Breaking Joseph (33 page)

“I can’t
believe you didn’t trust me.”

“Leila. Can you
blame me? You have a habit of surrounding yourself with people who
have…conflicting interests.” He pressed his lips together. “For
what it’s worth, I did trust you. For a while.”

He was breaking
me from the inside, and I clutched at my elbows so that I might
stay together.

“So why am I
here?” I said. “Do you want to hear the whole sordid story?”

“No.”

I looked down,
embarrassed.

“Poppy,
yes?”

“And Isobel,” I
added.

He sat up, his
fingers flying into a tight knot. “Fuck. Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fuck.” He
frowned to himself, the charge of thought alight in his eyes. “I
should have guessed that. I’m sorry.”

“I’d have told
you if I could. They said we couldn’t be together if I wanted to
keep my secret.”

“Nobody knows
you’re here, Leila.” He patted the space on the bed, and it felt
strange to need permission to get close, let alone touch him. “At
least take your sodding coat off.”

I shrugged the
black pea coat off and draped it over a chair. He watched me as I
stalked over, taking in the seams on my stockings and the way the
skirt clung to my hips. Then he fell back a little on his hands,
instinctively making space for me in his lap.

It wasn’t my
fault that I filled it without thinking.

I sank down, my
knickers mashing over his crotch and warmth blossoming from the
lock it morphed to. My knees stuck to his hips. I wound my arms
around his neck, and now I could press my face into the hollows and
come home to the lemony scent there. He kneaded at my buttocks,
nudging my chin with his nose until his mouth found mine.

I remembered
how he devoured as much as he kissed. I was served on a plate to
him and cut to pieces; he still wanted me, fragmented. It made me
easier to chew.

“God, I’ve
missed you,” he murmured, his fist working into my hair.

“I’ve…I’ve
missed you too.” It wasn’t the word I needed to say–or hear–but I
couldn’t be the one to let go first. Not now.

His wolf had
never been such a cannibal. He tossed me onto my back, his knee
jerking between my thighs so I was outspread and vulnerable. I let
him pin my wrists above my head.

“Why am I
here?” I repeated, my teeth gritting as he bit the smooth flesh
beneath my upper arm.

“Do you need to
be told?”

“It’s all so
fucked, Joe.” The last word edged into a cry as he bit harder,
deeper.

“I’ll take care
of it.” He dragged his tongue along my collarbone. “All of it.
They’ll be shitting barbed wire when I’m done with them. Shh.”

I wanted to
obey him, I did. But it was impossible to relax when all my plans
suddenly hovered in the air, cocking their eyebrows at me.

“Joe.” I arched
away from him. “Can we stop a minute?”

He cupped my
cheek. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Leila?”

“I don’t
understand.” I lowered my eyes. “I thought I was never going to see
you again.”

He rolled onto
his side and peered down at me. “I told you, we’ll work something
out.”

“But I’m
moving,” I said, “I’m moving on Saturday. I’ll be a hundred miles
away–”

“No, you won’t.
We’ll sort something here. I’ve got plenty of contacts.” He smiled,
confused. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

“Me either.” I
had longed for this, had lost hope for it, but now his offer seemed
incomplete. “I’m not sure why you’re asking me to stay.”

“Don’t you want
to?”

“Of course I
do. But why did you call me here like this? Why didn’t you just
phone, or visit me at home?” I asked.

“I wasn’t sure
you’d want to talk to me,” he said stiffly.

“You doubt your
own arts of persuasion, do you? Why is everything with you just a
big business transaction?” I regretted the words as soon as I said
them, but there they were, clawing their way toward him.

“You didn’t
come to me. I would have helped. I thought…I thought we were in a
place where you would do that.”

“You’re asking
me to change all my plans and the most you can say is that you
missed
me,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s a gamble I can
take.”

“I see.”

“The way you
pursued me…I just don’t get it. This is the best you can do?”

When I knew
that I loved him, an apple smacked me about the face. I didn’t care
where it was headed, whether I was the target intended in the first
place; I just knew. And I liked the bruise it left.

