Breaking Joseph (21 page)

“But–but I’ve
never done this before, I…”

“I like that.”
He edged back to the bucket seat and sank down. “Breaking you
in.”

I took deep
breaths. Forgot the pain that pricked me. In the scrape of light
that spilled from the doorway, I studied the scalpel that sat so
neatly between my finger and thumb: slight, steel, ribbed along the
handle. A smooth triangle of a blade that curved inward along the
edges, tapering to a whisper of serration. Just enough menace to
cause my hand to tremble.

Charlotte
gasped in the giddy haze of lust.

“See.” He
cocked his head. “I think you like this present more than the
shoes.”

“Not if you’re
going to fuck me with it.” I said it before I could help myself,
and he laughed at the twisted horror of my brows.

“Leila. Come
here.”

I followed his
gesture, knelt beside him on the floor while he flicked on a lamp.
Fearful of dropping it in my ever-sweaty palm, I laid the knife on
the carpet. “What do you want me to do?”

He leaned to
cup my chin. “What would you like to do?”

“What if I
catch an artery or something? Or I go too deep? I don’t know, I
don’t want…ah…”

“I want to see
you mark me.” Joseph reached for the scalpel and pressed it back
into my grip. “And I think you’d like that, if you tried it. To see
my blood on your fingers.” He bit his lip. “I made a pretty pattern
on your back…it’s my turn.”

In time, I’d
expected the knife to come out again, seduced by the flat canvas of
my belly. I might have even hoped for it. But I never guessed he’d
want the favour returned, that he’d let me play God with his skin.
Breath burned in my throat at the thought.

“Where?” I
managed.

He sat back in
the chair and drew a fingertip across his belly. “Here’s good. Or…”
He stroked the vague protrusion of bone at his hip. “Here.”

I caressed the
same spot, drummed the flesh to check for the lithe spring of veins
beneath. “Like a pattern? Or words. A symbol. What?”

“Up to you.” He
winked. “You’re the artist.”

Joseph was the
most fearful of teachers. He never warned of an exam–just thrust it
upon me–and he expected homework that he didn’t take the time to
ascribe. I was like him in many ways, but not once had I stared at
his body and imagined the designs I’d paint in blood. Even when
he’d done it to me that night in New York, it wasn’t with a
scalpel. He scratched and grazed rather than cut so cleanly. Oh
God.

God.

I jerked up to
look at him. “Have you been cut before?” How, with whom, where?
Why?

“No. Or at
least…not because I asked for it.” He tucked stray curls behind my
ears. “Just no swastikas or lame little smileys, okay? If you do
this right, it’ll scar.”

My first
thought:
brand him with your name
. It scared me how easily
the notion materialized in my brain, letters carved in smoke and
clinging to saliva. Like I had a right to do it, like anyone did.
In an effort to be clean of the idea, I shifted my attention to his
cock, still stiff against his stomach and obscuring his navel. When
I dragged my tongue over the head, he groaned.

“Stop it.” He
tugged at my hair. “I
said
, stop it. Leila.”

I licked my
lips. Avoided his eyes, though I’m sure they were green as ever.
For long moments, I caressed the expanse of his belly with its
almost-tanned skin and brief skim of veins. There was little
softness to it, not like mine; just a thin gauze of fat over firm
muscle. I didn’t want to cut there.

He guided the
scalpel, still in my fist, back to the rise of his hipbone. A neat
wedge of flesh and sinew made an uneven crescent as it curved
above.
Here
. So it was. With a breath drawn from heavy air,
I bent to lick the spot, anoint it with a sucking kiss. He caressed
me as I prepared him, swirled fingertips in circles on my scalp.
His own breath came in short little jerks now. I sat at his feet
and tasted the blunt flat of the scalpel, an acolyte of his own
making.

“Are you sure?”
I whispered.

“Yeah.” He
caught my eye. “Are you?”

There was no
going back from a wound, a cut. No altering what became of me once
I turned Charlotte to a sculptress. The lash mark on my back stung,
made me quiver; why did he want this? Why did I? What power did he
have that I would go this far to please him?

All of this, it
made me so uncomfortable. And he knew it. That was the only reason
he asked me in the first place. That he would pretend I had the
power, that we’d dance like this…oh, oh.
You want me to use
this, but you know full well that I don’t need it to hurt
you.

