by Geneva Lee
For now I had things to do. The little stationary store I’d found online had already set aside my order. I inspected it with delight before having it packaged up. Outside, the world was glorious. The September air had the promising crispness of fall to it. Soon I would need warmer dresses and jackets. My mobile rang as I waited for my order at a popular food truck.
“Did you sense I was thinking about shopping?” I answered.
“It is one of the gifts of my people,” Edward responded dryly. “But don’t try to distract me. Rumor has it that Alexander is shacked up with a tart, and said tart didn’t call me.”
“Said tart has been deliciously preoccupied.” It might have once bothered me to know what the rest of the Royal circle thought of me, now I no longer cared.
“So it’s true then? My brother didn’t break the hearts of women the world over to call your bluff. You actually moved in with him?”
Edward knew his brother well. Too well. Both had been taught to hide who they truly were, which I supposed made it harder for them to have secrets from each other. Of course, he’d seen through Alexander’s publicity ploy. Edward was well versed in playing to a camera.
“Actually I could use your help. I might have panicked and told my mother we were having a housewarming party this weekend. Up for planning a party?” Between unpacking, work, and the constant need for physical connection between Alexander and me, I was more than a little worried about adding another thing to my plate.
“Of course. Consider it done.”
“You’re a lifesaver. I’ll send over names and details.” I paused before deciding to add, “Bring David.”
“I’ll ask.” The sadness in his voice told me everything I needed to know. “Apparently actions don’t always speak louder than words.”
“You could always tell the world you’re living with him,” I suggested. “It will be a hell of a row, but the angry shag is fantastic.”
“I think David would settle for holding hands in public.”
“If you don’t feel up to party planning—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I could use the distraction. And Clara, I’m happy for you. Truly.”
We hung up with plans to talk again in the morning. Juggling my purse, take-away, and Alexander’s present, I almost wished I’d let Norris drive me. But I knew that was a slippery slope. If I was going to maintain a life outside our relationship, there had to be boundaries. Our passion was all-consuming, and I knew all too well how easily affection could turn to co-dependence. Sometimes I had the uneasy feeling I wanted him too much, especially after his admissions to me. My desire for him ignored boundaries in the bedroom. If I wasn’t careful, there would be none in my life outside the home as well.
Shoving my bag’s strap higher on my shoulder, I turned the corner and caught sight of my father across the street. I hadn’t been avoiding him the past few months, unlike my mother. But he’d been busy, working hard on a new tech start-up that he thought could rival the success of partner.com, the website that was responsible for my family’s fortune. He had never accepted that he had one big idea in him. I didn’t doubt that was where I got my work ethic—or my stubbornness.
Opening my mouth to call to him, the words died on my tongue as he caught a woman’s arm and pulled her close. A woman who couldn’t be older than me. A woman who laughed adoringly at him. A woman who was definitely not my mother. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he leaned in to kiss her. I was still frozen in place when he opened a cab door and disappeared inside. My gaze flickered up and I realized with horror that they’d just left the Kensington Grand Hotel.
I couldn’t process what I’d seen. This time when I saw the Rolls idling nearby, I walked over and got in. Norris headed toward the building without direction from me, and I sat quietly, working through the haze of confusion clouding my brain. It was as if the world had shifted on its axis just slightly enough that no one else noticed, while still throwing me off balance. Suddenly my mother’s strange behavior made sense to me. She had to know, or at least suspect. Late nights. New projects. Business trip. It was all code for an affair. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Because I’d been too wrapped up in my own world to notice. But now I knew. There was no choice but to talk to my father about what I’d seen. I just needed to get him alone. Luckily I knew exactly where he would be this coming Sunday afternoon.
I finished out the day, trying to ignore the chaotic, negative feelings growing inside of me. I was angry with my father. I felt betrayed. And I was frustrated with Alexander for not trusting me to go into work alone. Was this how relationships went sour? Small lies and distrust. My parents had been in love when I was little. Then everything had changed. With money, I’d watched my mother become someone else. A person who was never content, who never had enough money or attention. I didn’t blame her for my father’s infidelity, but I suppose I wasn’t surprised that he’d strayed either. Not that I thought he deserved a pass. Far from it.
But the thought that turned my stomach over, was wondering if I’d push Alexander away, too. I had my own set of neuroses. Was it just a matter of time before he found himself in the arms of someone who didn’t come with all the baggage I did? That was why I’d wanted to maintain some independence—keep my job, walk to work, ride the tube. What happened if I became too dependent on him and he finally walked away?
I also knew now that he’d protected me from his more depraved tastes. My father had treated my mother with kid gloves, too, always desperate to protect her fragile spirit from the truth. Now he was hiding an affair.
I wasn’t fragile and I didn’t need protection.
By the time Norris pulled up in front of the house, I’d whipped myself into a mental frenzy. Bursting through the front door, I threw my bags on the floor. I needed to set the record straight immediately.
I found Alexander in the living room. His mouth curved into a wicked smile. “Hungry?”
