by Chloe Cox
Whoa.
It felt totally and completely right. She felt free.
CHAPTER 15
Stella had no idea how long she laid like that, across the Sheikh’s lap. When she finally began to pay attention, she noticed the sounds of brunch had resumed, though the Sheikh was still rubbing her back. She lifted her head slightly, and he caught her.
“Don’t try to get up on your own, Stella,” he said. “Let me help you.”
He turned her over and scooped her up, holding her naked in his arms, and setting her down securely in his lap. She felt a gentle hand on her cheek.
“You did very well, Stella. I believe you will keep your promises, as I always keep mine.”
Stella half-jerked awake, wanting to look into the Sheikh’s eyes. That seemed important. His eyes were two black pools of utter calm. They looked the way she felt on the inside.
“Are you satisfied, Roman?” he said, not taking his eyes off of her.
Again, Roman laughed. “Oh, yes. No concerns. Have fun.”
Without another word, Sheikh Bashir stood, holding Stella as though she weighed nothing at all, and carried her over to a private corner booth. It hardly seemed to matter that she was still naked. It fit her mental state: raw, vulnerable, stripped of all artifice. Sheikh Bashir sat with care, wrapping her in his huge arms and holding her close. Stella’s defenses were completely down. It was almost as if she didn’t need them, cradled in his arms.
He stroked her body for a while, her cheek, her arms, her thigh, leaving her with a slight buzz that tingled over her skin. Finally, he said, “It was important to you that I came back for you, at the Alexandria Club.”
Stella murmured, “No one ever comes back. They always just leave.”
She’d said it without thinking, but her words penetrated the pleasant fog she’d been in since her spanking and woke her up. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. It was so starkly true, and so obviously a pathetic sentiment. She didn’t want to sound pathetic. She didn’t want to be pathetic.
“Shhh,” the Sheikh said, and kissed her forehead, stroking her back to a state of calm. He seemed to know he’d veered close to dangerous territory, and now he went in a different direction. “You were very good with Ms. Kincaid,” he said.
She sighed. “I volunteered with folks like her for a while.”
“That work was important to you?”
“Very.” She nodded into his chest.
“Why were you drawn to that, Stella?”
It seemed like such an innocent, easy question, that at first it didn’t set any alarm bells off at all. But so close to what he’d just asked her, so close to what she’d just said about people leaving… Stella hadn’t made the connection herself until he’d brought the two things side by side, but now it was there, indelible, undeniable. Of course there was a connection between her own shitty childhood and her desire to help people who had no one to care for them. It seemed so obvious.
Like he knew.
But it was just too big for her to wrap her mind around it. She didn’t want to leave this happy moment and think about things like that.
The Sheikh’s voice rumbled in his chest, gently prodding her along. “It was important to you, and yet you stopped?”
Stella yanked her head away from his chest, shaking it violently. She didn’t want to think about that at all, let alone tell Sheikh Bashir about it. She never wanted to think about Robert and all the stupid crap he’d pulled after the divorce ever again, if she could help it. She knew that was foolish, but this weekend, just this weekend…
Sheikh Bashir pulled her back to him, hugging her tight.
“It’s all right, Stella, nevermind. It’s all right…”
It made no sense at all that a proper Sheikh, and a Dominant, no less, could be so comforting, and yet Stella felt herself melt into him. There was something about it that was so easy, so natural, as though he read her like a book, knew all her flaws, and still only wanted good things for her. It was intoxicating. Like getting drunk on happiness. On the feeling of being loved.
Oh, Stella, she thought. Be careful…don’t read too much into it…
But she could already tell she’d ignore her own warning. She would let herself fall a little further, even though she was also beginning to understand that submitting to this man completely would involve telling him all the secrets she didn’t even want to admit to herself. Stella wasn’t quite sure she could do that, with anyone, ever again, and the idea made her sad.
Sheikh Bashir seemed to feel it in her body. He petted her hair, and said, “No, Stella, do not become overwhelmed. You are much stronger than you think. Look at what you did this morning. Rest now, and we’ll continue with our day…”
Stella looked up into his eyes. “Continue?”
He smiled wickedly. “You didn’t think this was all I had planned, did you?”
CHAPTER 16
Bashir couldn’t believe there was so much joy to be had in watching someone sleep.
He’d carried Stella back to the suite while she was still half-submerged in a sort of haze after her experience at the Black Brunch, knowing that she would need to rest for a while. The intensity of the scene, of her involvement in it, and of the things he’d sensed afterwards while holding her in his arms…well, he’d felt it, too. They’d both needed time to recharge. So he’d carried her back, fully intending to hold her until she fell asleep.
