Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (70 page)

Seeing a bar after closing, with the lights on and the music off, is much like seeing a beautiful woman without makeup. All the parts are there but made unappealing. Glasses thunk against bus trays, squeaky-wheeled press buckets make their way across the floor behind the slap and swoosh of grey-fringed mops. The staff laughs at each other’s jokes, which are invariably on customers. Guests lingered, mostly in earnest conversations about the next destination for drinking or fucking. Some clung by their fingernails, as if a change of venue would break a spell.

In the case of the Stock, the city had darkened beneath us as much as it ever would, and the sky was a burnt orange with reflected light. It was one fifteen in the morning. I had a pocket full of cash. Maybe I’d go the hell out and talk to people. Maybe I’d cling to a venue until four a.m. to avoid sleeping in my house for the first time in weeks.

But I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t getting drunk, and I wasn’t reacquainting myself with anyone. Only one woman was at the bar. It was Jessica, and she was not alone. Jonathan stood over her, and they were arguing fiercely. They looked like a married couple on the verge of a blowout, talking over each other, tense hands in front of them. I didn’t want to approach them. But something else took over.

She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. She wasn’t supposed to be in fifty feet of him. He was mine. I had a reaction that could only be described as biological. Rage filled my blood from some angry gland until my fingertips clenched and my teeth ground together.

Jonathan looked up. As soon as he saw me, he came my way like a torpedo.

“What the fuck?” I said.

He gripped my shoulder and spun me around. “Walk.”

“No.” He pushed me toward the back room. I shrugged him off. “I want to talk to her. That’s why she’s here.” He took my bicep and yanked me off the floor. “Get off me.”

He didn’t listen. He pulled me through the halls, past the few coworkers left, along the concrete floors of the back hallways. His face was stern and blank, a fixed mask of intention. He pushed me into the break room, locked the door, and drew shades over the window to the hall. When he finally faced me again, I pushed him away.

“Don’t you
ever
do anything like that again,” I said.

He pressed me against the wall and put his face to mine in a punishing kiss. I gave in to the heat, the urgency of his mouth on mine, his tongue demanding response, his hands still pushing my shoulders. I groaned into him, my voice a breath I had no choice but to take.

“I told you not to meet with her,” he said, face near enough to kiss me again.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Oh no?”

“Dragging me away from a conversation, trying to isolate me, you’re giving her quite a case.”

“Pick up your skirt.”

“Using sex to control me...”

“Show me your cunt, Monica.”

I felt a pool of arousal below my waist at the command. Though Jonathan didn’t hold my arms, his grip on my shoulders made skidding my hands over my skirt uncomfortable and awkward. I pinched the fabric and bent my wrists, hiking up the skirt one inch, then two. I got a fistful of cotton and yanked. The whole thing rode up as our eyes met, our breath mingling.

“So, what? You going to fuck me now?”

“I am.”

“You think that’s going to stop me?”

He put a hand at my throat, fingertips at the base of my jaw, forcing me to look at the ceiling. The restriction and posture sent a tidal wave of desire between my legs. I wanted to wrap them around him and take him inside me.

“I’ve never punished you, goddess. But I will.”

“Go on. I’m not scared of you.”

He looped his fingers in my panties and drove his fingers along my wet cleft. I gasped and moaned when he thrust two fingers in me. When he pulled them out, I felt their loss. I wanted to be filled with him, despite the fact that he was pissing me off, or because of it. Pressing his torso to mine and keeping his hand on my jaw, he put his wet fingers in my mouth.

“This mouth is mine,” he said. “It doesn’t talk unless I tell it to.”

The taste of my sex filled my mouth as he drove his fingers down my throat. I sucked them clean to please him, to please myself. The sensations caused by his forcefulness were overpowering.

He took his hand off my throat and ran it along my belly, to my thighs, inside them. He found the crotch of my panties and pulled them off. Then, without a pause, he pushed me onto the lunch table. The metal legs scraped the linoleum as he slid me back and bent my legs so my sopping pussy lay before him.

“You’re not fucking my decision out of me.”

