Break the Rules (Rough Love Book 7) Read online

  But he’s reminded of a conversation he and Xander once had, not long ago.

  “Why do you always say the full word, sadomasochism?” Ben asked. “The books just say S&M.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a shame to replace an elegant, exquisite word like sadomasochism with something like S&M?” Xander practically sneered the abbreviation. “There’s so much beauty in what we do, I don’t like to denigrate it with some pop-culture nickname. A word like ‘sadomasochism’ rolls off the tongue; it draws on the history of these things and reminds us of the Marquis de Sade and his revolutionary philosophies, Sacher-Masoch and his cruel Goddess in furs.” Xander caught sight of Ben watching him, his mouth twitching. “What?”

  “You are so pretentious, Alexander,” Ben told him, and they’d ended up in a tickle fight.

  Jake does not look like someone Ben would ever want to tickle fight.

  Well, we’re not here for a tickle fight, so that works just fine.

  “Also, I should warn you—if I go under, into subspace, sometimes I say things. Poetry things. But just ignore it.”

  “You talk a whole lot, for a sub.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to be clear on—”

  “Do you go under deep?” Jake asks suddenly, and Ben feels a little relieved. So far, the guy hasn’t been interested in listening to him at all, which doesn’t seem like a good sign.

  “Sometimes. Yes.”

  “Well, you can have a half hour or something afterwards, I guess, and I’ll go watch TV while I wait for you to come out of it. But you gotta get out of here by four, because my boyfriend’s coming back and he gets shitty if my sluts are still here when he’s around.”

  Oh, God. What are you doing? Get out. Now.

  But for some reason, he doesn’t. For some reason, Ben stays, stock still, his heartbeat getting faster and faster.

  This isn’t right. This is all wrong. Get out.

  I don’t want to.

  He’ll hurt you.

  I know. I know that.

  “You gonna take your clothes off or are you gonna stand there like a fucking tree?” Jake growls.

  “I’d prefer no verbal humiliation,” Ben reminds him, but starts undressing. With Xander, it always felt like a strange kind of foreplay. Right now, though it feels like nothing. The guy is eyeing him with appreciation, but Ben takes no pleasure in it, and is devoid even of the embarrassment he sometimes felt with Xander.

  It is what it is.

  He’s here for one reason.

  To hurt.

  He gets down to his briefs, and with no word one way or the other from Jake, removes them too. He’s completely flaccid, and he can see that Jake is disappointed.

  “You can bend over the bed, over there. I’m gonna hit you for a while.” He grabs a cane from the wall, and Ben frowns.

  “I’m sorry. I should have said. I don’t like canes.”

  “Well, I don’t give a fuck. You’ve been moaning on and on about everything you don’t like—what about what I like? I like this and I’m going to use it on you. Or you can get out. Your choice.”

  “Is it soaked?” Ben asks, his voice tight.

  “What the fuck do you mean, soaked?”

  “Has it been in water?”

  “Why the fuck would it be in water?”

  Ben relaxes a little, turns around and walks to the bed. “Alright. You can use the cane. My safe word is—”

  “What in the fuck is that?” Ben turns again to see Jake pointing at his ass.

  “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” It’s his goddamned XR mark.

  “Is that a tattoo?”

  “No. Just a sharpie mark, from an old…It’s nothing, forget it.”

  “Go wash it off.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because for the next half hour, I own you, and I don’t want to be hitting an ass that says otherwise. What does it say, anyway? X something?”

  Ben feels a surge of red rage and starts to breathe a little faster. He walks back to his clothes and starts pulling them on. “First of all, it wouldn’t come off with soap and water anyway, and second, even if it could, I wouldn’t take it off, because third, you don’t own me. We agreed to a power exchange for one hour and that’s all. But I’m done. I’m leaving. You’re not safe, and you’re not hitting me.”

  “I’m not safe? Fuck you, bitch. You’re the little pussy who likes getting fucked up.”

