The Willing (16 page)

Eventually, I had to step out of the elevator, which narrowed the distance between us to a couple of feet.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and my eyes on his face. He was blushing badly, fists clenched at his sides. I got the distinct impression that he was trying hard to keep from bolting. I couldn't blame him.

Oliver's throat worked, Adam's apple bobbing. "I thought you might want to see..."

Had I been so transparent? Part of me bristled with the suggestion, reluctant to admit I'd lain awake in bed at night, wondering what it might be like to have Oliver beside me, skin on skin.

The rest of me was more concerned that his cock was soft between his thighs, his wrinkled foreskin obscuring some but not all of the fish-belly white scars around the shaft. Someone had bound his sex into a cock cage of some kind. My stomach roiled. I'd seen plenty of weird implements in my day at the club; things our clients brought in, toys ordered online. Props I didn't know how to manipulate and wasn't sure I should learn.

The Internet gave everyone ideas, but most people were able to distinguish between fantasy and the other thing.

I reached out my hand very slowly, giving Oliver the time he needed to recoil if he didn't want to be touched, and tentatively curled my fingers around his soft cock. He shivered.

This—what we were doing now, nameless and strange as it was—likely counted as a firing offense. I tried not to dwell on my endless capacity for self-sabotage as I palmed Oliver's prick. He didn't harden for me, but neither did he pull away.

"Aren't you cold?" I was surprised to hear my voice so even, so controlled. I didn't feel like I was in control.

 Oliver nodded. "A little. Will you come upstairs?"

We were a long way from my begging to be allowed into the penthouse a minute ago. Oliver had gone from playing the disembodied gatekeeper to tentatively offering to lead me into the playroom.

I touched his hand and felt his fist relax. His fingers threaded through mine.

It was unsettling to see him like this—not the submissive part, that I actually liked—as if he'd come untethered while we were apart.

In the playroom, the bed had been transformed in a smorgasbord of sex toys. Some, like the anal plugs, I knew he'd said he didn't want to use during our sessions. I could have asked him why he'd lied, but the scars around his shaft were answer enough.

"How do you want me?" he asked, too quiet to sound excited. My heart ached for him. I'd flirted with a desire to protect during our sessions, even though I was the one dishing out the hurt, but I'd never felt it outside of that adrenaline-pumping environment.

I couldn't fathom taking a crop to him right now. Had we been in the club, I would have turned down the appointment. But Oliver needed me to take him out of his head. That was our deal and the only way I could be of any service to him.

"Help me clean this up," I said, not quite an order. I gave his fingers a little squeeze, but he was already obeying, also willing to go above and beyond when we were in this room.

It was no use trying to tell myself I should be afraid of him; that he was a bad man an even worse friend. I found a pair of leather handcuffs on the bed and similar ankle restraints. They were the kind with clips attached in case the submissive wanted a spreader bar used. I hunted for something softer I could use to bind Oliver and found nothing. No matter, my leather belt would do.

Oliver finished tidying up the bed in record time. I said nothing about the toys that wound up piled on the floor at the foot of the bed. There were more pressing things at hand.

"Lie down," I told Oliver and then kicked off my shoes. I didn't have to pretend I was tall, not in here. It occurred to me that dominating a man like Oliver gave me precisely the same thing he got out of submitting: comfort. There was nothing Freudian or feminist about it. My power lay in pleasing Oliver; I knew I'd done that over the past two weeks, so when his eyes found mine as I bound his ankles, I felt a surge of tenderness bloom inside me. "You brought them out," I reminded him, "but if you're not comfortable with restraints tonight..."

Oliver shook his head. "No. It's fine. Just surprised, that's all."

He was anticipating my next move—or trying to, his mind leaping across the possibilities into the unknown.

I could've put his fears to bed right then and there, but words were just that and Oliver had always preferred it when I worked with my hands. Once I slipped his feet through the leather cuffs, I sat down on the mattress and moved to do the same thing to his wrists. He watched me like a hawk.

