I take in as much of a breath as I can. “You were...so silent today.”
He looks back up at me, his dark eyes dancing. “You were not.”
I think of the sounds that came out of me and blush, looking down.
“You were perfect.” When I look back up into his eyes, his eyebrows are drawn together. “My brother...should never have been there.”
“You can make it up to me.”
I don’t know who we are, having this conversation in this room. But Cassian’s face lights up at the words.
One moment he is looking at me like that, and the next I’m in his bed.
I’m in his sheets, stretching out with my head on his pillow. I’m swimming in the fresh laundry scent of the fabric and the spice of his own scent, listening to the sound of his clothes dropping to the floor next to the bed.
When he crawls between my legs, I open them for him without a moment’s hesitation.
This—this will not be punishment. And if it is, it’s going to be one I like.
I expect him to take me, but instead he lowers his head between my legs.
Tears gather at the corners of my eyes with his first lick. I never thought—I never imagined this would happen. I never imagined that he would know.
He lifts his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t—” I press his head back down. “Don’t.”
Cassian Locke is a master of devouring pussy. Mine, in particular. He holds my thighs open, the flesh tender beneath his thumbs, and licks and sucks, every movement worshipful and exacting. I know he’s not sorry for what he did to me. He’s only sorry that his brother had the chance to ruin it. Four days ago, it wouldn’t have made a difference which man stepped into the room. And now—now—
I come hard into his mouth. He won’t let my hips go, like he has to taste this, and he laps up my juices until I come a second time. Then he crawls on top of me and thrusts inside of me in a powerful sweep, my swollen entrance clenching around him.
This version of Cassian between my legs is like nothing I’ve ever seen. He’s a wonder of the world. Every inch of him is toned and taut, his waist nipped in with so many muscles I can’t help but scrape my fingertips over them. The sight of him in the low light of that little lamp winds me up, which should be impossible because I am already at my limit for orgasms of that caliber. It doesn’t seem to matter when he’s fucking me to his own climax, his face pressed into my collarbone, all of him laid out against me. I can feel him, and it destroys me.
When he’s finished with me, he turns on his side, throwing his arm across my waist, and this draws a tear from the corner of my eye and it trickles down my cheek.
“Tell me what you need.”
He’s asking me if I need pain. But this pleasure—somehow, it’s pain enough. Because I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again.
I shake my head.
A silence follows that’s almost long enough for me to fall asleep.
“It’s not your fault.”
I don’t know what he means, but his shift in tone has me instantly and fully awake. He runs his fingers absently through my hair.
“What?”
I’m still not used to speaking to him like this, but it doesn’t matter. I have to know what he’s talking about.
“I went to visit your father.”
My stomach turns. “Did you see him?”
“No. I met with your brother.”
“That’s—” My mouth is dry, and I’m aware more than ever of how openly I’m sprawled on the bed. I cross one knee over the other. “What did he say?”
“The payment for your contract?”
I nod.
“It came from your family trust.”
“What does that—” I press both hands to my forehead. “What does that mean?”
“From what I gather, they were the ones to arrange the contract. It wasn’t to settle a dispute. Or—it wasn’t to settle a dispute with an outside family.” He grimaces. I never took Cassian to be the type to have feelings about what other people wanted out of these arrangements, but they’re written all over his face.
The meaning sinks in.
“They did this to me.”
His silence is enough of an answer. Now I know—I know why he couldn’t speak to me in the room today. Not even to play his part. He was keeping all this inside his head.
“I know what he does.”
“My father?” The words are a soft rasp, and my stomach folds in on itself. I know what he does, too. But now it’s present in the air between us, that terrible knowledge. The way my father makes his money. The way he earns his power. “How?”
“My own father kept records. I didn’t think to look until after the meeting.” He shakes his head. “That’s where I was when Lysander—” He must think better of saying anything further because his voice trails off. “I know what he does.”
I can’t look at him.
I turn my face to the side, hiding from him. Cassian reaches out and settles two fingers under my chin, turning me back to him. I can’t look away.
“What could possibly make you ashamed in front of a man like me?”
I can hardly take in a breath. Am I hallucinating? Am I seeing this man before me as...the man? Not the towering figure in a suit, the menacing one with a belt?
When the oxygen finally forces its way into my lungs, I know there’s no room for anything but honesty.
“I was part of it.” This is the truth that keeps me bent over that bench instead of fighting it all the way down. I deserve it. I do. I can’t even pretend otherwise. He’s stripped me of my ability to do that. “Complicit. I...lured people.”
“You knew what he was doing?”
All those years, during my childhood, I had no idea. I knew there were certain things we didn’t talk about. Certain things that were better not to know. But it wasn’t until I turned sixteen that he started using me as part of the business. It’s like a permanent stain on my skin. “I didn’t know the full extent until a few months ago. And once I knew—” Bile rises in my throat and I force it back down. “I was going to run away with my boyfriend. He was the only one who knew about our plan, and—”
“He gave you up.”
I never would have believed him. Not until now. But his voice is a quiet truth.
