’s smitten. She’s a rope girl. And lucky for her, you’re a rope boy.”
“You still think you did me a favor.” I pushed past her and headed for the sliding door. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be far away from this place and these people. I wanted to put distance between me and Kat so I could clear my head. “You broke my heart tonight and now I’m going to break hers and you think you did me a favor. You should have told me she was coming here. I should have been given the choice.”
“No…my god. Tell me you’re screwing with me.” Kelli followed me to the door, but stopped short of getting too close. Her cool exterior cracked and she looked helpless standing there in her pretty dress and windblown hair.
I felt sorry for her, despite everything, as she realized what I already knew.
She shook her head. “You’re not going to keep her. After all this, knowing how she feels about you and your world, you’d let her go. Have you lost your mind?”
“There’s the problem, Kel.” I didn’t want to hear anymore, didn’t want Kelli’s romantic but irresponsible version of my life. “You assume I wanted her in the first place. What you’re suggesting is out of the question. But I could have told you that if you’d asked before meddling.”
“Josh…I’m sorry.” She reached out to touch my arm but I shot her a warning look and she snapped her hand back. “I thought I was doing the right thing for the both of you. There was no way you’d keep your secret once she joined our community and this way you didn’t have to share her either.”
“You’re sorry?” I laughed. “You think I’ll forgive you for forcing me to break her heart? You’ll be lucky if I don’t destroy you for it. You don’t deserve my mercy and you sure as shit won’t get my forgiveness.”
Before she could answer, I jerked the door open and left her there.
I left them both there and went in search of my own self-destruction.
Because if I had to pay the price for this bittersweet transgression, I’d make sure I never recovered from it.
9
____________
Kat
Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. I stirred from a beautiful dream to the sound of tires on asphalt and the pre-dawn light of rolling highway sweeping by. I blinked my eyes open and as I rubbed them free of sleep I remembered.
I remembered everything.
I glanced at the seat next to me where Julie drove, eyes held straight ahead, sleepy but awake and nursing a to-go coffee cup that smelled like hazelnut.
“Julie?”
My last memory was of me in bed with Josh, falling away into the glow of our mutual orgasms. I had no memory of getting into Julie’s car.
She didn’t look at me. “Hey sleepy head.”
“How…?” I glanced around me, found my purse and my shoes at my feet. “How did I get here? What time is it?”
“You were dead to the world, doll. You’ve been asleep for hours.”
My jaw ached and the memory of why sent a blush straight through me. I touched my sore lips and startled when I saw the ring of bruises around my wrist. Both wrists. I covered them as best I could before Julie saw.
The memory of them made me tremble all over again, but I was too exhausted to indulge them.
“How did I get to the car?”
What I wanted to ask was, what happened to Josh?
She cleared her throat and reached her free hand to crank the heat. Outside fall had turned the world bright yellow and orange, but it also brought a chill that had seeped into my toes while I slept. It felt like we’d been gone from the world for years, not hours.
“You fell asleep during the party. You were carried out to my car and buckled in when it was time to go.”
I waited for her to get to the details we both knew I ached for. Josh. I tried to burn his name into her forehead from my seat. Tell me about Josh.
“He left,” she said finally. She sighed, took my hand from my lap, and pressed it against the heater. I didn’t even realize how cold my fingers were. “After he put you in my car and asked me to drive you home. He left.”
“Oh.” I stared out the
window. I don’t know why it made me feel so sad, so lost, but it did.
I felt…
Like a mistake.
Julie sighed. “If it makes you feel better, he practically made me sign in blood that I’d make sure you got home safe.”
I didn’t answer. A shiver passed through me and I wrapped my arms around my body and squeezed.
“Damn it, Kat.” Julie plunked her coffee in a drink holder and veered sharply towards the side of the road and came to a slow stop. An early morning fog hovered across the ground, making the empty nothing on either side of the highway seem particularly ominous.