"Do you trust me?" I asked.

It took a moment, but I got a nod, however shaky.

"Okay. I'm going to tie your hands to the headboard now. I'll stay right beside you. If it gets to be too much, you can just say so." I didn't even try to act this bit. I couldn't even if I'd wanted to; my thoughts were still guiltily immersed in that awful disfigurement. No wonder he didn't want to undress all the way when we were together, those scars must have been present for every sexual encounter. Every woman he'd gone to bed since being mutilated would have seen them.

In our sessions Oliver got to have some control on that point. It made little sense that he'd choose to surrender it now, when I had done nothing to merit his trust.

I thought back to what Evangeline had said about Oliver suffering from certain intimacy issues. I wanted to laugh, to cry. I did neither.

Looping my belt around the headboard and the metal chain around Oliver's wrists was easy to do. He never let me out of his sights as I secured it in place. If he wanted to get away badly enough, he could still tear his way free with only a little bit of concentration. There were no keys involved, no knots to cut off his circulation.

"I can get to my knees," Oliver offered softly. His heart wasn't in it, though, I could tell.

I shook my head no.

"I want you to lie there and let me sit beside you for a bit, okay?" I felt compelled to ask rather than order, even though I knew that there was a risk I would take him out of whatever sense of peace he'd found in baring himself to me.

If I'd known about it sooner, I might have treated him a little more gently during our previous sessions. Guilt ate at me like disease before I realized that he didn't
want
to be treated gently. He wanted pain—enjoyed it—and he was smart enough to know that if I saw the way his cock had been mutilated, I'd hold back.

There was nothing more frustrating than a clever submissive. There was nothing more exciting, either, because it meant I wasn't the only one putting thought into our time together. I felt my cheeks heat at the thought.

Oliver nudged my knee with his elbow. "It's disgusting, right? You can look at it, if you want. I'm not going to burst into tears just because you think I'm not pretty."

I believed that, but it wasn't the point.

My lips pursed. "I don't need to."

"No, I mean... I want you to look." He was flushed crimson all the way down to his chest, nipples peaked with the cold. I followed the smattering of chestnut-blond hair on his chest down the smooth planes of his stomach, and from there to his half-hard length. He wanted me to look, so I obliged.

Let it never be said Jo Torres backed down from a challenge, even when she should have known better.

"It's pretty awkward," I agreed, once I felt I could speak again. "A real kick below the belt, isn't it?"

Oliver's expression flickered. "Are you making a joke out of this?"

After the evening I'd had and the real and present danger that I'd just gotten myself fired twice in as many weeks, I wasn't going to balk at the resurgence of Oliver Shepherd, corporate stick in the mud. "Don't look so surprised," I shot back, shrugging. "You didn't hire me for the sake of my comedic talents." And if he had, then newsflash, he'd made a terrible mistake. I didn't stop talking long enough to let us get tangled in the fine print: "Does it hurt any?"

"Not anymore." Which wasn't to say it hadn't been excruciating back in the day. Any kind of genital mutilation was bound to be agonizingly painful—that much I knew from getting a Brazilian.

Oliver didn't offer any further details and I didn't press him with questions on the subject. Much as I wanted to know who'd done this to him so I could whack them over the head with a frying pan, or more likely warn their current significant other, I knew it wasn't any of my business. I kept my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.

The silence that settled over us wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was a far cry from hostile. We'd made at least that much progress in six sessions.

"Do you want me to touch you?" I didn't mean his cock, but he seemed vulnerable somehow and I had nothing better to do with my empty hands.

Oliver arched a brow, managing to appear both disbelieving and amused even as he lay there, bound and tethered, my prisoner in all but name. "Do you want to?"

We were being very tentative around each other for two people who routinely got together to enact various torture scenarios. I said as much and Oliver huffed a reluctant laugh. (I liked the sound of that a lot more than I should.)

"This is what happens when you diverge from the schedule," he said. "Where were you, anyway? If it's not too forward to ask..."

