Paris Punishment: Paris Trilogy: Part Two Read online

  Shifting her weight, moving as much as she could, should have reminded her that, as bondage went, this wasn’t totally restricting. Instead, it reinforced that she was utterly trapped.

  Naked, vulnerable, and trapped.

  She held her breath, then forced it out slowly, fighting the panic-induced urge to pant. When he’d proposed this scene, she thought it would be a chance for them to touch one another one last time. She refused to spend the next few years thinking about what had happened between her and Solomon. She’d done that once. Now that she was older and wiser, she wasn’t going to do it again.

  She came here for closure, and for her pride—he’d dumped her, walked away from her, twice. She was empathetic enough, especially after last night’s confessions, to understand that Solomon had good reason to feel like the injured party. Especially the first time he’d walked away. But he’d hurt her too. It was almost as if they couldn’t help but slide the knife into the other’s gut, even as they were leaning in for a kiss.

  Solomon was her greatest weakness. She could never keep her mask up in front of him. Maybe because he was the first person she’d ever really taken that mask off for.

  Despite spending the afternoon wrestling with the decision to stay, she’d come to first realize and then accept that to be able to let him go, she actually needed to be close to him one last time.

  Yet she wasn’t close to him right now. He’d bound her here and then walked away.

  Punishment.

  To be abandoned and ignored was certainly a punishment, and for her, it was perhaps the worst punishment. Abandoned and alone was what she’d felt when he broke their engagement. It was what she felt, to a lesser degree, after he walked out when her family showed up at the Orchid Club event.

  She’d come here hoping to avoid the emotional spiral she’d gone through, but this punishment was pushing her into that dark headspace she’d tried to avoid. Maybe he’d been looking at this scene as a chance to demonstrate his power over her, use that to make her hate him.

  It would be terribly, terribly easy for him to make her feel stupid and small. Their conversations since she’d arrived, first in his too-familiar office, then this morning on the pier, had made it clear that as far as he was concerned, she’d chosen her family over him. That wasn’t what had happened—at least not all of it, and it certainly hadn’t been her intention—but due to her stupid empathy, she could see his point. Understand his feelings.

  She tried to lift her forearms, feeling the restriction of the ropes, which was both comforting like the weight of a heavy duvet, and terrifying because she was blindingly aware of having put herself at the mercy of a man who had reason to hate her.

  Despite her attempts to control it, her breathing was choppy—a lump in her throat causing the air to catch with each inhale.

  Maybe he’d leave her here for several hours, then come back and begin to berate her. She’d given him plenty of material. Would he point out exactly how desperate and pathetic she was? She’d seen him again after five years, and within twenty-four hours agreed to submit to him. And when he’d walked away after she stepped out of their scene, she chased him halfway around the world. She said it was for closure, yet once again after only hours in his presence, she was not only ready, but desperately eager to strip naked for him.

  Pathetic.

  She couldn’t help herself when he was around. She longed for him. She chased him down, telling herself that it was about strength because the first time she hadn’t dared follow when he left her. That was a pretty lie. Strength would have been staying in Paris and simply moving on with her life.

  Disgustingly pathetic.

  Instead she was here, submitting to emotional abuse, because she’d once more agreed to scene with him. Masochism restrained within the rules of BDSM was one thing. This emotional masochism was pure self-destruction. She’d stripped off her clothes and knelt before the man who could reach into her soul and make her crave submission.

  Vivienne closed her eyes and swallowed against the lump of tears in her throat. She was desperate and a fool. Again and again she’d proven that, and not only with Solomon. He wasn’t wrong when he said she allowed her Uncle Gerard to manipulate her. Gerard was power-hungry, and in the years she’d been CEO, he’d repeatedly tried to undermine her. She’d found it was better to nip his antics in the bud than to be dismissive, which usually only caused his demands and dramatics to amplify. That’s why she walked out of the scene, prioritized him. Expedience. Experience.

  Or maybe she wasn’t the powerful businessperson she pretended to be. Maybe she wasn’t like Celeste at all, but just a scared little girl, unable to stand her ground, needing and craving others’ control and validation.

  She hung her head, hair falling toward the floor. A sob wracked her chest. She bit her lower lip, trying to hold in the pathetic sounds.

  “Vivi? Vivi baby!” Footsteps pounded toward her. There was a squeak of rubber-soled boots on tile as Solomon skidded to a stop and then a thud as he dropped to his knees in front of her. Gentle hands gathered her hair, fingers stroked firmly but carefully over her cheek, sliding along her skin to cup her jaw.

  “Don’t punish me this way,” she begged.

  “Punish you? You think… No. This isn’t a punishment. I was looking for something.”

  The moment he touched her, the panicky self-loathing had started to retreat. He cupped her chin, but didn’t force her to lift her head. She could see his black-clad knees and a small bag he brought with him lending truth to what he’d said—he left to get something, not as a way to emotionally torture her.

  The world slowed and stilled. Usually pivotal moments could only be identified in hindsight. Not this one. With a level of nearly divine clarity, Vivienne knew that what she said next could lead to one of two possible outcomes.

