“I’ll be good,” I say again, the words too garbled to understand. He understands anyway.
When he speaks, his voice is deeper, breath coming faster. He could beat me all day, but this is what he wants. This gentleness, this surrender. He has to break me down to get it.
God, he’d be so hard right now.
“I’ll be good, Daddy. I’m so sorry. I’ll be your good girl now.” The words keep pouring out of me, promises and pleas. And prayers.
That’s what he is to me, a new Leader Allen. My personal god.
Ivan replaced everything that came before. I could leave Harmony Hills, but I couldn’t change who I was. I still needed to worship. I still need to obey.
“Shh,” he tells me. “That’s right. You’re my good girl.”
I slide off the desk, my ass still burning from the sting of his palm. The floor is unyielding against my knees, but I don’t care. I cling to his pant leg, feeling him through the wool. I press my face against his thigh, turning the fabric damp. “Please. Let me serve you. Let me, let me…”
“Shh,” he says again, brushing the hair back from my forehead. “Enough of that. You’re forgiven.”
He’s absolved me, but that isn’t enough. I need him to touch me, to feel what I see bulging his suit pants. I need to be more than a servant or a thing to save. I need to be a woman.
Is this how my mother felt?
I never understood why she went to Harmony Hills, why she let Leader Allen use her like a whore. Wasn’t it a sin? He punished her every day. Only now do I understand, when I crave the same thing from a man far less holy and a lot more dangerous.
Ivan’s thumb brushes my tears from my cheeks. “Don’t cry, little one.”
And then I can’t hold back the truth. I have to tell him what I couldn’t say before. This can’t go on. I want him to hurt me, to discipline me. I want him to touch me, even if that will only ever happen in the form of his palm on my ass. But I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep drinking and partying. I’m not even sure I can keep dancing. “I can’t keep being bad,” I whisper, looking up into his gray eyes. “I have to be good now.”
If I’m good, he can’t bend me over the desk anymore. He can’t punish me.
This would never happen. Regret flickers in his eyes. It’s immediately replaced by the cold detachment that all the other girls get. This is why they’re scared to talk to him. This is who they see.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, as dark as the shadows around us. “Now go, little one. Run away.”
Chapter Eight
I do leave, but I come back again the next night. This is our dance, this attack and retreat—with one exception. Each time I left, I would do something wrong. Something so he would touch me.
Something so he would punish me.
When I show up at the Grand in late afternoon, shadows stretch over the cobblestone. The sun has left a sticky sweetness in the air, not quite evaporated by the night’s chill. I haven’t taken a sip of alcohol or a hit of anything. I haven’t even given myself an orgasm. I haven’t done a single thing to take the edge off, so I’m wired. I blink against blinding sideways light, feeling every bead of sweat on my skin. The world is too sharp like this, the very air made of blades.
I’m panting by the time I make it inside the double doors. They swing shut behind me, blocking out most of the light. I suck in the stale air like it’s a lifeline.
West is sitting at the bar. He works security here, one of the bouncers. Luckily he’s too busy brooding into his glass to notice me practically panting from panic. His dark skin looks even darker under the bar’s tinny overhead lights.
“Drinking on the job?” I ask, leaning against the bar. “I didn’t know a Boy Scout like you had it in you.”
He looks up, expression wry. “It’s water.”
I hop onto the stool next to him and peer into the glass he’s been staring at. “Water is never that interesting. There something bothering you?”
“Are you going to tell Ivan if there is?” His voice is mild, almost teasing, but I detect the warning there as well. I’m an outsider, even here, in this place. The girls look up to me just as much as they look down on me. They want my help, but they hold me at arm’s length. That’s what I get for fucking the boss.
Or not fucking the boss, in our twisted little game.
“Well, I don’t think you’re stealing the silver. So no, I don’t think I’d have to run and tattle on you.”
Besides, in a very short amount of time, it won’t even matter. I won’t be here anymore, and I doubt Ivan will even want to see me again.