Breaking Joseph Read online

  When he was done, he pulled the remains of the dress from under me and I winced as my skin hit cold tiles. Another slice and the belt came off in one severed piece. I wore only the stockings, shoes and an unintentional pout.

  “When I get out of this, I’m going to make you pay for it,” I warned.

  His face appeared before me, lightly tanned skin against the twilight. “Is that so?”

  I cocked my heel and drove it sharply into his ribs. There was no flinch but he groaned, and his eyes turned vivid beneath a glassy sheen of pleasure. “You’ll have to do it a little harder than that,” he said, chuckling.

  “Is that a threat or an invitation?”

  “Both, I think.” He kissed me again, his tongue slow this time. Pulled off to stare me in the eye and then descended before I remembered to breathe.

  I tried so hard to be disagreeable but my body already followed his, my back arching so my nipples caught against his shirt. The rope was a lot harsher than the black scarves he’d used before, and it cut into my flesh, stinging to numbness as I moved beneath him.

  He broke off to pour breath down my belly. His tongue dragged over the scratched brand that was healing so unfortunately well. Already, I ached for him to sink lower–I hadn’t forgotten the teasing kisses he planted there that morning, or the riot of my pulse in response.

  He parted me with his fingers first. “You’re very neat down here. Do you know that?”

  “Uh…thank you.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of women. You’re neat.” He toyed with my clit lazily. “And you get so fucking wet for me.”

  It was an effort to dart from his hand, to resist the urge to buck on it.

  He inhaled. “Tell me why.”

  “Why…what?”

  His thick thumb slid inside me and grazed along the bottom wall. “Why you get like this. Are you such a sticky mess for all your clients?”

  “No.”

  “Just for me?”

  “You’re not like my client.” I was tired of failing to resist. No good at it.

  “Would you do what I said if I wasn’t? Would you still be tied up on my terrace, would you have bent down in front of me that first night and begged me to fuck you?”

  “Quite possibly,” I mumbled.

  A warm hand cupped my cheek. “Did you always want me, Leila?”

  I tugged at my bonds without thinking. All those work meetings, the permission to stare at him, fantasizing about what his throat would taste like…I never thought it would happen like this. “You have no idea.”

  He grinned, made me suck his wet thumb. “I thought you were a prissy little trophy girl.”

  “You’re an awful judge of character.” I teased. “You thought Matt just wanted a fuck too.”

  “You are a prissy little trophy girl, though. In the office.” He pulled his fingers out again and smeared up over my clit. “A dichotomy in every sense of the word.”

  “That’s the worst pun I’ve heard in a long time.” I kicked his ribs, playfully this time.

  He grabbed at my ankle and unbuckled the shoe. “Shut up.”

  Everything about my jutting lower lip was a challenge, and his cheeks turned pink as he noticed.

  He pulled the shoe off my free foot and pressed my thigh back on my belly. Ah, being exposed so blatantly…I got drunk on it, and I loved how this man, so composed in the light of day, delighted in every inch of me.

  He held the shoe up. “They have a good heel.”

  “They do.” I jumped as the heel grazed my inner lips.

  “It’s pretty long,” he went on, watching me. “A little sharp, too.”

  He pressed it inside, and I moaned as the foot slapped into my clit. It barely slid in an inch or two, and felt narrow, but the point scratched at flesh inside with razored sweetness.

  God, I was going to be sore.

  “How long can you take this before you start to beg?” he said.

  “You didn’t break me earlier. You won’t now.”

  But he had broken me. He’d done it as soon as I stepped into the apartment with its soft lighting and messy coffee table, the cupcakes and the chatter and the conveniently placed rope–all of it was symbolic of a rapport I had worked so hard to achieve with Matt, and how I’d never quite got there. For the first time in my life, I felt perfect.

  And I knew something that I hadn’t before.

  The heel probed further now, and Joseph angled himself to drive it in with slick force. His poor neighbours…I dread to think what I sounded like.

