Mutual Release Read online

  He yanked the front door open, hands over his ears to quell the howling guilt and ran up the steps. After nearly an hour standing under the hottest water possible, he scrubbed his skin raw and emerged, flesh red and stinging, ready to cancel the night’s adventure with Caroline. He had zero business messing with her – with any of them. It was sick, wrong, and he had to stop. He leaned on the vanity, unwilling to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

  Images dashed across his brain: Damian, all in black again, wielding that vicious whip and a cold smile, flicking it against the pale skin of a naked, thin female secured to a St. Andrew’s Cross while Evan was forced to watch. His entire body trembled. He had to quit this now, before he lost himself and his sister forever. He tugged on jeans – not what he had planned to wear – not the dressy trousers, fitted white dress shirt and tie he always wore on his nightly forays into sexual depravity.

  The phone in his room rang. Without thinking, he answered. “Yes?”

  “Sir?” Caroline’s voice was breathy, and made him wince with a combination of lust and agony at his dilemma. “I’m washed, dressed and ready, and looking forward to our night together. Will I see you soon?”

  He ground his teeth when his cock pressed against his zipper at the sound of her voice. His hands curled into fists. He could already feel her flesh, taste her, smell her, see her bound and exposed, her ass red from the flogger.

  “Yes. Thirty minutes. Don’t wear panties.” He hung up after getting her address. “God damn it,” he muttered and sat, head in his hands. Self-justifications flickered through his brain. It wasn’t just hurting women that did it for him. He never, ever, did more than they wanted. There had been a few new girls trying on the sub role who’d used their safe word nearly immediately with him, leaving him wholly unsatisfied. But he respected it. But the last time they were there, just a few nights before, he had heard the club manager telling Damian in no uncertain terms that if he went too far again, made his sub scream her safe word over and over before stopping, he would be banned.

  He picked up his belt, gripped it so hard his fingers started to ache. There was no way he could not do this – now that he had Caroline the entire summer all to himself. Unable to halt the roiling in his gut, the nauseated feeling of helplessness at his own weakness and inability to just stop, he smacked his bare back with the leather. He winced, bit his lip, then did it again, and again, thinking to beat out the demon he must harbor – the one who could not achieve orgasm anymore, not even at his own hand, unless he had a kneeling submissive woman at his feet. There had to be something seriously wrong with him, considering the fact there was no way he was going to skip tonight with Caroline.

  A knock on his door made him jump. “Hang on,” he muttered, stripping out of jeans and pulling on dress slacks. He grabbed a freshly ironed shirt and shoved his arms into it, surprised when the sting of the welts he’d raised on his own skin made him shiver with something resembling pleasure. The pain soothed him, and sent his libido back into the corner, quiet for the time being. “What?” he said, already mentally distancing himself from whatever family member was going to try and placate him.

  Olivia slipped into his room, her hazel eyes dark, her lips swollen from activity Evan did not want to contemplate.

  “Go away. I have a date. I’m late already.” He stuck his wallet in his pocket and stood staring at her, trying not to pull her into an embrace, to soothe the anxiety out of her gaze.

  “Evan, you have got to stop accusing Damian of… stuff. He’s told me about this place he goes, with you.” The emphasis on the word you made him wince. She sat in the chair at his desk rubbing her arms, eyes darting around his room as if she were nervous to even be near him. That nearly ripped his heart in two. They had been – they were – so very close. How had he allowed that asshole to come between them? He sighed, pulled her up and into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said into her hair, his inner protector rising up and nearly choking him with the need to lock her in this room and keep Damian away from her forever. But he couldn’t do that. She was as old as he, and free to make whatever decisions she wanted about the company she kept. “Really, Olivia, I feel terrible. Like the worst kind of hypocrite.”

