Disciplined By The Dom (Club Volare)

by Cox, Chloe

  Eventually, the letters stopped.

  But there was one more. From a different hand, an older, old-fashioned hand, on ordinary lined paper, ripped out of an ordinary spiral notebook, not the sort of thing someone who revered the written word to the point of fetishization would use. It came with a clipping—a gossip column, a picture of Jake looking blitzed out of his mind, some blonde model on his arm. Catie recognized it as the last public press mention of Jake that she herself had been able to find when she’d gone looking.

  Dated about five years ago.

  Again, Catie groaned. She almost didn’t want to read it, almost didn’t want to know, but she plodded on. She looked at the end first. It was signed, “Eileen Corrigan.”

  And once Catie read it, she couldn’t stop. There was one passage she kept returning to, over and over again, like a sore tooth she couldn’t stop worrying with her tongue, like something that was so horrible she needed to feel the prick of it, over and over again, just to be sure it was real:

  “My boy’s suicide note talked about you, Jake. He said if his own brother couldn’t stand him, maybe there was something to that. I want you to know that, Jake. He cut me out years ago, but you still had a chance. I want you to know that he killed himself when you gave up on him. I want you to know that this is what you were doing when he did it. You killed him. Your heartlessness killed him.”

  Catie’s heart seized, and became a painful, twisting knot in her chest, twisting a little further every time she thought about Jake reading those words. They were so unfair, so patently, obviously unfair, and worse still was to think about the mad grief that had driven poor Eileen Corrigan to write them.

  Catie couldn’t match up the Eileen Corrigan she’d met—the Eileen Corrigan who worked at Jake’s charity, the Eileen Corrigan who affectionately bullied him like a nosy aunt—with that damning letter. There was no address, no postmark; it had been hand delivered. At the funeral? Catie shuddered. There was so much pain wrapped up in these letters, so much festering in the deep wound that they represented. One word swam out from amidst all the others, made itself known as Catie sat in the paper ruins of Stephan’s short life: heartless. It was how Jake had described himself, in so many words. Like he was the tin man, a broken boy, a hollow robot without the ability to grow a human heart. It was total, total bullshit, and yet he believed it about himself, and those letters were part of the reason why.

  I can’t be a part of this. I can’t be a part of the world that turns on him, too.

  She would tell Brazzer to go fuck himself. She would go to Roman; she would do whatever she could to find out the other source. She would beg Roman to be forgiven, beg that no one else would ever have to know what she’d almost done, least of all Jake. She would do whatever she could to try to show him how wrong that letter was.

  Catie was crying for him, crying for Jake in a way that she’d never even really cried for herself, when Jake himself walked in and found her sitting in a pile of his most private papers.

  chapter 24

  They looked at each other. There was a long silence.

  He was wearing his usual black tailored suit, and he had come into the room gently. Perhaps he’d heard her, and what she was doing had dawned on him slowly as he’d approached the room. Perhaps it had slowed him.

  He stood there, shocked, possibly, his face curiously expressionless, and took in the scene. Catie didn’t try to hide anything, not even her tears. For the first time, she didn’t have anything to say.

  But Jake did.

  “Tell me, Catie,” he said, his eyes locked on the letters. “Is what you’ve read better or worse than what you’ve been hiding from me?” His voice shook, rumbling on a low register, deep in his chest. She watched him screw up his face, trying to find an expression that fit.

  What she’d done—what she’d been caught doing—was just beginning to dawn on her.

  “Answer the question,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Is what you’ve read there, in Stephan’s letters—” He paused, bringing a hand to his mouth, but managed to keep going. “Is what you’ve read about me worse than what you’ve been hiding from me?”

  Catie shook her head.

  “Answer me!” he yelled. He made a fist, punched the back of the couch, then took a step back, his hand covering his mouth. “I’m sorry. I won’t…”

  “Don’t apologize.” Catie said, very quickly. To hear him apologize filled her with self-loathing. She deserved his rage—why wouldn’t he be angry?

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” Jake choked on the words. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. Even if…” He gestured at the piles of letters, shaking his head. “Catie.”

  “No,” she said, gathering the letters carefully, as though they were precious, treasured things, and not poison. She put them back in the case, and put the case back on the shelf, pointlessly trying to hide them away. “This is not worse. This isn’t even bad. You—”

  “Don’t tell me it isn’t bad. It damn well is.”

  “You should be angry,” she said. She almost wanted him to do something terrible; maybe she’d feel less guilty if he did something terrible. And yet again, she was thinking about herself. Bitterly, she said, “You should be furious. You should… I deserve for you to hate me.”

  Jake shook his head mutely, eyes wide, staring at her. The distance between them was enormous. She walked toward him, and he backed away. Her heart sank.

  “I deserve for you to hate me,” she said again. “Why aren’t you angry? Why haven’t you…”

  She didn’t want to say it. She knew it wasn’t in him, somehow, he wouldn’t ever be violent in anger. But that wasn’t the worst thing she could imagine. The worst thing she could imagine was that he’d never look at her again.

