Page 33 of After Dark
“What I know,” she said, very quietly, her gaze on his though it looked like it hurt her, “is that pretending to be perfect for you is the closest I’ve ever felt to a good person as I think I’ll ever get. That’s all.”
Arlo smoothed his hands over her cheeks, running his palms over her cheekbones. Then over that sweet, ripe mouth.
He leaned in and kissed her, low and slow. When he pulled away, her breath was a little ragged, and he kept his gaze on hers. Serious. Intense.
“Thank you for telling me these things,” he said, almost formally. “I don’t take them lightly.”
Then he picked her up again and carriedher off to bed, where she fell asleep in his arms almost immediately—right after she claimed she wouldn’t. That she couldn’t.
But Arlo stayed awake much longer, staring at the way light from the bay moved across the ceiling, working out the puzzle that was Josette in his mind.
And the best way to solve it. For good.
Chapter Eight
It took Josette about two minutes into Arlo’s morning blow job to realize he’d woken up and chosen violence. Not literal violence, of course. But still.
Everything was different.
It was the way he gripped her hair, holding her face still, that indicated that their usually lazy bit of cocksucking to wake up was now more of an intense face fucking.
When he finished, he didn’t let her come.
And when she tried to say something about it, he tilted his head to the side in that way of his that made everything inside her go still, and lifted one brow.
“Today will be high protocol,” he told her, matter-of-factly. “Infractions will be dealt with accordingly.”
His voice was cold. His gaze was stern. She felt it wind around inside of her until she felt like butter straight through.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered.
Then he made her crawl, naked, trailing behind him as he moved to the kitchen. He had her kneel beside his chair as he read the paper and ate his breakfast, and fed hermorsels with his fingers when he felt like it. He otherwise acted as if he didn’t know that she was there, naked and desperately wet and aching, but she knew he did.
Right when she thought—despairingly—that she was going to have to shift position without permission because her knees hurt and her pussy ached, he guided her head to his leg and let her rest there.
It sang in her like a gift. Like a magic charm.
The heat of him and his tough, strong muscles. His hand resting almost carelessly on her head, toying with her curls.
Josette felt herself drifting off into that other place that she usually could only access after a deeply intense scene. Some people lived like this, she knew. High protocol in a 24/7 power dynamic like this swallowed some couples whole. It was all the intensity, all the time. It was hard to transition out of it. Some never did.
On her knees beside him, her face on his leg and fed by his hand, she could see the appeal. There were no decisions in this space. He told her what to do and she did it.
All she had to do was obey. It didn’t matter who she was without him. It didn’t matter what people thought of her, because those people didn’t exist here in this electrically charged space that was only theirs.
Arlo was the only thing that mattered, and all she had to do was what he told her.
There was something about it that felt healing. That this was some kind of blessing, that his will sanctified her and made her whole.
Because another truth was that Josette loved the version of herself she was in his hands. She loved the fact that shecouldbe perfect. For him. For a while.
Deep in high protocol, she was tempted to believe that it was sustainable.
He cuffed her hands in front of her when he was finished with his breakfast, and had her tend to the dishes even though the cuffs made it more difficult. She assumed that was the point. When she was finished, he laid her out over the kitchen table on her back. Then he used a riding crop on her breasts, making them feel red and swollen, nipples so tight it was like they were clamping themselves, her whole body a riot of sensation.
“If you keep tossing and turning, Josette,” he told her coolly in the middle of it, “I won’t let you come all day.”
So she had no choice but to keep her cuffed hands over her head where he’d put them and try to press her fingers hard enough into the heavy table to keep herself from reacting. She had to do the same with the backs of her knees, which were folded over the edge of the table. She had to fight to keep her hips from rocking with each strike of that crop. Arlo rained down blows all around her breasts as if he knew that the more swollen they felt, the more wild the electricity that raced all through her body and seemed to pool in her clit.
