Holding The Cards (21 page)

"I realized we had gotten away from what it was that had brought us together and now it was all about sex. That night felt better, though," he added wistfully. "It was more like us again. I had my arm around her, and through most of dinner, she cuddled against me and seemed happy with me, like she was pleased with me, and that felt good. It had been awhile since I'd felt that way."

Hadn't it been so similar for her, never feeling as if she had pleased Jonathan, always anxious, on edge, not caring about career or personal identity any longer, too keyed up to think about the destructiveness of it? It shamed her to think of it now, how she signed herself over to him, who she was, with barely a murmur or qualm. It was also frightening how she had done it, with no real sense of having done so. She had just hungered for acceptance, self affirmation, because she lost the ability to give that to herself. She had let Jonathan take it away. She and Josh, two insecure people with low self-esteem, uncovered and stripped bare by two people who needed to degrade them to feel worthwhile themselves.

It was pathetically formulaic and painful to see the mirror, but she was strong enough to look. She held the cards now, and had been holding them, since she became true to herself again and said the words that made Jonathan walk away. Now she just had to figure out what the winning hand would be for Josh.

"Tell me what she did." Her spike heel slid against his instep, depressed slightly, just enough to cause another slight red mark, a warning. "Don't keep me waiting, Josh."

The threat laced into the warm promise was a potent mix. His erection, waning a bit from the fluctuation of his emotions, jumped, began to swell so the straps bit into the tender skin again, and he groaned at the discomfort.

She knew the torture of desolation and desire mixed. It tore the senses apart and the shields down. She hoped he didn't need a further push. Marcus was a still presence somewhere to the left of her, and she could feel his tension.

"We left the restaurant," he said after awhile. "I had my arm wrapped around her. She nuzzled against me, then took my hand, pulling me into the shadows between two buildings so we could embrace. She was shy almost, where any other time she might have begged me into the alley in broad daylight and pleaded with me to use her where anyone could walk by at any moment and see her. But she wanted tenderness, and it…God, it was wonderful. I practically swallowed her, pushing her back against the bricks, but just to kiss her, hold her, feel her holding me.

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"I didn't think about how unsafe it was where we were. I was supposed to protect her, and I didn't even think about it. Something came at me out of the shadows. I was so stupid, not thinking about how we were in a not-so-great an area, though the restaurant was a nice enough one. Letting her pull me into an alley, for Chrissakes, and I was supposed to take care of her…" his lips curled in a sneer of self-loathing so bitter Lauren could taste it on her own tongue.

"There were three men. They tore us apart and two of them grabbed me, knocked me around a bit, but mainly forced us deeper into the alley, forced me to my knees and held me there while the other one shoved her onto her back in the filth of that alley and yanked up her skirt. He hit her in the face, split her lip…"

He pressed his head back against the cross, his jaw clenching. Lauren didn't move, fighting every urge she had to keep from touching him in comfort or speak soothing words. The wound wasn’t open yet.

Blood had to be free flowing for it to cleanse itself.

"She was crying, crying my name as he rammed into her. And I lost it. She belonged to me. I was supposed to take care of her, but, no, no, NO. That's not it."

Lauren watched, her own eyes anguished, as moisture trickled from under the mask, curved under his jaw. His voice became brutal, unforgiving.

"For the first few minutes, I didn't even try to do anything, because I was getting hard watching them do it. I was getting off on it, because it was so much like what we did. She liked the rape scenes."

Lauren shifted, her eyes locking with Marcus's.

"I was fucking enjoying it, as if I was watching a Dom get rough with her to torture me, for not being enough. And," his voice broke, "I thought…she's finally…finally getting what she deserves." He choked on a sob. "I fucking
thought
that, I remembered that like I was some kind of diseased redneck wifebeater. It was that, not her being raped, that tore it loose inside me. I lost it."

A quiver ran through his shoulders, a tensing like a cramp.

"Josh —"

"No," his face contorted. "Let me feel it. I deserve it. I became filled with so much rage; ten guys couldn't have held me. I rolled and kicked. I fought them with whatever I had inside of me, three years of unfulfilled passion, fueled up emotional fucked-upness. When I yanked the guy off her, I remember his eyes going wide, looking at my face, and he tried to say something, but I busted his mouth with my fist before he could. I was sticky, sticky, spraying blood on her, and then she was on my back, trying to pull me off, and then the police were there…the police were there."

