Forbidden: A Standalone (17 page)

“I think I know what Deacon’s going to say,” I said.

“Go on.”

I leaned forward, my butt barely on the chair, and made my voice milkshake thick. “Kitten, you’ve been so bad. So very naughty. Do you think I won’t punish you? My sweet little slut, you do these things so I’ll hurt you. So I’m going to have to now. Let me tell you what we’re going to do when you’re back. You’re going into my office. You’re going to bend over the desk, pull your panties down halfway, and spread your legs. There will be a paddle on the desk. You will place it on your lower back. Then you’re going to wait. When I come to you, I will take the paddle. You’re getting a full twenty strokes on your bottom and the backs of your thighs with it, kitten. Call out the numbers as I do it. You are not to scream. You may spit, you may cry, but you may not shout. You may only thank me. When I’ve done twenty, you are to take your ass cheeks in your hands and spread yourself for me. Your fingers on your raw skin will burn, but I don’t want to hear any complaints. No crying. No blubbering. You may beg me to fuck you. When I believe you mean it, I’ll take you. I’ll push your face to the desk when I’m fucking your cunt, then your tight little ass. I’ll bury myself in you until your skin is too tight to take me, and I want nothing but gratitude when I come on your back, do you understand?”

I watched Elliot’s face and saw nothing. Not a blip.

“You must think he’s very angry at you.”

“That’s what he’ll say if he’s
not
angry. If he’s pissed, well, he won’t make promises. I know him.” I waited for a response and thought I saw a flicker of emotion. I expected disgust, which was how most people reacted to a relationship like Deacon and I shared, but it wasn’t that.

“Session over,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

ELLIOT

I
 slammed the door behind me and locked it, fumbling with my belt and zipper as if I was an adolescent twisting the last few moves of a Rubik’s Cube.

My dick was swollen purple, the skin stretched over throbbing blood vessels. The pressure on my balls was enormous, as if a million troops stormed the gate. I stroked myself over the toilet three times then exploded, biting back a grunt as I unleashed a torrent onto the back of the lid. It was more than a release, the pleasure of it lasting beyond a simple discharge.

My mind wasn’t my own. I let it make the pictures Fiona had called up, her pink ass under my hands, her cries, her legs restrained by her clothing, her body stiffening with a wet grunt when she came, crying my name then whispering it like a prayer.

God help me.

FIONA

O
ne of the rec rooms overlooked the front of the grounds. I knew he was coming. I knew Elliot would call right after the session, and Deacon wouldn’t delay a second to see me. When I saw my master’s black Range Rover come around the front drive and pass into the parking lot, I felt as if a hundred interlocking pieces had fallen into place.

I said it, I meant it, things happened as predicted. That was what it was to have Deacon in my life.

“Hey, someone here?” Karen was behind me, toting her IV tower. The sun blasting through the windows made her look hollow.

I wanted to hold her down and force-feed her a cupcake. “Deacon.”

She stood next to me and peered out the window. We’d heard much about each other’s lives in the past weeks. I’d even have called her a friend at that point.

She leaned over beside me. “I can get you Halcion.”

“How?” I whispered back.

“Warren’s out for his sister’s wedding. He’s getting me something. I can put in an order for you.”

I looked at her skull of a face, blue eyes bulging without flesh to hold them in. She’d been so pretty when I met her.

“What is he getting you?” I asked.

“Something I need and they won’t give me.”

“Please tell me it’s not uppers.”

“I have a mother already.”

I dropped my voice to barely a whisper. “You don’t need diet pills, Karen.”

“Do you want the Halcion or not?”

Deacon gave the valet his keys and headed for the door. He buttoned his jacket and walked in that way only Deacon could, a mix of fierce intention and poise, a stew of dignity and ruthlessness.

“He’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“A thoroughbred.”

As if his inner GPS had a little red dot homed in on my location, he looked up at me as he crossed the drive. I put my finger to the glass. He smiled and held up a finger, pressing it against an imaginary glass pane between us. He got closer to the building, and when I could only see the top of his head, he disappeared from sight.

