Girl In Pieces

by Jordan Bell

  I did not see Thomas and no one stopped me as I followed Josh out.

  Rivers of rain poured down the front doors, obscuring my view of Josh’s retreating back. I collected my wilted courage and trudged out after him. He must have heard me because he turned before reaching his car.

  I stopped a few steps away, unsure if he’d bite if I got too close.

  He stared down at me, the rough stubble along his jaw and disheveled appearance made him more imposing and gorgeous out here in the dark. A strange, carnal desire to let this man pull me into the back seat of his SUV and punish me for everything I’d said and done to him that night overwhelmed me. I swallowed, pressed my hand to my stomach to calm the butterflies there, and bowed my head.

  Josh stepped closer. “I thought you’d rather sleep in the drunk tank than accept my help.”

  “Please take me home,” I begged.

  “Ok.” Josh said without hesitating. “Get in.”

  Josh’s Explorer was pretty much the opposite of Thomas’s ultra-sleek futuristic sports car. It was rough around the edges from hauling bar stock and frequent camping trips. It smelled like men’s shampoo and leather boots and old coffee and had scuff marks along the glove box from where I put my feet up on the dash. We were public transportation people in our day-to-day lives, so riding with Josh on a pickup or delivery was like going on a road trip. I’d pack snacks and playlists and he’d point out we were only going across the city.

  It’ll take us fifteen minutes, he’d say. I’ll pretend it’s longer, I’d answer.

  My little sounds, the buckle clicking into place, my chattering teeth, the squeak of my thighs against wet leather made the muted silence in the cab feel even more oppressive. Every time I shifted he’d glance at me. Even breathing was too much noise. I became gigantic as I thundered through the quiet. I’d never felt so large and bullish in my life.

  “You’re cold,” he said without looking at me.

  “I’m ok.”

  He flipped switches anyway, and turned knobs until the heater came alive. At first it just made me shiver harder, but as we pulled out into the empty, quiet streets, the warmth began to have some effect on my numb fingers.

  We managed to drive a good 58 seconds before he broke the silence with more of his impatient questions.

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Josh,” I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Damn it, Kat.” His jaw tightened as he worked through his temper. His body screamed with barely held restraint. “I just want to know you’re safe. There are too many men who claim to be dominant lovers and end up sadistic and cruel while claiming you asked for it. I just need to know.”

  “I don’t want to tell you.” I looked out the window at the sleepy world, everyone dreaming their pretty dreams. I envied them tonight. I’d never in my life wanted to me so normal and boring as I did right then. “You’ll think I was being foolish. You won’t think for a second I did anything to protect myself.”

  “No more yelling, I promise. Just tell me the truth.”

  “I answered a personal ad.” He opened his mouth to break his promise but I held up my hand to stop him. “I texted his information to Julie. We went to dinner, that’s it. A plain, old fashioned, no whips invited date. He was nice, actually, despite how things ended up. He tried to impress me with his car and…it doesn’t matter. You know what happened. Worst date ever, but it didn’t start out that way. I was never in any danger from him. He was an idiot, not a psychopath.”

  “He paid for escorts,” Josh protested.

  “I didn’t know that ahead of time. It’s not like people advertise their dirty little secrets the moment you meet them, no matter how you meet them. I’ve known you my whole life and didn’t know yours until a month ago, so please. Spare me your judgment. According to your view of my world, you are just as suspect. Who knows what danger I’ve placed myself in getting into your car.”

  “You’re not amusing.” His curt tone and reproachful look cut off of my snotty response. I shrank own in my seat a little and looked back out the window. “It’s not the same thing, Kat. It’s hard to know who to trust.”

  “You’re not kidding.” I exhaled onto the window, puffing a cloud across the glass. I drew my name in the fog with the tip of my finger. Kat. “I trusted you after all.”

