Disciplined by the Dom (12 page)

Catie shuddered. She could psychoanalyze herself later. Right now she had to figure out what the hell she was going to do about the potential disaster waiting for her out in the bar. She had to get her story straight in case he recognized her from Volare, and she had to come up with something in case he recognized her from Brazzer’s. That was the real danger. She’d go dye her hair or something tomorrow, but right now she had to wing it. She pulled her hair back and rolled it into a makeshift pile, sticking a pencil through it. That would have to do for now, and she’d known some men to be fooled by less than an updo.

She took a deep breath, promised herself she wouldn’t think about Jake, and forced herself through the double swing doors.

And walked right into Jacob Jayson.

chapter
12

Another physical shock; another jolt that rattled the ben-wa balls. Only this time, it was the man himself standing in front of her. Catie’s throat suddenly felt very dry.

“We need to talk,” Jake said.

She shook her head. This was nuts. “How did you even find me?”

He seemed annoyed at the digression. “Your emergency contact on your Volare application, one Daniel Boylan, was very forthcoming, if difficult to understand while on a bus full of actors. We need to talk,” he said again.

“Not now we don’t,” she said. She could see the man in the grey suit over Jake’s shoulder. If he saw her with Jake, he’d recognize her for sure—and he’d be one step closer to connecting the dots between her, Volare, and Brazzer.

Jake’s eyes flashed.

“You remember our agreement?”

“It wasn’t a contract.”

“It’s not a contract in any legally binding sense. It is in a morally binding sense. Training does not work without a full commitment. I
have
committed. I allowed you to—” Jake broke off, as though genuinely aggravated. Catie watched him roll his neck, like a fighter between rounds, and had two thoughts:
Holy crap, that is sexy
, and,
I can’t believe I have the power to get under Jacob Jayson’s skin
.

“Training is not a part time endeavor,” he said, looking down at her. “And while I am your trainer,
you are my sub
.”

A shiver went through her. She tried to hide her smile, shifted her weight, and was reminded—again—of the ben-wa balls. This time, it felt like her whole body quivered. She finally met his eyes, and thought she saw something searching, something questioning. Did he think she would back out?

The hope she’d felt in him flickered back to life, and with it, her conflict over what she had to do for Brazzer. She quickly squashed both thoughts; she was so tired of
thinking
. And here, in front of her, was this man who made her happy to feel instead.

“I’m working,
sir
,” she said, carefully emphasizing the word. “I just took a break. I can’t leave Giselle on the floor by herself, unless—“

“Who is Giselle?” he said.

“The other waitress.”

“Wait here.”

Catie watched Jake stalk off into the crowd, his expensive suit completely out of place amongst the carefully hip crowd. He wasn’t dressed like the man with the grey suit—Jake was more Saville Row than Fifth Avenue—but he was still in a suit, and that was probably enough. Sooner or later, the man with the grey suit would notice him, would recognize him, and if he saw him with Catie…

She tried to fade into the background, hugging the double doors. She could still see the man in the grey suit through the crowd, his head swiveling around. Probably looking for his waitress. Catie turned her back, doing her best to huddle in the corner.

Suddenly she felt him behind her. Jake. His hand on her shoulder, on her waist, turning her to face him. Her body reacted almost violently where he touched her, like it was a near burn. He blocked out everything. Just the mass of him, of his tall, athletic, patrician body, like some kind of Greek statue—he seemed somehow denser then everything around him, more solid. All she could hear, see, and touch was him.

“Giselle says to take as long as you like,” Jake said. “She also says thank you.”

“For what? What did you—”

He leaned in, stopping just short of touching her, his lips a hair’s breadth away from hers. She could feel the heat coming off his body. Could hear the rumble in his throat. He said, “Does it matter?”

She caught her breath.

“No,” she whispered.

How could she already be so useless? Such a pile of hormones? Two minutes ago she’d been condemning this man, and now she would probably run away with him to Morocco if he asked.

