Breaking Joseph Read online

  “I want to suck you,” I whispered in his ear.

  “And I want to hear you come. Louder than her. Longer. How should I do it, sweetheart?”

  The way his shadow curled over me, the sheen of water on his skin–God, I was half way there just looking at him, and tight enough to burst all over his cock. Too easy. I wanted to savour this.

  I brought his hand down. “Just here. Just…you know.” It was getting hard not to slur.

  “Mmm…but I want to hear you say it.” He rubbed my clit in little circles. “Here?”

  I arched into him. “Please. Like that. Harder.”

  I exhaled at every clockwise stroke. The wait until twelve might as well have been hours, but when the thick pad of his thumb pushed into me there, working up from the base to the tip, it was worth holding my breath. The water made me so sensitive.

  “Inside.” I panted. “Please.”

  I accepted his fingers so easily. It felt like the curtains flying up before a show. They settled into the right spot with a twitch of my hips and then he started a slow, firm massage. Tick tock. I closed my eyes, held on to his shoulders and let wave after wave of deep ache wash over me.

  We could date. I’m late, I’m late…

  Elise grew impatient. So did I, though I could have stayed there all night, half straddled around his waist as he reached into the core of me. Each deliberate twist made me cry out, and he chuckled every time my voice quivered, delighting in his control. I would have watched him had I not become Alice down the rabbit hole, but I heard him egging me on all the same: That’s it, baby. You’re soaked; can’t you feel it? I can feel it, even in the pool. So fucking tight. Are you going to do it for me?

  I clung to the edge, angling so he couldn’t quite catch me hard enough. Linger here for a while, said Charlotte. Let the convulsions swell to quakes, let the supple strength of his fingers tempt me over. Somewhere close by, in an echo, I heard myself coo like a dove.

  “Ready now?” He jerked me toward him with the hand buried between my legs.

  I broke fiercely and it gripped, dragged me in, tied me down. Never stopped, just ebbed and flowed.

  “Keep going for me. Good girl. So strong…I love it.”

  Some orgasms were gifted, and some, like this rabid thing, were pulled from me, kicking and screaming like petulant wraiths. At the peak, my names forgotten, I grew noisier and more delirious in a dark little world. A glass bottle appeared in the centre: drink me.

  “You’re not done yet, no, no. Again again again…”

  Was this the apple I’d wished for? Were his fingers the snake? It was it already so deep inside me, so ravenous when roused.

  “Can you hear her, baby? Oh, you’re going so much harder. Clever girl.”

  Pop the cork, take your medicine, have your cake and eat it. Chase the wolf in rabbit’s clothing–not quite the dragon, but just as dangerous and twice as addictive.

  “Just a pack of cards,” I murmured, breathless.

  Joseph peeled my face from his shoulder. “What?”

  “Knave of hearts. Stole all the tarts…”

  “Ah. Hello, Alice. What is it next, orf with my head? Do you know how long I’ve waited for a girl who comes in literary metaphors?” He pulled me up straight. “Are you all right?”

  “A bit dizzy.” I blinked beneath the streaming pool lights. “Did I…did I black out?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Oh.” The air was suddenly so cool. Delicious. “I think I had a dream.”

  He drew his fingers out and flexed them between us. “That settles it. I need to patent these.”

  * * * *

  The pale moon that poured through the hotel window was a callous reminder of my cage.

  Thoughts buzzed in the aftershock of that orgasm, of our swimming pool fuck. Over and over, I heard Joseph say that Matt wanted to change in me the things he loathed about himself. Then I thought of how Joseph tried to balm my urges, how he persuaded me to forget myself with his language of gasps. A question mark–a badly tied noose–hung over our right to the hunt. Did that panic him? Did a Charlotte linger in his brain, prodding at the synapses and willing him to misbehave? If Mr Merchant had a Hyde, did I need to flay him before we could have anything other than a casual arrangement?

  The words were stained and heavy, and they were his: It’s never casual.

  What the fuck was it, exactly?

