Disciplined by the Dom (17 page)

He pressed his leg between hers, spreading them. He took whatever time he wanted. He could surely tell how badly she wanted him, how badly she needed him inside her, and still, he took his time. She was on the verge of begging.

He pushed her skirt up above her waist, and her underwear bit into her hips as he twisted them in his fist, pulling them aside. Her legs were trembling, and she arched her back into him as he bent her even lower.

Her pulse roared in her ears. She felt completely vulnerable. At his mercy.

There was no more preamble, no warning. The head of his cock touched her outer lips, and then it pushed into her, slowly but relentlessly, so that she felt each thick inch. It kept coming, the slow, deliberate motion of his thrust giving her time to wonder how he’d fit. She moaned as he slowly impaled her, dropping her hands to the seat of the couch to push herself back against him. She felt stretched, full, on fire.

Then he started to fuck her.

He dropped his hand to the small of her back, not letting her up, and his fingers dug into her hip as he drove in and out in long, strong, punishing thrusts. She stopped trying to buck her hips back at him and gripped at the leather of the couch, holding on, while he picked up the tempo.

“Come for me,” he growled.

She heard herself gurgle something unintelligible and then just stopped trying to speak at all and rode the feeling that was coming over her. Her body both opened and closed at the same time, trying to draw him in, contracting around him, and finally bursting in great shuddering waves that flew down her trembling legs.

She’d come hard, but not enough, and he wasn’t done. When her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore he pushed her forward on the back of the couch, balancing her there, and kept going, slowing the pace until she started to build with him again, until she was screaming something, not words. He drove into her with one, final thrust and she felt him come hot and hard, felt him shudder against her, and then fall, the exhausted weight of him laying on top of her, leaving them both motionless.

It felt like a long time before he lifted himself off of her. She might have stayed on the couch like that, limp and exhausted, if he hadn’t wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up. He brought them both over to the couch and pulled her down on his lap. They sat like that, still and quiet, for a long time.

Finally, he said, “I have a collar for you.”

chapter
17

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Eileen’s voice pierced Jake’s foggy mind and dragged him back to reality. Her characteristic perceptiveness, delivered in her equally characteristic style—bluntly—put him on edge. For days, ever since Catie had come to stay with him, he’d been a useless, preoccupied mess. He was having enough trouble sorting through his own emotions, let alone Catie’s, and he didn’t think he was in the mood to have Eileen shine a harsh light on whatever uncomfortable truths lay at the root of his trouble.

Not that he had a choice.

“Seriously, Jakey, what’s the deal? You look terrible.”

Eileen rummaged through her beige leather bag, her green eyes narrowed and locked on his face. He hadn’t even noticed her cab pull up, though he’d arrived a few minutes early just to give himself a chance to prepare. A few minutes during which he’d ended up thinking about the Catie situation instead.

“Here,” Eileen said, and put a hard candy in his hand. “Get your blood sugar up. This is a good day, Jake.”

 “Thank you,” he said. He didn’t know what else to do but pop the candy in his mouth. Eileen always reminded him of who he had been when he’d first known her—a lonely, emotionally stunted little boy, grasping desperately at the facsimile of a family he found in his father and half-brother, totally ignorant of the fact that he was intruding on Eileen’s actual family. Back then she’d openly resented him for the time he’d demanded from her husband and her son. Her familiarity with him now put him on the defensive. After all, all they shared was a history best forgotten and a tragedy neither of them would ever forget. A tragedy that he was partially responsible for. And yet here she was, worrying about his blood sugar and throwing candies at him. It was confusing.

And she’d wanted to see the building that would house the new expansion of Stephan’s House. How was he to say no?

“This it?” she asked, looking up at the six-story brownstone. The weather had relented for at least the day, leaving the skies overcast. The clouds looked heavy, and the cold threatened snow.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not ready yet, I warned you. Don’t judge it too harshly.”

“Oh, hush. Go on,” she said, gesturing up the stairs.

He led her into the darkened building, flipping on the lights in what was once a sitting room. It would eventually be a reception area, but right now it was just a hollow shell.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said.

“I tried to tell you there wouldn’t be much to see.” The candy was a caramel, and it stuck to the roof of his mouth. Now he sounded like a kid, too.

“Some of the girls told me this one would have a fancy photo lab,” she said casually.

Jake stiffened. It would. Stephan had been passionate about photography and writing. Jake had done the research: the arts could provide a useful form of occupational therapy. It had seemed like a natural thing to do, but he hadn’t envisioned Eileen Corrigan standing in the middle of a construction site, being reminded of her dead son’s favorite things.

Not for the first time, he didn’t know how to feel.

“I think it can help some people,” he finally said.

“Good,” she said firmly. “Show me what you’re gonna do.”

He took her on a brief tour, explaining how many extra beds they’d have, how many staff members, what programs they hoped to offer. The speech had become mechanical by now, and Jake felt his mind begin to wander, as it did, back to Catie. It felt no more odd to think about her in this context than in any other, which in and of itself was odd. She left him completely unsettled. He had come to think that they would move beyond training, into yet some other uncharted territory—a thought which, for him, was nothing short of revolutionary—and then she’d worn the collar he’d given her and promptly disappeared. Not disappeared entirely, but he hadn’t seen much of her the past few days. Granted, he was busy—very busy—with Stephan’s House, and she seemed to have her own responsibilities. He knew Roman had assigned her something to do with the Valentine’s Auction, and he presumed she was very busy with her studies. Her thesis. The thesis for which he would need to do his own homework.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was avoiding him. He didn’t understand it. Everything about their interactions felt new and incomprehensible to him. He wondered if this was what it was like for normal people, all the time. Is this what it was like to become attached? To feel close? He wasn’t sure he could recommend it. And he wasn’t sure he could trust it, either.