  She wiped her eyes and stepped out of his embrace. “Yeah, well, that’s what Damian said too. That you did… whatever with these… women, but didn’t really respect them. That they were just objects to you. And to him. That it really meant nothing other than to teach you both how to be better, um, you know…”

  “Oh god, would you just stop.” Evan gulped, embarrassed dismay grabbing his gut and giving it a hard twist. “That’s bullshit. He’s just saying that because…” He grabbed her arms and stared at her. “You have to listen to me, Olivia. Really listen and try not to judge. Okay?”

  He searched for the right words, ones that would not freak her out or make her think he was justifying his own bad behavior. “This thing, this activity I do, I’m… it’s a compulsion, yes, and something I somehow need to… ah…” He looked down, speechless for a moment. “It’s something I do to help me establish control over my own impulses, to make me a better lover, yes, ultimately. But it also gives me what I need to… satisfy myself as well. It’s rough, but proscribed. There are rules, well, guidelines anyway. And most men like… me… well, we take the guidelines very seriously. I never, ever, ever hurt anyone to the point they are no longer getting pleasure. I hear a safe word – which is a word the woman uses to make me stop, no questions asked – and I stop. No questions asked. But Damian, he… won’t. I mean, maybe he can’t; I don’t know, but he’s… out of control. Which is sort of the opposite of what should be happening.”

  Olivia sucked in a breath, tears welling in her eyes. Evan tried not to shake her. “You have to hear me now. You gotta understand what this means. He is supposed to be gaining control over himself, to keep from taking dangerous steps to actually hurt his partner. But he is going the other way, somehow. It’s like a woman in tears and screaming her safe word makes him go… harder.”

  “I know, Evan. He told me.” Olivia’s words cut through his angry haze like a knife through bread. “That’s what you refuse to grasp. I am different for him. I’m his anchor. His safe harbor, the place he comes when he needs calm.”

  Evan sighed, ran a hand down his face, then glanced at his watch. Caroline, if she were the well-practiced sub he figured her for, would still be sitting, ready for him, even though he was a solid thirty minutes late. Part of him wanted to believe his twin – that Damian Slate had a human side and that he only shared it with Olivia. But something deep inside, in the place that stored the memories of blood, snapping leather, hot wax, and screaming women Damian had left in his wake lately, would not accept it.

  “Okay, honey, I’m late. But we have to keep communicating. How about this.” He pulled her close and kissed her hair. “I’ll agree to accept what you are telling me about Damian not being who I think he is when he is around you. And you swear on Mom’s Bible that you will come to me, talk to me, tell me if he ever does anything you aren’t comfortable with. Promise? Please?”

  She nodded, gave him a squeeze, and danced her way down the hall. He followed her out, smiling, which was quickly replaced by a dark frown when he saw the object of their disagreement lolling on Olivia’s bed.

  “Remember what you promised, Olivia.” He addressed her but stared right at Damian.

  “You going out, mate?” the boy said, ignoring the thick awkwardness in the room. “Need me to – ”

  “No.” Evan held up a hand, recalling something Caroline had told him. A small tendril of evil he hardly recognized touched his brain. He leaned in the doorway. “Taking Caroline downtown tonight. You know, from work?”

  He was thrilled to see the other boy’s eyes darken. But his words belied the look on his face. “Oh, cool. Have fun with that. I hear she’s an expert.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever.” Something about Damian’s nonchalance pissed him off all
over again. The sight of Olivia draping herself over the guy’s prone form and ignoring him did not help. “So, later.”

  “Uh huh,” Damian muttered, staring into Olivia’s eyes and running a fingertip down her face. “Later.”

  Evan stomped down the stairs and found his parents sitting in the kitchen. He spoke without thinking. Words tumbled out and over the wall of propriety he’d built that kept him for years from saying to them what he really thought. “I hope you know your precious Damian is fucking around with your daughter, likely right over your stupid heads. And he will probably hurt her, a lot. But whatever. You don’t care, right?”

  He slammed the back door on them before they could speak, screeched out into the quiet, suburban Detroit street and found himself at the door of a tidy little condo a few minutes later. He sat, trying to catch his breath to center himself. Then he got out and walked to Caroline’s door, spine already buzzing with anticipation.

