The Assignment

by Jade A. Waters

  “You feel so fucking good.” He held on to my hips, yanking me down around him, fucking me harder.

  “Oh, yes!”

  Open, wide, being ridden by him, I felt it again—that avalanche of pleasure engulfing me. Dean withdrew until only the head of his cock stayed inside, but when I wriggled down on him, he ensconced himself. The contact was intense, the movement ferocious.

  “Maya...” His fingernails scratched my skin and he draped his body over me. He latched onto my breast with his teeth and I shook, the stretch of him filling me with such primal lust. In the next thrust he grunted, and he exploded within me as I shuddered with pleasure.

  I screamed, my body giving in, contracting around him until I couldn’t see straight. When Dean collapsed over me, he smothered me in the scent of his skin, of our musk.

  For several minutes, the two of us lay there, his mouth on my breast, his hands tight on my hips.

  Aftershocks vibrated through me, and Dean whispered, “You felt incredible.”

  I couldn’t find my breath or quiet the frantic beating of my heart.

  Dean raised his head and unpeeled his fingers from my hips. He stretched them over my belly and I closed my eyes. I hadn’t stopped clinging to the comforter, so he took my hands and uncurled my fingers before flattening them on the mattress. He spread kisses over my chest and along my neck, then he pulled himself away so fast I whimpered.

  “I’m going to want much more from you.” He unrolled the condom and tied it in a knot, and when he walked to the bathroom to discard it, I lay there, trying to make out the patterns in the ceiling but failing repeatedly. “I hope you feel the same.”

  Jesus Christ, yes.

  Dean came back into the room and tapped the side of my thigh. “Under the covers you go.”

  Exhausted, I dragged myself up along the comforter and turned it back. Dean climbed in with me, clutching me to his chest. His warmth cradled me as he nestled his chin in the crook of my shoulder.

  “Tonight, we got to know one another. But on our next date, I’m tying you up.”

  In another lifetime, I might have objected. I might have argued.

  But with his arms surrounding me, his fingers running through my hair, it was exactly what I desired.

  He kissed the back of my head. “Get some rest. You’ll need it.”

  It only took a few minutes for me to fall asleep.

  * * *

  I woke to Dean’s fingers grazing my side. He stroked from the edge of my breast down to my hip, then back up in a tender, consistent motion.

  I opened my eyes, remembering where I was and the night we’d shared. Dean’s chest pressed along my back. When he tucked his hips up, he nudged me with his nascent erection as he laced his free hand with mine above the pillow, which had taken on the musky scent of the night before.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Somewhat,” I said. He couldn’t see my smile, but it was there, because I was delighting in the feel of him. I’d expected I might wake up alone, and the warmth of his hand was a welcome surprise.

  “I love this tattoo. What does it mean?” His fingers followed the Greek letters running along my side.

  “It’s ελευθερία. Freedom.”

  “Backstory?”

  I rolled to face him. Our night of play had lightly mussed his hair, and the sun peeking in from the edges of the blinds cast dotted lines of light over his shoulder. He’d kept his hand on me through my movement, and now he spread his fingers over my belly. His touch made me feel warm and open...but it was much too soon to share that part of me. I’d made that mistake before, in a relationship I’d thought was going somewhere. It hadn’t gone over well.

  Hell, it had gone over like a natural disaster.

  I wasn’t ready for that yet, not after one date. This thing with Dean was too tempting, too intriguing, so I picked the safest answer. “It’s a long story. Perhaps I’ll share it another time. The word and the meaning for me, though—it’s all mental. Freedom of mind. Of emotion.”

  Dean cocked his head, tracing the word once more. “Do you find freedom when captured?” His finger continued that slow glide over my skin while he waited for the answer I attempted to form.

  I’d never truly been captured. Charlie and I had played minimally in this regard, and on the few occasions I’d convinced a lover to pin my hands above my head, I hadn’t found anyone willing to go there—to force me to surrender. To decipher if that urge in me was real, and what I craved.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” I said. “Yet.”

