Breaking Joseph (14 page)

“Oh God. No.” I
folded my arms. “It’s for my parents.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” I
smiled faintly. “They spent buckets of money on my school and my
courses, and…well, everything really. They’re about to lose their
house. And their business.”

“Yikes.” He
held his arm out, and I settled into the crook of it. Felt weirdly
organic.

“Did I do okay,
then?”

“You, my dear,
were quite the natural.” He gave me a squeeze. “I’m going to tell
Will that you’re good to go on the website. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” Another
gulp of water. Public website. Fuck. “Thank you.”

“No worries,
Leila.
Lay
-la.” He tittered. “Shame you have to change that
name.”

“Rather
appropriate, huh?”

“Lay lay lay
lay lay,” he sang, rocking me. “Shift up a little.”

“Mmm?”

He scooped up
my legs beneath the knee, and laid them on his lap so he could
reach between them. When he brushed the gusset of my knickers, I
went rigid.

“Relax,” he
said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

“You didn’t.” I
cleared my throat. “Earlier, that is.”

“Oh, I did. A
bit. Sorry, chick. Next time, we’ll practice.” Now he walked his
fingers under the lace and sought my still-sore clit. “Here?”

“I…yeah.”

Of all the ends
to the evening, I never anticipated this, to pant and mew in front
of a bemused–and aroused–driver while my new partner-in-crime
explored my girl-parts with the skill of a seasoned professional.
But it was gradual and delicious and ah…
wet
…Aidan knew what
he was doing, and could calculate the healing in it. I came on his
fingers with thick contractions and sucking gasps.

“Now,” he
mumbled, as we pulled up outside my building, “go have a good
cry.”

I blinked.
“Should I?”

“You will.”

“Did you?”

He kissed my
forehead. “Just don’t worry, when it happens. It’s normal. You’ll
be okay.”

It did. It was.
And am I?

I don’t know, I
don’t know.

Ask Charlotte.
You might have to take off the duct tape first.

* * * *

The epic space
of Joseph’s lounge made a night garden, with up-lights like
buttercups making halos on the walls. His coffee table was a mess
of paperwork, flickering laptops–two. Who needs two?–thickly
stacked files and empty Coke cans. On the wooden floor, the
National Geographic
lay splayed like a drunk’s hand of
poker.

He didn’t touch
me as I entered. I wasn’t sold to him, nor was I his lover, not in
any agreed sense.

“Been working?”
I asked.

“Had a busy
day.” We sat apart on the sofa in carefully measured distance. He
was at least three breaths away. “A lot to be done next week,
too.”

“I can hardly
wait.” I leaned back and my breasts slid beneath the vest. Still he
watched, his gaze hooked to the points of my nipples.

“Have you
decided?”

“About us?”
What a strange word. “Um. No.”

“But you came.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t have a spare room,
Leila.”

“You could be a
gentleman and have the sofa. It looks like it’d seat about twelve
people.” I poked him in the ribs, but his eyes flashed as he caught
my hand.

“Tell me why
you’re here.”

His fingers
clenched as they coiled around my wrist. They were thick, firm.
Reminded me of his cock.

This wasn’t my
last job. It wasn’t a job at all, so why did it feel a bit like my
first one all over again? The jumpy sense of foreboding, maybe…or
because Charlotte beat louder than ever at my temples, and I was
just as desperate to shut her up.

“You’re a
prick,” I said.

“I’m
sorry?”

Crap. Um.
“You’re a prick, Joe.” I drew my hand back and balled it in my lap.
“You treat people like they’re worthless to you.”

Silence scraped
me raw. We were sandpaper, doomed to friction, and maybe not the
right kind of pain. The next time he spoke, he’d ask me to leave. I
was sure of that.

“All right,” he
said finally. “Sometimes, I can be a bit cruel.”

Well, hell just
got a few degrees colder.

“But you…you
got Matt to join in when you hired me because you knew he liked me,
and you wanted to outdo him. You piss all over Poppy’s parade on a
regular basis just because she’s not your type. And you–”

“Hold on a
minute. Hold on.” He tapped at his forehead, winced before he
spoke. “You know what? I admit to the Matt thing. I don’t like
competition. But as for Poppy, you–”

“You’ve never
given her a fair chance.”

