DAY TWENTY FOUR

I hadn’t let myself consider what would have happened if I’d done it differently. If I’d sat him down and explained that I was unhappy. If we’d gone to counseling. Opened up communication. Maybe I would have broken through to him.

More likely he would have retreated further, burying his inner Dominant under another few layers of shit, and tried to be the perfect man for me. At least, the man I thought I wanted. No matter how I twisted it in my mind, my only options were this miserable empty bed in a cavernous empty loft with uncertainty in my future and past.

Stick to the plan.

I could live like this for another two weeks. That was my cliff. Once I was midair I had to either fly or hit the ground in a mess of blood and bone.

Only his love could stop my trajectory. I was submitting to him in ways he didn’t know and I didn’t even understand.

Kayti caught me at the receptionist’s desk, green eyes wide with the sheer import of what she was about to say. “He’s in your office.”

“Who?” As if I didn’t know. As if I should have been the least surprised.

“Adam,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” I said. “Hold my calls.”

“Should I cancel your ten-thirty?”

It was nine thirty. One hour. “No. I can make that.”

The ten-thirty meeting was a perfect excuse to keep my clothes on my body and my knees off the floor.

I strode into my office, letting the door click behind me. Adam stood with his back to the window, hands in his pockets, all dressed up in like a god in a suit.

“What?” I said. “Didn’t hear me yesterday?”

“How was it? Your session with what’s-his-name?”

“Why?”

“I want to know. I’m your first Dom. It’s my job to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I don’t know if I believe that.”

“You don’t have to. I see it as my job. That’s the end of it.”

I crossed my arms and leaned on my desk. I needed more than posture to protect me from him, but my arms and a desk were all I had. “Do you want the gory details?”

He went to the side of the desk chair, two feet closer to me and out of the glare of the morning sun. Close enough for me to see that he hadn’t slept. Close enough to smell his cologne and hear the undertone of worry in his voice.

“I want it any way you’re willing to tell it,” he said.

My throat went dry. He hadn’t said anything unexpected or piercing, but I realized my plans were detouring. If we hadn’t been honest with each other before the split because of the things we hadn’t said, a tidy obfuscation now wouldn’t be the right answer.

“I didn’t go,” I said. “I went home. Not that it’s any of your business.”

I hadn’t realized how tense he was, but his body relaxed noticeably and his smile was one of release.

Which annoyed me. I’d given him what he wanted and he hadn’t earned it. Not even a little.

“Get out,” I said. “Just go.”

“Diana, listen, I—”

“Are you going to tell me you love me?”

“No.”

“Then get the fuck out!” I slammed a book on the desk and took inventory of anything on it that I could throw, ready to go full tantrum. “Get—”

Like a wind, he crossed the distance between us. One hand behind my head, the other over my mouth. “Don’t yell.”

“—uck oo—”

“Your safe word is pinochle.”

He pushed his body against me, and I was flooded with desire. We were playing now. I hadn’t intended it, but we were in the game. I groaned at the thought, discipline flying out the window.

“I was waiting for you to lie about where you went, and you didn’t. You told the truth. I’m going to reward you. Do you want that?” His voice was laced with promise.

Yeah. I wanted whatever he had in mind.

I nodded behind his hand. He moved it away.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“What did you think? I was going to let you drive away and not follow you?” In one motion, he pulled my shirt and bra up, exposing my breasts.

“Why? Why did you follow if you don’t care? I don’t understand what you want.”

“I never said I didn’t care. Look at you,” he said. “So tough. But your breathing is shallow and your nipples are hard.”

“You’re leading me on,” I said. “You know I love you.”

“Maybe you don’t.” He stepped back. “Maybe you think you do. Pull your skirt up.”

I was powerless against him. I wanted him. I wanted to obey him. What he was doing was terrible, and I knew it. Yet my body rushed and tingled at his command.

I pulled up my skirt.

“Get on the desk.”

When I was sitting on the desk, he grabbed my ankles, pulling them up and out until I fell backward onto my hands. He jerked my knees open so he could see my soaked underwear.

“I realized yesterday that you couldn’t go back.” He opened my desk drawer and got out a pair of scissors. “There’s no more vanilla Diana.”

He hooked his finger on the crotch of my panties and snipped them open with the scissors.

“I won’t miss her,” he said, thrusting two fingers deep inside me before I could feel anything about what he said. “But I’m responsible for who she became. Probably the most desirable submissive in the city.” He ran his fingers along my front wall, circling the hard bundle of nerves he always knew where to find. “And the worst trained. Do you want to come?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The answer is, ‘If it pleases you.’”

“If it pleases you,” I gasped.

“It doesn’t.” He took his fingers out and laid them on my lower lip. “Clean these off.” He shoved them in my mouth, and I sucked my taste off them. “I need to teach you what to expect from a Dom and show you how you deserve to be treated.” He removed his fingers. “Now what do you say?”