He stopped, breathing hard, tears dropping off his chin onto his heaving chest. Lauren shifted, rose.

"Don't take it off," he snapped out. "I don't want you to see my face."

"Okay," she said softly, laying her hand against the side of his jaw.

"Don't," he tried to jerk away, but the bindings didn't allow it. "I don't want you to touch me."

"Well, that's just too bad, because I'm going to." She rubbed her hand along his jaw, stroked, kept
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stroking as her other hand laid along his rib cage, soothing the ulcer of emotions.

"Please," he choked out. "I'm not…that's not all of it."

Lauren raised her head and she sensed his eyes searching for her face. She nodded, stepped back and let him hear her sit before him again. "Tell me all of it, Josh," she said sternly, though her throat ached with his pain.

"One of the guys was critical." His voice was weary now, almost dead. "The other was pretty messed up. I had just knocked the third out. The messed-up one was still coherent enough to talk, and he did, because he didn't want to go to jail for rape, especially since he wasn't a rapist." Josh swallowed, and his voice broke.

"He was just doing what my wife had paid him to do."

Cold insinuated itself in her vitals like a doctor's invasive instrument. "Josh," she whispered. "Oh God, Josh."

Abandoning anything but her feelings, she sprang up and removed the mask, unbuckling it and pulling it off so she could see his anguished face. He turned eyes to hers that were overflowing not just with tears, but the black despair she had detected in small doses since they had met. Was it really less than two days ago? She snatched up a towel, wiped away his tears, blotted his running nose with tender fingers.

"Don't untie me," he said quietly. Marcus stopped in mid-motion. "I don't deserve the consideration."

He leaned his head back, closed those hopeless eyes. "I didn't know that at first," he murmured. "They separated us. She told the police everything," his eyes opened, went back to Lauren, his chosen confessor, and the detachment in his eyes stirred her, so at odds with his exposed physical condition.

"She didn't want her friends to go to jail, or me. When the cops came in and started asking me questions about our… lifestyle, it floored me. Where the hell had that come from? Then I looked at their eyes and knew.

"It was a fucking game. A game she had engineered. She wanted to get off on me being helpless while she was raped, which of course wasn't rape. I didn't tell them anything, didn't make any attempt to defend myself. I wasn't protecting her or them, I just couldn't speak. Everything shut down and I was just inside my head, looking over our whole relationship, everywhere we had taken it, a spiral to hell. We kept going round and round the same subject that fascinated us, deeper and deeper into what had resulted in that dark alley. The police, the way they looked at us. The sick fantasies of bored yuppies while people got robbed or murdered out there, real crimes.

"One of them considered me a lowlife, perverted freak and it was obvious he considered the whole situation a waste of the taxpayer's money. Probably thought they should just shoot the lot of us. The other was more sympathetic, but it was all pity. He had this look, like I was some guy who had been sexually abused as a child, to explain why I was so fucked up now. Like I was some lost little kid that needed a mommy to take me home. And then she showed up to do just that."

Lauren wasn't sure he was even in the room with them anymore; his gaze was so far deep into himself.

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She could feel Marcus suffering, they both were, but Josh was not going to stop until it was done, now that it was out in the open.

The muscle in his jaw clenched. "Her eyes were shadowed and bruised, her lip split. She looked a little scared by it all. I don't know for sure. I was so messed up that night, I couldn't have said what she was feeling. She got me to the car, started to say something, I don't know what. I just handed her the keys, walked away, didn't look back. I felt like a worthless, dirty piece of shit. Everything shut down, you understand?" His head turned toward Marcus, focused. "I called you.

"When I got home," he said dully, "I stank of blood, sweat, the jail cell, and my own shame. Winona came over, of course. She followed me into my room, closed the door. We looked at each other then, and for just a moment, I had this pathetic glimmer of hope. There were tears in her eyes, and she was trembling. I thought, for just a second, she knows just as I do, that we went too far a long time ago. I cared about her. I didn't have much more than sex with her, but there was a basic attraction between us that could have been more. For just a second, I thought we were about to step on the right side of the line. Then she knelt in front of me and asked me to punish her.

"Jesus," he shook his head, "The rage just took over, and I couldn't control it. I threw her out of the apartment. When I was dragging her, she pushed against me, and her nipples were hard. It turned her on.