"It's forward and backward, but if you want to know, I'll tell you." My smile alleged insouciance as I told him about the club, the legions of scantily clad women grinding amid clouds of stale smoke. The bar and the bartender featured only briefly in my tale as I pointed out how surprised everyone seemed to be when it turned out I didn't drink like a fish.

"Why don't you?" Oliver asked.

Because there's a chance I'll see you
, I almost said. "Habit, mostly. Plus it's bad policy. I like to be sober when I'm dealing with men who feel entitled to take whatever looks like it might be on offer." I'd heard the horror stories, I knew I had to rely on myself to keep out of trouble in this line of work. The police was as likely to prosecute me as any guy who overstepped. I didn't want to end up in prison, convicted of solicitation, so this was my solution. Sobriety and zero tolerance for any man who so much as implied he might like to put me in my place.

Of course, those were the easy red flags, the ones I could spot right off the bat. Trouble was most of our clients liked to play at being nice, easy-going types who didn't hit on women. Michelle and I had both had our fair share of those. Some bad eggs you just couldn't weed out.

I considered not telling him about Ruben, but Oliver's breaths had evened out and his questions had lost their usual edge, so I thought,
to hell with it
, and painted the picture of my latest bout of unprovoked violence with flourish. "So don't feel bad," I added in the end, "seems I hit people indiscriminately these days."

Oliver quirked a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Is that going to be a problem for you with your—Madame?"

"I don't know." That was an honest answer: no frills, no attempt to dress it up into something funny. Losing my job was rarely hilarious, no matter how many times it happened. "Does it matter?" I asked, holding his gaze as I combed my fingers gently through his hair.

"Possibly." He pressed on before I could ask what was supposed to mean: "You wear a wig, don't you?"

Few people could come out of left field with a question like that and leave me feeling anything less than defensive. It was never white men—who bought my time for their own sexual gratification—who got to be the exception. All the more surprising, then, that Oliver's query should make me want to provide enlightenment rather than a cuff across the ear. "Yes," I said, hesitating a little on the answer. "Is that problem?"

He wouldn't be the first guy to make some crack about real hair. It was such a taboo issue that I often wished they didn't bother. I didn't need their approval any more than I wanted to explain myself to them.

Oliver just shrugged. "I was curious... Is it part of the uniform? Like the clothes you wear?"

I glanced down at my miniskirt and bit my tongue against asking what he could possibly know about that. Now that I knew his secret, rebuffing invasive questions about pretending to be something I wasn't had gotten just a little bit tougher.

"It's more a matter of packaging. How many black women do you know who wear their hair natural? I've learned it's easier to get work if I look like my clients think I'm supposed to look: exotic, but not scary. Guys want long hair to sink their fingers into, right?"

Oliver held my gaze. "Not all of us."

No, I thought, some just wanted someone to snap a whip on their backs until the skin scarred over. I didn't say it. I felt ashamed to be thinking it in the first place.

"How long do you think you'll need me tonight?" I'd never asked that before, but then our sessions usually had a finite point beyond which we never went; it was often reached when Oliver climaxed. The routine of it was familiar and easy to follow. I knew I was done when he disappeared into the bathroom to clean up, then it was off home for me and another two grand dollars in my bank account, thank you very much.

Tonight was shaping up to be a little different. Not
bad
different, just unusual and therefore scary. Predictably, I wasn't fond of situations I couldn't predict.

"How long
can
you stay?" Oliver asked.

I mentally consulted my unwritten plans for the rest of the night. Now that I wasn't going to be putting up with Madam Madrigal's clients or making nice with the other girls, my schedule had cleared dramatically. I could always head home and unpack more boxes, but that hardly seemed like an answer I could give Oliver. I wanted to maintain a sliver of mystery between us. To have something that was all mine, a sanctuary to hide me when this school girl crush blew up in my face—as I knew it inevitably would.

"As long as you need," I said in the end and watched his features relax.

Oliver mumbled something into the pillow, the words half smothered by the soft cotton case.