The Con Artist

by Kitty Thomas

  This surface shit looked pretty bad to her. Quill had broken skin. Marcus would need to be bandaged up.

  “Are you sure you want to soak like this?”

  “Put the salts in. It’ll help me heal.”

  She started to cry.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “I’m not distraught. There’s no reason you should be. You’re just playing into his bullshit.”

  Saskia wiped the tears off her face. “I’ve played into his bullshit from the moment I knew who he was. He knew I wouldn’t be able to resist him if I knew he was Quill.”

  “This is all a chess game with him. He’s always playing six or seven moves ahead. He’s patient. God only knows how long he’s been jerking off thinking about doing what you just witnessed. You can’t let him inside your head.”

  It might have been nice to have these warnings much earlier—like the day she’d brought the reproduction to the house and first met Marcus. It was far too late for disclaimers. Quill was already deep inside her. And he hadn’t even fucked her yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  Marcus let out a pained hiss as he lowered himself into the oversized tub.

  “Is the water too hot?”

  He shook his head. “It’s fine, love.” He extended a hand. “You can come join me if you want. There’s plenty of room. You don’t want to keep him waiting. You clean up while I soak.”

  She kind of did want to keep him waiting. She was beginning to grow strangely attached to and protective of Marcus, which made it feel like a betrayal to be near Quill. She wasn’t sure if she could sit at a table with him and eat breakfast and pretend nothing had happened.

  Marcus watched as she got into the tub. “You belong to him. If I ever come between that, it won’t be good. For either of us. I can only protect you so far. You have to do the other part by remembering who you prioritize.”

  Quill was the last person she wanted to prioritize. Of course, that would only remain true until he sucked her into his web again, or painted her or painted with her. He made her weak in so many ways.

  So much about Marcus made sense now—so much about his reaction to her from day one. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t picked up the undercurrents between the two men.

  Now that Marcus had acclimated to the heat and the sting, he’d closed his eyes, his head resting against the tile. His arms were stretched over the edge of the tub as the steam rose off him. He didn’t look like a man who’d just been beaten in her place. Even if physically it might take a bit longer, emotionally he seemed to mend at a speed bordering on supernatural. It may have been a while, but this didn’t seem to be an unusual event between them. Quill had just needed an in.

  “Sir?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You just did.” After a long beat of silence, he said, “Go ahead.”

  “How long did you know what he was planning to do with me?”

  He let out a long, resigned sigh as if he’d been waiting for this question. “I didn’t know exactly, but I suspected he was planning something early on. I didn’t know what, but I knew he was far too obsessed with you.” He cracked a grin. “I can’t believe you conned him out of all that money. He was mad about it for the first few hours after you left that night, but then I guess his evil plan started forming, which pacified him for a while.”

  “Were you watching me in Venice?”

  “That was my assignment, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  He shrugged. “What attachment did I have to you?”

  It felt like a lie, or part of a lie. Had Quill promised him a piece of her that early in the game to gain his enthusiastic surveillance? Marcus had selected that white nightgown so quickly. Had he seen her in it already in the villa? She didn’t verbalize any of these questions or thoughts. She didn’t want to know. She still wanted to see him as her protector.

  She took the bar of soap and a loofah from the tile and began to bathe. If she dragged things on too long, Quill wouldn’t be happy. And Marcus was right. That wouldn’t end well.

  “Why did you let him beat you?” she asked.

  Another sigh. This time he opened his eyes and sat up to level a warning look. “This is a lot more than one question.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If I hadn’t, it would have been you. It would have been bad for you, and you didn’t deserve it.”

  “So? What attachment do you have to me?”

  His hand dipped under the water to squeeze her thigh. “Let’s just say you’re growing on me, and I’ve developed an interest in your welfare.”

  She tensed, but then relaxed again as he kneaded the muscles in her leg.

  “Is Lachlan even his real name?”

  Marcus shook his head. “No, but if I told you his real name, what you just witnessed would be mild compared to what he’d do to me. And remember, the great and powerful Oz sees and hears all.” He pointed to the camera staring down at them over the tub.

  She wasn’t sure how, but she’d nearly forgotten the cameras. There was no such thing as a private moment on Quill’s property.

  “Turn around and let me get your back,” Marcus said.

  Saskia turned and leaned against the edge of the tub as Marcus’s hands moved slowly over her. Her muscles bunched into tight knots as he touched her. She couldn’t relax with him again, not after the price he just finished paying for it.

  “He’s watching this,” she whispered.

  “Probably,” Marcus said. “He likes to watch.”

  “But aren’t you worried...?”

  “It was a misunderstanding on the meaning of the word Fuck, Saskia. Relax. He’s not going to punish me for this. He wants us to bond. He just wants me to remember which one of us is at the top of this food chain. As if I’d ever forget.”

  Punish. Marcus might not think Quill owned him anymore, but if he thought in those terms—the same terms she thought in—he was already Quill’s again. Their master kept them both in a cage with only each other for comfort. And she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t make up rules on the fly just so he could take his sadism out on her protector. Marcus seemed much more confident of Quill’s inherent sense of fair play than Saskia was.