She couldn't see even then, she couldn't tell the difference between games and real life, or maybe she didn't want to."

He swallowed, shuddered. "I came here. It was quiet enough, and simple enough, for me to put some pieces back together. The things that let you get up in the morning, go through the motions. Eat, drink, sleep, crap. But here I am, playing games again at the first opportunity. It's like, you don't go to hell, it just keeps chasing you down." At Lauren's stricken look, he closed his eyes, shook his head. "No, that was wrong. I didn't mean that, not about you.

"I did the same thing you did. I questioned whether the cop was right, if we were just a bunch of sick freaks. If this wasn't a game, but a scream for therapy. But then, here, where it's quiet, and I could think, I saw it was just the same thing as being gay."

His eyes opened, turned to a surprised Marcus. "There's too many who are, for it to be something unnatural. There are so many who are drawn to D/s. It's in the animal kingdom; you see it all the time.

Dominant and submissive is a way of life, and we are animals, we can't escape it, shouldn't want to. We would probably be a lot less fucked up if we acted more like animals, accepted things, and stopped trying to run the world. D/s is part of our instincts, part of what we are, but the question becomes, how far do you indulge it? We don't have 100% animal instincts, and nothing can fuck you up like half-assed instincts meeting overblown intellect.

"Is this okay?" he glanced down at himself, a slight trace of amusement in his tired, tear-streaked face. "It feels okay," he said thoughtfully. "But when is it too much? Will I enjoy this now, and then let you be raped in an alley, get off on it?" his attention turned to Lauren and the amusement disappeared. "Nothing she did changed that I had that thought, when I believed she was being raped for real. People playing D/s games are okay, but what I did, what I thought, was twisted. I took the step from sex to brutality without even blinking. Some people can handle it, some can't. You can, Marcus can, but I'm not one of them.

For me, it turned into a power trip, and a dangerous one. I know now it's a game others can play, but I can't. I shouldn't be here, shouldn't be doing this." He shook his head. "You're right. Take them off."

Lauren met his rational gaze. Too rational. "Are you sure?"

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"Yes. Let me go. We need to stop this. I need to stop this."

She considered him. "I don't know if that's the right thing to do."

"Were you listening?" he snapped, making her jump with his abrupt venom. "You don’t… you're fine, you're perfect," he closed his eyes, averted his face as she stepped closer, "You're perfect," he said raggedly. "It works for you. But I'm a monster."

"No," she shook her head.

He jerked at the right arm. "Listen, let me go. I don't need to argue it, I just need to go."

"To run."

"Yes, to run," he snarled. "What do you care? Let me go!"

"No," she repeated, sure of herself now. She stepped back and loosed the whip from its coil again.

Josh stopped, stared at her. "What?"

Lauren wet her lips, shifted her weight to one hip so the fabric shimmered, giving him a brief glance of the body beneath. "You heard me well enough. You need to stop running from the truth, Josh. The real truth." Her voice had become cool, authoritative, and his attention seemed divided between incredulity and apprehension, shifting between her face, the whip and the displayed delights of her body.

"Let me go," he said between gritted teeth, and yanked against the cuffs, hard enough that the cross proved it had indeed been designed to hold a strong man, for the wood did not groan and the manacles did not allow him to budge the slightest amount.

He was there, bound for her intentions, until she deemed otherwise. It made her hot all over, especially now that she could see the paved road to hell clearly. There was one last exit, right before the pit of flames, so close to the precipice they might be scarred by the damning heat. Or purified by it, depending on how right she was. She took Josh's advice, and followed instinct.

"You like to play, Josh," she said, her voice becoming almost gentle. In contrast, the whip arced up, slashed across his ribs. He gasped, cursed.

"Your crime," her voice rose over his feral growl. "is not in holding back, but in pretending to be what you're not. You liked seeing her thrown to the ground, because that's exactly what she wanted you to feel."

"No," he shook his head.

Lauren sidled closer, sliding her breasts against his abdomen and chest, brushing her pubic bone against his erect and bound shaft.

"Look at me, Josh. I wanted you spread, and tied." She ran the handle of the whip up between his legs, lodged it firmly in the crevice between leg and testicles, making him feel the pressure against his scrotum.

