by L E Royal
“Sweetheart…”
It was breathless, and it wasn’t a command, but a plea. Parker let it spur her on, rolling her hips a little more insistently, rewarded with a soft sound of pleasure and surprise from her usually quiet lover.
Her climax was coming, building, pressing closer with every slide of fingers over her, every press of the toy that connected them inside, but more consuming was Kristina. Her breaths were short, her dark eyes fluttering closed and then resuming the fight to stay open. The fingers in Parker’s hair were gentle, and when they kissed it was softer, deeper, heavier than it had ever been.
“Krissie…”
She hadn’t meant to say it. Kristina’s eyes snapped to her, and for a second, they were laid open, a flash of fear and so much longing that Parker closed the space between them and kissed her. She ground her hips hard against Kristina, feeling the toy move deeper inside, her body jumping at the sensation.
“Okay?”
The word was breathy, barely there, and Parker nodded, their foreheads pressed together.
“Yes, honey, just…”
Kristina held her hip, guiding her, tugging her up and closer, changing the angle, and God.
“I’m close too, baby.”
Parker tried to cling to the words, to let them anchor her, keep her from floating away on the feelings ripping through her. Once upon a time she’d experimented with toys, but this was unlike anything she had achieved.
Soft lips pressed messy against the corner of her mouth, bringing her back to the moment, and she moved as prompted, twisting dark hair back from Kristina’s cheek and watching her beautiful face. Her body burned, and she wanted her undone, as if her own climax depended on it.
“Do you like this, honey?”
Kristina nodded, her bottom lip so tight between her teeth that part of Parker worried it would bleed.
“You feel so good in me, Kristina.”
Parker’s body reacted directly to the moan the words elicited. She clenched hard, deliciously, confusingly full now.
“Is this what you wanted?”
She tugged softly on Kristina’s hair, tilting her head back to hold her gaze, unashamed by her own stuttering breaths, the need she knew was painted all over her face.
“Yes…” The reply was a hiss, and Parker’s insides quivered, the hand at her hip tightening ever so slightly as Kristina picked up the pace between them.
She opened her mouth to speak again, but she was so close, everything in her wound so tight, a moan escaped instead. Sucking in a breath, determined to see Kristina undone, she grit the words out.
“No one…has ever…had me like this. Only you…only you, honey.”
Kristina’s dark eyes flared, and she rocked into her harder. Parker’s eyes fell closed, Kristina’s slim hips flush now against her own.
“Relax, baby…”
Kristina kissed her cheek, her chin, her nose softly, and she was in control again, though the strain in her voice told Parker she was close to falling apart.
“You’re mine… You’re all mine, sweetheart…always….”
Parker moaned her agreement, long and loud and unashamed.
Teeth nipped her throat and her walls quivered.
Kristina was chanting in her ear over and over, and Parker had never wanted to belong to someone as much, never felt such an overwhelming sense of belonging as she did with her.
“Krissie…” It was a demand and a request, and Kristina drove into her, the hand on Parker’s clit slipping away to grab at her backside and tug her forward so she met the thrust just right. She heard Kristina’s breath catch, felt her tense, and then Parker was coming, long and hard, to a backdrop of Kristina moaning, shaking, jolting against her. The toy moved inside her, and it was like her pleasure was never quite done. Fingers dug into the soft flesh of her backside, teeth in the thin skin of her shoulder.
They were still moving together when she forced her eyes open. Kristina’s were still closed as Parker rolled on top of her, shooting open when Parker rocked herself onto the toy insistently.
“Sweetheart.”
She was breathless, beautiful as Parker struggled to find her hands and tugged them up to hold them against the pillow above her head.
She watched panic flare in Kristina’s eyes, and kissed her until she felt her relax.
They fit together as easy like this as they ever had. Kristina’s hips moved under her, and Parker busied herself with kissing as much of her as she could reach, tasting the sweat-slick skin of her neck, her clavicle, her shoulder.
Another orgasm was building, low in her stomach, as her hips ground into Kristina’s, her nipples rubbing against her breasts, her tongue in her mouth.
“Parker…”
Parker pulled back and looked down at her, lips swollen, parted, eyes dark, hungry, open, her hands still clasped above her head.
She was in love with Kristina.
“Okay?”
Kristina nodded, and Parker sank back down to kiss her. She forced herself to rock faster, harder, her thighs tensed tight, ignoring her own pleasure until Kristina’s body bowed off the bed, and she keened, long and high. Kristina shuddered below her, and strong hands pulled her down, tugging her forward and letting the toy push into her at just the right angle to shove her over the edge.
“Sweetheart…”
Parker lost herself in that voice, in the arms around her, the body under her. Kristina held her there, rolling her hips softly, slowly, until Parker was limp above her, spent.
Finally, the arms holding her loosened, and she rolled as she was prompted, jumping uncomfortably as the thing slipped from inside her. A thud sounded in the quiet room and she guessed Kristina had tossed it aside, and then she was back, half on top of her. Parker wrapped her arms around her without thinking.
“Sleep?”
She was already drifting.
Chapter Fifteen
“EXCUSE ME, PROFESSOR.”