But hurt didn’t
come into this. Pain did. Pain wasn’t the same.

I didn’t need
to give him an answer. Instead, I laid the blade tip just above his
skin, a mere centimetre between me and a new breed of lover. So
close.

“You won’t chop
me in half, if that’s what you’re frowning over,” he said. “Treat
it like a paintbrush. Stroke. It won’t go deep.”

I wanted to ask
how he knew that, but right then, words seemed a waste of
effort.

Stroke.

The first time,
I barely brushed him with the knife. A chalk-white graze appeared
and a flush bloomed either side, but a cut wouldn’t come. Still,
his breath quickened.

“Sweetheart. Be
brave.”

“I’m
trying.”

He gave a tut.
“Poor effort. Must try harder.”

“I’m holding a
knife, y’know.”

He grinned like
the villain stitched into him. “I know.”

I’d never
manage more than a scratch if I didn’t calm the shake of my hand or
the grate of my heartbeat. No more sketches in the air. Just
guts.

So I cut
him.

Oh fuck. The
rush as his skin parted as if invisible fingers peeled; the ooze of
glossy scarlet; the groan that escaped through his gritted teeth;
fuck. With the first line–first incision–done, I bit my lip so hard
just to find the composure to curve the line. The iron perfume of
his blood made me dizzy. I’d barely done half that second line when
I realized my fingers weren’t just warm, but wet, and that I could
barely see his skin for the oily map of crimson.

My hand
wobbled. He hissed in pain. Then the knife fell from my fingers and
I let out a pathetic whimper at the mess of red that caked us.

“I–I
can’t–”

“All
right.”

“But you’re
bleeding…”

“Yes. I know.”
He leaned forward with a grunt and peered at my haphazard design:
an L just two inches tall half framed his hip bone, a flourished
curve of a stem with a clumsy scrape of a foot. L for Leila. L for
lilac. L for law, and for lo…ah. “You are brave.”

Not to cut him,
but to brand him. Or both, perhaps.

Still…he liked
it. I saw it in his flicker of a smile, the pride that jumped from
his raised eyebrow. For a second, as we inspected my so-called
handiwork, I felt bound to him on a whole new level. Like we’d
found the gutter, split ourselves open and danced in the lava,
oblivious of burns.

He didn’t bleed
profusely, but blood wept from the lines enough to make me panic.
If he needed stitches, how the hell would he explain that to a
doctor? I groped around on the floor for something to clean him
with and blotted at the mess with a fistful of crumpled shirt.

“It’s okay.
It’s not bad.” He pulled my hand away. “Leila. Come here.” Weeks
ago, he’d watched me with Isobel from the same place, but now he
gestured to me, only me. It hurt to straddle him but as I slid
down, as I let him stretch me…I came home. I was wetter than I’d
noticed, primed by crimson, his clever fingers and his cruel lash,
and I coated his cock in slow little strokes. They were all I could
manage.

Joseph used my
hips for leverage as he thrust up into me. I loved how his pupils
dilated when he bottomed out, black eclipsing green, as if he was
possessed for a few seconds at a time–a hundred demons attempting
to dominate him and never winning, always smothered by heady sage.
Could he teach me to do that? Could we rip Charlotte from her cage
of bones and sinew to zip her into his eyeballs? She would feel at
home, there. She and Joseph saw the world the same way.

He rocked
against my clit and I was dizzy with the pleasure, blotting out the
pain. When he stroked my back, he withdrew with hands bloodied and
wiped them along my thighs in scarlet murals. It mingled with the
sticky mess of his hip. War paint. I wrapped my arms around his
neck, dug my fingers into his hair and let go of it all. The word
spilled over and over until my voice became a strained hymn, a
desperate prayer, and it was my orgasm that lifted it and propelled
it toward gods in a thousand different directions. I squealed as it
left me, as the pain infused me all over again and he made me work
so hard that I felt fresh blood trickling warm on my skin.

He clasped the
back of my head and tore me from the revelry for a kiss. I licked
the sweat from his brow as he recovered, stroked damp blond wisps
from his eyes, and noticed that he had let his hair grow a little
since we’d become involved. The wolf, it seemed, was clawing its
way out. We never made love, and we never really fucked anymore,
but oh, we cast spells and fought battles.

