Dark Secret Love (13 page)

I understood that he wasn’t punishing me because he was angry. He was punishing me because he had promised that he would.

Thoughts ran through my head. What would Nate say when he saw my striped skin? What would he do? He went out with other girls, but I didn’t think he played like this with most of them. Would he turn against me? Or would he be aroused at the thought that I’d been whipped by someone else? Would he make me recount every erotic detail? The way the leather had felt against my skin? The way my sex juices had started to pool between my nether lips?

Again I choked on a number, losing count, and Jack’s low laugh of disbelief made my breath catch in my throat. I wasn’t trying to displease him. I was swirling, off balance, unprepared for our encounter. He grabbed my hair tight once more, and brought his lips to my ear. “Oh, baby,” he whispered. “You haven’t found the right man for the job yet, have you? You don’t know how to
act. You’re untamed, begging for the crop, desperate to be controlled.”

Was he right? I had no idea. I felt as if I were on the cusp of coming. If he simply brought one finger between my lips, if he flicked my clit with the softest touch, I would explode. Or implode. I was wrecked, and Jack knew it. But he didn’t stop.

The belt kept landing. The pain built. And I counted. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. I have no idea. My back tightened. My muscles coiled. I knew better than to look over my shoulder at him, to try to gauge his limits. I played as meek as I could, arms tight, head down, and I visualized Jack slamming me up against that freezing cold wall and fucking me.

When Jack was finished, when he came up behind me and pressed his strong body to mine, I finally felt the tears come. Not from pain this time, but from release.

He spun me around, and I collapsed into his arms, let him set me in his passenger seat.

Let him drive me home …

To his home.

Back when I was in college, I got my license to do massage. I had a table, and mostly worked for Jody and his wealthy movie-industry friends, driving out to their houses in Malibu or the Hollywood Hills. My services were often given as a gift for weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries. So I was familiar with the building Jack drove us to, an exclusive condo perched over Sunset Boulevard, looking haughtily down at Spago and Tower Records and the glitter of the city. One of my clients had lived here, and I’d adored doing massages at his place—especially because Jonah always fell asleep on the table. At the end of the massage, I’d steal outside onto the balcony and stare at the lights while I waited for him to wake up.

Jack lived in the penthouse, where the view was even more spectacular. Daylight doesn’t do much for L.A., but I could tell that when evening came, a magical transformation would take place. I saw little of the rest of the décor—aside from noticing that Jack was a minimalist,
which was expected. Hard floors. Straight-edged furniture. Stark modern art.

He let me wander while he fixed us drinks, and again I wasn’t surprised when he handed me a glass of very good whiskey. Neat. There was nothing extraneous about Jack. Nothing spare on his six-foot-two frame. No nonsense about his short, dark hair or his ice-blue eyes. He fit into his environment perfectly. But I didn’t. I sipped my drink and felt like a wildflower growing in a sidewalk crack. I had that sundress on, a pastel riot of tiny flowers adorning the sheer silky fabric. My shoes were silly, tall wedges with laces that ran up my calves. To be like Jack, I should have had on a sleek pair of black leather pants and a wife-beater. Or an inky black dress with no adornments whatsoever. What did he make of me? Of the flush of color in my cheeks from only the first few sips of the fiery liquor? Of the way I couldn’t stand still, but needed to pace to the windows, then back to the nearly wall-size modern painting above the uncomfortable-looking sofa?

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked.

“That I don’t fit in,” I told him. Whiskey makes me honest.

He smiled, and immediately his features lost their craggy seriousness. His smile changed everything. Lit his eyes. Turned him model handsome. “You fit in perfectly. You transform the place.”

I shook my head. I felt like a hick here. The women Jack ought to date ran studios. They had people like me working to organize their pedicures, their facials, their love affairs. Jack had nothing in this place that showed a person lived here. No books scattered about. No trashy magazines. It was like a showroom from an architectural magazine.

He leaned against the bar and stared at me, and I felt myself needing to pace again. I couldn’t imagine sitting on the sofa, or on the oddly shaped chair. I couldn’t imagine ever sprawling out on the wood to read the naughtiest sections of my favorite gossip rags.

“Do you remember what we talked about at dinner?”

And now I stopped walking. Yeah, I did. Of course I did. He had told me what he wanted to do to me. He had floored me by reciting my fantasies in a way that no man ever had. Not Brock back in school. Not Connor. Not Nate. He had spelled it out, as if someone had given him the key to my diary and he’d read every entry—a diary that didn’t exist outside of my head.

I looked into his eyes. “Yes,” I said, and then when he waited, “Yes, Sir.”

“You weren’t too drunk?”

“No.”

“What did I tell you?”

I found myself slowly walking away from him, until I’d actually backed myself into a corner of the room—the corner of one wall and the sliding glass doors to the balcony.

“You said that you knew what I wanted. You said I wear my desires on my sleeve.”

“But what were your desires?” He was being patient. I could tell. But I could also guess that his patience had a limit.

If I could have burrowed backwards like a rodent, I would have. My back was pressed onto the cool white wall. I was trapped there, but I’d trapped myself. Jack hadn’t taken a step toward me.

“You said I needed—” Oh, Jesus. You know? It never gets any fucking easier.