Jake pushed her back through the double doors, and then they were in the wide hall, lit by bare, ugly fluorescent bulbs, the door to the alley on one end, the door to the storage rooms on the other.

“What did you want—?”

He cut her off. “Somewhere more private,” he said.

“There’s just the storage rooms,” she said doubtfully, looking down the hall.

Without waiting he grabbed her hand and led her down the hall, walking almost too fast for her to keep up. She was wearing comfortable shoes—you had to, to run drinks in a bar like this—but her skirt was short and her shirt low cut, and practically running in the colder air of the hall with the ben-wa balls inside her made her feel very…alive. Jake pushed open the storage room door and pulled her inside.

It was even colder in here, and dark. The cold storage was on the other side of the room, but the whole place was cold. Unheated. Catie could see her breath in the cool fluorescent light that streamed in from the window on the storage room door.

“Is everything ok?” she asked.

“I need you to listen,” he said. “This will be difficult for me to say.”

Catie could only see one half of his face in the light, but it was enough to recognize the signs of struggle, as though he were physically wrestling the words out from some part of his mind that very much wanted to keep them hidden. She had followed him here, overwhelmed by her physical desire for him, in spite of what she’d thought of the man after watching him walk out on that girl; now she was held in place by her desire to see that man come forward and speak.

“You should not have been at Stephan’s House,” he finally said. “Roman sent you… I do not know why Roman sent you. But he surely knew it would result in something like what happened.”

“What did happen?” she asked quietly.

“What happened was that you saw a man who knows his own limitations and respects them. Normally I would not feel the need to explain myself, but our situation is…unique.”

“Our situation?”

Somehow she felt, right then, with certainty, that he wanted to touch her. And she wanted him to. But they both remained still, just a few inches of chilled air between them.

“Your notes,” he finally said. “Your thesis. Our arrangement.”

Catie tried to tell herself she wasn’t disappointed. Of course that’s what he meant. Of course it was.

But she couldn’t quite keep it out of her voice.

“I still don’t understand what you mean,” she said. “About…your limitations.”

“Don’t lie,” he said sharply. “I
saw
you. I saw you look at me, when I interrupted you and Alice.
I saw that you saw
.”

She thought back, thought back to the expression that had been on his face: pain, and then emptiness. But first, pain.

“You don’t know what I saw,” she said, her natural stubbornness taking over. She poked him in the chest. “
I
don’t know what I saw, either, but I damn well have a better idea than you do. Why did you leave like that? Isn’t that your thing? To help those kids?”

He was silent. She poked him in the chest again.

“Well?”

This time he caught her hand. He brought it back to her side and to the small of her back. Then he drew her toward him until she was pressed into his hard, muscled leg, his face hovering right over hers.

“I told you once before that I am not built for attachments,” he said, very low. “It is more than that. I am not…capable of the normal things that people do in those situations. There are reasons why, but it no longer matters what they are. It remains that I am deficient in this area, that I cannot be of aid when people…
feel
. And given Alice’s state of mind, it is likely that she would interpret my deficiencies as a reflection upon her. She would take them personally. It would harm her even more. I could not allow that to happen, and so my only alternative was to leave, and make sure that someone with the right skills found her.”

Catie felt her defenses crumbling, felt all her hard won rationalizations fading into paper-thin excuses. If he did what he did because he thought it was the best he could do, and not because he just didn’t want to be there, didn’t care…

“You’re not deficient in any way that I can see. You
chose
—”

“Then you are not looking,” he said sharply. “I cannot feel the way normal people do. My heart…hardens.”

“Oh, bull
shit
. I
saw
you,” she said. “You looked like someone had kicked you in the ‘nads, and
then
you left.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a slow smile spread across his face. “That’s fairly accurate, actually.”

“Yeah, I’m calling bullshit,” Catie said.

Why are you making this harder on yourself? Let him be the bad guy!

