by Lilia Moon
Every molecule of her is worthy.
I give Ari a cue to keep going. I need a little more information before I decide how I’m going to play this.
She sidles closer to Gabby. “You can totally do it, sister. Just wiggle a little and you’re there.” She gives a highly instructive shimmy of her own hips.
Gabby looks more than horrified. More than embarrassed. The doubt has reached her eyes now. She puts a hand on Ari’s knee. “Stop. Please.”
I want to pick up something dense and hard and throw it, because this isn’t the battlefield I would have picked. It smells too much like something the Daniel of ten years ago might have done. A total Dom show-off move. However, it’s the battlefield those damned voices of hers have chosen, and that makes it a really bad time to back down. I nod fractionally at Ari. She’ll know what I want her to do.
She nods, soldier to general, and turns back to Gabby. “Come on. It’ll be completely hot.”
Gabby stares at her like she’s suggested killing babies and harvesting their brains.
Ari rolls on with Academy-award-winning obliviousness. “Ask your sexy man over there. He knows you can do this.”
Gabby’s eyes shoot to mine. Looking for help. For an extraction plan.
Ari’s watching me like a hawk. A very careful ally, waiting for any more cues.
She’s done more than enough. It’s my turn now, and I know what I need to do. It can totally be done. Gabby’s responsive enough, imaginative enough, trusts me enough. But it’s still making me decidedly uncomfortable. I don’t want this to be about me.
And then my brain kicks in and points out what my inflated ego hasn’t figured out yet. Nobody in this room is watching me. They’re all looking at the gorgeous woman with the flushed cheeks and the eyes that want me to save her and embedded somewhere deep, the voices that are still in far too much doubt.
I feel my answer to those voices rising up, deep and strong and sure. I won’t do this for me. But I will absolutely do it for her.
I’ve shown her tonight that we can be great together, let our worlds mix and blend and make something wonderful. But this will go straight to the very heart of the rest of the problem. The one where she doesn’t think she’s sexy enough or desirable enough to stand proud in mine.
I get up off the couch and walk over to Gabby, my eyes only for her. Ari does a slippery eel move to clear out of my way, and I can sense the subtle movements of the rest of the room as they give us the space we need for whatever’s about to happen.
I stand Gabby up and sit down in the spot she’s just vacated. Then I take her hand. “What’s your safeword, sweetheart?”
She turns white.
“Your clothes stay on. All I’m going to do is hold you and talk. And once you sit in my lap, the talking will be quiet enough that nobody else can hear.”
She’s trembling, barely holding herself up.
I can feel the concern in the room, but everyone in here knows the drill and is reading my face just fine. Nobody’s trying to help her. This is a walk she needs to do all by herself.
When she finally speaks, it’s in the barest whisper. “Red. My safeword is red.”
I let her see the deep belief in my eyes. The respect. “Do you need to use it?”
“No.” Her eyes close. “But I need you to keep holding my hand. Please don’t let go.”
There’s not enough dynamite in all the world to make that happen. I tug gently on our joined hands. “Come sit with me.” I smile at her white face and scared eyes. “You’re going to do something that I bet nobody else in this room has ever done.”
Her eyes get big.
Ari snorts from behind her. “No shit. I’m so jealous.”
Sam sighs. “Me too.”
I would normally kill people for intruding on a scene like that, but they’re not intruding. They’re helping—and they’re absolutely pitch perfect.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Gabby
I don’t know what’s happening.
My perfect evening just took an awful turn into something I don’t understand. One where friends push at me even when I ask them to stop and the man who asked me to trust him is stepping into something that feels so very close to betrayal.
I’ve said yes—but my faith is whisper thin.
This room has suddenly become his world. I can’t do this. I start to shake my head.
“Gabby.” His voice cracks through my fears. “All I want you to do is sit in my lap and listen to my voice. Can you do that?”
He wants more than that, but I can’t stand any longer. I sit down carefully in his lap, avoiding everyone’s eyes, and lean into his chest. “I can’t do this.”
He wraps his arms around me, and now his words are for me alone. “I know you believe that, sweetheart. It’s not your job to change that. I want you to give those doubts to me. Whatever happens or doesn’t is all on me. Your only job is to listen to my voice.”
“You want me to come.” I’m an ice age away from that, and I can feel the tears looming. “Ari could do that. I can’t.”
“Ari’s never done this. Or Sam, or anyone else sitting here right now. And if you don’t come, all that will happen is that they’ll laugh at me for being such an arrogant Dom.”
I feel like I could crack at any moment—and he’s so calm.
He strokes my back, kisses the top of my head. “You’ve let me chase your insecurities away with my hands. Tonight let me do it with my words.”
He isn’t asking me to come for him. He’s asking me to trust him.
I stop thinking. I know this man, these hands, these words. I exhale, and my whole body relaxes into him, boneless and empty of everything that was trying to hold me up, make me fight, make me run.
His exhale mirrors mine, wrapping around what I’ve just given him. Holding it safe. He nestles me carefully into his shoulder, my head tucked under his chin. “This is how you feel right after you come, love. All liquid, warm surrender. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever known.”