  “Are you going to come, sweetheart?”

  I sucked in half the sky. Nodded between contractions.

  “Mmm. Maybe not.” He slowed, turning the shoe so it scraped me roughly. “I’ll fuck you,” he murmured, “but I’ll do it hard. It’ll hurt.”

  I found myself gasping. “I want it to hurt.”

  A tall shadow rose over me. Each shirt button popped with savage precision, his belt collapsed with a sharp clink and his trousers followed in a heap on the floor. As I tensed, the heel slid out and bobbed beneath my vulva in a sticky little puddle.

  Then, he took me.

  Of all the positions he had me in, this simple contortion–he bore down on top, I spread out below–was the most intense. I loved how his arms covered mine as they hung, tethered, how he used my bound wrists as leverage for every thrust, like he fucked me from the top and the bottom at the same time. I ached inside from the heel’s dainty point and the stretch of him was acidic with it. No mercy here, and yet he was a kiss softer than any, a fingertip lingering over my spine.

  He watched me, his breath gruff, as I struggled to stay quiet in our battle of wills. My breasts ached as he shoved them back and forth, my buttocks burned as they rubbed against the tiles and my inner thighs were raw with him.

  I was ready to snap when he reached for my tied ankle and yanked it free. My leg, almost numb from the thrashing, slid around him with languor and ease. I held him to me, inviting him to sink further into my skin, my flesh, everything. He wasn’t pounding anything out of me now–he tore a space for himself and filled it right up. So beautifully. I cried out long before I recognized my own voice.

  Charlotte fell in on herself–smash, crumple, shuddershudder–and the second he realized my orgasm had hit…he stopped. God knows, it was obvious, the way I stiffened and moaned his name. I writhed beneath him until he moved again, and then it was a slow dance as he made me work for every breath-sucking contraction. Fear pricked the back of my neck, the terror that it would fall away and I’d lose everything…but he forced me to fight until the last wave ebbed. I did beg. I begged until my voice cracked and my throat was dry.

  “Leila.” He came up on his knees, wet cock in his fist, and I arched back to spread autographed midriff like a canvas. Air hissed through his teeth, my name got stuck on the way out, and then warm splashes flew across my stomach to settle on the carved pink welts. I opened my eyes. Purred like a kitten. In the glowing deck lamp light, his chest roved in and out of shadows as he caught his breath.

  When the moment faded, he went to fiddle with the hot tub while I lay drowning in my own breath and the sound of bubbling water–he’d switched on the jets. Broad-shouldered and naked, he stood framed by frothy clouds of steam.

  “Are you planning on untying me?” I was beginning to get cold.

  “No.”

  He wandered back inside the apartment and emerged a moment later with our glasses in hand. It was only when he sat next to me that I noticed the flush that fanned like a bloodstained butterfly, across his collarbone.

  “You need a few minutes to recover,” he added, rubbing a stray drop of himself into the top of my stocking. “Besides…I think I like you best like this.”

  “So I can’t go anywhere?”

  “So you get annoyed and kick me like a girl.” He grinned.

  “I can do that again, if you like.” I attempted to catch him with the heel, but he sat too close and it was awkward. “Move down a
bit and I promise not to be gentle this time.”

  He set his glass on the tiles and climbed back between my legs, his hands outspread. “Take your best shot then, sweetheart.”

  Did he really want me to kick him hard?

  “Still pathetic.” He shrugged me away with the slightest tremble.

  I drew my leg back and launched it at him. His flesh gave like butter.

  “Fuck! All right, all right.” A hand clapped over his side as he winced. “You win.”

  “Untie me now?” I pulled at the rope.

  He glanced over at the hot tub–white foam licked at the sides. Then he reached for the scissors.

  “Only because I intend to do worse to you in that bath.” He squeezed a breast in one hand while he freed me with the other.

