CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marly
Iexamined myselfin the mirror. The dress Jude sent up still had tags on it—seven hundred dollars. For a dress in a private club that no one would ever see and I’d never be photographed in. What was the point of that? My dad would be rolling in his grave right now. He understood the occasional splurge and he loved buying me presents… but he loved a good deal even more.
Instead of tearing the tags off, I tucked them into the dress. Just in case Jude decided he wanted to return it. At the most, I’d be wearing this for what? An hour? Two tops? How late can a public flogging go?
Holy shit, just listen to yourself! I scolded myself. A public flogging. Forget the stupid dress, Dad would be rolling in his grave aboutthis. I could still hear his voice—his Dadisms. In the ninth grade, my boyfriend threatened to break up with me if I didn’t let him cheat off my math homework. For weeks, I let him copy my work until one day after school, my dad came home early. He walked in on my boyfriend copying my homework. The anger and disappointment in Dad’s eyes—I hated that look. I never wanted to be the source of that expression on anyone ever again.“Marlena, if you were meant to be controlled, you would have come with a remote,”he’d said. Then, he took our papers and the next morning, he turned usbothinto the principal for cheating all year. I had to do extra credit for weeks to climb out of those zeros I received. But Dad wasn’t wrong. I was raised to be independent. In control of myself. So then, why in the hell did it feel so damn good to lose that control within these walls?
“Sorry, Daddy,” I whispered, then tugged the tags off the dress.
There was a knock at the side door—from Jude’s room. I rushed over, opening it to find Jude standing there in his usual starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to the elbow. Charcoal dress pants. Sleek silver and black leather belt. Matching black leather shoes.
He towered in the doorway, taking up most of the space—both literally and metaphorically. His shoulders rolled back, his chin high and his eyes fixed onto me. His jaw twitched.
“Well?” I said, doing a twirl for him in the new dress. “What do you think?”
His gaze swept briefly down my body, then jerked back to my eyes. “I think… you don’t look like you.”
“I’m not supposed to look like me. I’m supposed to be Holly.”
“Right,” he said. His voice was stern, but his eyes were pensive. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry,” I said, stepping back to give him room to enter. Then, I looked around the room to escape those searing jade eyes of his. I wanted to know about him and yet that damn commanding nature of his managed to turn me into a blubbering idiot with a simple glance. “Before we go, I was wondering what your favorite toy is? I’ve been studying them and there’s so many. How do you choose?”
Jude’s head jerked with the question, eyes wide and momentarily stunned. “Are you asking Leo? Or me?”
“I’m not so sure there’s much difference between the two anymore.” I responded in a moment of bravery.
That stunned look of his quickly morphed into a grin. “We’re pretty similar at times, huh? It’s why when the script rolled across Ash’s desk, I was the first person to pop into his mind to play the role.”
“So?”
“Even with that,” Jude walked to my bed, “Leo and I have very different answers.”
He had one hand in a pocket and the other was brushing across his top lip. “Leo tends to be more about pain. Whereas, I’m more about the power in bondage and control. So, for Leo, I think his favorite toy is right here.” Jude held up a hand, palm out.
“His hand?”
A smile twitched on across Jude’s mouth and the smug grin sucked the wind right out of my lungs. God, he was breathtaking.
“Yep… the crops and stuff are fun. But I think Leo would love to feel the pain he’s administering on his palm with each strike.Andsince he’s a control freak on top of a sadist, he would want to know just how hard he was hitting; so that he didn’t go too far.”
I nodded, my mind drifting back to the other night when Jude’s hand came down on my ass in the common room. A shiver rolled over me like water sliding down my body in the shower. I never considered myself to be masochistic, but when it came to Jude? I trusted him. I trusted him to know just what buttons to push and how far to push them. Which was…holy shit. I didn’t trust anyone other than my dad and Omar. He stood over my bed and I swallowed, that warm feeling zinging into my veins and swirling around in my stomach like the first sip of hot coffee.
“So, then foryou?”
He inhaled a short breath before leaning down to my nightstand and pulling something small out of the top drawer. “This,” he said, holding a small toy out.
I took it in my palm—some sort of small ring with a silicone ball on it the size of a pea. It couldmaybebe a cock ring, for a man with a micro-penis. But even still—I hadn’t ever seen a cock ring with a little ball on it like this one. And based on when I had felt Jude’s erection pressing against my belly when he spanked me? He didnothave a micro-penis. “I didn’t even see that in there.”
Jude shrugged. “It was in the back of the drawer. It’s small, so it makes sense you would have missed it. But that’s my favorite toy. That along with the bed restraints.”
I turned the small ring over in my hands. Only, by the time I looked up again, Jude had moved in, towering above me, so that his hot breath cascaded down my neck.
“Why would Holly need to know about Jude?”
I swallowed. It was a damn good question. And the bottom line was that I didn’tneedto know. Iwantedto know. I held up the small silicone ring, hoping to change the subject. “What is this?” I asked, ignoring his question.
