Disciplined by the Dom (22 page)

Jake did it for her.

“Did you hear me?” he said, bending down to get a good look at her face. He wasn’t far now, just a few steps. “I said I
know
, Miss Rose.”

It broke in on her mind like a giant, crashing wave. He knew? And he didn’t hate her? Was that possible? She hadn’t really allowed herself to believe that that was a possibility, and now she knew why: she hated herself so thoroughly for what she’d planned to do that she assumed anyone else would, too. Catie looked at Jake for the first time without the effort of a concealment, without worrying about what he might find out, what he would think. For just a second, she smiled at him, completely bare.

But then she studied his face. He was angry, yes, but not nearly angry enough. For the most part he looked…well, grimly triumphant was the only way she could think to put it. He didn’t seem wounded, or at least not wounded enough. He was upset, but not with
her
. No man was that understanding. None.

He couldn’t know. He couldn’t. If he knew, he wouldn’t be speaking to her. He wouldn’t…would he?

Catie’s brain kicked back into gear, and she thought quickly.

“How did you find out my last name?” she said.

“I asked Captain Seenan to look into it.”

“You asked Captain Seenan to find out my real name?” she asked, carefully. “What I mean is, how did you know it was…”

“How did I know it was fake in the first place? Because I couldn’t find your graduate program.”

Catie stiffened. It was ridiculous that she should be offended that he’d try to find out about her completely fake graduate program, but it was the one limit she’d set. “I told you I wasn’t comfortable with that.”

Jake laughed in disbelief, and spread his arm in a wide arc. “Did you think I would be comfortable with you going through my ancient history? That that’s why I had it all hidden away, because I was so comfortable with it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to.”

It was the only thing she could think to say.

“I know you had to, Catie,” Jake said softly. He took another step toward her, and an arc of sodium-tinted light from the quiet street fell across his face and chest, making him very hard to read. Her heart beat out a staccato rhythm, and she almost didn’t dare to breathe.

“Why did I have to?” she asked. It was barely a whisper.

He was close enough to touch her now. She felt his fingertips on her bare forearm, and she jumped.

“I’ve watched you,” he said. “I’ve watched you in our sessions. Whenever I get close to you, whenever I learn something, you push me back like this. You rifle through my wallet, you go through my personal correspondence. You violate some boundary. You provoke me and you push me away. I didn’t know why until I found out about your father.”

Catie cleared her throat and kept her voice very even. This was important. “What did you find out?”

“He stole from you. Abandoned you. What I know is probably only the most visible manifestation of his failure. I imagine it did not start with the embezzlement. You’ve every reason not to let people get close to you. You’ve every reason to push me away, after what happened when we last…”

Catie closed her eyes, and felt hope die in her. Her father. He’d found out about her father. Not her, not Brazzer, not
Sizzle
. He’d forgiven her for being a helpless victim of fate, not for the shitty choices she’d actually made.

“Captain Seenan sounds thorough,” she said.

“I’m still waiting on the full report,” Jake said, and took her hand in his. Somehow, he managed a solemn grin. “Anything else I should know?”

Catie laughed, shaking her head to keep herself from crying. Oh, if only. She had a reprieve, nothing more. Captain Seenan was still digging. She met Jake’s eyes, and the warm light she saw there tormented her. She knew she should tell him. Right now was the moment to tell him. Right now was the moment to come clean, to confess, to take her chances and throw herself on his mercy, even though she hadn’t had a chance to try to fix it yet.

She should do it. She should speak.

Catie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Suddenly she wondered if Jake was right. Did she do what he said? Did she drive people away, right when they got close to her? Jake had gotten in her head like no one had before, and this was what he had found. He had been inside her, and he’d decided he still liked her.  The man had just taught her something about herself, something nobody else had ever been able to do, and he still looked at her as though he loved her.

That was something Catie had never even allowed herself to wish for. That was something she’d thought happened only for other people.

She wasn’t strong enough to throw it away.

“No,” she said, choking back tears. “There’s nothing else.”

chapter
25

Jake knew at once that she had lied. Her eyes fluttered, looked briefly away, the silver lilt of her voice with one off note. He had looked inside himself again for the anger he had been sure he would feel as he climbed the stairs to the sound of Catie crying, knowing it came from the library, and was still surprised to find relief in its stead.

He really had felt relief when he saw Catie crying amidst Stephan’s letters. Yes, a kind of obligatory shock and anger, but they passed, flashes in the pan. They left behind a cool, flowing sense of release, that finally, finally, someone knew. That finally Catie, in particular, knew. He hadn’t had to come up with some torturous way to explain; she’d seen for herself. And if she decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, well, he wouldn’t necessarily blame her.

But just the look on her face had told him he didn’t need to be concerned about that. And it had given him the latest in a series of emotions he’d never dreamed he’d be able to feel. Joy. A weird, strange joy, when the woman he loved was crying and the evidence of a tragedy lay about everywhere, but joy, just the same. One more thing he owed to Catie.

It had been quickly supplanted by confusion. She was still hiding something.

“Are you sure?” he asked her.

She nodded, wiping at her eyes. Another lie. He had never been this attuned to another human being. It felt improper, in a strange way, like he was eavesdropping, and at the moment, what he heard hurt him deeply.

Captain Seenan had given only the barest details: her father, poor excuse for a man and a father both, a thief who’d abandoned her; mother dead; etcetera. Only family left was a grandmother in a home somewhere. There were some hints at an outlandish youth, acting out, never getting the attention she needed. Not an uncommon story, but that it was Catie’s story made it special to him.

Yet still she hid from him. She was like a wild animal when wounded, determined to hide until she healed. Only Jake was certain that he owed her more than that. Whatever wonderful thing was happening to him, he was certain he owed it to her, and equally certain it would not survive if she left. He wouldn’t scare her off.

