Or maybe they got him, too.
And honestly, I don’t find myself caring. Not much. Not enough.
I sit on the edge of my bed and drop my head into my hands. If anything happened to him, it’s my fault. There’s no way around that. I convinced him to go away with. I planned and schemed and brought him along every step of the way.
I wanted to be free, and I walked right into a trap.
You didn’t care about him, an evil little voice whispers in the back of my mind. And you liked what happened to you today.
“No.” My voice bounces back at me. The echo seems louder than when I spoke, which should be impossible. “I didn’t like it,” I whisper.
Two days with Cassian Locke. I can’t be coming apart already, can I? Or is one punishment session—God, I can’t believe I’m thinking of them this way, as set in stone, as set in my schedule—all it takes to push me over the edge?
The truth about how I feel is so slippery it makes me feel filthier than I already do, with that sheen of sweat still on my skin and the wetness lingering between my legs. I didn’t like it.
I hated it.
And I craved it.
I still crave it now. Even now, after I was brought back here with cuffed hands and a sore ass. Mika made me lay on my stomach and rubbed some kind of cream into my skin. It made it feel better. A little.
But it didn’t wipe the thoughts from my mind.
Filthy thoughts.
The groan comes from somewhere deep inside me, a strangled noise filled with wanting. Until today, nobody has ever restrained me. Until today, nobody has ever spanked me. I’ve never been belted. That’s not how things worked in our world. There was decorum.
That decorum, I remind myself fiercely, was a veneer for the kinds of nasty secrets I couldn’t bear to keep any longer.
Is it so bad that I used Tripp as a means to an end, if it meant I could build a life safe from those secrets? If, one day, I could work to cleanse my family’s past of all those dark and terrible corners?
It was not something I could do from inside the house.
The thought strikes like lightning. Cassian could have been involved in that. More intimately involved than I ever knew. How else would his people know where to find me? How else could he be so confident that my punishment is deserved?
I can’t focus on these arguments.
To think of any of them is to think of Cassian. To think of Cassian is to remember how exposed I was, bent over that strange bench, my wrists and ankles bound. It’s to remember the way his hand came down on my flesh without hesitation.
It’s to remember the burn.
That burning pain spreading over every inch of me, around the front of my hips and between my legs and that part of me cried out in recognition.
It was what I’ve always needed. I’ve been asking for years, I see now.
I grit my teeth and let myself fall back on the pillow. I am still naked. Mika didn’t even bring me a robe. She uncuffed my hands and left without another word. The sheets press coolly against my punished ass.
I can’t let it come to this. I can’t give in this way. Cassian Locke is a monster, and I’m not. I’m not. And only a complete fucking freak would like what he did to me. Only a complete freak would squeeze her eyes shut and shove a knuckle in her mouth to quiet her little noises. Only a nasty, dirty freak would slip her hands down below her waist and between her legs, teasing the clit that had been so desperate for attention when the pain was fresh and hot and endless.
I arch back against the sheets, circling that swollen, aching bundle of nerves with my fingertips. Relief battles with frustration. I’m oversensitive, aware of every inch of my skin. Too aware. The fine edge between pleasure and pain dances back and forth, forcing me to chase it.
Cassian did this to me.
I hate that he did this to me.
But that hatred—it feels so alive, so essential, that I want to bottle it up and drink it every night. It’s a dark energy that thrums through my veins along with my heartbeat, straight to that space between my legs that aches and wants and fights.
Why can’t it be easy? Why can’t it be easy to get myself off? I try not to think of him. I try not to think of the way his suit moves with his body. I try not to think of the way his dark eyes rake over my skin like I’m a piece of property.
I try to think of anything else. Another man. Tripp. Any other man. But the men in my imagination are the equivalent of cold, boring water, stagnant at the bottom of the tub. They’re a safe bet and I want nothing to do with them.
None of them have ever caused me any pain. Or if they did, it was superficial—fake the way that soap operas are fake. It only ever went skin deep and it wasn’t hot enough to make my core coil up in pleasure and frustration.
Cassian forces his way back into my mind, and my body responds like he’s standing in the room with me. I can’t help the little whimper that escapes my throat, because as much as I hate him, I wish he was standing in the room with me. A voice in the back of my mind whispers that if he’s so skilled at delivering pain, he must also be skilled at delivering pleasure. I know it deeply, down into my bones, though I’ve never once thought of it before. It makes abundant, cosmic sense. He holds the key to both pain and pleasure in the palm of his hand. Each is impossible without the other.
I don’t want to be lying here in this bed on my back.
I guiltily and desperately want to be back splayed on that bench. Anything—I’d take anything. A vibrator pinned beneath me. A punishment in progress. Anything. But there is no other furniture aside from this boxy bed, this thin mattress, and so I have to settle for bending over it. This has to be the neediest I’ve ever looked, one hand fisted in the thin sheets and one down in the hot, wet crease between my spread legs.
There is no choice in the matter. I have to think of Cassian, or lose the orgasm that threatens.
And so I do.