“Leila, please.
There are some things…I have my reasons.”

“What
reasons?”

“I wish I could
tell you, but I’d be more of a cock if I did.” He sighed. “Do you
have anything else to throw at me?”

“When you found
out about me being with the agency, you made out like you were
doing me a big favour, letting me off. But if you were so virtuous,
a quiet word in my ear would have served as fair warning.”

“I was doing
you a favour, however I did it. What you did was stupid.” He held a
hand up before I tore into him. “But I was stupid as well. I took a
big risk in hiring you like this and keeping your secret, you
know.”

“No bigger than
my suggestion. You’d have known about me either way,” I
snapped.

“Perhaps.”

“You
blackmailed me, Joe. If I’d have said no–if I’d never agreed to do
my last jobs with you–then you’d have fired me on the spot.”
Awkward truths are a relief to release, but Jesus, they’re jagged
on the way out.

“I was selfish.
I know that. Everything worked out though, didn’t it? You got what
you want, and I…”

“Now you want
to trip me into giving up. Again.” Hormones frothed in their rush
for alchemy: hate, lust. Something, s–ah, I don’t know. “So what do
I owe you? Is that what this is all about, you controlling me like
you do everyone else?”

“No.”

“So…you tell
me,” I whispered. “Why am I here?”

“Do you
remember what I said about Matt, about him looking to change things
in you that he saw in himself?”

I nodded.

“Well.” He
folded his arms. “Maybe you’re feeling like a bit of a prick as
well.”

For the second
time in days, I welled up. I loathed how he spotted these things I
hid, how he pricked and squeezed and danced in the blood. He might
have been healing a wound, he might have been making a new one; it
hurt all the same.

“That’s what
you’re trying to do, isn’t it?” he said. “You want me to change in
order to have a chance with you.”

“Not change,
just…show a different side.” The side I saw in the pool the other
night, the man who wanted more from me than a one-dimensional fuck.
Not that it ever felt anything less than full on, punch-in-the-face
3-D.

He shifted to
stretch his legs. “What is it about me you want to alter, then? Go
on. I’m your lump of clay.”

I pouted at his
sarcasm and he grinned at me. I think he was more amused that he’d
broken through my sulk than anything else.

“Just…be nicer
to people. Don’t play with them just because you think it will be
interesting. They’re human beings, not experiments.”
You know
that too well
, said Charlotte. Her tongue was forked and sly.
Hypocrite.

“I could try
that. I might not be very good at it, though,” he added. “But the
other disagreeable things about me…”

“What do you
mean?”

He slid over
then and peeled my vest up over his almost-healed signature. It was
just a pale pink shadow on my skin, the letters faded and the
rubies shattered to dust.

“Oh. That.” I
inhaled hard. “Those things can stay.”

“Good.”

He was so
close, his shoulder on mine and his fingers tickling lightly at my
hips. Warm breath disturbed the curls at my neck and sought the
skin beneath.

He went to kiss
me and I jerked my head away.

“I haven’t said
yes yet,” I muttered.

“Yet?” A smile
twitched at the edges of his mouth. “What can I do to hurry things
along?”

“I don’t
know.”

“Aside from be
somebody else.”

“Don’t be–ah.”
I stroked a handful of creamy blond hair behind his ear. “I do want
you. All of you. Just sometimes…sometimes, you remind me of a part
of me I don’t like.”

“I know how
that feels. I do. And I can make you forget.”

“Not yet. No.”
I sprang up, afraid of how I’d never leave his bed if I let him
fuck Charlotte. “Stay there.”

In his bedroom,
I tore several ties from their hangers and scrunched them in my
fist. The last time I was in this bedroom, he’d been my client and
we seduced Isobel. Now we’d spent a week belonging only to each
other–scrap that, ourselves–and I still I didn’t know my place.
Perhaps the only way to find out was to put him in his…

He cocked an
eyebrow as he spied the coloured silk.

“Stand up,” I
said.

He got to his
feet, eyed me expectantly. Then I brought his wrists behind his
back and he went rigid.

“Leila. What
are you doing?”

