His eyes are on mine, like he takes some sick pleasure in watching my face while I follow his orders. A humiliating drip slips from between my legs down to the sheet beneath me. Even over my ragged breathing, I can hear it.
He can, too.
His eyes tear away from mine, alighting on my neck, my breasts. I can almost feel them lingering on my nipples. Damn them. They’re giving me away almost as much as the slickness between my legs.
As much as I want to follow his gaze, I can’t. Because with the firestorm of his eyes focused somewhere on my face, I can finally look at him. He’s got me pinned on my back. There’s nowhere else to look. And I find that I don’t want any other view.
Dark hair, not a hint of gray, not a lock out of place. An aquiline nose like something out of a historical movie. He could have been an actor, if he didn’t do...this. Punish people. Punish women. Punish other women—
A sick flash of jealousy flutters through the pit of my gut. How many other women has he pinned like this, watched like this? And how can I be jealous of them? Were they all dragged here, like me, to pay for their sins?
And did he like it?
I follow the sharp, cutting line of his jaw to his lips. What would it be like to have those lips on mine? To have them anywhere on my body? Is he the kind of man who would bite at my nipples? A ripple of pleasure spreads outward from them at the thought of being bitten. Not by any man, by this man, whose power vibrates in every one of his muscles. The cut of his suit doesn’t disguise it for an instant. It only enhances it.
He’s staring between my legs.
Straight between my legs, where more wetness is gathering like I’m some kind of slut for pain, like I’m some kind of glutton for punishment.
And I am. That’s what I am.
I asked him to punish me, and he’s doing it now. I am half consumed by the shame of his hand around my neck and half drowning for the love of it.
I wish we could have met somewhere else. Somewhere we would have been on equal footing. Where he could have seen me as something other than a body to be punished.
You deserve this, that voice whispers, and I know it’s right. I deserve every moment of his punishment, and I deserve what I’ll get when he sends me back. My heart thuds against my chest, my stomach twisting. And he will send me back, because I would deserve that, too. That’s what it means to pay the price.
“Pay attention.”
His voice cuts through that useless worry, pointless when he has me in his hand like a bird he could crush at any moment. His eyes are on mine again, dark and searching. Hard, like stone. The corner of his mouth twitches upward in some kind of satisfaction. The punishment isn’t over, of course it’s not, of course he would never be so simple about it.
“Now finish.”
Finish. The word rings in my head, my pussy reacting before the meaning fully reaches my brain. I swallow, feeling the curve of his hand pressing against my neck. “Finish?”
“Put those fingers back where they were when I interrupted you.” He delivers each word with thudding precision.
It should be easy. My hand is already splayed on the bed, my fingers still damp, but with his eyes on mine I am flooded with the kind of embarrassment I never thought I’d feel again. Not since the moment he put me over his lap the very first time.
“Hesitate one more moment and you’ll pay for it.” His tone is light, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take without passing out. The ugly truth, the ugly, terrible truth, is that the more I breathe him in, the more his very breath brushes against my lips, the more I want him.
And I will never deserve him.
I want to fight him.
I want to obey him.
But I have no more time to think about it, because his grip around my neck tightens again and I instinctively gasp in a breath.
“Hand. Between. Your. Legs.”
This time I do move, putting my hand back where it was, my middle two fingers centered squarely on my clit. That’s where they were when the light turned on, when that door opened, and when I flung myself to the wall like I’d been caught stealing something.
Which, in Cassian Locke’s view, I was.
“Finish.”
I want air, I need more air, and so I circle my fingers around my clit. Oh, how am I going to—how am I going to come like this, with his hand like that, with his eyes, and his body—
Shame burns through me again, like another wave of a forest fire, because there it is, under my working fingers. Pleasure. Suddenly his hand on my neck is not pressing down, I’m pressing myself into it as if I can’t get enough of his touch. I can’t get enough of his touch, but I have to settle for my own.
A low moan escapes my lips as I slip my fingers lower, toward where I want him the most, and then, like the filthy slut that I am, I bring my other hand into play, slipping two fingers inside me while I play with my clit. I’m swollen and oversensitive, but I have no choice, I have no choice but to give myself over to this—
“Keep your eyes open.”
He’s going to see everything, and here I am on the edge with my hands working between my legs, fucking myself, playing with myself, and when I look up into Cassian’s eyes, I see something extraordinary happen.
The stone facade slips away, revealing a color in his cheeks, revealing a heated depth in his eyes, and when he swallows hard, I know—I know—he wants me. He wants this.
And I don’t have time to think about what that means because even imagining him wanting me is enough to send me twisting in his grip, coming with a mewling cry that I don’t recognize, pleasure bursting through every inch of me. I’ve ruined the sheets, I had to have, and as the last wave moves over me, my muscles go limp and loose.
He’s inches from my face and I reach for him.
God help me, I reach for him, and he leans closer, so close his breath is hot on my chin, and for a wild moment I think he really might kiss me and I am sucked into a vortex of anticipation that I never want to leave, because what happens after we kiss, oh God, it could be, it could be—
He releases me.