But then he found he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
He knew he should. He knew there were things he needed to attend to, phone calls to make, bridges to mend—particularly with the Creighton family, who knew Cecil was an ass, but would still need to be mollified. But Stella had curled against his chest like a kitten, and her beautiful face had relaxed into the deepest peace, and suddenly it seemed as though there couldn’t possibly be something important enough to tear him away. So he’d laid there with her, doing his best not to move or disturb her in any way, content to marvel at the depth of happiness to be found in such a simple pleasure.
The slight smile on her sleeping face gave her an expression of peaceful, gentle joy, and Bashir decided that this was probably her natural state. It contrasted painfully with the occasional twists of grief or sadness that he had observed when she spoke of her abandoned work with the elderly.
Or when she mentioned people leaving.
Both admissions were incredibly important; Bashir was certain that he’d have seen that even without all his specialized training in reading people. It was that obvious. Great hearts come with great wounds, he thought. His mother had said that often enough before she’d died, but Bashir had been too young to grasp its meaning, or to wonder why his own mother had had occasion to say it so often. What wound could have been so great as to make Stella afraid to do the work that she found most fulfilling?
Bashir could make only a rough guess. The rush report he’d commissioned on Stella Spencer gave the barest facts about her divorce and her upbringing, and Stella herself would have to fill in the gaps. If she wanted to, that is. Bashir wondered if she would believe how much they had in common, even coming from such different backgrounds. Absentee, uncaring fathers were apparently a universal problem.
She shifted against his chest, and let out a low sigh. He loathed to wake her, but he would have to soon if they were to take part in all the things that he’d planned for the day. The report on her past had been indispensable in the planning process. He was quite proud of himself for being so inventive on such short notice, but he had to be honest with himself about the purpose: he had planned a day of activities tailored specifically to Stella’s hobbies and interests, but it wasn’t just for her that he’d done it. It wasn’t just to give her a fantastic day, not just to bring her to the point where she was comfortable enough to submit to him, to confide in him, to bring them both closer so that he might finally take her in the way she deserved. It was also for him. Quite plainly, he wanted to see her happy.
He want
ed to see her come over and over and over again, of course, but he also wanted to see her simply…happy.
The realization had shaken him to his core.
He had thought, lying there with Stella sleeping in his arms, perhaps that was enough. If all I get is one weekend where we may pretend at love before we must part, perhaps that is indeed enough.
But immediately he had known that that was a lie. After the Black Brunch, with Stella lying against him, naked and beautiful and still smelling of her desire, it had tested the very limits of his self-control not to make love to her. For the first time, he’d let himself wonder why he’d put such restrictions on himself. Why, truly, had he demanded that she make such concessions, that she reveal all, submit completely, before he would take her?
Why is that still so important to me, when it started out as just another game?
Bashir feared that he knew the answer: that she already had hold of his heart, and that the best he could hope for was to even the playing field, to make sure that he could trust her fully, that his own vulnerability was at least reciprocated before they parted.
Must we part?
It had been an assumption. Perhaps one made out of defensiveness, but that did not make it an unreasonable assumption. Even if Stella proved to be everything he felt her to be, would she care for his kind of life? He did everything in his power to keep himself in the New York sphere, managing the family business interests in the Americas, and he never intended to relocate to Ras al Manas. It no longer felt like home, if it ever truly had, and his responsibilities, such as they were, were here. Grandma Kincaid was here. He could not justify moving her or leaving her. No, he would be here, for a long while. But what about after that?
How would she fare at embassy events? Would she die of boredom? Or the false roles that she would have to play? He could not see her like that. He hated it himself.
But he was being foolish, incredibly foolish, to waste time thinking of these things that would never happen. If this weekend were all he would get, he would make it the best it could be.
He caressed her sleeping cheek. “Time to wake up, Stella Spencer.”
He watched her come slowly to awareness. It was its own pleasure to see her remember the events of the morning, to see them replay themselves in her mind, projected onto her face.
Yes, she had enjoyed herself, and she wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Nor did she seem certain what to make of Roman’s presence. That was the moment when pleasure turned to embarrassment on her beautiful face.
“Tell me,” he commanded as he handed her the clothing he’d ordered for her.
“What?”
“Stella.”
“God, it’s like you’re psychic. Fine.” Adorably, she actually turned around to shed her bathrobe. “I was thinking about how I’m going to face Roman after this. And Lola. And, um, everyone else.”
He heard the chagrin in her voice without even needing to see her face.
“Do you think they see what happened this morning as some sort of debasement?” he asked, moving close behind her. “As though it’s something you should, in fact, be ashamed of?”
He smiled. He towered over her, and he could see the blush begin to crawl up her skin from over her shoulder.
“Maybe.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“No. I don’t know. I mean, objectively, if I were to describe it to someone…” She turned around to look up into his eyes, and the gesture slayed him. “But that’s not how it felt, at the time.”
“Everyone in that room this morning understands that what happened, happened on a deeper level,” he said. “They’ve all partaken in something similar. They’ve all been to the space you enjoyed afterwards.”
