He dragged the object through my folds then, swirling around my clit before going lower, so the only answer I had was, “Mmmm.”
“You’re even wetter than you were. I knew you were looking forward to this. Want to see?”
“Yes.”
Reeve came around to my face and stuck the end of a crop in front of me. The tongue glistened with fluid. “That’s from you.” He brought the tip to his mouth and sucked. “You taste good, Em.” It was so base. So depraved.
It made me so hot, I was almost sure I could come right there.
“You want to taste what I taste. You’re so dirty like that, how you love the taste of yourself almost as much as I do. Guess what, Em. I’m going to give you what you want.”
The crop was thrust back toward me, but instead of rising to my lips like I’d expected, it tapped underneath my chin. “Open,” Reeve commanded.
I let my jaw fall open and he stuffed familiar white lace material inside – the remnants of my panties. He’d made sure the lining of the crotch was what hit my tongue, and as I tasted myself I was at once repulsed and turned on. Or, rather, turned on more. I couldn’t begin to understand the opposing reactions. They pulled at each other, feeding into each other, fueling my desire to limits above and beyond the lust I’d felt before.
He wasn’t done though. “Bite around this.” He stuck a green braided rope, less than an inch thick, in my mouth. I bit around the rope, securing the panties behind it. “Don’t drop it. Understand?”
I couldn’t talk anymore now that I’d been gagged, so I simply nodded.
“Good girl,” he said as he walked back to my rear, dragging the crop along my ribcage.
There was no warning before the first thwack hit my skin. No warm-up. Just thwack, a sharp, concentrated sting across my cheek, causing me to grunt and my leg to lift reflexively.
He didn’t massage the bite away, didn’t touch me before the next hit. The other cheek now, but higher up than the last one. He continued like this, one swat after another in no identifiable pattern so that I had no idea where the next one would land. On and on until my grunts turned to cries, until my ass was on fire, until my eyes were watering and my jaw ached from clenching.
By the time he was done, my pussy was trembling with need and I imagined my backside was streaked with red. He pressed his body against the burning flesh of my ass and I felt the tip of his cock at my wet entrance.
He entered me then. Plunged into me with a sharp, hard thrust that reached so far inside of me, so deep that I gasped, nearly dropping the rope from my mouth. The climax that had been building little by little while he’d spanked and whipped and played shot through me, exploding like carbonated soda out of a shaken-up can.
While I was still twitching and groaning, I felt the tug of the rope in my mouth from both ends, and I realized Reeve was gripping them, pulling my neck back as though they were reins, and I was his pretty pony to ride.
And he did ride me. He pulsed into me with his cock, one hand pulling at the lead, keeping my head erect, the other digging into my hip. All the while he talked to me. Spoke sinful, licentious words that made me buck and flail underneath him. Said things like, “You want this because you’re a slut.” And, “You’re dirty.” And, “Such a filthy girl who wants to be fucked like she’s a nasty whore.”
My second climax came on even faster. The third was on its heels, shuddering through me with aching leisure. Squeezing the breath from my lungs, causing my legs to give out even with the support of the hay bales underneath me.
Reeve dropped the rope, pulled out of me, and flipped me over to my back. He shoved inside me, pushing through the clenching of my pussy to continue his assault. The bra had loosened during the shift and my hands were free now. He leaned over me, pinning me down as he fucked me with more fury and fervor than he ever had.
His eyes bore into mine from above. “I’m the perverted sick asshole who likes to say this shit to you,” he said, his voice raw and rough. “Who likes to fuck you like this. What does that mean about me?” His tone tightened and his inflection drifted upward as his orgasm came rumbling through him with brutal force. He ground his pelvis against mine, the fabric of his jeans prickling at the sensitive skin of my behind. He groaned and growled, his fingers clawing into my wrists, his eyes clamped shut.
As soon as he’d released enough to let go of my hands, I sat up, spit the panties out of my mouth, and pulled his face toward me. “Maybe that just means you’re made for me.”
I kissed him, hard, my mouth claiming his, my lips shaping his with vicious, unyielding devotion. Soon, he was kissing me in return. His hands came up to wrap around my face. When our mouths broke, we clutched onto each other, our heads huddled together as we gasped for breath.
Eventually, he began mumbling. Incoherent words that turned into my name. “Emily, Emily, Emily.” He stroked his palms up and down my back. “You’re freezing cold. We need to get you warm.”
I hadn’t noticed until he’d mentioned it. It was only fifty degrees out and about the same temperature in the barn. “Well, I don’t think my shirt’s of use anymore.”
“I suppose not. Here.” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Get dressed as best as you can. I’ll put this stuff away and then we’ll go give you a hot bath. Then, later, if you’re up to it, maybe we’ll get a bonfire going.”
“I’m in.”
He took a step away, but came immediately back. “One more,” he said as he slanted his mouth over mine.
One more and one more and one more, I thought. Always another one more. I’d take them all. I’d take even more.
Reeve headed down the aisle. I pulled up my pants and zipped his jacket over my breasts. I found my bra and shirt and wrapped them in my jacket. Cradling the bundle under one arm, I stuck my ice-cold hands in my pockets. Reeve’s pockets. My right hand closed around something metal. Keys. I pulled them out to study them, my heart pounding.
