Chapter 4 #2
Those damned words again.
They hit me even harder a second time, after actually meeting Luke. They hit somewhere far inside, in the part of myself I keep carefully hidden from anyone.
But here isn’t the place to examine the odd lump in my throat, nor the sudden constriction in my chest that almost makes it difficult to breathe.
I tuck the words away before their impact can show on my face.
“Would you two gentlemen excuse me for a moment?” I stand up, smiling smoothly. “I need to take Luke through the job for about half an hour, then I’ll be back.”
I don’t miss the sly grin the men exchange when they think I’m not looking.
Mak has clearly given Roman and Dimitry the heads-up about the Viewing Gallery.
Which means they’ve probably warned Luke.
Not that it matters.
Being warned is one thing.
Surviving it is something entirely different.
Welcome to the dark side, Captain Macarthur.
The Viewing Gallery is one of several purpose-built rooms in the basement of the Quartier, all of which cater to different tastes.
This particular room has a twenty-by-twenty-foot glass box with only one piece of furniture inside it: a red leather reclining chair, with wide-set padded foot props.
Adjustable cameras on the chair are connected to large screens on either side and behind it. The floor beyond the glass is polished concrete. There’s no seating.
Two down-lights are the only illumination. One highlights the chair. The other spotlights a place outside the box that is just big enough for one man to stand in.
Inside the glass room, Rocco, his immaculate torso oiled and gleaming, is already waiting.
Rocco might be quite the most useless barman I’ve ever employed, but his tongue once reduced a notoriously tough American diplomat to such screaming ecstasy that the UK brokered its best trade deal in a decade. The deal is still known around Westminster as the Rocco Accord.
Best of all, Rocco understands the darkness.
He knows that he’s here to put on a show. He plays his part in these performances willingly, and for a damn good paycheck, but he also understands that it is only a part. A show.
He knows that in our world, sex is always about power and control.
Tonight, it’s about giving the kind and wholesome Luke Macarthur a close-up look at the darkness, so he can choose to walk away now, while he still can.
“One guest,” I inform Rocco. “Make sure he can see everything.”
Rocco nods, adjusting the camera angles slightly for maximum effect.
The lighting is designed to show every detail of my performance, and in turn to expose every detail of the spectator’s reaction to it.
It isn’t the sexual reaction I’m watching for.
That is predictable enough; I’ve never yet had a man watch this performance who didn’t become visibly turned on by it.
Most end up with their dick in their hands, moaning, their eyes locked on my swollen pussy, projected in devastating detail onto the screens behind the chair.
It’s what happens when they actually look at my face that changes the game.
The moment when they see the dead girl in my eyes, staring unblinking back at them.
When they realize I’m not moaning, or gasping, or reacting in any way.
That’s when they start to understand the darkness they’re actually dealing with—and when I get to see what the man is really made of.
They all break, eventually.
In the end, they can’t get out of the room, and away from my dead eyes, fast enough.
Mak has watched me break men this way before. To be honest, given how well he knows me, I’m rather surprised he suggested Luke for the job at all.
Mak knows as well as I do that outsiders like Luke don’t survive people like us.
I strip off in the adjoining changeroom and reach for a burgundy silk robe that I slip on over my stockings, stilettos, and corset. I close my eyes, conjuring up the images from my past that I use to build the mask which, like my costume, carries me through these performances.
Hanging naked by my wrists in a cage, while my father and his friends play cards at a table nearby.
Screaming under the cut of my father’s whip, while his men take bets on how long it will take for me to pass out.
And finally, mastering myself to endure the entire ordeal in utter silence.
Keeping my eyes wide open, staring coldly at each man until they can’t take it anymore and look away.
That was the last day my father ever used his whip on me. It was also the day I learned that men only want what they think they can control or conquer.
Turning myself into a dead thing, a psychopath with no soul, removes the thrill of conquest.
It removes the power in their game.
When my eyes open again, any trace of Zinaida Melikov, successful businesswoman, is gone.
In her place is the renowned psychopath feared by London’s underworld.
The vengeful daughter whose dead eyes were the last thing Oleg “the Whip” ever saw.
The external door opens, and Anatoly walks Luke to the spotlit circle on the other side of the glass, barely feet from the chair.
I wait for him to leave before walking out from behind the screen. Anatoly doesn’t like these performances.
I’m aware of Luke’s still, silent figure, but I don’t so much as glance in his direction.
Ignoring him is part of the game.
It isn’t until I’m seated on the tilted chair, with my knees up and feet on the padded footrests, that I let my eyes rest on the spotlit circle in which Luke stands.
Oh, fuck.
I should know by now that looking at him is a mistake.
Luke isn’t shifting uncomfortably. He isn’t looking around, trying to work out what is going on. He isn’t defensive, aggressive—or even turned on.
His face is as impassive as my own.
His arms are loose at his sides, feet planted firmly on the ground, stance easy but controlled. He looks like he could take anything that comes at him, but has no need to look around wondering what might be coming for him.
And he’s staring straight at me.
Not at my body.
Not at my spread legs or the man kneeling between them. His eyes don’t flicker downward or from side to side.
Luke is looking straight into my eyes.
He’s looking straight into my soul.
I’m used to being on this chair, to playing this game.
I’m accustomed to disassociating from the physical arousal of Rocco’s tongue, to allowing my body to react while my mind and soul remain entirely untouched.
