Beyond Eden (28 page)

“It is,” Eve said instantly, because she felt like she had just fallen into heaven. “Paul gets that same feeling,” Danny said softly. “And just like how you don’t want

me to think badly of you for having the most extreme voyeur fetish I have
ever
seen,

Paul doesn’t want you to think badly of him for having the most mind-numbingly, hardcore pain fetish you’ve ever seen.”

That caused a flash of ice to cool her ardor and she looked up at Danny in fear. “How bad is it?”

“Bad, Evie,” Danny said sadly. “He would let me beat him to death and get off on it until his last breath.”

“Oh, Paul,” she whispered as she fought back a fresh surge of tears. “Did I do this to him? Did my leaving cause this?”

“He had to have been born with it. No one can get a pain fetish like this from anyone other than the Divine. Can you find beauty in darkness?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Then look for it,” Danny said softly. “Use artist eyes and look for lust and desire, not horror or pain. The devil was the most beautiful angel. Remember that and I think we’ll all be fine. Perfect mates complement each other. It makes no difference if it’s in heaven or hell, as long as they are together. You are a perfect mate to Paul and me, Evie Girl. I think we always knew that. It was the reason the three of us became friends

before we were old enough to understand anything other than recognizing another part of ourselves in someone else.”

Eve stared ahead, her eyesight unfocused as she thought back to her childhood that had always been beautiful and perfect to her because Paul and Danny had been in it. “You’re a poet,” Eve whispered as a smile tugged at her lips and tears ran down her cheeks. “You’re an artist and I never knew it.”

“If I’m an artist it’s only because we share a soul,” Danny whispered, his dark eyes glassy. “I love you, Evie Girl. Will you be good to Paul? Will you be everything he needs and nothing he doesn’t?”

“Absolutely,” Eve said with a passion that burned through her like the fires of hell. “I promised to love him forever. He’s perfect to me.”

“Then go get dressed for your Master,” Danny said with a slow, dark smile. “The snake and Eve worked together, you and I will too. We’ll make sure our Adam enjoys Eden before he leaves. We’ll give him four months of strawberry so sweet it will sustain him through a whole, miserable lifetime of bland vanilla.”

Shirtless and barefoot, Paul sat on the edge of his bed. He had changed into an expensive pair of black, laced-up leather pants Danny bought him years ago for public games. He wore his own leather collar and wrist cuffs because he was half terrified Danny would try to put the fleece cuffs on him in front of Eve just to fuck with him.

His fingers laced together at the back of his head, his elbows resting on his knees, he tried to take slow, steady breaths to still his racing heart. Everything in him wanted to flee, to run out the door and get out of the house that seemed to pulse with an air of unavoidable change. He knew everything was going to be drastically altered and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He just had to sit there and endure it, watching helplessly as his life pulled him down a path he found terrifying.

He was powerless, a slave to Danny who had decided this was what he was going to take from Paul next, his last bit of dignity. He didn’t just steal Eve, he was going to make her watch Paul be shamed and humiliated. The fear was incredible, all consuming, enough to shut his mind down from the ability to think and his skin hummed from the thrill of it. His cock ached in a way he hadn’t thought possible. The pain of knowing he was exposed to Eve was enough to have Paul completely mindless with need.

The breaths he was taking were for sanity, for some way to block the desire for pain and submission that took over his body and mind when it was triggered the right way. He knew if he could think past the lust, he would see this was a mistake. If he could find lawyer Paul instead of slave Paul he could stop the collision of worlds that would injure him for the rest of his life and ruin the one thing that was perfect and beautiful to him.

Paul stiffened when he felt Danny’s presence at his door. He was silent, but Paul could always feel him without seeing him, could sense him under his skin, could get hard from his scent and the sound of his slow, confident breathing.

“I need a safe word,” Paul whispered without looking up. “I need a safe word for this one.”

“Yeah, you probably do.”

Paul sucked in a sharp breath, his body shaking under a fresh tidal wave of desire. They hadn’t played with safe words in years. Danny hadn’t pushed him to the outer limits of his tolerance in what seemed like forever. Safe words between a Master and slave who knew each other completely were pointless unless they really planned to teeter on the edge of a chasm that would leave a slave broken beyond repair.

