The Culmination (The Club Series Book 4)

by Lauren Rowe

  I swallow hard and nod.

  “Say it, please.”

  “You’re in charge,” I breathe.

  Oh my God. I’ve got goose bumps. And a lady-boner. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is gonna be good.

  “And why am I in charge, Sarah?”

  “Because you’re the only one in the entire world who knows how to make me howl like a monkey, weep like a guitar, squawk like a seagull.” I laugh at that last one—I don’t know where that came from. I funny. I slap my cheek, forcing myself to stop acting like a dork. “Because you know how to bring me to the light outside the cave, Jonas P. Faraday, oh lord-god-master,” I say reverently. “Because. You. Are. God.”

  “That’s exactly right. Good girl.”

  I shift in my seat. My mouth is dry. Hot damn, this is gonna be good.

  He bends down and turns off the faucet on the tub. “Are you ready to climb and conquer the epic and towering peak of fucksellence, my precious baby?”

  I nod like a bobblehead doll. “I sure am, my sweet Jonas. Hellz yeah.”

  He glides over to me and my skin bursts into flames at his mere proximity.

  He cups my face in his hands. “Nothing worth having comes easy,” he says. “The path to greatness comes with great sacrifice. To conquer it, we must carve new pathways inside ourselves—forge new wiring inside our brains. In summary, we must try something new and untested. Do you understand?”

  Um, no, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But it doesn’t matter. I trust him one hundred percent. He’d never, ever hurt me, and I know that. So whatever the heck he wants to do to me, whatever his little speech means, I’m in. In, in, in.

  “I understand completely,” I say solemnly. “I’m in.”

  “In the past, I’ve always served you and your desires. Your pleasure has been mine. Your orgasm mine. Your blood mine. But now that changes. Now, the tables are turned. And my pleasure is yours.”

  I raise my eyebrow. Interesting.

  “From here on out, you’ll serve me—totally and completely—with no regard for your own pleasure. You’ll serve me with your blood, sweat, and tears. And cum.”

  Damn, he’s a good-looking man. He’s truly the sexiest man alive. I nod, though, yet again, I don’t know what he’s talking about. How is this any different than what we’ve always done? The man has sucked milk from my boobs and slurped up blood from between my legs and pushed the button for Ding Dongs on my vending machine—and, for years before that, licked sweat off my every crease and curve of my body like a thirsty dog with a dry bone. But, never mind, this speech of his is hawt.

  “Yes,” I say, though I don’t really know exactly what I just agreed to.

  He grabs the velvet box off the ledge and strides gracefully back to me, his muscles taut. “Repeat after me: Jonas, you’re completely in charge for every fucking minute of this entire weekend.”

  Oh, he just grabbed the velvet box. Yay! For a moment, I can’t focus. I smell jewelry. “Could you repeat that, baby?” I ask.

  “Jonas, you’re completely in charge for every fucking minute of this entire weekend.”

  “Jonas, you’re completely in charge for every fucking minute of this entire fucking weekend,” I say.

  “There will be absolutely no bossy bullshit from me, I promise.”

  “Well, since I am literally incapable of bossy bullshit in the first place, there will most definitely be no bossy bullshit from me.”

  He stifles a laugh. “My body is yours to do with as you please.”

  I laugh. “Oh my God. I’m soaking my panties clean through right now, baby. You’ve got me losing my mind and we haven’t even—”

  “My body is yours to do with as you please, Jonas,” he says sternly.

  “My body is yours to do with as you please, Jonas.” I grin. “Take it. Take every drop of me. Me, me, me. Take meeeeeeeeee.” I giggle. “I’m yours. Propiedad de Jonas Faraday. Mi amor. Todo mi mundo. The man who—”

  “Ssh.”

  I shut my mouth.

  Jonas shifts the velvet box to his other hand.

  What the heckity heck is inside that frickin’ box?

  “Now, as we both know,” he continues, “I’m incapable of deriving pleasure from your pain. That’s an immutable truth, no matter what peak we’re trying to climb. But let me be clear about something: I do intend to fuck you so hard you lose control of your bodily functions. And I do intend to fuck you so hard you can’t walk properly afterwards. And I do intend to fuck you so hard you beg for mercy.”

  A semi-squeal erupts from my throat. Hawt.

  His eyes flicker. “Do you consent to my terms?”

