Breaking Joseph Read online

  breaking

  JOSEPH

  book two

  www.lucyvmorgan.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © Lucy V. Morgan 2014

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in 2012 under the title of

  The Whored’s Prayer

  Cover art by Kenny Wright

  www.kennywriter.com

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to places, persons or events is entirely coincidental and a product of the writer’s imagination.

  For those I cut before I learned how to use a knife.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  "Alternative" Ending

  Books by Lucy V. Morgan

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Why did I let a man scratch his name across my belly?

  I can show it off while he’s still asleep. I’m naked, but don’t be embarrassed–I am often naked professionally, see–ah, there it is. Raw, pink and raised, sprawling from one hip to the other. J,o,s,e,p,h. I bled a little at the p, but he licked my flesh to echoes and then it was just something else wet. Did it hurt? A little. The zigzag blade of a bread knife is sharper than it looks, but this man is a professional. I only felt what he wanted me to. Don’t try this at home, kids. In a dark New York hotel suite, however…it's other side of the mirror, and the rules are upside down. Funny how a pair of lawyers like that place best, hmm?

  Maybe not.

  Shall I tell a dirty secret? How about five, six, seven? Part of me is dying to share them. I call her Charlotte, this half who is thrilled to take money for breathless favours, and the one who found herself in a hotel room just weeks ago with her boss and her colleague. They stuffed an envelope into her bag, and themselves into the places she kept for paying customers. It was Charlotte who let them, and they lapped her up like the cold milk she was, but it was Leila who explained why she needed the money, and Leila who agreed to make her boss the last client in return for her dream job.

  Leila knew it was blackmail. Charlotte bit her lip and said it had sugar on top.

  The secrets get worse. That wasn’t the end of things. And this confession, it’s not the most religious thing I’ve done. The boss had a girlfriend, and for one night only, she was Charlotte’s unwitting prey. The colleague wanted more and served his heart on a plate to me. It was rare before we started, I think, but well-done by the time I left the wreckage of him standing in the rain.

  Now my boss sleeps beside me, and I measure the rise and fall of his chest like an act of worship. He is my apple, a devil’s gift, and tonight, we broke our self-imposed ban and talked to serpents in a mashed tangle of limbs. Paying me wasn’t enough–I was the check, and his knife signed on the dotted line, on the Braille that said yes please. He isn’t like other clients. I’m not sure he ever was, really.

  I don’t want to be the bad girl any more. I’m tired of being Leila, of cleaning up Charlotte’s mess. But this man who put his name on me is a wolf, and if he wants anything, it’s to stalk the night together. I tried to be normal with Matt; it was carnage, it didn’t work. There’s an ache in the pit of my stomach because I think that I’m trapped beneath a full moon: debauched, exhilarated, exhausted. Professional but pretending, smiling but breaking, paid for and silently chained. And if you think I’m bad…Joseph is worse.

  They call him the Chairman of the Whored.

  I want to believe there is hope for me, that I am not lost to the desires that haunt my flesh. Perhaps I’m in love with the idea of behaving; if I am, it’s the only love that hasn’t scowled at me and decided to have a donut instead. Perhaps I ought to just stop moaning and put my good girl knickers on, because Jesus…I’m tired.

  The sun will rise in a few hours and one way or the other, I’ll be forced back into the black and white world. I could be Leila, who is on a glamorous trip to secure her job as a proper lawyer. Or I could be Charlotte, who is on an extended job with her last client, and is blurring at the edges a little more with every fuck.

  When I wake up…who will I be?

  Chapter 1

  The first thing I felt that morning was the coarse rub of his blond stubble. It tickled my shoulder as his teeth grazed my neck. Sleep turned to fabric, and he tugged the thread ‘til I unravelled, naked and unashamed.

  “Do we have to get up yet?” I asked.

  “Car won’t be here for over an hour.”

  I arched into Joseph and brought his hand around to the stretch of skin that bore his signature. Already, his cock grew stiff between my buttocks and I wriggled until it sat at my lips. Then there wasn’t time to get wet–he scooped my thigh aloft and I whimpered at the warm stretch.

  I love morning sex. I loved how my body couldn’t quite catch up with Joseph, how I felt him so acutely because nothing stood in the way of our mashed flesh. I even loved how easily he slid without his usually slick reception–he forced, I submitted. All at once.

  His fingers stroked my scratched belly as he fucked me slow, slowly, slower. Breath peaked against our pillows in bursts of warm air. There was a stirring intimacy in it; we moved like we knew each other. This bed knew us. It smelled like body lotion and the sticky shadows of last night’s orgasms.

  I tried several times to push his hand to where I ached, but his thrusts turned shallow until he barely moved.

  “Do I have to beg?” I panted.

  “Mmm.” He bit my earlobe. “Maybe.”

  At six AM? The man was something else. “Don’t stop–”

  “Not good enough.” Fingers crept down to pull me apart.

  “Please, Joe…”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  I mewed as I laid back on him, squeezing hard over his cock. His thumb found my tight clit, pressed down, and then he shoved into me with a low moan.

