Belle (Unbowed Novels Book 1)

by Liz Meldon

  “What do you think, Belle?” I asked, easing up on the vibrator so she could focus on my voice. “Shall I fuck you now? Do you think you’ve earned it?” I paused, grinning at the way she moaned over her shoulder at me, cheeks tearstained and lovely. I pursed my lips, nodding as though I spoke the language of sub-moans fluently. “Is that so? Are you sure? Does my pretty little submissive deserve my cock?”

  Her eyes widened as her head bobbed up and down. Well, rather sure of herself, wasn’t she? I pressed the vibrator to the flat base of the plug, enjoying the way her entire body tightened.

  “Yes, I agree,” I mused, my tone casual, distracted—like I wasn’t dying to fuck her ten ways from Sunday. “I suppose you’ve done rather well, earned a bit of cock in your cunt. I think you’ve even earned the right to come.”

  But she could only climax if I was balls deep inside of her. I removed the vibrator, and with it the temptation to break the second she had permission. Belle sagged, her body begging to go limp, but the leashes attached to her collar forced her to stay upright. As I tossed the wand back into my box, I entertained the idea of tasting her, of licking her through orgasm after orgasm, then fucking her to my heart’s content.

  But I couldn’t wait. I craved her tight pussy, needed to feel it ripple, dance along my shaft as she came.

  The sand parted beneath me as I settled on my knees, one hand on her hip, the other pumping two fingers in and out of her slick channel, rubbing against the teardrop-shaped plug in her ass. She bucked, half fighting, half grinding down for more, and I looped my arm around her waist and dragged her back into me. The leashes protested, their leather wincing taut as they held her in place. Her collar would dig in, merciless, constricting her windpipe. What I would have given to be able to see her face—her wide, watery eyes, her lips plumped up around the gag.

  Our playroom back home was going to need mirrors—a lot of mirrors.

  When she keened, a telltale sign that she was so fucking close, I withdrew my fingers, quickly replacing them with my cock.

  “Fuuuuck.” I hissed, long and low, as I sank into her, right down to the hilt. I hadn’t taken her with her asshole plugged before, and it made her sinfully tight. Shooting stars ripped across the insides of my eyelids as my head fell back, eyes shut, mouth open. Her cunt convulsed around me, welcoming me home. For a few moments, a high-pitched whine singing between my ears drowned out the rest of the world. The crashing waves. Belle’s moans. A creature of lust, I basked in the grasp of her wet heat, perfectly still—until she started rocking back against me.

  My eyes opened. I smirked, watching for a few moments as her red ass ground back, trying to find her own pleasure. Bratty little thing. I smacked her twice, just for the fun of it. Leaned down and flicked each nipple, too, just to hear her scream—just to remind her who was in charge.

  Then, grasping her firmly with both hands, fingers digging into her hips, I fucked her properly. Slamming into her, hard and fast, wishing I had tied a belt around her waist this time as well; I had so enjoyed having something proper to hold onto that night on the beach.

  I pounded her through her first climax some fifteen seconds later, relishing every detail of her writhing figure. The way she shook, trembled, flailed. The way she fought her restraints, squealing and screaming and babbling incoherently against her gag. She was a woman possessed.

  And I took that as a compliment.

  I fucked her into another orgasm shortly after, my teeth gritted, my hips relentless as I leaned to the side to watch her clamped tits bounce. The pain would sharpen the pleasure, make it headier, make it burn so much brighter. I dug in, shortening my strokes, ramping up the intensity. Our symphony drowned out Ixora—the waves, the birds, the palm fronds, all silenced by Belle’s cries, my grunts, and our bodies pounding together.

  My climax took me by surprise. It had been building for some time, but the explosion happened so suddenly, so viscerally, that I choked and doubled over. Hips shuddering. Skin prickling. Jaw clenched as I spilled into her. My toes, my fingers—I couldn’t feel any of them. I was just this limp, useless being at the end of an insatiable cock, and the temptation to collapse on top of her until I caught my breath was overwhelming.

  Maybe next time—when I had her this tied up, this restricted, somewhere with air-conditioning and a dozen mirrors so I could take her in as I came down from the high.