Paul asked for an edge game in his voice mail and Danny had delivered.

He had to have known there was no limit to the physical pain. He would have never been able to hit the edge with Paul on that. Pain was always fun to him, no matter how intense or excruciating. He had to hit Paul somewhere that could actually break him and he’d found it with Eve. This was a way to cut into his soul and leave him bleeding for eternity.

“Y-you pick it,” Paul rasped as his breathing became sharp and irregular. “Pick it and I’ll remember.”

“How about Trisha?” Danny mused thoughtfully. “Hearing you scream her name would most certainly disgust me to the point that even punishing you would be revolting.”

Paul shook his head sadly, reeling at just how much of an asshole Danny could be. “Fine.”

“Now I want you to say that I’m a god.”

Paul snorted incredulously and tilted his head to look at Danny standing in the doorway to his room wearing a pair of tight, laced-up black leather pants similar to Paul’s. He was barefoot and bare-chested, showing off a lithe, muscular body anyone would find appealing. His face was darkly beautiful, his eyes compelling enough to have Paul wanting to stare into them forever, no matter what sinister things he saw.

Paul squeezed his eyes shut against the rush of longing for a man who could make evil look good any day of the week. “Are you being serious?” he asked in amazement, because that was taking it a little far, even for Danny. “You want me to call you a
god
?”

“Do you really want to fuck with me on an edge game?” Danny growled at him. “Do you want Eve to hear you screaming Trisha before we get to anything interesting? I was hoping to impress her with my biggest, strongest slave and all she is going to remember is you caving from just the thought of a little pain.”

Paul took a shuddering breath because he realized Eve was listening. She was in the hallway and could hear everything. The addicting feeling of icy-hot pleasure shimmered over his body and he squeezed his eyes shut tighter and whispered, “You’re a god.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic about that, you really don’t,” Danny said in disappointment. “This smart-ass attitude is something more suited to Evie. Maybe she’s been giving you bad habits. Maybe I ought to break her instead of you as punishment for corrupting a slave who’s supposed to know how to behave.”

“You’re a god,” Paul said louder and more confidently because he knew without a doubt if he had to watch Danny break Eve he would be saying Trisha faster than he could blink. “Really, Danny Boy, I live to worship at your feet.”

“I suppose that pleases me,” Danny sighed, not sounding overly impressed. “I want you to get on your knees. You look pretty at my feet.”

Paul felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in defensiveness. Danny knew that being called pretty would get at him faster than anything. He slid off the bed, falling heavily to the floor, purposely landing hard on his bad knee just for the jolt of pain it

would cause as a distraction against the anger that would probably have him saying something that would get him into more trouble.

Paul just kneeled there, his breath ragged with fear and desire, his mind a riot of emotions as he stared at the floor and tried to focus on his bad knee that was humming from the impact instead of the implications of what was really happening.

He heard her first, that soft, graceful way Eve had of walking he knew instinctively. He lifted his head slightly, staring at slim, bare feet and perfect toenails painted with black nail polish and decorated with colored flowers. Eve had always done that. Her toenails had never been just one color. They had always been decorated with whatever design had appealed to her that week.

He couldn’t do this while looking at pretty, flower-decorated toenails that reminded him of crawling through windows under moonlight just to be with Eve because being away from her felt like he had lost the ability to breathe. The game was about rules and Paul had once broken them all for Eve. Loving her had given him the ability to defy both of their parents and do things that would have gotten Paul beaten and both of them grounded for life if they’d been caught.

To him, Eve was the opposite of the game. She was the one pillar of defiance in his life that had been made up with nothing but discipline and blind obedience to the point that he got off on it. Merging her with the game meant killing his last grasp on something that had been sweet enough to risk everything.

“You’re not going to look?” Danny asked. Paul shook his head silently.

“Why, Paul Guy?” Eve whispered in a soft voice that created a fresh pulse of desire that stunned him because it was a different one than what he was used to, a feeling he had forgotten. It tasted sweeter, felt purer and was no less intoxicating because of it. “Are you ashamed of me?”

