Beneath the Burn (64 page)

Charlee clicked the door behind her, the pain wrenching her chest, cutting off her air. Just a few more minutes and she could finally break down.

“Will you call Laz?” She stared at the button on Tony’s shirt, not wanting to see the pity sagging those steel gray eyes. “He’ll know how to deal with whatever drug is in his system. Make sure he doesn’t…overdose.” She cleared her throat. “Get him back to his room safely. I won’t be joining him.”

“Of course.”

Nathan gripped Charlee’s chin, raised it. His eyes were fierce and imposing. He wouldn’t ask her if she was okay. Not if he was reading her face. “I had our things packed. Our bags are downstairs. Was that…is that what you want?”

Bless him for his foresight and saving her that dreadful task. “Thank you.” She moved toward the cluster of guards, knowing what would come next. Jay’s actions didn’t just impact her. They hurt Nathan, too.

Nathan wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist and leaned his forehead against hers. They spoke softly, Tony nodding, her face drawn and her lip sucked in.

Maybe Charlee could convince him to come back before they left Little Rock. What could she say to make him stay with Tony? The throb in her head magnified with the pain stabbing her heart.

He cupped Tony’s face, kissed her deeply, passionately. Charlee turned away and swatted at the tracks of tears burning her cheeks.

A moment later, his hand slid over her limp one. “Let’s go.”

As Nathan led her to the elevators, she plodded beside him, borrowing his strength to move her legs, to leave behind the guards and their semblance of safety. The further they walked, the more brittle her spine felt.

Should she have handled it differently with Jay? Maybe waited until morning to talk to him when he was sober? What if she misinterpreted what happened? Betrayal gripped her insides. There was no way to misunderstand Ella’s mouth wrapped around his more-than-willing erection. She choked, muffled it behind trembling lips.

Bags in hand, Nathan led her to a waiting cab, his eyes scanning the street and windows of nearby buildings. Following her in, he barked an address at the driver. They made it a block before her grief exploded, trembling her body, clogging her sinuses, and soaking her face. She let it go, let him hold her as she wept the broken pieces.

By the time they pulled into an underground garage of some swanky hotel, her eyes were dry and her breathing had returned to normal. Emptiness set in, deadening her. In a shocked haze, she followed Nathan out and froze.

Edison, one of
The Burn
’s bodyguards, waited behind the wheel of a nondescript subcompact car.

She backed up. “No, I’m not going—”

“He’s driving us somewhere.” Nathan shoved her face first into the backseat, tossed their bags on the floorboard, and crawled over her, his weight pressing her down.

The car moved, but he didn’t. “We were probably followed. This should throw him off.”

Right. Of course. Roy was always watching. Numb and drained from crying, she concentrated on loosening her trembling muscles.

The car stopped. Another underground parking lot. With a nod at Edison, she trailed Nathan up the stairwell and through a tiny hotel lobby.

The mechanics of check-in and bedtime preparation went by in a blur, and she lay on one of the double beds in their shared room, blinking through the dark. Her body, exhausted and weak, would not shut down.

“You want to talk about it?” His bed creaked with his movements.

“I want you to stay with Tony.” Silence. Her chest squeezed. She pushed on. “Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to move forward on my own, Nathan. I have to.” Her heartbeat sputtered in terror. “I have twenty grand. I’ll hire a lawyer and a bodyguard until I can build a case against Roy.”

His sigh tumbled through the darkness. “If it were that easy, we would’ve done that three years ago. If you don’t want to talk about what happened with Jay, go to sleep. We’ll discuss everything else in the morning with clear heads.”

Shifting to her side, her back to Nathan, she buried her stinging eyes in the pillow. The horrible feeling clawing inside her had been preventable. She didn’t have to fall in love with a drug addict. She’d let him in, fully aware of the risks. Hell, he’d given her a manual bulleting all the fucking dangers. Yet, looking back, would she have changed anything? A tear skipped down her cheek. She loved him. She would always love him.

“For what it’s worth…” He shifted, rustling the bedding. “Jay’s behavior tonight was unexpected. It doesn’t feel right. He loves you, Charlee. I don’t think he’d ever intentionally hurt you. I don’t…I just don’t understand why he did it.”

A blast of jealous anger broke through the heartache. Image after image of his dick in Ella’s mouth, his hips thrusting, and his mouth parted in ecstasy. She wanted to flush out the acidic hate eating through her gut, and she knew how.

She’d make the phone call in the morning. There were Doms in every city, and she knew enough of them. Someone would be able to give her a referral in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tomorrow, she would replace the internal ache with physical pain, and regain some fucking control.