Fitting since it was Halloween. Tonight would be one of the biggest nights of the year at South River. I’d offered to help. Josh would be there. We’d have to face each other, surrounded by hundreds of people.
“I’m fine,” I interrupted before she could start in on me, though we both knew I wasn’t fine. I didn’t know what I was, not exactly, but it wasn’t fine.
Regret.
Guilt.
Shame.
Aching, dreadful longing.
Oh, fuck me.
“I don’t know what happened,” she started and turned fully in her seat. Her perfect fairy hair was messy and ratted on one side of her head, but somehow her make-up remained as crisp and new as if we’d just left for the party. “I can guess and I don’t need details. He seemed pretty upset and now so do you.”
“Please, Julie, please don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking. And believe me, whatever you’re thinking, I’m thinking something worse.”
“I knew the moment he saw you we were in big trouble.”
I leaned back into the chair and stared out into the fog. Was this what Brian meant every time he laid into me? For the first time I felt like I was still a little girl pretending to play in a grown up world.
“I feel like I’ve set fire to my whole world.”
Julie snaked her fingers through mine and squeezed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t burn to the ground, but even if it does? I won’t leave you to face it alone.”
***
Thank you for reading Josh and Kat’s story! But it’s not over yet. The story picks up with broken hearts in GIRL IN PIECES before crashing into the finale with WANTING IT ALL.
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ͻ If you like more books about curvy girls, strong heroes, and steamy nights, you’ll love the Amazon Bestseller THE CURVY SISTER and the BDSM series SECRETS, beginning with book 1 HER SECRET PLEASURE, book 2 HER SECRET BETRAYAL, and ending with book 3 HER SECRET POWER.
ͻ If you’d like to read an excerpt from GIRL IN PIECES the second book in this series, please keep reading.
THE CURVY SUBMISSIVE #2: GIRL IN PIECES
In GIRL IN PIECES , Josh has turned his back on what happened between them, leaving Kat on her own to deal with her new, stormy desires. When her relationship with her brother deteriorates and financial troubles threaten to crush her dreams, Kat finds herself seeking escape in another’s arms, one who is willing to mentor her while she tries to get over her heartbreak. As her life goes to pieces, she struggles to hold onto the girl she used to be while facing the girl she might yet become.
Enjoy the first chapter of GIRL IN PIECES!
Chapter One
Josh was awake.
I could see his bedroom light on from my window which had never made me feel so much like a stalker until this morning.
It was comforting, though, to know he was as awake at the wrong end of the day as I was.
The digital on my bedside table read 4:49 a.m. Below Josh’s bedroom window the South River Bar sat quiet and dark. Someone had parked in front of the fire hydrant again and behind that was a pale pink convertible La Sabre with a cream top and white leather seats. You could always tell what kind of night South River had by how many cars were still parked on the street after last call.
I settled my hands against the cool glass and marveled at the bracelet of bruises he’d left across my wrists, blues almost too faded to make out in the dim light. His big hands had fit perfectly around mine when he’d held me down and held me still. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel his breath on my neck and his weight and his…
I shivered and pressed my fingertips into my eyes until lights sparkled across my vision. Sleep was out of the question, no matter how tired and heavy my body felt. Instead there was only pacing and thinking and watching his window for a sign.
It was inevitable really. Katrina Koile, stalker. I was one pair of binoculars shy of a misdemeanor.
Josh Murcek, my brother’s best friend and owner of the South River Bar, was my second unofficial brother by choice. We grew up together, even though he was five years older. Pop Murcek taught me to waltz when I was sixteen and Josh tutored me in algebra at a booth in the back by the stage. He taught me to tie cherry stems with my tongue, do tequila shots without wanting to die, and defended me to Brian when Brian got into one of his anti-Kat moods.
Josh…he’d always been my friend.
