Girl In Pieces (2 page)

For an awful moment the three of us stood frozen.

Thisisn’thappening. Thisisn’thappening. Thisisn’thappening.

There was nothing either of us needed to say. No explanation or excuse or reason that would make any of this better for any of us.
 

I turned and went back home alone.

It’s better this way.

This was what I told myself when I drove away from the lake house. This was what I told myself when I paced my apartment watching for her bedroom light to go on to let me know she’d gotten home safely. Alone.

This was what I told myself when her lingering scent on my skin and on my clothes turned me into the worst sort of coward.

Seeing my little Kat standing in front of me in her pink jacket, hair mussed, eyes crinkled with anxiety, I knew our one transgression had changed everything. I couldn’t look at her there, red cheeks and sleepy eyes and not want to pick her up, cradle her against my chest, and carry her to my bed.

But I couldn’t do that because we weren’t alone.

And now she knew it.

It’s better this way
 
was what I told myself as she walked away, tears already spilling traitorously over her cheeks. She wiped ineffectually at them with the cuff of her jacket before shoving the stairwell door open.

I took two steps into the hallway after her, but the door slammed and I knew it wouldn’t matter if I caught her or not.

Kat was never coming back. Not now.

The downstairs door banged shut and the roaring, pervasive quiet that echoed behind it rang with such finality. There was no time to grieve or make excuses or think up pretty lies that would calm her. It was done. That was that.

The Kat shaped part of my life had come to an end with four words.

It’s better this way.

What a fucking lie.

*
 
*
 
*

I retreated back into the apartment when I couldn’t stand staring at the door at the end of the hall a second longer, hating myself for hoping she would come running back so I could at least have the chance to make her hurt better. To wipe away her tears. That was my role in her world, not the one who caused them in the first place. What a piece of shit I was turning out to be. Brian made her cry. The assholes who took advantage of her, they made her cry. I was the one who was supposed to tell her how amazing she was, remind her how beautiful and worthy and clever.

I was supposed to protect her from assholes like me.

Michelle stood, arms crossed, tapping her bare toe impatiently on the carpet. She was a beautiful girl, of course, but different from Kat. She was hard to impress, confident and controlled even when she played at being the submissive pet. She performed flawlessly, like a dancer. Slight. Fit. Easy to take through the motions for hours without wearing her out. We played together often enough, but we’d never bothered to date. Kat had never met her and Brian only a handful of times.

We drifted apart eight months earlier when Brian and Kat’s dad got sick and I ended up covering the bar most nights when he had to be at the hospital. Ending our arrangement had been easy and painless. An afterthought. It made calling her for nights like these easier, though tonight it didn’t hold the tantalizing sheen it usually did.

It was never love, but we got along well. She anticipated me, gave in gracefully or fought back with just enough desperation to almost feel sincere. Michelle was an actress. A player of parts. I had no idea who the real Michelle was. I’d never really wanted to know. Her submission was party perfect, but only skin deep and that was enough for me.

You were just killing time until you could be with the person you actually cared about
. Kelli had said those words hours ago and they’d plagued me even as I called Michelle to prove her wrong.

She was right, of course. I knew it as soon as I hung up the phone I was making the worst mistake of my life.

There were crucial pieces missing from mine and Michelle’s chemistry. Emotion, for one. We did not share any genuine longing, which was typical of arrangements like ours. Playmates and nothing more. Barely even friends.

The one thing that also kept driving us apart –
surprise
. We could not astonish each other and we had no desire to try. There was no discovery between us, no adventure, no complication, nothing hard or painful about our match.

And I hadn’t known that was what I was missing from my bed until last night, until every touch hurt and healed at once. Until every breath and every moan and every choice ached with guilt and relief and a bewildering sense of gratitude. Every release had been hard earned, every fantasy possible and terrifying. What Kat gave me was a gift. What Michelle offered was efficiency and consistency. Considering how base and wicked our appetites ran,
efficient
 
and
consistent
 
seemed more like failures than anything else.

One ginger brow lifted as I passed her.

“Girlfriend?” she asked.

Michelle followed me into the living room where she climbed onto the couch, tucked her feet beneath her and drew her knees to her chest. I fell into the chair across from her and rested my head in my hand.

I could feel the pain in my chest smoldering until the moment when I realized,
really
 
realized what had just happened.

“No.”

She looked surprised. “Playmate then?”

I scowled. “No.”

“She looked a little … young.”

“Old enough to make bad decisions, just like the rest of us. She’s a friend.” I hesitated before correcting myself. “Was a friend. Brian’s little sister.”

Michelle’s hazel eyes widened. “That’s the girl you take care of? I pictured her, I don’t know, like thirteen or fourteen. A kid.”

I threw her a hard look, surprise making me tense. “I never told you about Kat.”

“You didn’t have to.” She shrugged and drew her fingers through the length of her hair as if this conversation hardly registered her interest. “Hers was the only call you’d interrupt a scene for. At first I thought it was another woman but your conversations were more
overprotective big brother
 
than
hiding your secret Dom life from your vanilla girlfriend
. You’d also call her sometimes when we got in late. I guessed she was your little sister, but I just figured she’d be, you know,
little
. A little
kid
.”

With her pink hair, boots to her knees, and cat ears - it was easy to think of Kat as a kid sometimes. But then she bit her bottom lip bashfully as she swore like a sailor, swayed her hips out on the dance floor and she became ageless. Some nights, surrounded by people chasing after something they couldn’t name between loud music and too many drinks, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“She’s not a kid.” I shook my head. “And she’s not mine.”