  Dean smiled, his lips full, enticing. “Then that’s what we’re going to find out. Game?”

  “Yes.”

  He spiraled his fingertip in small circles over my belly until he reached the top of my mound.

  “I need a minute,” I said, sliding away to the bathroom. After I washed my hands and slapped some water on my face, I took a quick rinse of my mouth and headed back to the bed. Dean crawled over me the second I returned, covering my body with his and filling my nose with a mix of his intoxicating natural scent and a touch of sweat. He wedged himself between my thighs, his excitement apparent.

  “Do you always like to be on top? In control?”

  His palms encircled my wrists, which he drew up and against the headboard of the bed. “Do you mind?” Dean shifted his weight into me. One hand stayed around my wrists while the fingertips of his other hand ran along my cheek in a tender motion that fired tingles across my face. His gaze paired with this touch made me gasp—as did the firm thrust he took, seating his engorged cock closer to my hole.

  “No complaints here.”

  Dean trailed his fingers across my lips. His weight above me sent heat throughout my limbs, and the pressure of his shaft on my overstimulated tissues pulled all of it directly into my core. “Good. But I admit,” he said, pinching my wrists tighter, “I’ve done a terrible job of clarifying my expectations with you.”

  I tilted my hips up to meet him. The fullness between my thighs was teasingly damp. “What do you mean? I think you’ve been totally clear. Exploration... Like I said, I’m in.” I shimmied beneath him in an attempt to spread my legs and hook my feet around his ankles. The draw of his fingertips across my lips came to a pause. “And now that this assignment business is all over—”

  Dean bore down with his weight, catching my feet with his ankles and snapping my legs back together. He pressed up against me, and I gasped. “You think your assignment is over? No, no. You’ll have many more assignments before we’re through, Maya. We’re going to see how far you’ll go. How well you’ll follow instructions.” As he said it, he pushed up his cock, covering himself in the liquid heat of my desire.

  “Oh, wow.”

  Dean rubbed himself back and forth, and my nipples pebbled against his chest. “What do you say?”

  “Holy crap, yes,” I said.

  “I want you wet like this, all the time. Sometimes, I’ll leave you wet like this. Wanting more.” He shoved into me again. My clit had grown swollen, my limbs tense, but he wouldn’t release me. His entire body, every muscle he had, seemed destined to keep me pinned in place.

  Pleasure ricocheted through me.

  “I’m going to ask you to spread your legs. Okay?”

  Dean’s voice had become a low growl, and my head moved on its own accord, assenting to him on some carnal level I didn’t understand.

  He loosened his legs from my ankles. “Spread.”

  I did, trembling.

  He pressed harder against me, both of us coated with my fluids. “More.”

  “I can’t.”

  He tightened his hold and thumbed my bottom lip. “You can.”

  When I spread my legs wider, my muscles strained from him holding them apart the night before. But
Dean nestled closer, his cockhead slicking along my folds and driving me insane. Then he placed his mouth over mine and forced his tongue between my teeth, the taste of me faint, but still there. His tongue tangled with mine in a kiss that took my breath away.

  I rocked my hips up to take him farther, but Dean released my mouth with a click of his tongue.

  “No. Not yet.”

  I should have shut my legs and kicked him away for torturing me like this, but it was too good. I clenched my teeth, pleasure hurtling through me. “Please...” I growled. I was on the verge of orgasm and Dean hadn’t even pushed forward, or strummed my swollen knot.

  “The look on your face is pure excitement. Need. I can’t wait to see how you’ll look when I thrust into you. When I force that orgasm out of you.”

  “Dean.” The sensation rolling through me was incredible, uprooted from some buried place. I closed my eyes.

  But Dean said, “Look at me.”

  He’d jerked the string again. My lids popped open. I was compelled, like Dean had magical authority through any of the words he spoke aloud. Like he was the pied piper of sex.

