Disciplined by the Dom (20 page)

Jake wrapped his hands around her hips and pushed up into her, loving the expression on her face, loving that he put it there. She picked up the rhythm, grinding into him, and when she opened her eyes to look down at him, he decided to see how high he could push her.

“Come for me,” he said.

And he pressed the button.

Catie screamed, coming violently around his dick, bucking and thrashing in his lap. Jake dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips in the effort to hold back, to keep himself going. He didn’t want it to end. Sweat dripped down his forehead into his eyes, and his shirt stuck to his chest as Catie writhed in his lap, shivering, shaking, her hot, wet flesh quivering around his. She collapsed with her arms around him, twitching once, twice. He couldn’t wait for her aftershocks to pass. He dug his hands under her thighs and rose, lifting her up, and placed her on the table. He was still hard; he still wanted her more than anything. He climbed on top of her, and brushed her hair away from her face.

He had pulled out of her, and now he positioned himself right above her, poised to enter her again. He was determined to go slow, determined to show her how grateful he was for whatever it was that had just happened to him, for whatever it was she had made possible in him, since he didn’t think he’d ever figure out how to tell her.

“Keep coming,” he whispered. “You let me know when you’ve had enough.”

He slid into her slowly and deeply, and when he was fully in, he bent down to remove the clamps with his teeth. He wanted her nipples for himself. She moaned again, a sound he loved, as he took one and then the other into his mouth, nibbling softly while she arched her back.

When he started to move again, she moaned with him, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking at her face. He lost count of how many times she came, of what were full-blown orgasms and what were just the shuddering gasps of her worn out body, but finally he felt he couldn’t hold out any longer. With one last, hard thrust, he let himself go.

He didn’t know how long they lay atop his ruined table. Didn’t care, really. He’d fallen on his back, spent, and Catie had rolled over to lie on his chest, as though they did this all the time. In the back of his mind, he knew this was significant, too, but it wasn’t until Catie propped herself up on his chest, her eyes clear now, steady, though it looked like she might have cried, and leaned forward to kiss him that he knew something had changed—changed utterly.

“I think I know you too well,” she said softly, and leaned her head back into his neck.

The thing was, Jake wasn’t repulsed at this intimate affection. He didn’t recoil. Instead, he felt a sweetness blossoming in him, a desire to bring Catie more moments just like this. He had crossed the rubicon, in a way, and wouldn’t be the same. And he’d done it for it a woman who was hiding something from him.

chapter
22

“I was afraid you would still be angry with me,” Roman said, deftly picking up a piece of uni with his chopsticks. Roman had invited Jake to dinner…in his Volare office. Roman valued privacy, and had a good relationship with a sushi restaurant that delivered without asking too many questions.

“I am,” Jake said.

“And yet?”

“Even when wrong, you may occasionally be right,” Jake said, sipping at his whiskey. He did enjoy Roman’s taste in whiskey. “So here I am.”

Roman grinned wolfishly. “So something has happened, then?”

Jake laughed without any real mirth. “Yes. I have crossed every line of impropriety with respect to Catie. Every single one. Without even…That is to say, I am not accustomed…”

Jake shook his head, unable to find the words. Roman was smiling now, broadly.

“Don’t look so happy,” Jake snapped. “I’ve done her a real disservice. I have no idea what the consequences might be. I—”

“Relax, Jacob,” Roman said. “It is natural for human beings to have defenses. But then how do people ever grow close unless they cross these lines?”

Jake didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t have much experience with the normal progression of intimacy. He had no frame of reference.

“It is a conundrum,” Roman allowed. Jake remembered that Lola had gotten him a Word of the Day calendar, and chuckled. Roman had scoffed at it, said his English vocabulary was fine. Apparently Jake wasn’t the only man susceptible to the subtle influence of a woman.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” Roman said.

“You can tell that something has happened?” Jake asked. The idea made him uncomfortable.

“Something, yes. Something good?”