  Ouch. Josh withdrew and fell silent. The stretch of leather between us grew by miles. The heat warming my skin had a sleepy effect and while he wrestled with his thoughts, I rested my head against the window and closed my eyes. Despite everything, it was easy to let my guard down with Josh next to me. I still trusted him, which seemed both foolish and inevitable.

  “If you knew,” he said suddenly, his voice low and intimate. “If you had any idea the things I dream about doing to you, you’d never forgive me. I’d kill another man for wanting what I want from you.”

  My whole body responded to those words, like gunpowder under my skin. With a look, his husky voice, and those miles between us snapped closed and suddenly there wasn’t enough room. I could almost feel the heat coming off his skin.

  I dug my nails into my thighs and shot him a furious look.

  “Nothing could be as bad as what I want.”

  Josh waved his hand dismissively. “You don’t know what you want. You have no idea.”

  “I want to be tied down,” I shot back. “Arms behind my back. Face down. Blindfolded.”

  Josh froze.

  “I want deafeningly loud music and no knowledge of what’s about to happen to me.”

  Muscles from his shoulders, biceps, forearms, right down to his fists, tightened like dominos. He didn’t dare look at me this time, but I knew he heard every word, could feel it when the steering wheel whined when he twisted his hands against it.

  Emboldened by his reaction, I closed those few inches between my fingertips and his body and slid my fingers along his belt.

  “And then I want this.”

  When I hooked my fingertips over the sharp leather edge and tugged, he swerved over the middle line into the next lane. Josh swore, jerked back into his lane, and clamped a hand down hard over mine. His nostrils flared.

  “You,” he warned, “have no idea what you’re asking for.”

  “Should I beg instead?”

  Josh hit the brakes, letting my hand go and bringing us to a squealing, hydroplaning stop several feet from the moment he put his foot down. The force threw me into my seat belt and then back into my seat hard. I swore. He swore. I twisted to look out the back window, half expecting police or, hell, an alien invasion wouldn't have been out of the question. But there was nothing but us idling in the dark, the Explorer’s headlights the only illumination for blocks.

  He breathed hard, stared straight out the window into the rain and did not let go of the steering wheel for anything. He held onto it like he was the only thing standing in the way of the aliens and my pending abduction. His intensity worried me.

  “You have no idea what you’re tempting me with.” He exhaled a soft, throaty wanting noise. “You greatly overestimate my self-control.”

  “You should have taken me home that night.” My hurt bled into my accusation more than I’d expected. It suddenly seemed so important that he not know how much my heart hurt from his dismissal. “You should have let me try to earn you. I wanted so badly to know what your hand felt like spanking…”

  “Stop.”

  My words froze on my tongue and I immediately obeyed. Obeyed. That word meant so much more now. It was that voice, that demanding voice like a threat that would not allow me to push his limits. It was more powerful than his hands in my hair, holding my head down. It should have scared me but all it made me want to do is place my head in his lap and wait for his next command.

  “I’ve never met anyone who needed to be gagged as much as you do,” he continued, a wry, sadistic amusement curling the corner of his mouth. He ran a shaking hand back through his hair before returning to
the steering wheel. “We made a mistake and we’ll never be able to undo the damage. We’ll never be able to go back to how we were, no matter how much I wish we could.”

  “I wanted it,” I shot back, my heart beating like gunfire against my ribs. “God, I begged for it. I don’t want to hear about how much of a mistake I was. What’s wrong with me wanting it? Why does playing with me disgust you but playing with Michelle is so bloody wonderful?”

  “It has nothing to do with her,” he snapped. “I don’t feel disgust, Kat. I feel shame. You’re Brian’s little sister, somehow still fourteen years old and bratty and endlessly in the way. I can’t seem to forget that little fact.”

  There. A throb beneath my breast bone. My skin tightened down my arms, across my scalp. The rushing, falling, vertigo feeling when you hear something you don’t want to and you can’t make it stop.

  He squeezed his fists, the focus of his control. I wanted to touch them, to know what his fear felt like shaking him apart like that. I didn’t dare, though. I stayed pressed against my door and stared at him like he was the alien.