  Now, however, I forced myself to move. While I blanketed her, I did my best to keep my weight off her. The nipple clamps went first. They needed to be carefully removed, not the kind you could just rip off without doing serious damage.

  I had the other kind too, mind you, and I intended to use them very soon. Yanking them off killed, but then the pleasant afterburn of blood rushing back into place—speaking from personal experience, it was rather exhilarating.

  Belle uttered a strangled cry as I removed each of the clamps, the second one sharper, shriller, than the first. Grinning, I tossed the golden clamps and chain aside, then undid her gag. It plopped unceremoniously into the sand, falling heavy, wet, slacked in drool. Kissing Belle’s shoulders, her neck, her braid flush against her back, I listened to her suck in a few deep gasps.

  “Are you all right, Belle?”

  She hummed pleasantly, wearing a sleepy, adorable little smile when she glanced back. “Better than, sir.”

  “Good girl,” I rumbled, then kissed her shoulder as I slowly started to regain feeling across the rest of my body. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, sir.” She reached for me, and we pressed our foreheads together for a moment, catching our breath. When I retreated, straightening up on my knees, cock still buried inside her delicious cunt, she nibbled her lower lip for a moment, then giggled. “That was really fun.”

  My grin went nuclear, stretching into a lovestruck smile that hurt my cheeks. “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?”

  Just beyond, the midday sun twinkled across the water. I lifted my gaze with a heavy sigh, in need of a shower and a nap.

  The sea was calm today.

  “You know,” I mused, leaning forward again and slowly, subtly, wrapping her braid around my fist, “we still have tonight.” I unhooked her leashes, tossing them into the sand as she shivered. “Hours of it. How ever will we kill the time?”

  Sure, this was our last hurrah, but I intended to make slow, passionate love to her, without all the extras, at least once before we left Ixora. She would weep with pleasure again before the day was through.

  “Tell me,” I rasped. She stared down at the sand, her breath slowing, her expression peaceful.

  “Tell you what, sir?”

  “Tonight, after we’ve packed our bags, eaten our last supper…” I yanked her head up by her braid, savoring the way panic skittered across her features—panic giving way to desire. It glittered darkly in her royal blues, and suddenly my cock was ready for another round. I dropped down further, brushing my lips against her ear, and my smile turned wicked. “Tell me, after all that… How would you like me to fuck you, sweetheart?”

  House Rule #21: Addendum

  Belle and Sir will show how much they love each other—every day, no exceptions.

  Epilogue: Belle

  Friday, August 15th

  “Both of my girls look so pretty in their collars.”

  I hoisted up Lily, our six-month-old ragdoll kitten, as Dean strolled toward us. Dapper as ever in a crisp all-black suit, including the bowtie I’d knotted earlier, he was sex on a stick—but I wouldn’t be able to have my way with him, or vice versa, until the night was over. Torture.

  “We’re matching,” I said, grinning as I lifted my chin to show off that Lily and I were sporting near-identical collars—only Lily’s was faux crystal, virtually indestructible, and mine was Cartier.

  “Magnificent. Both of you.” Dean’s hand fell to my lower back when he leaned in for a kiss, opting for my cheek instead of my lips to spare my efforts. As prone as he was to utterly ruining my hair and makeup on our nig
hts out, which usually put us about a half hour behind schedule because we just couldn’t help ourselves, it was in poor taste to show up late to your own gallery opening—especially one that was just a short elevator ride away at the base of our new home.

  A whole lifetime had passed in the four and a half months since our sensual stint on Ixora Isle. Not only had I stopped working at Elysium permanently, but Dean had sold his shares in the Donahue empire to his father, relocated to New York, and bought us a building. Well, not us, per se. Sure, we had the penthouse all to ourselves, but he was in the process of converting the nine floors below into luxury apartments to be sold or rented out sometime in the next two years. While no one wanted to live on a construction site, the lift took us right to our front door, as it would with all the apartments courtesy of the resident’s key card, and the walls were just soundproofed enough that we barely heard the clamor of drills and hammers, of men shouting back and forth over the din.

