by Hannah Ford
The air was cold and I stood there shivering - I couldn’t tell if it was because of the chill in the air or the anticipation of what was about to come.
I turned to him.
He was watching me carefully, trying to gauge my reaction.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In the laundry room of a building I own.” He reached into the bag he’d grabbed from the bodega, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and tossed the bag onto the floor before taking a long pull from the bottle.
“Why are you drinking?” I asked.
“Because I need something to take the edge off.”
“Take the edge off what?”
“You disobeying me. And what it does to me inside when I think of someone hurting you.”
It was dim in here, the only light coming from a couple of bulbs overhead and the small amount of outside light that was coming in from the two tiny windows that lined the wall, up by the ceiling. “What is that?” I nodded to the metal contraption.
“A cage.”
“No, not the cage. What’s inside of it?”
“An impaler.” He took another sip from his whiskey, his eyes still studying my face carefully, waiting for my reaction.
The word, impaler, sounded scary and foreign.
I took in a deep breath. “And you want to put me in it?”
Noah nodded.
I licked my bottom lip. “Why didn’t you tell me you owned an apartment building?”
“I own a lot of buildings, Charlotte. Here, overseas, in other parts of the country… Commercial property and apartment buildings are a significant part of my portfolio.”
“I thought we said no more secrets.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I could tell he was going to bring up the fact that I’d kept a secret from him.
My eyes returned to the impaler. “How does it work?”
He set his bottle of whiskey down on the floor and crossed the room to the row of filing cabinets. He unlocked one of the padlocks with a key that was on his keychain, then reached inside and pulled out two separate padlocks.
“You will get locked into it,” he said. “Laying on your stomach, with your arms and legs pulled back and cuffed in.”
The filing cabinet drawer was still open, and I could see what was inside of it, a mix of file folders, papers, and what looked like a picture.
I walked closer so I could get a better look, and as I did, I felt Noah tense beside me. His hand reached out and clamped down on the top of the drawer, but he didn’t make a move to close it.
I reached past his hand and picked up the picture.
It was of a woman standing on a beach, wearing a huge brown straw hat, a pair of khaki capris, a flowing white shirt, and red pedal pushers. She was smiling, but her eyes were fixated on something out of the camera’s lens, like someone was about to take a picture of her but she got distracted by something or someone else.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“My mother.”
I looked at him. His face was a blank, but I could hear the pain in his voice. I placed the picture back down in the drawer, and when I did, I caught sight of a file folder. The tab read The State vs. Noah James, District Juvenile Court of New York, Case No. 34576.
I sucked in a long breath. Noah’s court case. The one where he’d been arrested for hurting his stepfather.
Noah took the picture from my hand and placed it back inside the cabinet then shut the drawer and locked it back up before I could ask any more questions. Then he unlocked another drawer and pulled out a long leather switch.
“Noah –”
“Go stand over there, Charlotte.” He pointed to the side of the room, where a small area the concrete the floor was raised, creating a small platform.
I thought about disobeying him, but there was no denying it. I was turned on, the strength of his voice and the brazenness with which he was ordering me around drawing me in and pulling me under his spell.
I went and stood on the platform.
“Take your shirt off.”
I reached down and gripped the sides of my sweater, pulling it over my head slowly, the chill of the air instantly making my skin prickle with goose bumps and my nipples harden under the sheerness of my bra. Noah had begun to unbutton his shirt, revealing his chiseled body, the six-pack abs, the hard ridges of his broad chest, the soft line of hair that started at his navel and dipped below his belt.
“Noah,” I said, swallowing. “I want to talk about what’s in the filing cabinet.”
He grinned wickedly and trailed the switch over the dusty floor, his eyes burning. “You want to talk about what’s in that filing cabinet, Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
“Then take your skirt off, nice and slow so I can see that ass.”
I turned around and reached for the side of my skirt, my hands fumbling as I struggled with the zipper.
I turned around and tugged it off my hips nice and slow, making sure to bend over as I did it, giving Noah a full view of my ass and pussy as I did it. Both were bare, my panties taken by Noah in the elevator and not returned.
“God, you are fucking sexy,” Noah murmured, and I felt the whip slid over my ass cheeks -- but he didn’t strike me with it, just let me live in that space of anxious anticipation of wondering what my punishment was going to be, how hard, how severe, how pleasurable.
I straightened back up and turned around, stepped out of my skirt which was pooled around my feet.
Noah took another pull from his whiskey bottle.
I swallowed nervously.
“In that filing cabinet, Charlotte,” he said. “Are the transcripts and documents from my court case. All the disgusting details.”
He said it matter-of-factly, but I could tell he didn’t like talking about it, that I was pushing him, not just with the way I’d disobeyed him, but now with the fact that I was trying to get him to talk about something he’d buried long ago.
“What are the disgusting details?” I asked, bracing myself.
“Take off your bra, Charlotte.”
