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I pondered how many people Cliff might have murdered who had deserved it, before he found himself in my employ. He was wiry, tatted, and tough, with a missing front tooth he’d never bothered to replace.
I’d hired him to double as protection when we drove into the sketchier areas of town; I was one of New York’s most prominent architects and Chere ran an upscale jewelry business. She regularly had consultations with clients carrying a million dollars’ worth of gold and diamonds, and scary Cliff was the only one between her and a thief.
I should have insisted she take Cliff along to Andrew’s bachelor party, but she’d complained and said he wouldn’t let her have fun, which was probably true. “Please!” she’d begged. “I’ll call every hour, and be home by three o’clock, I promise!”
But I hadn’t received any calls after midnight, and as for coming home, she hadn’t accomplished that either. I looked over at her, pale and hungover on the seat. She groaned as Cliff swung into traffic and flinched as the driver behind us blared his horn.
“Price? Do you happen to have any ibuprofen with you?”
“No, and you don’t get any anyway. Not until you’ve had the spanking you have coming to you. I want it to hurt you, one hundred percent.”
“Can’t you spank me tomorrow? When I feel better?”
She spoke quietly, so Cliff wouldn’t hear, although I had a pretty good feeling he understood our dynamic. I spoke quietly too, to protect her feelings and her privacy.
“You’re getting spanked the literal second we get home, baby. I’ve had eight whole hours to worry about you. No use putting it off.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Well, you did.”
I wasn’t furious anymore, like the wee hours of this morning, when I’d had to break my promise not to track her with her phone. I wasn’t livid like when I’d arrived at a shuttered gay club and pounded on the door until someone let me in. I wasn’t out of my mind like when I’d found her phone abandoned on the floor beneath a velvet, alcohol-stained banquette.
Chere and I had been married nearly six months now, but we’d met long before that. We’d been through a lot of trauma and drama together. I’d lowkey stalked her for many years.
Not lowkey.
I’d really stalked her, and I’d had to learn to stop the worst of my surveilling behavior or lose her completely. It had taken a long time and a lot of work to get to a place where I could make myself let her go, let her have some freedom without me.
It’s just her best friend’s gay stag party. What could possibly go wrong?
I blew out a breath. I could stop worrying now. She was okay. She was sitting on the seat beside me, her pretty, expressive brown eyes closed against the sun. The rays illuminated her freckles and brought out the burnished tones in her complexion. My beautiful love. My starshine. I wanted to murder her for scaring me, but I wouldn’t. She might feel murdered afterward, but she’d still be alive.
“We’re here, boss,” said Cliff, pulling up to our building on Bleecker Street. “Should I park, or will we be going out again soon?”
“Park it,” I said, helping Chere from the car. “We’re not going anywhere for the next few hours.”
I ignored her soft moan of dread and guided her inside.
* * *
Chapter 3
Chere
I was usually happy to come home to our beautiful apartment on Bleecker Street. Price’s home—now our home—was spacious, airy, and full of light, though this lightness was balanced with dark, elegant, old-world furnishings, some pieces of which were priceless. The overall effect was intimidating yet cozy, like my husband.
Well, sometimes he was cozy. Sometimes he wrote me poetry. Sometimes he punished me and made me cry.
I deserved this, though. We had rules. One rule was to obey orders, and I’d been told to check in during the evening and to be home by three.
“Go on ahead of me,” he said. “You know where we’re going.”
“Yes, sir.”
I slunk toward our bedroom and then into the walk-in closet, where a secret door opened to a haven of sadistic delights, or masochistic shudders, depending which side of the equation you were on. In our relationship, of course, my husband was the sadist, and I was the masochist shuddering at his touch.
I shed my clothes, throwing them in the dry-cleaning basket, not that dry cleaning would necessarily erase the mysterious stain down the front of my favorite party dress. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