In fact, I’ve spent so long perfecting the art of detaching my inner self from my physical form that I sometimes wonder if I will ever make the two things work together again.
But there’s something about Luke’s eyes locked on mine that reminds me of exactly how connected those separate parts of myself truly are. His direct gaze is unsettling in a way I’ve never felt on this chair before.
Unsettling in a way I’ve never felt before, period.
Rocco’s tongue slides along my outer folds.
Luke doesn’t move.
Just like when he watched me earlier through the camera lens, his stillness is uncanny. It’s like the heavy atmosphere of the sky when a storm is coming. I can sense Luke’s power, but not by a single flicker of his eyelids does he betray it.
And that mastery turns me on more than anything ever has in my life.
Unlocks a sudden, fierce arousal that I’m powerless to fight.
It takes every ounce of my infamous self-control to maintain eye contact.
Usually my arousal in this chair is a shallow, practical affair. A performance that has nothing to do with genuine desire. My goal is never to titillate the watching men.
It’s to humble them. To break them. They always crack, whether before or after they blow into their own hand.
But tonight, the body I mastered long ago is betraying me.
Luke’s eyes remain on my own, unwavering and uncompromising.
Heat curls along my spine, delicious and forbidden.
Rocco continues, oblivious to my inner turmoil. It’s never about the woman for him. Rocco just gets off on the game. In his own way, he is just as disassociated as me.
Except that tonight, I’m losing my disassociation really fucking fast.
Luke’s eyes don’t move. Not down toward Rocco’s head, nor to the screens on either side of me, which show a close-up of Rocco’s tongue stroking my folds, pushing me toward an orgasm that, for once, I am desperate to have.
Don’t clutch the chair.
I never bind my hands. Another part of this game is to leave my fingers visibly loose, relaxed, proof of how little I care what is being done to me.
But right now it’s an effort not to grip the arms, to writhe in the chair.
And I’m uncomfortably aware that my nipples beneath the corset are hard as berries.
Not that Luke would know, since he hasn’t so much as looked at them.
Crack, you bastard.
I’ve never had a straight man last this long without a reaction.
Most squirm until they can’t take it anymore and finally reach for their cock.
The bolder simply start pumping themselves straight away, their eyes glued between my legs.
There are those who beg to fuck me. Those who threaten to rape me senseless. Those who angrily demand someone come and suck them off.
But in the end, they all come.
And then, faced with my silence and psychopathic stillness, they all break.
Captain fucking Macarthur doesn’t even have a visible hard-on.
And yet I know he’s turned on.
I can sense it.
Feel the carefully restrained power, the heat simmering beneath his surface control.
I want to turn that heat up until he can’t take it anymore.
I want to see him fucking break.
Only he’s showing no sign of doing anything of the sort. And the more he simply stands there, his mountain of a body as immovable as the earth itself, the more it’s my own body melting into liquid desire, my own control that is slipping away.
His eyes bore into mine like twin lasers, and moisture slicks my thighs. My clit is so swollen it’s pulsing. And the way the pressure is building from the very base of my spine, I’m almost terrified of the force of the orgasm that is coming.
I can’t lose control.
Control is power.
I am master of this body, I tell myself fiercely. Master of this game.
Except I’m really not.
I want to drop my eyes to Luke’s cock. I want to pull it out of that frustratingly well-made tux and devour every hard inch until he’s groaning my name with his hands in my hair.
I want to drive Captain Macarthur so utterly insane he has to fuck me, deep and slow, filling me until I can’t breathe . . .
For a moment the sensation is so real I can actually feel it.
Oh, fuck.
Did I just actually moan aloud?
No. I never make a noise. My self-discipline is far too entrenched to make that kind of mistake.
But something happened.
For the briefest moment, I wasn’t detached anymore. I was somewhere . . . else.
I let my mask slip.
I know it did.
Did Luke notice?
The cameras are angled to catch every vivid detail of my swollen, glistening arousal, the throbbing intensity of my approaching orgasm. Even if the enormous screens are in Luke’s peripheral vision, he can hardly ignore the close-up images on them.
Yet he’s still just standing there, holding my eyes, his own utterly unreadable.
I can’t tell what he’s thinking. What he’s feeling. Whether he saw behind my mask or not.
I need this to be over.
I want to hiss at Rocco to just get on with it, to bring the game to an end, but that would be admitting defeat.
Who the fuck am I kidding?
This game is already over.
And for the first time in my life, I haven’t won it.
Luke hasn’t moved. Nothing in his eyes, face, or stance betrays a single flicker of emotion. He might as well be carved in fucking marble.
He beat me at my own game.
The realization splinters the last of my control, and orgasm hits with the mind-bending intensity of a freight train at high speed.
It is only the discipline of long practice that ensures I keep my eyes open, although my ability to see through them has completely left the building.
It feels like every synapse inside me is exploding, a sensation so exquisite it’s almost unbearable.
Luke’s eyes are like silent witnesses, both impassive and intense, like he’s inside my body, riding every wave with me, yet also completely detached from the experience.
I force myself to stare straight back at him, spasming in utter stillness and complete silence, which somehow only increases the intensity.
I’ve never been more shattered by an orgasm in my life.
I stand up as soon as I trust my legs, pushing Rocco aside.
Luke holds my eyes and doesn’t move a muscle.
Focusing every effort on retaining at least some control over my weak-limbed, satiated body, I turn my back on him and disappear behind the screen.
Game: Captain fucking Macarthur.