“You needed—” he prompted, and then he was in front of me, his hands on either side of me, one on the wall, one on the window. My thoughts slowed down. I realized that he was going to leave a palm print on that pure wall of glass. I wondered if he had a maid who came in daily to Windex. The world slowly stopped moving. His eyes were focused right on mine. I could feel my heart beat. I could hear his breathing. “You needed …” he demanded, and I closed my eyes and lowered my chin, actually folding into myself, making my body as small as it could possibly be.

“You said I needed to be hurt.” As I spoke the words, I remembered how I’d felt when he had said them. My legs feeling as if they’d turned to liquid, as if I’d never be able to stand again. My panties were wet. My cheeks were pink from embarrassment. Now things were different. I was alone with Jack. I opened my eyes and looked up at him from under my lashes, as bold as I could possibly be. He was blocking me from any escape. But I didn’t want to escape.

“That’s right,” he said, and once more he smiled, but it was a different smile this time. His eyes seemed to grow colder. The smile didn’t light them up the same way.

“You worry about it,” he said, looking at me as if appraising my most private thoughts. “You feel bad because of the things that you want.”

I nodded, and I could feel tears stinging my eyes, but they didn’t fall free.

“Stop beating yourself up about what you like,” he said, and his hands came down and gripped my wrists and then lifted them, holding them over my head, stretching me. “It’s the way you are, the way you’re wired. You need to accept that. If you’re going to let me take care of you,
give you what you want, you have to get over the rest. Can you do that?”

He tightened his grip and brought his lips to my ear. “You look like you’re about to cry,” he whispered. “But don’t cry yet, Samantha. Let me give you something to cry about first.”

Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god.

“But before I do that, you have to trust me.” A current of desire worked through me. Jack didn’t release his grip. “Can you do that, Samantha? Can you trust me?”

I looked away from his eyes, staring out the window, at Hollywood slowly coming to life now that it was early evening. And then I looked back at the man holding my wrists so tightly, gripping them so that I could not get away.

“Yes,” I said, my voice clear and strong. “Yes, Jack.”

You want to know what he did to me, don’t you? You want to know if he started right there, in the corner of the living room where I could look out, past him, and see the fading rays of gold coloring the hazy sky of the city.

Or maybe he took me into the kitchen, bent me over the countertop, lifted my sweet little dress in the back.

No. Jack wasn’t predictable like that. He made me tell him I trusted him. And then he changed all the rules.

“Take off your clothes.”

The tone of his voice did not allow any hesitation. With fumbling hands, I slid the dress over my head. I let him see that I had on a matching bra and panty set and the stockings he’d admired in the garage under the bar. And those silly, useless high heels.

“All of your clothes.”

I had to bend down to untie the shoes and slip them off. Bra and panties next, then stockings. I was entirely naked, pressed up against that white wall, waiting for
Jack’s next move. He only moved very slightly, to slide open the glass door to the balcony.

“Out—”

I looked at him, and I know my eyes were begging.

Tell me. Tell me what you’re going to do. So I can prepare myself. So I can process the possibilities ahead of time
.

“Out,” he repeated, more sternly, and I walked through the opening and out onto the small balcony. He didn’t have anything extraneous here. No potted plants. No sports gear. Just a small table and two chairs, where I could imagine that he might drink coffee in the morning, or his whiskey at night.

You think Jack went out there with me. You think he fucked me on the balcony, his test for this evening simply that I would obey him, that I would go outside nude, where people might look up and see me—though from where? Street level was too far down. The nearby buildings were all offices. Would anyone still be working at this hour?

Jack slid the door closed behind me, and when I turned, those wordless thoughts of begging for information now reaching my lips, he was gone. I was out there on his balcony in the dusky lavender light.

And I was all by myself.

I cupped my hands and looked into the condo, thinking that Jack might be on the sofa, watching me, or maybe over at the bar, refilling our drinks. No. There was no Jack. I wondered what he expected me to do. Should I sit down on one of the chairs, put my feet up on the table, act nonchalant, as if I sunbathed nude—in the dark—every night of the week? But Jack would know better. He had my fantasies pegged. He knew that there was very little in
my world about which I was nonchalant. Being naked and exposed was not one of those things.

The view from his balcony was mesmerizing. As night began to fall, the lights of Sunset took on their vibrant gleam. L.A.’s constant melody of traffic noise lulled me. I stared down at the cars, wondering where their passengers were headed. To the fancy restaurants or clubs on the strip? Or out to the beach, along the curves of this iconic boulevard?

I wrapped my arms even more tightly around my naked body. How long would he leave me here? I wondered suddenly whether he’d even locked the door. Perhaps he’d simply slid the glass shut behind me, and the test was whether or not I was smart enough to think to slide the door back open.

But somehow I knew. That door was locked. And I also knew that trying to open it and failing would send me over the edge.

I didn’t have a watch. The only way I could tell that time was passing was by the sky. Darker now. Darker by the second. Crispness in the air.

“Oh, god, Jack. How long are you going to leave me out here?”

I was speaking out loud, the sound of my voice shocking to my ears. Would he make me sleep out here? Would he leave me all night? What was he waiting for? Did he want me to show him how strong and brave I was? Or did he expect me to break down, to grovel, to get on my knees on the balcony floor and supplicate myself to him? And what would it matter if I did? He wouldn’t see me. He wasn’t in the room.