  He exhaled. “And all I want to do is tie you down with my belt and kiss and lick and bite every inch of your body until you’re screaming. I can’t reconcile the two girls. It’s impossible.”

  “Josh.”

  I love you. I love you like a wrecking ball, like I know I shouldn’t, like the worst idea ever. I love you even though I know it’s a stupid, reckless thing to do.

  He looked at me, blue eyes so blue even in the dark and the shadow of stubble along his jaw aging him, making him more masculine and rough around the edges. I wanted to put my hands inside his coat and climb into his lap and kiss him until all his words went away and we could finally let go of all that control.

  But instead I dug my nails into my palm to keep the real words locked up where they couldn’t get me into trouble.

  “You think it’s that easy, just letting me hurt you without knowing how you will react?” He ran his hands down along the shape of the wheel and back up to the top. Each caress slow and measured.

  “Not everyone gets off on it,” he continued when I didn’t answer. “I suspect it doesn’t ever stop being pain and humiliation for most, even submissives. It’s rarely indulgent and gratifying, let alone physical pleasure. You think I could just live with myself if I bruised your body and instead of loving it, you hated it? Do you think I could survive hurting you for fun, being turned on by every mark, every scream, while you become increasingly more afraid of me? It would kill me, Kat. It would kill me to become your monster. You can’t ask me to test that possibility.”

  He closed his eyes and dug out the last of my heart, making sure he got every morsel.

  Because he was right, of course. Forcing him to do this one thing he did not want to do would have been selfish and cruel.

  Josh made his choice and I had to let him.

  “Thank you for coming after me even though you didn’t have to,” I said softly. “It meant everything to me.”

  “You scared the hell out of me tonight.” He shook his head, disgust twisting his mouth. “I am not Brian. I don’t care how much distance is between us, I would never not come for you, Kat. I know I opened my mouth and became this asshole because I was scared to death, but I am not Brian.”

  “I know,” I said, detaching myself one word at a time. “I don’t really hate you. Much. Mostly. Sort of.”

  Josh smiled briefly and let go of his death stranglehold on the steering wheel. His arms slackened. “You do. And you should. I deserve it.”

  “Josh.”

  “Don’t.” He tore his eyes off the road and met my needy, fervent gaze. “What’s done is done. We can’t go back. Pretending otherwise won’t undo any of it.”

  What he was saying was, if you say what you want to say, I will be forced to break your heart again.

  “We should go. I want to go home and you’ve got someone waiting for you. We’ve wasted enough time.”

  He shook his head and pulled back out into the left hand lane, all our confessions left out on that wet street. “No one is waiting for me, Kat. She’s not…we’re not…I didn’t sleep with her that night. I sent her home. I made a mistake calling her in the first place.”

  Lie. Maybe. Maybe he didn’t sleep with her that night, but he had since. I’d seen her car on our street enough times to know she wasn’t just hanging out with him, her Master, watching TV or playing Monopoly.

  “It doesn’t matter what the two of you have.” I shrugged. “You should have something that makes you happy. I think that’s supposed to be the point of everything. You get what you want with her and I’m…well, I’m the biggest mess in the world. I can’t take care of myself let alone someone else.”

  “She doesn’t,” he said quickly. “It’s not like that.”

  “I know what it’s like.”

  “Kat…”

  “I don’t need details.” I looked at him. He looked at me.

  Josh went quiet. We crept past dark cars left on the street after last call. The bar was shuttered but for a muted glow from somewhere inside. Probably Brian’s office. There were no lights on in Josh’s apartment. There was no one waiting for him tonight.

  All of the windows in my building were dark, except Avery had left a light on in her kitchen. It was a soft yellow glow, somewhere away from the window. Her stove, probably. For some reason it made me ache with home sickness. I wanted to burrow into my blankets and hibernate for at least fifty years.