Just the thought that something might be happening inside him—something he couldn’t control—worried him.

And still, his primary responsibility was to Catie. He had promised to complete her training, to help her, to discover whatever it was that tormented her, whatever it was she hid, and…well, what she did with it was her own choice. But the process of self-discovery was inseparable from the process of training, and he’d managed to make it, instead, about his own confused feelings.

Feelings. He had them, and he didn’t recoil from her. Even when they weren’t in a scene, he felt the connection. Unlike anything else he’d ever experienced, it made him feel like he was losing his mind.

“Earth to Jake,” Eileen said. She waved a hand in front of his face. “What is up with you?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Girl trouble?” she said. Eileen raised an eyebrow, but she looked pleased.

This was the last thing he needed.

“Of course not,” he said, perhaps too quickly.

Yes, too quickly. Eileen gave a cunning smile. “That Catie girl I met, then?”

He didn’t know what to say. He just stared at her, stupidly. How did women
do
that?

“You don’t bicker like that with people who don’t matter,” Eileen said confidently, patting his arm as if they were…close. “You just ignore them. Having problems?”

What could he say? Yes, there were problems, problems of the variety he couldn’t speak about with his dead father’s widow. But it was more than that: there was a problem with this conversation, with the way that Eileen spoke to him in those confidential tones, with the fact that she was attempting to share anything with him beyond what was necessary. Jake felt the old, familiar revulsion start to creep up his spine, and his heart dropped.

He’d had almost a vacation from it, with Catie. It was like they communicated on the same damaged frequency, something that came in under the radar, that fooled his poisoned mind, at least temporarily. When he might have otherwise felt sick at the pretense of affection, there was the D/s dynamic to channel it away. But he wasn’t cured. This was the proof. Eileen Corrigan tried to have a normal conversation with him, something that demonstrated she cared—could she, really? Was anyone that forgiving?—and here was the old reaction.

How long until it manifested around Catie, too?

How long until he hurt her?

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said finally.

“It could do you good.”

“No.”

Eileen nodded. They were standing in the room that would become the photo lab, and Jake felt that the tour had come to an end. Wordlessly, he turned around and started back down the stairs.

He held open the door for Eileen and waited. She stood still in the dark vestibule and peered up at him.

“I want to spend the anniversary with you,” she said, her jaw set. “Go out to dinner. Try to remember nice things.”

He was flabbergasted. For five years he’d buried himself in what work was available, read Stephan’s old letters, avoided Eileen’s letter—singular, like the telltale heart that it was—and then drunk himself to sleep watching his movies. This year, the anniversary coincided with the Volare Valentine’s Auction, and he’d thought that the festivity of the Auction might perhaps prove enough of a distraction to give him a reprieve. Not that he deserved it. But dinner with Eileen Corrigan on the anniversary of Stephan’s suicide?

“I don’t understand,” he said lamely.

Eileen walked past him into the grey light of early February and looked up at the sky to see if it would rain again.

“I have some things I want to give you,” she said. “Some stuff I want you to hear. Try something different, rather than just being miserable. You’re screwing up your life with this, you know. It’s getting ridiculous.”

He felt twelve years old again. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “So we’re on for the fourteenth. We’ll go to Angelo’s in the old neighborhood. Fantastic, that’s settled.”

She walked briskly down the steps, looking down the street to see if she could spot a cab. One started to turn the corner, and she walked out into the street with her hand up like the native New Yorker she was.

“Listen,” she called back as the cab slowed to a stop. “Will you talk to that girl already? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re gonna screw that up, too. Promise me, all right?”

Without waiting for a response, Eileen ducked into the cab shaking her head, her bright red bob bouncing back and forth. It was just as well. Jake was too stunned and disoriented to be of much use. He stood there, in the middle of the sidewalk, Eileen’s final words echoing inside his mind, until he realized she was right: he was going to screw it up. He had made it all about himself, when it was about Catie. And if there was one thing the memory of Stephan made abundantly clear, it was that he couldn’t make the mistake of allowing anyone to depend upon him ever again.

He’d have to complete Catie’s training, somehow find a way to disentangle the threat of her thesis, and he had to do it quickly, before the stakes grew any larger.

It meant he needed to know more about Catie than she was willing to tell him. It meant he needed to do some investigation. And he knew just who to call.

chapter
18

Catie sat in the Volare lounge and stared morosely at the blue folder in front of her. It was the same blue folder that held all the information on the Volare members and the Valentine’s Auction.
Names. Biographical details. Shit they’re into.
She took out the New York Lottery scratch ticket she’d bought on the way over and put it on the low table next to the folder, as though it were a viable second option.

Well, you never knew.

She’d gotten another call from Brazzer. Of course she had. She’d been able to delude herself into a fantasy life with Jake at his incredible townhouse for all of one day—one incredible day—before Brazzer had ripped her out of the clouds and pulled her back down to reality. Catie had been disappointed when Jake left her in her own room, with her own bed, but Brazzer’s call later that night had reminded her that she needed all the cover—and all the protection—she could get.

Brazzer had wanted to know if she was ever going to have anything for him, or if he should spend the money elsewhere. Catie had tried to get him to give up some info on his alleged second source, but he’d only laughed at her. She’d had to tell him she’d have something for him, but he hadn’t believed her. In the end, she’d had to tell him about the auction. Not details, but that it existed. She felt terrible.

And here she was, with the mother lode of gossip information staring her in the face. She’d done what she was supposed to do, she’d written the copy for the Auction catalog. She’d kept a copy of the document for herself, as…she wanted to say as insurance, but it wasn’t that. It was so she’d have something to sell Brazzer if she could ever bring herself to pull the trigger. Theoretically, she could do it now. She could call Brazzer up and be out of town tomorrow.