I imagine him in this small, cramped space, standing behind me. He’d disapprove—I know he would—but yet a certain heat would be present in his eyes as he watched. Would he let himself touch me? No. He will only allow himself to be provoked as long as it serves him.
He would remain in total control. He would hold that over me without laying a finger on my skin.
Do it, precious thing, he’d whisper to me in that dark, sinuous voice of his. Make yourself come, bent over your bed like the whore that you are. Spread those legs for me. Wider. I want to see more of you. I want to watch while you debase yourself for an orgasm. If I stop you, will you beg? How prettily will you beg me if I tie those wrists together and chain them over the wall so you can’t reach that aching clit? Oh, how you like this. You love this. You need it. You crave it.
I pant breathlessly against the sheets, my mouth open, a prayer on my lips: thank God no one is here to witness this.
12
Cassian
Lysander is late to meet me in the innermost office, which both of us pretend to share but neither one will ever sit in for long. It used to be my father’s, and too much of him lingers here for it to be comfortable. He had a bank of monitors installed behind the desk with views of the nine security cameras. We call it the den. It’s not a fucking den.
Two of the unblinking eyes watch the entrances of the building, front and back, but the rest peer endlessly into the two rooms that are the beating heart of our business: the cell and the room. I don’t look at either. If I see her now…
If I see her now, I don’t know what I’ll do.
My brother enters on the tail end of the call he was so desperate to take. “—acceptable.” A pause. “No. Tomorrow.” Then he hangs up the call, shaking his head from side to side as if it was an interruption and not something he’d scheduled in advance. He slips the phone into his pocket and crosses his arms over his chest. “What is it you wanted, Cassian?”
I could kill him, but I don’t. I speak calmly but I’m all business. “Who ordered the contract?”
His eyes flick down to the floor.
“Don’t waste another second of my time. Who ordered the contract?”
“It was paid for from the—”
“I know who paid for it. I read the file. Who ordered the contract?” I keep my hands from balling into fists, but it’s a near thing. Every muscle in my body is tensed, waiting, as if she’s pulling me back toward her. And why? Why? Two days ago, I didn’t know she existed. “Who, Lysander? Did someone approach you on the street with a briefcase full of money? Were you drugged in a club and woke up with a signed contract? Who was it?”
He’s working too damn hard not to meet my eyes, looking over my shoulder at the bank of monitors behind me. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” My blood courses hot, scorching like lava, don’t touch it or you’ll die. I might die. “It’s one thing to fuck up with the form. It’s another to be…completely negligent.” How could he not know? He does know our protocols. I made sure of that. Is this all to fuck with me? “You obviously don’t know how far you’ve slipped below standards.”
The corner of his mouth twitches and I shift my weight, ready to launch myself across the den and take him down to the floor.
“I don’t think she knows that, either.” It’s a dry joke, but the weight in his voice makes me spin around.
There’s nothing on either one of the entrance cams, just as I suspected. Nobody approaches this house without good reason. And all’s quiet in the room. I’m not in there, after all, and it’s already been cleaned.
But in the cell…
My blood freezes into ice and fractures into infinite pieces, then rushes back together, hotly, pounding. I almost collapse from the sight on the screen. As quickly as it froze, that same blood pulsates hotly, beating a painful path through my veins.
Because Justice is on her bed.
And she’s not sleeping.
Lysander makes a choked noise behind me, somewhere south of a laugh, and I taste it as bitterly as if it happened in my own mouth. Despite the release I just pulled in the shower, I’m instantly, painfully hard at the sight of her, knees spread wide on the bed, her hand positioned between her legs—
I turn to go so quickly that Lysander doesn’t have time to get out of the way. Our shoulders connect as I shove past him.
“That’s the spirit,” he calls after me. “Show her what—” His voice fades behind the rush of blood pounding mercilessly in my ears. Show her. Show her. There’s nothing I can show her. She had to know we’d be watching. Nobody in that room has ever assumed they had privacy before. Or maybe she doesn’t care. I don’t know what infuriates me more. I don’t know which makes me want her more.
I’m blinded by the image on the screen, storming through the halls in a cloud tinged red with rage. Some part of me whispers that it’s not rage, it’s not rage at all, but I can’t entertain that voice.
Justice Danes, her hand stroking her legs…
Not without consequence.
At the door to the cell, I punch in the code with stiff fingers and stab another button so that as the door opens she’s bathed in a harsh light.
I take one step into the room and breathe in the scent of her arousal. It’s saturating the air, taking up all the space in the room, but her hand isn’t between her legs anymore. I half hoped she would still be in that obscene position when I entered, just so I could take advantage of it for her punishment, but Justice has had enough time to sit up, panting, naked beneath the thin scrap of a sheet she’s pulled from the top of the bed. It half covers her, one peaked nipple exposed, the upper part of her back pressed defensively against the wall.
Her sweet mouth opens and closes. “What are you—” she gasps. “Have you been watching me?”