  “You’re a good lawyer,” he mumbled, dragging over the words that meant so much more than they used to. Ah, ah. “And a fast learner.”

  * * * *

  Like Joseph, Bach and Dagier was in the business of law and savagery. This morning marked the beginning of a seduction like the one he wrapped around me. We’d come to New York to stalk Redfish Pharmaceuticals, and now, we massaged and teased and whispered our promises, only to pounce with an offer they couldn’t refuse. When they looked away, we pressed a knife to the throats of competitors as our eyes shone in the dark.

  Or, in common English: we met them for breakfast.

  We arrived at the restaurant first, and Joseph’s hand sat on the small of my back as he guided me toward the table. Our potential clients chattered between sips of thick black coffee and tapped on their phones. A tall, dark-skinned man with high cheekbones and a shock of curly hair stood to greet us.

  “You must be from Bach and Dagier.” He shook Joseph’s hand. “Deacon Grey. I’m chief of finance at Redfish.” He gestured to his two companions. “This is Kenji Nakamura, my assistant chief, and Elise McCall from Salinger Wren, who represent us in corporate law.”

  “Joseph Merchant, partner. This is Leila Vaughn, one of my trainees.”


  I shook hands with them all, smiling and nodding.

  “My colleagues will be with us shortly,” Joseph said as we took our seats at the round table. “Leila and I found ourselves ready a little earlier than expected.”

  “Not to worry.” Deacon waved to a waitress. “We’ve been catching up for the last half an hour. Things start pretty early around here. Coffee? I think they do breakfast tea here too–isn’t that what you guys drink?”

  I laughed. “Not enough caffeine. Coffee, please. And thank you.”

  “I like this.” Elise gestured to my bag. “Mulberry?”

  “I wish.” I sighed. “A London brand.”

  “I remember being a trainee. The first thing I bought with my fully qualified paycheck was a satchel from Louis Vuitton.”

  “Ooh. Very nice.”

  “It was a bit tasteless, actually.” She shoved shiny brown hair back in handfuls as she giggled. “I’ve moved on from there. How long until you can buy real Mulberry?”

  “A month or so.” Why did I feel like I was counting chicks before eggs had hatched? “To be honest, I’ll probably blow most of it on rock-and-roll things like rent.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”

  I glanced at Joseph; he and Deacon were already immersed in conversation. They had evidently spoken before.

  Kenji pushed a menu in my direction. “Would you like to look?”

  He had a shy, restrained way about him; the kind of man who measures his words at the office, then gets drunk and lets loose like a firecracker after a sniff of gin. I had learned to spot his type–among others–in my other job.

  Usually, I encountered them after the gin.

  “Thank you.” Waking up with Joseph had put my hormones on the warpath. I shot Kenji a teasing smile that made him blush from collar to hairline, and then I shivered in wicked abandon.

  Sadie, Joseph’s assistant, appeared in the doorway, and Yves, Poppy and Matt filed in behind. I waved them over and Joseph made more introductions. Matt took a seat where he could neither touch nor look at me. The nerves that had grown between us were flayed after his outburst last night. You should be ashamed of yourself, he’d said. I offered you my money and you still made your choice. A few days ago, we had knotted fingers beneath a table just like this. Rubbed ankles and bumped knees.

  “Sleep well?” Sadie asked.

  I tried not to look sheepish. “More or less. How about you?”

  She eyeballed a rather disgruntled, hungover Yves. “Some of the time.”

  Full of nervous energy, Poppy squirmed in her seat. “This menu is ridiculous. It’s for breakfast and it’s about five pages long.”

  “It’s an important meal,” Kenji said.

  “In the UK, it mostly consists of bacon sandwiches,” Matt said wistfully. “Or porridge. For pansies.”

  Elise grinned at him. “Pansies. I like it.”

  Poppy wrinkled her nose. “Why would anybody eat an egg white omelette? Surely it’s the yolk that makes it an omelette and not a big pile of congealed–”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely,” I cut in. “Different strokes and all that.”

  I ordered pancakes with fruit, and a foamy latte. Newspapers rustled, people wriggled out of suit jackets as they began to sweat beneath their shirts. I liked the ambiance here. I liked breakfast being an event rather than a rain-soaked Starbucks.

  The food arrived and I leered at Matt’s oozing, sunny eggs. Where had this appetite come from since we arrived in New York?

  We took it in turns to talk about ourselves as we ate. Deacon played squash and had three children; Elise had been to Harvard. I was instantly jealous. Kenji was an artist on weekends. Matt got stung and had to explain rugby. I talked about helping with my parents’ holiday estate, Poppy enthused over Wall Street and Joseph reeled off a list of favourite authors that surprised me a little. It shouldn’t have–I’d seen the heaving state of his bookshelves. Sadie chattered about having worked in the city previously, and Yves bragged about his vineyard in France.

  What would the reaction have been if we’d talked about our other interests? I’m Leila–I like running, and my boss chops me up for shits and giggles. I’m Joseph–I like Nabokov, Golding and fucking women with inanimate objects. Pass the milk?

