Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (68 page)

“She wants you, Jonathan,” I said.

“No. She wants money. She’s had trouble maintaining her lifestyle and her art at the same time. I set up a trust for her to pull from whenever she wants. It’s a few million a year and I don’t notice it, but that’s what she uses to finance her work. We were set to renew the terms after ten years, and I cut her off.”

Margie broke in. “It’s a revocable trust. He can do what he wants unless he’s declared incompetent. Then it automatically flips to an irrevocable trust. The terms will be reinstated. It’s a stopgap against hospitalizations, drug addictions, that sort of thing.”

Jonathan broke in. “She’s using my kink to call my sanity into question. She pushed me into spanking her and tape recorded it to show how out of control I am.”

They paused their tag-team routine, and I glanced from one to the other. Margie leaned forward with her elbows on the desk; Jonathan with his ankle crossed over his knee, leaning over the arm of the chair toward me.

“The cameras?” I said. “She was trying to get something to show you were crazy? How would it be admissible?”

“It’s all back room deals,” Margie said. “We think she might have counted on a little shame from you to corroborate, as well as my brother’s desire to protect you. Kinky shit on tape could have served a hundred purposes.”

“Fuck her.”

“That’s the spirit.”

He took my hand. “She came to me only because the cameras were a bust.”

I squeezed his hand. “I’ve met her. I’ll tell you one thing. She’d drop everything to have you back.”

“I’m spoken for.”

“Regardless. She always manages to get you to do things, doesn’t she?”

Silence built between us as we held hands and searched each other’s faces. I examined his for understanding that what he did was wrong, and I think he searched mine for forgiveness.

Margie cleared her throat.

He and I didn’t move.

“Monica,” she said. “I want to tell you why you’re here.”

“To verify that he’s telling the truth?” I said without moving my eyes from him.

“No. I need to tell you what to expect.”

I moved my gaze from him to Margie and leaned back in my chair. He didn’t let my hand go. She took that as her cue to continue.

“She’s probably going to contact you and ask you to verify that he hits you. Just know anything you say will be twisted. She has to prove that what he’s doing is impairing his ability to function. Barring that, since she’s after his money, she’ll threaten to go public and blackmail him.”

Jonathan squeezed my hand, and I turned to him. “If I spend even thirty days in jail, we go back to the old terms of the trust and she can drain it.”

“Arraignment’s next week,” Margie said.

I felt as if I was being played, as if those two had worked out a routine and delivered it. I couldn’t tell if I was being lied to or just manipulated, but I didn’t believe Jonathan gave a rat’s ass about a few million a year. Something else was at stake that they weren’t talking about, and I needed to shake things up.

“I think I should go see her,” I said.

The air went out of the room.

“No,” Jonathan said.

“I’m sorry?” Margie seemed keen for an explanation.

“Absolutely not.” Jonathan’s tone was definite and dominant.

“I wasn’t asking permission,” I replied without my submissive voice.

“Let’s hear it,” Margie said. “She might have something.”

“The only way you’re going to get an angle on what she intends is if I see her. If she makes an offer, I can take her up on it and go see her to get dirt on you. I’ll tell her I’m pissed at you because you spanked her. We’ll have tea and talk about what an asshole you are. I come back here and report everything.”

“No.”

“Are you going to the Collector’s Board thing?” Margie asked Jonathan before turning to me. “She’ll be there. It can be a casual conversation.”

Jonathan’s tone was clipped, as if he didn’t even want to talk about it. “It’s all Jessica’s people, and they’re going to be snickering about this arrest. I won’t subject Monica to them, and I’m not going without her. So. Done.”

“What is it?” I asked Margie. “It sounds like a great idea.”

“Fifty of the city’s biggest art collectors drinking and spending money,” Margie said. “I went with him last year. It was like high school without the acne.”

“And Jessica will be there?” I asked.

“Four artists for every collector.” Margie smirked. “You never met a bigger bunch of whores in your life.”

Jonathan was right, I
did
like her. “I want to go.”

Jonathan stood up. “Margie, as usual, a fucking pleasure.” He looked at me and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

Margie pushed her chair back and stood. We were done. I got up without taking his hand.

