His Contract: Legally Bound, Book 1 (14 page)

“Meaning?”

“Meaning my mother isn’t supportive of Nick and Gabe. At all. It was a big shock for her when he came out, and she never accepted it. They were so close, and now she barely talks to him.”

“But that’s your mother. Not Nick.”

Lilly averted her eyes. “I know.”

Jack tipped her chin up, not letting her look away. “Do you really?”

“I do. It’s just…” she started, not sure how to put it into words. “I can’t stand the idea of what happened between Nick and Mom ever happening between him and me. If he thought badly of me for not looking out for myself…” She winced. “I can’t let that happen.”

Jack studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “I understand. Thank you for telling me. Now finish your coffee so we can get you home. Same time next Saturday?”

He grinned, and the glint in his eyes made her forget about her past, about work, about anything else other than him.

“I can’t wait.”

Chapter Twenty

“Where did you get your scar?”

Jack paused, his hand frozen as it held Lilly’s, halted in the motion of rubbing salve into her wrists. Her skin had gone a deep shade of pink after he’d kept her bound for a session that had been different than all the others. He’d pushed her limits, wanting to show her the pleasure she could get from something she’d feared: the Wartenberg wheel.

She’d trembled at the sight of those gleaming spikes, but Jack promised her she was ready for it, insisting it was for sensation and not for pain or punishment. Knowing she could either let him test her boundaries or keep hiding and stay afraid, Lilly met his challenge, whispering “green”. Lilly had remained tense when he ran it over her belly, but the barbs didn’t hurt when Jack wielded them. He swept it along the swell of her breasts, and each roll left a tingling path in its wake. She’d gasped in surprised pleasure when he made a thorny dance across each nipple.

The pride in his eyes brought her more gratification than any toy could.

That was probably why she’d blurted out the question, more brave than usual because of what she’d just accomplished.

“I’m sorry, Sir. That was out of line.”

They were in the playroom, not in his kitchen. Their roles hadn’t shifted yet.

“It’s all right.” Jack finished massaging ointment into her skin. “It was from a whip.”

“Someone whipped you?”

“No, I did it to myself. Accidentally.” He turned his arm over and examined the scar. “It was years ago. Hurt like a bitch.”

Lilly sat up and bent her head, her chin jutted toward his wrist. He held out his arm. She leaned forward and examined the arc of white.

“May I?” she asked, her finger hovering above it. This scar seemed like a doorway to another world.

Jack nodded, and Lilly ran her forefinger along the puckered skin, stroking it like a worry stone. She knew she should’ve been thinking about the pain he must have endured, but all she could picture was a younger Jack testing the limits of his dominance, seeing what that power felt like for the first time.

“I was so excited when it came in the mail,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Eve laughed when I got it. Told me she had no idea she’d married Indiana Jones.”

Lilly didn’t stop moving her finger, but her breathing went shallow, her mind on high alert. Jack so rarely talked about his wife.

“I tried out a couple of practice strokes, but I had no idea what I was doing, and the whip curled back around and sliced right through my flesh.” He shook his head, as if he were chastising his former self. “Once I felt how much damage it could do, I never used a bullwhip again. Making a mistake like that with Eve wasn’t an option.”

She caressed his injury, the tactile proof of Jack’s decision to keep his wife safe. He was so careful with her, so diligent in never causing her harm. Lilly felt a flash of jealousy, but pushed the feeling away.

It was crazy to be envious of a ghost.

She stroked the scar once more, her touch coming to rest on the highest ridge. “You were very good to her.”

Jack took her hands in his and turned them over. “It’s a lot of responsibility, hurting someone like this.”

Lilly could feel her pulse in her throat as he gently swept his thumbs over the red marks on her skin.

“Was it ever too much responsibility?” she asked. “I mean, did you think you’d have to stop?”

She’d wondered how it was possible—how he and Eve had navigated jobs and parenting and family, but still managed…this.

“I went half of my life without realizing I was a Dominant. Something always felt off. I was never satisfied.” Although the shadows of the room hid half his face in darkness, it was the closest she’d felt to really seeing him. “Once I started, I couldn’t go back. For me, there’s no other way to be.”