“Just
practicing my knots.” I looped the ties around, ends swishing, and
secured his hands tightly. Then I layered more ties together in a
makeshift blindfold. When I slid them across the top of his nose,
tugged them around the back of his head, his croaks of discomfort
assured me he couldn’t see. “Somebody told me once that it’s an art
form.”

I hooked a
finger under his waistband and led him to the kitchen. There, I
shoved him into a chair and he grimaced as he almost toppled
sideways.

“How does it
feel?” I whispered, “Being controlled?”

“Disorientating.” He tugged at his hands. “You’re quite good at
this, aren’t you?”

“I’m good at a
lot of things.” I dropped onto my knees and splayed his legs,
crawling between them. “We could have fun like this, don’t you
think?” I popped the buttons on his jeans and his cock sprang up. I
teased it with my nails.

“You know, this
isn’t exactly punishmeeeh–”

I sucked
him.

He was full and
heavy in the back of my throat. In the minutes that followed, I was
generous, and he got the deep strokes he craved, the mouth-fuck he
gasped for. And then…I spat him out.

“I’m going to
do this for a long time,” I said.

“Not that long,
sweetheart.” He shifted in the chair. “Trust me.”

“Mmm. I don’t
think so.” I curved my hand around his shaft, squeezing. “I’m going
to do it as long as I want and you’re not allowed to come.”

He gave a
little laugh. “How are you going to stop me?”

I rose to kiss
him. “If you do, my answer is no. I’ll get my things and call a
car.”

He swallowed.
“I can handle it.”

“Good.”

I pushed my
tongue into his mouth, and below, grew wet at the thought of him
tasting himself on me. “While I’m doing it, you can tell me what it
is that you want. About these rules we ought to make.”

“You’ll
probably regret untying me, you know.”

“Maybe I won’t,
then.” So I ducked back into his lap and traced his cockhead.

“I want
this.”

Oh, he was
panting. Delicious.

“You twisting
me and testing me with that gorgeous mouth of yours. And I want…I
want to own every inch of you so that you beg to be allowed others.
Sweet little things we can tease and torture together, men who wish
you moaned their names like mine.” He licked dry lips, working hard
to resist the way I sucked him. “I don’t think monogamy is
physical, Leila. I don’t think you do, either.”

I tugged his
balls, exhaled on them. “Go on.”

“What do you
want to hear? God. Will you fucking untie me already?”

I peeked up
beneath my eyelashes, smirking around his warm flesh–he couldn’t
see me and it was almost more satisfying. “No.” The word hummed
down his shaft.

“I don’t know
whether you’re the drug or the rehab. Do you know that? But we…we
could save the world from each other.”

“And?”

He tried to
edge away from me, tried to escape my mouth, but with his hands
balled behind him, there was little space to retreat. The moans
cracked his voice. “I don’t need a knife to cut you, you know.
Whore.
Ever worried that no man would want you because of
what you are?”

For a second,
it seemed I lay back on that stranger’s bedroom floor,
half-undressed and exposed to the party. But judging by Joseph’s
groan, he liked the way I choked, and I grazed him with my teeth in
retort.

“Ever thought
that maybe you need a man who can match you?” he said. “Fuck for
fuck.”

He bulged
through my cheek.

“Leila.” The
word was a warning.

I sucked
harder.

“Leila,
please–”

I can’t
remember what I heard first: his yelp of relief as I drew away, or
the rough split of silk as he ripped the ties clean apart. He
slumped in the chair, panting and pawing the air for invisible
me.

“You cheated.”
He gasped.

I brushed his
freed wrists. “So did you.”

“I can only
cheat if you’re playing a game. Thought you wanted less of those.”
He rolled off the blindfold and blinked in the dim light. “They’re
fun…but the prizes are crap these days.”

“Huh. An
apple.”

He took my face
in his hands. “Is this like Alice? I’m not going to get it, am
I?”

“No.” I smiled,
my cheek hot in his palm. “Does it matter?”

“I’ll figure it
out. Come here.” He kissed me very slowly. “Now,” he breathed, “I,
Joseph Merchant, do solemnly swear to be less of a prick if Miss
Vaughn will have me.”

“We’ve got no
Bible, you can’t swear anything,” I teased.

“I, Joseph
Merchant, do solemnly swear to be less of a fucking prick.”