Anything For Him (11 page)

That would never happen.

I was just being fanciful, allowing the softer side of me to come to the fore and, inwardly, I cursed myself for it. I needed to stay on the track our journey had begun on, with Liuz my master and me the willing follower. If I tried to manipulate things, who knew what would happen? I had a good idea. He’d say the stop word, and my world would be shattered. Damn, I’d become attached and shouldn’t have. No, I needed to scour these new feelings away, wash any remnants down the drain, because if I didn’t, it would be over faster.

Over. I never want it to be over.

Him reaching out his hand for mine, twining his fingers with mine, brought me up short. Another show of tenderness I hadn’t expected, bringing my previous thoughts and hopes rushing back.

Stop it. He was just doing that to waste time between fucks. It didn’t mean anything. Not a damn thing.

‘You have tiny hands,’ he said, gaze glued to our knot of fingers. ‘So tiny.’

Shit, his words melted me into a pool of goo. I wanted to see what he saw, to see through his eyes, but his face was telling me so much more. That little smile was back, the dimple in his cheek, and his eyes had taken on a dreamy look that I would swear expressed similar thoughts to mine.

Was he feeling something for me? Something more than seeing me as a woman he could use? I couldn’t hope. Just couldn’t.

To stop myself falling even more madly in love with him – or more obsessed – I dragged my sights from his face and stared at our hands. I shouldn’t have done that. What I saw were hands that belonged together, his large palm pressed against my smaller one, the tips of my slim fingers barely peeking from between his thick, longer digits. My stomach rolled with the realisation that I had allowed myself to go too far when I’d removed the blindfold. I’d encouraged intimacy, ousted the security blindness had given me, and I knew I was in all kinds of trouble now.

‘Do you think,’ he said, still studying our hands, ‘you could have another man after me?’

Oh, I knew where this was going, why he’d asked that question. Beefcake. I tensed, hoping he’d think it was a natural reaction to his query and not that I knew what was going to happen at some point tonight. I swallowed, hoping my voice came out strong when I replied. Should I give the true answer burning my tongue? The one where I was honest and said that no man would ever match up to him? No man would ever make me feel as sexy, as dirty, and as needed as he did? Or should I shrug it off, behave as I was supposed to and give him a hell yeah?

I decided to hedge my bets, play it safe. ‘Um, in what context?’

‘It’s simple. Just like I said. Could you have another man after me?’

After me. He meant tonight, me having another man straight after he’d been inside me. I could, would do that for him.

‘Well,’ I said, dredging courage up from the shadowy little corner it had retreated to when I’d taken the blindfold off. ‘You’ve made it clear we’re not going anywhere. You let me know we’re just fuck buddies, so I haven’t got attached.’ Liar. ‘So when you say the stop word, yes, I’d fuck someone else.’ Eventually. When I picked up the pieces of my heart and glued them back together.

Oh, hell. I’d really gone and fallen for him, hadn’t I?

I’d said what he might want to hear, but at the same time I’d made it clear that when he said the stop word, I’d become attached to someone else. I’d effectively told him I belonged to him and him alone until he ended what we had. Those were my true thoughts, but I knew without doubt that in order for him to keep his knees intact, to have unbroken arms and legs – or worse – I’d give myself to Beefcake.

If Liuz picked up on what I’d actually said, would he send Beefcake away? He couldn’t. He had no alternative but to pay the man one way or another.

If only I had the money to give him.

He sighed. ‘But imagine if I did not want to say the stop word yet.’

Yet. He was going to end it at some point. Oh, God, Hannah, you stupid, stupid woman. What have you got yourself into here?

‘Maybe I want to share you with someone,’ he continued, stroking his thumb over my inner wrist.

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ I must have sounded dense, but I needed to stall him so I could think on what he’d just said. He was putting it in a nice way, making out he wanted to share me. So he wasn’t going to admit that I was payment, that I was a nothing who didn’t deserve being made privy to what he’d planned. I understood why he couldn’t say. I mean, how rude would that sound? You see,
Aniolku
,
it’s like this. I owe a dangerous man some money … But on the other hand, he was asking my opinion. He cared enough to find out whether I could handle this instead of just assuming I would.