Lilly felt something click inside her, his answer resonating. It was what she’d felt all along—why even when she’d buried her desires, they kept pushing through in her nightmares, refusing to be silenced.

She couldn’t stop now if she tried.

A floating, calm feeling stuck with her after he drove her home. When she showered, the hot water was a searing flame against her tender skin, but the pain didn’t bother her. The physical reminder of Jack’s dominance seemed to bind her to him, a grounding force fighting against the anxiety that used to cripple her.

Odd how getting her skin turned red by one man could wash away the bruises left on her heart by another.

She was stepping out of the shower when her home phone rang. She hurried to pick it up, wet feet skidding over the floor.

“Hello?”

“You’re not answering your cell,” Nick said. “Are you leaving soon or what?”

“Leaving?”

“To come over for dinner, remember? I got the pasta and everything.”

“Right! Of course I remember.”

It was a lie. She’d completely forgotten that she’d agreed to cook for him and Gabe tonight, promising to save Nick from another Saturday night at Chez Please Don’t Make Me Go.

“I lost track of time while I was working. I’ll be there in a bit.”

She hated being dishonest, but telling Nick why she forgot was not happening.

The bitingly cold air hit her when she got off the T at Boston Common. Although spring was only weeks away, winter remained a stubborn child, clinging to the ground and treetops. The warmth of Nick and Gabe’s Beacon Hill brownstone was a welcome respite, and a short time later she was sitting at their dining room table, their plates scraped clean.

“Now that is a home-cooked dinner,” Nick said.

“Yes, thank you so much for the carbo-load.” Gabe put a hand on his stomach. “I’ll need to detox for a week.”

Nick reached over to clasp Gabe’s hand. The intimacy tugged at Lilly’s heart.

Looking away, she busied herself with clearing the table and suddenly noticed the marks on her wrists. Eyes going wide, she tugged down her sleeves. Grabbing as many dishes as she could carry, she went into the kitchen and put them in the sink. Nick and Gabe’s galley kitchen was modern but small—nothing like Jack’s, with its gleaming countertops and shiny pots hanging from a rack above the island.

Maybe one day she’d be able to take them down from their idle positions and cook Jack dinner too. After today and the things he’d shown her, anything seemed possible.

Lilly started up the hot water and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves as Gabe arrived with the silverware and cups.

“See, this is why I prefer restaurants. No work.”

Nick appeared with the remainder of the table’s contents. “That, and because you’re a terrible cook. Lilly and I can handle the dishes. Why don’t you put a movie on and we’ll join you in a few?”

“I feel like a beached whale, so I guess I should be sprawled out on the couch to match.”

“No mobster movies,” Lilly called after him. Gabe scowled and walked out the door.

Throwing a towel over his shoulder, Nick took the plate she’d finished rinsing and put it in the dishwasher. For a while, they worked in comfortable silence. It was a chore that reminded her of being small, of standing on a wooden stepstool and carefully drying the cups Nick handed her, wanting to prove she wouldn’t drop them. To make her big brother proud of her.

“So we never got to talk about the show,” he said. “What did you think?”

“You know what I thought of your photos. They were great.”

“What about the rest of the show? Did you get to see the ones upstairs?”

She nearly dropped the plate in her hands, certain that all the air had been sucked out of Beacon Hill. She continued rinsing, scrubbing harder than before. “You’re my brother. It’s gross that you’re asking me this.”

“It’s art, not sex.”

Lilly didn’t answer. Her worlds were colliding, the one she stole into with Jack crashing into her brother’s kitchen. Nick nudged her with his shoulder, and she tried to angle herself out of the way.

“Come on, Lil. What did you think?”

“I don’t know. They were—” She shrugged. Shook her head. “—fine, I guess.”

Nick sighed. “We used to be able to talk about anything.”

She sighed too and looked down at the sink. It was true. Once, she’d shared everything with him, from her first track meet to her first kiss to her first moot court argument. Maybe things would’ve been different if she’d told him about Damien.

If only she could tell him about Jack, and how happy their Saturday discoveries were making her.

Was it Jack making her happy? Or that she was finally learning to accept who she was?

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“After what happened to you in college, did you ever think, ‘this is too hard’?”

“What do you mean?”