  He didn’t take his eyes off me when he reached under the pillow. Somewhere in the night, he’d placed a condom there, and I’d evidently slept through it. It didn’t matter. Those slate-gray eyes stayed locked with mine, two storming seas that told me how chaotic his thoughts were, how he wanted to be inside me. I tried to inch down but couldn’t with the way he’d pinned my hands.

  Dean ripped the wrapper open with his teeth. “I’ll let you go long enough to put this thing on. If you move, no sex.”

  I was no idiot.

  I held myself rigid for the five seconds he took to sheath himself.

  Dean plundered my mouth in a heavy kiss as he used a firm grip to roll my hips upward. My wetness had smeared all over my thighs, but he didn’t push inside. “I love that you haven’t moved your hands without me telling you not to—such a quick study.”

  “Stop...torturing...please...” My blood whirred in my ears.

  Dean took my lip between his teeth and bit down. Then, with deliberate slowness, he eased his cock past my entrance. He lingered there, making me beg.

  “Please!”

  In one smooth arch, he thrust, tapping the well within me. I moaned once he anchored himself there and stopped, and his kisses tumbled over my lips, my chin, my neck. “Wrap your legs around me. Tight. Your arms, too.”

  Eagerly, I complied. I kept my fingers interlaced but looped them around his shoulders and wove my legs around his waist. “Fuck me,” I mewled.

  He rolled his hips, so deep he tantalized every inch of me with the movement of his pelvis. Dean pinched my hips hard, mouthing my breast and keeping himself steady. “Is that what you want?”

  I used my hold on him to buck my hips up from below. “Please, yes, please...”

  Dean drew himself out. He stopped when the thick ridge of his crown caught the rim of my cunt, then made tiny pulses that made me moan. “Say it again.”

  “Fuck me!” I pleaded.

  Dean heaved forward as I clung to him. He repeated the motion, overwhelming me with his force, pants breaking from his throat while he dug his teeth into my breast. He was heavy and strong against me, his hips crushing mine with the thrusts he took inside. But he surprised me, wrestling his hand until the pad of his thumb swiped across my clit. I was on edge, meeting his motion, and in moments I crumbled beneath him with a wail of ecstasy.

  Dean didn’t stop when I came. He kept pounding, writhing with me, spurring me on, making the headboard creak with how hard we fucked. I tightened around him, my body softening and my arms loosening. I tried to keep up, weak from our night, from the agonizing teases he’d made all morning.

  “Turn over.” His voice came out a hungry croak in my ear, the tortured sound of a man needing to come.

  Unraveling my arms and legs, I turned and offered him my flesh. Dean climbed over me, slipping effortlessly inside and fisting my breasts.

  He drove forward so rapidly I had to rebrace myself. His body over mine was savage, rough. He licked my back, and took a bite of my skin that made me jump. “This time is for me,” he warned.

  Dean lost control a second later. He fucked me with wicked grunts that made it clear I was there for him. I was the body to bring him pleasure, the partner meant to surrender to his control. His hands clutched my breasts, his fingertips pinching my nipples until I cried out. He took wild, impaling thrusts. I was to be used, I was to be challenged, and as he grew deliciously violent inside, startled tears brimmed the corners of my eyes. He issued a hoarse cry and shoved so deep I felt ripped apart.

  And then I came.

  * * *

  It took a while for us to catch our breaths. I’d fallen headfirst into the pillows, my ass high in the air and my face hot. I hadn’t known what to think, and for now, the plush fabric I smothered myself in could hide the tumble of emotions working its way across my cheeks.

  Dean had dropped to his side. He snuck his head beneath my torso and rubbed my thigh, but I wasn’t yet ready to look at him. “Are you okay?”

  I puffed out my cheeks in a wavering breath. I was stark naked and weak from a single night of sex—sex that had shifted into pure, animalistic fucking in the last ten minutes—and somehow he’d turned me inside out. I was raw and exposed, and I didn’t even know this guy.