There were nine keys in total on the ring, a mix of gold and silver. I had no idea what they all opened, but I was sure one of them went to his office.
Before I could think too hard, before I could doubt or second-guess or talk myself out of it, I tucked the keys inside the bundle of my clothes. No guilt, I said silently. It’s done. I could decide what I did with them later.
“Ready?” he asked from down the aisle.
“More than.” I tightened my grip on the bundle and hurried up to meet him, already rationalizing my actions in my head. He’d left me no choice really. He still hadn’t told me about Amber. If I had to find out my own way, I felt justified.
Never mind that I hadn’t told him about Amber either. Things were changing between us, but we both still had secrets.
CHAPTER 26
Back at the house, Reeve set me up in a hot bath with Epsom salt to soothe the lashes from the crop and the sore muscles from the day’s ride – both of them. Later, after dinner, we went out back to the fire pit with a group of men from the ranch. It was Friday and warm for April, according to Charlie, the kind of night for “boozing and blazing,” as he put it.
Brent and Parker joined as well and though the latter grinned knowingly every time he happened to glance my way, it wasn’t as uncomfortable of a gathering as I might have imagined. This was the closest thing Reeve had to family, I realized now, and explained his relationship with Kaya’s staff. He relaxed with them, joking and laughing unlike he did with anyone else I’d seen him with. Not that I’d seen him with many people. Through the stories shared among them, I learned Reeve had been quite wild in his youth and long past. He’d dabbled in recreational drugs and gambling and women.
“Lots and lots and lots of women,” Brent said and Reeve kicked his boot. “Hey, I’m speaking with admiration. You were a God.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Reeve took a swig of his beer. “I still am a God.”
When the laughter from that settled down, I asked, “What made you clean up your act?”
The guys looked to my boyfriend who, once again, looked as though he might let the question go ignored. But I was learning he liked to take his time with personal answers and, sure enough, eventually he said, “Missy.” He worked his jaw. “Her death was a big slap in the face that my life was out of control. So, I stopped with the drugs, cut out some key people, quit throwing over-the-top parties, and —”
“And you’ve been a control freak ever since,” I finished for him.
Again everyone laughed. “You know our boy well,” Charlie said and I thought, I’m beginning to.
Around ten, the group dispersed – some going into town to drink at the bars, others, who had to work on Saturday, going home to sleep off the alcohol. “There’s no Monday through Friday when you’re working with livestock,” Charlie said in parting. “And five a.m. comes sooner than you think.”
Then it was just Reeve and me. I shifted my weight on the rock I was sitting on, partly to angle myself toward him, partly because my sore behind had kept me shifting all night.
He noticed and patted his thigh. “Come here.”
Eagerly, I accepted the invitation into his lap. It wasn’t really that much more comfortable than the rock, but sitting with my back pressed to him, his arms wrapped around me, made everything feel better.
“So… a party boy, huh?” I asked, though I’d really known that already. The media had portrayed him as such and I’d seen evidence from his birthday party pictures at his Palm Springs resort and from Chris’s description of Sallis gatherings.
Reeve nodded, but didn’t elaborate. When he did speak again, he had to repeat his question, I was so certain I’d heard him wrong the first time. “Have you ever been in love?”
I craned to look up at him to see if he was serious. He was. I settled my head back into him and said, “That’s pretty unexpected coming from you.”
“Why? Because a ‘party boy’ can’t ever be interested in mushy things like love? Maybe I just want to find out if I have a reason to be jealous. So I can kill him.”
I rolled my eyes but my chest warmed, as if the fire was also heating me from the inside.
He nuzzled into my neck. “I’m serious. About some of it, anyway. Tell me. I want to know.”
“No. I haven’t.” There was a time I’d thought it was another of my flaws. Thought that I was incapable of falling in love with a person or of having another person love me.
But there was someone I had loved. Someone who loved me. Someone who proved contrary to the illustration I’d drawn of myself. “I did love someone once though,” I said, wanting to answer his question honestly. “A girlfriend.”
Reeve moved my hips so that he could face me. “Emily. Are you saying you go both ways? Because I think I just got hard.”
I chuckled. “No. I don’t. Definitely all man for me. I mean, I’ve had threesomes. With her.”
He adjusted himself underneath me. “Yep. Definitely got hard.”
I could feel his bulge – he wasn’t hard. Semi maybe. I ignored it, more interested in explaining my relationship with Amber at the moment. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t sexual even when there was sex involved. We were just really good friends. We went through a lot together and she always understood me like no one else ever has.”
Or, like no one else ever had. Because Reeve seemed really good at getting me.
“Plus you had threesomes. We should call her up.” He tipped his beer to his lips.
From his wink, I knew he was kidding, but I said anyway, “No, we shouldn’t. First of all, I can’t call her. We parted ways and then I lost track of her.”
I took the bottle from him and finished the end of it in a long swallow before adding, “Besides, I don’t think I could share you with her. With anyone.”
Reeve put the empty bottle on the ground and cupped my cheek. “Then I’d never expect you to.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed me, or I kissed him, lips molding by the firelight. Heat spreading from the inside and the outside.