  I’m Poppy and I sometimes have sex with my glasses case. I’m Matt–I like full English breakfasts with brown sauce, and I am secretly Batman.

  Gah. Where was Aidan when I needed bad innuendo? In bed, probably. He’d promised that he’d be useful, but so far, all he had done was help Matt get regrettably drunk, and tout for business with meat-packer trannies–or so I’d heard. A good manwhore never tells.

  “So,” Deacon said as our plates were cleared, “you guys are going to show us your stuff after lunch.” He arranged his knife and fork neatly. “You know, Joseph, I like that you’ve brought your interns over. We don’t really do that here. You don’t scrimp.”

  “That we don’t.” Joseph shot me a sharp glance. “We pick the most talented graduates. Why should they have to waste two years doing boring things?”

  Elise laughed. “We waste three years doing boring things.”

  “Should have come and trained in England,” Joseph said with a wry smile.

  “Either way, I like it.” Deacon got to his feet. “Now, we have to dash–sorry we couldn’t spend longer. But it’s been a pleasure getting to know you all. I guess we’ll see you in the boardroom.”

  We said our goodbyes and sat to finish our coffee while Sadie dealt with the bill.

  “That went well, children.” The chair creaked as Joseph sat back. “Let’s see if we can’t pull this one off.”

  “Are we free for a bit now?” Was he headed back to the hotel, and would he let me pounce on him? Or would he pounce first?

  He nodded. “Yves and I have some things to go through, so you’re all free to go. I’ll see you in the hotel lobby at one.”

  I caught his eye. His lips twitched. It was a flicker of a pout, and made for kissing. Just two hours ago, he’d spent himself in my mouth before we fell into the shower, and I could still taste him through the coffee and the sweet, sticky mango. A man who echoed in my throat was not one I could ignore from across the table.

  Poppy and Matt gathered their things…and lingered.

  “You can carry on,” I said. “I’ve got plans.”

  “Oh.” Poppy’s eyes darted between Joseph and me. “Catch you later then, maybe.”

  Matt watched her leave with an anxious hand in his hair. “Actually, I…I was hoping we could talk for a bit. Is this a good time?”

  “I don’t know. Is it?” Joseph had already turned his back to collude with Sadie over paperwork. Maybe our game was off for now. I was hardly his first priority. But deliberately putting myself in Matt’s company after his outburst last night…the thought made the pulse at my wrists pop.

  “Can’t see why not.” He held my jacket up so I could slip into it. “After you.”

  The streets were busy and I had to take his arm to keep up. He offered it to me with an absurd amount of ease–even now, that gesture felt natural between us, and I clung to the tall shape of him for fear of being lost in the sea of bodies.

  “There’s a park not far from here. Me and Aid found it yesterday,” he said. “It’ll be a bit quieter there.”

  He led me along a sandy path to a bench beneath a candy pink blossom tree.

  “So.” I wrung damp hands together. The air was mellow and saccharine, but the memory of our last conversation was a bloodbath, and the remains gnashed their teeth in my ears.

  “Aid thinks I should apologize.” There was a rough edge to his tone, like he dragged the words out of bed on a weekend.

  “Aid thinks a lot of things, most of which are inappropriate.” I tried to smile. Failed miserably. “Illegal, actually.”

  “I want to apologize. For last night. I know I did then, but–”

  “It was hardly very genuine,�
� I said drily.

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  Silence. This wasn’t what I’d expected.

  “See, Aidan was right.” He still wouldn’t look at me. His shoe carved a pattern in the dust. “I was drunk. I regret it. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like…ugh. Look. I’ve got more respect for you than that.”

  “Thank you.” My cheeks fizzed. I didn’t deserve this; I was the one who’d tried him on for size and declared us a bad fit. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

  “You know how I feel about you. It’s just…all this…it’s so fucking hard, Leila. I feel like he’s rubbing my face in it.” Joseph, that was.

  “Before you say it, I’m not defending him–”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “We’ve talked a lot. I don’t think it’s personal.”

  A sarcastic laugh twisted on its way out. “What is it then, exactly?”

  “I think…he doesn’t understand why you’re doing what you are. Why you’re so hurt. He’s a very different creature.”

  “You want a cold fish?”

  I looked at him. “I think we already had this conversation, didn’t we?”

  “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say. This week is a bit of a bad dream, to be honest.”

  “It would have been cruel of me to let you think I wanted the same things,” I said. Crueller, even.

  “How did you know what I wanted?”

  “You didn’t want me to be with other people.”

  “Yeah, but that’s kind of what a relationship is, Leila. Or am I missing something?”

  “I’m no good at it. I wanted to be, but only for you.” I bit my lip. “Not for me.”

  He sniffed. “Would you be faithful for him?”

  “I’m not sure.” The laugh turned sour in my mouth. “Not even sure if being faithful is a reliable measure of anything. I used to think I could fix that.”

  “And you can’t?”

  “I’m not so sure I should. What do you want me to say?”