Page 66 of Violent Delights

Chapter 39

Joseph

Twenty-one days. I can feel the end closing in on us, and I’ve never hated it more than I do this time. I’ve been falling further down the slippery slope with each day we spend together. She has taken more of me than any other girl has before, and I cannot imagine having to let her go. So soon.

We’ve passed the middle point of our time together. This is usually the point where a routine sets in that slowly leads to me losing interest in the girl.

With her, though, it’s exactly the opposite.

She’s pulling me closer, in deeper, even after I thought it couldn’t be possible. We’ve been spending all our meals together for the past week because I enjoy her company, I like acting normal with her. No one has ever evoked that desire within me. At first, I tried to dismiss it as just another kink, something new I wanted to try because it was foreign to me. But by now even I’m willing to admit that this might be more. I just don’t know how to deal with it.

Nothing is boring with her. While we still tiptoe around the taboo issue of our arrangement, we talk about pretty much everything else. She’s told me about her family, where she grew up, where she went to school, who her friends were. At one point, she even mentioned an old boyfriend who betrayed her in so many ways that it made me sick. I stopped her from talking about him any further because I couldn’t bear listening to it.

She has learned to ask the right questions, no longer pressing me about things she know she shouldn’t. But she managed to get me to talk about myself, my family, and the parts of my past that I was willing to share. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about myself to anyone as much as I have with her. It’s frightening and liberating at the same time. I don’t feel like I’m giving away too much, but I often found myself crossing my own limits.

I always stopped when things got too real. When I found myself approaching an area so intimately personal that sharing any more information might get me into real trouble. It’s easy to talk about the fuck-up my father was, and how he dragged my mother down with him. It’s also easy to talk about my grandparents, my grandfather in particular, who saw not only the symptoms of my troubles, but the root cause of it. He saw something in me that no one else saw, and he made sure to nurture that part of me before other parts could kill it. He knew all I needed was a challenge, a purpose, something that was all mine to control, something that provided me with power and success, but also the burden of responsibility.

In me, he saw the heir to the family’s business. He saw the person that my father failed to be.

Ruby’s eyes were glued to me every time I talked to her about those things. Her interest is so sincere that, for the first time, I understood what people meant when they said someone “touched their heart”. She certainly has that effect on me.

This morning is not the first time for me to wake up next to her. Another rule I broke. I’ve spent the night with her more than once. I fell asleep next to her a few days ago, after fucking her for hours, and neither of us woke up until the next morning. So what, I thought. An accident. It won’t happen again.

But it did. And then it became a deliberate choice, making it all the worse.

She’s still asleep now, her face covered by her dark ash blonde mane, her lips partly opened as she lies curled up next to me.

I place a kiss on her cheek, tugging on the collar to see if she’s awake. She groans a sweet little complaint, her naked body squirming around in the sheets.

“Time to get up, my pet,” I whisper. “You’ll get a spanking if you’re not up within five minutes.”

“Ten,” she sighs. “Ten, please, Master. I’m so tired.”

Her voice is low, her mind barely awake yet.

“Five,” I insist, giving her another kiss before I crawl out of the bed I never should have slept in.

She’s not your fucking girlfriend, and she never will be.

It seems I can repeat this mantra as often as I wish, but it won’t change the way I act around her. Even the marks on her skin can’t belie the fact that I’ve fallen for her way more than a john should fall for his whore.

Eighteen more days. That’s how much longer I can pretend that none of my self-imposed rules exist, and do whatever I want with her. That’s how long she’ll still be mine. After that, it has to stop, all of it.

“Five minutes,” I repeat. “Or you won’t be able to sit for a week.”

She growls, but catches herself just in time.

“Yes, Master,” I hear her weak voice from beneath the sheets.

I pull myself away from her and leave the room to head downstairs. Nothing has changed in regard to where she’s allowed to be in the house. She’s never to leave her room, unless I bring her downstairs to have a meal together, but I always bring her back up to her room right after. She has never seen my bedroom, my office, or any other room in the house. At least that’s a distance I manage to maintain.

I’m just about to start the coffee machine when my phone rings. This happens so rarely that the sound startles me, and I almost let the carafe fall to the floor. Who on Earth would call me on a Saturday morning?

The first people that come to mind are my grandparents. Did something happen to one of them? It’s not Sunday. It’s not their day to call.

My heart is racing when I head over to the phone, and I’m flooded with relief when I see that it’s not their number on the screen.

But the relief is soon replaced with bewildered anger.

It’s the agency.

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