  Her first option was to give in to the emotions fluttering inside her like a thousand dark-winged bats. She could tell him everything she felt. They were in a dungeon, he was in Dom mode. He would take her in his arms, cradle her and comfort her. Protect her and care for her. He would make her feel cherished, safe and worthy.

  And if he did that, she would leave here loving him.

  Vivienne Deschamps took a deep breath and chose option two—marshal her emotional defenses and pretend she was far calmer than she really was. As tempting as it was to let him take care of her the way she so desperately needed, the way only Solomon had ever cared for her, she would not.

  She was Vivienne Deschamps, daughter, granddaughter, niece and great-niece of powerful, brilliant men and women who had shaped the political and cultural climate of a nation, if not a continent.

  She’d come here for closure and she would see that through. She would get what she needed one last time, then she would leave, and this time she would be the one who walked away.

  Vivienne could do nothing about the tears that lingered on her lashes, or the fact that her eyes were probably red-rimmed. As she gathered her mental armor, walling it around the deepest parts of her emotional well, locking away the most desperate depth of her need, she tossed her hair and raised her head.

  Solomon looked at her with aching concern. If she hadn’t just forced herself to lock down her feelings, that gentle, almost loving look on his face might have been her undoing.

  Vivienne forced a smile, though it was shaky. That was okay, she wasn’t going to pretend she hadn’t been crying. She was going to lie about exactly how deep into the well of her own emotions she’d just fallen.

  “I thought you planned to be a real bastard,” she murmured. “Leaving me here alone as punishment for invading your privacy.”

  Solomon’s expression didn’t change. “Vivi, I would never do that. That’s not how we’ve ever played, and that’s not what you need.”

  Vivienne latched onto the word. “Need,” she whispered. “No, Master, it’s not what I need.”

  There was heat in his gaze now, though she felt him struggling to hold it back, to
maintain focus on her emotional state.

  His thumb stroked her cheek and her heart panged. Gentle, intimate silence filled the scant space between them.

  No, no, no she thought. Don’t look at me like that, don’t be so gentle and kind. Don’t be the boy I fell in love with, be the bastard who walked away.

  “What do you need, Vivi baby?”

  It was an invitation for her to open up. To lay bare those most secret needs that were both universal yet somehow passé to admit. She needed to be loved, to have a partner who would stay by her side no matter what. She needed purpose in her life beyond her work. She needed a family of her own. Needed to know that in twenty, thirty years she would look back on her life and not feel regret.

  She could tell Solomon those things and it would change what was about to happen. There was too much between them for him to hear her confessions and not react. Her resolve weakened, and she nearly also gave in to the impulse to collapse into him and let him rescue her from her life. He was both the antagonist of her story and the only man who could serve as her white knight.

  Vivienne shifted her gaze from his eyes to the spot between his brows, and even that small change in the level of intimacy was enough to pull her back from the brink. She could lay herself bare, and maybe that unvarnished truth would change the landscape of their interaction. Nothing could change the past, but maybe they would have a future. They talked about it in the club in Paris. If she laid her soul bare, would he take her as his submissive? They could probably see each other once a month, once every two months or perhaps more frequently. Every other weekend—he’d come to Paris for a few days, then a fortnight later she’d fly to the Bahamas. She would have him, have her needs met by the only man who could ever really do it for her. And in the times between, she would pathetically wait. He would know her most intimate needs, but wouldn’t satisfy them. There was no future for them, no family.

  So Vivienne did the smart thing, chose the smart option.

  Her smile changed from soft to sharp and full of knowing.

  “What I need, Master, is to be punished.” She slid her gaze from his face down his arm to the hand that wasn’t cupping her face. “I need to feel your hands on my ass, spanking me, hurting me, making me feel everything and nothing.”

  Solomon was still, and for a moment she thought he would force the issue. That he saw all too well what she was doing, purposefully deflecting, and in doing that, not really answering his question.

  She was, in effect, topping from the bottom, which was something he hated. Though, if he confronted her with it, she would argue that she was being honest. And she was being honest—she needed him to not push her into laying her soul bare. She needed him to take this back to the physical, needed him to make this about closure, about saying goodbye, about reminding one another what they needed in a D/s partner so they could both move on and find someone else who would fill those needs. Though she regretfully suspected it would never be as good as it was with him.

  “Please, Master,” she whispered. Please don’t push me to confess things I don’t want to tell you. Please stand up and spank me, hurt me the way I need. You called it armor, so please let me keep those last innermost defenses raised against you.

  Solomon’s hand slid from her cheek under her ear and into the hair at the back of her head. He gathered it in a fist then tugged once, sharp and hard. The nerve endings and her scalp prickled, and a little needy gasp escaped her. He cupped the back of her neck and leaned in for a hard kiss, his tongue invading her mouth possessively.

  Her mind and soul melted and relaxed when confronted with this wonderful, familiar domination. He pulled away from her lips, but kept his hand tight in the back of her hair.

  “I will punish you,” he promised starkly. “And a spanking isn’t enough of a punishment.”

  Vivienne touched the center of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “You have large hands, Master. I assure you, when you want the spanking to hurt, it does.”

  “And you like it.”