Now, watching
him shift about in the hotel room lamp light, I realized that I’d
always thought the apple would catch him too. I hadn’t been waiting
to fall in love; I’d been waiting for him to love me. I did need
it. I used to treat men like mirrors and whatever I felt bounced
off, seemed pretty–but he wasn’t that polished. He was rock paper
scissors, living for the battle, and I felt so small in that moment
that I wasn’t sure I could ever be victory enough.

“You were the
one who shut me out. What is it that you want, exactly?” He crossed
his arms about his chest, moved sideways; we were apart in more
ways than one.

“If you have to
ask, it’s pointless anyway.” I slid forward and stood up, brushing
the creases from my dress. “I think I’m done negotiating. I’m sorry
you can’t make your
acquisition
.”

Then he was
behind me, my wrist squashed in his palm.

“Neither of us
signed up for this.” These words hurt him. “I’m doing the best I
can.”

I tugged my
flesh from his, trembling in the knowledge I was that brave. That
stupid. I felt like the silly little girl expecting candlelight and
roses…and yet he had given me those, once.

Was it so
ungrateful to need three words?

“It’s not
enough,” I said, shaking my head so that he wouldn’t notice my
reddening eyes. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged
helplessly. “Leila. You know what I am.”

I paused as I
went to open the door. “I know. It was you who said we could make
new rules, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t have
an answer; just a sad, defeated stare.

Even in the
safety of my own bedroom, I couldn’t cry.

Chapter 19

“So that’s it,
then.” Aidan’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “Death to the
Marquis.”

“Off with his
head.” The irony was bitter on my tongue.

“That surprises
me. I don’t know why.” Aidan paused over the box of clothes he was
helping to pack. “He didn’t seem the type to just roll over.”

“He’s not, Aid.
He just…he doesn’t love me.”

“Tosser.” He
snorted.

“It’s for the
best, right?” I wasn’t convincing myself, let alone him. “Everyone
said he was bad for me.”

“It’s for the
best if he wanted something different,” Aidan said slowly.
“Lei-Lei, are you all right?”

The roar of
tape split the air as I fastened another box. “I’m okay. Yeah. I
mean, I can’t lose something if I never had it to begin with.”

Aidan grimaced.
“If you’re still in the phase where you apply that kind of drivel,
you’re in need of a stiff drink.” He paused, looking wistful.
“Stiff something, anyway. I’m sure Matt would oblige if you won’t
let me.”

I succumbed to
an exasperated laugh. “I’m aware of what he would oblige,
cheers.”

“You’ve got to
hand it to him, though.” Aidan clicked his fingers comically. “He
took care of business.”

“Yeah.” I
hauled my shoeboxes out of the wardrobe and began checking their
contents. “And coincidentally, he took care of it so that we’d be
together twenty-four hours a day.”

“Ahh, so he
did. Deus Ex Mattina. I like it.” He eyed me over the heap of
shoes. “He
could
have just said, ‘Screw the bitch. She
deserves everything she gets.’”

“I know, I
know. I’m being horribly ungrateful.”

“I’m going with
melodramatic succubus, but that works too,” he chirped.

“It’s just…ugh.
He can be so patronizing, going on about how I need to get away
from London and the agency. He doesn’t say that about you.”

“I wish he
would, though.” Aidan grasped his hands together in an act of
prayer. “It might mean he’d finally fuck me.”

I rolled my
eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Are you sure
moving in with him is a good idea, then? If you’re this annoyed by
him?” He folded a shirt with crisp efficiency. “Now you’ve got that
money, and all…”

“I’ve been
thinking about this, but I have to start on Monday and I’ll never
find a place before then. I’ll get on it as soon as I can,
though.”

In truth, I’d
barely thought on what I’d change my specialism to, let alone
whether or not I should take Matt’s room. I had been trying to
exorcise a certain ghost but he just hung around like a wickedly
good smell.

“Are you taking
all your, erm, implements to Matt’s?” Aidan emerged from a drawer
holding a suede flogger aloft. “Because this is pretty. I would
happily look after it for you.”

I snatched,
using it to swat his buttocks. He grinned at me and offered himself
up again.

“It’s going
into storage. I can’t give away my toys.” I dumped a pile of coat
hangers on the bed. “Aid. Do you think I should give him another
chance?”

