Chapter 58

Valerie lay in bed for an hour trying to collect herself. Her heart settled down to a more restful tempo, but her thoughts kept returning, again and again, to her need and desperation. The memory of her dream fragmented and faded, but the central elements of it remained clear; especially the way Lucca’s whip purified her thoughts even as it drove her to the brink of climax.

The memory of the pain lingered as well, like a buzzing in the back of her mind that she could not escape. She tried to ignore the part of her that was desperate for the pain.

With a final frustrated sigh, she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower, before her body’s need became stronger than her willpower; and before her hands, of their own accord, earned her trouble she did not want.

She ran the water as hot as she could stand, hoping the sting of it would sharpen her mind. She did little more than cleanse and shave her face, condition her hair, and rinse her body off; and dressed quickly, after, in jeans and a baggy t-shirt.

Hair still damp, she found Lucca beginning to prepare breakfast; they had cluttered the counter top with milk, eggs, bread, and a few other ingredients; but they had also already brewed a pot of coffee. She could smell bacon cooking, and hear the faint sound of sizzling from the oven. Valerie poured a mug of coffee and perched on the stool, watching them quietly.

She knew the shape of the question she wanted to ask them, but it remained to be seen first if she could fit it into words, and then whether she would be brave or desperate enough to speak them.

“Morning,” Lucca greeted her, amiably. “You hungry?”

“Kind of,” Valerie deflected, sipping her coffee. “What are you making?”

She watched Lucca work. They wore cargo shorts and a heather grey tank top, and Valerie was mesmerized by the way their tattoos and the muscles of their arms and shoulders moved while they whisked eggs and sugar together, along with a few spices that Valerie could not identify on sight.

Her mind played back the memory of those same arms pinning her against the kitchen wall, despite how much she tried to focus on the present moment.

“French toast; the bread was going a bit stale. Feel like a grocery run later today?”

“What, no Sunday church service?”

Lucca snorted in amusement, and shook their head, declining to dignify the joke with a verbal response. They poured milk into the mixing bowl with the egg-and-sugar paste, and whisked it for a few moments more to integrate the two.

“Cut this into thick slices, would you? An inch or so.”

They deposited a stale half baguette, a bread knife, and a cutting board on the island in front of Valerie. The bread had grown dry and chewy all week on the counter-top. Valerie would have eaten it as-is rather than let it go to waste, but she was sure Lucca’s french toast would be a much more pleasant experience.

She mulled over how to make her request while she sawed at the bread.

“Hey, Lucca…?”

She had sectioned the baguette into eight inch-thick chunks, and pushed the cutting board back to the other side of the island.

“Hmm? Oh, thanks.”

“No, uhm… I mean… That’s right, right? But… I had a question. Also. Not about breakfast.”

“This is perfect,” Lucca nodded toward the bread, and dropped the slices into the egg and milk mixture. “What’s the question?”

“Okay, so, last week, when you…” she gestured toward the section of wall that Lucca had held her against, the weekend prior. “Um, when you..”

“I remember.”

Valerie swallowed; her face felt flush and she distracted herself by taking a long drink from her coffee. Lucca peeked into the oven and, satisfied with whatever they saw there, turned their attention fully toward Valerie.

“You… said you, uhm. That I earned a… punishment, for wearing my running shoes in the kitchen…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not—”

“No, no.” Valerie interrupted them, nervously.

They raised an eyebrow at her, nonplussed.

“I… It’s the opposite. I…”

She could not make herself say the words.

“You… want me to punish you?”

She nodded mutely.

“Why?”

Valerie had been asking herself the same question ever since the idea had crept into her mind that morning. She was not really sure she knew the answer, but she could not shake the thought, anyway. She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

“I can’t focus. Dana’s drugs… hormones, whatever. I don’t even know. But I’m just so…” she clutched her hands into fists, and pressed them against her face for a moment, letting a frustrated breath out through her nose. “I’m so fucking horny, Lucca.”

They smirked, and made a small wordless gesture that Valerie interpreted as go on.

“It’s.. worse every day,” she continued, “And Dana’s rules… I can’t do anything about it. Running doesn’t help, cold showers don’t help. I don’t… I don’t want to break her rules. I just…”

She was starting to come close to tears of genuine frustration. Lucca leaned back against the counter top, keeping their expression neutral while they let Valerie finish saying what she had to say.

“I want to do a good job. At work,” she gestured vaguely toward Lucca’s office. “I don’t think I can make it another week, much less two, like this.” She choked back a frustrated sob. “It’s bad enough when Dana does this to me, but I don’t have any real responsibilities there. But this project… the money… I can’t tell you how important it is to me.”

Her voice cracked as she finished; the next word would have been choked out past a sob, and she was proud that she held it together that far.

Lucca’s face lost its neutrality, but the sympathy bordering on pity that replaced it was less comforting than Valerie had hoped for.