  What the fuck had just happened?

  “Maya... Come out, come out wherever you are...”

  He snaked his arm around my waist and gave me a tug. I should run, and yet the soft touch of his hand came like a cry in the night. That human caress telling me it was okay to feel whatever the hell I’d felt seconds ago.

  “Let me hold you,” he said.

  I didn’t fight when Dean hauled me into his arms. I curled up into his broad chest, my hands tucked over my breasts as he pulled me close. He rested his lips on my forehead and arranged me in his hold, lovingly stroking my skin.

  I trembled with his chin against the top of my head. I could hear his heart pounding over the steady thundering of my own.

  “Did I get too rough?”

  “A little,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No.” I wet my lips, loosening my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “It wasn’t bad. It was just... I wasn’t expecting that...”

  Dean’s hands were warm on my back. He gave me a squeeze. “I don’t want to scare you away. Slower next time. Okay?”

  I nodded, calmed in his hold. Strangely comfortable with him. Like I’d known him, this connection, my entire life.

  “I can be gentle, too, I promise.” Dean grasped my chin to turn my face up to his. “I mean it. We can slow it down if this was too much.” He frowned. “It’s been one night. What was I thinking? I’m not normally like this. But you...”

  “It’s okay. I’m all right,” I said. I meant it.

  Dean planted his lips on mine in a prolonged, tender kiss that warmed me to the core. When he pulled away, his eyes were bright, kind. “You’re irresistible. I’d like to see you again this week. What do you say?”

  “Yes.” Despite the wave of shock slowly subsiding in me, it was the easiest yes I’d ever spoken.

  He cupped my shoulder, then ran his fingers through the tangled strands of my hair. “I’d like to give you another assignment, too.”

  “Does it come with another reward?”

  Dean chuckled. “All back to normal, I see.” He kissed my cheek. “And yes, of course it does.”

  “What is it?”

  “Not yet.” Dean’s body was warm and inviting. “We have maybe an hour until checkout, and I’d prefer to spend it holding you. Making sure you’re okay.”

  Against the hard muscles of his chest, I blinked.

 
Was I prepared for this?

  Chapter Seven

  Dean and I cuddled like a couple who’d been together for years, up until the moment we had to dress and check out of the hotel. There weren’t many words between us, only the tender caress of his hands and the play of his lips over my cheeks and mouth. He dressed before I did, packing up his work belongings and watching me with a smile on his face. When he walked me to the parking lot, he held my hand, and I couldn’t help the swell of emotion from this simple, sweet move. It was such a contrast from the man who’d blown my mind not an hour before.

  I didn’t know what to say when he backed me against the driver’s side of my car, his embrace solid and hot as he gathered me into his chest under the morning sun. What I did know was that he made me feel protected and special, and that I needed to see him again. Especially after he dragged his lips over mine and murmured, “See you soon, gorgeous.”

  Since Dean had chosen a hotel in Oakland, I had a short commute home. I opted for a shower after a strong cup of coffee, and my appearance in the bathroom mirror shocked me. I still had the remnants of my makeup smudged in the corner of my eyes. My lips were bright pink from Dean biting them that morning, and there was no salvation for the disaster of my hair, my usually long blacks strands a disarrayed mop that would need a half gallon of conditioner and a sturdy comb to fix.

  I stripped off my clothes, my body weak, each limb used and worked. Scratches lined my sides from when Dean must have clawed at me, but I didn’t remember it happening. There was a red mark on my breast, proof of his bite and the way he’d lost control fucking me the night before. And of course, the residual sting of my pussy lips proved all the attention I’d received at Dean’s hands.

  I hadn’t come that hard in years.

  I let the shower water spill over me, the hot, replenishing stream calming my nerves. In truth, nothing that had happened bothered me in any way. But it was different, rough. Like Dean had reached inside me with his commands, ordering me to do what he asked in a way that summoned me to blossom for him.

  I flattened my hands on the tile walls and replayed his words in my mind.