by L. DuBois
She’d spent the first few minutes plotting her revenge on her sweet, devious Master for leaving her frustrated and aching. Then she’d calmed down enough to appreciate the quiet and peace of the coming twilight. The Sub Rosa Court was beautiful without scantily clad people to distract from the ambiance.
Her body was sore, in the best way. Her scalp still prickled a little from having her hair pulled. Her jaw was tender from all the time spent with his cock in her mouth. Her pussy felt swollen and aching, both from the powerful, rough fucking, and because of her continued though somewhat dimmed arousal.
Liam was gone long enough that she started to get anxious. That might lead her to either slipping mentally out of the scene, or getting annoyed enough that it would make it hard for her to not try to step in and take control.
Both those things had happened in the past.
When they’d first gotten together, he’d been the strong, silent type. Those rare times he smiled had felt like a secret and a gift. She’d been unsure of herself, though hiding it well. He’d been a rock in the storm—kind, sexy, and steady.
She’d been the odd one—a weird upbringing that left her with a host of issues, bisexual with body image problems, and a dream of being a game developer when blond women were seen as either a trophy or default enemy by much of that world.
She tried to turn her thoughts away from the past, from who they’d been, but this time her compartmentalization didn’t work. There was something her subconscious mind was demanding she face, and no act of will would push the thought aside.
When they’d first gotten together, he’d been the leader in their relationship. It had been that way for a long time, until…
Until she’d gotten pregnant. It had been an accident, but he’d smiled when she told him, and when he smiled, she saw the future. Her family. Their family.
Then the baby died inside her. Her body, which should have been a place of perfect safety for her child, had become a tomb.
He’d held her, but hadn’t been able to reach her through her grief. When she finally recovered, she’d told him she wanted to try again.
That’s when things had changed. When she’d taken the reins of their relationship. He’d nodded his agreement, but hadn’t smiled. Sex had become a way to make a baby. And she’d gotten pregnant, only to lose the baby at four months. At least she hadn’t had to labor and deliver a dead child that time. She’d had a D&C, and a valium prescription to help her deal with the emotional aftermath.
She hadn’t asked to try again. She’d gathered herself and told him they were going to adopt. She’d told him they should get married. So they’d be a better prospect as adoptive parents. He hadn’t proposed, she’d declared.
The adoption happened fast—they’d been selected by a lovely young woman who wasn’t ready to be a mother yet only months after they’d started the process. They’d gone into debt covering this young woman’s bills as the pregnancy advanced. They’d bought the condo during her second pregnancy, not wanting to raise the baby in a rented apartment, and fallen behind on the mortgage during the adoption process.
His fingers had been both cold and sweaty the day she pulled him through the hospital corridors to the labor and delivery wing, four hours after they’d gotten the call that it was time.
She’d held her baby—it had been her baby—for an hour. Then the birth mother had looked into her child’s face and changed her mind.
Rosalicia couldn’t blame her. The baby had been perfect.
They’d walked out of the hospital with an empty car seat dangling from Liam’s hand.
Throughout all of those things, she’d been the one in control. She’d been the one making decisions, and each of those decisions had resulted in heartbreak.
That was what her subconscious wanted her to realize.
She twisted her neck, wiping the tears streaming down her cheeks onto her shoulders.
Her decisions had brought them nothing but heartache. She wanted to be happy again. She’d been happy when they were younger. Was it as simple as that? She wanted Liam to be in control, because some base, simplistic part of her thought that if he was in control they’d be happy again?
Or maybe it was that she no longer trusted herself—her desire to have a child, a family, had led to nothing but pain.
She let out a sad little laugh. It was more complicated than that, everything was. Now that she knew the source of her desire, did that change what she wanted?
Taking several deep breaths she was able to successfully box up and put away the old sadnesses. That allowed her to center herself.
She focused on the feel of the slight breeze on her naked skin. It was getting cold as the sun went down. She shivered and her nipples tightened. Her right nipple was sore—that had been the one he’d plucked and pinched as he fucked her.
She shifted on the padded chair, wishing it was wood so she could have pressed the sore spots from her earlier spanking against a hard surface. She rocked her hips forward and back, which was enough to make her sex sort of rub against the cushion.
Fresh need bloomed inside her, followed by relief that she hadn’t screwed up the good thing they had going tonight by thinking dark thoughts.
She was wiggling on the chair, experimenting with self stimulation, when Liam returned.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Rosa lowered her gaze, but didn’t bother to hide her smile. “Nothing, Sir.”
“Next time I’ll tie you tighter.” He dumped an armload of fabric onto the loveseat where he’d fucked her.
Rosa licked her lips as the memory made her pussy throb harder.
Her sweet master now wore dark slacks. His shirt was unbuttoned, showing off his chest and the slight paunch he’d gained since she left him.
She’d left him. Another thing they needed to deal with. Maybe they should stop and talk about—
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she blurted out. Her worry was forgotten as she saw what he’d plucked out of the pile.
A plaid Catholic-school uniform skirt.
