Jeremiah Quick (9 page)

"Because here's the thing… you knew there
was a whole lot of everything about your world that didn't make
sense. And yet… you accepted the free car, and accepted the free
ride to college, so long as you got home by curfew, and you were
mommy and daddy's good little rich girl for far longer than you
should have been. And when Chill blew his fucking brains out
because he was so fucking lonely, did you give a shit, little
Miss-got-it-so-goddamned-fucking-easy? Did you?"

Pretty heard everything he said, and he was
right, he was so right, and she knew she was spoiled and something
within her cringed. But it wasn't till he said that about Chill
that she managed to react. She jerked her head from side to side,
trying to escape the hand still clamped across her face, and when
he didn't let go, she bit him. He jumped and swore and did let go
then, and she took the opportunity to shove herself away from him,
backing up on wobbly legs until she could boost herself onto the
table. Her instinct about the letters, Chill so lost and lonely,
asking for a friend. That. Just that. She’d ignored him, and worse,
thought badly of him for his need. But it wasn’t her fault. It
wasn’t. It wasn’t. She couldn’t have saved him, even if she wanted
to, right?

Only maybe she could have. Maybe she was the
most spoiled, most self-centered person ever and there could never
be redemption.

She shook her head from side to side,
letting her eyes plead with Jeremiah, but it wasn’t enough, she had
to speak, despite the consequences. "No. Jeremiah, no. Say it isn’t
true. Please."

His whole face looked hollow for the next
minute, especially his eyes.

"You'll take ten more, for Chill?"

"I'll take twenty, if you promise me it
isn't true."

He stared at her.

And something slipped in his face then, his
eyes, something that revealed an even bigger truth that Pretty
didn't want to see – an ugliness too terrible for her to even know
what to call it. But whatever that ugliness was, it screamed at her
that one of them needed saving. But would he save her, or would she
save him?

Because she knew somehow, right then, there
would be no saving each other.

It felt like he stared at her for a hundred
years, before he shook his head.

"Sorry, Sunshine, no can do."

She sighed, sagged, and let her hand rest on
the table behind her, where her fingers bushed against something
long and thin, reminiscent of the stripes of pain along her back.
She picked it up, pulled it around to look at it. It wasn't a whip.
It was more of a… well, a switch, she supposed. Black, synthetic,
and slightly flexible, with a handle at the thicker end, and
tapering to a sharp flexible tip. She ran her hands over it. It
looked less painful than it felt.

She wondered if her inability to trust
Jeremiah Quick made those ten strikes feel more painful than they
actually were. But she had no basis for comparison, did she? At
least not yet.

Quick held out his hand, silently asking her
to hand the thing to him, and she did.

He brought it to her lips. "Kiss the switch,
Sunshine, and thank me with your eyes."

She pursed her lips and touched them to the
instrument of her pain, then lifted her head a little, keeping her
chin down, demure, and raised her eyes just enough to meet his. She
blinked slowly, deliberately. Twice.

"Not bad," he breathed. "For a
beginner."

And his fingers were then at her lips,
urging her to open her mouth, and there was the chocolate, rich and
sweet, and she didn't even know where he'd been hiding it.

It flooded not just her mouth and sense of
taste, but all of her senses, started a tingle in her belly, a
shiver down her spine. Even her pussy contracted.

He set the switch on the table beside her,
stepped in closer, and, using thumbs and forefingers, reached to
pinch both her nipples at once. Hard enough that she gasped.

Her left nipple hardened, instant and total
arousal. But the right one was inverted, had always been inverted,
so it didn't. Pretty didn’t care. She was thirty-six years old,
looked as good for her age as she was going to, and was long over
being self-conscious about one defective nipple.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Yeah, right, like she was going to fall for
that.

And then he tilted his head, almost so he
was looking up at her, and the expression on his face was open, his
eyes clear and so light blue it was like looking into Lake Superior
on a sunny day. His long hair fell across his cheekbone, and he
looked endearing, appealing, as young as he'd been when they'd
first met. The corners of his lips lifted, and his voice was soft,
so soft it was almost a whisper. "Don't be embarrassed."

She could have laughed. She had so many
flaws she wasn't afraid for him to see this one.

"I'll fix you," he said, and lowered his
head.

A prettier lie had never been told.

He sucked gently at first, a teasing pull,
and then hard enough to make her gasp and to force the nipple to a
point. It wasn't sensitive and she knew the peak wouldn't last. It
never did, but every male she'd ever been sexual with had to
try.

He let his teeth scrape across her nipple
before he let go, then gave her that endearing look again, peering
at her through his hair, his cocky grin so utterly forgotten, yet
immediately familiar, that Pretty raised her arms without thinking
and wrapped them around his neck, pulling him closer so she could
sigh his name against the hollow of his throat.

Chapter 6

S
he.

Her arms are delicate around my neck, and
she smells, oh, of fear, and herself, and half-forgotten desperate
clutching, of begging me not to leave… and I forget for a little
bit of time why I'm even doing this. I should carry her to the
house and remember her properly with the sort of love-making we'd
never had a chance to accomplish. Slow and sweet; as gentle as her
lips… tender and pretty as her skin… as soft and careful as her
hair.

Her breath is warm against my throat, and
her lips feather across my skin in an erotic dance that feels like
my name.

I raise my eyes to the ceiling,
second-guessing myself, until I see the remains of the black scarf
tied to the rafters, the one I sawed through with a knife.

And it all rushes back into me, then – how
important it is to recognize pain for the character-building
exercise it can be, and to know I'm the only one unafraid to teach
her, and she
is
afraid, yes, but still she…

…wants this.