My apartment sat diagonal to the bar and he lived in the apartment above it. We had these rituals - Sunday mornings he’d make pancakes and when I saw the vodka sign turn on in the window it was my signal to head over. If I left the bar late I was to turn my bedroom light on as soon as I made it home safely so he’d know.
He’d been my friend for so long I’d never thought of him as anything more. At least…not serious thoughts. I rarely saw him with women and when he dated they never seemed to stick around long enough to learn all our names. I flirted with him playfully when I wanted free drinks, but he never overstepped into something inappropriate.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. That wasn’t true at all. There was one night when things went in a very different direction. Just a little. Just a toe over the line, but enough for me to think about his mouth late at night for months after.
It was the night of a very bad breakup. We were days into moving Kyle’s shit into my apartment when he decided things were moving too fast and I came home to find all his stuff gone and a note asking me to delete his number from my cell phone. Josh stayed up with me into the wee hours of the morning, unwilling to let me go home and cry myself to sleep. He dumped dozens of quarters into the juke box and we spent the night inventing new drinks named after the faults of our past lovers.
Comes Too Fast - Aftershock and Rumplemintz with a maraschino cherry floating in the middle.
Texts Every Six Minutes - low cal skinny Raspberry Vodka, a splash of pineapple juice, Sprite and an orange wedge skewered onto a bendy straw.
Comments on the Size of My Thighs - espresso, chocolate syrup, Frangelica, and as much whip cream as can fit in the glass. Topped with chocolate shavings and a maraschino cherry. Or two.
Expects Dinner but Doesn’t Do Take-out – Goldschlagger and Crown Royal, chased with a shot of the cheapest Vodka in the bar.
It had been incredibly cathartic even though I’d suffered one of the worst hangovers of my life the next day. I still had a rumpled copy of our drink recipes stuck to my fridge.
The memory of that night hit me bright and loud and I couldn’t help but smile. Green Day rocked out on the juke box and whenever the tears threatened to start again Josh would feed me a steady stream of cherries soaked in amaretto to quiet them. I was sitting on the bar, my legs dangling over the edge and somehow he’d pushed his way between them so that we were incredibly close. Too close, but we’d had enough shots by that point that it didn’t even occur to me to blush.
He settled his hand on the outside of my thigh and I could remember fe
eling the weight of it through my fashionably ripped jeans and, despite my tipsy haze, I’d felt my body’s reaction to it. Later I was embarrassed by the memory of my actions, but at the time I’d stared right into his eyes and opened my knees wider so he could climb closer and he had without hesitation. His hand had traveled higher, dangerously close to the rounded bottom edge of my ass. I’d felt his fingertips dig into my thigh as he gripped me in one hand.
Josh brought the cherry to my mouth. Touched it against my lips. A drop of amaretto splashed my bottom lip and without hesitating he’d run his fingertip along my lip to capture it. I watched him suck the liquor from the pad of his thumb. My heart had gone stratospheric.
The spell broke when my cell went off. Julie making sure I wasn’t setting the apartment on fire. I’d been sure at the moment that his unabashed, intimate reaction had been a symptom of too many shots. Now I was sure it had been something more.
Because last night I’d submitted to him, on my knees, begging for him to touch me. Mine he’d growled, his rough heavy breath punctuating the possessiveness behind that single, fascinating word.
I closed my eyes and leaned my hot forehead against the glass and tried to calm my breathing. We hadn’t had sex. The thought struck me as funny now that I stood alone in my apartment, in my pajamas, stalking him. We’d done everything else, but not that.
No, that was a lie too. Not everything. We hadn’t kissed. That would have been too intimate. Too far. I’d succumbed entirely like a little girl too quick to love, but he’d played it smart and held back the most important parts. The parts that couldn’t be undone in the morning.
Regardless, things were different. I could feel it in my chest, could feel it in my guilt over watching his apartment like this when I’d checked to see if he was up a thousand mornings before without feeling like a crazy ex-girlfriend stalker.