  Don’t say anything, just go. But he can’t help it. He can’t.

  “Well you, Jake, are a fucking moron, and it actually pains me to know that there are people as stupid as you in the world.”

  He just has time to hear Jake muttering something about show you pain before the cane whips into his face and cracks against his nose. Ben staggers back, holding his face in agony, until a fist hits him square in the gut, and he crumples to the ground, winded.

  He manages to crawl a few yards before the cane lands on him again, hard across the small of his back, where Xander never ever hit him, ever, because he said it was far too dangerous, and all Ben can think is this guy is going to rupture my kidneys or murder me some other way and I am going to die here on his dirty carpet and I will never see Xander again.

  He rolls over and kicks out hard with a bare foot, feels a satisfying connection with the guy’s knee. Jake screams in agony, and Ben takes the moment to scramble up and stagger towards the front door. Every horror movie he’s ever seen is playing in his mind, but he makes it to the car without Jake even reappearing in the doorway. He’s perturbed for a moment to remember it’s still only the afternoon, and he has to blink a few times to adjust his eyes to the light.

  Ben floors it out of the driveway, his heart hammering. He has to pull over a couple of miles down the road, and open the door so he can throw up. When he looks at himself in the mirror, his nose is streaming blood and he already has bruises coming up on his cheek, his right eye puffy and closing over. A small, dark part in the back of his brain wonders how Xander might like the look. He wouldn’t care for the technique, of course, but the outcome, maybe—

  That’s not fair. He would never hit you in the face.

  “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.” He drops his forehead to the steering wheel. “No. No. No crying, not now, not ever.”

  He has to go somewhere. He has to move, to drive, keep going—but any one of his friends will freak if they see him like this. And he’s left his shoes behind, his favorite Skechers. The thought upsets him, a bone-deep sadness at the loss.

  He’s only been there once before, but somehow, thankfully, he remembers how to get there. A modern building, discreet, marked only by the matte copper plate on the door: Dubois Health Services. There is no one in the waiting room except the receptionist, a statuesque ice-blonde with a tasteful silver collar.

  “I don’t have an appointment,” Ben says awkwardly to her. “But I’ve been here before.” She doesn’t even raise her eyebrows at his state, simply smiles and asks his name, tells him to please have a seat, and brings him a handful of tissues and an ice pad for his nose. It’s the same kind of ice pad Xander always used.

  And then she comes down the thickly-carpeted hallway, reading a file, looking as serious and untouchable as last time he saw her: the Doctor. Xander’s Doctor. Ben lowers the ice pad, so at least he doesn’t look like a complete moron.

  The Doctor glances at him once, twice, and turns to the receptionist. “I think we’ll reschedule those last two appointments, Adrianna.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the blonde says, and looks relieved.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It’s Benjamin, isn’t it?” the Doctor says to him. “Or do you prefer Ben?”

  Ben wants to reply, but his words get caught up around his tongue, and he can only look with mute pleading at her.

  “Benjamin,” she says. “Please come with me.”

  He follows her silently down the hallway. Once they enter her office—as restrained and elegant as she is: a few burgundy tone
s, a Persian rug, the nameplate on the door reading only Dr Dubois—he finds his voice again. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  “Don’t even give it another thought. I had some very dull patients this afternoon. You’ve given me the perfect excuse.” Her accent is clipped, faintly European.

  “Thank you.”

  He follows her through the office and into the examination room, starting to wonder what in the hell he’s doing. But he obediently sits on the gurney and takes off his shirt.

  “Was this consensual?” she asks, touching her fingers lightly to his face. Ben shrugs. Then it hits him—for some of her patients, this kind of thing is consensual.

  “I guess not.”

  “Do you have other injuries?”

  “Just my back. He hit me there. He didn’t…I mean, you know. I ran before anything else happened.”

  She nods. “Who did this to you, please?”

  “It wasn’t—it’s not…Not him.”