He reached for her cheek, but she backed away.

“How are you not pissed?” she said again. She was almost angry now, the way people become angry when they don’t understand what’s going on and it frightens them. “How are you not, just…freaking out?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. He wouldn’t let go of her hand. He had begun to think of it as a lifeline. “I am, in a removed way. But I am also…I am
relieved
. I hid that for so long, worried about what you would think, if you knew. And there are other things, too. Catie, those letters were not wrong. What I told you was true. I was heartless, in a way; not incapable of feeling, but incapable…it is hard to describe. I couldn’t bear intimacy of any kind with another human being, least of all the kind where someone in pain depended upon me.”

“You used the past tense,” she said quietly.

“Yes. You were there with me, in the dining room. You know that doesn’t fully describe me anymore, at least where you are concerned.”

His own words sounded bloodless to him. ‘Doesn’t describe me anymore?’ Like he was speaking of a passing acquaintance, a casual encounter, rather than the life-changing thing that she had done for him. Jake looked at Catie, wilting in shadows just beyond the range of the light from the desk lamp, and struggled to do better.

“Your false name,” he said, and she stiffened again. “You used that for a reason.”

Slowly, she nodded.

“You wanted to become someone else? To leave it behind?”

Catie didn’t say anything. He badly wanted to touch her, but forced himself to speak. “That’s how I feel, in a way. I have become different. Something has happened to me, because of you. I am…
Damn
.”

He couldn’t say it yet, didn’t have any facility for intimate language. Maybe he’d get there eventually, maybe not, but for now, he had to use what he had. He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her.

It only seemed to make it worse. He could feel her wilting further, collapsing in upon herself to some far place he couldn’t reach. He didn’t understand.

“Catie,” he said, as she drew away.

“I don’t deserve this,” she said.

She meant his kindness.

She looked tinier than she ever had, shrunken, as though she were trying to disappear. Jake thought back to the first time he’d brought her into this very room, when he tried to explain what his deficiencies were—deficiencies Catie had somehow begun to heal. He’d tried to explain how he achieved catharsis through domination, how it was the closest he could come to intimacy, how the rules and strictures gave him a kind of freedom.

“Like a sonnet,” he said under his breath.

Catie looked at him, and something glimmered in her eye—that spark that he loved so much.

She’d said she needed submission in the same way. That it gave her the same release. Catharsis. And now she was huddled in front of him, so consumed with self-loathing that he couldn’t reach her.

Except perhaps one way.

“I think you need to see that no matter how far you push me,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

He moved forward, and instinctively she moved back, as though they’d already started the dance. In just a few steps she hit the back bookcase, sandwiched between the two large windows. Slowly, deliberately, he reached down to grab her hands, and brought them up over her head.

Catie sucked in her breath and looked up. “Punish me,” she said. He looked down the length of her body to see her chest rising and falling rapidly, her stomach fluttering. He knew if he put his hand in her pants, he’d find her wet.

Jake thought back to their first session, remembered her response to pain. To discipline. He slid one hand down her arm to palm her breast, and viciously pinched her nipple.

“Ah,” she cried, and her breathing intensified. Her eyes were large, and had become languid, deep. She looked right at him and said, “Yes. Please.
Please.
”

Catie had given him the ability to love. He would give her anything she needed.

“Take off your clothes,” he said, releasing her hands. “And bend over that couch.”

chapter
26

Catie shivered at the sound of his voice. Authoritative. Demanding. Urgent.

She met his eye, and slowly began to unbutton her blouse. Her awareness of her body—of his eyes on her body—increased with every button.

“Quicker,” he said, his voice thick.

She shed her blouse, unzipped her skirt. Soon, her clothing lay in an inert pile at her feet, and she felt the calm start to come over her, the stress and anguish of knowing she’d failed Jake—again—fading into the background.

She started to move towards the couch, but he stopped her.

“Wait,” he said. “Spread your legs.”

Catie obeyed automatically. It wasn’t until she felt his hand push between her legs that she remembered: today was Friday.

She had screwed up.

Before she could speak, his fingers spread her lips and probed her flesh. Jake frowned.

“Today is Friday,” he said. “Something is missing.”

Catie felt the heat spread through her body and rise to the surface of her skin, where it burned. She was both genuinely ashamed and, somehow, thrilled.

“I forgot, sir.”

His finger swirled carelessly, and Catie’s eyelids fluttered. He shook his head in slight disappointment. “Beneath the couch there is a box. Retrieve it.”

Catie padded across the floor, grateful for the no doubt priceless rugs. She had once felt awkward about being naked, in a strange way, but Jake had since given her a different sense of her own body. Every movement was part of their game, every gesture charged with desire, with the potential for pleasure. She could feel his eyes on her every step of the way.

“Open it.”

She did. It held what she expected: various toys, accoutrements, and equipment. She no longer wasted time thinking about what other women might have seen similar things in Jake’s presence. For right now, this moment, she knew she was all he thought about.

“This has earned you…more,” he said.

She bent her head, and tried not to smile. “Yes, sir.”

“Bend over, hands on the couch, as you were before.”

She shuddered. Every movement seemed to occur in slow motion. She bent slowly at the waist, keeping her back rigid and slightly arched, feeling the pull on her hamstrings. She placed first one palm and then the other flat on the rich red leather. And then, with her head down, she thrust her bottom ever so slightly towards him. An offering.

He said nothing. She heard him rustle through the box, heard him take out several items. He must know what the anticipation did to her.

Finally, she felt it. First a swab of lube, his fingers rough and unyielding. Then the cold, round metal of the ben-wa balls.

“This time, you will take it with these inside,” he said, removing the metal and pushing one, two fingers inside her, moving them about. “And you will
not
come. Do you understand?”