Jake sat silently. He wasn’t hungry. He’d been…perturbed, since his last “session” with Catie. He couldn’t even properly call it a session. It had turned completely on its head—
she
had turned it completely on its head. Jake couldn’t identify exactly what had happened to him, what had changed, but he had noticed it had begun to bleed into other areas of his life. Perhaps without realizing it, he had slowly grown accustomed to the idea that things were simply different with Catie, that he was somehow more open with her. He had not grown accustomed to the idea of opening himself up to the world at large.

He hadn’t even been properly aware of how guarded he was, of what defenses he had around him, until they’d started to fade. But then there had been a visit from Eileen to confirm their dinner date, and his skin did not crawl. Whether it was simply the residual glow from Catie—God, Catie—or something more profound, he had no way of knowing. And it was driving his analytical mind mad.

But there was nothing analytical about whatever was going on inside him, nothing at all. Jake remembered what he had arrogantly told Catie during their first session: some things just
are
.

Indeed. Just his luck that he would experience something like that with a woman who was hiding something from him.

“Jake?”

Jake looked up. “I apologize, Roman. I am…preoccupied.”

“I can see that, my friend. You look worried. Is that correct? Anxious.”

Jake scowled. He had been thinking about whether it had been wise to leave Catie the particular present he’d found for her. At the time it had seemed perfect, meaningful, the sort of thing only she would understand. Since then—since only that morning—it had begun to gnaw at him in a most unfamiliar way. He kept thinking back to what Catie had said the first day she’d come to stay with him, when she’d begged him to continue to train her: that she needed it, the same way he did. Unspoken: she, too, was saddled with some heretofore crippling emotional wound, something she hid, something that had scarred over, forming a barrier between her and the world. Perhaps the same thing she hid from him, perhaps not.

Perhaps something that meant his little gesture with the book was too much, too fast. Or perhaps not. And round and round his mind went. It was
maddening
. How did normal people stand this?

Irritated, Jake said, “Roman, this is not a productive area of conversation. If this is why you wanted to have dinner—”

Roman shook his head, spreading his arms. “No, no. Forget it. I do have something to ask of you. The Valentine’s Auction.”

“What about it?”

“Lola tells me that Lindsey Grunwald has broken her leg skiing, and that this leaves a vacancy in the catalog.”

“So?”

“Perhaps Catie could fill the vacancy.”

Jake put his drink down. “You want Catie to offer herself up for auction at the Valentine’s benefit? To the highest bidder?” He flushed with anger as he thought about what that meant. “No, absolutely not. Out of the question. No. I won’t allow it.”

Roman laughed, delighted. “But that is not for you to decide, my friend.”

“We’re not asking you if you’ll
sell
her, Jake,” Lola’s voice came from behind him. “We’re asking you if you’ll
buy
her. You know, within the limits of the event. And it’s not my idea, I might add.”

Jake turned to find Lola closing the door behind her. Her usually beatific face was clouded with uncertainty. These two had been up to something, something to which he was not privy.

“Is one of you going to explain this?” he said.

“Roman thinks this is a fantastic opportunity to get Catie more involved,” Lola said, perching on the edge of Roman’s desk. Roman watched her silently. “He insists, rather.”

“I do. I have already asked Catie.”

Jake tensed. “You asked her if she’d participate in an auction to the highest bidder?”

“Yes, with certain conditions.”

Jake’s entire body went cold. As calmly as he could, he said, “And what did she say?”

“The conditions are that you would be the one to buy her, Jake.”

He wasn’t even embarrassed to be so visibly relieved, not even when he realized this might be a patented Roman move: to show him he cared. He already knew he cared. The idea of Catie going to any other man shut down the logical part of his brain and awakened some frightening, primeval part of him. Not for the first time, he wondered if normal people had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. The way people talked about love, you’d think it was a lot more pleasant than this.

Love.

“Jake, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He got up, possessed of a desire to be elsewhere. To find a way that everything made sense.