Wasn’t that the truth, and here was another – she could have been. If I’d just reached out and claimed her, she would have given me her heart. Happily. If I’d asked. If I hadn’t been such a coward.

As if I had any idea what to do with someone’s heart. I couldn’t even take care of my own.

Michelle leaned forward, a sly smile spreading across her full mouth. “Intriguing. Something did happen though, didn’t it? You’ve got the look of a guilty husband caught eyeballing the backside of a younger woman. I’ve never known you to be interested in the young, innocent school girl thing. Seems a little beneath you.”

I didn’t answer her, not a first. Before the night I’d indulged in a fantasy about kissing Kat’s mouth, strawberry shaped and a little wet…I’d never looked at her that way.

And after…I’d been careful to never let myself indulge in daydreams of her again. I’d felt like a creep every time I’d stared too long at her parted lips, though after what I’d done to her mouth last night I’d pretty much blown that to hell.

Michelle tucked an arm around one knee and turned serious, small wrinkles forming across her brow. I watched her, tried my damnedest to want her. To crave her. Half naked on my couch and my mouth should have been watering for her. I stroked her bare thighs with my gaze, the sliver of stomach I could see behind her knees, and willed my body to react to her.

Nothing. Nothing happened. Mostly I kind of just wanted her to go home.

A physical memory came unbidden into my thoughts. Kat’s body pressed against the wall outside the bathroom, my hand in her hair, pressing her cheek to the wallpaper. I’d wanted to consume her. She’d made wanting her intoxicating and unbearable. Every one of her breathy pants and gasps I’d felt in my chest.

Her whole body vibrated against mine with anxiety and arousal. She knew nothing before she walked into that house last night and I’d been overcome with the pleasure of showing her my secret world.

Wanting her with me in it.

Not wanting her anywhere near it.

Wanting to have her.

Wanting to protect her from what I could do to her.

Which was I? The monster or the hero?

Neither. Both.

“Things got carried away.” I shook my head. “I should have expected her to come here this morning. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“I don’t mind. You know I don’t mind. I do wonder though, why did you kick her out of your bed then immediately order me into yours?”

I didn’t answer her. How could I? It had seemed like a completely reasonable response at the time. I had to replace her smell and the memory of her touch. I had to replace her mouth so I didn’t go mad longing for it.

It had been a knee-jerk, impulsive reaction when everywhere there was vanilla and brown sugar, her laughter, and the way her eyelashes brushed against my cheek as she clung to me.

 
“Let me guess then,” Michelle said quietly, her expression softening. “You feel guilty. She’s just a kid, after all. She’d never understand you and even as much as she might want to, she’d never want what you want. Not really. So you needed someone to erase her.”

I ran a hand across my forehead and stared towards my bedroom, towards Kat’s apartment. I imagined her unhappiness as she realized that’s what I’d done, that I’d left her after the things I’d done to her and gone to find another playmate. One I’d have sex with and share my desires with. One I didn’t pull away from. One I wasn’t afraid of. One I didn’t regret.

Oh, god. What had I done?

“She must mean a lot to you.”

“You have no idea.” I laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. “I’ve known her since she was
twelve
 
for fuck’s sake. I can see her bedroom from my bedroom window. I know that she thinks pancakes taste better when they are shaped like animals. I know her favorite superhero, color, movie. I know that she can eat an entire pizza by herself without feeling even a little bit guilty about it. And last night I taught her how to safe word and she loved it.”

Michelle rolled her pretty green eyes and I kind of hated her for it. “Why not keep her then, if she’s so special?”

Why not?

“As if it were that easy.”

“It’s not?” She flicked her wrist between us. “It’s always been that easy for me. Of course, I never invited trouble into my bed either.”

Her tone jarred me, so cavalier and condescending. She had no right referring to Katrina that way.

But I also knew until last night I’d have warned my friends away from the dangers of inviting trouble into their bed, too. Love was certainly the worst kind of trouble.

I’d never been ashamed of my desires until last night, until that beautiful blonde girl had asked me to show her what I liked and I realized I couldn’t risk her reaction when I told her the truth. What we’d done in that back bedroom barely scratched the surface of what turned me on. How could I tell her I wanted to take her over my lap and leave hot, red handprints all over her pale thighs? How could I ask her to bear the pain of a flogger in front of a room full of other Doms? How could I order her to beg, on her knees, for permission to please me? What if she said no? What if she looked at me with horror and disgust?

My God, what if I scared her? What if I turned her love into fear? I didn’t know how I’d be able to live with that.

I exhaled and realized my hands were shaking again.

“She was such a pleasure to tie up,” I murmured as I stared at my hands. Michelle was right, I’d invited trouble in and now I’d pay for it. “She took the ropes beautifully and she’d
enjoyed
 
it. Everything about her calmed and intensified at the same time. I’d barely touched her and she almost slipped into sub space. I couldn’t stop watching the other players watching her. It was extraordinary. Excruciating, but extraordinary. God how they wanted her.” I hesitated, my heart sinking. “Not as badly as I did, though.”

She exhaled and uncurled herself from the corner of the couch, stood, and made her way over to me. I followed her with my eyes. Nothing rose to attention, nothing stirred in my chest.

Michelle settled onto her knees between mine, a practiced position she held a little too perfectly. She set her hands on my thighs and gazed up at me. I should have wanted her. I should have loved seeing her down there. I should have taken her by the hair and maneuvered her while I lowered my zipper.