Chains and Canes (22 page)

“No, but
she
might raise my rent.”

“Does she mind a lot of noise?”

Oh, there was her Sir. The hunger in his ocean eyes exploded like fireworks. “Don’ know.”

“Then I might need a pillow, Sir. Tonight I want to scream.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Remy had brought men and women home before. Late nights at bars needed to end somewhere, though he used his small studio apartment as last choice. Most of those who’d stuck around long enough to count as a boyfriend or a girlfriend preferred their own digs. Remy had nudged them that way as well.

He didn’t like people in his space, which was why he’d opted for a one-room apartment with a tiny kitchenette. No splitting rent and sharing air with anyone else.

Beyond the mess, there wasn’t much for Naya to see when Remy threw open the door, certainly not compared to the palatial penthouse she lived in with Daniel.

“Is it completely tacky if I say I’d have cleaned up if I knew you were coming over?”

“I don’t mind,” Naya said. “I’m just doing a quick search for preserved body parts.”

“Under the bathroom sink. Of course.”

The studio really was a mess. His queen-sized bed sucked up the space along one wall. Its foot was strewn with clean clothes. The dirties ended up in a pile under the window. Somewhere under that mountain was a laundry basket. At least there weren’t dishes in the tiny sink. That small blessing was because he’d been sharing meals with Naya at Devant.

Other than the laundry, most of it was clutter. Dance magazines sloping haphazardly in corners. Never-watched postal-delivered DVDs were stacked under the wall-mounted TV. The shelves he’d hung to the right of the bathroom door were slap full with sci-fi paperbacks ready to cascade off the edge.

“I’m not very neat.” Mostly he had no training in how to order a household, and making a life in New York hadn’t made it a priority. As far as he knew, his mother had never held a sponge in her life. The closest his meemaw ever got to cleaning up had been scrounging under the sofa for spare change, but his momma was meticulous about cleaning her bedroom before bringing men home. He’d learned to associate furniture polish with the noises of sex in the next room, where he’d lie awake trying to keep his meager dinner in his stomach.

Remy did the best he could, wiping up anything sticky, damp or dirty, but he knew he was doing it wrong. Surely there had to be an
easier
way to keep his personal space in order. There seemed to be a lot of things he should know but didn’t—gaps that had been filled with lessons that no one should be forced to learn.

“Yeah, you’re not neat.” She slung her bag onto an upholstered chair that cradled a stack of mail. “Big deal.”

“Thanks for agreeing.”

The smile he was coming to relish—all rounded cheeks and perfect teeth—lit her face. “I was supposed to lie to you?”

“Never.”

“Tell me…” She draped her arms over his shoulders. “When did you start to dance? I’ve been dying to know.”

Remy couldn’t hide his physical reaction with Naya so near, but he could keep his voice even. Maybe it would compensate for his flinch. “You start.”

“Will you answer me if I do?”

He glanced away, then returned to her attentive gaze. “
Oui
.”

“All right,” she said. “I started to dance before I could stand on my own. My papa told me that when we went to his brother’s restaurant, I’d wiggle in my highchair whenever music played. He’d put me on the ground and hold his hands over mine where I gripped the table. Literally dancing in the aisles before my first birthday.” She smiled with her untouched relish for life. “Then it was on to
mi tía
’s studio, where I spent most of the rest of my childhood. Mami said it was best, so I’d have something to value above all the attention boys paid me.”

“Your mami was right. And those are pretty memories.”

So damn pretty.

After kissing his cheek, she tilted her head. “Your turn.”

And he had nothing pretty to offer her in return.

“First memory of me dancing, I was four or five. Some music channel. I didn’t know the song, only that it moved me. I kicked enough bottles out of the way to make space in the living room. And I…danced. It was like learning a new language in a minute’s time.”

A frown drew a line between her dark brows. “Bottles?”

Remy couldn’t slip free of her loose hold. Instead he grounded himself with his hands held tight at her hips. “My momma shambled in from the kitchen. She held a cigarette and her ten a.m. beer. One look at me and she put them both down on a salvaged coffee table. I remember smiling up at her, unable to express what had happened to me. I felt transformed.”