  I nod. “Yes, lord-god-master. Jonas, oh my God, you look so effing hot right now.”

  “If you’re experiencing discomfort or anxiety or anything else short of actual pain, then I don’t give a fuck. You can say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or beg or cry and I won’t stop what I’m doing. But if you say the word ‘mercy,’ then I’ll immediately stop whatever I’m doing. All I ask is that you take great care before using that special word, because, no matter what, I’m going to honor it, instantly, no questions asked. It’s a magic word, Sarah, so use it only when absolutely necessary.”

  Oh my fucking God. Did Jonas just give me a safe word? Holy Dungeons and Dragons, Batman, my tormented, baggage-laden husband is really doing this? I truly never thought I’d see the day. “Yes, sir,” I say, but I can’t help but grin when I say it.

  A flicker of a smile dances on his luscious lips. “All right. Now that I’ve explained the rules for our ascent up the peak of fucksellence, I’ve got a little token of my feelings for you.”

  Without further ado, he (finally) opens the rectangular velvet box in his hand to reveal the most stunning diamond bracelet I’ve ever seen. Holy frickity-frack, that’s a crap-ton of diamonds all in one place. Mine eyes! Mine eyes! The sparkling light doth blind me! Lawdy, lawdy! I’m coming home, dear lawd, I’m-a coming home to you!

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, baby,” Jonas says, grinning.

  I raise a shaking hand to my mouth and lean in, peering more closely at the dazzling amazingness. Oh my God. This thing is gonna sear my corneas. Some of the diamonds are big ol’ rocks—how many freaking carats are those things?—did he steal them from Queen Elizabeth?—and other stones are smaller diamonds clustered together, set into various shapes. Oh God. The clustered shapes are the sun, the moon, and a whole bunch of stars. I’m seriously in danger of fainting right now. “Oh,” I breathe, swooning like Minnie Mouse. “Oh,” I say again. “Oh,” I say a third time. Am I having an orgasm right now? Holy shit, yes, I am. Like, literally. I am having an orgasm! “Oh,” I say again. “Oh, oh, oh.” Good lord, I’m having a diamond-induced orgasm! “Oh!”

  “You like it?”

  I nod, but I’m too overwhelmed physically and emotionally to speak.

  “I’ve been meaning to upgrade your membership bracelet for quite some time,” Jonas says softly, his face glowing with his excitement.

  “Jonas,” I finally say, my voice trembling. “Thank you so much. It’s amazing.”

  He removes my engraved platinum bracelet, places it on the marble counter next to the sink, and fills the now-empty space on my wrist with my new bling. “Thank you for being my wife and the mother of my girls and the sole member of the Jonas Faraday Club, Sarah Faraday.”

  I bite my lip for the twentieth time in the last twenty minutes. My clit is zigging and zagging. My heart is lurching out of my chest. My pulse is pounding in my ears. My entire body is electrified. Holy hell, I want to make love to this man. I motion to my now discarded platinum bracelet next to the sink. “How about I wear that one on my other wrist? That way, we’ll still be matching?”

  He kisses me softly and I jolt with desire at the touch of his lips.

  “We’re still matching,” he says. He peels off his T-shirt and throws it on the ground of the bathroom. He places his hand over the sun, moon, and stars adorning his chest
. “My matching bracelet is right here.”

  Oh, Jesus. That’s too much. I attack him, devouring his lips like a starving man on a sandwich. For a brief, delicious moment, he overpowers me, his muscles, lips—his sheer physicality—swallowing me alive, but then he pulls back, his eyes blazing.

  I want him to rip my clothes off my body and fuck me without mercy on the bathroom floor the way he did on the airplane—good God, that was scrumptious. But he surprises me by pushing a lock of hair out of my face and taking a long, deep breath.

  “Our quest for fucksellence begins now, baby. Take off your clothes and get into the warm tub. I want to wash my pretty toy from head to toe before I start playing with her.”

  Chapter 43

  Jonas

  Gloria puts Sunny on the phone and the line is suddenly filled with the sound of happy babbling.

  “Hi, Sunshine,” I whisper, taking care not to let Sarah hear me from the bathroom. “It’s Daddy.”

  “Dada!”

  My heart melts. “Hi, baby. I just wanted to say goodnight. Are you having fun with Grandma and Rosario?”

