Black Light: Brave

by Smith, Maren

  “It’s okay to cry. Sometimes it’s what’s needed to help let the stress out.”

  “But…” She flexed her fingers. “I didn’t hold still. I’m supposed to hold still.”

  “According to who?” he reminded.

  “Someone who doesn’t matter.”

  “Good girl.” He brushed a kiss upon the top of her head, content to hold her for however long she needed it.

  “Is it okay if I hug you back?” she whispered, almost too soft for him to hear.

  “Please do.” He kissed her brow again, breathing in the scent of her hair, liking the way she fit against him. “Doms need hugs too. Especially after punishment is done. Believe it or not, we don’t like giving them.”

  Most doms, anyway, he silently amended, and then immediately shut Ethen out of his thoughts. He much preferred to focus on Puppy and the way she timidly unfolded her arms and wrapped them around him instead. She curled in close. This, he told himself, was worth everything, right here. It was all he’d ever wanted since before he knew it was missing from his life.

  It was progress.

  And most of all, it was a complete and utter figment of his imagination that tickled at the back of his head, whispering that it was every bit as fragile and unstable as she was.

  Ethen was in prison now, but he wouldn’t always be. Eventually, he would be getting out and when he did…

  When he did, he’d find out his web of ties binding Puppy to him were nowhere near as strong as they might once have been.

  She wasn’t Ethen’s anymore.

  She was his.

  Holding her that much tighter, he shut his eyes and shut out the voice.

  She was his.

  * * *

  “It doesn’t look it,” Carlson said, as he spread a blanket for her over the living room sofa, “but this couch is almost more comfortable than the bed. I usually end up sleeping on it at least once a week.”

  The couch was a dark green, with flecks of brown woven through the material. It looked comfortable. Still neat, not quite new, but far from ratty. It was also huge. When he held up the blanket for her, she crawled in with more than enough room to stretch out. Neither her head nor her toes touched the opposite arms. Her bottom, however, couldn’t help but touch the cushions. Lying on her back, she stretched out so it wouldn’t have to bear her weight, but sitting or sprawled, she was swollen and throbbing, and even the minor brush of her flesh against the cushions as she scooted down, made her ache and burn all over again.

  While he roamed through the lower floor, lighting the gas insert fireplace via the remote on the mantle and turning off all the lights, she curled onto her side so the ache would calm back down again. The blanket was soft. The army green t-shirt he’d given her to sleep in was even softer. She tried to find his scent in it, but all she could smell was clean laundry detergent.

  “Warm, cold?” he asked, once all the lights were out except for one down the hall that led, presumably, to his bedroom and the flames dancing in the hearth.

  “Comfortable,” she answered.

  “You know where the fridge is if you get hungry or thirsty. Is there anything else you can think of that you might need?”

  Was he looking for reasons to stay out here with her? As much as it tickled her to think that, she shook her head.

  Leaning over the back of the couch, he braced his forearms on the plush cushions, making himself comfortable as he looked down at her. “Questions, comments, concerns?”

  It made her bottom ache all over again, but she rolled onto her back anyway, so she could see him easier. “The things you had me repeat…”

  He nodded. “I remember them.”

  “Are those my next lines?”

  “You haven’t finished the lines I’ve already given you.”

  Although she couldn’t hear a hint of blame in his tone, it was hard not to take that as censuring. “I’d have been done with the first one, but I had to redo a page.”

  He blinked. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it got torn.”

  “All right.” He inclined his head. “So, in future, the procedure for that is that you will tell me a page got torn, so that I may have the chance to say, ‘That’s fine. You still wrote them, and that’s what counts.’”

  It was hard not to read that as scolding, too, even though he ended on a small smile.

  Her line was ‘Yes, Sir.’ Never would she have answered Ethen with anything else, but like his fork at the supper table, she couldn’t quite stop herself from poking. “It wasn’t perfect.”

  “Did I ask for perfect?” he countered.

  Fidgeting with the folds of her blanket, she shook her head. She half-expected him to complete the ritual by asking her to differentiate between himself and Ethen, but he didn’t.

  “How do you feel about the lines?” he asked instead.

  The burning pulse in her caned flesh flowed a salacious path directly between her legs. Her thighs clenched, but it didn’t keep the wanton throb from finding a new place now from which to torment her.

  “I like it,” she admitted.

  He arched an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth curling.

  “I know I’m not supposed to, but I do. It comforts me when I get nervous or scared, and…” She hesitated, knowing better than to say what would ultimately make her even more vulnerable than she already was. But he looked so good, leaning over her. He always looked good, but it was even better right now with the illumination from the hallway and the glow of the fireplace casting him part in light and part in shadow. He was close enough for her to touch, if only she were brave enough. All she had to do was stretch out her hand and she could easily have cupped his face. “It makes me feel close to you,” she finished helplessly.

  Unfolding his hands, he trailed the tip of one finger across her forehead, swiping a lock of brown hair from her eyes. “I guess I should always keep you in lines then, shouldn’t I?”