  “Jake, please,” she said. “Just say something, anything—”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said slowly. “Because I know why you did this.”

  Jake’s eyes came alight and focused on her, clear as day. His face darkened, and he stopped his retreat. Jaw squared, he walked toward her.

  “I know why you did this,” he said. “Catie Rose.”

  Catie found herself unable to move, a gross parody of a paralytic, like it would all become real the moment she broke the stillness.

  Jake did it for her.

  “Did you hear me?” he said, bending down to get a good look at her face. He wasn’t far now, just a few steps. “I said I know, Miss Rose.”

  It broke in on her mind like a giant, crashing wave. He knew? And he didn’t hate her? Was that possible? She hadn’t really allowed herself to believe that that was a possibility, and now she knew why: she hated herself so thoroughly for what she’d planned to do that she assumed anyone else would, too. Catie looked at Jake for the first time without the effort of a concealment, without worrying about what he might find out, what he would think. For just a second, she smiled at him, completely bare.

  But then she studied his face. He was angry, yes, but not nearly angry enough. For the most part he looked…well, grimly triumphant was the only way she could think to put it. He didn’t seem wounded, or at least not wounded enough. He was upset, but not with her. No man was that understanding. None.

  He couldn’t know. He couldn’t. If he knew, he wouldn’t be speaking to her. He wouldn’t…would he?

  Catie’s brain kicked back into gear, and she thought quickly.

  “How did you find out my last name?” she said.

  “I asked Captain Seenan to look into it.”

  “You asked Captain Seenan to find out my real name?” she asked, carefully. “What I mean is, how did you know it was…”

  “How did I know it was fake in the first place? Because I couldn’t find your graduate program.”

  Catie stiffened. It was ridiculous that she should be offended that he’d try to find out about her completely fake graduate program, but it was the one limit she’d set. “I told you I wasn’t comfortable with that.” />
  Jake laughed in disbelief, and spread his arm in a wide arc. “Did you think I would be comfortable with you going through my ancient history? That that’s why I had it all hidden away, because I was so comfortable with it?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to.”

  It was the only thing she could think to say.

  “I know you had to, Catie,” Jake said softly. He took another step toward her, and an arc of sodium-tinted light from the quiet street fell across his face and chest, making him very hard to read. Her heart beat out a staccato rhythm, and she almost didn’t dare to breathe.

  “Why did I have to?” she asked. It was barely a whisper.

  He was close enough to touch her now. She felt his fingertips on her bare forearm, and she jumped.

  “I’ve watched you,” he said. “I’ve watched you in our sessions. Whenever I get close to you, whenever I learn something, you push me back like this. You rifle through my wallet, you go through my personal correspondence. You violate some boundary. You provoke me and you push me away. I didn’t know why until I found out about your father.”

  Catie cleared her throat and kept her voice very even. This was important. “What did you find out?”

  “He stole from you. Abandoned you. What I know is probably only the most visible manifestation of his failure. I imagine it did not start with the embezzlement. You’ve every reason not to let people get close to you. You’ve every reason to push me away, after what happened when we last…”

  Catie closed her eyes, and felt hope die in her. Her father. He’d found out about her father. Not her, not Brazzer, not Sizzle. He’d forgiven her for being a helpless victim of fate, not for the shitty choices she’d actually made.

  “Captain Seenan sounds thorough,” she said.

  “I’m still waiting on the full report,” Jake said, and took her hand in his. Somehow, he managed a solemn grin. “Anything else I should know?”

  Catie laughed, shaking her head to keep herself from crying. Oh, if only. She had a reprieve, nothing more. Captain Seenan was still digging. She met Jake’s eyes, and the warm light she saw there tormented her. She knew she should tell him. Right now was the moment to tell him. Right now was the moment to come clean, to confess, to take her chances and throw herself on his mercy, even though she hadn’t had a chance to try to fix it yet.

  She should do it. She should speak.

  Catie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Suddenly she wondered if Jake was right. Did she do what he said? Did she drive people away, right when they got close to her? Jake had gotten in her head like no one had before, and this was what he had found. He had been inside her, and he’d decided he still liked her. The man had just taught her something about herself, something nobody else had ever been able to do, and he still looked at her as though he loved her.

  That was something Catie had never even allowed herself to wish for. That was something she’d thought happened only for other people.

  She wasn’t strong enough to throw it away.

  “No,” she said, choking back tears. “There’s nothing else.”

  chapter 25

  Jake knew at once that she had lied. Her eyes fluttered, looked briefly away, the silver lilt of her voice with one off note. He had looked inside himself again for the anger he had been sure he would feel as he climbed the stairs to the sound of Catie crying, knowing it came from the library, and was still surprised to find relief in its stead.