To see Catie.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Of course,” he said. “Roman, enough of this. It’s obvious you have some sort of plan, or ulterior—”

Jake was interrupted by his phone, a specific ringtone that he had assigned to exactly one person, for one purpose.

Captain Seenan.

“Excuse me,” Jake said. Normally he would not do this, but this call… Roman raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Lola looked between the two and sighed.

“Captain.”

Captain Seenan’s voice was hesitant. Uncomfortable. “Mr. Jayson, I have some preliminary results for that inquiry you asked for. About Catie…Roberts.”

“Yes?”

“Well, Roberts isn’t her last name.”

“What do you mean it’s not her last name?” Jake said. He had both Roman and Lola’s attention. It was his fault for being rude enough not to leave the room, and from the raised eyebrows, it was clear they knew who he was talking about. “Please explain.”

“Well, from what I can piece together,” Captain Seenan said, “it has something to do with embezzlement.”

Wordlessly, Jake let himself out of Roman’s office. He was already walking toward the elevators, already on his way to Catie.

“Tell me everything you’ve found so far,” he said.

chapter
23

Catie hugged her knees, folded herself up on the red leather couch in Jake’s library, and stared at that stupid book. She’d read it already, of course, as a kid. It had been one of her father’s prop books that he kept around just for appearances:
Crossing the Rubicon
. An historical narrative of Caesar’s defining moment, when he led his army across the border, the river Rubicon, from the provinces and into Rome’s territory, making his insurrection official and marking the beginning of his coup. He’d famously said, “
aleaiacta est”
: the die is cast. It had been the point of no return.

And Jake left her a book all about it. A first edition, no less.

Catie had been making herself nuts trying to figure out what he meant by it. What die had been cast? What was the point of no return? No return from
what
?

Did he know?

The idea that he might find out, that she wouldn’t be able to explain first, and that he’d think the very worst, made her feel absolutely sick.

Catie had been on edge ever since the last time they’d made love. That’s what it had been, even if it had been…unconventional. There was no mistaking it. It was the one honest thing she’d done in recent memory, the only time she was truly herself: when she was naked with Jake.

Pathetic.

And then Roman had called. She was to fill in at the auction, with Jake buying. She didn’t fully understand why it was necessary, but she knew how she felt. The idea of Jake standing up and claiming her was…

It was trouble, was what it was. She wanted it too badly. And there was no one who deserved it less than her.

She kept going back to that moment, when she’d told the truth, for once, and he’d looked at her like he loved her. Like he loved her in spite of himself. And she had wanted to believe it, more than anything. She’d wanted to believe she could tell him everything, that she could confess it all, that she could cry her apology to him, tell him how truly, truly sorry she was, and he’d miraculously forgive her. He’d take her in his arms, and together they’d find a way to save Volare from Brazzer’s other source. That moment contained every comforting fantasy she’d ever had. She’d wanted to believe she could rely on him to be there, to love her regardless of her mistakes, in spite of everything. It had been the best feeling.

But that’s how it always felt before everything went bad. This, Catie supposed, was the hangover. Now she was just scared. Scared, and alone, and in over her head.

And Brazzer kept calling.

While Catie had been sitting in the library, staring at that book that meant who knew what, her phone had begun to vibrate at regular intervals. If there was a better way to lose your mind, Catie didn’t want to know about it. She was afraid to move. A decision either way, any positive action on her part, would involve crossing some Rubicon or the other—either she got off her ass and truly committed to trying to save her grandmother by betraying Jake, or she left her Nana out in the cold and tried to do the right thing by Jake and Volare.

The phone started to vibrate again, skidding across the antique end table. She just couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Fine! What? What do you want?”

Brazzer sounded lewdly amused. “Am I interrupting anything? Anything I should know about?”

“Just tell me what you want.” All of Catie’s frustration and fear was coalescing into one big giant ball of anger, and it was aimed at Brazzer. The rational part of her brain knew that this was not smart. She tried to reel it in. “I’m working on it,” she said through gritted teeth. “But this is not ideal.”