Leather Bound (28 page)

‘Who runs the club now?’ I said.

‘Wes thinks he does,’ he said.

He was kind of talking nonsense. I tried to process everything, to work my head around it, but one thing kept eluding me. The trouble was that I couldn’t even figure out what the thing was, so it wasn’t like I could ask about it.

‘Where’s your tattoo?’ I asked. ‘You must have a tattoo.’

‘I’ll show you tomorrow,’ he said.

Which ended up being fine because about a second and a half later, I was out, lost to the world of dreams and sex.

* * *

I woke in the half-light, Davian spooned around my body, breathing lightly in my ear. Sometime in the night, he’d stripped himself of his clothes. My bed smelled like the two of us, and the heat of his half-hard cock was a beautiful thing against the curve of my ass.

I was starving and achy all over. But there was no way I was going to get up right away. This moment was too perfect.

He snugged his body to mine, murmuring half-sleepy things in my ear.

‘Yes,’ I said back to him, assuming he would never hear, assuming that my words would be little more than dream fodder.

‘Good,’ he said. He was awake with a suddenness that surprised me. He leaned over me and caught my mouth in a rough kiss, his stubble raking my face. How fast he brought me to desire, with little more than a touch, a word. Barely awake, and still I wanted every part of him inside me, wanted to feel the lust of his body against my own.

I rolled onto my back, loving the look of him looming over me, his gaze both sleepy and wanting. I reached for his cock and stroked the underside softly. He rewarded me with a shuddering groan, his cock growing harder with every touch.

‘Spread your legs,’ he whispered, and watched while I did so. His gaze on me as I dipped two fingers into my wetness almost undid me. Never before had I wanted to be watched this way. I never wanted him to stop looking. I rolled my clit between my fingers, listening to his sharp intake of breath that nearly matched my own.

‘Condoms?’ he asked. And then he found them on his own anyway. He didn’t take his gaze from mine as he rolled the condom over his erection. That gaze was filled with so damn much. Want. Greed. Lust. Something else. Something that I knew was echoed in my own expression.

Slowly, he lowered himself between my thighs, sliding his hips forward so that his cock nudged against my opening. Kissing me, he shifted forward. Giving me just a little. Teasing me.

‘Stay still,’ he said.

He kissed me again and moved into me, slightly deeper. A small stroke of pleasure. A promise.

I couldn’t stand it. I wiggled against him, urging him deeper.

He pulled away, laughing.

‘What did I say?’ he said.

‘I don’t know?’ I countered. ‘Forgive me?’

‘Against my better judgment, you are irresistible,’ he said.

He gave another tiny movement forward, pushing deeper. I ached to stay still. I wanted all of him, every single bit, as deep as he would go.

‘You should know,’ he said. ‘Before we get any deeper into this…’

‘Mmm, yes, deeper, please…’

‘I’m serious, Janine.’

‘If you’re so serious, you shouldn’t be talking with my pussy full.’

‘It isn’t full yet,’ he said. He entered me, fully, his hips pushing to mine. Every part of me came alive, starting with my pussy and echoing upwards and outwards. My toes curled. Meaningless words came out of my mouth.

‘Now it’s full,’ he said. He didn’t make it to the end of the sentence before his voice dropped off, growing guttural and snarly. It was hot as hell.

Little shivers worked their way up and down my spine, tiny promises of what was to come as he leaned down to kiss me, still stroking inside me. My hips slid up to meet him, greedy for, well, everything. I wanted it harder, faster, fuller. And yet I also wanted it slower, sweeter, the lingering almost-there of orgasm that I loved so much.

He gave me both, bringing me to the edge and easing me back down again until we were both panting, grinning, our desire sliding into that euphoria of sustained pleasure.

‘No. More,’ he said. Sliding himself upright, he brought me with him, until I was nearly on his lap. He lifted me again and again, bringing me down hard over his cock. I leaned in to kiss him, and it was all teeth and snarl and ohfuck. I touched my clit with a finger. More little sparks, the kind that went straight to my head, sang light and sweet songs of pleasure.

‘I’m going to come,’ I whispered against his mouth.