I was famished, but there was no way I was telling him that. “I can feed myself.”
“Poppet.” His eyes narrowed as he stood. “I don’t like your tone.”
“And I don’t like being followed around by a bloody babysitter all day. What’s next? A personal bodyguard in the office?” The realization hit me that I sounded hysterical, but I ignored it.
“What I do is for your safety,” he reminded me.
“Do you have a whole team following me?”
“Only Norris. When we were…apart, I had more than one detail. Now I would prefer if Norris handled your personal safety.” He was choosing his words carefully, but that didn’t make them any easier to swallow.
“And why’s that?”
Alexander abandoned his bourbon on the console and crossed to me. “Because he’s the only one I trust with my family.”
Another time those words might have softened me, but now they only made me angrier, reminding me of all I had to lose—if I’d ever had it all. “I’m not family. You don’t love me, remember? I’m just the tart you’re fucking.”
“You will not speak about yourself in that way.” His eyes flashed as he spoke.
“Or what? You’ll punish me?” I was pushing his buttons now and I wasn’t even sure why. Perhaps it was all the things left unknown. All the things left unsaid. All the dark corners we hadn’t yet faced.
“Yes,” he confirmed in a low voice. “I will allow no one to speak of you like that—not even you.”
His words splintered my fury, but I held onto its pieces. I wanted to be angry. I didn’t want to wind up like my mother and father, always walking on eggshells around each other. Thinking of my father made me wonder what it would be like to discover Alexander was sleeping with another woman. My stomach roiled at the thought. I couldn’t handle it anymore. There would always be barriers between me and him, but some of them needed to be torn down. I was tired of wondering how far he might take me—of where the line stood. “Show me.”
“Show you what?” He eyed me suspiciously.
“You want to punish me. Show me.”
“No,” he said immediately. “I don’t need to do that anymore and I won’t do it with you.”
“But you will with someone else? Why? Because I’m some slut you’re shagging?” I sensed the rage growing inside of him, saw it flickering in his eyes even as he tried to restrain himself. I’d lost control entirely though. There was only one objective—push him past the boundary he’d set for himself—for our relationship. I couldn’t survive more secrets. “Isn’t that what they think of me? Your family? Your friends? I know it’s true. I’m nothing but an American whore. We both know it.”
Alexander’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “Careful, poppet.”
“I don’t want to be careful, I want you to show me what you did to her. I want to know how far you’ve gone.”
“And if I’m unwilling to go that far again?”
I saw the battle in his eyes. If what he claimed was true—that he no longer felt the desire to punish—what was he fighting?
But I was well past the point of reason, and part of me—the part of me that responded to his demanding sensuality—wanted to feel the pain.
“Do not mistake my reluctance to punish you as no longer having the capacity to punish,” he warned me in a tone that sent chills trembling down my skin.
“We agreed to explore and right now it’s killing me that another woman experienced something with you. I don’t want there to be places you’ve gone without me.”
“This isn’t a place you want to visit, and it’s not a place I wish to take you.” He relinquished my wrist and stepped away, creating a buffer between our bodies that neither of us were accustomed to.
“I can’t live knowing you’ve been more intimate with another woman.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line, his eyes growing as dark as his tousled hair. “That wasn’t intimacy.”
“The pleasure and the pain, remember?”
“You’ve experienced pain, Clara.” Alexander’s words were measured. Apparently neither of us could let go of the past. “The two should be felt together. You aren’t a natural submissive. Your body won’t respond to true pain with pleasure. Not physical pain. Not punishment. At least not by my hands.”
“How can I understand the balance without knowing each for what they are individually?”
But I was getting nowhere with him. I would have to entice him—make the impulse impossible to deny. My fingers trembled as I unzipped my pencil skirt and allowed it to drop to the floor. Alexander didn’t move to stop me even when I shimmied out of my thong and turned my bare ass toward him.
“Show me,” I demanded. “Or should I hurt myself. I’m healthy enough for, what did you call it? Self punishment?”
“Clara,” he growled. “This is not a game.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a request. I’m asking you, X.”
His hand cupped my ass and my eyes closed in expectation.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do.”
“You can’t know,” he murmured, his lips dangerously close to my ear.
“I suppose not until you show me.”
He lifted his hand, but I shook my head. “You’ve spanked me before. Whip me.”
“I don’t keep a room full of floggers,” he said humorlessly. “All I have is my belt, but the strap…”
I blanched, momentarily losing my nerve, but I pushed away the fear. “Use the belt.”
Alexander drew it slowly from his belt loops and coiled it around his hand. Between my legs, tension mounted, my sex swelling with macabre expectation even as fear closed my throat. I waited, but all he did was circle his prey, surveying me with untamed eyes.
“You will do this properly. There will be no crying out. You may cry—I expect you will—but you will remain silent. If you do not, I shall have to whip you more. Do you understand?”
I nodded even as tendrils of anxiety curled through my belly. For a moment, he watched me and I studied him. Both of us trying to determine exactly what we were starting. There was no sign of refusal in his body now. His broad shoulders were straight, his eyes cold and distant. This is what his submissive had experienced: a beautiful, unreachable man who longed for release.