I hit the bed with a muffled thud.
He turns on his heel and stalks out.
14
Cassian
All the sun in the world couldn’t burn away the shame that’s settled over my skin like a fine film, but the sun doesn’t know that. The light is weak midmorning in the fall. Weak and pathetic. Lukewarm. Like my self-control.
I almost kissed her tonight.
With her pulse under my fingertips, I was on top of the world. That little neck, so delicate, framed by the loose locks of her hair fallen from the twist they’d put it in that morning. Justice might be a spitfire, but she’s flesh and bone like every other woman I’ve taken under my hand. I’ve had my fingers wrapped around plenty of necks, but none like hers. None in the cell.
I’ve never once gone into the cells for one of the contracts.
Why would I?
None of them have interested me outside of the check they come attached to. I don’t concern myself with the various webs spun between New York’s elite. They shift so much that the information may as well be meaningless. What matters is that I have always been impartial. My father has always been impartial. We carefully consider the information on the contract, then approve or decline. There are no feelings involved.
There were no feelings involved.
I take a right turn onto Seventh Avenue. My father would have called it prudent to take a car, but I had to get out. Finding Franklin Keys is the perfect excuse.
Mr. Keys is the only person I could find who is publicly associated with the Danes Family Trust. I grit my teeth at the thought of my careless idiot of a brother agreeing to this contract in the first place, and take a deep inhale of the autumn air. The watery sunlight is tinged with a faint edge of chill, still far-off enough that the rest of the city seems to be ignoring it.
I, for one, am going to pay attention.
&nbs
p; Mr. Keys’ office is another three blocks down in a narrow building wedged between two others. He shares it with one other company—K.L.M., Inc.—and that name means nothing to me. A buzzer by the handle of the glass door summons a doorman, who takes one look at me and presses a switch on the inside. The lock clicks inside the door and the doorman pulls it open.
“Good morning.” He nods his head and steps back to let me in. “Do you have an appointment, sir?”
“I’m an old friend of Franklin’s.” I don’t give him the hint of a smile, and he doesn’t give me one, either.
We consider each other.
“He’ll be expecting me.”
The doorman must conclude correctly that today is not a good day to fuck with me. He gives another nod and steps back behind a small podium, ridiculously sized even for the narrow room. It’s not even large enough to cover the lower half of his body. He picks up a phone, murmurs something into it, and looks back up at me. “You can go up.”
There are two doors at the back of the lobby, each with a brass nameplate. Mr. Keys’ is on the left. The knob turns smoothly under my hand, and I open it to find a staircase carpeted in faded green. Ten steps up, and I’m on another landing.
A woman in a navy suit sits behind a wooden desk that’s the same shade as the doorframe behind her chair. She stands without a word and opens the door, keeping her eyes on the floor. It occurs to me that these people think I’m someone else.
Fine with me.
I go into Franklin Keys’ office and find him cowering behind a desk that’s far too large for the room.
No. He’s not cowering, exactly, but when he stands up to shake my hand, there’s a wobble in the movement that makes me think he could be blown over by a strong gust of wind despite how stocky he is. His hair is dyed a jet black that doesn’t suit his face and combed back from a part straight out of the forties.
“How can I help you?” He sits back down with a huff of breath and folds his hands on the surface of his desk. His eyes are a pale imitation of the color blue. Justice’s put his to shame.
I shake her out of my thoughts. “I’m here about the Danes Family Trust.”
Some of the tension releases from his shoulders. “I can’t talk about that.” He moves as if to stand up, so I step around the chair opposite his and sit down, leaning back as if I own this entire building and the block surrounding it.
I lean forward into the silence, letting him see my face. I’m trying my best to broadcast an expression that’s more thoughtful than menacing, but from the looks of Franklin Keys, I’m failing. And I only half care. “There are questions that need answers, Mr. Keys.”
He exhales through his nose and releases his hands, laying them flat on the table between us. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can say about the...trust...you’ve mentioned.”
“The problem is...” I wrinkle my forehead. “I’ve received quite a large payment from that trust. A payment for services that are in the process of being rendered. And I’ve come to question whether that payment was legitimate.”
He raises his eyes from the surface of the table. “Did the funds not...transfer properly?”
“Oh, no. They transferred straight into my accounts. But I’m not entirely certain that the Danes family authorized the payment.”
“What—” Keys swallows hard. “What reason do you have to believe that?”
“The request for services was unusual.”
He waits. Maybe he thinks I’m going to provide more details, but I’m not. I don’t divulge the nature of my business to people like Franklin Keys. The individuals who need my services already know who I am, and the individuals who will be on the receiving end will find out when they need to know.
I cock my head to the side. “Did you approve the transfer yourself? You’re the trust administrator. It appears on all the available paperwork.”