I hadn’t realized how anxious I’d been until I couldn’t see him. Like the hum of a car engine that didn’t bother you until it was gone, the thrum of my heart stopped and the pain disappeared. Karen put her arm around me because I’d put my hand to my mouth to hold back the tears.

“It’s okay,” she said, not even knowing why I was emotional.

“He’s not mad,” I said. “He still loves me, and he’s not mad.”

I would have said that nothing could disrupt his love for me. Not even a hoof knife twice in the chest. But seeing him smile and put up that finger, I realized I’d been crushed with worry. When that worry disappeared, the space it occupied was filled with joy. I hugged Karen, rattling her tubes, and she gave me a rare laugh.

“I’m just…” I started but couldn’t finish. “I can actually breathe without pain. I have to get used to it.” I threw myself onto the light grey couch.

Karen sat next to me carefully, so as not to disrupt her IV. “You’re relieved.”

“Yeah. I feel like everything’s under control again.”

“He did that with a look?”

“That’s us.”

“Maybe you’ll sleep now.”

“No. Just have Warren get the pills. I’ll pay him when I get out.”

Karen waved the idea away. “He doesn’t want money. He has plenty. He’ll ask for a favor or something. He just wants friends. He’s lonely.”

“Okay.” I craned my neck to watch the valet drive Deacon’s car into the lot.

“Aren’t you going to run down and see him?” asked Karen.

“Elliot wanted to meet with him first. I guess to make sure he won’t upset me. Which, I mean, I know he won’t now. So they’ll schedule a visiting time and, oh God, this is so great.”

I leaned back on the couch, and Karen sat straight up. She looked tired and wrung out. Her battle with food wasn’t going well. She said the only time she felt in control was when she wasn’t eating. She was defined by her refusal, and when she accepted food, she felt indefinite, sloppy, out of control.

I knew plenty about her life. Before Amanda died, we’d had a lot in common, between the drugs and the sex. Food wasn’t what should have made her feel out of control, but who was I to judge?

“I wish I had a Deacon,” she said.

“One day, you might.”

I felt like the queen of the ball.

ELLIOT

I
 had to get to Alondra, but I had to meet Deacon. Frances had offered to take the meeting, but protocol be damned, I didn’t trust her motives. Mostly though, after Fiona’s monologue about pain and pleasure, I found myself driven by an unprofessional level of curiosity again.

He wasn’t what I expected.

I’d expected a dirtbag in a wifebeater and camo. I expected a trashy goatee and a flashy car. Mostly, I expected to look at him and wonder how he could make a slave of a woman who could have any man she wanted.

But he wasn’t any of those things. He was wealthy, obviously. His jacket fit as if it was custom made, and his hair fell in a conservative drape. His face hadn’t been shaved in a day or so, but it was the style. He carried himself with assurance. I couldn’t see the valet’s position, as he was behind the hedge with someone else, but Deacon seemed to sense his presence. He didn’t concern himself with the valet until he was close enough to hand over his keys. Deacon seemed at one with the space around him, at peace and in control.

I knew the patients looked out the east window to see who was visiting, and when he looked and held a finger to the upper floor, I knew he must have seen her. In that gesture, much of my curiosity was sated. Another tangle of emotions took its place.

“Mister Bruce,” I introduced myself as he approached reception. “I’m Dr. Chapman.”

“Nice to meet you.”

We shook hands. He looked me in the eye. Two gentlemen trying to protect the same woman, probably from each other.

I led him to my office and showed him the chair in front of my desk. In a last millisecond decision, I didn’t sit behind the desk but in the chair next to his.

“I notice an accent,” I said.

“I’m Afrikaner. From the south.” He said it with a thick Dutch accent. I could almost hear the k. “I grew up on a farm about two hundred clicks outside Queenstown.”

“I’ve never been.”

“To Queenstown?”

“To Africa.”

He smirked, and I felt like an ignorant American.

“How long have you been in Los Angeles?” I asked.