He wiggled it and grinned.
“I am not going out in that,” she protested.
His grin disappeared. “Excuse me.”
Oh.
“I’m sorry, Sir. I just…what if there’re children?”
“We’re not going to Chuck E Cheese. And you will wear what I tell you. Won’t you?”
Damn it. She was going to end up looking ridiculous.
And yet she was practically vibrating with need. “Yes, Sir.”
He untied her, then tenderly kissed the faint marks on her wrists. Rosa slid her hands though his hair as he knelt before her, undoing the bindings on her ankles.
She would always love him. Even if they couldn’t be together outside of Las Palmas, she would always and forever love this man.
She wanted to tell him that, but the words were stuck behind a lump in her throat, and then faded away when he grabbed her knees, forcing them open even wider.
“Lean back,” he growled.
She closed her eyes, scooted her hips forward, and lay her shoulders back. Sprawled lewdly and happy to be that way, she moaned at the first stroke of his tongue over her labia. Then he was lapping at her aching clit and she grabbed the arms of the chair with white-knuckled hands.
Her toes were barely touching the ground, but she pressed her hips up into his mouth, thighs sliding forward on the edge of the cushion until the balls of her feet hit the slate slab under them.
He buried his face in her pussy, the unfamiliar beard abrading her sensitive skin. He plucked at her clit with his lips, then tongue fucked her before returning his attention to her clit.
He closed his teeth over her mons, and his bearded chin pressed against her clit. She almost came—the short coarse hairs on his face stabbed against her most sensitive flesh, dozens of little points of sensation.
Her hips bucked, her calves tightened, and—
And the son of a bitch pulled back.
Rosa’s eyes snapped open and she grabbed his head, hands fisting in his hair. She was going to force him to eat her pussy until she came, damn it.
Liam jerked her off the chair, twisted her face down over his lap, and spanked her.
Rosa growled and tried to bite him.
He spanked her harder.
She had a vision of what they must have looking like—him kneeling on the ground, her struggling and snapping as he held her down over his knees, his right hand slapping her wiggling butt.
Damn it, that thought only turned her on more. She stilled, panting in arousal, one hand braced on the ground, the other trapped between her body and his. His cock was hard against her elbow.
“Better,” he murmured.
Another spank, and now that she wasn’t focused on struggling, she could feel the hot burn of the previous swats.
He rubbed her ass with his palm, then casually pulled one ass cheek to the side. Cool air washed over her anus and she stiffened, waiting with a sort of happy dread.
He released her, helping her to roll off his lap so she was sitting on her well-spanked ass on the cold stone.
“Time to get dressed.” He pushed to his feet and then offered her a hand. Once she was standing, he tossed her the plaid skirt.
He was frowning. “I’d get you dressed but I have no idea how that thing works.”
Rosa undid the small buckle and hidden buttons. This was an actual plaid skirt, not one of those “naughty schoolgirl” uniforms. That was something at least.
“Where did you get this?”
“There’s a lost and found.”
Rosa wrapped the skirt around her waist. It was a bit big, and it fell to catch on her hips. That put the hem nearly at her knees, which she counted as a blessing. She fastened the buckle as tight as she could, then looked up, expecting him to have a shirt ready.
Instead he held a bunch of leather straps, connected with shiny silver O-rings the size of jam-jar lids. He held it up, and it wasn’t a happy smile so much as a devious grin that curled his lips. “Harness.”
She looked at the straps, to him, then back. She raised her arms, fingers pointed out to the sides.
It took ten minutes for him to get her into it, and he occasionally muttered to himself, which detracted a little from the uber-Dom thing he had going, but she could tell from the way he carefully positioned each piece that he’d studied how to do this. He cared enough about topping her that he’d planned for this.
Damn, that was sexy.
When he was done, there was a strap around her ribs under her breasts. Connected to that were four straps that framed her breasts, meeting at yet another strap that circled her upper chest and back. Four more straps, two in the front and two in the back, connected the upper horizontal strap to a collar.
Below her ribs, ten short, thin silver chains danced over the skin of her stomach, linking the rib strap to a wide belt-like waist strap.
The whole thing was heavy and tight. Her breasts seemed obscenely bare in comparison.
He walked around her, examining his handiwork. When he’d made a complete circuit, he hooked two fingers under the buckle of the center horizontal strap, positioned just under her breasts, and tugged. She tumbled forward a few steps, until she was pressed against him, with his fist a hard knot between their bodies.
“Maybe I’ll take you out like this.” His voice was husky. “Let everyone see who you belong to.”
Some stupid, boring part of her insisted that she’d get in trouble for being indecent. But he was her Master, and if he wanted to do that, then he would—could. And more importantly she had to trust him. Trust that he would keep her safe, which probably meant not forcing her to go to a restaurant topless.
Which meant his words were all part of their play. She relaxed into him. “Yes, Sir. Would you play with me, while strangers watched?”
“Is that what you want?”
In reality? No. But that wasn’t what she said. “I want to be a good sub. Your good sub.”