“Remy…” Her whisper trailed off. Now she was the strong one for not looking away.

“She slapped me so hard that I fell. Said, ‘I don’ want no faggot son.’ Hell if I knew what that meant, but I didn’t need to be a kid genius. I couldn’t stop dancing, so I hid it. Television was my teacher, all those dancers when MTV actually showed videos. Not enough money for supper sometimes, but we sure as hell had cable. Priorities, right? I spent what money I could find on batteries for an old Walkman. I’d spend hours in the swamps, alone, transforming myself by moving. Always moving. If I could
be
dance, I didn’t have to be
there
.”

That was his limit. His bones locked, and even the slight weight of Naya’s arms around his shoulders became a pair of hands holding him still and low and small. As gently as he could, he pushed her away. Other girls might’ve taken offense, gotten pissy, gone home.

Not Naya. She touched his cheek and softly thanked him, before shaking out her long rich hair. It trailed down her back as she sauntered to the bed.

“Thankfully, your apartment is free of suspicious jars. We’re in the clear. And the bed seems better than all right.”

She looked at ease there, stretched across his inexpensive jersey sheets. Remy grinned tightly, letting his lust for this woman push dark thoughts back where they belonged. “The bed just got a whole lot classier.”

He was a dancer and a choreographer. He saw dozens of graceful people move every day. There wasn’t much within the realm of movement that he hadn’t experienced. So the way Naya reached up to pull her T-shirt off shouldn’t have been a big deal.

It
was
a big deal.

His chest tightened and his fists curled. He wanted to stake a claim that wasn’t his. Having Naya in his bed, on his plain sheets…in his territory. Need warred against reality in a way that could do real harm in his head.

If he wanted too much, he’d only hurt more when it never came. Fact.

“Freeze,
chère
.”

She stopped with her arms in the air. The ends of her hair were trapped in her shirt until a single lock fell and set off an avalanche of brown silk. “
Si
, Sir.”

“I didn’t tell you to strip.”

The honey skin of her throat tightened across tendons. He’d affected her assurance, given her a shot of nerves. Good. Petulant bastard that he was, he enjoyed turning the tables on how she and her precious, perfect fiancé left Remy feeling lost and desperate for more.

They flipped him inside out.

They made him want to hurt them both for shining a spotlight on what he couldn’t have.

They made him want like hell to do right by them, when he had no clue beyond orgasms and the pain.

“You didn’t, Sir.”

“Show me your wrists.”

His smart girl held them straight out, still wrapped in the pale green of her shirt. He laced his fingers through hers. That last moment of sweet contact that would carry them through what was to come.

What Remy meant to do to her wasn’t nice, which was fitting because he wasn’t a particularly nice man—not when you got down to the meat of him. The past was a hard thing to exorcise. He’d made bad choices. End of story.

“You’re going to cry tonight.” Remy stroked hair back from her temples and across her shoulders. The strands slid through his fingers like water. “You’re not going to get a pillow, neither. The walls are pretty thin here. You’ll walk out in the morning wondering who heard you and if they thought about what went on. They’ll know you’re a wicked girl who loves to have her ass whipped until you sob and beg me to keep going.”

The unadorned dance bra wasn’t practical enough to hide how her nipples tightened. She nodded.

After gripping the fabric of her shirt, he yanked her bound wrists toward his headboard. She was thrown off balance and fell flat onto the bed. Her arms stretched above her before she dug her heels into bunched sheets and scampered up the mattress. He twisted the material three times and snagged it on an eyehook screwed into his headboard.

She craned her neck to look at where he’d pinned her. “That’s efficient.”

“I bought the bed before I figured out that I liked tying women to it.” Only then had he…adorned the plain pine.

“And men.” Her eyes flashed.

“And men.” He wondered if the flare in those depths had to do with what he was thinking—Daniel trussed up, on his back, helpless.

On that surge of arousal, he flipped her onto her stomach. Her face pressed into the mattress as he removed the tight black pants that had tormented him all day. Her tiny cotton thong arched over her ass and dipped between her legs. The lacy fabric was dark with her moisture.