  She saw it when his gaze dipped to her mouth. The heated pulse leapt inside her. Her thighs tensed. The soft cotton of the t-shirt he’d given her might as well have been burlap for how fiercely she felt the abrasion against her budding nipples. The small of her back lifted, subconsciously grinding her sore bottom into the sofa cushions in her ache to feel the wandering caress of his finger, not just following the curve of her cheek to her lips, but all the way down to her breasts.

  He stopped just shy of caressing her lips.

  He pulled his hand back. “All the rules still apply. You’re to make yourself come at least once before you get up in the morning.”

  “Yes, Sir.” But it wasn’t her fingers that she wanted to feel, creeping down into the elastic of her panties.

  “Goodnight, honey.” Pushing back off the couch, he gave her one last smile and then walked away.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered, just before the light in the hallway winked out.

  She listened, but she didn’t hear a door close. He’d left it open so he could hear her, just in case there was a problem.

  There really was no comparison between Carlson and Ethen. None at all.

  Easing onto her side to take the pressure off her tender butt, she hugged her pillow and waited for that sensual pulsing to stop its wanton cry for attention.

  It didn’t. It dulled, but it never fully went away and for the longest time, Puppy lay there, fingers lightly caressing the welts that could still be felt. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but he’d gone light on her. There were only a few and he hadn’t cut the skin at all.

  Touching the tenderness behind her was making the ache between her legs that much worse.

  Taking her hand away, she hugged her pillow closer and tried to go to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t shut off. All she could think about was the pulse, the wanting, and Carlson, just down the hall.

  Digging through her backpack on the floor at the head of the couch, she drew out her notebook and hugged that now too. It didn’t work. She curled around it, bu
t her need was too raw.

  What would he do if she went to him right now?

  She wilted. He’d probably remind her yet again that sex was off the table and send her back out here.

  He was a good man. A kind man. She needed to not be so needy.

  She closed her eyes again, hugging her notebook, but her clit throbbed and her heavy breasts ached, and not all the ignoring in the world was making her lust go away.

  He was going to send her right back out here and she knew it, but she got off the couch anyway. She gathered her blanket, her pillow, and every tattered shred of courage she could find. She wouldn’t be a nuisance, she told herself, as she left the dim glow of the living room fire behind her and ventured down the hallway. She wouldn’t even wake him up. She’d just lie down by his door and go to sleep where she could be near enough to hear him breathing. It would be hard, but she could make herself be content with that.

  His bedroom wasn’t hard to find. Even in the dark, there was just enough fire light to see the shadowy blackness of three doors down that hallway. One was the guest bathroom, one his office, and the other was standing wide open, showing nothing inside but an alarm clock with a digital display that read 11:23 in bright red numbers.

  All but holding her breath, she waited for Carlson to say something, but everything in the black of his room was silent and still. She could barely detect his breathing, but the slow evenness of it suggested he might be sleeping. Otherwise, why wasn’t he saying something?

  She fidgeted with the cloth folds of both her pillow and blanket, wrestling with all those last-minute fears trying so hard to convince her that he would surely be angry when he awoke to find her sleeping just outside his door. Maybe he wouldn’t, though. So far, her track record for being able to guess what would or wouldn’t make him angry wasn’t at all accurate.

  Moving slowly, she lay her pillow on the floor and was just trying to figure out how to get the blanket both under and over her without accidentally bumping the wall when he said, “What are you doing?”

  Caught, she froze. The interior of his bedroom was blackness. She couldn’t see him at all, but with the glow of the living room behind her, apparently, he didn’t have that same problem.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.

  “I wasn’t asleep yet,” he replied, mildly enough. “Again, what are you doing?”

  She looked down at the blanket she could barely see, half spread out up against the vague paleness of the wall. Feeling stupid, she asked, “I wanted to be close to you. Can I sleep here on the floor? I breathe heavy when I have a cold, but I don’t snore. I promise.”

  She heard the shift of his weight on the bed a half second before he clicked the lamp on the bedside table on.

  Propped up on his elbow, the look he gave her was bemused, not angry. His own blanket, pulled all the way up to his underarm, did nothing to hide his bare shoulders of the muscular pecs of his chest.

  “No,” he said dryly. “You may not sleep on the floor.” He lifted the corner of his top sheet and blanket, granting her access and a sneak peek of a sparse, dark-haired happy trail leading from his navel into the elastic waist of the grey pajama bottoms he slept in. “Get in here.”

  Did she dare trust that?

  She was moving before her brain could fully form the question much less the answer. She crawled into his bed, but she did it with every intention of respecting all his boundaries.

  “Sex is still off the table,” she said, so he wouldn’t have to.

  “Right,” he said, his jaw clenching once. He leaned over her, bringing with him the heavenly scent of his deodorant as he reached for the lamp on the bedside table.

  “It’s okay,” she added, tingling in all the parts of her that he had accidently brushed as he switched the light off again. “You don’t have to keep saying that, either. I know I’m not very attractive. I understand. We don’t ever have to have sex, if you don’t want.”

  The entire bed shifted as he nearly rolled on top of her. He smacked the lamp switch, turning the light back on.

  No longer bemused, he pinned her to the mattress with a glare. “Say that again?”