  “Of course not. He would never do anything like this.”

  “That’s what I kept telling him,” Ben says before thinking.

  The Doctor looks into his eyes, and Ben feels like he’d never be able to hide anything from her, even his most shameful and terrible secrets and desires.

  “I’d like a name, if you are willing to tell me,” she asks gently.

  “Why? I don’t want to press charges or anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m the fool who went. Went into his house, even though I knew something could happen. And I kind of provoked him. I deserved it.”

  She looks sternly at him. “Benjamin, you did not deserve any of this. What has been done to you was done without your consent. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Yes,” he sighs. “Alright. It wasn’t my fault.” He looks at her, so calm and unflinching and beautiful, and all he can think of is Keats.

  I saw pale kings, and princes too,

  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

  Who cry’d—’La belle Dame sans merci

  Hath thee in thrall!’

  She smiles. “My husband likes to call me his Belle Dame sans Merci,” she says unexpectedly, and Ben blinks. She’s married?

  Then it hits him. “Did I say that out loud?”

  “You did. Now, Benjamin—are you sure you don’t want to make a police report about this incident?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t want to. It would just be…I’m well known. It would turn into a thing.”

  “Alright; as you wish. But if you are comfortable, I’d still like to know his name and any details you can tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if there’s someone out there doing this, the rest of the community needs to be warned, even if you don’t go to the police.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Sometimes, it’s not all about you, Benjamin.” But she’s smiling at him. It would be impossible to take offense. And so Ben smiles back and tells her all the information he has, and she writes it down in neat, blocked letters on her notepad.

  “I’m going to clean your face,” she tells him. “Your nose is, thankfully, unbroken, but you’ll be quite sore for a few days. You’ll have to take over-the-counter painkillers for that. I don’t want to give you a prescription, because I’m sure—” She stops, gives a rueful shrug. “I’m sure you’ve had enough pills and potions to last a lifetime.”

  “Not quite a lifetime. As it turned out.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, touching his shoulder. “We all thought you and he—well, it doesn’t matter what we thought. You lasted as long as you could.”

  “What do you mean?” Ben frowns. “No. He broke up with me.”

  Ben is pretty sure the Doctor isn’t used to being shocked, because the way she stops and stares at him lacks any of her natural grace. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He broke up with me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Ben gives a sharp laugh. “Uh, yeah. Pretty damn sure.” He can’t really blame everyone for finding it so surprising. It came out of the blue for him, too.

  The Doctor says, “Of course. Forgive me. It’s absolutely none of my business, in any case.” She pulls on a white medical coat, snaps on latex gloves and busies herself with cotton pads to clear his face of blood and sweat. After his face is clean, she begins to tend the mark on his back, and her fingers are as sure and gentle as Xander’s ever were. Ben bites down on his lip to distract himself.

  “If you pass any blood in your urine over the next few days, you will need to go to the ER. But it seems to me that he missed your vital organs. Did you have intercourse?” she asks.

  “No. God, no, nothing like that.” He’s doubly glad now, because he really couldn’t take having his asshole examined by her, not again. He sees a brief flash of humor cross her face in the mirror.

  “All done,” she says eventually, disposing of her gloves. “You can put your shirt back on. And here—you’ve been such a good boy. Have a lollipop.”

  She holds out a small jar towards him, and Ben grins, winces at the resulting pain in his nose. “A lollipop?”

  “These aren’t just any old lollipops. I have them shipped from San Francisco. And I only give them to my very favorite patients.”

  Ben feels that familiar surge of pride in himself that he used to have when he pleased Xander. He picks one, creamy-colored and enticing. But the moment he puts it in his mouth—”What is this?”

  The Doctor, taking off her white coat, glances over. “Chai flavor. I’m sorry, do you not like—Benjamin, what is it?”

