once smiled like you meant it. And when I walked into this office and caught you reading her book, you were smiling like a lad who just found his father’s Playboy stash. I’ve tried writing in bed before. I never seem to get much done.”
Zach opened his mouth again, but J.P. raised his hand to cut him off.
“You can keep working with Sutherlin. For now. Just take a little advice—”
“I’d rather not.”
J.P. reached across Zach’s desk and grabbed the manuscript. He flipped it open and whistled. No doubt his eyes had landed on one of the myriad erotic encounters in the book.
“In the words of Charlotte Brontë,” J.P. began, “‘Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.’ Or in the words of me… Keep it on paper, Easton.”
Zach clenched his jaw and did not reply. J.P. grabbed the newspaper with Zach and Nora’s picture and left him alone once again with her book.
Closing his eyes, Zach conjured an image of Grace. God, he was glad she was in England where she wouldn’t see that photo. But why worry? Even if she saw it, saw him with another woman, would she care? Of course not. If she did, she’d be with him in New York right now.
With a tired sigh he turned to a page in Nora’s book he’d marked with a paperclip. Caroline is sleeping in a separate room from her lover after an argument. William wakes and walks on silent feet to her door. Cracking it just slightly, he pauses and listens until he hears her breathe. The image haunted Zach. The last year with Grace had become a nightmare of shutting doors and separate rooms. Still he could never let the night pass without at least looking in on his sleeping wife until that one terrible night when he found the door locked. The next day J.P. called and invited him to New York and to Royal House with the promise of the chief managing editor position at the L.A. offices when the current chief retired. Zach didn’t even bother to ask what he would be paid before saying yes.
Why was he letting himself think about this? He had to stay objective about the book and its enigmatic author with her dark hair and red dress and her words that burned.
Keep it on paper, Easton…
Easier said than done.
5
The phone rang at seven and the call itself consisted of only seven words—her hello followed by his “The club at nine. Wait blindfolded.”
With shaking hands she hung up the phone and went to shower.
She arrived at 8:46. In most areas of her life she ran habitually five minutes late. But she’d learned the hard way never to keep him waiting.
He had his own room at the club, only one of seven people who did. And she had a key to his room, only one of two people who did.
His room was spare and strangely elegant considering its only purpose. Apart from three floor-standing candlesticks, his room was simply adorned. Rich white and black linens covered the bed. White sheets waiting to be stained.
She undressed completely and found the black silk scarf. Kneeling on the bed with her back to the door, she closed her eyes and wrapped the sash around her head. She hated this part, hated sacrificing her sight to him. It wasn’t fear so much as greed. She wanted to see him, wanted to see him hurt her, wanted to see him in her. He knew that’s what she wanted. That’s why he ordered the blindfold so often.
She waited.
While she waited for him to arrive, she began the deep, slow breathing he had taught her long ago. She took the air in through her nose and pulled it into her stomach before exhaling out through her mouth. The breaths weren’t simply to relax her although they did take the edge off her nervousness. The hypnotic breathing lulled her and helped her slip closer into subspace, that safe place where the mind went while the body was elsewhere being tortured. There was a third reason for the breathing he had never told her, but she knew was true—he’d ordered her to do it. Even the very air that went into her lungs did so at his command.
She exhaled when she heard the door quietly open. Straining her ears, she tried to hear everything he did. He didn’t speak. He rarely spoke at these moments. She listened and heard with some relief the sound of only one set of feet. Sometimes he didn’t come alone. She heard him strike a match and light the candles; she sensed the room brighten.
Five minutes or more passed in silence before he came to the bed. A shiver ran through her body as he placed his fingertips on the small of her back. The pleasure of the shockingly gentle touch was so intense it felt like something had pierced her back all the way through to her stomach. She sighed as he kissed her naked shoulder. She stiffened when he locked her collar around her neck.
He rarely used the leash in their private interludes. He reserved the leash to humiliate her when he paraded her through the club. When alone he simply slipped two fingers under her collar and dragged her like a dog to where he wanted her. The collar tightened when his fingers gripped the leather band. He pulled and she came with him as he brought her carefully off the bed. He was always so cautious with her when she was blindfolded, careful to never let her trip or hurt herself in any way. Hurting her was his privilege alone.
He pushed her forward and she felt the bedpost against her shoulder. Taking her arms one by one, he pulled them behind her back. She leaned her weight into the wood as he buckled the leather bondage cuffs on each wrist. He raised her arms over her head and secured them high to the top of the bedpost.
She stiffened as she felt his hands cover her face. They did nothing but rest there a moment before they moved over her head. Slowly, they ran over her neck and across her shoulders, up her arms and down them again. His arms encircled her and slid over her chest, breasts, and stomach and up her sides before gliding up and down the expanse of her back. One hand slipped between her legs as the other passed over hips and buttocks, down one leg and up again, then down the other. Finally, he ran his hands over the tops of her feet and then lightly passed them over the sensitive soles. She tried not to smile at the exquisitely gentle sensation of his hands touching every part of her body. She knew what he was doing. If more than three days passed without him taking her, he would perform this ritual of re-marking his territory. Her body was his territory, his hands were saying. Every inch of it.
She sensed him step away from her. She began her slow deep breathing again. When the first blow landed between her shoulders, she flinched but did not cry out. The second one came harder and this time she did flinch. By the tenth her back was on fire. After twenty she lost count.
Behind her blindfold, time ceased to pass in its customary manner. Five minutes of flogging lasted an hour. One night in his arms passed in minutes. An hour-long beating was something to be grateful for. The beating would seem to last forever. Even eternity in Hell was no Hell if he was there.
The flogging finally ceased. He pressed in close to her. She felt his strong, bare chest against her burning back. She breathed in and inhaled his scent. Even warm from exertion and arousal he still smelled like a deep winter night.
He placed his hands on her fluttering stomach and brought them slowly up to her breasts. A night with him always meant waning pleasure and waxing pain, waxing pleasure and waning pain. He brought her through the cycle over and over again. The pain brought her body to life. The pleasure was always most acute when it followed the pain.
Now