MONICA

I
didn’t speak until the elevator doors closed. “You know I’m right.”

He was on me in a second, his tongue prying my mouth open, his hands on my face, his hard cock against my hip. I had much to say, but none of it seemed important. I was helpless. A ring of fire built between my legs at his touch, portents of pleasure pushing me forward. He hitched my leg up and did a slow grind against me.

“Jonathan. I should do it. I mean it.” My words came in gasps.

“No.”

“I can help you.”

He smacked the red button on the control panel, and the elevator came to a halt. A bell rang in a constant clatter, but he didn’t pull away. He pulled my skirt up and hooked his finger in the crotch of my panties, sliding his finger along my wet folds.

A voice came over the intercom. “What’s your emergency?” It sounded automated, as if there really wasn’t someone on the other end.

He turned to the panel and said something in a language I didn’t understand, then put his lips on mine as if it was our last kiss.

“Can you repeat that?” asked the voice robotically.

He repeated it and undid his pants, pulling out his gorgeous cock.

“I’ll have someone there in ten minutes.”

“Cameras.”

“It’s Saturday. No one’s at the desk. Whole system’s probably shut down.”

He fell into me, pushing me into the wall, a hand pulling the crotch of my panties away as the fingertips dug into my ass. I hitched my leg on his hips. He guided himself into me and thrust hard, shocking the breath right out of me. Bringing my other leg around him, he thrust again. And again.

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

“Fuck is right.” He twisted my nipple through my shirt. The exquisite pain was a direct line between my legs, making me spread them wider. He buried his face in my neck. “You are not to see her, goddess.”

“Jesus. I can’t think.”

“Don’t think.” He pushed his belly on my clit, and a thousand fireworks went off between my thighs. “Just do what I ask.” He rotated his hips, rubbing me sideways, then forward. He looked me in the eye, and let his hand creep up my face. He slipped a finger in my mouth. I tried to suck on it, but I couldn’t keep my lips closed; I was gasping so hard. He pulled it out, dragging saliva across my cheek.

“I’m coming,” I said.

“You’re coming, what?”

“Sir.”

He didn’t withhold. He pummeled me, driving forward until I cried out through clenched teeth, pressing my legs around him, praying to a God I didn’t even believe in. Jonathan’s prayer was right behind mine, and he grunted it into the spot where my ear met my neck. His purposeful thrusts slowed into jerks, leaving nothing but hot breath on me. Our chests rose and fell in time, and our mouths found each other in a gentle, satisfied kiss.

The alarm suddenly seemed louder and more annoying, and the elevator cold and hard. Only Jonathan’s face, as it took up the whole of my vision, was soft and inviting. He pulled himself from me and gently lowered my legs. As I straightened my skirt, he pressed the alarm button. Blissful silence followed, and the elevator jerked down.

I had about thirty seconds to say what I wanted to say, and I was not eager to do it. “I’m going. She’s wanted to tell me something for a month, and it’s time I heard it.”

He pressed his lips together. “No.”

“You have to trust me. I committed to you. That means something.”

“I get it. You don’t need to prove it to me.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything to you. I don’t have to. I dedicated myself to you. I gave my body to you. That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly more compliant.”

JONATHAN

I
put Monica in the Bentley so Lil could take her to work. I refused to hear another word about her seeing Jessica, but I should have acted more laid back. Such rigidity would only make her want to see my ex-wife that much more. Yet I couldn’t even pretend I would talk about it later. I had to let Monica think it was about money, but the truth was that Jessica knew too much. “Just paying her off” might have seemed cheap in the short run, but in the long run, it did nothing to protect me. I had to find a better way to manage the problem, and I needed to buy time with compliance.

My lunch with Eddie Milpas was three blocks away. I called my sister and walked.

“So?” I said.

“She’s not your type,” Margie said. “She has dark hair and a brain.”

“Thank you. I didn’t need your approval.”

“Neither did she. Which I like. I always expected your next one would be on her hands and knees, licking a doormat. That’s not what you got. You got someone bigger than your grip. So, good luck with that.”