The nearness of him was working on her, slowly, the way it takes a minute or two for a martini to hit on an empty stomach. The warmth of his body, the scent of him, the way his thumb had begun to stroke at the small of her back where he still held her hand: all of it seeping into her struggling mind, making it difficult to think. To dissemble. To be the liar she needed to be.

She could tell he was holding his breath, and a tension radiated out from him, his shoulders suddenly rigid, his brow furrowed in the dull half-light. His hand on hers pressed into the small of her back, pushing her body up against the hard length of him. His other hand moved quickly in the dark to grasp her breast, and she gasped in surprise. He squeezed, hard, his thumb digging into her nipple, and a little moan escaped her lips.

“I didn’t come here just to explain myself,” he said, and his hand began a slow journey down the front of her body.

“Then why—”

“I came,” he said, his fingers raking down the front of her stomach, leaving chills in their wake, “to make sure that you obeyed my order.”

Her whole body tensed, and the resistance of the ben-wa balls sent another shiver through her. They’d kept her at a point of tension all day, hovering there, thinking about
him
.

“Have you come?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s Friday,” he reminded her. His hand had reached her skirt and was dragging it up her to her waist.

“I know,” she said.

He slipped his hand between her thighs and pushed right and then left, prodding them open. He stroked the sensitive skin right at the seam of her leg, toying with the edge of her underwear, and she felt her whole body bear down with a pressure that was returned by the ben-wa balls still inside her. The muscles around her core, that wrapped around deep inside her, began to throb, the tension they’d felt all day rushing to the surface.

 He hooked his fingers around the fabric of her underwear and pulled it aside. Her breath hitched, and she couldn’t help but move her hips ever so slightly. She thought she saw him smile again.

His fingers worked back and forth, back and forth, along the length of her folds, her wetness spilling out and covering his hand. She was suddenly wetter than she could ever remember being, and only for him.

He found the string, threaded his fingers through the hook.

“Very good,” he said, and pulled on it.

A small sound escaped her, and her back arched, her chest pressing into him. The pressure was almost unbearable when he pulled, the balls stretching her entrance from the inside, the feeling of fullness overwhelming her. The tension that had built up all day threatened to spill over. Her body clamored for release in a rising chorus, and something else with it, something else she couldn’t ignore: the way she felt about Jake.

Why was she arguing this point? He claimed to be a heartless robot, and that would make her job
easier
. She wouldn’t have to worry about hurting him, she could just go ahead and write her story, get the money from Brazzer, and then…

But he wasn’t a heartless robot. She knew that, even if he somehow didn’t. She’d seen it. And if he wasn’t a hollow man, then he did what he did because it was the best he thought he could do. Maybe that’s what Stephan’s House was: his attempt to be the best version of himself. She didn’t
want
that. She wanted him to be bad; she wanted him to be easy to betray.

And he wasn’t.

“Dammit,” she whispered.

“Tell me,” he said. His voice had grown rough, and now his fingers moved quicker. She felt him close, felt him nearly inside her again, nearly inside her head, like he could feel the conflict gathering there. Could she hope to lie?

“Maybe you’re fucked up,” she whispered, unable to stop herself, barely able to breathe, “But you’re not heartless. I saw it. I saw you. Please don’t make me say anything else.”

And now that she said it, what was she going to do? It was out there, it was real; she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t.

What was
he
going to do?

There was a timeless beat where neither of them moved, and then he pushed her back, still holding her between her legs until the backs of her legs hit a low shelf, and then he tilted her head back and kissed her.

He
kissed
her.

His lips were softer than they looked, his tongue gentle against hers. She hadn’t ever expected to be kissed by him. It was too…personal. But his mouth covered hers, and what was gentle soon grew hungry, demanding. He’d let go of her hand, and she clawed at his suit, wishing there was nothing between them. His hands pushed her skirt up high above her waist and grabbed roughly where the backs of her thighs met her buttocks, and in another second he’d lifted her up onto the low shelf and pushed himself between her legs.