Kristina appeared in the bathroom doorway, hair still wet from the shower, pajama pants and a T-shirt hanging loose from her small frame.
Parker tugged her glasses off her nose and set her phone aside—student emails could wait, definitely.
“Oh no, please, keep those on.”
She sauntered across the room, and Parker watched, spellbound, wondering if she would ever get tired of this woman. Even after last night when they were both thoroughly sated, desire crackled between them again like a static charge, though it was gentler now than it had been at the start.
The mattress dipped as Kristina sat beside her, and she studiously ignored the way her heart jumped when Kristina leaned in to kiss her.
“So you’re in a better mood this morning?” Parker asked the question against soft lips.
“I recall being in an awfully good mood last night.”
Parker nipped at the tongue that was playing at her lips.
“If that’s my punishment, I may have to make you jealous more often, Miss Diaz.”
Kristina stiffened under her touch.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Dark hair fell in Kristina’s face as she looked down, and reaching up to twist it back over her shoulder had become so natural Parker did it without even thinking.
“Krissie, it’s natural. We all experience it at some point in our lives.”
The nickname earned her a kiss.
“Not for me. I don’t do jealousy, as a rule. I don’t tolerate it from my subs, and I seriously never engage in it.”
“Why?”
She searched Kristina’s eyes, trying to follow where she had gone again. The place was far, and cold, and everything was so clear-cut that Parker didn’t understand it at all.
“Because it’s just insecurity given airtime. We live in an amazing world; there’s so much to experience. If I interact with someone else, it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I think it’s crazy to believe you can be absolutely everything to someone else, and it’s selfish t
o expect it.”
Wow.
“So you’re polyamorous?”
“What? No.” Kristina’s eyebrows shot up. “That implies I have feelings for multiple people. I don’t.”
“You just want to sleep with multiple people?”
She wished she hadn’t said it. As soon as it left her mouth, her own jealousy stirred. Maybe she was selfish, but the thought of Kristina with someone else twisted something deep in her gut.
“Lately, no.”
The admission felt huge in the quiet of the room.
“Kristina… There won’t be any more dates. I mean, I’m not planning on doing that again.”
Somehow it felt important to say. Kristina’s eyes were on her, full of apology and a thousand questions. She asked one of her own.
“Are we…being exclusive?”
Her heart beat harder at the suggestion. Experience had taught her that Kristina would balk at the commitment, but hope made her ask anyway.
“Parker… I…” She paused, running a hand through wet hair, beautiful in the late-morning sun peeling in through the windows. “I want to say yes, and that terrifies me. This isn’t who I am.”
Parker’s heart soared and then stuttered, but for now, it was enough.
“So don’t say anything.”
Maybe she was wrong to keep giving her all these concessions and ways out, and she could only imagine what Marion would say, but against all the odds, she trusted Kristina. As much as her reasoning was lost on her, and as much as she didn’t understand the invisible and ever-changing standard she seemed to hold herself to, Parker knew without a doubt Kristina wasn’t out to hurt her.
Kristina picked at a thread on her pants, goose bumps on the tops of her arms from the cool of the room after her shower. She’d never wanted anything like this, like her.
“Planning on going out to do your yoga this morning?”
Seemingly relieved by the change of subject, Kristina flopped back onto the pillows beside her, and Parker tried to ignore how natural it was to lean down and kiss her. When she pulled back, Kristina’s eyes were shining up at her with their usual mirth.
“Not unless you want to join me?”
Parker laughed.
“And humiliate myself, flailing around while you fold yourself like a pretzel?”
“Oh…”
Kristina caught her by the shirt and tugged her back down. She went easily.
“So you do watch me.”
Her cheeks did flame a little bit at that. It had become a guilty pleasure, lying in bed looking out of the window to watch the sunrise over the ocean and ogle Kristina in those oh so thin spandex pants.
“What if I do?”
A smirk lit her beautiful face.
“I know what I’m getting you for Christmas then.”
Somehow, the permanence in the words surprised her. It was the most Kristina had ever talked about, or implied there would be, any future for them together. She tried not to cling to it.
The doorbell rang before she could ask what. Kristina groaned.
“Need to get that?” Parker let her fingers walk up a pajama-clad thigh, catch the hem of her shirt, and tug it up to expose a thin sliver of skin above her waistband. She raked her nails over it softly.
“I don’t want to.” Kristina shivered under the touch. “But I should.”
Parker kissed her, slow and deep, and just when Kristina’s fingers came up to thread through her hair, she pulled back.
“Go ahead, honey. I’ll be here.”
She huffed out a sigh.
“You’re evil, Professor, but I’ll have the last laugh.”
Parker picked up her phone as she rolled away. She slipped her glasses back onto her nose, looking over the rims as the doorbell rang again.
“I’m counting on it. Now go answer the door.”
With one last scorching look, Kristina disappeared down the hall.
The sound of voices floated up to meet her. Focusing on her emails, she tried not to listen, but as they grew quieter, discomfort settled over her.
Conscious she was prying but concerned, she set her phone aside, left her glasses on the nightstand, and started down the long hall after Kristina.
