Page 95 of Just Business
“I already know I won’t.” Eli started chopping vegetables. “But I want to hear it anyway.”
Justin cleared his throat. “We never set any ground rules. So yes... I’d become a twenty-four-seven slave without wanting to—or even knowing what that meant.” Shame twisted and broke free, squeezing Justin’s heart until he couldn’t breathe. He bent over and pressed his forehead against his knees.
An instant later, Eli was there,kneelingbefore Justin, one hand lifting his head, the other brushing his bangs away. “Just, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“Your leg...”
“Fuck my leg. Don’t worry about my leg.” The pain and concern in Eli’s expression... entirely for Justin.
Eli understood the pain of the past. “I want—need to get this out.” Justin wiped the tears off his face. “And the onions will burn.”
The kitchen already smelled of caramelizing onions and sausage. Eli frowned, but climbed to his feet anyway, almost concealing the wince. “You’re not going to accept ‘fuck the onions,’ are you?”
Justin hiccupped a laugh and shook his head.
“Figured.” Eli returned to the stove and pushed the vegetables around before pouring egg on top.
A deep breath steadied Justin. “We did go to parties sometimes. I enjoyed those. Even though I was forbidden to talk to anyone, I could listen and see someone other than Francis.”
Lavi walked into the kitchen and jumped up onto the breakfast bar, his fur soft under Justin’s fingers. “I disobeyed the whole no-talking rule quite a bit. Francis was controlling, but he got squeamish about damaging me, especially around others. I’m enough of a masochist that I thought I could handle any punishment he doled out.” He’d been wrong about that. Pain? Yes. But there were other ways to punish besides flogging or whipping.
Eli added cheese to the omelet, his shaky, quick movements speaking for him.
“During the last party out there, someone I’d known from college told me my parents had been trying to find me. It had something to do with my sister.” He could taste the panic of that moment, the way the world had frozen as the worst possible thoughts scrolled through his mind. Anger heated his gut. Lavi pressed his face against Justin’s hand. “I’d had my mail forwarded to Francis’s address. Ithoughthe’d been giving me everything.”
“He hadn’t.” Eli flipped the omelet—a huge mass of egg and cheese—onto a plate.
“No. I didn’t say anything that night or even the next day. I waited until one of the rare times Francis left me alone in the house and snooped through his office and the trash. I found shredded letters. Pieced enough together and recognized my mother’s handwriting.”
Eli leaned against the counter and pushed his hair back with both hands. “You confronted him.”
“Yeah. I was sick of the shit. The orders, the lack of free will. I couldn’t even leave the house without him. I found a pair of scissors and cut his collar off. When he got back, I handed the collar to him along with the shredded bits of my mom’s letter.”
“And he freaked out?”
“Yes, but he didn’t get angry, didn’t yell. He... fell apart. Tears, apologies, the whole nine yards. Told me he loved me, that he was only trying to protect me. He thought I loved being taken care of.” Justin picked Lavi up and held his warm, purring body against his chest. “I bought every word.”
Eli blew air out from between his teeth and pulled two clean plates from the cabinet. The tension in his body could have held up a bridge.
“After talking things through, finding out what was happening with my sister, getting Francis’s promise that things would change and that he’d let me go visit my family, we had sex. Some of the best we’d had in a while.” Lavi squirmed and he let the cat jump to the floor. “I let him tie me up and flog me. He bound me like I’d asked you to.”
Eli slid the large omelet between them and sat down. “Is that why you...?” He rotated the plate slightly.
“I used to love being bound tight and hard against a cross. With cuffs I can move and it’s not as fun. I... didn’t realize he’d ruined it.” Justin took a swallow of cold coffee. “He did flog me that night. Hard, and I loved every second. When he finished, he told me that every inch of me belonged to him. He’d clothed me and fed me and fucked me and he wasn’t letting me go.” Justin blinked away moisture. “Then he walked away and left me there.”
“He—” Eli stood again, paced to the counter, then turned around. “Heleftyou there? How long?”
“I don’t know.” Long enough to piss himself. Long enough to run out of tears. Long enough to not be able to move when Francis took him down and shoved him into a bathroom with the order to clean himself up. “I—” Maybe he shouldn’t have told this story because he couldn’t stop shaking.
Again, Eli was there, this time handing him a glass of water. “Justin, look at me.”
Eli was so much taller than Francis. There was no rope here, only a giant omelet and two plates. Justin took a sip and cold liquid eased his throat. “A day or so later, I snuck out of Francis’s bed, grabbed a change of clothes, and left. I—sat in a park until morning, then went to my former office and begged a friend to let me use her phone. Then I called home.”
That hadn’t been pleasant. His father had answered, and lashed out with the latest news of his sister. He’d only stopped when Justin had started sobbing. “In the end, my dad wired me money they didn’t have so I could fly home.” He looked up.
Eli held out his hand and Justin took it. A slight tug had him on his feet and Justin stepped into Eli’s arms.
“Thank you for trusting me with that.”