  Vivienne lowered her eyes submissively, though she could feel herself smiling. He tugged on her hair, forcing her to look up once more.

  When she did, he was smiling, and a little thrilling bolt of trepidation shot through her. A smiling Dom was a very dangerous thing.

  “That’s why I went hunting for something to add to the spanking.” He picked up a little bag that was resting on the platform just below her left hand. Now that she looked at it, it appeared to be one of those mesh reusable produce sacks. He opened the drawstring and pulled out…

  “A spoon?” she asked, bewildered.

  He set the all-too-ordinary spoon down near his knee. Then he reached into the little sack once more and pulled out a large chunk of ginger.

  It was the size of his palm with multiple fingers. The coarse-looking brown exterior was not nearly as tough as it looked and could be easily peeled away to reveal the yellow, fibrous flesh of the ginger with the edge of a spoon.

  Vivienne sucked in the air and jerked in her bonds, genuinely shocked and now more than a little afraid of what was about to happen.

  “Ginger?” she whispered.

  “I usually don’t go in the big kitchen, which is why it took me so long to find it.” He held up the root, turning it in the light. “A nice big piece. I could probably get multiple plugs out of it.”

  Plugs. He was going to do exactly what she was worried he planned to do. Though that worry felt shockingly like red-hot arousal.

  “Merde,” she hissed.

  Solomon grinned, unrepentant. “That’s right, Vivi baby. The spanking’s for fun because we both like it. But the figging? That’s your punishment.”

  Chapter 11

  Part of him wanted to just stay there on his knees where he could look into her eyes. It had taken him far too long to find some fresh ginger in the kitchen, and for a moment he thought his searching was futile. But dinner last night had involved a nice ginger flavor, so he kept looking. Eventually he was rewarded, and he’d returned to the dungeon after far longer away than he meant, to find Vivienne in tears.

  There were people—stupid people who didn’t know her—who might describe her as haughty or at the very least imposing. Even before she was forced to take over her family business, she was personable but private. Very few people ever saw her cry. It was why it had hit him so hard every time she’d come back to whatever hotel or borrowed house had been their temporary abode, after walking through an area stricken by disease or poverty, or later, a stressful day struggling to do the job of CRD Beauvalot CEO. She’d collapse into his arms, silent tears running down her cheeks, her empathetic but steel-strong core shaken in a way that made his heart clench and his fists ball up with the desire to strike out on her behalf.

  When she was doing NGO work, he’d watched her learn to compartmentalize so she wasn’t left paralyzed by sadness. Once she was a CEO, he’d watched her fracture.

  And she’d started to change, emulating Celeste’s haughty attitude and air of command rather than the capable compassion she’d showed before.

  With him she’d still been Vivi, his passionate, empathetic lover who’d felt everything so keenly that it built up inside her, like gas filling a room, needing only a spark to ignite.

  For a while, his love had been enough to release that pressure. He’d still been able to take care of her. Slowly, he’d lost her. Been unable to reach her, unable to find that core of her, the real her.

  Every conversation they’d had since reconnecting in Paris, no matter how adversarial the start, became something intimate and full of truth.

  That was why he wanted to remain on his knees before her, or better yet, untie her and cradle her on his lap. To comfort those tears, but also question them. A submissive’s reaction in a scene was often as telling or more telling than their words. Not because of deliberate deception, but because one reason people sought out submission in BDSM was the release of control. When the power exchange was in place,
and the claustrophobic emotional ties most people lived with were replaced with physical ones, the emotions that finally surfaced could end up surprising even those emotions’ owners.

  The idea of being left as a punishment had struck a nerve. That should be explored, and yet…

  He had no right.

  Solomon looked away, out the windows to the ocean. Forced himself to repeat those words. He had no right.

  No right.

  He could touch her—that they’d agreed to, as part of the scene. It would be irresponsible for him to do more.

  To untangle the Gordian knot of a woman’s, particularly this woman’s, need to submit—with all its many facets and pitfalls—was the right of her Master.

  Solomon was not her Master. He had been once. Those years when they’d been traveling, learning and loving together, had been the best ones of his life.

  Once again he got to hear her call him “Master.” But it couldn’t last.

  Could it?

  Solomon pressed a kiss to her forehead, more because of his own need than to comfort her. He stood after tucking the ginger and spoon back into the small net bag. Stepping to the side so he was out of her field of vision, Solomon took a moment to gather himself.

  She’d been ready to leave when she brought him tea out on the water. He asked her to stay. She’d come for closure and he proposed one more scene together.

  The truth of it was, as blindingly angry as he was with her for allowing her family to change her, to manipulate her, and force her to become someone she never planned to be, that anger wasn’t enough to make him stop wanting her.

  Want her? The voice inside his head was snide. The worst of his own brutish sarcasm thrown back at him. You more than want her—

  Solomon forced himself to turn, shifting his attention so he didn’t finish that thought. It was easy to be distracted from such anxiety-inducing sentiments when his other option was to look at the lovely, bound, naked, and waiting body of his Vivi.

  He set the little bag with the spoon and raw ginger down between her shoulder blades. She started, but didn’t protest or move.