Voices rose—she could make out Kristina’s and another woman’s—until she was hovering outside the living room door.
“I told you, I’m busy.”
Kristina sounded as fraught as she’d ever heard her, and Parker entered the room without thinking. The woman from that day in the driveway was there. Her dark eyes snapped to her, all lithe feline grace as she stepped easily around Kristina to move toward her.
“A sleepover? TPE round the clock?”
Lost, Parker opened her mouth to ask what she meant, but Kristina was at her side, half between her and the woman who Parker knew by now to be Mal.
“No. Can we do this some other time?”
Mal didn’t seem to hear her.
“Older. I’m impressed. I can work with this.”
Parker felt herself being appraised and squared her shoulders, wishing she was wearing something other than sweats and an old T-shirt, wishing she was wearing a bra.
“Mallory Carlson.”
“Parker Freeman.” She held Mal’s gaze, feeling Kristina beside her, tense, watching the interaction.
“So, Parker. Kristina and I were going to play. I’d be happy to have you join. It would be good for you to spend time with a more experienced Dominant.”
It took her a second to realize what she meant. Kristina was oddly quiet, still at her side, so unlike the confident, carefree woman she usually was in front of anyone else.
“Actually, it sounded like Kristina asked you to leave.”
Mal’s smile twisted into something sinister, and she laughed. The sound was rough, and the chill it sent down Parker’s spine was anything but pleasant.
“Fiery. I see why she likes you.” She seemed to consider for a second, and Parker held her gaze. “You can join us, or leave. Which will it be?”
Is she for real? Kristina went to speak, but Parker was faster.
“What exactly will I be joining you in? Has Kristina said she wants to have sex with you, or be dominated by you, or whatever you’re hoping is going to happen here?”
The scent of perfume assaulted her as Mal stepped into her space. They were close enough to kiss, but against all her instinct, Parker didn’t step back.
“Kristina is mine.”
“Honey.” Parker forced herself to look away from Mal, to Kristina who looked small, lost, beside her, watching the interaction between the two of them intensely. Mal scoffed at the endearment. “Do you want me to leave? Do you want to…” She couldn’t bring herself to call it playing. “Be with her?”
“Of course she does. Isn’t that right, pet?”
Mal answered for her, and Kristina swallowed hard, dark eyes falling to the floor, silent. That was no kind of answer.
“You need to leave.”
If Kristina wanted her to go she could say so, but until then, Parker wasn’t leaving her alone with this woman. Mal licked her lips and stepped impossibly closer.
Mal reached up. Parker swallowed hard as she waited for Mal’s fingers to brush her cheek. They never made contact.
Suddenly awake, moving, Kristina was between them, conviction burning in her voice.
“Don’t touch her.”
Mal laughed, and Parker was lost, missing too many vital pieces to make real sense of this interaction. The fingers of Kristina’s free hand shook at her side, and it was so natural to step up to her back and slide her own through them, squeezing gently.
“Kristina…”
Mal pulled her arm from her grip, roughly.
“Just leave. I’ve told you, I don’t want you here anymore.”
Mal’s nostrils flared. Her gaze on Kristina was scorching, even as a bystander.
“Why? Because of her?”
Parker opened her mouth to tell her it was none of
her business, but Mal spoke again.
“You will always, always be a broken little girl, Kristina. You might enjoy playing Mistress, but you and I, we know the truth of what you are. And you will come back to me.”
It sounded too much like a threat. Kristina’s fingers shook in her own, and Parker stepped closer, her other hand soft on her hip as she addressed Mal.
“You need to leave.”
Mal snapped her eyes to her, studying her, analyzing her with such contempt, such condescension, that it was an effort not to wilt under her glare. Parker’s front pressed soft against Kristina’s back. Parker let her presence fortify her, inflate her. She had something Mal didn’t. Kristina was hers, for now.
“You heard her.” Kristina took a shuddering breath. “Get the fuck out, Mal, and don’t come back. It’s over between us, it has been for a while, and I mean it, I’m done.”
Mal’s face was sour as she took a step away, and as Kristina relaxed against her, Parker felt like, finally, it was safe to exhale.
A sound rang out like a gunshot, too fast, out of absolutely nowhere, and Mal sprung forward. Kristina let out a strangled cry and jumped back covering her face, colliding into Parker who wrapped her arms around her without thinking.
The room was silent, and it took Parker three long seconds to realize the noise had just been the stomp of Mal’s stiletto on the floor. The action made no sense, but Kristina was shaking against her, and Mal was laughing, cold, callous. Did she pretend to hit her?
“I’ll be seeing you, K.”
Thankfully, she did turn to leave, and Parker waited, listening to the click of her heels down the hall, the open and close of the front door, the roar of her car speeding out of the driveway.
Kristina’s breathing was ragged, uneven in the quiet.
“What just happened?”
Kristina made no move to answer, still clinging to her, small, quiet, in a way Parker had never seen her.
“Krissie?”
Taking hold of Kristina’s biceps, she tried to move her away, but Kristina held tight, and unsure what else to do, Parker walked them to the sofa and sat them down.