  It’s too much. He feels grief well up in his throat and makes a choking, hacking noise. The Doctor immediately hops up on the gurney next to him. “Come here,” she says, and for a moment it’s completely weird, and he wants to push her away, but she pulls his head into her shoulder, and he cries into her cream silk blouse until it’s soaked and slightly bloody from his nose again, and sticking to both of them. His lollipop has glued itself to her collar, and she peels it off. “You haven’t been taking care of yourself, Benjamin.”

  “I guess I was just used to him doing it.” He sounds all stuffy.

  “Too used to it, perhaps,” she says, sliding off the bed. She turns to stroke her fingers over his cheek, wiping away the tears, and then absently raises her wet fingertips to her mouth in a gesture so Xander-like that Ben’s heart falters.

  She stops, her fingers an inch away from her lips, and looks faintly astonished at herself. But then she wipes off her fingers on a hand towel and smiles at Ben. “The bathroom is over there—I’ll give you a moment. Once you’re ready, please join me back in my office. I think we need to have a little chat.”

  That sounds unpleasant, Ben thinks. But once his head stops throbbing so much, he gets up and steps into the bathroom, takes a piss—blood free, thank fuck—and splashes his face with cold water. When he returns to the office, the Doctor has changed her blood-stained blouse for a fitted red sweater.

  “I’m sorry about your shirt. I’ll pay for the dry cleaning, or whatever,” he says.

  “Don’t worry about it at all. Have a seat.” She’s at her desk, waving to the chair in front of it. Ben obeys, hoping that she won’t be too mean to him, like she was mean to Xander that one time. “Could you tell me, please, what you’ve been doing since he broke off the relationship?”

  Ben thinks for a moment. He wants to tell her everything. Everything. “Can I tell you about what happened between us?”

  “Of course, Benjamin, if you want to.”

  So Ben relates everything. His research and his questions to Xander, and the argument they had after the play. Xander’s comments about Blood Bond. His trip to Mexico, Annika, Byron…Jake.

  “And do you have people in your life with whom you can discuss these things that you do? Your sexual desires?”

  Ben shakes his head. “Not really.”

  “I see.” She seems to be considering her words
carefully. “Did he never take you into the community, to meet people?”

  “No.” Ben sees her dark eyes, almost black, flash with something. Anger, or perhaps only annoyance.

  “No. He did not. I see.” She’s talking more to herself than to Ben, so he says nothing in reply. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Benjamin. It’s important to be able to share with others. Share experiences, swap stories.”

  “Yeah. I kind of wanted to at one stage, but he…I don’t know. He didn’t seem to want to go back. He didn’t want to take me.”

  “I see,” she says sharply, for the third time, and then closes her eyes. “I do beg your pardon. I don’t mean to criticize him. I’m sure he did what he thought was best. Only I trained him, you see, and I thought I’d trained him better than that.”

  Ben’s mouth hangs open. “You trained him?”

  “I did,” she says. “Although perhaps he needs a refresher. Now as for you, Benjamin, tell me: are you comfortable? Do you feel comfortable in your own skin?”

  It’s a strange question, but in here in this quiet, well-appointed office with soft lighting and a painting on the wall that Ben is pretty sure is a very expensive Pre-Raphaelite original, it makes immediate sense.

  “Not always. I never knew before him that I liked this kind of stuff. Sometimes I feel like there’s something wrong with me, that it can’t be healthy to be this way. To love pain and blood and to want to—to please people…It’s like I’m living in a dream, and sometimes I wake up for a second and I realize how crazy it all is, how it doesn’t really make sense. But when I’m dreaming, it makes perfect sense.”

  “Dreams have their own logic, don’t they?” She reaches for a pad of paper and a pen. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a masochist,” she tells him casually. “Have you ever read him?”

  “A little. Not for a long time.” What the fuck does Rousseau have to do with anything?

  “He believed his masochism stemmed from his mother’s death. She died giving birth to him.”

  “Great,” Ben snorts.

  “Do you think he was wrong?”