  Chapter 6

  Sugar and spice, and twice the vice: that’s what Charlotte was made of.

  Most girls have a recipe for disaster, but few of them actually find all the ingredients and bake them at the right temperature. If they did, they’d learn to measure more accurately, and that they ought to clean up their mess as they go along.

  Imagine my surprise when the smoke cleared from the oven, and a house of cards teetered in all its sweet, frosty glory. Pretty and delicious, more hearts wanted a piece of it than I was right to give. So I took money for it in the hope it would plug a hole, somewhere. That my next effort might be a piece of cake.

  Charlotte’s recipe was not for a love potion. Oh, enough of it sloshed about, and some poison too, but mostly it was a festival of cock. Once, Charlie took advantage of the deviant-in-waiting who interned at his law office, and crumpled her morals like paper in his palm. Soon she lay in his bed–or over his desk–more than in the arms of her boyfriend, and he showed her what it was to have secrets. She liked the taste.

  When she lost him, Charlotte curled nameless and waiting, clawing for the life in shadows that he stole away. With whom would she share her urges? Blood, like desire, tasted bitter when she drank it alone.

  Then came the excuse for the oldest profession. Time for Charlotte to get a name, a job and a world of her own. Time to drag her bones from the closet. As the whore was made flesh, so everything awful about Leila came to be. Everything awful about me.

  Wolves eat little girls, said Joseph, the hungry man with appetite of Eve.

  You are what you eat, see. Eve ate an apple.

  Joseph ate me.

  * * * *

  Goodbye, New York.

  I refused Poppy’s offer to swap seats again on the flight home. Matt remained cool with me at the airport–sulking a little, I think–but soon after we boarded, we were sharing magazines and squabbling over what to put on his iPod. We weren’t fixed, we were never going to get back to the flirtatious friends we had been, but it was progress.

  His metal play list squealed in one ear and a blur of paradoxes crept into the other. It occurred to me that if Joseph had never discovered Charlotte, if I’d put paid to the whoring and come out here with no obligation to anyone…I would still likely have ended up in Matt’s bed. Things might have progressed a lot further between us without ever having to tell him about the night job and when I finally discovered the truth about Charlie, it would have been ten times messier.

  When I thought about it all like that, what had transpired seemed preferable, tears and sweat and all. It was a blond, chiselled shape to the right of me, and every time I glanced at him, he was watching.

  * * * *

  “So what happens now?”

  The leather seat of the cab felt sticky, and I slumped on Aidan’s shoulder as I peeled my thighs away. It was like ripping off a bandage. “We go home to sleep. You’re not actually suggesting drinks, are you?”

  “No, no. Not that, Lei-Lei.” He elbowed me lightly. “What happens now with you and the Marquis de Sade?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  His copper eyebrow rose in a cynical arch. “You get to decide?”

  “Last night…he asked me if I wanted to date him.” Saying that out loud made it feel real. It could have been the first time I’d heard it.

  “You mean he asked for freebies,” Aidan scoffed. “Come on, we both know that one.”

  “I know, I know. But it’s not like that.”

  “I think we’ve been here before. And the food was better,” he said forlorn
ly, scrunching a half-empty crisp packet in his fist. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

  “I…I like him, Aid.” I tugged at a broken cuticle. “But–”

  “But he’s a prick.”

  “Well. Yes.” I exhaled, and the burden hovered in the air. “For a lot of the time, anyway.”

  “You’ve got awful taste. Have I told you that?”

  I elbowed him back. “Do you remember what you told me when we first met?”

  “That you had the hips for a strap-on?”

  “Apart from that,” I grumbled.

  “Erm. No.”

  “You said that there are three ways to get someone to sleep with you: the first is to make them think you’re great, but that’s pot luck. The second is to pay them. And the third–the most effective, you said,” I counted on my fingers, “is to make them think you’re a cunt.”

  “What’s your point, you pedantic cow?”

  “Just because he’s making me think he’s a prick, doesn’t mean he is.”

  “Denial doesn’t suit you. Just doesn’t work when you’re ginger.” The crisp packet crackled in his fist. “We’re too shifty-looking.”