‘Me too,’ he said. He stroked into me, hard, his beautiful eyes half-closing even as he struggled to keep watching me. I stroked my clit, once, twice, and then I was over, moaning his name, good, strong pleasure filling my body and brain. I felt him come before I heard him, a long shuddering stroke, and then he was kissing my face, my cheeks, the corners of my mouth.

‘Janine,’ he whispered.

And somehow that was everything.

* * *

‘What were you saying before?’ I asked. ‘When you wanted to get all important-talky and I just wanted to fuck you?’

He laughed low against the side of my neck.

‘I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t always be so nice,’ he said.

‘That was nice?’

‘I mean –’ he said, his voice serious ‘– that I’m a professional dom for a reason. I like my kink. Bondage and leather and a gorgeous girl with tousled hair and glasses down on her knees sucking my cock.’

Even if he hadn’t been touching me while he talked, his words alone would have made my nipples ping the way they were, would have made my pussy constrict the way it did.

‘I like my kink too,’ I admitted. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I dream of you fucking me sweet and slow, but mostly I imagine you cuffing my wrists, bending me over, tying me down or up. Using those big hands on some tender part of my body.’

He growled softly and tightened his body against mine.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very very good.’

A moment later, he draped his arm over me. ‘Also, here,’ he said. He turned his arm to show me the inside of his wrist, the one where he usually wore his watch.

A small tattoo. A keyhole and, next to it, a skeleton key.

‘Both?’ I asked.

‘Keyhole first,’ he said. ‘Then key.’

Keyholder
, I thought, remembering the man who’d fed me in the Blind Café.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He murmured something unintelligible against my neck and in seconds, he was asleep. My body threatened to follow suit if I didn’t get up. I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed all day, curled up with Davian, drifting to sleep together, but that wasn’t an option. Leather Bound, the current mistress of my life, called her siren call. I’d left too much of my work in Lily’s hands lately. I needed to get back to my real life.

Leaving the bed and Davian’s sexy, warm body was one of the hardest things I’d done in a long time.

I wanted to kiss Davian more, to feel his lips against mine, but he was already conked out again. I guessed he needed the sleep just as much as I did, and I didn’t want to wake him. Looking down at him before I left, I had a slippery moment of déjà vu, of time moving ahead and still leaving you in the same place as before. I fully expected Davian to wake up and say something life-changing when I walked out the door, but he was silent except for the soft sound of his breathing.

Walking to the bookstore, I realised I desperately needed three things: food, coffee and something that resembled a normal day.

* * *

I was surprised to find the front door of Leather Bound unlocked when I got there. Lily must have beaten me here and forgotten to lock it behind her.

I shut the door behind me and turned.

‘Hey Lil, I –’ My voice died away as I saw the store. Leather Bound was trashed. Shelves sat almost empty. Books littered the floor in haphazard piles and jumbles, most of them opened, as though some ADD-addled child had riffled through all of their pages, found nothing of interest and thrown them back down.

Oddly, nothing else was touched. Lily’s hand-drawn signs were still intact. The ladder leaned, haphazard as always, looking as if it had been used, but unharmed. The register still squatted its frog squat on the front counter. Even the window displays were pristine. Someone had ransacked the velvet room, but no more than they had anywhere else. My office appeared to be still locked, which was one small joy in the midst of a thousand sadnesses.

As I stood there, confused and miserable, something else ripped through my gut. An anger that made me clench my fists. Assholes. It was one thing to ruin someone’s store, to try to destroy their livelihood. And entirely another to destroy the thing they loved most. To destroy someone else’s story. What right did anyone have to do that?

I forced myself to breathe, pushing air in and out of my lungs with a fierceness that left my light-headed and huffing. But at least I felt like I was in a little more control. I still wanted to punch whoever had done this, but I didn’t want to punch them with a crowbar any more.

‘Lily?’ I called.

‘Back here,’ she said. Her voice was wobbly and broken.