  Chapter Seven

  Evan stood in the hallway, hands in his pockets, watching as Caroline lay on her bed, spread-eagled, wrists and ankles bound, tears streaming down her face. The last almost-seven weeks had been one long kink fest. But he’d graduated from what he now recognized as the rookie who’d fingered the sexy woman now lying ready for his attentions.

  “That’s better,” he said, striding into the room as he recognized the getting-over-herself stage of the night. Caroline was a highly-strung woman and he’d learned she needed discipline to bring her down to a plane where she could actually enjoy herself. He’d found her breaking point about two weeks ago, after several sex-soaked weeks of exploration. And he’d breached it with one solid shove, taking her over the edge and into an amazing mental space for them both, with the help of nipple clamps and hot wax.

  But now, he sat running a hand up her leg, loving the strong muscles under his palm and the way her breathing speed increased in direct proportion to the pressure of his fingers. The control she gave him made him feel ten feet tall most days. His brain fuzzed over, but he kept his body calm. Her skin pebbled as he let his palm graze her bare sex. She’d been waxing it, at his request. Actually she’d done pretty much everything he wanted, which, while a buzz for an eighteen-year-old to have such power over a grown woman, was starting to get stale. As it always did, the smell of Caroline’s lust rose from her in waves, made everything around him fade as all his energy focused in on her. He stopped touching her and stood, forcing a whimper from her lips.

  The moment froze, coalesced in his brain. He knew what he had to do. He unlatched the cuffs at her hands and feet and watched as she curled into a ball, shivering and hitching with sobs. “Get up, Caroline. Stop all the noise. Now.” She was pissing him off, but he couldn’t figure out why. Her malleable personality had shocked him, given her tough-shit saleslady daytime persona. And now, at this moment, he was furious at her – she needed to get a fucking backbone, or men were going to walk all the hell over her once he was gone. And “gone” was something he would be in about two weeks. “Goddamn it,” he growled. “Don’t make me come over there.”

  She got to her feet, wobbly in her high heels. Evan watched as she dropped to the floor and crawled towards him as he tried to repress his disgust. Because giving into that would lead him down a darker path than he would allow himself to go. But his fury rose when she reached his shoes, pressed her lips to them, the sweet heart shape of her bare ass tempting him.

  What was wrong with him, anyway? This was his fantasy, wasn’t it? Shit, it would be any man’s fantasy, really. A woman on her knees, begging him to get her off over and over, and then take her however he wanted. Terror flooded his nerve endings. Was this Evan Adams now? This animal that was picturing himself backhanding her across the room and yelling at her to get her fucking act together, to stop being such a sniveling useless lump of flesh – could this really be him? Evan Adams, “Mr. Prez,” “POTUS” to his friends, mild-mannered captain of sports teams, bound for college and law school. Did he really stand here glaring at a vulnerable woman and envision crushing her soul with a few words and gestures?

  He stumbled back, bile rising in his throat, leaving her there crouched and waiting for his command, as they’d practiced. Turning, he strode out onto her small balcony, gulping in huge breaths of sultry Michigan late-summer air. Nothing was helping. Mortified by his own thoughts and urges, he suddenly believed himself no better than Damian, who’d kept up his not-so-subtle seduction of Olivia all summer long. The urge to jump, to feel the hard connection of feet with concrete, the potential crunch of bone and the jolting pain that would jar him out of this stupid fucking fantasy world was so strong he had to grit his teeth.

  Gripping the metal banister, he stared out over the lights of Plymouth, Michigan – the mild-mannered Midwest suburb where he was born and raised and now operated in some kind of parallel universe. He had ten days before he left for college, and he itched for the departure. Even though he got laid something like five times a week, after long play sessions that left both him and his partner – his submissive, he reminded himself – gasping for breath, he was starting to get tired of it. And that was straight back to “lame as shit” territory, right where he’d started.