He heard the anxiety in her voice and realized she probably thought he was hiding from seeing her as the woman he had taunted with being broken by Danny. She didn’t know that Paul knew it was impossible for anyone to resist being enslaved by Danny if it was something he really felt like doing.

“Never,” he said, tilting his head back to stare at her.

He had expected to find Eve in his old football jersey, but was left sucking in a sharp breath of desperate desire, his mind going hazy to the point that Lawyer Paul completely slipped out of reality. Eve’s hair was tied into pigtails with vibrant, multicolored silk scarves tied into each one. They blended with wild rivers of thick red hair that flowed over her shoulders and down slender arms. Her eye makeup was dark, making her eyes glitter like brilliant emeralds in the dim lighting of his bedroom. The contrast between pale skin, red hair and redder lips was jaw dropping. He’d never seen a woman achieve that mysterious, forbidden look to anywhere near the degree Eve had. It was made more intense by the black leather pants and matching corset she wore, laced tight, showing off a small waist and full breasts that spilled over the top of it.

There was no lace or silver zippers and her feet were adorned with nail polish, instead of dangerous high heels. It was leather with no adornments save corset laces, colorful, silk scarves hanging loose in her hair and a beautiful collar around her neck that was all black and glittered with multicolored rhinestones.

Paul had played the game since he was eighteen. He had honestly thought he had seen women in every combination of leather, corsets and red lipstick possible. He had never counted on Eve walking into a game that should have never been hers and obliterating the others effortlessly. She was gorgeous and sexy but she was also adorable and sweet. She was every happy, bright color of the rainbow, mixed with the dark, compelling beauty of black leather that was an instant mark of forbidden, sensual things. She had joined the game without surrendering any of the quirky, adorable traits that made her so wonderfully unique. It took Eve twenty minutes to create something that had just ruined miniskirts and high heels forever and Paul’s breathing fell shallow as he kneeled there by her feet and stared up at her feeling completely captivated.

“Tell me why I’m a god, Paul Guy,” Danny demanded knowingly as he looked down at Paul over Eve’s shoulder.

“’Cause you own a goddess,” Paul rasped in a low, husky voice as he felt himself melt under the waves of longing he had for a woman he had given away twice. The first time he had let her go to New York by herself, without anyone to protect her from a city that had nearly crushed the beauty out of her and the second time he had sold her to the devil for something as worthless as desire. He looked away from her, staring back at the floor. “I could never be ashamed of you, Evie Girl. You’re radiant to me.”

Eve sucked in a quivering breath. “Paul—”

He glanced back up at the abrupt sound of Eve’s voice being cut off and found Danny with a long arm wrapped around her waist and a hand clapped over her mouth as he glared down at her furiously. Eve was glaring back at him, her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits of green as she defied Danny with every ounce of her being without saying anything.

“Don’t do that to her,” Paul growled at him, feeling a surge of anger flow through him.

“What are you going to do about it?” Danny taunted, arching an eyebrow challengingly at him. “I own you. I know you inside and out. I can bring you to your knees anytime I want and you know it. Having a fetish is such a pesky thing.”

Paul’s body flushed with fear that gave him the rush of desire that was only possible when his fetish was triggered the right way. Danny did own him. He knew how to push Paul’s buttons in the right way and literally bring him to his knees. He took a deep breath, glaring at Danny as he whispered, “Don’t pick on her. I left the voice mail. Pick on me. I’m begging you.”

“Oh, this is sweet,” Danny said with a smile as he held on to Eve, who wasn’t struggling, but was still glaring up at him furiously. “You would do anything to save Evie, wouldn’t you? Too bad for you she belongs to me.”

Paul wavered again, searching for sanity though the haze of desire caused by Danny’s viciousness that already had him hard and aching. “What do you want?”

“Quite honestly, I want to break Evie,” Danny said in a dark voice. “She’s the one standing here struggling in my arms while you’re on your knees like a good slave. What do you think, Paul Guy, can I come up with something? Pain is out of the question but humiliation works just as well. Maybe I’ll make her suck my dick while you watch. That could be fun. Really make her feel like a whore in front of her first love.”