Hurt Me So Good (5 page)

“Who’s next?” Mal asked in a sharp, impatient voice.

Grateful for the prodding, Shiloh brought out the last storyboard. “We need a submissive who’s well trained and knowledgeable. She knows her limits and is solid in her ability to stop the scene when the play is getting too heavy. This sub needs to be able to participate in several shows, but when it comes down to the final competition, she must bow out. The level of punishment at this point of the competition will just be too much for her.”

“And that sounds like you to a T,” Ryan said to his wife.

“I would love to be on the show with you,” Kimberly cooed in that sweet fragile voice. “We’ll have so much fun!”

An avalanche crashed through Shiloh, stifling her. The last thing she wanted was Victor’s old girlfriend on her show. Ironically, Kimberly was right. She’d be absolutely perfect for the part.

“That’s a horrible idea,” Mal retorted. “Victor is playing the Master of the show.”

Kimberly blanched—or at least Shiloh thought she paled a little. It was hard to tell with her porcelain complexion. “Then it’s even more appropriate that I fail to win the show.”

“Why would you even think he’d want you anywhere near his set?”

“I owe him.” Kimberly bowed her head, her lips quivering. Tears dripped on her hand clasped in her husband’s. “He’s too much the gentleman to be offended, and I can help. You need me.”

Fighting to keep her face smooth, Shiloh rubbed her palms on her skirt. Her stomach roiled. She’d planned this show every waking moment, and then dreamed about it every single night. Not once had she ever imagined having Victor’s ex-fiancée competing for his affections. How would he feel to see her again?

If both his past and his hopeful future girlfriends were kneeling before him, who would he choose?

Mal said something about getting Victor’s approval first, with polite goodbyes and excitement from club’s owners at the thought of being on the show. Numbly, Shiloh shook the couple’s hands, unable to stop comparing herself to the other woman.

Her competition. Literally.

Mal was blind if she couldn’t see why Victor had wanted the elegant, fragile woman. With her pale, translucent skin, delicate bone structure and willowy figure, he would have been badly tempted to try and break her. A harsh word would make her beauty crumple like a trampled flower; his crop would mar her perfect skin.

She was just too fragile for a man like him to resist.

Shiloh had never had a poor body image or lacked for self-confidence, but standing face to face with Kimberly, she knew she was the woman’s opposite in many ways. If Victor had once planned to marry this woman, how could he ever feel the same way about her?

Victor broke the water’s surface and settled in for a long swim, but his mind was occupied elsewhere.

On Shiloh.

He’d already worked out on the weights, pushing harder than his physical therapist liked, but he needed to wear himself out, even if his knee hurt like a bitch later. If he wasn’t handicapped by his knee, then he’d be out pounding the pavement for miles, or better yet, letting a defensive end pound him into the turf. Swimming in his infinity pool was about all the aerobic activity he could manage and still walk unassisted the next day.

His cell phone began ringing. With a frustrated sigh, he levered himself out of the pool. He couldn’t concentrate anyway. If it were a work call, he’d ignore it, but his brother—

“Conn! I haven’t talked to you in ages.”

“What’s up, big brother?”

“Nothing much.” Victor tried to laugh, but it sounded forced to his ears. “Working non-stop as usual since the fall season is just around the corner.”

“No, I’m serious,” Conn said, concern echoing in his voice. “Is something wrong?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Miss Belle insisted that you needed me to call, now, before I even got home. I’m driving up and down the hills so might lose you.”

Miss Belle was their eccentric—some may say crazy—grandmother who insisted that she could talk to ghosts, or at least their dead grandfather.

“I’m fine, really,” Victor replied, shaking his head. He’d never been able to get anything past Miss Belle—even though she now lived six hundred miles away. God help him if Mama got wind of anything unusual; she could be knocking on his door in thirty minutes.

“Miss Belle said that if you didn’t want to talk to me, she’d be calling Mama next.”

“Can’t I meet someone without my entire family sticking their noses in my business?” Setting his phone to speaker so he could scowl at his brother, Victor toweled off. There’d be no more swimming today. “Next Vicki will just happen to stop by too.”