  “Sir?” Her voice quavered, making Evan’s head ache. If this was what it truly meant to be Dominant, to have a woman at his beck and call, sexually speaking, as long as he exhibited control over the situation from the get-go, he was about half done with it. “Please?”

  He turned, hands curled into fists, and willed a better man from the depths of the inexplicable rage that gripped him. She did not deserve his inner asshole. She was just weak and was going to have to cope without him soon enough. “What do you want tonight, Caroline?” he asked, surprising himself with the admission that he needed something more than just to be the big boy in charge all the time. Without even truly understanding why, he pulled her to her feet and handed her a towel from a nearby chair to wrap herself in.

  “I… I don’t understand what you mean.”

  He glared at her, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I mean, what do you want to do tonight? I want to please you, and I am getting tired of all this… drama. You need to get a grip on yourself, do you understand?” The responsibility for her well-being hit him square in the gut. “I’m leaving, moving. I’ll be gone from your life in less than two weeks. You have to realize that.”

  “I want… whatever you want, Sir.” Her hands shook as she reached for him.

  He deflected her, hating himself but unable to stop. “Fine. Get on your fucking knees, unzip me, and suck my cock. Right now.” The darkness was descending on him, enveloping him in a way he’d never felt. Something hurt so bad he had to clench his eyes shut. Oh, yes, his dick. That was it. That was all there was at this moment. His hard cock, and her sniveling mouth covering it, sucking him, and her hands cupping his balls, teasing him – that’s all there was in his universe. And he was a sick, selfish motherfucker, but here he was telling her what to do because that was what she wanted.

  “That’s right. Deeper. Swallow it.” He had both hands in her hair, tugging hard. His feet were planted far apart. This was fine. This was what she wanted… wasn’t it?

  He clamped down on the orgasm hard, stepped out of her reach, his cock slick and throbbing between them. She stared up at him, her lips wet and swollen. The question in her eyes, the need he saw there, made the fury grip him all over again. And that translated to something dark and ugly.

  He yanked her up, crushed his lips over hers and shoved his tongue between her lips, attempting to dispel the frightening but very real urge to hurt. He gripped her arms, too hard most likely. “Fucking stop sniveling, Caroline. It makes me so angry.” He flipped her around, bent her over a chair on the balcony and shoved his way into her. He hated himself but could not stop. He hated her, but would not stop.

  And sometime in the next few minutes he experienced both a mind-blowing orgasm and a fracturing in his soul that would take nearly ten years to repair.


  A loud ringing burrowed into his brain, making him groan and throw a hand over his eyes. He opened them, staring at the ceiling of his boyhood home, the place he was leaving in two days for good. That last night with Caroline had been horrible, and he’d held her for hours while she decompressed from it. Then over coffee the next morning, he told her he was done. She’d been in grownup mode then, had smiled and kissed him, and wished him well. But the next night she had been on the phone, begging him to help her, to discipline her, anything. He’d told her no and had been proud of himself. Because he knew damn good and well he’d come as close to rape as he ever had, and never wanted to go near that temptation again.

  He needed to get the hell away from her, lest he sink deep into a weird limbo between true Dom and sub, abuser and abused. Caroline had proven too weak overall. He required something more. But that left him with a whimpering, needy woman on the other end of the phone pretty much every night. Thank God the warehouse job was done and he didn’t have to face her there. He felt like all sorts of a shithead for doing this to her but had no idea how to handle it any other way.

  Damian had been quiet, avoiding the scene for the last four weeks, seeming to focus on being the nice boy his sister so desperately wanted him to be. Evan’s parents had left him alone, allowing him to come and go as he pleased, seeming to not even care. That hurt more than he was willing to admit, although he’d taken full advantage, sleeping at Caroline’s place plenty of times and cursing himself the entire next day for doing so. He would have given anything for his mom to demand he account for his whereabouts. For his dad to lecture him for staying out all night. At least then he would know they gave a rip. But why would they start now, he reasoned, when they’d spent the last eighteen years being flaky with regard to his well-being?