She shut off the water and turned to face him. “That being gay was too difficult. That people wouldn’t accept you the way Mom hasn’t, so it might be easier to try to shut it down?”

Nick leaned against the counter. “I tried to ignore it. I focused on my career for a long time. Pretended that wasn’t me and spent most of my time alone. But you can’t ignore who you are, Lilly.” He shrugged. “Hard or not, it’s the only way I know how to live.”

“For me, there’s no other way to be.”

His words echoed Jack’s. The affirmation made something tight loosen inside her, gave her hope.

“You okay?” Nick asked. “You seem off.”

She wanted to say she was great—better than she’d been in a long time actually—but she couldn’t. She and Jack had both agreed to keep this quiet.

“I’m fine. Maybe I’m homesick. I miss Dad.”

It wasn’t really another lie. She did miss their father, even if that had nothing to do with what she was feeling.

He hummed in response and they both went back to work. Lilly flipped on the faucet and watched the suds buoy up—light, like the way her heart felt.

Maybe someday she’d be able to tell Nick everything, and he would understand.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Can we have ice cream, Uncle Jack?”

Jack opened the movie theater door with one hand while Hope clung to the other, holding it out for Allegra as she scurried outside.

“I don’t think so, kiddo.”

“Please, please, please?”

“That’s three pleases, so you get three no’s in return.” He rattled them off, snatching her hand before she walked off the curb. “And no letting go while we cross the street.”

“That’s four no’s, not three,” she grumbled.

“Thanks, smarty-pants.”

A blast of mid-March air cut through Jack’s coat as they crossed the street. It was spring break, but the temperature didn’t reflect that change in seasons at all. Lumps of slush-covered snow lined the ground, dirty with mud from the street. Half of Harvard’s student body had retreated to warmer shores. He almost wished he could’ve done the same.

Almost. If he were in the Caribbean, he wouldn’t have been near Lilly.

He opened the back door and ushered his nieces inside. Allegra insisted on buckling herself while he got her sister situated, and he hoped from the way her teeth had started to chatter that she’d gotten the desire for ice cream out of her system. By the time he got behind the wheel, however, she started another chorus of “please’s”.

“Allegra Archer,” he said, in a tone stern enough to silence her. “Your parents said a movie and dinner, not ice cream. That was the deal this year.”

It was a tradition he’d agreed to long ago. One day during each of his breaks, he took the girls for a day to give Brady and Sam some time alone. It had been Eve’s suggestion back when she had plenty of activities to bring home from her classroom and enough energy to do them with the girls. She’d upheld her end of the bargain, even when all she could do was smile and watch them from the couch. Last year, Jack hadn’t had the strength to do it alone. When he’d suggested a return to the tradition earlier that week, Brady and Sam had hesitated before saying yes, but he’d assured them he was up for it.

What he didn’t say was that the days of his vacation were dragging. He needed to fill the time until Saturday.

“Ice cream can be dinner,” Allegra insisted.

He stifled his laugh as he started the car. “No, it can’t.”

“Pretty please?”

“I told you I’d say no every time you said please.”

“Bet I can say please more times than you can say no.”

“I bet you can’t.”

Allegra took a deep breath and began repeating the word please in an endless stream until she ran out of air. She gathered another lungful while Hope picked up where she’d left off, and then they both chimed in until they were saying “peas” instead of “please” and laughing too hard to talk. Jack couldn’t stop himself from laughing, either. These two seemed to know exactly how to wrap him around their fingers.

“I can’t say no a hundred times, but I could get in trouble. What would your parents say if they found out I was getting you ice cream for dinner?”

He caught Allegra’s mischievous smile in the rearview mirror. “You don’t have to tell them,” she said.

Jack let out a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Where do you want to go?”

They cheered in unison and requested a spot on the other end of town. He put on the radio and the girls sang along, off-key and loud and not caring in the slightest. He was halfway there when he turned a corner and realized where they were.

The hearse idled outside the funeral home and spewed exhaust, fumes curling white in the bitter air. Jack’s shoulder burned under the weight of the coffin, even though it was a burden he shared with Josh, Patrick and Brady. The sky was gray, not that he’d looked up to check. Raising his eyes meant reconciling his anger with whoever was in charge up there. Looking down reminded him of where his wife was about to be.

