You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(50)

“Then you can handle one little flogging,” Charlotte shot back. “They’re not even stingy floggers. Are those deerskin, babe?”

Taggart held up a set of floggers. “Yes, two perfectly matching floggers. Same weight, same material. Deerskin. They’re soft and produce a nice thud.”

Floggers. Those were big old floggers and Ian Taggart would be wielding them. “I’ll do it with Jesse.”

“Uh, I’m not qualified to do Florentine,” Jesse said. “It’s two floggers working in time. If you do it right, you pretty much create a circle-eight pattern. It’s really cool to watch, but you have to be careful to stay on the big muscles, the shoulders, butt. You don’t want to hit the wrong place or you could damage the sub’s kidneys. I would have to practice on Darla for a couple of weeks before I would be willing to do it.”

“Who’s Darla?” She’d figured out that Sanctum was full of gorgeous, submissive women and they all seemed to want her man…well, they all seemed to want Jesse.

It was annoying.

Jesse’s hand found hers, squeezing gently. “She’s a life-size doll. We use her to practice on.”

She still didn’t like Darla. And she definitely didn’t like the idea of being at Taggart’s mercy.

Jesse let go of her hand. “It’s all right. We’ll go to the bar and have another drink or we can just call it a night.”

Damn Charlotte Taggart and her manipulations. “No. I’ll do it. Does my safe word work on him?”

“In this setting it does.” Sometimes when Taggart smiled he looked like a shark getting ready to go into feeding-frenzy mode. Unfortunately, this was one of those times.

“It’s just no for tonight, Tag,” Jesse explained.

“That’s no fun. I thought she would pick expellif*cktis or something,” Tag replied.

“It’s expelliarmus,” she corrected. “And actually that’s a good one. I really wouldn’t be thinking that in the middle of this and it is a disarming spell that forces your opponent to drop whatever they’re holding, so it works.”

Now she sounded like a nerd.

“Is that Harry Potter stuff?” Jesse asked.

Yep, she was a super nerd. “Yes and I think Ian would make a good Voldemort.”

“He was a *.” Taggart gestured to the play area. “Now if Hermione here would please take the stage, we can get started. Jesse, tie her to the middle cross, please.”

“Cross?” Phoebe hesitated.

Jesse pointed to the back of the stage where there was a wooden X on the wall. There were leather cuffs on the top and bottom of the X, obviously where her hands and feet would go.

It struck her suddenly that she would be all alone up there. She would be stripped down and vulnerable and at the mercy of a man who likely had none.

Was this their version of revenge? Was this how they got back at her for lying to them? She stared at that cross and hated Phoebe Graham in that moment. This vulnerability wasn’t her. She was strong. She’d built up walls over her lifetime that were so strong almost no one could get through them.

Until Jamie died and she found out that all the shit that came before was nothing compared to how hollowed out grief could leave a person.

The old Phoebe would have shoved everyone the finger and then told them to go to hell because she wouldn’t have cared about them. This stupid weak Phoebe didn’t want to be laughed at, didn’t want to find out what they really thought of her.

“I don’t want to be tied up.” She would be helpless. She couldn’t be helpless.

Taggart looked down at her, his face as soft as it ever got. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise you that. Like I told you, all my rage is far better expended on your brother.”

She shook her head. “I can’t stand the thought of being tied up. This isn’t right for me.”

“Phoebe, this is about learning to trust,” Ian explained. “You wouldn’t be the first sub who couldn’t stand the thought of being tied down and vulnerable, but you’ll also never know what it means to utterly trust a partner so much that he could do anything and you would know it would be all right.”

“I can’t.”

“All right.” Tag gave up. “I’ll get someone else. I can’t flog her with her just standing there. There’s too much risk that she would move at the wrong time.”

“Let me be her cross,” Jesse said suddenly. He stepped forward. “She can hold on to me, lean on me. That way I can tell if she’s handling it all right.”

Taggart seemed to think about it for a moment. “She can use her safe word at any moment, but she’s got to be still until I stop.”

“I won’t move.”

Taggart nodded and gestured for Jesse to join him in setting up the scene. Phoebe was left watching them, wondering if she was making the right choice.

If Jesse was with her, she could try it. It would be better to know than not. If they made fun of her, or if Taggart decided to hurt her for kicks, then she would know that he was the same as all the other *s she’d met. She didn’t think so, but then she’d only seen how he treated the people he loved. How would he treat her?

People liked to hurt other people. That was what life had taught her. Her childhood had been one long succession of adults who failed her. She’d watched her foster brothers and sisters damn near kill each other over as little as an extra soda. Only Ten and Jamie and their dad had ever offered her refuge, and then they’d sent her off to fight a war no one even knew was raging.