Mercy by Annabel Joseph Read Free Book Online Page A

afterthought, “I’ll pay you for your time.”
    I made a nauseated face.
    “Yes, I thought that’s how you’d feel. Anyway, the pleasure will be payment enough.”
    My God. My God. My God. My God.
    “Okay,” I said. “Here’s some truth for you. I’ve never fucked someone I’m not in a relationship with.”
    “Oh, we’d be in a relationship. Just a non-traditional one. Do you really want another boyfriend? So soon?”
    I thought for a minute. God, no. I didn’t.
    “And it wouldn’t just be fucking, Lucy. Exchanging power is erotically charged, yes, and it can be deeply sexual, but it’s about much more than just getting off. It will meet needs you didn’t even realize you had. It will meet needs for you and me both. And it would be safe, of course. Everything we did together would be absolutely safe and consensual.”
    “Consensual?”
    “Yes, it would have to be. You know what I mean by consensual? You would be there because you want to be. And we would use safe words.”
    “Safe words?” No explanation was forthcoming. “What are safe words?” I was a little afraid to find out.
    “Safe words are words that keep people like you safe.”
    “Safe from what?”
    “Safe from people like me.”
    He leaned back then, stretching casually, as if we discussed nothing more unusual than the weather. I sat across from him and wrestled with my feelings. Anger, indignation, shame, curiosity, lust. Then his eyes returned to mine and he spoke to me with intensity in his voice.
    “You know, I want to own you and I want to use you. I want your obedience and beauty. But what I really want is for you to find joy in it too.”
    “Joy?”
    “Yes, joy. And perhaps, at times, a little pain,” he said with a faint smile. “I’m not going to lie to you. There’s a good bit of the sadist in me. There will be times that I’ll purposely hurt you, times that I’ll try to make you cry. There will be ups and downs, and, well, a considerable amount of pain. But somehow I think you’ll enjoy it.”
    My God, that I could even be sitting here considering it. But his warnings about pain didn’t frighten me at all. In fact, he was right. The idea was exciting me. What kind of pervert was I? He must have seen that I was weakening, that even in my fear, my uncertainty, I wanted to say yes.
    “We could start slowly,” he said. “I would teach you and guide you. I know right now you’re afraid of the unknown. You barely know me, I realize that. I barely know you. But there are some very elemental desires you and I share. And if we get to know each other better and discover that we don’t suit each other, we’ll be truthful to one another, won’t we? Can you promise me that?”
    I thought about six years of deception, the toll it would take on someone’s trust. “Yes, I would be truthful to you,” I said with conviction. “I would always tell you the truth.”
    His expression deepened as he looked at me. “You have no idea how those words make me feel. Because I believe you, little girl.”
    Little girl. He had no idea how those words made me feel, the tingle that raced across my skin. I desperately wanted to be his little girl, his lover, his toy, whatever he wanted me to be. But he’d warned me I couldn’t be his girlfriend. Would everything else be enough?
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    “You drive a hard bargain.”
    He laughed, an exhalation of nervous energy. “I’m trying. I really am. I suppose this isn’t what you expected.”
    “You planned all along to ask me this when you invited me here?”
    “I started putting words together the very second I laid eyes on you.”
    That made me shiver a little. All that time, he’d been thinking of doing these things to me. “When was that? When you first laid eyes on me?”
    He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “It was a while ago.”
    I just stared into my coffee, overwhelmed by the moment, by the decision. It seemed to me that the next words I chose to