I could nearly laugh at her indignation—very nearly. It’s so fucking naive for a woman who spit at me, so innocent, so pure. “Every moment,” I growl. “Did you think you had privacy in here?” The last word comes out on a sneer and her eyes flick downward. Is that heat on her cheeks? Can she possibly feel shame for what she’s done, what she’s been caught doing?
But then her eyes meet mine again and I see it’s not only shame. It’s defiance. That chin comes up a fraction of an inch.
“How dare you.” My voice is low, and the question I’m asking has taken on a new shape, a new form. How dare she be so impudent? And how dare she do that, on the bed, without my permission, in my house, under a fucking contract, no less—
The corners of her mouth turn down with a little frown that does nothing to temper the fire in her eyes. “You never said.” She sounds like nothing so much as a petulant student, and it sends another rush of blood straight between my legs.
“I never said,” I repeat back, not taking my eyes from hers. I want her to feel this, feel every moment of it.
“You didn’t.”
“I never said that you could get yourself off while you’re here for punishment.” How could she believe it would have been all right? Who the hell is this woman?
She bites her lip, drawing it between her white teeth. “If it’s so wrong, then punish me.”
It’s a dare and a crossroads, planted firmly between us. I’m still sorting out what it means that Justice gets off on the punishments I dispense. I’m not a fucking idiot—I know this is a game people play. But I am not playing that game. This is a cold, sharp business, and nothing about it is done for fun. Or for pleasure. That’s not what people pay me for, and it’s not what they paid my father for, either. They paid for pain. They paid for retribution.
They didn’t pay for fingers in the folds of a needy, wet pussy.
And now that she’s thrown down that gauntlet, now that she’s topping from the bottom like this is some scene in a sleazy club covered in velvet and jizz…
I can’t do it.
Physically, yes. I could take her by the hair and drag her on her knees to the room, I could strap her down, I could pin her across my lap. I could use any of the various tools at my disposal. But that would be giving in to her.
My brain twists and turns at the bonds she’s put on it. It’s not fucking right. It’s wrong, and while I’m standing in the room with her, I can’t see the way out of this situation. It’s beyond fucked now.
But neither can I turn and go out the door.
I won’t let her win.
Not now, not ever.
So instead I let a slow smile creep over my face. Justice blinks at the sight of it, pressing back into the wall a little more, and I wonder if she’s regretting what was surely a flippant offer. Because even if she’s rubbing it out with her cheek pressed against the sheet, she must know that there’s worse I could do. Worse than the belt. Much, much worse.
I cross the room in two strides and she sucks in a breath. Maybe she was less intimidated when I was standing by the door, but now I’m towering over her, looking down at that exposed nipple, at the lean line of her thigh, with nothing between us but a few inches.
Justice tries to hold on to the sheet when I rip it away, but it slips from her fingers.
God, she’s perfection.
I can see the marks from the belt curving around the side of her ass from here, and if we were anywhere else, any other people, I’d lean down and kiss her lips. Taste her. Take her. Ravage her.
But we’re not anywhere else.
13
Justice
I don’t know who he is when he reaches for my neck.
But it doesn’t matter whether he’s Cassian Locke or Sir when his fingers slide over my windpipe, his grip strong enough that I know he could kill me but loose enough that I can still breathe. It’s not his hand that’s making my breath shallow and rough, though I’m desperate to play it cool.
How can I, when I know they’ve been watching? God, I am so fucking stupid. How could I be so stupid? How could I not know that this place would be filled with cameras, every inch of me on display at any given moment?
Maybe you did know, a voice whispers dar
kly in the back of my mind. Maybe you did know that he was watching, maybe you wanted him to come here...
His hand tightens on my neck and I snap back into this moment, this utterly mortifying, degrading moment, when it could not get any worse than lying naked on this bed with this man’s hand wrapped around my neck like I am his property.
My pussy clenches at the thought and heat trails up around my chin.
His property.
I’m not his property, I am being held here against my will.
And yet, and yet...
It was still me with my hand between my legs, filthy, panting. Jesus, and now I’ve dared him to punish me. My ass still hurts from when I was tied over that bench less than an hour ago. The skin still smarts. I can’t see how red it is, but I bet it’s an angry pink.
“Spread your legs.”
I hadn’t noticed the way I’d pinned my knees together until he gives the rough command. There’s something about his voice that makes me pull my knees apart without thinking until the moment that I do think, and then I clamp them back together.
“Spread your legs, or I’ll do it for you.” There’s enough of a threat curled in the rich liquid of his voice that I only hesitate a moment longer before I draw my knees apart, exposing my center to the air. To him.
I’m still wet.
The air licks between my legs, a cool caress.
“Wider.”
I have to wriggle down a couple of inches against the wall to allow my legs to open any farther.
“Wider.”
Oh, God. This is—this is different. A flush rushes down and across my chest, beginning with his hand and ending between my legs. It’s not like being tied by impersonal leather straps. It’s not like when he becomes nothing but a shadow dispensing burst after burst of pain.
I spread my legs as wide as they’ll go, finally forced to use my hands to press my knees outward. My knees themselves are hinged up awkwardly near my breasts, the gap between them closing with every breath.
Cards of Love: Justice Page 6