I found her kneeling on the floor, already trying to piece things back together. She looked up at me as I approached, her fingers moving still on the page she’d been flattening. She wasn’t crying, but it was clear she’d done so before I got there; her usual perfectly done eyes were smeared, her nose a soft pink. Her lips trembled as she pinched them tight. Webster was curling around her legs, mewling at her, clearly confused but unharmed.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Did you call the police?’

She shook her head, tried to speak, then closed her mouth when tears welled up again.

‘I’ll call them,’ I said.

If I was speaking, it was only because my mouth was still going, as though it was trying to finish the sentence it had started when I’d walked in. But clearly Lily’s wasn’t doing at all what she wanted it to.

I couldn’t look in her eyes or I would have joined her in the tear club and then we’d both be blubbering. And I didn’t dare touch her; I was afraid we’d both lose it for real.

I kneeled down to help her, choosing a book at random, lamenting the creases at the corners of the pages. I started to ask what happened, but that wouldn’t come out, stuck in the tight close of my throat.

Our dream seemed like it was falling apart, bit by bit, like the seams of your favourite sweater unravelling while you weren’t looking. Pretty soon I felt like I would wake up naked, with nothing but a pile of yarn next to me, having no idea what had just happened.

First Wes and his stupid rent hike. Then losing the book trail. Now a break-in. If someone was sending me a message, it was coming through loud and clear.

Lily and I worked in silence for a while, I don’t know how long. Smoothing out creases the best we could, putting books back in their rightful places. Some of the books didn’t even belong to this section of the store; it was like someone had flung them as hard as they could across the store just to see where they’d land. We started making piles of those, and as they rose higher and higher, all I could think about was how much work we had cut out for us.

When my fingers felt like they’d taken all of the paper cuts they could, I plopped myself on the floor with a sigh.

Lily tucked a few more books back into their proper places. The shelves near us were almost full again. Lily looked stronger too, more together; putting things in their proper place always made her feel that way, I think. I felt like I was the last one to join the party; my gut was still too tight, my legs shaky, my throat like a tiny straw that was impossible to breathe through.

Lily dropped down beside me and we looked at the incomplete shelves for a long time. Our dreams were still messed up, and getting worse. But at least I wasn’t alone.

‘I’ll go call the police,’ I said.

I reached over and took her hand, and she let me, even tightening her fingers around mine.

‘We’ll get through this,’ I said. ‘Us, and Leather Bound. We’ll all survive this. I promise.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I just thought it would be easier than this.’

My laugh was sharper than I meant it to be, harsh. It came out of my chest in a sharp push. ‘Yeah, I think that about a lot of things lately.’

Lily leaned into my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. Her sobs were fierce, shaking her whole body as she cried.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

I had no idea what she meant.

* * *

I called the police while Lily went and, in her words, ‘fixed her face.’

When she came back, her make-up was perfectly put together. You could barely tell she’d been crying, except for the tiny patches of pink at the corners of her eyes. I envied her for a moment, but I also didn’t. In the midst of pain, the last thing I wanted to add to my plate was worrying about how I looked.

‘What’d they say?’ she asked.

‘They said they’d be right over, and asked if we touched anything.’

‘Um,’ Lily looked at the books we’d already put away. ‘Whoops.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure it will be fine. They said not to touch anything else. Besides, it’s not like they’re actually going to find out who did this.’

‘You don’t think?’ She started to pick a couple more books off the floor and then realised what she was doing and put them back down.

‘Janine,’ she started. ‘This might be my fault.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I came here last night and I might have forgotten to lock the door.’

She clearly had more to say. She was rubbing her tattooed ear, blinking at the floor.

I waited.

‘I told you I met someone,’ she said finally. ‘And she, she likes to have sex here, in the bookstore. I might have forgotten to lock the door.’

A vision of Lily on my desk filled my mind. Did I tell her I’d seen her? Would it make her feel better or worse?

I didn’t say anything. I just gathered her in my arms, saying, ‘It’s OK. It’s not your fault,’ until the police arrived.

They showed up quickly, two men, all dressed to the nines despite the early hour.

They asked a ton of questions and took a ton of photos. They were polite and thorough, but didn’t give us much hope of catching the people who’d ransacked the store.