“So you met someone. That’s wonderful.” Silence stretched out for several seconds. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes and no.” Victor blew out his breath, trying to find the way to get some of the turmoil off his chest. “Do you remember when you visited a certain club with me?”

“Ah, I certainly do remember. You and your friend Mal taught me everything I know there. Did you meet her at Silken?”

“No, but she knows, Conn. She knows what I am.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Victor sat down on the bench and stared down at the phone in his hand. Absently, he rubbed his bad knee, stretching his leg out before him to take some of the pressure off the strained tendons that never seemed to heal completely. “Mama said you’re dating someone. That it’s serious.”

“If you can keep a secret, I’ll admit that we’re engaged, although I don’t plan to announce it formally until everyone comes up for Thanksgiving. You are coming, aren’t you?”

“Congratulations! Yeah, I’ll keep it secret, but you know I’m tempted to tell Mama just so she’ll get off my back about grandbabies. I can’t wait to meet your girlfriend, but I’ll have to see how the season is going before I can commit.” Victor sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. “Does your fiancée know what you are?”

“Of course. She’s my old student I told you about. I finally found her again. It took us a while to work through all our issues, but we’re happy, V, in large part thanks to you. If you and Mal hadn’t taught me so much, I might have…”

Victor heard the lump in his brother’s throat. “You might have hurt her.”

His brother made a low sound of regret.

“That’s the difference between you and me, bro.” He tried to keep his voice light despite the heaviness pressing on his chest. “You’re reluctant to hurt the woman you love. Me, I can’t wait. And that’s why I’ve got a problem.”

“Hold on a minute. I’m going to pull off the freeway. This talk is too serious for me to concentrate on driving.”

Victor waited, contemplating just hanging up. His little brother might be Dominant, but he didn’t have the same kind of single-minded aggression. If someone Victor wanted to talk to hung up on him, he wouldn’t call back; he’d be sitting in their living room before they got home. Even if Conn did leave him alone, Miss Belle would certainly uphold her threat, and hands down, he’d rather talk to his brother than his mother about sadomasochism.

“Still there?”

Mouth quirked, he replied, “Yep.”

“I was afraid you’d hang up on me.”

“I thought about it.”

His brother laughed, but then turned serious. “I have to admit that I don’t get the pain aspect. I mean, I know it hurts when I spank Rae, but I don’t start out with the intention of causing pain. I don’t
try
to hurt her, and by the time it does start to hurt, she’s feeling too good to care.”

Victor caught himself nodding even though his brother couldn’t see him. “You’re both into sensual spanking. You don’t spank her to hurt her; you spank to get her off and you work off some of your aggression in the process.”

“If I ever hurt her, I mean, really hurt her…” Conn growled out a curse beneath his breath. “It’d tear me up inside.”

“It tears me up too,” Victor admitted softly, remembering the suffocating guilt he’d felt when he’d frightened Kimberly so badly that she dumped him. “I don’t want to like it, but I do. Nothing gets me off like pain, even if I feel bad about it later.”

“Pain you feel, or someone else?”

“Both. I like the feel of pain myself—it makes me appreciate what I’m doing for my partner. I know exactly what it feels like. I used the crop on myself long before I ever thought to use it on someone else.”

“I thought you were a sadist,” Conn said carefully.

“I am. I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of pain. I just like pain, even my own.”

“If your new girlfriend likes pain…”

“She does.”

“Then…are you worried you’ll go too far?”

Victor closed his eyes. “I know I will. I can’t help but go too far.”

“You’ve been with subs before. I saw you do a scene at Silken and you were completely in control. Your partner was happy as far as I could see.”

“She was,” Victor agreed, shame churning in his stomach. That woman had been Kimberly. He’d worked so very hard at controlling himself for her, denying that darkness that threatened to bubble up every single time he stepped into a scene. She didn’t want the Master in him, let alone his crop. “But I wasn’t.”

“It looked to me like you were having a good time.”

Victor ground out a harsh laugh. “That’s because I’m a damned good actor.” He pulled the ponytail holder out and rubbed his hand through his wet hair. He’d had his hair pulled back so long that his scalp was tender. “That was kindergarten shit for me. It wasn’t serious. It sure as hell didn’t get me off.”