I reached behind me and unhooked my bra. His eyes were locked on mine as he paced back and forth across the dusty floor, a light sheen of sweat on his hard, chiseled chest.
“Slowly, Charlotte.”
I slid the straps down my arms, letting my breasts fall out of the cups slowly, watching Noah’s eyes burn with searing desire. Even now, even in the fucked up, twisted situation we were in – him standing there with a whip, chest heaving, ready to whip me for disobeying him, me trying to pry information out of him by letting him have his way with me – I still flushed with pleasure and excitement that I was able to have this effect on him, that he loved me and my body, in all its imperfections, so much so that he got excited and turned on just by looking at me.
I dropped by bra on the floor and stood there, naked, my arms at my sides, my eyes on his, waiting for further instructions.
“The details, Charlotte,” he said, “are that my stepfather beat my brother and I so badly that he broke my nose when I was ten. He broke my mother’s wrist, her arm, her ankle.”
My heart clenched and tightness rose in my chest. “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” he asked sharply. His hand was still wrapped around the whip, his grip tightening.
“Because I didn’t know.”
“Never apologize, Charlotte. Not for someone like that.”
He crossed the room until he was standing behind me, and the rubber band around my chest squeezed tighter with emotion and anticipation.
I hated that he had gone through something like that, hated that it had probably been something even worse than what he was telling me.
I hated that he felt the need to take his emotions out on me physically and sexually whenever they bubbled up inside of him.
And yet I loved him more in that moment than I ever had, for everything he’d been through, for how I knew that even desp
ite the horrors he’d experienced he was a good, kind person.
“I will keep you safe,” he growled. “I will do whatever it takes.”
The whip slashed through the air, landing on my ass, and I gasped in surprise and pain.
“And you will not defy me.” He crossed to the front of me, his chest heaving with emotion and exertion. The whip lashed my stomach, and I cried out, the skin there sensitive, not used to being hurt that way. “Tell me.”
“I won’t defy you, Noah.”
“Again.”
“I will not defy you.”
He whipped me again, this time across my breasts, the leather thrashing against my nipples, leaving a sick flaming burn in its wake.
“Again,” he said, but he was lost in something else, something bigger than me, some emotional time machine over which I had no control.
He whipped me again and again and again, over my pussy, my ass, working out his aggression and his emotions, punishing me while relieving something for himself. Only when he’d exhausted himself, when my pussy was wet and aching for him, did he toss the whip onto the floor.
“Get in the cage, Charlotte.”
I stepped down from the podium and walked toward the cage. When I was inside, I turned to look at him, standing there, his eyes filled with pain.
Then he followed me into the cage, pushed me up against the bars, the steel pressing into my back as his hands intertwined with mine.
“Charlotte,” he groaned, his hands sliding over my body, inspecting the marks he’d left on me. “Charlotte, what have I done to you?”
“Shhh,” I said, putting my lips to his. “Shh.” Our mouths found each other, our kisses intensifying, the two of us kissing with such passion and ferocity I couldn’t have imagined it even existed, much less that it could be something I would experience.
His hands moved over my body, and I reached down and undid his belt, desperate to feel him.
He groaned as my hand wrapped around his shaft, rock hard and ready for me. I squeezed and he groaned again and pushed me down to my knees. I removed his pants and wrapped my mouth around his cock, sucking on him hungrily, trying to soothe his emotional scars with physical pleasure.
His hips thrust into me, his torso angled back so that he could get a better angle on me, a better amount of friction. I swirled my tongue around the head of his dick the way I knew he liked and he groaned.
“Use your hand, baby.”
And I did, taking him in my hand, sucking and stroking, our eyes locked as I watched the pleasure move over his face, watched him slowly start to lose his grip on the control he clung to so dearly.
“I need to fuck you,” Noah groaned, and he grabbed me around the waist, picking me up and pulling me to the ground.
I climbed on top of him before he could stop me, and he grabbed my wrists, his nails sinking into my skin and as he started to roll me over, but I dug my heels into the ground and clenched my thighs together.
“No,” I whispered, leaning over him so that my hair brushed against his chest. “Please, Noah, I want to be on top of you.”
He’d never let me be on top before, had never let me have any control when it came to what we did sexually. Resistance crossed his face, but I kissed him.
“Please,” I whispered.
He nodded, but his nails dug deeper into my skin as I grabbed his dick and positioned it against my pussy before sliding down on top of him, the pleasure of feeling him inside of me this way firing through my body like a bullet from a gun, over and over and over again, each shot of pleasure more intense than the one before it.
I began to rock on top of him, my clit sliding over his shaft. I tipped my head back, and watched as his hooded gaze dropped down to the place we were connected, the look on his face one of pure ecstasy.
He let me ride him for as long as he could take it, for as long as he could let himself feel vulnerable. It wasn’t long – maybe thirty seconds, and then he grabbed my hips and pushed me down onto the dirty floor, thrusting inside of me, his need taking over.
He fucked me hard and fast, his hips bucking into mine, filling me.
