Page 13 of Disgrace

“Oh, I can do drinks!” She leaps from the table with excitement. Pulling a chilled bottle of Bollinger from the fridge and grabbing two glasses from a high shelf, she sashays back to the table. “My oven is hot.” She twists the cork with the bottle supported between her thighs, and I am all kinds of distracted. Was that a euphemism? Because if it was thenmineis hard…fucking hard. “Is there something in the oven Jason?” Her knowing smile has me adjusting my pants. Shit! The bread! I jump from the table and run the short distance to the kitchen. I open the oven to a billow of steam, which fortunately, is still white. The ends of the bread had started to turn and catch but the rest is fine. I bring it over to the table pulling chunks apart and handing Sam a piece. I’m all about the presentation.

I raise my glass for a toast and she eyes me with suspicion but tips her glass to meet mine all the same. “What shall we toast, Sam?” The glasses hover millimetres from each other.

“To wishful thinking.” Her smile falls flat, and I shake my head.

“Oh, I think we can do better than that. How about to truth and trust. I already have one and I’m getting the other tonight.” Her eyes narrow but she chinks her glass against mine and takes a small sip of the bubbly.

“You are awfully confident about that, Jason.” She eyes me over the lip of her glass, her expression a mix of I’m not sure because she has regained some of her former sass but there is a tinge of sadness, too. I don’t answer but take a big gulp of Champagne. We eat the meal in comfortable silence, and when she places her cutlery together on her clean plate, I take one of her hands and hold it between mine. I lean toward her and smile when she mirrors my move.

“Tell me, Sam, did me tying you up turn you on?” Her breath catches as my words float on a soft exhale toward her lips. She tips her tongue out to wet the sudden dryness before she answers.

“You know it did.” She exhales softly.

“I did know, but I wanted you to acknowledge the truth.” She tries to slip her hand free, but I hold it firm and kiss the individual fingertips. Her breath catches on her reply.

“The truth doesn’t really matter does it?” She sighs, stretching out some tension in her neck by rolling her head from side to side. Her hair falling in the loose ponytail as she moves. She straightens her shoulders and flashes me her most seductive smile. Her sinfully breathy voice washes over me. Her words are like audible Viagra. “Of course you turn me on. Look at you. Even if you didn’t look like Apollo, you fuck like a porn star. I’d have to be in a coma not to get wet around you.”

“Hmm, flattery will get you fucked, Sam, but it won’t stop this conversation from happening,” I reply deadpan, but laugh when her shoulders sink. I wonder if she has ever had someone read her like this.

“I wonder if you are so used to getting your own way that you even realise when you are in manipulation mode.” She flutters her eyelashes with mock innocence and finally pulls her hand free only to place it on her mock wounded heart. I chuckle and push back from the table. I take her hand and lead her to the softest looking of the sofas, the one near the sex lounger. “Don’t insult me trying to deny it. Just know it won’t work on me. I won’t let you top from the bottom so we better just get that straight right now.” I roughly pull her to sit between my legs, my arms around her, my thighs encasing her, and her back to my chest. As much as I mean those words, when her eyes well with sadness it will take a much stronger man than I to deny her a single thing.

“It turned you on when I restrained you, so that wasn’t an issue for you?” I rephrase my question, and although I feel her initially tense, she also relaxes back against my chest. I languidly stroke the length of her arm and across her tummy. “Just the truth baby, nothing more.” I kiss her hair.

“It did. I was nervous, but yes, it turned me on…a lot.” I smile into her hair. This is progress.

“That pleases me.” I pause to let that sink in. “How does that make you feel?”

“I…I…That turns me on, too. I like to please you.” My thumb rests on her wrist, and I can feel her little pulse beating double time.

“And you do—”

“But—” I silence her interruption by cupping my large hand over her mouth, which makes her giggle.

“Shush…we’re making progress.” I laugh, too.

“I have to ask, Sam. You flinched from me after you safeworded out. Did you really think I would harm you?” The fact that I have to ask this cuts me to the core, but after her meltdown, I really can’t take anything for granted. She twists in my arms and tucks her knees up under herself, so she is kneeling in between my legs. She strokes my cheek, and her eyes are filled with remorse.

“Not ever. Not you.” She drops her head, unable to keep eye contact, but I won’t let her avoid me like that. “I’m so sorry, Jason.”

“Don’t…You have nothing to be sorry for. You didnothingwrong.” My thumb catches the stray tear poised to tumble down her cheek. “I want you to tell me who did?”

This is a clusterfuck. The last time I felt this vulnerable was the day Richard destroyed me and my mother abandoned me, that day, over ten years ago. I may have felt a little lost when I left home, when Leon took me in, but I haven’t felt this raw since the day I was left to bleed. I don’t want to relive any part of my childhood, I don’t want to rememberthatday or my relationship with Richard. But I know if I want to have more than a one-night-stand with Jason, it’s exactly what I will have to do. I let my head sink back against his hard chest and feel the strong thump-thump of his heart. I savour the quiet, gentle breaths he takes that make both of our bodies rise and fall. The calm before the storm. This is my choice, I know. I could shut him down. Tell him it’s none of his damn business and hide, like I have done every time anyone has dared to get close. Everyone except Leon and now Jason.

His hands are large and strong. So much power and control at his fingertips. I don’t doubt for a moment he could easily crush me with his physical strength, but there is more to control than overpowering someone. I am five foot ten, slender build, and I have men twice my size quake when I enter a room. No, it’s not about brute strength; it’s about trust. Do I trust Jason enough? Not just to give up control, but do I trust him enough to let him in?

He delicately traces his finger the length of my arm, circling my palm and dipping across my tummy. Feather-light and hypnotic, I fall a little more under his spell.

“Sam?” His voice is level, but I can feel the heavy weight of the unanswered question. I draw in a breath, and he slips his fingers between mine, entwined and secure, and he grips my hand.

“My mother.” I am surprised how emotionless my voice sounds. She only died recently, but still I feel nothing but bitterness and bile for that woman. My only living relative, the one person who was supposed to love me and protect me, but instead, she gift wrapped me and gave me to a monster. I hate them both. Richard’s abuse was mostly physical, but the mental abuse I lay firmly at my mother’s feet. The guilt, the shame, the hypocrisy and hell I lived, every day was her poisoned gift to me, her only child.

“My mother pimped me out to the son of the wealthiest family in the village. Insisted I date him, ignored the bruises and cuts even when I told her exactly who had done them. When I dared to break up with him because I wouldn’t let him fuck me, she locked me naked in the coal shed for a week with no food, my penance for sinning. I wasn’t allowed tosaythe word fuck, there was no way she wouldn’t kill me if I actuallydidfuck. She made me beg him to take me back, promise him anything. Toheranything meant my heart and hand or some misplaced romantic notion. But tohimit meant I was going to become his personal fuck toy.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” Jason’s words startled me. I had started to drift to a much darker place. His rough, sexy timbre grounded me back to now.

“I was sixteen, Jason. I had no other family, and because my mother was so strict, I had no friends, either. I didn’t have a mobile phone until I left home at eighteen. We had a television, but only for the news, and I had to use the computer at school for any homework. I wasverysheltered,” I pause, “but not at all protected.” He hums in understanding. Solutions always seem so simple from a distance. “I left the first chance I got but it was too late, the damage was done.”

Sam aged sixteen

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