“I don’t think a punishment is the answer here, Valerie.”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“Breakfast is almost ready, let’s figure this out with something in our bellies.”

Lucca delivered a plate to her with half the french toast, scrambled eggs, and several slices of bacon. She nodded, and started eating; she had learned not to argue with Lucca when food was involved.

Valerie ate slightly less than half of her portion, and downed another cup of comfortingly bitter black coffee. Lucca finished what she left on her plate; they had repeated this pattern for virtually every meal they had shared, and Valerie wondered why they did not just serve themselves extra from the start.

“I’ll talk to Dana.”

When Lucca spoke, Valerie had been staring down at the swirling black-brown of her almost empty cup of coffee. She was startled out of her minor reverie by their words, and it took her a moment to put them back into context.

“What? No… That’s not…”

“You don’t get to dictate what I talk to Dana about, or not.”

Their tone was marginally gentler than the words themselves; but the thought of Lucca interceding with Dana, again, on Valerie’s behalf made her skin crawl with anxiety.

“I know,” she replied quickly. “I’m… I didn’t mean to say…”

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“I know she’s your friend, but… maybe you don’t know this side of her. I don’t think she’s very happy with me right now and this isn’t going to make it better.”

Lucca looked at her quietly for a few long moments. Their expression was a mixture of sadness and displeasure, and Valerie stared down at her coffee rather than carry the full weight of it.

“You don’t have to go back,” Lucca told her, softly.

There was a certain darkness in their voice that Valerie did not fully understand, but she supposed they were seeing her situation is still essentially voluntary and consenting. She could not convince herself that they were wrong.

She opened her mouth to disagree, nonetheless; to remind Lucca that she had no real alternatives. She closed her mouth again without speaking. Lucca had given her a real alternative, she realized; but the realization left her feeling more conflicted than she expected.

“I don’t want to give up,” she replied, her voice small.

She fiddled nervously with the mostly-empty coffee mug in front of her.

“Is it the money?” Lucca’s tone way dry, anticipatory disapproval.

A million dollars, she thought to herself. She did not reply immediately. That amount of money still felt unreal; like a mirage, and she had still not figured out why. Dana had showed no sign of planning to withhold the money, so it was only her own anxiety telling her stories.

“No,” she admitted, reluctantly, but it was true. “I don’t think I really believe I’ll get the money.”

“Then why?”

Valerie looked away. She asked herself the same question dozens of times and still had never come up with an answer that she found totally believable.

“I… I don’t know. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to fail,” at yet another thing, she thought. “I want to prove I’m strong enough.”

“Prove to who?”

Valerie shrugged dejectedly, and looked at Lucca with an expression that begged them to drop the questions and take her at face value.

“And you think a body covered in bruises is going to make anything easier for you?”

“It’s worth a try,” she offered, but she did not fully believe it herself. “She… she punished me last time, when you…” she gestured toward her nipples; the shape of her nipple piercings were visible through the thin t-short material.

“When I edged you until you cried and begged and then made you orgasm for an hour straight?”

Valerie turned bright crimson, but she also felt herself get painfully hard. She nodded, biting down on her lip until it hurt in an effort to keep herself focused.

Lucca’s mouth curled upward with a tinge of mischief. Silently, they cleared the plates, and stepped around the kitchen island. The bar stool Valerie was perched on did not really change her height, and they still towered above her. She looked up at them, eyes wide and uncertain.

“It sounds like you’re going to get punished either way,” Lucca murmured. “Whether I do it or Dana does, later.”

Valerie nodded shakily; she was nervous about where their line of reasoning was heading.

Lucca stepped forward, and placed a hand gently on the side of her neck. Their hand felt cool against her heated skin, but the touch only made her heart beat more rapidly. They leaned in close, their mouth only an inch from her ear.

“I think what I’m gonna do is get you off, say, three or four times. You can beg me not to, if you want.”

Their voice was low, and Valerie’s eyes widened.

“In fact,” they went on, “I’m going to just keep going until you beg me to stop.”

Valerie swallowed heavily, staring up at them. She neither spoke nor tried to move away.

“And then I’m going to see if I can’t get another two or three out of you, while I enjoy the begging.”

Their fingers gripped the back of her neck, and their thumb stroked her jawline. Her lips parted unconsciously; but she could not mentally form words to reply, much less speak them.

“And you can tell Dana you only asked to be punished, that you begged to be punished, and I wouldn’t listen. Because I won’t listen. I’m not offering this. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”

Valerie blinked as she absorbed their words. It might work, she thought. It might at least mollify Dana somewhat. She suspected Dana would punish her anyway, maybe even make up a new rule for the purpose.

“You can still use your safe words, though no, don’t, stop, and please don’t count. But you want to show me how strong you are, don’t you, my pet?”