Not until he’d gone home and jacked off while hitting his thighs so hard with his crop that he’d been bruised the next day. He hadn’t had a choice. The only way he could come to Kimberly and love her the way she wanted was if he punished himself first.

“Sorry if this is too personal, but can you get off without pain?”

“Sure. It’s just not as good. It hasn’t been good in a long, long time.”

“The first time Rae and I were finally together, I was damned close to losing control, but I made it through by the skin of my teeth. After that, I trusted myself more.”

“I’m not worried about losing my control during sex. Not exactly.” Victor kneaded his scalp. The soreness didn’t do much for his erection that hadn’t faded since Shiloh’s presentation. “It’s the scene where I’ll go too far.”

“So don’t do a scene with her, not until you can control it.”

Victor shook his head. “Won’t help, bro. I’ve already established what I want from her, and it’s not just sex. She’s not a submissive who’s going to be happy with a little light bondage or pleasant sex, not for long, and neither am I. Pain
is
sex for us, the best kind of all, and I’m afraid…”

He closed his eyes and forced himself to admit the truth. “If it’s just me, I can control myself, but she’s not just a submissive. She’s a masochist, and she’s far from afraid of me, which is dangerous. She’s going to push and taunt me into crossing the line, and I’ve barely even touched her. She’ll let me go too far.”

“If she knows how to stop you…”

“She’ll know how to tell me to stop, definitely. But I’m afraid she won’t. She wants me to hurt her as badly as I want to hurt her. I tried to scare her today and she laughed and deliberately antagonized me. What if I can’t control us both? What if I get lost in the pain and take her too far? Once it’s done, what kind of damage will I have caused her? Will she hate me, then? God, Conn, I don’t want to seriously hurt her!”

“‘Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure that exists in pain
.
’”

“Don’t quote poetry at me,” Victor groaned. “You know I never understand it.”

“You’ll understand this one: ‘Ah, me! Alas, pain, pain ever, forever!’”

Yeah, he certainly did. Pain was always with him, and something he couldn’t help but seek. “What happened to us, Conn? I mean, seriously, I’m more messed up than you, but neither of us is exactly normal.”

“I don’t know, V. I wish I could help more than just listen to you.”

“Miss Belle was right to have you call me, but don’t tell her so. It helped just to talk about it.”

“Do you think we got these urges from her? Or maybe—”

Victor let out a laughing groan. “Don’t even go there. I can’t even begin to wonder if Mama or Daddy gave us these needs. Are you trying to give me nightmares?”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Hell if I know.” Victor sighed. “What makes this all even more hilarious is both Shiloh and I are going to be doing a reality BDSM show for VCONN’s new season.”

His brother blew out his breath in a low whistle. “You’re coming out of the closet, so to speak?”

He hadn’t thought of that. How many Dallas citizens would recognize him? “We’ll be wearing masks and costumes.”

“You know Mama wouldn’t miss a single show from your station, right?”

Great, that was exactly what he wanted to hear. Not only did he have to worry about protecting Shiloh from himself, but now he’d have to deal with his mother’s fury if she witnessed him seriously hurting a woman. It’d been one thing to know he ran a sexy cable show; how would she feel to know he was
participating
? As the Master?

“I didn’t think about that,” he admitted. “I guess I should warn her.”

“Too busy thinking about getting into your new woman’s pants, huh,” Conn joked.

But Victor didn’t laugh as they said goodbye. He’d been too busy thinking about how long she’d go before giving her safeword and fleeing him for good.

Chapter Five

Freshly showered, Victor limped back to the poolside bench to fetch his phone. He was going to have to ice his knee tonight if he had any hope of skipping the brace for tomorrow’s taping, assuming Shiloh and Mal had made enough progress. He checked his watch. He ought to know within the next hour how the day had gone.

His phone rang, and his stomach tightened with the irrational fear that it might be Shiloh calling to say she’d changed her mind. That she didn’t want to see him at all, let alone risk coming into his home. Stupid, he knew, because he’d been too careless to make sure she had his personal number so she could reach him. He’d told her to call if she had problems, but like an arrogant ass, hadn’t provided her with his line.