“A few years. Business takes me back every few months, to the DRC mostly. Not home.”

“May I ask your business?”

“I run a photography agency. Photojournalists working in risky assignments. We hire photographers, buy ransom insurance, track them down if they don’t check in, liaison with embassies, negotiate terms of release, this sort of thing.”

“Terms of release?”

“When they’re kidnapped. The authorities are as useless there as anywhere else.” He said it with cold aplomb, as if reminding me of something I had forgotten.

“Ah,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but an opening for more. It was a hole in which the other person was supposed to pour information, and it usually worked.

In the case of Deacon Bruce, something else happened. “How is she?”

“Without betraying a confidence, she’s better. She came in confused. She’s gotten her bearings, and she’s managing. She’s still struggling with her memory of what happened that night.”

He nodded.

“I assume you remember?” I asked.

“I tripped and fell.”

“You always so clumsy?”

“I get my coordination from my mother’s side. Dutch, you know?” He smiled ruefully, and I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with him. “I’m concerned about Fiona. She’s not violent. Feisty, sure. And strong. Very strong. Almost impossibly so. It’s not like her to snap. I want you to know, I want her out of here as much as she probably wants out, but I’m not going to push for it. If you think my visit will cause her stress before she’s ready, you need to say so. I have no problem staying away until she’s ready.”

“I honestly don’t know when she’s going to be ready. And I’m going to be honest about something else.”

“Please.”

“I’m concerned that she attacked you because she was harboring some anger toward you. Apparently there was a violent incident?”

He smiled again and leaned back in his chair to one side, as if tucking himself in a corner to get comfortable. He was almost laughing.

The mockery burned me as much as the fact that I had to explain myself. “I’m not talking about anything associated with consensual—”

“This is something she told you?”

“I can’t explain further. She came in here with a cracked molar and nerve damage to her wrist.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. Though I sensed a bit of guilt in the expression, it wasn’t defensive. It was remorseful and sad.

“Fiona and I have certain rules, and the rules are there for her safety,” he said. “Hurting her for breaking them defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

“So she did break some rule?”

“These rules aren’t arbitrary.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sure you do.”

From his tone, I could tell he was sure I didn’t understand at all, and he was right. I didn’t. Not one bit.

“Fiona needs to channel her energies,” he said. “What we developed together does just that.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me, Doctor?”

“It’s hard to resist.”

He laughed. “All right,” he said, sitting straight in his chair. “I’ll give you a gift for your honesty. South African farms are far removed from each other, and when I was younger, we had so much privilege, it never occurred to us to protect them. Until, of course, the situation in my country changed. There were too many unemployed young men for the government to deal with, and these young men, they were angry. They were angry at families with money and land. So they gathered in groups and went into the farmhouses and took what they wanted. The farmers were armed usually. My father was, but he was a peaceful man. Of the seven men who came into our house, he shot only one in the leg. He paid for his kindness with his life. My brother was locked in the basement while my mother and sister were badly abused. Our workers… the people were beaten bloody. Two died. I’d grown up with these men. They were my friends.”

“Were you there?”

“I was in Queenstown on business, and one of our foremen came in the morning to tell me. He was covered in blood. By the time I got there, it was too late.” For a moment, he stared into the middle distance.

I didn’t interrupt with any of the hundred questions stewing.

“What happened right after is irrelevant,” he said. “But I am serious about protecting what’s mine.” He smiled, and his smile ended the discussion. He was very shrewd, very self aware.

Plying him further seemed like a waste of time. I was already missing a meeting at Alondra. More small talk would force me to miss an appointment with a patient.

But who was I kidding? Sure, I needed to get out of there, but I’d already assessed whether or not he was a threat to her. What was at the front of my mind, what made me react in ways I didn’t understand, was that he loved her. I couldn’t pretend to understand how their relationship worked, but when he said her name and asked about her, when he looked at me as if deciding who I was in her life… He cared about her more deeply than I understood.

“Let me talk to Fiona,” I said, standing. “Then I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you for your consideration.”