  Marcus rinsed her back. “Okay, you’re done.”

  Saskia got out and grabbed a towel from a shelf. “Why didn’t you just fight him? You could probably take him.”

  The look Marcus gave her told her everything. He was half in love with Quill, too. And like her, he knew how utterly foolish such feelings were.

  “Once he recovered, he would have taken it out on you worse. It was the easiest way to appease him. I’m not that breakable.”

  No. He wasn’t. And underneath the fear for him and the distress, she’d been excited by Marcus’s display of strength, as if he could take the whole world on and resurface whole when the debris cleared.

  Marcus let the water drain and got out of the tub. Saskia passed him her towel. He wrapped it around his waist and sat on the bench. A brief, cozy domesticity.

  “There’s a first aid kit in the lower cabinet,” he said.

  Saskia retrieved the large box of ointment and antiseptic and bandages. Quill’s estate was practically its own pharmacy. She opened the container and laid everything on the bench.

  Marcus pointed. “The peroxide, then this ointment, and these bandages. They breathe better.” Spoken like a man who’d been here before.

  He turned away, and Saskia went to work on his back. Marcus was so cavalier about all of it that it was easy to brush off how harsh Quill had been, even now, looking directly at the damage. If it had been her there would have been screaming and endless tears and begging. It would have been impossible to dismiss the weight of it.

  Marcus’s stoicism made it easy to forget just how raw and broken the skin on his back was—except for the dragon which remained untouched. As out-of-control as Quill had acted, he’d had the presence of mind to avo
id the tattoo.

  Saskia’s fingers trailed over the ink.

  “A few years ago he wanted to collar me,” Marcus said. “I said fuck no. He felt compelled to mark me in some way. We agreed on the ink.”

  “But that’s permanent. You can take a collar off.”

  “Not while with him, I couldn’t. And we see how far I’ve managed to wander beyond his reach. A collar is too on display for me. Not my thing. This was a compromise I could live with.”

  It explained why the tattoo had escaped the bite of the whip.

  “Why a dragon?”

  “It’s a subtle reference to a part of his real name. I can probably say that much, at least, without his ire. It’s like a property of stamp, if we want to be crass about it.”

  So much more permanent than a collar.

  “I thought you said he didn’t own you anymore.”

  Marcus sighed. “In ways he does. In ways he doesn’t. Our relationship is complicated, but it’s not something you should worry about.”

  He winced as she dabbed the peroxide on his back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He squeezed her free hand. “Do what you have to do.”

  When she’d gotten him bandaged, he returned to the gallery to dress. Saskia followed. Her things were all in a pile of boxes she still hadn’t had time to sort through. It wasn’t as if the gallery had drawers or closets to stash her stuff. The haphazard way everything was stacked in the gallery made everything feel very temporary. But the heated possessive looks Quill—and sometimes now even Marcus—sent her way, made it feel as if her confinement inside Quill’s gallery would stretch the full length of her remaining existence.

  Marcus tossed her a robe from one of the boxes. She grabbed the garment out of the air when it reached her and stared at it for a full minute as if it might attack.

  “Just wear it to the house. You gotta figure out the loopholes if you’re going to make it with him, love.”

  “Are things going to be weird now?”

  He pulled his T-shirt back over his head, careful not to disturb the bandages she’d taped in place. “Weird how?”

  “I mean is there going to be jealousy?”

  Marcus grinned. “Not from me. I have a feeling you and I are not interchangeable cogs in his machine. But if you get weird as you call it, there will be punishment from me. I might not want to hurt you, but you’re not going to run over me, either. So don’t get any ideas.”

  “He said you couldn’t...”

  “He said I couldn’t break skin. I can spank you, cane you, and whip you so long as I don’t break that rule. And there are many ways to punish a person that don’t leave any marks which I’m more than happy to explore with you if necessary.”

  An electric jolt ran down her spine. “Yes, sir.” Getting into a pissing match with him over Quill was the last thing on her mind anyway.

  “We better get back to the house.”

  Inside the large hall of the main house, Marcus pulled her into an embrace. His lips pressed against the shell of her ear. “Be good. I’ll see you tonight.”

  He drifted off down the hallway toward the room she’d found him sleeping in the day before.

  Saskia took a deep breath and dropped the robe before going to meet Quill for breakfast.

  He was reading the financial papers again, his breakfast dish already picked clean. The coffee cup moved absently to his lips every few minutes as he scanned the news.

  He glanced up. “Come here.”

  She’d been about to sit, but she abandoned the chair and edged toward him.

  “I’m not going to bite you.”

  His assurance brought little comfort. But when she reached him, he pulled her onto his lap and just held her for several minutes, his fingers trailing through her hair.

  “It’s important you know that Marcus can be punished as well and that I watch those video feeds.”

  Lacy came in with an ice pop in hand, gave it to Quill, then left without comment.