I hear someone laughing quietly, and realize it’s me.
“That’s it. Hold that feeling. The one where we don’t take ourselves too seriously and the world is magic and beautiful and we let it be what it wants to be. Let ourselves be who we want to be.”
His words are important, I know they are, and I’ll treasure them. As soon as I get past the need to float on his voice. The gorgeous, light feeling of letting go and knowing that no part of me will be dropped, and if it ever is, it will be picked up and bandaged and brought back into this place of floating sound.
He chuckles, soft and warm under my ear. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you tonight after all these people are gone?”
I feel a momentary twinge about the people, but his voice doesn’t let me go. They don’t matter. He matters. I matter. What he wants to do to me matters.
“I thought I might leave you in your dress for a while, because you look like a sexy wrapped present, but I need to see you tonight. To run my hands over your shoulders, and down your sides, and under your hips. To feel you quiver when you realize just how many candles I’ve lit and how well I can see you.”
I don’t know who’s shivering—his story or me.
“Just like that. I love feeling that, sweetheart. Knowing that all it takes is a touch from my fingertips to make you feel that way. That aroused. That wanting.”
I’m feeling some of those things now. My desire knows this man, hears him calling. I move, trying to get comfortable.
“Can you feel how hard I am, Gabby? How the thought of touching you, of skimming my fingers under your breasts, of running my tongue over your pussy, what that does to me?”
I can hear his heart, beating faster under my ear. Mine is beating somewhere between my legs. Waiting for his touch. Waiting for his words.
“You’re going to be naked on my bed, Gabby. All of you stretched out and spread apart for me to see. I might bend you over just like I did earlier,
right on the end of my bed so that I can lick you while I play with the plug that’s still in your ass.”
I can feel it inside me. And somehow I can feel his tongue, too.
“It’s driven me crazy knowing it’s been inside you all night. Touching you. Making you all hot and bothered.” His breath is hot on the top of my head. “So I think I’ll be taking that out of you while I lick you and putting my fingers inside you instead. It won’t be any work at all, because you’ll be stretched and open and ready. Can you feel my fingers sliding in and out of your ass, sweetheart?”
I want. That’s all I feel now. The heartbeat between my legs finding new nerves, new heat, new places to flood.
“You’re wiggling so hard into my fingers, and it feels like heaven, but my tongue wants back in on the action, so I swat your ass and tell you to hold still. You moan, one of those beautiful whimpers of yours that makes my cock ache. But it’s worth it, because my tongue is dipping into you, feeling you getting wetter as I lick you. Big strokes from one end of your pussy to the other so that I can taste all of you.”
I’m curling my fingers into fists, grabbing the sheets, desperate for the orgasm I can feel coming. I just need a little more. Just a very little more.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Daniel
Someone’s going to come awfully damn soon, but I’m not sure if it will be her or me. Gabby’s fingers are curled into my shirt, clenching like crazy as she wiggles on my cock, whimpering and hot, rubbing her thighs together and reaching desperately for what my words have brought so close.
I can feel her yearning, wanting the thing just beyond her reach.
All it would take is the tiniest touch, and if that’s what she needs, I’ll give it to her, because she’s earned every bit of this release. But I don’t think she needs it.
I think she can do this entirely on the power of her own surrender.
“You’re almost there, aren’t you?” She moans and grabs tighter on my shirt. “Gabby, I want you to remember how it felt when I tied you up with the leg cuffs and the stomach binding. You couldn’t move at all. You could only wait for my fingers and my tongue and my cock and whatever they wanted to do to you.”
She shudders out a breath, but her body relaxes. Stills. Lets go of her own need to move.
So utterly beautiful.
“Yes. There you are, with my fingers in your ass and my face breathing on your pussy. You’re spread wide open and waiting for whatever I choose to do. I’m going to make you come, sweetheart. I choose how, I choose when.”
Gabby lets out a keening wail, but she doesn’t move.
I lower my voice, giving her everything she needs. “Now, love.”
Her head tilts back and her entire body melts into the most beautiful orgasm I’ve ever seen.
I let my hands move. Stroking her arms, her hips, down her legs, letting the silk of her dress and the warmth of my touch catch the gorgeous ripples that keep quaking her. Touching this stunning woman who just gave everything she is over to the care of my voice. Who sat in my lap and came just because I asked her to go there.
I thought I’d done this before. I was so very wrong. I’ve never touched anything like this.
I gather her in, taking the blanket someone hands me, the water offered up by someone else. I can hear the quiet, awed silence of a living room full of people who’ve just seen something that’s rendered them speechless. I lay my head down on top of hers and smile. I know how rare this is, even if she doesn’t. I know exactly the treasure she’s just allowed all of us to witness.
And as soon as she lands her brain back here on planet Earth, the people in this room will make sure she knows it too.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Gabby
“Open your eyes, Gabby.” Daniel’s arms are shifting me, turning me slightly away from his chest.
I feel like I’m just waking up from a nap. A really languorous one that worked every one of my muscles and left them very satisfied jelly. I slide open one eye, and then the other.
Reality rushes in.