His hand slid into her hair, made a fist, and then he crushed his mouth to hers. He was frantic, moving his mouth around too much, too fast for her to lose herself in any one kiss, but it made her feel owned, possessed.
Mastered.
When he finally pulled back they were both breathing hard.
“Food,” he said. “There’s no catering. We have to leave to get food.”
“I’m not that hungry. Not for food.” She wiggled her hips against his crotch.
He grunted. “You need to eat.”
He pawed through the pile of clothes, pulled out a white peasant-style off the shoulder top, holding it up with a grin.
She swallowed her need to tell him exactly how much that top did not go with the skirt. When he tossed it to her, she put it on. While the skirt had been a little big, this was a bit small. The gauzy fabric was pulled tight over her bra-less breasts, and the brown of her nipples was clearly visible.
The off the shoulder neckline exposed the upper straps of the harness and collar. She undid the small bow of the drawstring, hiked the shirt up over her shoulders, and tightened it.
That pulled the thin fabric tighter to her breasts, until she could faintly see the freckle to the left of her right nipple. Okay, that was worse.
She shrugged the top off and retied it, leaving her shoulders bare of fabric, and the top of the harness visible.
The hem was just long enough to cover the waist strap, but left two inches of skin between the top of the skirt and bottom of the shirt naked.
This outfit was an indecent mess, but from the way Liam was staring at her, he liked it. He adjusted his pants.
He more than liked it.
He cleared his throat. “Food.”
“Food,” she agreed, and took a deep breath. The straps of the harness squeezed her, but it was enough to bring his eyes to her breasts.
He fumbled in the pile of clothes, and pulled out a black triangular shawl with long fringe that reminded her of an old-west brothel.
She made some mental apologies to the gods of good fashion and draped the shawl around herself, clutching it together between her breasts with one hand.
Liam held out his arm in a gentlemanly way. “My lady? Shall we dine?”
Rosa laughed and put her hand on his forearm. “Why thank you, good sir.”
She’d forgotten how he’d used to make her laugh.
Thirteen
They ended up eating at a taco truck. That hadn’t been his plan. He’d had visions of finger fucking her under the table while a tablecloth hid her spread legs from view. Unfortunately, the restaurants in Malibu were either incredibly fancy—and they weren’t dressed appropriately, even he could recognize that or casual enough that on a Monday night the patrons included families with sunburned, over-tired kids bouncing up and down in their chairs and ignoring panoramic sea views.
They’d passed this taco truck a few times, and finally when she’d suggested they just eat there, he’d pulled over. It was parked on the side of California’s famous Highway One, in a packed dirt lot, one side of the truck practically touching the cliff face that towered above them. Strings of bare bulbs fanned out from the truck, fastened to poles anchored in buckets of concrete. A few folding chairs and tables were set up under the lights.
He’d opened her door for her, and she accepted his hand as she climbed out.
She looked around, face unreadable.
Damn it, he should have had a plan. Reservations, a restaurant that was right for what they needed all picked out. She deserved better than to end up eating beside the highway.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, about this. This isn’t what I’d planned.”
She turned, the corner of her mouth kicking up. “The tacos smell good, and I’m hungry.”
They joined the short line, reading the menu off the various pieces of paper taped to the windows of the truck. A barrel BBQ was set up beside the truck, the source of the delicious
, meaty smell.
“What do you want?” he asked.
She looked at him, hiking the shawl up around her throat so the harness was completely covered. “Are you supposed to be…I mean isn’t the item ‘having food chosen for you’?”
He was fucking this up. Where was his inner Dom? Where was that confidence he’d had when they were at the club?
Maybe he could only be like that at the club. Maybe they were no good for each other outside of the walls of Las Palmas.
He looked down at his shoes. There was a light coating of dust on the toes, marring the sheen.
“Drop the shawl,” he said quietly.
She stiffened, looking around. There were half a dozen people besides the woman manning the grill and the man in the truck—a gathering of young men, who looked like they were getting ready to go out drinking, another couple, and two women deep in conversation, their discarded high heels set on a chair beside them.
There were no children, no families.
“Liam.”
“Don’t make me punish you.” He lifted his gaze from his shoes to the menu board, but didn’t look at her. He was worried that if she looked doubtful, or worse disappointed, he’d lose his confidence.
She sucked in air, and let the shawl slide off her shoulders. It pooled at her elbows.
“Give it to me,” he commanded.
She slid the shawl all the way off and passed it to him.
The darkness within him roared in triumph at her obedience.
“Don’t question me again,” he warned.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Now. What do you want?”
“Veggie tacos, please.”
He grunted. “You need protein.”
She made an exasperated little noise. “Then why did you ask?”
“Because I’m not a jerk.”
Her expression fell, becoming crestfallen. “I don’t think you’re a jerk when you’re being bossy. Not when you’re being a Dom. Please, I don’t want to go back to—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “I’m not going back. I think maybe we let some things out of the box we can’t put back in. Maybe choosing your food isn’t something we’ll do after the game, but for now I’ll choose what you eat.”