"You
are
spread, and tied.

"I wanted your cock restrained so you couldn't come until I said so." Her hand closed over it and he
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groaned, unable to do more than accept her caress, for the straps allowed him no room for movement.

"It is. You can't do anything without my permission. You want to fuck me, don't you?"

He stubbornly looked over her shoulder and flinched when the crop cracked on his flank. She wasn't holding back now. She made sure it hurt, and his teeth bit down on his bottom lip. There was a raging light growing in his eyes and she wanted it in flame. She wouldn't let him retreat into the coffin of his guilt.

Not this time.

"Tell me, Josh. You want to fuck me, fuck me hard. You want to feel me writhe beneath you, cry out; rake your back and ass with my nails. But you won't."

She seized his chin in one hand, forced his eyes back to her face, those nails biting into his jawline. "You can't. You can't do it without my permission." She leaned in, her lips touching his ear, which was turning a dull red. "I have to tell you it will bring me great pleasure. I have to order you to do it. You have to make sure it is what I want, because you tremble to please your Mistress. It pleased her to twist that in you."

"No," he said, but there was a grain of uncertainty in his rough voice, the shift of his eyes. Lauren seized that grain. She let the emotion creep into her own voice, her fury with the unknown Winona.

"She made you abuse her, made you fuck her hard, rape her. She enjoyed the violence, but more than that, she enjoyed watching it make you think you were sick. She hurt you, Josh. She used you. Your unconscious knew it all the time. Why do you think you were always twisted up in knots?" His neck tensed, as if he would pull away from her grasp, but he couldn't, and her hand wouldn't let him.

"You wanted her to feel pain that night, because she betrayed you, Josh. Don't you see? You were never the Dom.
She was
. She was your Mistress. She was supposed to take care of you, love you."

The rage swelled up, and the hurt, and he did manage to jerk from her grasp, causing her nails to slice across his skin. "No," he snarled, struggling so she saw red lines of welts just below the cuff lines on his wrists, proof of his strength. He could not get free, but he could destroy himself trying. "No, no, no!"

Lauren jumped back as one of the links popped on the manacle. Fortunately there were three holding it to the wood. His nostrils flared at her, his gaze flashing victory at her retreat.

Lauren's eyes narrowed. She stepped back up to him. Her hands could be as gentle as a mother's when she so chose, but she wasted none of that softness now. With brutal efficiency, she reached around Josh, jerked open the tongue of the belt to the cock harness, freeing it from his waist. She pulled the ass strap back between his legs and stripped off the full rig, the force of the jerk and the straps pinching the tender skin.

She stepped back, deliberately brought the harness to her lips. The tip of her tongue touched the strap that had been closest to the head of his cock, and she tasted the salty substance that had wet the area there. She tasted it, as delicately as she might sample a hors d'oeuvres at a cocktail party. Her hand with the whip dropped, her fingers curling into the dress. She eased the tight, clinging fabric up, up her hip until her shaved pussy was exposed, just the bottom point of it.

He watched her, fury, fear and lust warring in his gaze, tearing him apart within and without.

Her own insides were being tormented by his struggle. A good Mistress watched the body language, the shift of the eyes, the light sheen of nervous sweat, the state of the cock, to determine what the sub wanted, what would bring them the most pleasure. In so many ways, it was the Dom serving the sub's
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needs. If the Dom lost sight of that, she took the risk of moving into megalomania, and imposing what she thought was best for the sub. How could she not doubt herself at a moment like this? Lauren was sure even the unflappable Marcus was having second thoughts about what had started under the guise of a playful card game.

When it boiled down to it, she had to go with her instinct, and her feelings. And she wanted Josh.

Wanted him, heart, body and soul, and to do that, she had to bring him to her honestly.

She let the harness drop and faced him, her crop held to one side, the whip to the other, her breasts jutting and proud, her chin lifted. Challenge and denial were in every angle of her posture.

"Marcus, let him go."

The man, a somewhat dumbfounded witness to the charged tableau before him, jerked as if someone had just pulled his strings and reminded him he was part of the play. "What?"

"You heard me. Let him go." Her eyes met Josh's furious ones, flashing with equal parts venom and Viking lust. "Come after me, Josh. You want to prove me wrong? Prove you'll take what you want, that you like hurting women, like watching them be raped. Big pussy."