“My brother.” I shudder at the thought of him, so like my father. “Did he tell you about my sister?”
“No.” Cassian’s eyes are wary. I can see why, with a brother like his.
“She’s gone.” I turn my head to the side and wipe another tear on the pillow. “I don’t know if it’s like this—” I gesture vaguely toward the door. “Or if it’s—better, or if it’s worse, I don’t—” A sob fights its way to my lips, choking me. Cassian strokes a hand down the side of my cheek. “I don’t know.” My sister. She’s been gone four months. She never said a word about what she had to do, but I knew. I knew, because I had to do it, too. Maybe she escaped, but maybe...
“You’ll be all right. Once the contract is fulfilled, and you leave, you can look for her—”
My blood runs cold, like cracking ice. “You said my father wasn’t there.”
“No.”
My father is the only one with a weakness. At least, a potential weakness. Maybe he was the one who signed that contract. But if it’s only my brother—
“And you’re still going to send me back?”
Cassian’s mouth is a thin, hard line. “Those are the terms.”
“So what?” I won’t cry anymore. I swear it to myself.
“With what your father knows, he could bring me down. Your brother could. They could crush my reputation, and my business.” He’s leaving something out. Could he care that much about his brother?
“But I thought—” I can’t bring myself to say it. I thought the bed was a sign. Now I see that he’s meant it as a parting gift. A consolation prize. It’s too much to take. I should get up and leave, right now, but instead my body
responds to the crushing blow with a wave of fatigue. My arms and legs collapse heavily against the sheets.
Cassian leans down and presses a kiss to my lips. It feels like an apology, but it’s faint—or maybe I’m fading. I wait for him to shake me awake, to take me back to the cell, but he only pulls up the blankets to tuck around me.
“It’s all I can do,” he whispers. Or maybe I’m dreaming it. I’ll never know.
25
Cassian
Less than forty-eight hours remain in the contract when I walk into the room and find Justice bound over the bench. Mika has always been meticulous in her work, and today is no exception. I can tell she’s scrubbed Justice’s skin to a pink that verges on overdone, then covered it in a lotion that leaves her supple. If I were to touch her, my own skin wouldn’t catch on hers. She’s a blank slate, ready for punishment. Even the marks from the four strokes of the cane have faded nicely. Mika tended to that, too.
Justice doesn’t look at me as I enter the room. She doesn’t so much as try to turn her head, only keeps her eyes trained on the wall in front of her.
I stride over to the rack on the wall, listening to her breathe behind me and try to calm my thoughts. I was calm before I saw her, but now...
It’s like there’s a fire under her skin. Only I can’t see it.
I’ll go back to basics. I’ll start with my hand.
I move around next to Justice and put my hand on the small of her perfectly arched back. She gives no indication that she realizes I’m there—doesn’t startle, doesn’t move. I watch her for long enough to know that she doesn’t even flick her gaze over to mine, only stares blankly ahead.
I don’t fucking like that.
“Forty strokes to begin,” I tell her. It’s a high number, given what she went through yesterday, given what I’ve put her through since she got here. But Justice doesn’t protest. She looks down at the leather surface of the bench. “How many of those do you think you can tolerate?”
It’s a direct question, and her lips curve down as she decides on an answer. “All of them.”
I stroke my fingers down her back toward the cleft of her ass, not entirely gently. I want a reaction out of her. “Should we settle on fifty, then?” I hate the sneering sound of my voice, but I don’t know who this woman is. The fire is so far beneath the surface that none of the light escapes.
“That’s up to you.” Flat. Unemotional.
No. She won’t be like this. Not when she’s mine.
I press down on the small of her back, a more tangible reminder that she can’t go anywhere without my blessing, and bring my hand down hard on her ass.
Justice throws her head back, the twist of her hair shaking, but she doesn’t make a sound. I rain down several more blows with the same intensity. Her bottom blooms red beneath my palm but she doesn’t make a sound until twenty strokes in, and it’s nothing like what I’ve come to expect from her. There’s no pleasure in it. I never thought I would be waiting for pleasure mixed with pain in a contract’s voice. I never fucking cared.
Thirty.
Forty.
Tears leak out from the corners of her eyes, spilling over her cheeks, making her eyes a deeper blue than I’ve ever seen. But there’s no subtle rock of her hips, no attempt to grind her clit against the surface of the bench. By this point in any session she’s lost control of her ability to hold still no matter how tightly Mika has bound her. No matter how tightly I’ve bound her. It’s been as essential to her being as breathing.
Now, stillness.
I try to thrust away the hot, sick rage that fills my stomach and creeps up into my lungs, but it’s twisted itself up into my organs like a cancer. It’s fucking pathetic. Emotion like this—it’s never supposed to come into this room, and over and over again Justice has clawed it out of me.
Fifty.
She’s still whimpering, but the moment silence reigns in the room she tries to tamp it down, swallowing hard on the cries. She takes in a shuddering breath and releases it slowly, her head hung low, like a woman who is only enduring and finds nothing else in this.
