Forbidden: A Standalone (28 page)

I should have been relieved that you remembered.

But I wasn’t.

There are things I’ve known about you from the minute we met. And I tried to power through. I regret that. There are horses you can train. Wild horses. The stallions you think will never have a rider. I’ve had two of those, and they’ll only let me ride them, but they’re not broken. They’re not docile. Not really. Each and every one will turn on me if they can. Once you’re wild, you’re always wild.

You have no idea why you stabbed me, but I’m going to tell you.

You hate me. I’m an easy guy to hate. You’re not alone. I get off on your pain. I get off on dominating you. You’re small, and I’m in charge. Your goal is to please me, and that makes me feel good. I loved you because you hurt worse than any of the others. And now I know why.

Don’t resist the ropes. They get tighter when you do. You know that. And don’t argue when you model. I’m telling you this when you’re knotted for a reason. Look at you, trying to shake your head. You’ll rip your hair out to deny it. Stop it and listen.

Everything I’ve done to you goes against your nature. You don’t fight it because you truly hate yourself. I can’t cure that. Not with love or domination. So when you broke, you didn’t really break. Not the way a real sub does. You got confirmation that you were right. I don’t do that. I don’t play with confusion. But I did, and it ends now. There are new rules. I’ll take you and do what I want to you because you like it, but we have a new understanding, you and I.

You’re not submissive, Fiona.

fiona

I am so.

What the fuck are you talking about? We’ve been doing this for how long? You’ve been beating me raw, watching your friends fuck me, tying me into uncomfortable positions and showing me off. What the hell is that if not submissive?

B
ut I couldn’t argue outside my head. I couldn’t talk because he had a bit gag around my head, and my head pointing down at exactly the right angle to let my drool form a neat little puddle.

What the fuck was this?

Deacon, you get in front of me where I can see you.

You let me talk.

You son of a bitch.

I hate you.

He pushed me, and I swung, splayed like Peter Pan. I’d been glad he tied me with my clothes on so I could somehow hide what Warren had done to me, but now I didn’t want to be tied at all. I wanted to run away. Somewhere.

“I love you, Kitten,” he said. “And I’m sorry I tied you up to say this. But I need you to hear it, and I need your defenses down.”

I screamed in my throat, but I couldn’t move. This was such a shitty thing. The shittiest of shitty things. And again, in every way, I’d consented to it. I’d asked for this shit. Begged even. I couldn’t be mad at him even though I was. He really thought he was doing what was best for me. And fuck him.

He kneeled in front of me so I could see him.

I said something through the gag that I hoped sounded like, “Fuck you.” He pulled it down.

“Is this your shitty way of dumping me?” I spit out.

“See? Not submissive.” He held up his finger. “You
enjoy
being sexually dominated. You only
require
someone else’s control outside play, in the world. And this, I missed because I wanted you.”

He didn’t look half as upset as I felt. He looked like he always looked, as if he’d figured it all out and was just laying out the obvious.

“Get away from me,” I said through my teeth.

“You’re still mine.” He was gentle enough to soothe, and firm enough to assure me.

“I don’t know what that means right now.”

“This is not my shitty way of dumping you. It’s a way of redefining what we are.”

“You need a sub.”

He tsked and shook his head slightly. “I need to dominate, and I need you. But you don’t
need
to submit sexually. Do you understand the difference?”

“I understand,” I started as if I was agreeing, then I flipped it, “that the world is full of people telling me what I need and what I don’t. You know what I need? I need someone else to get me down. I have to pee.”

I didn’t have to pee, but I wanted to be down, away, out of this room, and away from him and his fucking definitions. I already found Laurel Canyon oppressive, and the ropes around my body only reminded me of Westonwood strait jackets.

“Debbie can get you down,” he said, standing. He kissed me on the mouth and strode out the door, his ass a perfect oval, stirring desire through my anger and confusion.

He closed the door behind him. Ten seconds later, it opened, and Debbie came in. She wore black jeans and a red shirt with three buttons undone. She was younger than me, but decades beyond me.

I must have been crying, because she took a red silk kerchief out of her pocket and wiped my cheeks.

“He hasn’t been himself,” she said.

