The Willing, page 12
Ruben frowned, but he leaned back in his seat as if worried I might bite him. That was a consequence of going on safari: occasionally the jungle cats fought back.
"Well," Madam interjected, coughing awkwardly as if in an attempt to reassert her authority. "I do believe Jocelyn was just leaving..."
"Soon as Ruben here tells me he grasps the full extent of what I just told him." I smiled thinly. "A nod will do."
"Jocelyn—"
Ruben canted his head back and forth slowly, despite Madam's protests.
"Enjoy the evening," I said. Madam's scandalized moue didn't escape my notice, but I was already turning on my heel, grabbing the awful bear paw purse off the bar counter and pretending I didn't notice everyone and their mother staring at me. The music was still droning in the background, forgotten.
No one could claim I didn't know how to make an exit.
I walked for a bit, determined to cool off, but the catcalls were getting old and with night falling, the mercury was dropping too quickly for my temper to keep up. I ended up hailing a cab a couple of blocks down from the club. The driver didn't blink twice when I gave him the address. The outfit really fit the job description, I figured, tilting my head back against the seat.
My thoughts wandered. The last thing I wanted was to think about disappointing Madam Madrigal; she'd never been much of a mother figure to me, but she was a fair employer in an industry that didn't put a very high premium on employee satisfaction.
If I ended up fired, at least it would be for a good reason. I heard my phone shrill in my bag, but didn't check to see who was doing the calling. I didn't want to deal with a dressing down right this minute, or listen to Michelle berate me some more for being a thoughtless wretch.
She'd get her chance again. I was very good at screwing up.
The city drifted by all purple and black, like a mottled bruise, and I thought about the choices I'd made and the people whose opinion I praised. As if I needed any further proof of my bad judgment, I inevitable found myself wondering what Oliver was doing; if he missed me tonight.
I didn't know if I wanted him to be all tied up in knots wishing I'd kept our appointment or if I preferred him indifferent. The latter would be easier on me when the contract terminated and I had to move on with my life. The former would better soothe my plus-sized ego.
There was only one way to be sure.
The taxi stopped outside the tower and I paid the fare without paying much attention to the driver's eyes sliding down my blouse. I told him to keep the change. I wasn't swimming in cash, but pennies I could still spare. Plus, a part of me knew full well that if I didn't get out right then and there, I'd just ask to be driven home.
I couldn't let better judgment stand in my way.
George did a double take when he saw me. "Is he in?" I asked, already on my way to the elevator.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thanks." I hardly looked like I was worthy of the title, but George was one of those old-fashioned types, a man raised in a family of women.
As the elevator doors closed, I pushed the button for the penthouse and watched it light up for a few seconds before going dark again. Experience told me a melodious ringing would be filling the apartment even now to announce me.
Oliver was usually prompt in answering, but today he seemed determined to dawdle. I mashed the button with my fist again and then a third time, proving that patience was not a character trait I held close to my heart.
"What are you doing here, Jo?" echoed around the small cabin.
It was a brief thing, but for just a second there, I couldn't help wonder if it was God speaking to me. That, or perhaps I had finally lost my ever-loving mind.
Then the penny dropped and ire surged hotly in my veins. "Nice trick. Let me up, Oliver." I didn't know where to look, so instinctively I glanced up, as if the man himself was on top of the elevator cabin.
Silence lingered for a beat, and then he spoke again: "You mentioned you were otherwise engaged tonight," Oliver pointed out, his voice slightly distorted by the intercom. "I wasn't expecting you to change your mind."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm a call girl, Oliver. You're really going to pull that shit?" He had a point, but I'd been making too many concessions already. I wanted him to heed me this time not because I was his dominant but because he wanted to, as well. Give me a chance, I thought stubbornly. You owe me that much. "Look, I know what I said on the phone… I'm sorry, it was a dick move. But now I'm saying let me come upstairs and make it up to you." That almost sounded like I was offering him sex. My skin prickled a little at the thought: had I really sunk so low that I used sex to make up for behaving stupidly?