  I snorted. “Oh, so the wisdom of Aidan Reaper only applies when he’s the one who says it?”

  “S’pose I have to hand it to him that he’s managed a weird combo of all three.” He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell Mattman I said that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “So that’s that, then? Am I losing you to a cunt?”

  “Shut it. I don’t know. Ah…I said I’d think about it this weekend, okay? He’s going to call on Sunday.”

  “Well, you know what I think,” he said.

  “That we should run off to Japan and make bukkake movies?”

  “I’ll probably be on tour with Cockspank.” He sighed wistfully. “It’s a hard life, being a supergalactic musician-slash-manwhore.”

  * * * *

  Back in my building, I staggered up the stairs with my suitcase and turned my key in the lock. The metallic little groan was achingly familiar.

  In my dark, cool flat, shadows reached out with spindly fingers and caressed me toward bed. Sleep was impotent; it refused to swell. I found myself tossing and turning, old memories swimming to the surface of choppy tempests.

  Dylan, his name was–Elliot’s best friend and the first boy I felt more than simple sin for. The one who left me embarrassed and alone on a stranger’s bedroom floor.

  I was sixteen, had not long begun sixth form and felt adult in my new freedoms. A friend of a friend held a house party. He would be there, everyone said so, and I stood by the mirror with Clemmie and our classmates and giggled over outfits and hairstyles. A few inches of cleavage seemed a heady, exciting idea.

  He approached me sometime past ten, crushing paper cups into the carpet as he climbed over the fawning couples. Observed me with that twitching, lopsided grin. Held out his hand. His soft Welsh accent made his words fall out in funny shapes. I pressed my warm palm to his, accepted the drink he offered and managed not to splutter at its strength. He introduced me to Elliot, to boys from his five-a-side team, and I laughed at their jokes–I’d have laughed if they gave me a first-person account of Auschwitz, if I’m honest. I had no idea how to behave for this wonderful lump of flesh.

  When he suggested we find somewhere quiet upstairs, I heard no warning bells, just the thick thud of my pulse in my ears. The bedroom was dark and smelled damp, musky, of boy. He pushed me against the wood-chipped wall and mumbled that I was gorgeous, that he’d been watching me all night and kept thinking about my pretty mouth. Could I have turned to syrup and slithered through his fingers, he’d have found himself stuck to the floor.

  There was no skill to his kisses, no design to pattern he pawed. I didn’t know any better and it didn’t matter, any of it–I’d been watching him across corridors for months. His tongue tasted like beer, his breath sweet with hops, and when he shoved his hands into my bra–when I gasped against his mouth–he seemed surprised that I liked it. Pleased.

  My stomach twitched as he got braver. Cold little scrunches. I bit his lip involuntarily and he swore. God, I remember every internal tremble.

  He never really asked permission. It was more of a statement, a box to tick. Eyes shut, I nodded, and the shame built already–that I should want it like this, that I should want it at all. But I was pancake batter in his curved palm and needed…something–

  “Dylan!” Someone banged on the door. “Sarah’s here!”

  “Shit.” He thrust me away, wiped his fingers on his jeans. Fumbled with his belt.

  “Who’s Sarah?” I said.

  The door fell open and light pooled in. Strange faces stared as I stuffed my breasts back into my top. Dylan stomped out without answering me, and I heard him chatting and laughing as he went down the stairs.

  Dark. Again. The sounds of the party were fuzzy, and my teeth chattered as I tried not to cry. It was bad enough that I’d been so willing but at least I’d wanted him; he, it seemed, had wanted anyone. Until Sarah arrived.

  Often, I wondered if this was where I split, and Charlotte rose like a phoenix from acid blue flames. Slumped in that strange bedroom, I was not quite myself. I was absurd mitosis.

  Some time passed before Elliot put his head around the door.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” My shoulders rose with a stifled sob.

  “I’ve got my Dad’s car,” he said. “I could take you home.”