I didn’t know the answer. I just looked at him with my tits and wet cunt open for him, wondering how to please this godly creature.

“You say, ‘Thank you.’”

“Thank you.”

“Good girl. Now.” He rummaged around my drawer. “How do you find anything in here?”

He plucked out two silver paper clips and what looked like a credit card but was a membership to some forgotten store.

He pulled a nipple taut and pinned the paper clip to it. “You’re going to repeat after me.” He clipped the other. The pain spoke directly to my pleasure. “Then you can come.”

“This is a reward?” I squeaked.

He slapped me between the legs with the card. I had to bite back a scream. It hurt like the best hurt. Like the ugliest package under the tree that exploded into sparkles and song when opened.

“The reward is, I’m going to train you. Period.” He slapped between my legs harder. I clenched my jaw. “This is not negotiable.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

Slap.

“Yes, sir.”

He tapped my clit with the card just a little. I was on the edge of ecstasy. I didn’t care if he loved me. Didn’t care if I got hurt. I wanted this drug right now, for as long as I could get it.

“Repeat after me. ‘You own me.’”

Tap. Tap.

“You own me.”

“My body is your toy.”

Slap.

“My body, oh God. My body is your toy.”

“Until the end of our term.” He drew the edge of the card over the length of my clit.

“Until… God. Until the end… oh…”

“Diana,” he said, his voice deep, rough, yet so sincere I had to look at him. “You’re beautiful like this. You’re perfect. I want to fuck the breath out of you. I want to hurt you. Mark you. I want you to beg me to stop and love it when I don’t.” His fingers slid into me again.

“What pleases you.” I couldn’t do more than squeak.

“Don’t come.” He reached behind me and swiped things off the desk. “Lie back and hold your legs open.”

I leaned back and put my hands behind my knees. He put his slick fingers in my ass, deep.

Looking at my cringing face, he said, “Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“What do you say?”

“Thank you?”

“That’s right.” With his other hand, he plucked the paper clips off my nipples and watched me closely.

I knew what was coming, and I knew he had it under control. I trusted him with my body if not my heart. I trusted him with my pain. The stinging came a second later. He bent away from me, digging his fingers in my ass and putting his tongue on my throbbing clit. When he sucked it gently, he put his other hand over my mouth.

Good thing. Because I was lost, and without that hand, my cries as the burning pain turned into a mind-bending orgasm would have brought in the whole office.

“Stop!” I gasped behind his hand.

He heard me. I knew he did, but he ignored me, licking and sucking, stretching my ass, bringing me to orgasm again until I couldn’t breathe and my cries dissolved into tears.

I gulped for air when he stopped and removed his fingers. He went into my bathroom. The water ran. I got up on my elbows when he returned with two hot cloth towels.

“I’m fine,” I said, but he picked me up and carried me to the couch.

“I know you’re fine.” He wiped my face, pressing the heat into my tear ducts. “I’m showing you how you should be treated.”

He put a towel on my sore nipples. The warmth soothed them. Then he wiped between my legs. I lay back and enjoyed it, closing my eyes against the hard office fluorescents.

“You’re going to make it worse,” I said. “Even if we don’t have sex. Real sex.”

“You may hate me when it’s done.”

“I can love you and hate you at the same time, you know.”

A short laugh of recognition escaped him. He must have felt the same when I left him. He might have even felt the same leaning on the couch in my office, shaking his watch down his wrist.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Ten.”

I shot up, bursting out of my post-orgasmic haze like a diver cutting into cold water. “I have to go. You have to go.” I wiggled out of my shredded underpants and pulled my skirt down. “Shoo.”

“Where are you going?”

I pulled my shirt and bra back over my breasts. “Meeting.”

His head tilted ever so slightly and his jaw tightened just enough. I had no intention of telling him where I was going or why. I didn’t want him to help or hinder the cause.

“I’m going uptown,” he said. “We can share a cab.”

“No, thanks.” I stood. The skirt was long enough to cover the fact that I wasn’t wearing underpants. I smoothed it down, and he took my hand.

“You can’t go out like that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“I forbid it.”

“Really?”

“Do you want me to train you or not? This…” He waved at me from knees to waist. “This falls under my oversight. You have to put something on under that skirt.”

“You shredded my underwear, first of all. So it’s your fault. And second, we haven’t negotiated the terms of my training.” I slung my bag on my shoulder. “This isn’t Montauk. I have plenty of options.”

He put up his finger and pointed right into me. “You want me to be the one to train you and you know it.”

I did know it. I knew it better than he did. But I wasn’t going to be a passive recipient of his demands, and I wasn’t just going to let him have full control of my future. The next two weeks were going to be his training as well as mine. He just didn’t know it yet.

I put my coat over my arm. “Send me the terms.”

Before he could answer, I walked out with my head high and tossed my sliced underpants into the office garbage pail.