  “Rosa babbabba dada goobuh!”

  “Wow, that sounds like fun. Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you Daddy loves you. And Mommy loves you, too.”

  Gloria gets back on the line to say she’s switching the phone to Luna’s ear and I go through the exact same routine with baby number two—only compared to Sunny’s babbling, Luna sounds like she’s comparing and contrasting modern-day Egyptian religious practices to those of the pre-dynastic period—and doing all of it in German.

  Gloria gets back on the phone. “They’re both doing great, Jonas. We just finished dinner and now we’re gonna take a bath and do story-time. Don’t worry about a thing, querido. And tell Sarah not to worry.”

  “Sarah’s in a Jacuzzi tub right now with her fourth glass of champagne.”

  “Oh, well, it sounds like Sarah’s already doing a great job of not worrying.” She laughs. “It also sounds like you’d better get the heck off the phone, honey.”

  We both laugh.

  “Thanks so much, Gloria. We really needed this weekend.”

  “I know you did, honey. It’s my pleasure.”

  “Kiss them for me. Tell them I love them before you put them down.”

  “I will. Now go.”

  We hang up.

  Who the fuck am I right now? There’s only a few minutes to spare before Sarah gets out of the tub and glides into the bedroom, her skin glowing, her clit tingling, her imagination running wild about what the fuck I’m gonna do to her to extract that blood, sweat, tears, and cum I’ve demanded of her, and I’m in here secretly calling to check on the girls? If I’d had a crystal ball five years ago and glimpsed my current self, I would have smashed the fucking thing against the wall in disgust—or, even more likely, called Josh to chew him out for rigging the cruelest practical joke ever.

  Okay, I need to get my head in the game. No more fucking around. I already veered off strategy once today, even before calling home, by fucking Sarah on the plane (and giving her three shrieking orgasms in rapid succession). Was it a masterful bit of fuckery by the legendary woman wizard? Yes. Was it fucking awesome? Hell yes. Was it utterly hilarious when the flight attendant tried to say her patented farewell as we de-boarded—“We hope you enjoyed your flight, Mr. and Mrs. Faraday”—but involuntarily burst into laughter, mid-sentence? Yes, it was. But was it helpful to achieving my mission for tonight? Emphatically, no. Because to lead Sarah to the absolute culmination of sexual satisfaction, it’s quite clear she needs a slow burn all day long—delicious anticipation to the nth degree—which means I’ve got to get her close to orgasm and then pull her back, over and over, until she’s finally ready to release a day’s worth of sexual energy all at once, in a manner so violently involuntary, she couldn’t stop to think—or hold back—even if she tried. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Starting now.

  I take a deep breath and remove the bondage sheet from my suitcase. Looks simple enough. I browse the accompanying pre-printed instructions for a minute. Yep. Super easy to install and use.

  Per the instructions, I fit the four corners of the sheet onto the thick hotel mattress, pull on the drawstring at the base, and then slide my hands between the mattress and box spring to connect and tighten the security straps attached to the sides of the sheet. Voila.

  When I stand back upright, I tug on the sheet forcefully to test its sturdiness, and, I’ll be damned, it doesn’t move in the slightest. I tug again, with even more force, and it doesn’t budge. Yep, when Sarah’s tied up, she’s not going to be able to move an inch, no matter how forcefully she thrashes or tries to free herself from her bindings.

  All of a sudden, a horrific vision of my mother floods me: she’s thrashing around, whimpering, her limbs bound by course ropes. What the fuck? For a jarring, unsettling instant, I feel like I’m gonna throw up. And then the image is gone.

  Holy fuck. I sit on the edge of the bed, my stomach twisting into knots. What the fuck was that? Jesus Christ. No. I slap my face. Fuck that, Jonas. I slap myself again. No. This is simple, harmless bondage with the woman I love more than life itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I witnessed twenty-five fucking years ago from a fucking closet.

  God, I wish Josh were here right now to punch me in my stupid fucking face—and rightfully so. “Jonas” he’d say. “Would you lose your shit at the sight of a fucking goldfish if you’d been attacked by a shark twenty-five years ago? Give me a fucking break. Now go tie up your wife and fuck her like any normal, red-blooded man would gladly do.”