When he didn't answer, I sighed and leaned back against the far wall of the cabin. "I'm not stepping out. So if you want to have a strange woman riding your elevator all night, then fine, don't let me up. You know we can have this argument face to face, too, right?"
It was one of the things we seemed to be doing best: when we weren't indulging Oliver's baser instincts (and to some degree my own), we were usually fighting like dogs, snarling and biting at each other. I wondered if he'd finally decided I was too much of a problem.
Had I just signed my own termination agreement?
So be it, I thought. I wasn't going to beg him to let me come upstairs when we both knew my presence here tonight was as much for my financial happiness as it was so Oliver could get his kicks.
There was no answer for a long, ponderous moment and then the elevator cabin slid smoothly into motion. Thank God, I thought, inexplicably relieved. Promptly, my stomach dropped into my knees, courage still at ground level while the rest of me soared into the stratosphere.
The floors passed by in swift succession, red digits drawn on a black field in the screen above the door. Music swelled in the background, predictably generic. After the club, everything seemed too quiet, too sedate. I wondered if I smelled of liquor and writing bodies, or if just one look at me would be enough to tell Oliver where I'd been. Despite myself, I found it necessary to fill my lungs with breath, bracing myself for a fight I didn't want to have but knew I'd only brought on myself.
As swiftly as the elevator had first picked up speed, so did it begin to slow down again, decelerating until it reached a full stop at the very summit of the tower. My pumps dug hard into the steel floor and then the robotic voice announced I had reached the penthouse level. Here it goes, I thought.
"I can explain—" I started, convinced that getting the first word in was the only way to go. Resolve left me as soon as the doors opened all the way.
Oliver was standing in foyer, apparently waiting for me. He didn't have any clothes on. Not even the Calvin Klein briefs.
Chapter ten
In retrospect, perhaps I could have done more than stand there, gaping for a whole half minute. In my defense, Oliver didn't make it easy to behave rationally. He just stood and let me look my fill like it was the most natural thing in the world. Considering how anxious he'd been about acknowledging his own orgasms, I didn't really buy it.
Eventually, I had to step out of the elevator, which narrowed the distance between us to a couple of feet.
"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and my eyes on his face. He was blushing badly, fists clenched at his sides. I got the distinct impression that he was trying hard to keep from bolting. I couldn't blame him.
Oliver's throat worked, Adam's apple bobbing. "I thought you might want to see..."
Had I been so transparent? Part of me bristled with the suggestion, reluctant to admit I'd lain awake in bed at night, wondering what it might be like to have Oliver beside me, skin on skin.
The rest of me was more concerned that his cock was soft between his thighs, his wrinkled foreskin obscuring some but not all of the fish-belly white scars around the shaft. Someone had bound his sex into a cock cage of some kind. My stomach roiled. I'd seen plenty of weird implements in my day at the club; things our clients brought in, toys ordered online. Props I didn't know how to manipulate and wasn't sure I should learn.
The Internet gave everyone ideas, but most people were able to distinguish between fantasy and the other thing.
I reached out my hand very slowly, giving Oliver the time he needed to recoil if he didn't want to be touched, and tentatively curled my fingers around his soft cock. He shivered.
This—what we were doing now, nameless and strange as it was—likely counted as a firing offense. I tried not to dwell on my endless capacity for self-sabotage as I palmed Oliver's prick. He didn't harden for me, but neither did he pull away.
"Aren't you cold?" I was surprised to hear my voice so even, so controlled. I didn't feel like I was in control.
Oliver nodded. "A little. Will you come upstairs?"
We were a long way from my begging to be allowed into the penthouse a minute ago. Oliver had gone from playing the disembodied gatekeeper to tentatively offering to lead me into the playroom.
I touched his hand and felt his fist relax. His fingers threaded through mine.