  He really had felt relief when he saw Catie crying amidst Stephan’s letters. Yes, a kind of obligatory shock and anger, but they passed, flashes in the pan. They left behind a cool, flowing sense of release, that finally, finally, someone knew. That finally Catie, in particular, knew. He hadn’t had to come up with some torturous way to explain; she’d seen for herself. And if she decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, well, he wouldn’t necessarily blame her.

  But just the look on her face had told him he didn’t need to be concerned about that. And it had given him the latest in a series of emotions he’d never dreamed he’d be able to feel. Joy. A weird, strange joy, when the woman he loved was crying and the evidence of a tragedy lay about everywhere, but joy, just the same. One more thing he owed to Catie.

  It had been quickly supplanted by confusion. She was still hiding something.

  “Are you sure?” he asked her.

  She nodded, wiping at her eyes. Another lie. He had never been this attuned to another human being. It felt improper, in a strange way, like he was eavesdropping, and at the moment, what he heard hurt him deeply.

  Captain Seenan had given only the barest details: her father, poor excuse for a man and a father both, a thief who’d abandoned her; mother dead; etcetera. Only family left was a grandmother in a home somewhere. There were some hints at an outlandish youth, acting out, never getting the attention she needed. Not an uncommon story, but that it was Catie’s story made it special to him.

  Yet still she hid from him. She was like a wild animal when wounded, determined to hide until she healed. Only Jake was certain that he owed her more than that. Whatever wonderful thing was happening to him, he was certain he owed it to her, and equally certain it would not survive if she left. He wouldn’t scare her off.

  He reached for her cheek, but she backed away.

  “How are you not pissed?” she said again. She was almost angry now, the way people become angry when they don’t understand what’s going on and it frightens them. “How are you not, just…freaking out?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. He wouldn’t let go of her hand. He had begun to think of it as a lifeline. “I am, in a removed way. But I am also…I am relieved. I hid that for so long, worried about what you would think, if you knew. And there are other things, too. Catie, those letters were not wrong. What I told you was true. I was heartless, in a way; not incapable of feeling, but incapable…it is hard to describe. I couldn’t bear intimacy of any kind with another human being, least of all the kind where someone in pain depended upon me.”

  “You used the past tense,” she said quietly.

  “Yes. You were there with me, in the dining room. You know that doesn’t fully describe me anymore, at least where you are concerned.”

  His own words sounded bloodless to him. ‘Doesn’t describe me anymore?’ Like he was speaking of a passing acquaintance, a casual encounter, rather than the life-changing thing that she had done for him. Jake looked at Catie, wilting in shadows just beyond the range of the light from the desk lamp, and struggled to do better.

  “Your false name,” he said, and she stiffened again. “You used that for a reason.”

  Slowly, she nodded.

  “You wanted to become someone else? To leave it behind?”

  Catie didn’t say anything. He badly wanted to touch her, but forced himself to speak. “That’s how I feel, in a way. I have become different. Something has happened to me, because of you. I am… Damn.”

  He couldn’t say it yet, didn’t have any facility for intimate language. Maybe he’d get there eventually, maybe not, but for now, he had to use what he had. He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her.

  It only seemed to make it worse. He could feel her wilting further, collapsing in upon herself to some far place he couldn’t reach. He didn’t understand.

  “Catie,” he said, as she drew away.

  “I don’t deserve this,” she said.

  She meant his kindness.

  She looked tinier than she ever had, shrunken, as though she were trying to disappear. Jake thought back to the first time he’d brought her into this very room, when he tried to explain what his deficiencies were—deficiencies Catie had somehow begun to heal. He’d tried to explain how he achieved catharsis through domination, how it was the closest he could come to intimacy, how the rules and strictures gave him a kind of freedom.

  “Like a sonnet,” he said under his breath.

  Catie looked at him, and something glimmered
in her eye—that spark that he loved so much.

  She’d said she needed submission in the same way. That it gave her the same release. Catharsis. And now she was huddled in front of him, so consumed with self-loathing that he couldn’t reach her.

  Except perhaps one way.

  “I think you need to see that no matter how far you push me,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He moved forward, and instinctively she moved back, as though they’d already started the dance. In just a few steps she hit the back bookcase, sandwiched between the two large windows. Slowly, deliberately, he reached down to grab her hands, and brought them up over her head.

  Catie sucked in her breath and looked up. “Punish me,” she said. He looked down the length of her body to see her chest rising and falling rapidly, her stomach fluttering. He knew if he put his hand in her pants, he’d find her wet.

  Jake thought back to their first session, remembered her response to pain. To discipline. He slid one hand down her arm to palm her breast, and viciously pinched her nipple.

  “Ah,” she cried, and her breathing intensified. Her eyes were large, and had become languid, deep. She looked right at him and said, “Yes. Please. Please.”

  Catie had given him the ability to love. He would give her anything she needed.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said, releasing her hands. “And bend over that couch.”

  chapter 26

  Catie shivered at the sound of his voice. Authoritative. Demanding. Urgent.

  She met his eye, and slowly began to unbutton her blouse. Her awareness of her body—of his eyes on her body—increased with every button.