  Josh pulled into a spot outside the bar and killed the engine. I put a hand on the door handle, but when he didn’t immediately get out, neither did I.

  “Are you going to be ok?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” The engine clicked as it cooled down. “No? Our friendship is toast. My brother is an asshole. My best friend is a traitor. I’m feeling like tomorrow is going to be pretty bad.”

  “Don’t blame Julie.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “She knew I’d break down the doors to get you out. It was really more efficient than her plan of showing up and yelling at the desk sergeant until she got her way.”

  I reached across the center console and touched his forearm. He was so strong, hard muscles and dark skin. I grazed the hairs on his arm, petting them, hardly touching him, but still the most calming, terrifying sensation I’d felt in weeks. This would be the last time I’d touch him, maybe ever, at least for a very long time. I needed a memory to hold onto.

  My thumb carved its way around his wrist joint, falling to the notch between his thumb and forefinger. He watched with wide pupils, but didn’t stop me.

  “Thank you. For coming to my rescue even though I’m not your problem.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, that half smile playing his mouth into something I badly wanted to kiss. “You will always be my problem. No matter what.”

  I snorted and withdrew my hand but he caught it out of the air and held it to the seat between us, our fingers threaded. I swallowed my nervousness and squeezed his hand.

  “I should go.”

  “I know.” He dropped back against his head rest and turned his head to look at me. “I’m finding it difficult to let you. You’re going to run back out there looking for a Dom and I will never be able to sleep again.”

  “If it helps you sleep at night, I won’t be looking for another you. You were right all along, you know. When Thomas told me what submission really meant, I realized that wasn’t what had turned me on that night.” I swallowed, choking on the truth he needed to know and I needed to tell him, no matter how much it sucked saying out loud. “I knew I would have a hard time feeling that way with someone else. I’m not giving anyone else control over me.”

  Josh lifted his head, his soft eyes narrowing. He spoke each word slowly and deliberately with that obey me voice that just knocked me out. “What, exactly, did he tell you submission was, Kat? What did he want from you?”

  I bit my lip and hesitated. If I told Josh
what Thomas said about anal sex, we’d start back over at the beginning with how naïve and careless I’d been. I didn’t want to go through that again.

  Instead I looked down at our intertwined hands, mapped where our fingers crossed, where his skin became mine. When I loosened my hold on him, he tightened his on me.

  “Kat, tell me. Tell me right now what he said to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  Josh reached across the cab and captured the back of my neck with his free hand and forced me to face him in the cage of his body. He dropped his chin so we were eye-to-eye, and though he didn’t hold me hard, I knew better than to try and pull away.

  “Answer me.”

  Obey.

  “He told me,” I swallowed. “He told me that I would do things he wanted because it made him happy and that in turn would make me happy. He said submission was about wanting to meet his needs.”

  I shook my head, trying to pull my face away from his but he didn’t let go, his fingers twisting up in the baby hairs at the base of my neck. He held me still even when I didn’t want him to see me anymore.

  “I don’t want to lose myself, Josh. I wanted to meet your needs, that’s what turned me on. I don’t want to lose who I am for someone else’s vision of who I will be for them. I can’t imagine letting anyone else control my body. You were right, I’m not submissive. I’m not really anything.”

  A long, electric silence stretched between us. His thumb caressed the soft skin behind my ear, but otherwise his face didn’t change, his eyes stayed unblinking on mine. Whatever he was thinking warred in those beautiful blue eyes.

  “I’m going to kill him,” he said suddenly, let go, pushed the door open and climbed out into the rain.

  His sudden departure terrified me. I’d said something wrong, done something wrong. The way his blurred shape stalked in front of the Explorer, shoulders bent forward, fists ready to for a fight, I knew I’d made another terrible mistake telling him how I felt.

  Josh yanked my door open.

  “Let’s go.” He took hold of me as I climbed out. “We have to talk. Not out here, but you’re not going home until I let you.”