Page 11 of For Love & Torture
My thighs quiver as our lips part. “Thanks. Like I said, you are the best lover I’ve ever had. And don’t freak about me calling you my lover. I just don’t know what else to call you. You aren’t my Dom. I just don’t know what to call you is all.”
“I’m your sparring partner.” He laughs as he walks away from me to get something. When he comes back, he opens his hands to show me what he’s picked up. “These are nipple clamps, and these are balls you hold in your vagina. I want you to take them home and use them a bit. The balls will help keep that vagina of yours nice and tight. I’m hung like a horse, I don’t want to stretch you out,” he says with a wink. “Using the balls for an hour each day will help make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I take the stainless-steel balls in my hand. “And the nipple clamps?”
He grimaces, and even with that look he’s still devastatingly handsome. “They can hurt pretty badly. They take some getting used to. Put them on and leave them on for just a few seconds. Keep doing that until you can wear them longer.”
Sitting the things next to me, I smile. “Thanks for thinking about ways to keep my va-jay-jay in good working order, boss. That’s kind of you.”
“Kind?” he asks as he takes my hands and pulls me up. “I wouldn’t call it kind. I’d call it keeping up with the maintenance of a pussy I’d like to stick my cock into a lot more in the future.”
“How romantic,” I say with an eye roll and a sarcastic tone.
“I told you, romance and love have nothing to do with this. I like the way your pussy feels. I like the way you respond to what I do to your body. I like the way I know you’ll be an asset to the club. I don’t particularly have to like you as an individual.”
His bluntness doesn’t sit well with me, and I pull away from his touch, grimacing. “That’s uncalled for, Grant.”
He lets me go as he shrugs. “I didn’t mean to be rude. And I don’t know that I don’t like you. I just don’t know you,” he crosses his arms as he looks at me. “I mean, we’ve fucked, but I don’t know you on a personal level. How can I say that I like you or don’t like you?”
Suddenly, I feel very naked. I mean, I am naked, but I haven’t felt it until just now. Climbing off the bed, I hurry to put on my clothes that I left behind a partition in the room. “Well, I know enough about you to know that you’re a dick,” I scoff at him. I don’t want him to know how much his words have affected me.
His hand is rough on my shoulder as he spins me around. “But you will still do this with me, won’t you?”
My chest is rising and falling in waves as anger rises inside me. I don’t expect the man to love me, he’s my boss after all, but telling me that he doesn’t like me—or might not like me once he gets to know me—only moments after fucking me is just downright rude.
Is this the kind of man I want to be doing this with?
Then I see something there in the backs of his dark blue eyes that I wasn’t expecting. Pain. More pain than I have ever seen before. The anger melts away instantly. “Yeah, I’ll keep doing this. You do fuck me well, Grant Jamison. Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, but maybe I can help you with that.”
He cups my chin, and that pain in those gorgeous eyes shimmers at me. “I don’t want to get a better bedside manner, Isabel. I want to do what I want to you—what I need to do to you—without either of us getting attached. And I’ll be treating the other women I do the same things with that way too. I don’t want sweet things said between me and any woman. That leads to other things, and I don’t want other things.”
He has me curious once again, and I have to give him a chance to talk. “I understand our arrangement here Grant,” I nod at him, letting him know I mean what I say, “but I want you to know you can talk to me. I won’t fall in love with you just because you share some intimate details with me. Who knows, I might be able to help you.”
With a blast of anger the likes of which I’ve never seen before, he grabs one edge of the table with the impact play items on it and flips it over, sending whips and floggers flying into the air. “Can you bring my mother back from the dead, Isabel?” he bellows like a beast, his face bright red, the veins on his neck bulging with the blood that’s coursing through him at breakneck speed.
His mother is dead, and he is absolutely furious about it. I have that much answered. I run my hand over his cheek in a soothing motion. His outburst might have shocked me, but I’ve dealt with worse before and I won’t cower from him when he’s clearly hurting. “I won’t ask again, Grant. I promise you that.”
I’m pretty sure I will never ask him that again. Even with my stepfather, I’ve never seen anyone go from zero to flipping tables in such a short amount of time. He turns away from me and begins picking up the things he knocked all over the place.
Bending down to help him, I only draw his ire out more. “Finish getting dressed. I’ll do this!”
Hurrying away, I know I’ll have to tread lightly with my boss. He has some inner demons that might plague him forever. Grant and I have good chemistry, but it looks like I’ll need to let that be enough—clearly he’s not looking for anything more, not even a friend. His personal life is his, and I’ll stay out of it.
After getting my normal clothes back on, I walk out. Grant has his shirt back on and some running shoes too. “I’ll take you home now.”
I don’t really want to be around the man right now. “I can take a cab. That’s how I got here in the first place.”
He reaches out, touching the top of my hand. “Have I made you hate me?” Those gorgeous eyes of his seem to droop at the far corners.
They tug at my heart. “No, I just understand you better now. It’s okay. This is business. What we do isn’t personal, it’s business. I know that. It was wrong of me to try to treat you like a friend. You’re my boss, and we have things to learn together. That’s all.”
He nods and turns away from me. “I am taking you home, though. You’re not leaving my home in a cab.”
“Okay.” I’m not about to argue with him.
Grant Jamison is a strange mix of things. There is a bit of a Dom in him, a bit of a scared boy who has lost his mother, and a bit of a maniac who is mad at the world. I can’t fix all that.
Maybe no one can.