  I exhale. Okay, I’m good. Thanks, Imaginary Josh. You’re right. I’m being a lunatic. Not to mention a puss. Millions of people tie each other up for pleasure every day—and doing it gets them off hard. It’s time for me to experience what everyone else does and act like a normal deviant—no, wait, it’s time for me to actually be a normal deviant. It’s time for me to stop cowering in a fucking closet, once and for all. Amen.

  I shake it off. I’m a beast. No more bullshit.

  I hear Sarah moan softly in the bathroom and I’m instantly pulled out of my own head. I know that moan. That’s the lovely moan Sarah makes right before making the sound that immediately precedes The Sound—which means Sarah is in there, following my instructions, and will therefore be joining me here the bedroom in a matter of minutes.

  “When I go into the bedroom, I want you to touch yourself,” I instructed Sarah twenty minutes ago from the side of the tub. I was just finishing up the pleasurable and sensual task of washing every inch of my beautiful wife’s smooth skin. “When you touch yourself, I want you to bring yourself to the very cusp of climax and then stop. If you give yourself an orgasm,” I warned, my hands gliding over her curves, my voice calm and commanding, “I’ll punish you for breaking the cardinal rule of the Jonas Faraday Club.”

  She grinned. “How will you punish me, lord-god-master?”

  “By gagging you with my cock.”

  “Oh.”

  “So do as you’re told.”

  “Yes, sir,” she responded, her nipples visibly hardening under the warm water.

  At the sight of her obvious arousal, I had to get up and leave right then or I was gonna throw my precious strategy out the window and climb into that tub with her.

  There’s splashing noise in the bathroom and Sarah moans again, only a little bit louder this time, and my cock responds like a trumpeter swan hearing the call of its mate.

  Okay. Focus. Back to the task at hand.

  I reach into the box, pull out the four soft cuffs designed to attach to the bondage sheet, and position them onto the bed. Okay. Bondage sheet done. Easy. No problem. Pussy-ass bullshit conquered. Now for the toys.

  I poke inside the duffel bag of sex toys I’ve curated for this evening’s festivities. Well, first things first, I pull out the blindfold and put it on the nightstand. That one’s a no-brainer—every single “how to get started with bon
dage” video I watched named the blindfold as the most basic implement of beginners’ kink. But what else should I christen the good ship Dirty Girl with tonight? Well, based on my hours of research, ticklers are the next obvious choice. So ticklers it is.

  I pull three ticklers of various materials and designs out of the box and place them on the nightstand next to the blindfold. Fine. Good. Blindfold. Ticklers. Check. Check.

  I continue shifting around my bag of goodies. There are several kinds of dildos here. Pleasure balls of varying sizes and shapes. A gag. Nipple clamps. A vibrating butt plug. I run my hand through my hair. Fuck, I don’t know. It’s all the same to me. A big, fat bunch of who-gives-a-shit bullshit. Fuck. I just don’t get the appeal.

  During my hours of research into these gadgets and this culture, I realized something about myself, quite plainly: this shit doesn’t turn me on. Why am I like this? I have no idea. And I don’t fucking care. I like me. I like the way I fuck. I do it exceedingly well, thank you very much. Fuck yeah. I’m a tenth-degree black belt in Judo, motherfuckers. I go into competition against my opponent and subdue her with nothing but my bare fucking hands (and dick and tongue and fingers), which means there’s nothing to taint the purity of the art form.

  When I feel Sarah’s flesh ripple or twitch against my fingertip or tongue or cock, that’s how I know what her body wants me to do next, whether her brain knows it or not. That’s how I know whether to press harder or pull back, slow down or speed up. How the fuck would I be able to gauge any of that if I’m trying to subdue my opponent with a giant dildo?

  In the bathroom, Sarah makes the sound before The Sound, snapping me out of my spiraling thoughts. Holy shit, she’s gonna walk into this room in a minute. And I’ve got to be ready for her. Chop, chop, Jonas. Come on, motherfucker.

  Whether I’m interested in this shit or not, Sarah is. And so is half the adult population in the Western world—maybe even more than that, given recent revenue figures in the sex-toy industry—so, obviously, I’m the weird one. (Surprise!) So, fuck it, I’m gonna give the girl what she craves. And I’ll pretend it’s my fucking idea the whole time. And I’ll make her surrender in a whole new way. And that will be worth it. Nothing worth having is easy, right? Right.