He held on to the casket and looked straight ahead.

The light turned red across from the cemetery, and Jack slowed to a stop. He’d avoided this part of town for ages, yet here he was.

He turned his head slowly to look past the gated stone entrance, a sickening clench in his gut. The gravestones stretched in quiet lines into the dense thicket of trees, but he didn’t have to strain to pick out Eve’s. He knew exactly where it was. They’d picked out the plot years ago. Eve liked it for its towering trees and the playground at the recreation center nearby. Boston College peeked over its edge, and she’d joked about the tennis courts there, saying they could haunt them whenever they wanted.

He’d never thought “whenever” would be so soon for her.

“Uncle Jack?”

Allegra’s voice shook him from his thoughts. His eyes were still on the cemetery entrance.

“Yeah?”

“The light’s green.”

He looked quickly back at the road in front of him. The windshield was blurry. “Right. Thanks.”

He got his act together long enough to get them ice cream, relieved for the patterned placemats and crayons the waitress provided. After wiping their faces clean of the evidence, he took them home, but the sly smile Samantha greeted them with made Jack sure she’d figured them out. She didn’t say anything, though, and he hurried to his car with a promise to call Brady tomorrow.

As soon as he was alone and driving again, he was bombarded by memories.

His house was full of people. Jack went through the motions, shook hands when he had to, thanked them all for their apologies, their flowers, their casseroles left on every countertop. When they left, he was barely able to cough out a thank you to Patrick, Brady and Sam, who stayed behind to clean up.

He dragged himself up to Josh’s room, and found his son on his bed, laptop balanced on his thighs, headphones plugged in. Jack sat down next to him and looked at the screen. It was a video of Eve taken at Josh’s college graduation, before hell arrived in the form of a tumor and another apology.

Josh offered him an earbud. Jack took it, closed his eyes and listened.

In the video, Eve was laughing.

He pulled into his driveway and grimaced, hating himself a little, because for some reason, he couldn’t remember the exact cadence of Eve’s laugh. It was a sound he’d wanted to bottle, to put away for safekeeping and take out on a rainy day. How could he have forgotten it?

He tried to compel the sound of her laughter into his head. Her voice when she said his name, when she called him Master.

He couldn’t hear it.

Feeling like the earth had shifted on its axis, Jack went up to his bedroom and sat down on Eve’s side of the bed. Opening her nightstand drawer, he picked up the wooden jewelry box with uncertainty. He’d spent weeks fingering the silver collar inside it. Months with his wedding ring still on. Jack ran a thumb over the vacant space on his ring finger. The emptiness there no longer felt strange, and the box in his hands seemed like an old friend he wasn’t sure he recognized anymore.

Somehow, something had changed. He’d avoided the cemetery, absolutely certain that going there would drive him back into an unbearable state of anguish, but it didn’t. He was sad, sure, but he wasn’t devastated, wasn’t reeling from the impact of all-consuming grief.

It was unsettling. For over a year, he’d been going through life with one foot in the grave, but now, for the first time, there was some distance between him and his sorrow.

He put the box away and shoved the drawer shut. A sudden influx of nervous energy made him stand and pace, not sure what to do with himself. He wandered downstairs and eyed the liquor cabinet, but it wasn’t a disconnect he needed.

He needed to regain control again.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Lilly’s number.

“Hey.” She said the word hesitantly, the single syllable coming out a little longer than it needed to. Her uncertainty wasn’t a shock. He’d never called her midweek before. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he lied. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m good.” She paused. “You sure you’re okay?”

A smile tugged at his lips. She’d learned to read him so well. “Just tired. I babysat my nieces all day.”

Lilly giggled softly. “That does sound pretty tiring.”

The sound of her laughter settled Jack’s nerves in a way he wasn’t ready to ponder. He sat on the couch and stretched his legs out. “Your day go okay? How’s your week been?”

“Long. Busy.”

“Are you working?”

“I was, but I couldn’t concentrate.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s hard to focus like…this.”

“Like what?”

A breath. “Distracted.”

Her voice was lower. Huskier. Jack grinned.