This wasn’t a nap. I’m on Daniel’s lap, in his living room. There’s a circle of people gathered all around us, on the floor and on chairs and sitting on the coffee table. And they’re all looking at me.
I’ve never seen anything quite like the collective look in their eyes.
I want to hide, because I remember now why my muscles feel this way, and I just want to sink through the carpet and never come back out—but I can’t. Because of what’s in their eyes.
Daniel’s arms turn me a little more. “They have things to say to you, sweetheart.”
Jacob, who’s closest, stands up and comes over. He crouches down beside the arm of the couch and looks me straight in the eyes. He’s not the goofball from my cooking lessons now—he’s something entirely different. “That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, Gabby. You were amazing.”
I blink at him, not understanding. “That was all Daniel.”
Jacob shakes his head, his eyes stern in a way that I somehow recognize. “Every Dom in this room knows that was all about you.”
I stare at him. That makes no sense.
Ari comes to sit next to Daniel and me, and she’s just flat-out grinning. “That was totally hot, sister.”
I have no idea what to say. I’m a grandmother curled up in a fuzzy blanket. All I did was listen to his voice.
She pats my shoulder and then reaches up and gives Daniel a kiss. “It takes a really big Dom to hold that kind of surrender. Maybe you’re good enough for her after all.”
Murmurs of agreement float in from the rest of the people gathered around us. I try to sit up, to tell them that they somehow have this all backward.
Daniel’s hands hold me still. “Just listen, sweetheart.”
Emily doesn’t say anything. She just kisses me, love and pride shining in her eyes.
Scorpio doesn’t move from her seat on the coffee table. She just punches Harlan, sitting at her feet. “We are so trying that, dude.”
Doxy turns and punches Jimmy, which pretty much just bounces off and leaves him looking as shocked as I’ve ever seen him. She flutters her eyelashes. “We should try it too.”
Jimmy gapes at her—and then looks over at me. “You might need to start giving a new kind of lessons, cutie.”
I stare. They’re all missing the point. I lay my hand on Daniel’s chest. “He’s the one who needs to give the lessons.”
“No. He isn’t.” Quint drops to a graceful crouch at my feet. “You give us all the same cooking lesson, right?”
I nod slowly. I have no idea where he’s headed with this, but despite his blond good looks, he’s easily the most unbending, unyielding person in this room. And right now, for some reason I don’t understand, he’s turning the force of that on me.
He waits until I’m almost shivering to continue. “Harlan usually manages something edible, Emilio gets eggshells in things that don’t even have eggs, and Damon mostly sets his food on fire.”
I want to laugh, but I can’t escape his eyes. “He only did that once.”
“So far.” Quint’s lips twitch for just an instant. “My point is, Daniel gave you a perfectly fine cooking lesson. A masterful one, even. But the end result is yours. You took the lesson and did something magnificent with it.”
I stare at him, at the deep approval in his eyes.
“It takes a sub who believes deeply herself, all the way down to her bones, to do what you just did.” He smiles. “Don’t forget it.”
I can feel something cracking me. Pushing. Streaming out through the small crevices. I look at all their faces, watching me with approval and pride and maybe even a little awe, and the cracks widen.
I feel the smile dawning on my face. See the reply beaming back at me from all of theirs.
Daniel strokes my back. “Do you want to say anything, sweetheart?”
A lot of things—but I think I need to give this some time to sink
in first. I look at everyone, taking in all their beautiful eyes. “I want to say thank you. For somehow making this not feel hopelessly embarrassing. For seeing something I couldn’t quite see.”
I sit all the way up, and let the dazzling glow of what’s just set loose inside me rise all the way to the surface. “I’m so very grateful you came. And I’d really appreciate it if you could all go home now.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Daniel
She turns around to look at me, the amazing woman on my lap who’s set something free that I desperately need to get my hands on—and it’s all I can do not to fall into her eyes.
I wave my hands at the rest of the room. “You heard her. Go.”
Gabby laughs and leans in and kisses me. “Come help me say goodbye.”
I could throw her over my shoulder and carry her off to my bedroom and not a single person in here would mind. Heck, they’d probably throw us a parade. But I want something more with this woman than a hot fling, and if that means saying a polite goodbye to my guests before I ravish her, then I can do that.
Probably.
My cock bleeds with the wanting of her.
I pull her in for a hot kiss, just in case anyone’s in doubt about why they need to start heading for the door.
Gabby melts into me—and then scoots off my lap, eyes dazed and laughing all at the same time. “Behave. Help people find their jackets. Make sure everyone has a ride home.”
“Oh, Daniel,” Ari and Mattie call out in stereo, total mischief in their eyes. “We can’t find our boots.”
I know a club brat when I see one. I look at Quint. “Think you can carry them both over your shoulders?”
He grins.
I wave at the two mischief-makers. “There. Done. Go away.”
Ari laughs and pitches a boot at Quint’s head.
Gabby splutters beside me and goes over to help people who don’t need any help to find their belongings. She doles out hugs and kisses and cookies while she’s at it, because she can’t help herself, even when she’s leaking arousal from every pore.