  He’d already found my coat, bless him, and it hung at the end of the banister. The quiet of the car was so comforting, the bucket seat almost swallowing me up.

  “Thanks for this.” I was so embarrassed at my red eyes in the mirror.

  “He’s a twat, you know,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t have left you like that.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean it. You’re lovely.” He lost the gear stick, had to grab for it. “Not that I’m coming on to you or anything, not like that.”

  “No.” I found myself smiling back.

  We went to the cinema a few nights later. Went to bed in a couple of weeks. He would murmur that he loved me as he inhaled against the hollows of my neck, and I said it back, though I was too broken to mean it. I severed one Leila from the other a little more each time I spoke the words. A year later, there was Charlie, and sometimes I still wore him as I moved against Elliot’s sheets. Maybe Joseph’s knife wasn’t really meant to cut me…but to remind me how sharp a blade can be.

  I never thought I was as selfish as Dylan. Not that crass. But my desire for Joseph said otherwise–he was a mirror, and the reflection an evil twin. Now she laughed, unbridled, unleashed.

  I was afraid of what I’d become. Ashamed of what she had done.

  Off with her head?

  * * * *

  Saturday was a blur of dull domesticity. I did the washing, sorted through the post, stocked the fridge. Put my black gown in for dry cleaning for a charity ball the following week. I cashed Joseph’s hefty check–I’d earned every penny and the notion echoed in my stiff thighs. I was all paid up, now, and anything else was a bonus. Technically, I had one of three jobs left, but with my parents’ debt covered, my childhood home was safe.

  “Good trip?” Clemmie’s voice was buoyant down the phone.

  “Uh…kind of.”

  “How’s it going with Shares-Your-Desk?” Bath water swilled about. She had a thing about a gossip in the bubbles.

  “Erm.” I twisted hair around my finger. “We broke up before we even left.”

  “Crikey. I didn’t think it’d be that soon!”

  “But you thought it? Cheers.”

  “You know what I mean. Oh my God. How did he take it?”

  “Not well.” I sighed. “But we’re being civil now. It’s not as bad as I first thought.”

  More splashing. “What made you do it, then?”

  My boss had paid me to screw him all week. Also, “Charlie thinks his w
ife probably knows about me. She’d have told Matt. And like you said…I think I was settling, a bit. We wouldn’t have made each other very happy.”

  “Bugger.”

  “I know. How are things with James now?”

  Air hissed through her teeth. “How are you fixed for a flat? Have you re-signed the lease yet?”

  “Yep, a few weeks ago. Why?”

  “I’m going to need somewhere else to live,” she said glumly.

  “Oh crap, Clem. I’m sorry.” I wanted to give her a big hug, bubbles or no.

  “He’s such a know-it-all. So bloody smug. I get enough of that at work, you know?”

  “Are you sure it’s over?”

  “Pretty much. He’s already started packing but I don’t want to stay here–too many memories. Still.” Her tone lightened. “We can be single and miserable together now.”

  I was going to tell her about Joseph, attempt to talk it out. Crap. “Yeah. Well. Hopefully not miserable for long, hmm?”

  “And we’re too slut-faced and whore-bagged to stay single, either,” she said. “We must go shopping for skirts like belts and fishnets we can rip holes in.”

  “Don’t forget the thigh-high boots.”

  “PVC is coming back, isn’t it? Let’s get PVC.” She splashed again. “God. Remember when we were teenagers and we didn’t need to stoop to skintight industrial products to get men?”

  Yep. All too well.

  Chapter 7

  Sleep had barely descended when my phone beeped: Have sent a car. Will be with you in twenty. J x

  Adrenaline surged in scalding ribbons, and my hand shook as I punched in his number.

  “What do you mean, you’ve sent a car?” I mumbled.

  “You don’t have to come.” He sounded amused. “I was just…I’m impatient. I want to see you.”

  “It’s gone midnight, Joe.”

  “We both know you’re going to get in the car.”

  “Is this my last job?”

  “If you want it to be.” He took a deep breath. “Or maybe it’s more.”