  Soundproofed enough that none of them could hear me scream.

  Dean had fortified our playroom anyway, a special space that came with a locked door and endless toys—endless things for him to bend me over, tie me to, and string me up from. Unlike the red and black private rooms at Elysium, our playroom was pink and gold, with plenty of mirrors, and included a fully stocked mini-fridge for immediate aftercare spoiling. It was my favourite room in the house.

  Off-limits, initially, to Lily. We’d only had her a month, but anytime one of us forgot to close the door, there she was, crawling over sex furniture or batting at dangling flogger tassels.

  “Are you sure she’s going to be okay tonight?” I asked as Dean tickled our kitten’s chin. Sporting the classic ragdoll patterns across her silky soft fur, Lily lifted her face obligingly, the end of her tail flicking, then slowly closed her enormous blue eyes. We had spent the whole week getting her accustomed to her little pink leash, which was currently looped twice around my wrist.

  “She was fine at the housewarming party.” Dean checked her collar—then mine, tightening mine another notch, just enough that I could feel the bite of each diamond. “She loved meeting all the people.”

  “We didn’t have photographers then.”

  “Well, we’ll keep an eye on her,” he insisted, stroking a thumb up her tiny kitten nose, massaging between her eyes as Lily purred in my arms, limp and happy, fully living up to her breed’s easygoing demeanor. “If she seems distressed, you can bring her upstairs or put her in my office.” Sage green darted up to catch and hold my gaze. “All right, sweetheart?”

  I smiled, head cocked. “Yes, sir.”

  Since leaving Ixora, Dean and I had needed to take some time amidst all the big changes in our lives to figure out the kinkier side of our relationship. Did we want to be Dom and sub twenty-four seven? Only in the playroom? When did the house rules apply? How intense did we want to take things?

  I now had eight collars in my collection, and I never went anywhere without wearing one. We had eventually agreed to keep the wilder side of our romance in the playroom, though a very light, fluffy, fun Dominant-submissive dynamic filtered into our everyday lives, too. I was only required to call Dean sir when we were intimate, but I liked peppering it into regular conversation, just to see the shift in his demeanor.

  While I trusted Dean to keep me safe, to act with my best interests in mind, we’d had squabbles like any other couple. Quitting my job, moving in with Dean, meeting his family, him meeting my family, trying to decide what the heck I wanted to do professionally as a Real Adult—as much as I loved my new life, it had also been stressful. Luckily for me, being bound spread-eagle, whipped, tormented with a vibrator, and then pounded into oblivion with Dean’s hand around my throat was a great stress reliever.

  What had helped the most for us during the last few months was that, because of our preferred kink, Dean and I knew how to communicate with each other. To be in a successful Dom-sub relationship, you needed to talk about everything, share your limits, your fears, and much of that translated into the rest of our lives, too.

  And thank goodness, because if we hadn’t been able to talk to each other, if we couldn’t sense when the other was upset, stressed, or frustrated, this probably would have fallen apart months ago. I loved him, and Dean loved me, but relationships took more than that to succeed. With all that we had done in just four and a half months, all the change, all the professional and personal upheaval, we could have imploded. Any couple could have imploded.

  But here we were. Dressed to impress, Dean in all black, me in fitted Renaldi couture, we had survived—and I was one hundred percent confident that we were going to keep surviving, thriving, for years to come. Decades. Just me and my sir.

  And Lily, of course—who had fallen asleep, her head slowly dipping down until it face-planted on my palm. I pressed my lips together, smothering a giggle, and Dean appeared to be doing the same. When our eyes met, I cuddled Lily to my chest, and the kitten gave a little mew in protest. Dean, meanwhile, moved in to fix my hair, smoothing it down, adding more of a curl to the waves tumbling down my back. He had offered to bring in a professional for tonight, but I had no qualms in doing my own hair and makeup. All that practice at Elysium meant I could tackle the whole lot in an hour flat when I needed to.