  He’d growled it, more like a dare than a question. She picked at her fingers, not at all sure how to answer. At least not until he grabbed one of her hands. She immediately stopped fidgeting. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, but he still shoved her hand down under the blanket and the next thing she knew, he had her cupping the bulge of a very sizeable erection. It was very thick.

  It was very hard.

  “Just so we’re clear,” he said unapologetically, “this is not the cock of a man who thinks you’re unattractive. If you ever say anything like that to me again, you will not like the consequence. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I guarantee you do not want to test my creativity in this area. Got it?”

  “B-but,” she stammered, “w-why are you always saying sex is off the table? If you want me, use me!”

  His eyes darkened and his laugh came out so close to a growl that she actually shivered. Letting her snatch back her hand, he said, “Honey, when you’re ready to call it something other than using, I will happily bend your ass over the first thing I see and fuck you fast and hard. Want me to pin you facedown on the bed, hands behind your back and hair pinned to the mattress while I have sex with you? Baby, I can do that, too. One of these days, I might even fold you in my arms while we gently, thoroughly, enjoyably make love all night long. But I don’t use people and, sure as hell, that does include you!”

  Glaring at her long enough to know there would be no further argument on the subject, he shut the light off again. The click of the switch sounded every bit as angry as his motions felt when he flopped over onto his back beside her.

  He breathed a heavy sigh.

  She felt horrible.

  “Stop picking your fingers,” he said.

  She hadn’t realized she was. She gripped a fold of blanket instead, tucking it all the way up to her chin. Lying on her side, facing him in the dark, she could have cried. She’d come in here to be close to him. Right now, all she could feel was a great, yawning expanse in the angry inches that separated them.

  She didn’t deserve to be here beside him. She ought to just go back to the couch.

  “If you’re not too angry, is it okay if I touch you?” she softly asked instead.

  He sighed again. “Touch me whenever you want to. You don’t have to ask permission.”

  Was he still angry with her? It was hard to tell. It had only been a moment, but already she could find no hint of temper in his voice.

  Careful not to take advantage or push anymore boundaries, she edged a little closer. Stretching out her hand, she found his side first and then his ribs. She liked his warmth and the solid feel of him beneath her timid palm.

  She wanted him. More than anything, she ached to caress him, committing all the hard lines of his body to memory.

  But no. It was late, tomorrow was a workday, at the very least where Black Light was concerned. She was being selfish, causing him nothing but trouble.

  “Is… is it okay if I put my head on your shoulder?” she pleaded. “It’s okay to say no.”

  “Do I need to get the cane again?”

  It was too dark for her to see him, and she couldn’t imagine he could see her any better. But he must have heard the rasp of her hair on the pillowcase when she shook her head.

  “Come here,” he grumbled, the weight of his arm hooking her waist and pulling her right up next to his body.

  The crook of his arm and shoulder became a warm, spice-scented substitute for a pillow. His bare skin beneath her cheek, the most sinful luxury she’d ever felt. She tried not to move. If she disturbed him too much, surely he would push her away, but she couldn’t help it. Contact with him was everything that she had been starved of for so very long. She curled into his one-armed embrace, her legs finding the soft cotton of his pajama bottoms. Her knee drew up, seeking entrance in betwee
n and he opened, allowing her leg to slip between his.

  He smelled good. He felt better. The heat of his skin seared away at her tingling fingertips. Her breasts felt swollen. Her pussy throbbed.

  His lips brushed her forehead in the dark and her own ached—just ached—in response. She tried so hard not to chase that kiss, but her body defied her. Her head tipped, her chin lifting. She breathed in the sigh he exhaled, the feather-light brush of his mouth moving down her cheek even as he said, “Honey, I am not a saint.”

  “Please don’t stop touching me,” she begged.

  Her hand caressed the stubbled line of his jaw, her thumb tracing longingly across his bottom lip just before he found hers in the darkness. The bite of pain was only half as exquisite as the wanton ache that burned through her when he slipped his hand beneath her t-shirt, cupping as much of her bottom as he could hold and squeezing.

  He drank her gasp between kisses, answering her next gasp with a hungry growl of his own as he stripped her underwear all the way off.

  She tried to get on top. Her muscles were a year out of shape, but she’d have ridden him until it hurt, just so he would keep touching her, but he rolled her onto her stomach instead, caging her beneath his hard body.

  “Knees,” he ordered.

  She scrambled into position, his nips across her shoulders and his kisses on the back of her neck melting her. She cupped his hands when he cupped her breasts, loving how he molded them to his grip. Her back against his chest, her head on his shoulder, she lost herself in every kiss, every tender caress that teased at the peaks of her nipples, and every heated grind of his cock pressing hard up against her buttocks.

  The night table jostled when he at last reached past her to fumble a condom from the drawer. She heard the rip as he tore into it with his teeth right before he sheathed himself, first in polyurethane and then in her.

  She tried to go down on all fours, but he pulled her back up again. He held her tight against him, his mouth never far from her skin, the fingers of one hand like a hungry mouth feeding at her breast, while the fingers of his other parted her folds to expert search of her clit.