“Clara, you may use your safe word.” He paused, then added in a clipped tone, “I do hope you will.”
His hand pressed against my back, directing me to bend over the console table. I folded over the edge, my ass presented to him, and took a deep breath.
“Ready?”
I steeled myself for the impact. A loud crack split the air as the leather belt made contact. Time seemed to stop, my mind unable to process the connection between the sound and the otherworldly pain seeding across my backside. I bit down a scream and pain lodged raw in my throat.
“One,” Alexander said under his breath.
Clutching the table’s edge, I braced myself for the next impact. The following lash hit harder, or perhaps it only seemed harder because my skin still smarted from the first. Tears rolled down my cheeks. My nerves sang with agony even as my mind went numb, unable to process anything but the brutal pain.
“Two.”
A sob escaped my lips.
“I told you to be silent.” His voice sounded distant, but it broke as he continued, “Now you’ll receive more.”
I fought against the part of me that wanted to beg for him to stop. I needed to understand. I needed to experience it, but it was more difficult than I’d imagined and I’d only endured two lashes.
All sense of the world faded away. My only connection was that of leather and skin, sound and pain. I stiffened as he raised his arm causing him to still.
“End this, poppet.”
He wanted me to use my safe word, but that was my last resort. I’d used it before and while it was meant to protect me, I’d seen how it had broken him. I shook my head.
The leather cracked across my skin and this time I screamed. My body went limp. I was no longer positioned artfully across the table. Instead it was holding me up.
There was no movement behind me. I opened my mouth.
“Three,” I choked out. Sobs racked my body even as I clung to my resolve.
Alexander lifted the belt and I tensed, my body already conditioned to know what came next. The strap ripped through the air, whistling past my ear, and smacked across the table top.
He sank to his knees behind me. The belt buckle clattered against the wood floor, and then his arms were around my waist, his lips pressing light kisses along my tailbone.
“Brimstone,” he whispered against my skin.
But I was too weak to respond, too overwhelmed by the emotions coursing through my veins. For a long time, we stayed in this position. I was afraid to move and Alexander continued to kiss me softly as though to reassure me.
Alexander lifted me into his arms, cradling me to his chest, and carried me upstairs. He stopped at the edge of the bed and lowered me to my feet.
“Lay on your stomach,” he advised me.
I did as he suggested. It took considerable restraint not to touch my backside to see how badly it was injured. Alexander hovered over me for a moment, but he didn’t speak again. He didn’t touch me. Instead he crossed the bedroom and paused at the door. “Now you know that I’m a monster.”
Chapter Thirteen
Seconds stretched into minutes as I waited for him to return, although I wasn’t certain he would. This time when tears collected in my eyes, it had nothing to do with the pain lingering in my body.
I’d pushed him too far.
I’d pushed him away.
The tears fell freely. For my father’s betrayal. For the mess I’d made of things. For hurting the man I loved.
Alexander’s footsteps came closer until I sensed he’d returned. I didn’t bother to turn my head to look at him. There was no way I could face him after what I’d done. The bed shifted as he sat down next to me. With light hands he carefully brushed
my hair back from my face, freezing when he saw my tears.
He swallowed audibly and leaned to kiss my forehead. “I’m going to attend to your bottom. I don’t want you to bruise.”
His words were hollow, although they echoed with self-loathing. I wanted to stem my tears, knowing it only destroyed him more to see them. But I couldn’t.
“This will be cold,” he warned me as he laid something soft over my backside. A moment later the chill of ice seeped through the cloth.
It didn’t matter. I was already numb, overwhelmed by our experience. Nothing mattered. Certainly not my physical comfort. Not when I’d forced Alexander to do something against his will. I barely processed it when his weight shifted and he spooned against me, his arms sliding under my stomach. He pulled me close, abandoning the ice pack and cocooning me with his warmth as he buried his face into my neck and whispered apologies. My eyelids grew heavy, my body overcome by the scene, and I slipped into sleep, knowing I was the one who needed to say I was sorry.
I woke feeling empty to discover Alexander absent from our bed. I sat up, forgetting about the belt, and winced as my weight shifted onto my rear. It wasn’t bad, just a bit sore. The room was dark but light slanted through the open curtains and fell over a form at the foot of the bed. Moonlight sketched Alexander’s masculine profile, highlighting his carved body. He’d undressed but he hadn’t returned to my side. His head was in his hands as though his thoughts were a burden. Crawling across the mattress, I slipped my arms around him, pressing myself against his strong back. His hand knit through mine and we held each other in silence.
“You’re not a monster,” I whispered, knowing what he was thinking.
A sigh heaved through his body and he shook his head. “You’re wrong. I was wrong. I knew it, but I did it anyway.”
“Because I forced you to.” That was the truth, and he needed to see it. I’d given him no other choice, given how recently I’d ran from him and the fragile state of our relationship.