“Distracted, huh?” She was flirting with him, drawing him in, and he let the pull happen. The focus on Lilly shelved his grief into a far corner of his mind. “What on earth could be distracting you?”

“You know what,” she grumbled. “The lack of orgasms is doing wonders for my concentration.”

Jack laughed, loving her sarcasm and her frustration. “Good.”

Lilly responded with a mixture of a groan and a whine. She must have been burying her face in a pillow because the sound came out muffled. “You’re killing me.”

“I am. But you like it.”

“You’re mean.”

“You like that too.” She whimpered, and he mimicked the sound, taunting her. “Are you wet?”

“Yes.” He could almost see the pout on her face. And now that he had her all wound up, he didn’t want to stop.

“Touch yourself.”

“It’s a weekday. I thought I wasn’t allowed.”

Oh she felt like being bratty now, did she?

“You’re allowed when I say you’re allowed. Now do as you’re told, little girl.”

Her breath caught like it always did when he called her that. He’d bet her pupils had dilated too, her expression awash with lust. Jack listened to her shift, knowing the exact moment when she stroked over her clit by the noise she made. He could see her doing it—one finger rubbing in tiny circles. He was hard in seconds.

“Tell me how it feels.”

“Good. Wish it was your fingers, though.”

“Oh, but I wouldn’t give you what you wanted so easily. I’d tease you until you were ready to scream.” He would too. Avoid all her sensitive spots, touching her everywhere but where she needed it most. “Push your fingers lower.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do it the way I would, slow and deep.”

Jack listened to her breathing quicken and imagined her body surging, her hips pushing up. She moaned, and it was enough to make him have to squeeze his dick to take the edge off. It wasn’t enough. He needed more, to push her harder, to see how far he could take this.

“Lower, now,” he instructed.

The order earned him a shocked inhale. Jack chuckled. She had little experience in anal, but she’d listed it as curious on her checklist, and he wasn’t backing down.

“I
said
lower.”

“Y-yes, Sir.”

He pictured her doing it, the look on her face as her wet fingers trailed a slow path downward to the tight, puckered entrance below.

“Is your hand where I want it?”

Her swallow was audible. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good girl. Now tap yourself there with your pinky, just once.”

“Oh.
Oh
.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, dragging out his words the way he wanted to drag his touch over her skin. “Now rub it the way I’d tease your clit, nice and light.”

Lilly grunted as if she were fighting back the pleasure.

“Didn’t think it would feel like that, did you?”

“No, Sir.” The words came out high-pitched, somewhere between a sob and a sigh.

“Now press your finger down a little. Just the tip.”

“Oh, fuck.”

The way she said it with her voice so hoarse, he was sure her head had lifted off the bed in surprise, her mouth hanging open, legs shaking. He wanted to see this, wanted his hands on her, his tongue. His cock stiffened, impossibly hard now. He could do this, could tell her to tap her sweet, virgin ass, and fuck her with words until she was completely out of her mind. But if she was going to come this way, he wanted to be there to watch it happen.

“I knew you’d like that,” he said. “Now back to your clit. Turn over onto your stomach.”

He heard the sheets rustle, reveling in her cry as she started to work herself again.

“I’m lying on top of you, holding you down. Feel my weight. My hand shoved between your thighs. Giving you no choice but to come. You’re almost there, aren’t you?”

She squeaked out in agreement. Jack smiled and whispered, “Stop.”

Lilly sobbed a sound of pure agony, aching and desperate to fall over the edge. He couldn’t wait until Saturday to have her. He just fucking couldn’t.

“If you want to come tonight, you’ll be in my playroom in thirty minutes with your knees on the floor and my cock in your mouth. The choice is yours.”

He didn’t wait for her reply. He simply ended the call.

Twenty-five minutes later, his doorbell rang. He opened the door to find Lilly out of breath and staring down at her watch. With eyes more wild than he’d ever seen, she ran past him and sprinted down the stairs, tearing off clothes as she went. Jack smirked and closed the door. He’d known she couldn’t resist, as drawn to their intense attraction as he was.

Pushing away the thoughts that had plagued him all evening, he followed her downstairs. He didn’t want to think about death anymore.

Lilly made him feel alive again.