That had to count for something, didn’t it?

Whatever it counted for, I grabbed hold of it and hugged it to me.

‘What I mean is, I need to share you with someone. Maybe one time, maybe two.’

Need. He hadn’t said he wanted to.

‘What brought this on?’ I asked, looking into his eyes. Every nerve in my body seemed to be screaming, making me tense, my mind full of questions I had no time to answer.

‘I have …’ He stopped, unhooked his hand from mine and lifted his arm to cup my cheek. His eyes flicked left to right, left to right, showing me he was unsure of how to word things.

Those actions had my emotions soaring. He cared. He bloody cared!

I warded off a huge smile, saying instead, ‘You have what?’

His hand burned my cheek, and his thumb tip brushing the soft skin beside my eye almost – almost – had me crying. I was on dangerous ground in more ways than one here.

‘I have a problem I need your help with,
Aniolku
.’

I laughed, reverting back to my original role, of who he thought I really was. ‘You need help from me
?
Now, that isn’t the man I know. You’ve given me the impression you don’t need help from anyone
.
’

‘I do not usually need help, but tonight I do. Something went wrong.’

‘Something went wrong?’ I purposely made my voice light, acted as though I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. ‘With what? And what’s another man fucking me got to do with it?’

He had two options. He’d either confess or make some bullshit story up.

Please let it be a confession
.

He sighed again, moved his hand from my cheek to cup the ball of my shoulder. Stroked languidly, circling my skin as though the action calmed him. Or maybe he was doing it to pacify me, to butter me up?

‘I – I promised you to someone else,’ he said bluntly, the words in his usual brittle, no-nonsense form but his eyes giving him away. He stared at my forehead, took his hand from my shoulder to fiddle with my tufty hair.

‘You did?’ I said, going for the incredulous tone.

‘I did. How do you feel about that?’

‘Uh, well, I don’t know. When this started, it was between you and me. No mention of other men or women. I thought …’ I paused for effect, hoping my acting passed as genuine. ‘Anyway, why are you bothered how it makes me feel? This thing we have, it doesn’t involve caring, does it? You tell me what to do and I do it. If either of us don’t like it, we say the stop word.’

He tensed, stopped playing with my hair, and looked me right in the eyes. ‘Will you say it now? The stop word?’

I felt a bitch for teasing him, but I wanted – needed – to know for sure if he had any proper feelings for me before I wasted my time allowing mine to grow stronger. Yes, we’d only fucked twice, but we’d spoken for a long time before that, built a rapport. Knew things about one another we’d never told anyone else. We had a bond, albeit based around a whore fantasy where we indulged in our deepest desires, but a bond all the same. Possibly tenuous, the strands of it that held us together ready to break at any moment, but it was there.

I just had to strengthen it, that was all.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Depends on why you need this man to fuck me.’

‘I owe him money for a deal that went wrong.’

Oh my God, he’d given a full confession. Well, not full enough that I knew what he’d bought and couldn’t sell, but I hadn’t expected this level of admittance. Of trust.

‘And you offered me as payment, is that what you’re saying?’

He resumed with teasing my hair between finger and thumb, staring at what he was doing. Nodded. ‘I did. I did not want to, but I did. This man needs payment. You were the only thing I could offer. Will you do it?’

I reached up and covered his hand with mine, drew it down to the space between us, holding it to my chest. ‘I would do anything for you.’

Relief bled out of him, his whole body relaxing, and a gusty sigh of his sweet breath shrouded my face. ‘Thank you,
Aniolku
,
thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me. No one has ever –’ He pressed his lips together.

‘No one has ever what?’ Say it, please say it
.

‘It does not matter.’

He touched his forehead to mine, closed his eyes, and we rested there for a while without speaking. My mind raced, my emotions a giddy swirl with me unable to distinguish the difference between them. They all melded as one big lump, settling in the pit of my stomach, a heavy stone that made me feel sick. He’d trusted me with a confidence, something I never thought he’d do. Earlier, in the warehouse, when I’d seen him offering me to Beefcake, I imagined he’d have taken his usual attitude and told me another man would be joining us and that was that. Hell, when Liuz had fucked my ass, I’d expected Beefcake to join in, striding out from behind the curtains or wherever the hell I thought he’d been.