This is the moment that Franklin Keys should throw me out of his office and refuse to provide any kind of confidential information about transfers or anything else. He should never have admitted to being the Franklin Keys involved with the Danes Family Trust in the first place. But he’s sweating and clearly scared, and he’s not that kind of man.
“What was your name, Mr...?”
“Locke. The payment would have been to Locke Confidential.”
I half expect him to pull out a paper record book, but Keys doesn’t so much as glance toward any of the drawers. “Yes. I approved that payment.” The look in his eyes tells me that he did, in fact, approve the payment.
I watch him for another moment to see if some evidence of a lie crosses his face, but it doesn’t. “One more question, Mr. Keys. Which of the Danes directed you to make the payment in the first place?”
He shoves himself up out of his seat. “I have an appointment. I’m afraid I’ll need you to leave the office.” Franklin Keys is not taller than I am, but he is significantly wider, and the fact of him squeezing around the desk prompts me to stand up and head for the door. I draw a card from my jacket pocket and slap it down on his desk.
“If you remember who gave you the direction to transfer the funds, I’ll be available here.”
He’s practically hyperventilating as he opens the door and stands in front of it, looking everywhere around him but at me. “It’s an...” I lose the rest of his sentence because he mumbles it under his breath.
“What was that, Mr. Keys?”
“Fathers and sons.” He straightens up as tall as he can. “Surely, you understand, Mr. Locke. You must understand.” He’s still mumbling something about understanding when I step out onto the stairs and the door closes quickly behind me.
Fathers and sons.
But Justice is a daughter.
15
Justice
I struggle against the bonds, jerking my wrists from side to side. I’ve been here for what seems like forever. Maybe longer than forever. At least since sometime this morning, but I have no idea what time it is now. There are no clocks in the punishment room. Cassian must like his sessions to feel endless, and this one already is, even though it hasn’t started yet.
Or maybe it has. Mika woke me roughly this morning. The fact that she could surprise me at all was a disappointment, but at some point last night I fell into a deep sleep. But not dreamless. No. Not dreamless at all.
I woke up with my thighs pressed together, the space between them hot and wet, and she frowned at me as if I’d done something wrong. But Cassian wouldn’t have told her about that, would he? No. Because it came so close to turning into something else entirely.
I can’t talk about the ways they cleaned me up this morning. I’d thought being forced to have a wax was over the line. Now I know it’s not.
I’m in the middle of considering whether he’s making me wait like this because he’s still upset about last night when the door flings open and Cassian strides in. I catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye but then he’s gone. I don’t dare turn my head to watch him. It’s possible I do dare, but after how intimate his idea of a punishment was last night, I’m going to think twice before challenging him again.
So I remain silent, hotly aware of the way this position exposes me to him in a way that’s almost as demeaning as the way I was spread out for him last night. At least he can’t see the way my nipples stand erect if he’s standing directly behind me.
No…actually, he probably can.
He’s shifting around behind me. There’s a rustle of fabric—taking off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves—and enduring the wait is agony. Is his palm going to land across my ass without warning? Is he going to start counting? IS he going to mention what happened last night?
Does he still want me?
I rock back against the bonds a fraction of an inch, just enough to release some of the tension building between my shoulder blades. It’s not altogether uncomfortable to be bent over like this, on display like this, but it’s not altogether comfortable, either.
“
I hate liars.”
Cassian speaks the words as if he’s relaying the weather forecast. It’s so casual that it lands sharply on my ears, and I open my mouth to reply, leaving it open for a long moment before snapping my lips shut.
He hasn’t asked me a question, and now I’m trembling in anticipation. I don’t know if it’s pleasurable anticipation or unadulterated fear. It’s both, one landing after the other, trading places like a couple twirling around a dance floor.
“You’re a liar.”
So there’s the follow-up.
“I—”
“Keep that pretty little mouth of yours closed. You’ll have enough reason to open it shortly.”
He steps closer and the air in the room responds to his body, whispering across my naked ass. “I don’t like liars, and pretending not to know something is the same as lying. It’s incredible that I’d have to tell a woman like you a simple fact like that, but clearly, I do.”
My body lights up with shame, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. That heat is followed by an icy cold dash of something else—guilt or fear or all of it at once. He knows, that dark voice whispers. He knows what you’ve done. He knows you’re as guilty as sin.
I want to tell him that I’m not. I want to tell him that I’ve tried my best not to be guilty, even while I live the life that was offered to me. I can’t help it that I was born to the parents that I was, I can’t help it that they built the empire they did, I can’t—
His hand slams down hard on my left ass cheek, and the pain chases the shame into the back corner of my mind.
It surprises me enough to draw a little noise out of my mouth, but I press my lips tightly together.
Another blow, to the other ass cheek.
“You can admit what you’ve done.” Cassian’s voice cuts like a razor and his hand might as well be a belt. It feels like he’s barely holding back, but he must be. He must be holding back something.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
He settles into a rhythm, and how many has he delivered before I’m making noise? Ten? Twenty?
Cards of Love: Justice Page 7