We came at the same time, him unloading into me as my pussy clenched around him, my orgasm rocking me so hard that I shivered when it was finally over, when that last wave of incredible euphoria had finally finished sliding through my body.
Noah collapsed on top of me, both of us panting, and I ran my hands down over his back and squeezed my eyes shut tight, letting the reality of what had just happened wash over me.
It was one of the first times Noah had begun to let his walls down. And in order to do that, he’d needed to exert control in other ways, i.e. by whipping me.Was this what he would expect now, every time I inquired about his past or asked him something personal? Would it take me being vulnerable, for him having control over me, for him to let his guard down?
It was a disconcerting thought, and I didn’t know what it meant for our future.
How could you have a healthy marriage if those were the rules?
And yet underneath all of this swirling confusion, another reality burned bright and hard.
It was the best orgasm I’d ever had in my life.
***
When we got back into the car Noah’s mood was lighter.
We hadn’t resolved anything and yet, somehow we’d both gotten a release.
We were hallway home when my phone buzzed with a text.
“Who is it?” Noah asked, looking over at me sharply.
“It’s John,” I said. “The man from this morning, the one I’m supposed to meet with tonight.” I’d never replied to his earlier text, and now he was following up, asking me if I would still come tonight at six.
Noah didn’t say anything.
“Noah,” I said softly. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What kind of person would I be, Noah?” I asked him. “If I just ignored what Mikayla had told me, if I just forgot about it?” I remembered how it felt to be locked in that club for even just a few hours, the heaviness of the air around me, the hopeless feeling as I’d been led to that auction.
Noah sighed. “This is that important to you?”
“Yes.” I nodded, waiting for him to give his verdict. If he forbid me again to go and see this man, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
“Fine,” he said. “One meeting. One time. That is it. I will go with you. We will stay for fifteen minutes. And if I get any sense that he is full of shit, or trying to manipulate you in any way, you will have no further contact with him. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, dizzy with relief. “Yes, I understand.”
I texted John back, telling him I would be there at six.
Noah reached for my hand, his fingers tightening around mine as we came to a stop at a red light. “Charlotte,” he said. “What just happened back there, in that room…”
I put my hand on his knee and squeezed it gently. “Noah, those things that… those things that happened to you. They weren’t your fault. I hope you know that.”
He kept his gaze ahead, watching as a family crossed the street in front of us, a couple with their children, the boy riding a scooter, his helmet askew on his head, the other little boy eating an ice cream cone that had dripped all over his shirt.
Finally, Noah tore his gaze away and his eyes locked on mine. “You are good,” he said. “You are sweet and pure and kind, and… ” He trailed off, his thumb grazing the back of my hand. “When I hear that voice, the one that tells me I’m worthless, that I’m a monster, that I’m not worthy of anything, it is you that brings me back. You would never be with anyone horrible,” he said. “You would never be with someone who was unworthy of you.”
“Oh, Noah,” I said, my voice catching at the thought of those horrible things, the ones he’d been told when he was younger, running through his head on a constant loop.
I shifted on the seat and moved toward him, b
ut his phone rang, and he reached for it, his hand leaving mine, his demeanor changing in an instant, so quickly it made me question if there had even been a moment of closeness there at all.
“Cutler,” he barked. “Yes… yes… you did? What the fuck was she doing there?”
The light turned green and Noah turned the car around, doing a U-turn in the middle of the street, all business again as he pulled into the traffic that was streaming by.
We began heading uptown, my head just as confused as my body was satisfied.
***
Clementine had found Lilah at a movie theatre on 57th Street, sitting in the back row, eating a carton of popcorn mixed with Milk Duds. There was a movie playing on the screen, one of those animated children’s movies that had Oscar award winning actors playing the voices of the characters and would end up making a bazillion dollars.
Clementine said Lilah had seemed dazed and disoriented, and there there were scratches all over her face. When Clementine asked her what had happened, Lilah said she couldn’t remember, but she thought maybe she’d put the scratches there herself.
Clementine took Lilah to the hospital for a psych eval, and Noah drove us there to meet them, gunning the engine of his car, tapping his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel at every single red light.
“I don’t understand why Clementine brought her to the hospital,” I said as we pulled up in front of the hospital. The wind whipped at my hair as I stepped onto the sidewalk, a uniformed parking lot attendant opening the door for me as another swooped in to take Noah’s car to the valet lot.
“Because Lilah was obviously in distress,” Noah said. “We have no idea what’s going on with this girl, Charlotte.”
“You mean she’s unhinged because she slit a man’s throat?”
Noah turned to me and gave me a glaring look. “No, because she has been through a trauma.”
I knew better than to talk back.
Noah had told Clementine to head back to Loft 37 and that we would meet her there, so Noah and I followed the signs to the emergency room, where they told us Lilah had been taken to the third floor psychiatric department.
We took the stairs instead of the elevator, somewhat of a relief to me, after what had happened the last time we’d been in an elevator together.