Standing between my legs, he unbuckled his belt. “Don’t make me gag you.”

I held up my middle finger. He smiled as if he couldn’t help it then grabbed my hand and held it down, hard. His thumb dug into my wrist, and I knew my expression broadcast pain. My legs tightened and closed, but he pushed them apart.

“I’m going to fuck you, and you’re going to shut the hell up for the fucking duration.” He drove into me without an ounce more warning. He fucked me as if he owned me, my body bent, powerless, exposed.

He told me to take it, but he was the one who was doing the taking. He held the meat of my thighs, spreading my legs. The pain of his hands digging into my skin, his banging cock, him standing over me in dominion. I’d never look at those humming fluorescent lights without feeling a buzz in my cunt again.

I got up on my elbows, and he pushed me back down. “Don’t move unless I tell you to.”

“I’m going to—”

“You are not.”

I
was
going to come. A tsunami of pleasure rushed over the horizon, rising waters pooled at my feet, ankles, knees. I had another half a minute to complete oblivion. But his eyes shut and he grunted, then moaned, pushing into me slowly. He was coming, motherfucker, and he’d never just come because he couldn’t help it. Outside the first time he fucked me without a condom, he never lost control. Jonathan’s orgasms always had a purpose.

Taking his hands off my thighs, he leaned in. “Give me a number between one and ten.”

“Two.”

“Forget that, then. Between five and ten.”

“Seven.”

“That’s how many times you’re coming before sunrise. But you have to come home with me.”

“You son of a bitch. We’re playing orgasm games again?” I asked.

“You’re being a poor sport.”

I got up on my elbows, feeling done with that conversation already. “Tomorrow’s my day off, and I want to work on some songs.”

“I have a piano.”

“All my staff pads are at home. All my notes. Forget it.”

He picked me up gently by my biceps, but his fingertips sent bolts of not-so-sexy pain through them. He must have seen me flinch. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll come to your place. Let me drive. Please. Give me a couple of hours to do nothing but make you squirm.” He tugged at my skirt, and I hoisted myself up so he could get it back in place.

I put my arms over his shoulders and kissed him. I couldn’t help it. I had absolutely no choice. His lips sat so close to mine, and they were so responsive. His tongue ignited the smoldering fire between my legs. I wrapped my legs around him, letting his mouth take mine.

“My place until sunrise,” I said as he kissed my jaw, then my neck. “Then you get the hell out so I can get to work.”

“To write,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

I pulled away. “I might also go to the bathroom once or twice. Do I need to fill out a form or call you first?”

A smile drew across his lips. A joke was incoming, but there was a click as the door was unlocked from the outside. Jonathan got his dick back in his pants before the cleaning crew swung the door open.

“S
aying I don’t know what I’m dealing with is plain insulting.”

We were on the matte black rocket, which I loved because I had my arms around him, inside his jacket, and I could feel the angles and bumps of his body. I’d tucked my skirt around my thighs to his satisfaction so I wouldn’t expose my pantie-less glory to Los Angeles. Once that was settled, he’d put my helmet on me as if to cut off any further discussion. Talking to him when he was a disembodied voice was hard. I didn’t want to wait until we got to my house to talk to him because we’d be in a private place and he’d try to shut me up with sex again. It would work, for the hundredth time.

“I’m not insulting you. I’m telling the truth. Jessica can teach Machiavelli a few things,” he said through the speaker in my helmet.

“I need to see your face.”

“You’ll see plenty.”

“Stop the bike.”

We were on Sunset, by the Junction, the one neighborhood where people gathered on the street, walking from bar, to restaurant, to bar, to home.

“We’ll be to your house in eight minutes.”

“Now.”

He stopped at a light and pulled off his helmet. His hair spiked and curled with the disruption, and when he turned to me, incredulity was in his eyes. I couldn’t hear what he said, and I folded my arms. I meant what I said, no matter his unheard response.

He held the corner of the helmet to his lips, and his voice came through my helmet. “You don’t get to give orders.”

I pulled off my helmet. I could only imagine what it did to my hair, but I was past giving a shit. I put the helmet on the seat and slid off the bike.

