Authors: Lucy V. Morgan
Tags: #womens fiction, #erotic romance, #bdsm, #contemporary romance, #dark romance
Breaking Joseph
breaking
JOSEPH
book
two
www.lucyvmorgan.com
Smashwords
Edition
Copyright ©
Lucy V. Morgan 2014
All rights
reserved.
Originally
published in 2012 under the title of
The Whored’s
Prayer
Cover art by
Kenny Wright
www.kennywriter.com
Publisher’s
Note
This book is a
work of fiction. Any resemblance to places, persons or events is
entirely coincidental and a product of the writer’s
imagination.
For
those I cut before I learned how to use a knife.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Why did I let a
man scratch his name across my belly?
I can show it
off while he’s still asleep. I’m naked, but don’t be embarrassed–I
am often naked professionally, see–ah, there it is. Raw, pink and
raised, sprawling from one hip to the other. J,o,s,e,p,h. I bled a
little at the p, but he licked my flesh to echoes and then it was
just something else wet. Did it hurt? A little. The zigzag blade of
a bread knife is sharper than it looks, but this man is a
professional. I only felt what he wanted me to. Don’t try this at
home, kids. In a dark New York hotel suite, however…it's other side
of the mirror, and the rules are upside down. Funny how a pair of
lawyers like that place best, hmm?
Maybe not.
Shall I tell a
dirty secret? How about five, six, seven? Part of me is dying to
share them. I call her Charlotte, this half who is thrilled to take
money for breathless favours, and the one who found herself in a
hotel room just weeks ago with her boss and her colleague. They
stuffed an envelope into her bag, and themselves into the places
she kept for paying customers. It was Charlotte who let them, and
they lapped her up like the cold milk she was, but it was Leila who
explained why she needed the money, and Leila who agreed to make
her boss the last client in return for her dream job.
Leila knew it
was blackmail. Charlotte bit her lip and said it had sugar on
top.
The secrets get
worse. That wasn’t the end of things. And this confession, it’s not
the most religious thing I’ve done. The boss had a girlfriend, and
for one night only, she was Charlotte’s unwitting prey. The
colleague wanted more and served his heart on a plate to me. It was
rare before we started, I think, but well-done by the time I left
the wreckage of him standing in the rain.
Now my boss
sleeps beside me, and I measure the rise and fall of his chest like
an act of worship. He is my apple, a devil’s gift, and tonight, we
broke our self-imposed ban and talked to serpents in a mashed
tangle of limbs. Paying me wasn’t enough–I was the check, and his
knife signed on the dotted line, on the Braille that said
yes
please
. He isn’t like other clients. I’m not sure he ever was,
really.
I don’t want to
be the bad girl any more. I’m tired of being Leila, of cleaning up
Charlotte’s mess. But this man who put his name on me is a wolf,
and if he wants anything, it’s to stalk the night together. I tried
to be normal with Matt; it was carnage, it didn’t work. There’s an
ache in the pit of my stomach because I think that I’m trapped
beneath a full moon: debauched, exhilarated, exhausted.
Professional but pretending, smiling but breaking, paid for and
silently chained. And if you think I’m bad…Joseph is worse.
They call him
the Chairman of the Whored.
I want to
believe there is hope for me, that I am not lost to the desires
that haunt my flesh. Perhaps I’m in love with the idea of behaving;
if I am, it’s the only love that hasn’t scowled at me and decided
to have a donut instead. Perhaps I ought to just stop moaning and
put my good girl knickers on, because Jesus…I’m tired.
The sun will
rise in a few hours and one way or the other, I’ll be forced back
into the black and white world. I could be Leila, who is on a
glamorous trip to secure her job as a proper lawyer. Or I could be
Charlotte, who is on an extended job with her last client, and is
blurring at the edges a little more with every fuck.
When I wake
up…who will I be?
Chapter 1
The first thing
I felt that morning was the coarse rub of his blond stubble. It
tickled my shoulder as his teeth grazed my neck. Sleep turned to
fabric, and he tugged the thread ‘til I unravelled, naked and
unashamed.
“Do we have to
get up yet?” I asked.
“Car won’t be
here for over an hour.”
I arched into
Joseph and brought his hand around to the stretch of skin that bore
his signature. Already, his cock grew stiff between my buttocks and
I wriggled until it sat at my lips. Then there wasn’t time to get
wet–he scooped my thigh aloft and I whimpered at the warm
stretch.
I love morning
sex. I loved how my body couldn’t quite catch up with Joseph, how I
felt him so acutely because nothing stood in the way of our mashed
flesh. I even loved how easily he slid without his usually slick
reception–he forced, I submitted. All at once.
His fingers
stroked my scratched belly as he fucked me slow, slowly, slower.
Breath peaked against our pillows in bursts of warm air. There was
a stirring intimacy in it; we moved like we knew each other. This
bed knew us. It smelled like body lotion and the sticky shadows of
last night’s orgasms.