“Matt?” He
looked at me as if I’d suggested murder. “Fuck, no. You’d destroy
him. Even he knows that. You two are like a twelve-inch dildo–it’s
a tempting idea but logistically, it’s just not going to
happen.”

Inwardly, I
sighed with relief that somebody agreed with me.

“No, you’re
right. We’re different people. We don’t want the same things.”

“D’you know
what the weird thing is? In about ten, fifteen years, he will want
them. He fucked you with the Marquis and he liked it. He paid and
he liked it. He bruised you and he liked it. He is so headed that
way.”

“What?”

Aidan paused to
swig from a bottle of Lucozade, and orange light splayed across the
wall as the sun hit the colored plastic. “Let me tell you how
Mattman’s life is going to pan out, Lei-Lei.” He made a theatrical
swoop of the hands. “In a couple of years, he’s going to marry a
moderately attractive girl who’s all right at oral, but only when
she’s drunk. They’ll have two-point-four kids–I don’t know how the
point four works, maybe one’s retarded–”

“Aidan!” I
tried not to laugh.

“Anyway. He’s
going to have his nice domestic life and it’ll be enough, because
he thinks it should be. He’ll be writing sad little songs about
monotony and depression, but he’ll hide them from vanilla wife
because she’ll think singing in a band is a waste of time when he
could be mowing the lawn or painting the fucking utility. Then
he’ll turn forty and realize that his hard-on isn’t going to go
away until he fucks a proper deviant, and perhaps the only way to
get rid of all this ridiculous self-torture is to take it out on
the arse of a lovely young filly with a suede flogger.” He brought
my nine tails down on a suitcase with a crisp swish.

“That’s…depressingly possible.”

Is that what
I’d seen in him that first night, the person he wasn’t ready to
become? He had the silhouette of a wolf then; the cub cast a larger
shadow in the glow of the lamp.

“Yep. He’s
going to have the mother of all midlife crises and that’s when
he’ll come looking for his long-lost Leila. Then you’ll have a
short-lived, sordid affair where he gets to do all the things he
couldn’t quite get past his Madonna-whore complex for this time
around.” He gave a knowing tut. “I fuck these men all the
time.”

“You think me
and Matt will get back together when we’re forty? You do realize
that if he thought he’d end up anything like his mum, he’d be
slitting his wrists?”

“Can you
imagine? Dear Mattman, your future is full of bitter misery.
There’s only one way out–start sucking cock.”

“Have a bit
more faith in him than that. It’s not like he’s unaware of how he
deals with things.”

I did want Matt
to be happy. I just wasn’t arrogant enough to think I was the
source of all his displeasure–I was a twisted symptom and I
wouldn’t be the only one, in the end.

Unfortunately.

I reached the
brown Louboutin box at the bottom of my wardrobe and paused to
stroke the lid. Teasing it off, I checked that the scarlet-soled
heels were still inside. It was then that I noticed I’d tucked all
the cards Joseph had given me into the tissue paper.

Soon,
read the last one. It felt oddly prophetic.

“Lei-Lei. Are
you listening to me?”

I shoved the
cards back in hurriedly. “Hmm?”

“I said, are
you keeping this torn-up old dress?” He shook out a handful of blue
satin and I shivered–I could practically feel it on my skin.
Charlie’s dress; Joseph’s massacre.

“Yes.” I took
it from him and rolled it between my fingers. “Yes.”

“What the fuck
happened to it?” He broke into a sly grin. “Did you play rape games
without me?”

“Not exactly,”
I mumbled.

“Good, because
then I’d have to sulk.”

* * * *

By Tuesday
evening, the flat was packed. I suppose that’s what happens when
you have little else to do. I’d had one brief outcall, a trip to
put myself on the Mulberry waiting list and an appointment at the
bank to put my money some place high interest and fabulous. I
know–boo fucking hoo, eh?

Wednesday
brought something I wasn’t expecting: a brisk phone call from
Sadie. Apparently, there was paperwork I needed to sign at the
office. I had been working so hard to forget Bach and Dagier;
researching my new company in Salisbury, pouring the contents of my
life into cardboard squares. Trying not to think about Joseph. Now
I had to face both, along with Poppy’s smirking mug–Matt had left
on Monday so I wouldn’t even have an ally.