But Liuz hadn’t just assumed.

The information had me glowing.

‘When will he be here?’ I whispered.

‘Soon.’

‘Am I allowed to see him before he fucks me?’

‘I think you have the right, yes. But the blindfold. I want you to wear it when he – I do not want you to see how him fucking you –’

– makes me feel? Is that what he was going to say?

‘I understand,’ I said, giving him a soft kiss that could be taken any number of ways. It was up to him to work out the real reason for that softness, if he even wanted to. ‘How will I see him then, if I have to wear the blindfold?’

‘We will watch for him through the window.’

I made to move away, to get up and go to the window. Half sitting, with my hand braced against the mattress, I was stopped by Liuz gripping my wrist and squeezing. Looking up at me with eyes that spoke of regret.

‘You said what we have doesn’t involve caring,’ he said.

I held my breath, pulse throbbing in my neck, heart beating so hard my chest hurt. ‘I did. That’s what you said, what you’ve always implied.’

‘I lied.’

Holy fuck.

‘That’s dangerous, Liuz.’ I pulled away, making it clear he’d made a mistake in saying that. Scooting off the bed, I prayed my answer worked to my advantage. That I hadn’t just made one motherfucker of a colossal mistake. For all I knew, he could be messing with my mind, trying to find out whether I’d allowed myself to feel more for him than he’d like. In order to keep him in my life for as long as possible, I had to act as I thought he expected me to.

I walked to the front window, parting the curtains a bit to peer out into the street. The mattress pinged, Liuz getting off, and his footsteps padding across the room made my tummy roll over. He was right behind me then, body pressed to my back, hands coming around to hold me close. I resisted the urge to tip my head back and rest it on his shoulder. His hot breath met my neck a second before his soft lips brushed the skin.

‘I know it is dangerous, Hannah. I did not expect this.’

‘Me neither!’ I said on a low laugh, giving in and lifting my arms to curl my fingers over one of his forearms.

I wanted to say so much more, to turn to him, bury my face in his neck and blurt out exactly how I felt, ask him to tell me what he was thinking, but a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness at the far end of the street and became visible as a large man as it passed under the streetlight.

‘I think the man you mentioned is coming,’ I said.

Liuz stepped to my side and opened the curtain some more. He sighed, a shaky exhalation that made me feel sorry for him.

‘Yes, that is him.’

We stood in silence as Beefcake approached, watching him climb the front steps and jab a meaty thumb onto the bell button. It was as though we were suspended, neither one of us able to speak, both wishing we had time to digest what we’d said, to understand the ramifications of his confession and the fact that I’d hidden my true feelings. Self-preservation I know, but was it fair to leave Liuz in the dark, wondering if the feelings he had for me weren’t reciprocated?

I had no time to ponder on it, because Beefcake pressed the bell again, the expression on his face one of anger and impatience.

‘The blindfold, Hannah,’ Liuz said, voice a little rusty.

He led me back to the bed, and I sat while he covered my eyes. I could smell him, wanted to touch him, tell him everything would be all right. But I didn’t. I had the upper hand here, and until I had time to myself where I could think about everything properly, I had to maintain my usual role.

‘Are you ready
?
’ He placed both hands on my head, buried his fingers in my hair.

I nodded and took in a deep breath. ‘I’m doing this for you, remember that.’

‘I know.’

I switched off sweeter emotions and hauled in those that belonged to the other me. The prostitute. The slut.

The dirty bitch.

The latch clicked open.

‘Is she here?’ Beefcake’s rough voice.

‘Of course.’

‘Good.’

I heard footsteps, the slam of the door and the scrape of a lighter. The fuggy smell of smoke touched my nostrils.

‘She looks really fucking young.’ Beefcake’s voice, sudden and right next to me.

His hot breath breezed onto my chest and his body heat crept over my nakedness. He wore a strong-spiced aftershave that mingled with the tobacco and my own sexy, sweaty scent. I wondered if he’d put it on for my benefit.