I turn her, bend her over the table again,
and push her down, face first, my hand cruel against the faint
marks on her back. She's really made much too much of her
"beating," and the thought of beating her for real makes me smile.
But before that can happen, I'll hold her trust in my hands, have
her will aligned with my own, dependent, co-dependent, immersed so
far
in me
that she'll never be a thing apart
from me
,
ever again in her life. Mine, for always.

I speak to her."Forty," and watch the line
of her back tense and twitch. And then, lowering my voice, infusing
it with kindness, I let her off the hook. "Forty bare-hand to
bare-ass smacks," I whisper into her ear, and use my feet to kick
her legs apart.

She is silent, rigid, and I suspect furious,
as she waits for me to hit her, so I set my hands free to roam over
her back, decorating the switch marks with pretty red half-moons
that I gouge into her flesh with my fingernails.

The line of her back somehow communicates
her anger, her pure defiance.

Oh, really? We get to play this way?

The rush of pleasure I get from
this thought curls my lips even more.

Chapt
er
7

P
retty clamped her
lips, clenched her jaw, waited for him to start spanking her so she
could start waiting for it to be over. She understood his purpose.
By never telling her exactly what punishment she was earning, he'd
be able, at times, to force his 'punishment' onto her arbitrarily,
meaning there was no meaning to the numbers.

Ten could be strokes, or spanks or minutes
or hours. It could be almost anything, really, completely dependent
on the spin he chose to give it.

Completely dependent, like she would
become.

She had no doubt he would prevail, would
obscure her ability to reason and muddy her sanity, but he couldn't
make her hate him, even if he tried.

She waited for him to hit her, but he
didn't. He smoothed his hands over her flesh, stroking, then
pinching, pinching then stroking.

It felt like a long time.

But then, there it was, the smack and the
shock of heat all at the same time. Not exactly pain, not yet, but
a rush of uncomfortable warmth, the press of her body hard against
the table for just that instant.

There was just that one.

She… wanted to look back at him, to see what
he looked like, try to guess what he was waiting for, but before
she could decide if that was a good idea or a terrible one, his
palm hit her ass again, harder this time, and she had to argue with
her throat to be quiet.

And then came a flurry of blows, some harder
than others, and she hoped he was counting, because she wasn't –
she was trying to breathe through the sudden surprising strength of
him, the pressure of the table against her abdomen, the sudden
warmth of her buttocks that was building to pain.

The pain part, the moment of
omg, I hate
this, make it stop
seemed very sudden. One smack was tolerable,
the next and every one after utterly intolerable for the next, oh,
minute and a half? And then the strange thing happened, the thing
she'd read about but never quite believed was real.

The pain started to feel good. Like…
blissful sort of good. Her brain releasing endorphins.

And her hips were pressing toward him just a
tiny bit, moving into the connect of flesh on flesh, and she was
fighting off a moan. Silence was nearly impossible.

When the spanking stopped and his cock
nudged between her legs, she was already wet, and her body welcomed
him.

He filled her utterly, as if he belonged
inside her, seeking and claiming, a perfect fit. His attention was
total. She'd say adoring, but no, his hands started those tiny
little pinching fires again, playing with whatever marks the switch
had left in its wake. It wasn't a loving act, and probably had
little to do with Pretty at all. It was maybe even an avoidance
maneuver, manipulating his own desire because he didn't enjoy
hurting her as much as he'd thought he would.

He paused the fucking of her, keeping
himself deep inside, and she felt a whisper of movement above her,
his upper body reaching for something, doing something with
purpose, though again, whatever it was didn't seem directed at
her.

He pulled out of her, then pushed in again,
but… different, wider somehow, and she wanted to squeak, groan…
make some kind of unhappy noise, and ended up panting instead,
clutching at the edges of the table, breathing, breathing…

Something clattered on the table next to her
face, the length of the switch, the wider end right in front of her
eyes, missing the handle.

And she knew then what was inside of her,
why it felt different. She clenched her teeth and closed her eyes,
breath held and chest tight, because some forbidden noise was
trying to rise up, trying to escape, and she could
do this
,
damn it, even if he wasn't being fair.

He kicked her legs further apart, and she
felt him stretching her even wider, as if forcing himself into her
alongside the switch handle, and it was too much, too riveting a
pain, and when the groan came out of her, it sounded like a
wail.

And yet there came a rolling liquid folding
sensation in her belly, and a wet rush to her cunt as her body
reacted to the pain, to him, and attempted to open to him more.

His fingers ran lightly up her back, almost
as if to soothe, but then he had a fist in her hair and wrenched
her head back, and she felt him close to her throat, mouth hot, his
voice a low growl behind her, primal and harsh. "Like this,
Sunshine Girl? Ahh, if you were allowed to talk I'd make you tell
me how it feels. Don’t worry, there'll be a time for that."

He let go of her hair and pressed her
against the wood, his hand going between their bodies, tugging
until she whimpered, until she mouthed silently against the wood,
"Please," and there was a sharper tug, and the horrible stretch
seemed to have an end.

Until she felt the handle against her anus,
hard and too-big. She wriggled against the thing, not because she
wanted it, but because she was still angry, more than ever, and
just wanted it
over
.

She wanted to talk to him, wanted him to
hold her and soothe her, and tell her the stories of his journey.
She wanted him to teach her ideas, not pain. Could she take it all
back? Were there any safewords here?

"Open for me, Sunshine Girl."

His voice was a caress, silk in her ear, and
the pressure increased until she felt the inevitability there, that
he was going to sodomize her with the switch handle, and she could
make it better for herself by helping him, or she could make it
worse by keeping herself stubbornly clenched.

Either way, it would hurt.

Pretty had been a frequent and chronic
manipulator of her own body since early childhood, locking herself
in her room, hiding beneath blankets, exploring those parts of her
that would surely be made off limits to even her own touch, should
anyone find out.

Dirty. Pervert.