“Monica.”

“Jonathan.”

The light changed. Horns shrieked. Curses cut the night. Jonathan and I stared at each other as our lane slowly sifted around us.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, paying the flipped birds around us no mind.

“I want to talk, and I want to do it somewhere you can’t fuck me.”

“You think dragging me into a coffee shop is going to stop me from fucking you? Shit, if I want you in the middle of this intersection, I’ll take you.”

He would, too. But also, he wouldn’t.

I stepped away from the bike. A dented Acura came to a screeching halt inches from me.

“Fuck!” Jonathan shouted, swinging his leg over the seat as if he was about to cradle my broken body in his arms.

The Acura’s driver cried obscenities. Something about me being a stupid fucking bitch. Blah blah. I’d been called worse on a random Tuesday night at the bar. I flipped him off without even looking, walking backward, drawing Jonathan out of the street.

But what I considered a meaningless gesture, the driver considered a call to arms. He leaned so far out of the car I had no idea how his foot stayed on the brake. “Get your big flapping twat outta the street, you bitch whore!”

Jonathan put the kickstand down on the bike, which I didn’t understand. Why on earth would he park it in the middle of the street? The light had turned red again, but obviously that was temporary. The guy in the Acura flung some more curses my way. Apparently, he didn’t see the guy with the stone-cold expression heading for him. If he did, he might have stopped calling me a fucking skank and started getting into a defensive posture.

Shit.

I darted in front of Jonathan, but he was moving so fast, I had almost no time to get between them. My ass pressed against the door of the car, and Jonathan was nearly there. I held up my hand. “Stop.”

“Get out of the way.”

“Hey, bitchface!” said the guy behind me.

“Get the bike, please,” I said to Jonathan.

“Get out of the way.”

“Are you a fucking adolescent? You’re going to get into a fight on Sunset Boulevard? What the fuck? Please, bend me over in the intersection instead.”

“You people are fucking crazy!” said the driver the second before the light changed. Despite the fact that I was practically leaning on his car, he took off.

More honking as Jonathan and I stared each other down in the middle of the street. More cursing as his bike sat in the middle of the center lane. We had to yell to be heard over the noise.

“Why can’t I meet with Jessica?” I demanded. “Why is it so important to you?”

“You’re asking me
here
?”

“If you can fuck me in the intersection, I can ask questions.” He grabbed my arm. I shook it off.

“You don’t know her! This is a game, and you don’t know the rules. If she gave you her number, it’s because whatever she’s trying to do to me, she’s going to use you for.”

“So you’re protecting yourself,” I said.

“And you.”

“I don’t need protecting,” I yelled. A delivery truck missed me by inches as it tried to make the light. The wind shear thrust me forward a few inches.

“Goddess,” he said, pulling me to him for safety, “you are a shitload of trouble.”

“You sorry you wanted a commitment?” Cars whipped around us at the green, horns screaming again.

“No. You’ve turned my existence into a life.”

An SUV swerved, but we held our gaze. “I’m about to turn it into your death.”

As if daring L.A. drivers to hit a couple in the middle of the street on a Saturday night, he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed him back. It’s not every day you get to flip off a whole city.

MONICA

I
didn’t tell Jonathan my phone had started buzzing while we were in the street. As I dismounted in my driveway, I glanced at it.

Jessica.

As if sensing something was amiss, Jonathan took hold of my wrist. He saw the screen display his ex-wife’s phone number in brilliant backlit blue and white. His eyes flicked up to mine, the phone lighting his face from beneath, as the phone purred in my hand like a kitten. His lips tightened.

“What?” I asked.

“You know what.”

“I’m not convinced I’m a tool for your destruction. I might be a tool for your salvation. Have you thought of that?”

“What if she told you I fucked her?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You’ll believe her. And even if you don’t, a part of you will always wonder. She’ll alienate us from each other,” he said.

“I’m insulted by the notion that I’m going to be used to hurt you. I’m not so weak-willed. Not with her or you. I’m going to see her. I’m going to let her think she’s using me, and I’m going to find out what she wants. I’m going to let her think I’m on her side.”