The light in
the bathroom was milky and pale, and the tiles glowed as the moon
sloshed through the window. In the shower, I braced myself against
the wall for a long time. He stroked the cold water across my
wounded back, murmuring soft words as I squeaked–the hurt no longer
underscored any pleasure and no numbing adrenaline soared in my
veins. Afterward, when he poured disinfectant over wads of gauze
and we took it in turns to tend each other, the pain was worse. I
made a hash job of sealing his cuts with white paper tape–he’d need
it looked at. It barely wept now, but looked raw all the same.

I found myself
in his bed, on my belly with a cool, damp towel over the welts. I
propped myself up on my arms to watch him read.

“Joe?”

“Mmm?”

“Will it take
long to clear up?”

He peered
beneath the towel, smiling faintly. “It looks a lot less angry.
Does it still hurt?”

There was a
faint sting as I shifted in experiment. “A bit.”

“You didn’t
bleed half as much as I did. I’d apologize, but…”

“But.” I kissed
his shoulder. “Shh.”

They felt
strange, those words. He had hurt me quite badly, told me I’d asked
for it, and a hundred chat show hosts bellowed in my ear that it
was wrong.

But.

I did ask for
it. Not with sounds. Like the plastic bouquet at the wedding, they
seemed like such a poor representation of the sentiment and the
power. No, my flesh had begged for it and my heart had yelped to be
purged. It wanted so badly to open up, but the scar tissue needed
defusing. It’s funny–I don’t remember anyone ever breaking my
heart, but maybe it wasn’t exempt from self-mutilation.

Joseph ran a
finger across my lips. “Smile for me.”

I obliged,
though I couldn’t scrape conviction.

“What’s wrong,
sweetheart? Did I fail to beat the misery out of you?” He rolled
his eyes just a little, and then I saw it: he loved the lash for
what it was. Chemical. He knew that I felt it and he wanted me to
see it that way.

Somewhere
within, the notion stirred that I might, soon. Because he asked for
it, revelled in it, loved it. There it was again, the l-word.
Ah.

“Do you think
we’ll be able to go out eventually and not have everyone stare like
we broke one of the Ten Commandments?” I sighed.

“None of it
bothered me.”

“I overheard
Matt bitching about us with his brother–”

“He’s sore
because you dumped him, Leila. He’ll get over it. You did an honest
thing.”

“And then Poppy
and Isobel were all cosy in the corner, glaring at us with these
big cat eyes,” I complained.

“If they had
big eyes, it was probably from all the coke.” He tittered to
himself and then appeared to stiffen.

“Um. What?”

“Pretend I
didn’t say that.”

“Hardly
very…proper of you,” I managed. “She never seemed like–I mean,
either of them–”

“This is the
City. You’ll learn.” He patted my head. “There aren’t many prissy
girls like you and Elise left.”

I grinned. “I’m
not prissy.” Hardly felt like it.

“You know what
I mean. Still. You two made a lovely couple earlier.”

“Oh, you liked
that?” I lay on my arms again, suddenly very coy.

“Of course I
liked it. What surprised me was that apparently, so did she.”

I brought the
fingers that had toyed with her pussy up to his mouth, and knowing,
he sucked on them. “She wanted to go further. Alone, though.”

“God. That
would have been something.” He bit my finger. “Poor Ken was about
to combust.”

“I’ll be
surprised if she can walk in the morning.”

“Will you be
able to?”

I wriggled.
Sharp heat danced over broken skin. “I’ll manage.” I closed my eyes
for a moment, sinking into the pillow. “Joe, will you call me a cab
before I fall asleep?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous. You’re not going anywhere in that state. Besides.” He
nuzzled at my hair. “Thought you’d stay with me tonight.”

“My best friend
is waiting at home,” I said. “I promised her I’d be back. She’s
having a really tough time right now.”

“Really?”

“She’s
splitting up with her bloke. They were together for ages. Poor
Clemmie…she’s really upset, Joe.” I was fighting to keep my eyes
open.

“You’ve got
clothes here, it’ll be fine. Let me take care of it.” His voice
loomed from far, far away.

“What d’you
mean…?”

“Shh. Sleep
tight, now.”

I succumbed to
the dark.