She put her arms around me and held me as the ropes loosened and I fell. Debbie was my friend and more. She was a rock, a counselor. She put things in perspective even if I never listened to her. So I let her hold me, and she did it with affection and sincerity.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“I have every confidence you’ll figure it out. Be patient with yourself.”

“Your hair smells nice.”

“Willem is here,” Debbie said.

“Ugh.”

“He was a great help while Deacon was laid up.”

Before I could articulate why I had to grunt at the sound of his name, Willem appeared. Deacon’s younger brother was a solid muscular mass of what Dad would call distemper. I’d just call him a cranky asshole.

And as he stood in the doorway with his arms folded and a sour face from here to the LA River, my opinion wasn’t changed. His hair was shorter than it had to be, as if he’d wanted to chop it off as an act of defiance. His eyes were as blue as Deacon’s, but colder, sharper, scarier to everyone but the few of us who thought he needed an attitude adjustment.

“Hello, Willem.”

His feet, in worn cowboy boots, were set far apart, knees locked, jeans rubbed-in with South African farm dirt. He got laid a lot because of his looks, but it was always a short-term thing.

“He might forgive you, but I don’t,” Willem said.

“Thanks for bringing that up. You can go home now.”

Rather than go home, he strode in, heels clopping on the hardwood. His hair was lighter than Deacon’s and his beard was a short growth of copper. “You bring shame on this family. You’re dangerous. You can’t control yourself. You’re a child. A goddamn child.”

Even without having been knotted ten minutes earlier, and even without Deacon having said terrible things to me and walking out, his words would have hurt me. I could tolerate being called a whore and a party animal. I didn’t mind if someone called me stupid, but his thinking of me as a child hurt. Hurt bad.

“You’re a bore, Willem. No wonder you can’t keep a woman.”

“That’s enough,” Debbie said in her Dominant voice. Willem wouldn’t recognize the tone, but I did. “Will, Mary set out lunch for you. You should eat it.”

I saw his conflicting emotions. He was compelled to obey, but he had more to say. He turned his body halfway to the door and looked at me as if he didn’t want to lose so definitively.

“I don’t deserve his forgiveness,” I said. “I’ll be around later if you want to yell at me more.”

He huffed and walked out. We watched him go. Once he was out, Debbie and I cleaned up the ropes together.

I caught myself doing something weird. Something that tied together two parts of a disconnected story. I was walking the Laurel Canyon property, trying to do it straight so I didn’t look like a rape victim, and as I looped the ropes into tight spirals, I had a fantasy.

In the fantasy, I told Elliot what Warren had done.

I told him straight and strong. I told him about my pain, physical and emotional. About where denying consent had gotten me. I told him I didn’t feel like it was my fault. That I’d been clear. That I felt all right with myself about it. Fiona didn’t blame Fiona. I blamed Warren and wanted to put my fist in his ass.

I fantasized that he understood. That he didn’t get mad. He didn’t try to wreak vengeance. He didn’t act like a therapist, and he didn’t act like a man on a mission. He took me in his arms and told me it was all right. That my reaction was normal. That my body would heal some day, but it would take time and I could be okay with that.

He kissed me in that fantasy, as he’d kissed me in so many. But I’d just been knotted, and my emotions were open and raw, and the effect of my imagination was sharp and strong. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I froze, because I could taste him. My lips shaped themselves against his, and his want was real and deep, man to woman.

“Fiona?” Debbie said.

An idea was fixing in my brain, slowly with every fantasy, that it could happen. That he’d allow it. That I’d accept it. That I could be the adult Elliot had faith existed and not the fuckup Deacon accepted.

Debbie caught the ropes as they dropped from my hands. “What happened to you?”

I shook off the crust of Elliot, but not the core.

“I’m fine,” I said, convincing myself I could muddle through. “Just fine. I have a shoot tomorrow with Irving Wittenstein. Can you imagine? It was scheduled six months ago, and I’m back just in time. It’s crazy how things get back to normal. The machine keeps turning no matter what.”

I smiled. She looked at me long and hard. She didn’t believe me, and as much as I wasn’t supposed to care what she thought, I realized I did care a great deal.