It was unsettling to see him like this—not the submissive part, that I actually liked—as if he'd come untethered while we were apart.
In the playroom, the bed had been transformed in a smorgasbord of sex toys. Some, like the anal plugs, I knew he'd said he didn't want to use during our sessions. I could have asked him why he'd lied, but the scars around his shaft were answer enough.
"How do you want me?" he asked, too quiet to sound excited. My heart ached for him. I'd flirted with a desire to protect during our sessions, even though I was the one dishing out the hurt, but I'd never felt it outside of that adrenaline-pumping environment.
I couldn't fathom taking a crop to him right now. Had we been in the club, I would have turned down the appointment. But Oliver needed me to take him out of his head. That was our deal and the only way I could be of any service to him.
"Help me clean this up," I said, not quite an order. I gave his fingers a little squeeze, but he was already obeying, also willing to go above and beyond when we were in this room.
It was no use trying to tell myself I should be afraid of him; that he was a bad man an even worse friend. I found a pair of leather handcuffs on the bed and similar ankle restraints. They were the kind with clips attached in case the submissive wanted a spreader bar used. I hunted for something softer I could use to bind Oliver and found nothing. No matter, my leather belt would do.
Oliver finished tidying up the bed in record time. I said nothing about the toys that wound up piled on the floor at the foot of the bed. There were more pressing things at hand.
"Lie down," I told Oliver and then kicked off my shoes. I didn't have to pretend I was tall, not in here. It occurred to me that dominating a man like Oliver gave me precisely the same thing he got out of submitting: comfort. There was nothing Freudian or feminist about it. My power lay in pleasing Oliver; I knew I'd done that over the past two weeks, so when his eyes found mine as I bound his ankles, I felt a surge of tenderness bloom inside me. "You brought them out," I reminded him, "but if you're not comfortable with restraints tonight..."
Oliver shook his head. "No. It's fine. Just surprised, that's all."
He was anticipating my next move—or trying to, his mind leaping across the possibilities into the unknown.
I could've put his fears to bed right then and there, but words were just that and Oliver had always preferred it when I worked with my hands. Once I slipped his feet through the leather cuffs, I sat down on the mattress and moved to do the same thing to his wrists. He watched me like a hawk.
"Do you trust me?" I asked.
It took a moment, but I got a nod, however shaky.
"Okay. I'm going to tie your hands to the headboard now. I'll stay right beside you. If it gets to be too much, you can just say so." I didn't even try to act this bit. I couldn't even if I'd wanted to; my thoughts were still guiltily immersed in that awful disfigurement. No wonder he didn't want to undress all the way when we were together, those scars must have been present for every sexual encounter. Every woman he'd gone to bed since being mutilated would have seen them.
In our sessions Oliver got to have some control on that point. It made little sense that he'd choose to surrender it now, when I had done nothing to merit his trust.
I thought back to what Evangeline had said about Oliver suffering from certain intimacy issues. I wanted to laugh, to cry. I did neither.
Looping my belt around the headboard and the metal chain around Oliver's wrists was easy to do. He never let me out of his sights as I secured it in place. If he wanted to get away badly enough, he could still tear his way free with only a little bit of concentration. There were no keys involved, no knots to cut off his circulation.
"I can get to my knees," Oliver offered softly. His heart wasn't in it, though, I could tell.
I shook my head no.
"I want you to lie there and let me sit beside you for a bit, okay?" I felt compelled to ask rather than order, even though I knew that there was a risk I would take him out of whatever sense of peace he'd found in baring himself to me.
If I'd known about it sooner, I might have treated him a little more gently during our previous sessions. Guilt ate at me like disease before I realized that he didn't want to be treated gently. He wanted pain—enjoyed it—and he was smart enough to know that if I saw the way his cock had been mutilated, I'd hold back.
There was nothing more frustrating than a clever submissive. There was nothing more exciting, either, because it meant I wasn't the only one putting thought into our time together. I felt my cheeks heat at the thought.