This is what it must have been like to be run through with a sword. The impact. The shock. And the cold, spreading realization that it’s a fatal blow.
Only my mind won’t accept it for that kind of wound. Heat sears up around the entry point, covering it over, a fever that reaches all the way up and into my brain.
Justice takes another breath and her body stills. She lifts her face from the bench and stares ahead at the wall.
Something inside of me snaps. Is it a rib? An artery going into my heart?
I’m at the wall in an instant, the belt in my hand in another instant. I don’t trust myself with the cane, with anything else. I bend down so I’m at the level of her face, close enough to see that her chin is trembling. She must have her teeth gritted shut. It’s something.
But it’s not enough.
“Punishment,” I whisper, and it seems the word goes straight to her core because her body quakes. I can see in her eyes that she’s struggling to get it under control. It’s in this interval that I move back around behind her to the optimal position.
This time, I don’t give her a number.
This time, I bring the belt down without warning.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Hard enough to make her howl.
An alarm sounds in the back of my mind, blaring, drowning out even the sound of my shattering heart, a light blinking red in the corner of my vision. I’m having an out-of-body experience, watching my arm come down again and again, feeling the minute contractions of the muscle in my shoulder from far away. Watching the red on her skin deepen, and deepen.
No.
Do I say the word out loud? I don’t know. It rings in my ears, along with ragged breathing that I recognize a moment later as my own. All I know is that I’ve stepped back. I’ve dropped the belt to the floor.
Justice is crying as prettily as she ever has, tears like falling rain, silent sobs. I’ve pushed her too far. But it wasn’t on the bench today that I did it. It was last night. I wonder if she remembers waking to tell me everything Lysander said before I entered the room. He used me against her, that bastard. He told her about a king being murdered, a son in exile—he made her think that I was never coming for her. In a way, he was right. I can never come to her rescue in the way that she wants, and for the first time in my life, it’s tearing me apart.
This is a fact that can never be spoken aloud in this room. My palm aches to stroke her hair, to get down on my knees next to her and take back what I’ve done. Take back every cruel promise I made to her last night.
If it was only me riding on this contract, if it was only me riding on this business, I would. I would have given it up long ago.
I swipe my sleeve over my forehead and stumble numbly to where the chain connects her cuffs to the wall.
“What—” A broken whisper.
“Silence.”
I release her from her bonds by myself.
All of this is against protocol. I never take her back to the cell by myself. I step outside and let Mika handle the aftermath. And my hands are always steady. Steadier than this.
Justice doesn’t know what to do, hesitating on the bench even though there’s nothing holding her there. I put my fingers on the cuffs and tug at her wrists, forcing her to her feet. She looks down at the floor, still crying. It tastes so fucking bitter not to touch her. It tastes so fucking bitter that it had to be her, that it had to be now. I don’t want to leave her here like this.
So instead I lead her outside, turning to force her in front of me. Down the hall, Mika is flat against the wall, eyes wide. The moment she sees us both step outside she disappears through the door, leaving it to close behind her with a whisper.
At the cell I enter the code, then take Justice’s elbow and push her inside. The searing beat of my own heart terrifies me. It fucking terrifies me. How c
an a person breathe like this?
She stands in the center of the cell, head down.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes snap up, no longer blank, just aching.
“Forgive me.” I hiss the words between gritted teeth.
“No.”
A cannonball, straight to the gut. I step forward so that I’m standing on the threshold, fist balled at my side. “You can’t hold this against me.”
Wide eyes, more tears. This is water torture. She must know it. “I can. You’re—” I wish she’d sob out loud. It would be easier to take than this. “You’re what I need and you’re throwing me away.”
It’s such a naked admission that it makes her more open and vulnerable to me than when she was flat on her back on the bed, my hand clasped around her neck. I’m what she needs? I can’t be. She has no idea what she’s saying.
My heart breaks into two ragged halves, each one tumbling to a different side of my chest.
“I’m fulfilling the agreement.” The words puncture like daggers in my throat.
“You’re sending me back to a monster. To...more than one monster.” Her eyes shine with something else, a flare that peaks and fades.
Breathtaking. “I’m a monster. Can’t you see that? I can’t fucking save you.”
“Then don’t.” Her chin trembles again, and I’ll be damned if I don’t want to press my thumb against it, press my lips against hers. “Let me die here with you instead of through slow torture with them.” A deep breath that does nothing to steady her. “My father—my brother—they sent me here. One of them sent me here. And they won’t hesitate—they won’t ever stop—”
“Come with me.”
Hope. Such an innocent, naive hope lights up her eyes, it almost kills me on the spot. “Where?”
“To my rooms.” I try to communicate in this sentence that the rooms are all I can offer, and it’s only for one night.
I don’t say it out loud. She seems to understand it anyway.
The light fades from her eyes, leaving them as blank as before. A last tear falls down her cheek. I hear it when it hits the floor. I didn’t know a single water droplet could be so loud.
Cards of Love: Justice Page 12