I tried several
times to push his hand to where I ached, but his thrusts turned
shallow until he barely moved.
“Do I have to
beg?” I panted.
“Mmm.” He bit
my earlobe. “Maybe.”
At six AM? The
man was something else. “Don’t stop–”
“Not good
enough.” Fingers crept down to pull me apart.
“Please,
Joe…”
“What do you
want me to do?”
I mewed as I
laid back on him, squeezing hard over his cock. His thumb found my
tight clit, pressed down, and then he shoved into me with a low
moan.
“You’re a
good lawyer
,” he mumbled, dragging over the words that meant
so much more than they used to. Ah, ah. “And a fast learner.”
* * * *
Like Joseph,
Bach and Dagier was in the business of law and savagery. This
morning marked the beginning of a seduction like the one he wrapped
around me. We’d come to New York to stalk Redfish Pharmaceuticals,
and now, we massaged and teased and whispered our promises, only to
pounce with an offer they couldn’t refuse. When they looked away,
we pressed a knife to the throats of competitors as our eyes shone
in the dark.
Or, in common
English: we met them for breakfast.
We arrived at
the restaurant first, and Joseph’s hand sat on the small of my back
as he guided me toward the table. Our potential clients chattered
between sips of thick black coffee and tapped on their phones. A
tall, dark-skinned man with high cheekbones and a shock of curly
hair stood to greet us.
“You must be
from Bach and Dagier.” He shook Joseph’s hand. “Deacon Grey. I’m
chief of finance at Redfish.” He gestured to his two companions.
“This is Kenji Nakamura, my assistant chief, and Elise McCall from
Salinger Wren, who represent us in corporate law.”
“Joseph
Merchant, partner. This is Leila Vaughn, one of my trainees.”
I shook hands
with them all, smiling and nodding.
“My colleagues
will be with us shortly,” Joseph said as we took our seats at the
round table. “Leila and I found ourselves ready a little earlier
than expected.”
“Not to worry.”
Deacon waved to a waitress. “We’ve been catching up for the last
half an hour. Things start pretty early around here. Coffee? I
think they do breakfast tea here too–isn’t that what you guys
drink?”
I laughed. “Not
enough caffeine. Coffee, please. And thank you.”
“I like this.”
Elise gestured to my bag. “Mulberry?”
“I wish.” I
sighed. “A London brand.”
“I remember
being a trainee. The first thing I bought with my fully qualified
paycheck was a satchel from Louis Vuitton.”
“Ooh. Very
nice.”
“It was a bit
tasteless, actually.” She shoved shiny brown hair back in handfuls
as she giggled. “I’ve moved on from there. How long until you can
buy real Mulberry?”
“A month or
so.” Why did I feel like I was counting chicks before eggs had
hatched? “To be honest, I’ll probably blow most of it on
rock-and-roll things like rent.”
She cocked an
eyebrow at me. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”
I glanced at
Joseph; he and Deacon were already immersed in conversation. They
had evidently spoken before.
Kenji pushed a
menu in my direction. “Would you like to look?”
He had a shy,
restrained way about him; the kind of man who measures his words at
the office, then gets drunk and lets loose like a firecracker after
a sniff of gin. I had learned to spot his type–among others–in my
other
job.
Usually, I
encountered them after the gin.
“Thank you.”
Waking up with Joseph had put my hormones on the warpath. I shot
Kenji a teasing smile that made him blush from collar to hairline,
and then I shivered in wicked abandon.
Sadie, Joseph’s
assistant, appeared in the doorway, and Yves, Poppy and Matt filed
in behind. I waved them over and Joseph made more introductions.
Matt took a seat where he could neither touch nor look at me. The
nerves that had grown between us were flayed after his outburst
last night.
You should be ashamed of yourself
, he’d said.
I offered you my money and you still made your choice.
A few
days ago, we had knotted fingers beneath a table just like this.
Rubbed ankles and bumped knees.
“Sleep well?”
Sadie asked.
I tried not to
look sheepish. “More or less. How about you?”
She eyeballed a
rather disgruntled, hungover Yves. “Some of the time.”
Full of nervous
energy, Poppy squirmed in her seat. “This menu is ridiculous. It’s
for breakfast and it’s about five pages long.”
“It’s an
important meal,” Kenji said.
“In the UK, it
mostly consists of bacon sandwiches,” Matt said wistfully. “Or
porridge. For pansies.”
Elise grinned
at him. “Pansies. I like it.”
Poppy wrinkled
her nose. “Why would anybody eat an egg white omelette? Surely it’s
the yolk that makes it an omelette and not a big pile of
congealed–”
“I’m sure it’s
lovely,” I cut in. “Different strokes and all that.”
I ordered
pancakes with fruit, and a foamy latte. Newspapers rustled, people
wriggled out of suit jackets as they began to sweat beneath their
shirts. I liked the ambiance here. I liked breakfast being an event
rather than a rain-soaked Starbucks.