One decision made, she embraced it, narrowed all her thoughts on it. Her muscles loosened, and her head sunk into the pillow.

84

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” Charlee sat on the edge of the chair in Master Conrad’s home office in downtown Little Rock.

The wood boards creaked outside the door under Nathan’s angry back-and-forth circuit. She detested that he came but couldn’t muster the energy to fight with him.

The middle-aged man behind the desk leaned back, his shoulders stretching beyond the chair back. His huge frame dominated the room, his deportment more so. Clipped black hair shaped his olive complexion. The sharp lines of his square jaw reminded her of a battle-hardened Marine, but he’d disclosed his day job was in real estate.

“When was your last BDSM scene?” He stared at her, unmoving in his perusal, a characteristic common to every Dom she’d met.

Duke in New York had been her last contract. “Two months ago.”

“Master Duke e-mailed your contract. With your permission, of course.”

Of course. Duke had referred her to Conrad that morning.

“Why are you here?”

The question startled her. Did revenge pour from her eyes? Was her hatred bleeding from her pores? If she told him the truth, he’d send her on her way. “I need help moving past an emotional barrier.”

He studied her for a long moment with apathetic eyes. “Very good.” With two fingers, he twirled the paperwork on this desk to face her and pushed it across the mahogany surface. “Look over the contract. Cross off anything you want to exclude from our scene. Write in anything you want to include.”

Leaning forward, she accepted the pen and scanned the document, pausing on the punishments clause.

Punishment of the sub is subject to certain rules designed to protect the sub from intentional abuse or permanent bodily harm. Punishment must not incur permanent bodily harm, or the following forms of abuse:

Death

Damage that involves loss of mobility

Permanent marks on the skin, including scars, burns, piercing or tattoos

Breaking of the sub’s bones

Dismemberment

Burning of the sub’s body

Drawing blood

Dramatic loss of circulation

Internal bleeding

Loss of consciousness

Cutting or pulling out the sub’s hair

Her pulse hurtled through her veins as she thought, not for the first time, that she should mail a copy of this contract to Roy.

Satisfied with the definition of punishment, she skimmed until she reached the hard limits.

No scat or fecal play

No public nudity

No verbal humiliation

No unprotected intercourse

No anal

Restricted physical humiliation: No licking shoes, eating dirt, simulating dog/cat such as eating from the floor and crawling on all fours, etc.

“If you don’t have any changes to the limits, initial here.” He tapped the box on the contract.

She scrawled her initials and moved the sub’s role, lingering on the section she’d anticipated.

The sub shall keep her body available for the use of her Dom at all times. This includes and is not limited to sexual intercourse: vaginal and oral. The sub acknowledges that her Dom may use her body or mind in any manner He wishes within the parameters of safety and any limitations in this Contract. He may hurt her without reason to please Himself.

He rested his forearms on the desk, his presence filling the distance between them, shrinking her. “Sexual intercourse was included in your contract with Master Duke. It’s not a common practice in my dungeon, but I will honor it should you choose to include it. Condoms will be used, but I require a second form of birth control. Write your birth control in the space provided or cross out the clause to exclude it. Then initial in the box provided.”

A heavy weight pushed down on her chest. If she had sex with the Dom, would she be doing it to balance the hurt Jay had inflicted on her? Would she feel vindicated after? The thought of going back to clinical, negotiated fucking festered in her gut.

Conrad watched her steadily, his face smooth and slack. His nose was slightly bent, his lips a bit too thin, and his hair was too short, too dark. Jesus, he wasn’t Jay, but she didn’t feel even a twitch of attraction. Still, wasn’t intercourse the reason she was there? To flush out the jealousy by lowering herself to the same level? It was wrong. She was so fucked up, yet she continued to mull over it. Eventually, she made the required adjustments, finished the read-through, and signed by the
X
.

“Before we proceed,” Conrad said, eyes on her. “Explain the man pacing outside.”

“He’s my bodyguard, but he won’t interfere.”

Not a wrinkled movement in his face. Not even narrowed eyes. He stood. “Follow the hall to the end. Remove your clothes at the door. Inside, assume the submissive position by the St. Andrew’s Cross. Once you enter the dungeon, you are my sub. Your body belongs to me.”

“Yes, Sir.” She rose on wobbly legs, a cluster of fear, uncertainty, and excitement battling through her.

Nathan’s gaze bore into her back as she walked down the hall and stripped her clothing. Naked, she stepped inside and drew in a shuddering breath.

85