He broke away first. With his mouth still inches from mine, he asked, “How is it that you’ve never fallen in love besides with her? You can’t say there hasn’t been opportunity.”
I turned away, leaning my head back on his shoulder. “There have been lovers, yes. But I never found anyone I trusted.”
“Why did you split up with her, then? With your girlfriend. If you were so close.”
It was weird to talk about Amber with him yet wasn’t all at once. But the answer to his question was hard to talk about with anyone. Was hard for me to even think about.
So I just shrugged. “People move apart sometimes, I guess.” I sat forward and looked back at him. “What about you? Ever been in love?”
He surprised me when he didn’t hesitate. “Twice. The last one – you remind me of her sometimes.”
Amber. He had loved Amber.
A ball formed in the back of my throat, and I felt truly conflicted. I was jealous, of course. But also, it was just another thing that connected he and I. Another thing that brought us together.
And I reminded him of her. “How?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to put a finger on because you’re really quite different. Like, she didn’t care for, well, for a lot of the things that happened in the bedroom. And elsewhere. She didn’t always like my approach. She was kinky, but not… submissive. Eventually that came between us.”
“How?” I asked again.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I needed these answers. For me. For us. “Is she the person you didn’t let leave?”
“Are you saying that trust is a factor for love?”
I glared, letting him know that I hadn’t missed that he’d dodged me entirely.
But then I answered him, because this topic was important to me, too. “It’s the factor. What else is it? Fondness? What about when he gets mad and beats you senseless? Or fucks your friend? Trust. All that matters.”
I pulled away from him, standing to stretch my legs or to try to relieve the sudden constriction in my chest or to escape the one thing it felt like I was endlessly trying to escape.
But it followed me, as it always did, wanting to come out, wanting to be exposed.
For once, I gave into it. “And that’s why she and I split ways. Because I lost her trust.”
“How did you lose her trust?”
“It’s complicated.” I already regretted saying what I had, yet I also feared I’d opened up a floodgate and was now being drenched in words that needed to be said, words that were going to leak out one way or another.
“Try me.” Reeve was like the riverbed, coaxing the deluge to flow in a natural direction. “You obviously want to talk about it.”
So, because I was drowning and tipsy, because I did want to talk about her, because I’d wanted to tell someone this story for a long time, because I’d been wanting to tell Reeve everything that I’d been hiding, I took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”
I sat down on the rock next to Reeve, uncertain where to begin. “Like I said, she and I had shared men before, but we hadn’t for some time at this point.” We’d been back from Mexico for almost two years and had resumed our long-term live-in relationships with men, just separately now. “She had a boyfriend. Bridge was his name.”
Reeve sneered. “Bridge?”
“Yeah.” For half a second I worried Amber had told him this story – it was a name he’d certainly not forget.
Except the Amber I knew never looked back. Never talked of the past. And Reeve was likely just making fun of the awful name. “Terrible, wasn’t it? Anyway, he was an okay enough guy. Much older than her. Fifty or so. Wealthy. She was really into him, but I don’t know. Let’s just say, she’d done better. But she said she loved him. Really loved him. And he was good to her, so I was happy for her.”
Bridge had been a drinker, but Amber was a complete coke addict by then. Together they made sense somehow.
“
I, on the other hand, had just left asshole number too-high-to-count, because when I’d told him I was pregnant, he thought he could give me an abortion by kicking the shit out of me.” Richard had been his name. He was married, running for a seat on the senate, which he’d lost. Karma sometimes works out.
“You were pregnant?”
I nodded. Admitting an unplanned pregnancy always seemed to open the door to judgment, more than admitting a drug addiction or an interest in sexual perversity. Not that I’d told anyone about my baby.
Perhaps it was my own judgment that I’d been avoiding.
As if to back that theory up, Reeve’s expression was absent of condemnation and full of something else – compassion, maybe? “Did he —?”
“He didn’t succeed,” I interjected, “but he left me in bad shape. And, as she always did when I got in trouble with a guy, Amber came to my rescue.”
Now Reeve’s brow furrowed and I realized too late what I’d said. “Amber?”
Fuck.
I’d been so careful the whole time I’d been with him to never mention her name, and now I’d let it slip in the worst story ever.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
My heart pounded so hard it felt like it was coming from my stomach as much as my chest. My hands felt sweaty, and my throat dry and chalky. I coughed, pretending I’d gotten something caught in my throat while I talked myself through recovery.
There could be lots of people with the same name, right? My Amber didn’t have to be his Amber. There wasn’t any way to recognize her from this story was there? That I could never know since I had no idea what she’d told Reeve and what she hadn’t. All I could do was hope.
When I felt confident enough about it, I said, “Yeah, that was her name. Amber.” Innocently, I smiled up at him. “Why?”
He shook his head, incredulous, perhaps. “It’s just odd. Amber is the name of the woman who reminded me of you.”
“Ah. Strange coincidence. I hadn’t realized it was that common of a name.” I picked up a stick from the ground and poked at the fire, hoping the act would distract or calm my panic attack.
First Touch Page 32