  The warm water turned my limbs numb, and I sank against him in sleepy rapture.

  “This is nice,” I murmured.

  He twisted my damp hair around his fingers. “It’s better with company.”

  “Don’t you feel like everyone’s watching you?” I gestured to the city below. “Being out here and all.”

  He smiled between kisses. “Excellent, isn’t it?”

  “I want to know how you got that nickname.” I nipped along his jaw. It never failed to feel indulgent, petting him like this. “Were you hiring back at uni, even?”

  “Nope. Little need with that much cheap alcohol flying about.”

  “Oh, you’re classy.”

  “I am.” He toyed with the top of my wet stocking. “I’m in a hot tub with the cleverest, prettiest girl in the company and I just fucked her with a shoe.”

  “See, I hear it’s only classy when you use the whole shoe.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Despite the water, my belly was still plastered in sticky ribbons and he massaged them into my skin with slow strokes. “I got that name because I got…around.”

  “Mmm.” I brushed beneath his chin. “I suspect that’s an understatement.”

  “We were a bit brazen about it all. Used to hold parties with special rooms, and the like.”

  I giggled. “And you were the ringmaster.”

  “Do you ever run out of awful puns?”

  “Only if you pound them out. You do seem to be rather good at it.”

  “As half of New York just heard.” He looked away, but I caught the corner of his smirk.

  “This is your hobby,” I said.

  “It’s recreational.”

  “And all these recreational girls…they just walked away after?”

  White wolf’s teeth played on his bottom lip. “No. Though I think you know that.”

  “But you graduated, what? Fourteen years ago? And up until a week ago, you were still choosing girls like Isobel.”

  The arm curved around my shoulders went rigid. “And? I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “I’m just curious. I mean, I’m like you, the things I want…is that what I’m headed for?” Would I emerge in a few years a fully fleshed predator, a trail of broken Matts in my wake? “Do we ever learn?”

  “I have learned. I never promised a girl anything, Leila–not beyond the bedroom. But they want what they want. I can’t help that they’re programmed differently.”

  “You don’t have to hire a girl to have casual sex, Mr Merchant.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said. “It’s never casual.”

  Oh.

  “It’s an event. But how many sports do men and women compete in side-by-side? There’s the problem, huh?” He dragged those teeth over my earlobe. “Hard to find an equal.”

  I prodded him in the ribs. “Now you just sound like a mean old misogynist.”

  “Do I look like a man who hates women?” Empty laughter spilled from him in rough bundles. “I’m tired, all right? Cynical. Frustrated with you all, as a gender. But I don’t hate anyone. God. I wouldn’t have the time for it if I did.”

  “But you have time for us as a hobby, hmm?”

  “You could say that.” He pulled me into his lap. My forehead bumped lightly against his. “I like watching you come too much to hate you.” His cock stirred against my belly.

  “Hmm.”

  “See, this…this is my recreational drug.”

  “Not an addiction?”

  “Says the girl who does it vocationally,” he teased. “Are you addicted, Leila?”

  “To the act, or to you?” The words came before I thought about them, and I looked away with embarrassment.

  “Either.”

  “Fuck me again,” I murmured into his wet skin, “for research purposes.”

  “See, this is what I like about you. You’re a worthy opponent, even if your rhetoric is awful.”

  “Sod off.”

  “Your language is foul too, but I’ll forgive you because I’m about to make you desperately sore.” He started to peel my wet stockings off, fingers scratching through the weak thread.

  “Please.”

  “You’re meant to be refusing me,” he complained. “Did you forget that?”

  “No. But I’d be lying, and one doesn’t lie in court.”

  “What does one do there, then, exactly?”

  “I believe you said it best with fucking them backward with a kebab skewer.” I giggled.

  “Did I really say that in a meeting?”

  “Yep. You were being particularly scary that day.” I bit his bottom lip and watched as my teeth slid away. “Bad wolf.”