He traced the material. “You’re a hungry little slut.”

Dusky-pink lips parted on an inhalation.

He angled her hips up, higher, until she balanced on her knees and her ripe peach of an ass begged for his attention. With her arms stretched out and bound to the hook and her forehead flat to the bed, she looked especially perverted. He wound his hand through her hair, but instead of pulling, he pushed her deeper into the mattress. “You look like a slave girl, Naya. You belong in a harem.”

She moaned quietly. She was already sliding toward that beautiful place he ached to take her.

“Do you want to be my harem girl?”

“If that’s what you’d like, Sir.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Does that make Daniel my harem boy?”

She didn’t try to hide her giggle. Hair slipped across the pale delicacy of her neck. “Do it. I dare you, Sir. You should Skype him just so I can see his face.”

He bent low over her, part intimidation, but with the goal of finding the paddle under his bed. He didn’t own many toys. For all the grab ass and play around, he’d never gone more than a couple rounds with the same partner. In fact… He suddenly realized that Naya had become his most consistent submissive. Learning the ropes after first discovering his dominant side had meant fucking hard and moving on. New York had taught him self-defense and how to hit. Only later had he discovered the pleasurable potential.

“And what if he likes it? Likes the things I call him, just as much as he liked dropping to his knees and sucking me off?”

She writhed. Slow and languid, she lifted her ass another couple inches and rubbed her beautiful tits against the tangled sheets. “Then I’d want to see his face for entirely different reasons.”

He slid the black paddle over the fleshiest part of her ass. Holes drilled in the paddle helped it move faster through the air. Less resistance. More impact. She was experienced enough to know that.

With one hand on her nape, he took a moment to relish the sensations. At times like this, with his senses heightened, even a breath could become a caress. He wore his clothes to emphasize the power imbalance, as well as to protect himself from distractions. By contrast, Naya’s golden skin stretched out before him. Unmarked.

Time to fix that.

He smacked her hard. No warm up, no warning taps. She cried out and arched under his grip. Pink washed across her ass. Back and forth, his sharp flurry of blows turned her red, hot, swollen. Again she cried out on smack number ten. He couldn’t help but keep count. It was part of the control. He grinned as he began another set, harder now.

Naya bent her graceful spine into a sleek curve, but she wasn’t retreating. Just the opposite. Whenever Remy paused long enough to relish their frantic breathing, she repositioned her ass. Higher. Toward him. Silently asking for more attention.

He grabbed her pussy. “You’re soaking wet.”

“Because you’re hitting me,” she replied on a sigh.

Her voice was floating and dreamy, but Remy was taking no chances. He’d learned to rely on more than body language and the look in her dark eyes. “Where do you live?”

“Central Park West.”

“What’s your favorite dance move?”

“Vertical split
penché
.”

“Good girl.” She hadn’t gone too far. This was just Naya happy beyond measure. He skimmed her hair back from her face, tracing the arch of her cheekbone and down to her strong chin. “You’re so beautiful.”

She didn’t deny and didn’t agree, only smiled at him with rapturous joy he hardly understood. All he knew was that he got her there. That didn’t mean he needed to be the only one who enjoyed the results of his adoring abuse. Remy wanted more.

Greedy fucker.

“What time is it in Hong Kong?”

Her watery-soft smile never faltered. With honey skin and sleek muscles, her back and reddened ass were perfection. “Thirteen hours ahead. So…seven in the morning?”

“Math.” He grinned. “That woulda been enough proof you’re still okay.”

Daniel wouldn’t answer if he was in some high-power business meeting or breakfasting with financial wizards the likes of which Remy couldn’t even begin to contemplate. Naya’s words, however, were just what he’d wanted to hear.

He slipped off the bed and snagged his laptop from its perch on the tiny kitchen counter. After flipping it open, he held it in front of one of Naya’s hands. “Your sign-in and password.”

She typed using one finger. Eagerness was obvious on her expression. With the familiar swoopy noise of opening a Skype video call, she jolted.

Remy positioned the laptop to show off Naya first. “Up on your elbows. Call, but when he answers, don’t say a word. Not one,
chère
, or I’ll have to punish you.”