  Saskia hadn’t detected sexual undercurrents between Quill and Lacy—even when she tried looking for them. And she’d tried. But the subtext had always been there with Marcus. It just hadn’t occurred to her that Quill liked to play on both sides so she hadn’t noticed. Admittedly it was only stereotypes that had prevented her from seeing it. Both of them were so traditionally masculine that it hadn’t occurred to her they might have had a sexual past together. She knew there was no universal law that said one or both of them must be stereotypically feminine. That was just her fucked-up lens of things—her own issue to work through.

  Whatever was between her master and her guard was something raw and animal and so innately male that it would have been impossible to look away, even if Quill hadn’t ordered her to watch it unfold. It wasn’t hard to see Marcus’s appeal to her master. Someone who could hang in chains and take lash after lash without so much as a peep. No whining or begging or screaming. Sure, Quill might like such desperate displays well enough. But Marcus’s ability to take whatever was dished to him without complaint expressed a kind of peaceful strength she both envied and admired.

  Quill studied her and stroked her throat as he might stroke a mare he was preparing to ride.

  “I noticed in the video that you were able to take Marcus pretty well. He’s not unendowed.”

  Maybe not, but he wasn’t as endowed as Quill. Did he think she’d just been pretending he was too much for her to take? Some kind of ego stroke or manipulation on her part?

  She wanted to stay furious with him for what had happened in the gallery, but sitting on his lap with his arms around her, his erotically charged energy directed at her... it was hard to maintain those feelings. And if Marcus wasn’t upset by any of it... He was right; she had to figure out how to play Quill’s game and find all the loopholes if she wanted to survive here.

  Quill tore the paper off the ice pop. “Open. You’re going to take this. Then you’ll take me. If I’m satisfied by both performances, you can have breakfast.”

  Saskia’s lips parted as he slid the ice pop in and out of her mouth, going deeper each time.

  “Relax your throat, Miss Roth.”

  It was perhaps the first time calling her Miss Roth had sent a burst of excitement straight between her legs. She squirmed to try to ease the ache forming within her.

  He smacked her thigh. “No. You were very bad. You’re going to take care of my terribly fragile bruised artist ego. Or my cock. Whichever. And perhaps you will be allowed pleasure tomorrow or the next day. Everything depends on your progress here.”

  She allowed the cold treat to cool and then numb the back of her throat until she could take it as far as he wanted without gagging.

  “Good girl. Now me.”

  Saskia slid to the ground under the table between his legs as he undid his pants. She took advantage of the still numb sensation in her throat to take Quill as deeply as she had the ice pop. He let out a pleased groan. His hand pressed against the back of her neck, a gentle intimidation, but he didn’t shove her down any harder.

  When he came, she swallowed the results of her efforts and he stroked her hair.

  “Lacy, Saskia will be having breakfast now,” he said loudly enough for her to hear.

  Saskia went back to her chair, trying to force the heat from her cheeks.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Weeks passed like this, and Saskia forgot the outside world existed. Quill kept her working in the studio nearly every day and long into most nights. He was a man possessed.

  They alternated days. One day would be focused on her work. The next, on his. On the days he painted, he chained her up or chained her down—depending upon the apparatus of choice. He’d give her pain then give her pleasure until she was wrung out. Then he would paint the results of what he’d done to her. Each painting he produced seemed to dig deeper and deeper inside her soul, so far that she wasn’t sure what she could possibly have left to create her own work with.

  Before
long, the gallery was filled with her image in oil, somehow more alive than a photograph. Each night, she stared out from between bars in the cage he still made her sleep in at the paintings trapped inside their own cages of glass. Surely they couldn’t breathe in there. But could she out here? Her reality had tilted and turned into a fun house mirror.

  Each night, as she was about to drift off, Marcus’s strong familiar hands would creep through the bars of the cage to touch her. Her legs would fall open for him; he’d stroke her until she came, and then she’d return the favor. Hand jobs had been deemed acceptable.

  After the first few days at the estate, Quill had let her move most of her things into one of the rooms in the main house. She wasn’t living in the main house, but at least most of her things were.

  A minimal amount of clothing at a time was left for her in the bathroom in what she’d oddly come to think of as her building because it certainly wasn’t a room or a suite or an apartment. It was just where Quill kept his private collection of art.

  It might have taken this full couple of weeks for that reality to sink in—that she existed as part of the collection. And that might be all.

  It was her day to paint, which meant nothing but sexual frustration because, to Quill, playing with her was meant only to prepare her to be put on his canvas. It was all work to him—one way or another. With each day he continued to refuse her his bed, she’d grown increasingly convinced he didn’t want her that way at all.

  Maybe he was just into Marcus. She was sure something was going on between the two of them again. Maybe while she slept. It was hard not to be jealous, no matter what Marcus said about them not being interchangeable cogs. She felt she was nothing but interchangeable. Replaceable. Forgettable. Just like everything she painted.

  Maybe Quill could close his eyes and imagine her mouth on his cock was Marcus’s mouth, but he could never fool himself that way if he fucked her.

  Quill looked over her shoulder at the new painting and sighed.

  Every time he did that, she deflated a bit more. Somehow, his disapproval each time she painted something new was more humiliating than anything else that had happened between them. At least she was managing the alla prima technique admirably. It was just what she painted with it that earned his disdain.