“We’re friends, Pen. Nothing wrong with that.”

    * * *

    RAMPAGE

    Penny doesn’t talk on the drive home. At first I figure she’s shaken up after the fight, but every so often I catch her scowling at me, so I figure I’ve done something wrong. Not that she’s about to tell me what it is.

    By the time we arrive at her house, I have twenty messages on my phone. Everyone wants to know what’s going on. What happened to me? Why did I lose it in the gym? Are Penny and I together? Do I have a will? Because Torment will never forgive me.

    Once inside, Penny feeds Clarice and goes to take a shower. I throw myself on the couch and try to figure out what kind of damage control I’m going to have to do to fix things at the gym. I let my mask slip tonight. Now I have to convince everybody that what they saw wasn’t real.

    “I’m knackered, so I’m going to bed,” Penny announces from the hallway. She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt with a “Mind the Gap” logo on the front. Given the girly clothes she wears every day, I would have expected her to wear something frilly and feminine to bed, but the way the T-shirt drapes over her softly rounded breasts and skirts the tops of her thighs is more erotic than the finest lingerie.

    “Come here.” I pat the seat beside me.

    She gives me a wary look. “Why?”

    “So we can talk.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, my hands dangling down so I am not tempted to push myself up and take her in my arms. Given her cold, stiff demeanor, I’d probably get a slap for my efforts.

    “You made me a promise, darlin’. You said you’d come to me if you felt a need to hurt yourself. You picked that fight with Fuzzy knowing how it would end.”

    Guilt flickers across her face, followed by defensive anger. “So what if I did?”

    “I could have given you what you needed, but without the harm.”

    She bends down and picks up Clarice, holding the cat against her chest. “As a friend?”

    “Yes.”

    Her bottom lip quivers. “A friendship where you spank me and whip me and fuck me but we aren’t together in a way anyone understands?”

    “I can’t give you anything else. I can’t give you normal. I’m not going to change. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember, and there’s nothing I can point to as a trigger, nothing that needs to be cured.”

    “I don’t want normal.” She puts Clarice down and gives her a pat. “I want pain because that’s the only way I can get emotional release. I just never realized there might be other ways of getting that release that involve pleasure, too.”

    And I never realized it would be possible to share my kink with someone who not only wants what I have to give, but needs it, too, although I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to tolerate the kind of pain I give the hard-core masochists at Club Sin.

    “I like who you are,” she says softly. “The real Jack you revealed at the gym tonight; the Jack from the club; and the Jack who’s my friend. I like your kind of normal.”

    I like who she is too, but what happens when she gets the help she needs and realizes there is a life beyond pain—a life I can’t share?

    “What’s going to happen if I leave tonight?”

    She tugs at the hem of her shirt, twists her lips to the side. “I don’t know. I can still feel the need; it’s like an itch under my skin. Maybe you could stay…”

    “I’ll stick around for a bit.”

    I follow her into the bedroom and stretch out on the covers. Her room is decorated in bold primary colors, a decided contrast to the pastels she always wears. Is this the real her? For a man who wears a mask, I am supremely incapable of seeing through hers.

    “You can get under the covers,” she says, lying on the bed beside me. “I promise I won’t attack you. I’m a quiet sleeper. I don’t moan or talk or thrash around. I won’t even steal the covers.”

    I turn on my side, prop my head up on my elbow. “I’ve never slept in a bed with a woman, Pen. Not even Avery. She wanted to wait until we were married. When I said I don’t do relationships, I meant I don’t do intimacy in any form. I have sex. I scene at the club. But that’s it. I don’t want to lead anyone on. I don’t want anyone to have expectations that I can’t fulfill.” She turns to face me, and I can’t help but smooth my hand over her arm, in and out of the dip of her waist, and over the curve of her hip. Her shirt rides up, exposing the lacy edge of her panties. My cock hardens, and I grit my teeth and roll to my back.

    “You can turn off the light.” She gestures to the light beside me. “I only need it when I’m alone.”

    My stomach clenches at the thought of all the other times she hasn’t been alone, other men who have shared her bed, held her while she slept, made love to her like normal men do.

    I turn out the light. Fold my arms behind my head. Stare at the darkened ceiling. Try not to think about the beautiful woman lying beside me.

    Penny rests her hand against my chest, snuggles against me. I’ve never had a woman snuggle with me before, but then I’ve never let anyone get as close as she is right now. At the club or in the few private encounters I have had, I’ve kept my submissives at arm’s length. We do our scene. I endure the aftercare. I send them home. There are no cuddles, no nights spent in each other’s arms, no lazy weekend mornings in bed. Even that crazy night with Sylvia, when I gave in to my longing for a connection beyond pain, I didn’t stay a minute longer than I had to.

    But this is Penny. And I feel something for her—the kind of emotional connection I never thought I would feel again.

    And it fucking scares me.

16

    It’s the dirty things you say