  He eased me back, and foamy gushes of water hit my lap as he sat up on the tub side. I put a hot cheek on his knee.

  “You never answered my question,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “About being addicted.” He filled his fist with my hair, scrunching. “Are you?”

  “A little bit, maybe.”

  “To me, or the act?”

  More truths swarmed on my tongue. “The act. But I think you…you have a rather strong hand in that.”

  He pulled my hair now, forced me to look him in the eye. “For fuck’s sake. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “No…but I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it.”

  “Fine.”

  He shoved my head into his lap and I went about the business of sucking him. I shouldn’t have tried to get under his skin–hell, he used a knife, but I wouldn’t let him beneath mine. Or so he thought.

  I looked up at him with a mouthful of warm flesh, and he gazed back with a mouthful of difficult words. Both would explode soon…but I didn’t know which would be messier.

  Chapter 4

  Once, I felt like a house of cards.

  I’d waited for someone to blow me away. Whether that meant to impress or deconstruct me, I hadn’t a clue…but I never imagined I’d get both at the same time.

  It was the carnivorous green eyes that caught me, the thick fingers that pinned me down and the edge of his serrated knife that cut me open and took me apart. Now, he wanted to build something with those neat, square hands. With words that neither of us wanted to say.

  And what of the remains left spluttering from the demolition, the pieces of myself I’d given to Matt the perfect life in coupledom that I’d thrown to the wolves? He still nurtured them, mourned the corpse. He clung to the life like a ghost made for haunting. I’d built that, though I never meant to.

  If anyone was going to put me back together, it ought to be me. I wouldn’t be made in God’s image or grown from someone’s rib. In order to invent, one needs a purpose, but I didn’t know how to define that or even what mine was.

  What I did know was that in one job’s time, I’d no longer be the whore. No more pretense. No more bank notes to function as excuses.

  Time to put our cards on the table, then. Time to decide if we’d play for keeps.

  * * * *

  “Well?” said Mum, her voice squeaky over the line.

  I ducked into a corner of the lobby and stuck a finger in one ear. “We got the contract!” I bounced around on my ankle boots. �
��We’re going out to celebrate later.”

  “Oh, that’s fantastic, darling.” A pause–she relayed the news to Dad, who said something obscene and congratulatory. “So what does this mean?”

  “It means a lot of money for the firm and hopefully, a secure job for me. And a happy boss,” I added.

  Joseph watched me from one of the sofas in the lounge. Things had been awkward since our conversation the previous evening. He was behaving as if he’d been rejected and I…well, I wasn’t sure what the proposition was in the first place.

  Who is it? he mouthed at me.

  Mother, I replied. Perhaps I gave him cause to be suspicious, but I buzzed with our achievement and felt so excited to tell my parents, I’d dashed off as soon as my phone rang.

  “What time do you touch down?” Dad asked as he took the phone. “Do you need a lift again?”

  “No, I think I’m okay actually. I’m going to share with Aidan.”

  Dad snorted. “There’s another boy, already?”

  “Oh God, no.” I laughed. “Aidan’s just a mate, Dad. Really.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “He likes boys.”

  “Oh. Well I suppose you’re allowed, then.” He sounded flustered and I had to bite my knuckles to stifle a giggle.

  “You’ll see me next weekend, anyway–I’ve got the last payment for you.” I glowed just saying that. “Then you’re all sorted, right?”

  Dad cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I think so.”

  “Great. Right. I’m off. Places to go, bars to drink dry.”

  “You take care of yourself. And call us when you’re home.”

  “I will. Love you both.” I stopped just short of doing my usual kiss-face.

  “You too, petal.”

  I made my way back and perched on the armchair opposite Joseph. The coffee cup wobbled in my hands.

  “I’m sure they’re very proud of you,” he said.

  “Yeah.” The coffee had gone cold. I set it back down. “Not that I did much of the work, though.”