“If they put her up on the stand, I’m worried.”

“You shouldn’t be. She looked me right in the eye when she made her claim on the contents of your closet. If the truth is something you need to use, she’ll tell it. But I wouldn’t count on her to lie,” Margie said.

“Monica? No. I’d never ask her to. She’s...” I stopped myself, wanting to use words like
clean
and
pure
. They sounded ridiculous. “She’s honorable.”

“God help you, then.”

“I don’t want her talking to Jessica.”

“What did you want me to do about that?” Margie asked as if bored, but I could tell she knew what I was going to ask.

“I want Will Santon’s team back.”

“You want to follow her. After she just got over surveillance equipment in her house. You’re a paragon of sensitivity. Really.”

I stopped outside Karen M’s. I saw Eddie at a window seat. No small thing. A year ago, they would have seated him by the bathrooms. “Do
you
want her talking to Jessica? Because that woman’s going to lie. She’s going to turn a sexless spanking into a grudge fuck, and then I’m going to be the one licking a doormat.”

Margie sighed. “I gotta tell you, little brother, on the rare occasions you feel something, you go deep.”

“And with respect to that, I’d appreciate your indulgence.”

“Take Santon. But on a personal note…”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t get caught. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re on thin ice already.”

We hung up. Sheila was my favorite sister, but Margie was always a voice of sanity when things got chaotic.

I sat across from Eddie. The window looked over a line of tall bamboo meant to block the sight of Wilshire Boulevard traffic. Eddie looked at the menu, then at me, then back at the menu, as if he didn’t know exactly what was on it.

“Nice tie,” I said as an opener.

“Thanks.” His tone was clipped and quiet. I knew the guy. He was a percolating case of verbal diarrhea unless he was pissed off.

“I hear they’ve changed to locally grown tomatoes,” I said, “so avoid the caprese.”

“I heard the same.”

“There’s a shitstain on your cuff,” I said. He glanced at me, then away. “Are we dating, Ed? Did I just fuck your best friend or get you the wrong birthday gift or something?”

Eddie, reengaged in the conversation, leaned on the window, spreading his arm over the table so he could fuss with a matchbook. “My boss gets back from a trip Friday. Some last minute thing to look at property up north, and he saw the girl I’ve been pushing. But according to him, I’ve been doing it wrong. My whole marketing strategy? Wrong. So
he’s
managing her.
He’s
signing her. Personally. Harry Enrich hasn’t personally managed talent in fifteen years.”

“She’ll be happy to hear it.”

“She shouldn’t be. It’s not all skinny ties and burning CDs any more. He hasn’t caught up to MySpace falling apart. She’ll be on his learning curve when he doesn’t even know he has one. That leather corset’s gonna start looking real comfy.”

The waiter came. We ordered quickly. That had apparently been bothering him, and I needed to clear it up. He was burned. The collection of talent was his job, and a singular voice had been pulled from under him. In a city full of hopeful musicians, voices like Monica’s were impossible to come by. Needles in haystacks. Finding another voice he could use could take him a year or a lifetime.

“Ed, listen. I don’t want any hard feelings. But it wasn’t happening your way. I could have gotten Randy from Vintage Records up there just as easy.”

“Randy Rothstein? Please.”

“But I kept it at Carnival out of respect for you.”

He laughed. I admit I smiled as well. The notion was ridiculous. He was up a creek and had a right to be angry. I had the right to not care.

“You went over my head less than a week after you beaned me,” he said. “I had a headache for a day and a half.”

“I apologized.”

Eddie pushed his drink aside as if it was an actual obstacle. “Listen, asshole. If you had a problem with me signing your girlfriend, you could have told me.”

“So you could what? Tell me to go fuck myself? She wasn’t signing with you anyway. Not all decked out in leather and chains.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Ed. She was walking. Who’s going to know it better than me? I saved your ass and hers. Now you can all make money together.”

“I got nothing. Enrich can have her. Without a marketing angle, she can sing like a mermaid and it wouldn’t matter.”

“Mermaids don’t sing. You’re thinking of sirens.”

He shook his head and smirked. “You need to go out and find me another girl who likes to get tied up.”