Oliver nudged my knee with his elbow. "It's disgusting, right? You can look at it, if you want. I'm not going to burst into tears just because you think I'm not pretty."
I believed that, but it wasn't the point.
My lips pursed. "I don't need to."
"No, I mean... I want you to look." He was flushed crimson all the way down to his chest, nipples peaked with the cold. I followed the smattering of chestnut-blond hair on his chest down the smooth planes of his stomach, and from there to his half-hard length. He wanted me to look, so I obliged.
Let it never be said Jo Torres backed down from a challenge, even when she should have known better.
"It's pretty awkward," I agreed, once I felt I could speak again. "A real kick below the belt, isn't it?"
Oliver's expression flickered. "Are you making a joke out of this?"
After the evening I'd had and the real and present danger that I'd just gotten myself fired twice in as many weeks, I wasn't going to balk at the resurgence of Oliver Shepherd, corporate stick in the mud. "Don't look so surprised," I shot back, shrugging. "You didn't hire me for the sake of my comedic talents." And if he had, then newsflash, he'd made a terrible mistake. I didn't stop talking long enough to let us get tangled in the fine print: "Does it hurt any?"
"Not anymore." Which wasn't to say it hadn't been excruciating back in the day. Any kind of genital mutilation was bound to be agonizingly painful—that much I knew from getting a Brazilian.
Oliver didn't offer any further details and I didn't press him with questions on the subject. Much as I wanted to know who'd done this to him so I could whack them over the head with a frying pan, or more likely warn their current significant other, I knew it wasn't any of my business. I kept my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.
The silence that settled over us wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was a far cry from hostile. We'd made at least that much progress in six sessions.
"Do you want me to touch you?" I didn't mean his cock, but he seemed vulnerable somehow and I had nothing better to do with my empty hands.
Oliver arched a brow, managing to appear both disbelieving and amused even as he lay there, bound and tethered, my prisoner in all but name. "Do you want to?"
We were being very tentative around each other for two people who routinely got together to enact various torture scenarios. I said as much and Oliver huffed a reluctant laugh. (I liked the sound of that a lot more than I should.)
"This is what happens when you diverge from the schedule," he said. "Where were you, anyway? If it's not too forward to ask..."
"It's forward and backward, but if you want to know, I'll tell you." My smile alleged insouciance as I told him about the club, the legions of scantily clad women grinding amid clouds of stale smoke. The bar and the bartender featured only briefly in my tale as I pointed out how surprised everyone seemed to be when it turned out I didn't drink like a fish.
"Why don't you?" Oliver asked.
Because there's a chance I'll see you, I almost said. "Habit, mostly. Plus it's bad policy. I like to be sober when I'm dealing with men who feel entitled to take whatever looks like it might be on offer." I'd heard the horror stories, I knew I had to rely on myself to keep out of trouble in this line of work. The police was as likely to prosecute me as any guy who overstepped. I didn't want to end up in prison, convicted of solicitation, so this was my solution. Sobriety and zero tolerance for any man who so much as implied he might like to put me in my place.
Of course, those were the easy red flags, the ones I could spot right off the bat. Trouble was most of our clients liked to play at being nice, easy-going types who didn't hit on women. Michelle and I had both had our fair share of those. Some bad eggs you just couldn't weed out.
I considered not telling him about Ruben, but Oliver's breaths had evened out and his questions had lost their usual edge, so I thought, to hell with it, and painted the picture of my latest bout of unprovoked violence with flourish. "So don't feel bad," I added in the end, "seems I hit people indiscriminately these days."
Oliver quirked a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Is that going to be a problem for you with your—Madame?"
"I don't know." That was an honest answer: no frills, no attempt to dress it up into something funny. Losing my job was rarely hilarious, no matter how many times it happened. "Does it matter?" I asked, holding his gaze as I combed my fingers gently through his hair.