  Still, I appreciated him doing last-minute touch-ups, his sage gaze flitting across my appearance—not coldly, but astutely, carefully, his eye for detail surfacing. Naturally, I always preferred his slow, lazy perusal of my figure, where he inspected every inch of me at his leisure, reminding me with something as simple as a look that I belonged to him.

  And he belonged to me.

  When he finished with my hair, his hand smoothed down my back, over the fitted constraints of tonight’s dress, and then stopped at my backside. Smirking, he gave it two affectionate taps, then a sharp squeeze, one that made me jump and giggle. My body clenched instinctively around the small butt plug I’d inserted at Dean’s request before I got dressed. No panties, of course; we had kept a number of the more fun house rules from Ixora.

  “If you’re a very good girl tonight,” he murmured, tucking my hair over my shoulder reverently, as though not to muss it. His lips brushed against the shell of my ear, his minty-fresh breath making me shiver. “I’ll leave this in while I fuck you.”

  He squeezed my ass again, though I knew that he would have preferred to slide his fingers between my cheeks, maybe even press against the silicon plug’s flat base. We both enjoyed the steel plugs for playtime, but this texture allowed the plug to contour to my body. Even though the dress I had chosen for tonight was restrictive, feeling much like a corset that constricted everything, the plug’s base would remain hidden for the duration of the gallery opening. A little secret, just for Dean and me.

  “Can we christen the office?” I murmured, quirking a suggestive eyebrow as I covered Lily’s ears. She reared back out from under my palm, then nibbled on the side of my hand. Dean chided her for me, and I readjusted my hold. The kitten was so good-natured that I could carry her around on my arm like one of those little yappy lapdogs. She enjoyed lounging like a sphinx, surveying her territory, before eventually falling asleep.

  Dean scooped up my free hand once our little one had settled, then kissed the top of it. “Of course we can christen the office, sweetheart. Tonight seems rather appropriate…”

  “Yay!” I nibbled my lower lip; he certainly sounded sweet, but his tone, his eyes, the way he smirked was downright filthy. I had no idea what he had in mind for our first time in his new base of operations at the back of the gallery—but I couldn’t wait.

  My giddy little giggle had Dean’s smile sharpening, and, ever the shark, he dragged an open-mouthed kiss up my throat, the hint of teeth making me squirm, then nipped at my earlobe. Heat burned deep within me, and while I’d hoped he might do more, we really didn’t have the time. Instead, Dean quickly arranged my hair once more to his liking, then shot me a wink before pushing the gold button next to the chrom
e elevator doors.

  As the lift whirred up to meet us, the nerves that had been on the fringe all day exploded, making my stomach somersault—and not in the fun way. More in the oh god please let tonight go well kind of way. Still, amidst all the anxious churning, my excitement managed to poke through, too. I was nervous for Dean, for all the hard work he had put into this place over the last several months, but I was also beyond excited. Dean’s New York gallery, the one he had tried to pitch to his parents before they shipped him off to Harvard, had had its soft opening last night for friends and family—and it had gone spectacularly.

  Not only were my parents present, along with a bevy of Dean’s Manhattanite friends, but his sister and her influential social circle had flown over from Oxford to round out the numbers. Thankfully, I had already met Adelaide the weekend before, so I knew what to expect of the youngest Donahue; we’d had a shopping day on Fifth Avenue, although I had tactfully avoided Candace’s boutique, below which sat my former place of employment.

  We had spent the day together while Dean worked overtime on getting the gallery ready. Adelaide was somewhat of a spoiled princess, but she was sweet, too, just like her older brother—and nothing like her eldest brother. She’d told me all about her plans to join an interior design firm when she finished with college back in England, and then dropped five grand on clothes in a single shop like it was nothing. Dean’s little sis was the exuberant, bubbly, outlandish one of the family, and since I’d had a bit of experience with her, I had been able to warn Mom and Dad about her in advance.

  She and her friends had been decently behaved last night, which had been a subdued affair with great appetizers and lots of laughter. Only one reporter had been invited, while the rest would be in attendance for the official opening tonight. My parents would have loved to see the place all dolled up for photos, but Dad had had a veterans’ brunch thing back in Portland this morning that he couldn’t miss.