Two years earlier

fiona

N
umber Two Maundy stank of sex, and though there was low ambient music, I heard the cries and moans of people in pleasure and pain. Thwacks. Pops. The whoosh of a whip in the air and the hick of it meeting flesh. I’d done it all before, but there was something new about that night. I crossed my legs under the table and fidgeted with my soda, clicking the ice around until the edges were gone.

My friend Ahmed and I had gone to the Dome in New York a few times. We’d rented a couch and a Mistress had led a girl to me on a leash. She’d knelt before me, and I opened my legs to her. I called her a good little bitch when she licked my cunt, and I came good and hard. But I’d felt like a visitor even after the Mistress kissed me on the mouth.

I didn’t feel like an observer on Maundy. I wasn’t looking in the window. I wasn’t an honored guest but a piece in a puzzle. I only had to be snapped into place.

In front of me, across a narrow marble strip, crouched a naked woman on all fours. Her hair was tied in a neat bun, and her back was planar under the weight of a man’s feet as he reclined on the grey couch. She didn’t move, even when the sole of one shoe pushed on her, leveraging against her as if she were a coffee table.

He put his iced drink between her shoulder blades. No coaster. She winced from the cold but didn’t even look as he turned to the second woman kneeling before him. She wore garters and had pink hair and tattoos.

He put his finger down Pink Hair’s throat. She took it. All the way down. He thrust his finger into her repeatedly, fucking her mouth with his hand. He wore a suit, but he wasn’t Deacon.

Master
Deacon Tiffany had called him. Suited him. I wasn’t surprised.

I sat alone, riveted by the coffee-table woman. Tiffany had walked away seconds ago, after walking me through and seating me. I’d seen all the trappings before: the straps in the walls, the hooks in the ceilings, the wooden Xs between the windows that overlooked Los Angeles.

“What do you see?”

I spun around to see Deacon standing by my side. I’d only seen him sitting in the front seat of his car. He was gorgeous when he stood. Tall. Straight. Shoulders in a dark suit tapering to a slim waist. Shirt open a few buttons. Tooled leather belt with a buckle shaped into two twisted feathers.

“A lot.”

“May I sit?”

“It’s your party.”

He sat. To my left, someone came with a grunt and a cry. I couldn’t even look, he was so gorgeous. So self-assured. He had confidence where most men had no more than their cocks.

“I don’t usually come downstairs, but Tiffany said you were here. She said you came with a friend.”

“She left.”

He nodded. The light from the little table lamp brought out the hard precision of his face. The short beard, the scar on his cheek, the one on his beautiful upper lip. His tongue flicked out, licking his lip so quickly I barely remembered it happening. “What do you do, Miss Drazen?”

“Like, for a living?”

“If you want to call it that.”

I shrugged. “I’m seen. I get paid to wear things people want me to wear. Or get photographed. Otherwise I have plenty to live off.”

“Who photographs you?”

“I have something with Irving Wittenstein on Wednesday.”

“Impressive.”

“Not really. I just go and smile. Look defiant. La-di-da.”

“You make people think of you for a living. You remind them you exist.”

I hadn’t ever thought of it like that, but something about it made me bristle. “I don’t care what they think.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

He didn’t believe me. I could see it on his superior grin. He’d believe it soon enough.

“What do you do?” I asked. “Just the club?”

“I’m a photographer.” He’d only lied a little. He didn’t know me well enough to tell me what he really did.

We smiled at each other then. Stupid thing. To find a connection between his job and mine. I met Hollywood people all the time and had more in common with them than I had with him, but I felt something click nonetheless.

“You’re watching this scene play out,” he said, pointing across the marble path.

Another man had joined the scene, kneeling in front of the coffee-table woman and unzipping his pants. He was in his twenties, handsome, tattooed—what hipsters tried to be when hipsters tried to be rough.

“Yes.” I didn’t have more words, because the rough man put his cock in her mouth and pumped, looking elsewhere, and she couldn’t rock with him. Couldn’t spill the cold drink. I was a throbbing gushing mess, watching him fuck her face. My clit was a hard nodule, and I pressed my thighs together because it felt good.