Now she looked down, her shoulders tensing. She was perhaps still tentative about the things she’d shared, or had almost shared, when in subspace. That was all right. These things took time.
“Finish getting dressed, Stella. We have places to be.”
She looked at the t-shirt and jeans he’d given her, and then at his own informal attire, clearly perplexed. “Yeah, where exactly are you taking me?”
Bashir only smiled. She’d see.
The ride over was remarkable for how easy it was. As soon as his driver—ever a discreet man—closed the door, Stella had snuggled up to him, burrowing under his arm without a hint of self-consciousness or affectation. Bashir tried not to think about how natural it felt, or what she looked like under those jeans, or how seductive her scent was. He was a man unaccustomed to denying himself things, except as a matter of increasing his eventual pleasure. To do it because he might need to protect himself was anathema to him, and he felt the tension inside himself increasing with every passing second.
It had almost become unpleasant by the time they approached their destination. A road crew was repaving a section of 72nd Street, backing traffic up all the way to Columbus; with some relief, Bashir pressed the intercom button.
“Miguel, we’ll get out here and walk. Come back for us at the prearranged time.”
If Bashir had been looking for some reason not to fall further in…something with Stella Spencer, if he’d been looking for some blemish, some evidence of incompatibility, he was further denied as they walked together. Stella stopped at a blinking parking meter, regarding the beat up brown station wagon that was in danger of a parking ticket with concern. Bashir watched her pat down the jeans he’d provided for her, realizing too late that she had nothing besides what he’d given her.
“Do you have a quarter?” she asked.
Bewildered, he gave her the coin and watched her buy the brown station wagon a twenty-minute reprieve. Was anyone really that conscientious? That concerned with the welfare of people they’d never meet? Bashir didn’t think he’d ever noticed a parking meter in his entire life.
She ran up to him, smiling brightly, and threaded her arm through his. “So are you gonna tell me where we’re going?”
Bashir shook his head, and allowed himself a slow smile of his own. “Though I wanted to give certain parts of you a chance to rest and recover,” he said, enjoying her now familiar blush. “I thought you might enjoy a different sort of physical activity.”
And with that, he led her inside.
~ ~ ~
“A batting cage?” Stella said, understandably surprised to find an athletic facility underground on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “A batting cage!”
She didn’t know of any in the city besides the one at Chelsea Piers, and she was reluctant to go there, knowing how often Robert used the facilities. Didn’t matter how vast they were; just the chance of running into him set her teeth on edge.
But apparently there was an actual batting cage hidden away uptown. It was bizarre. And it was the real deal. There were kids with families, young athletes, coaches—the works. The memories of her time playing softball flooded into her mind, filling her with warmth and with a competitive edge. She’d forgotten how good it felt to be really good at something. And she had been good; she’d been better than good—she’d been great. There was nothing quite so satisfying as connecting with a tricky pitch and knowing that you’d sent it flying farther than anyone thought you could. Hitting was one of the hardest things in sports, and Stella had been damned good at it.
Robert had basically refused to go to batting cages with her. He’d always insisted they do something he was better at, like squash, or golf, and in retrospect Stella realized it was because he just couldn’t handle losing to a girl. He had really been that petty.
Probably should have been my first clue, she thought ruefully.
But now Sheikh Bashir had taken her to an actual batting cage. He’d teased her, and publicly spanked her almost to the point of orgasm, and he’d held her in a way that made her feel more cared for than she could ever remember rightly feeling, and now he’d taken her to a freaking batting cage.
‘Thrilled’ wasn’t even the word. Stella was ecstatic.
&n
bsp; “How did you know?” she asked as the Sheikh returned from the front desk bearing gloves and helmets. Even wearing a batting helmet, he looked amazing. His soft white polo shirt did nothing to hide his muscular chest and shoulders, and his arms, hefting various bats, rippled with tightly coiled cords of muscle. He still looked like he could command a room. Like he could command a legion, even in a polo shirt and jeans. Stella swallowed hard.
Focus, Stella!
“Seriously, how did you know?” she asked again.
The Sheikh turned towards her, his usually stern face a mask of mocking innocence. “Whatever are you talking about?”
She punched his arm. “Come on. A batting cage? It was just a stroke of genius? Or are you actually psychic?”
She was only half-kidding. His ability to read her bordered on scary.
“I believe your impressive collegiate exploits are a matter of public record, Ms. Spencer,” he said calmly, handing her a thirty-two inch bat, exactly the right size. “If one were so inclined to look.”
Stella’s stomach flipped over at least a few times. He’d cared to look her up? Just to see what kind of date she might enjoy?
Holy moly, is this a date?
When had her wild, impulsive, scandalous weekend as a paid submissive consort morphed into a wholesome, all-American courtship?
Well, not exactly a courtship in the strictly traditional sense. Her ass still stung a little from the morning’s activities, and already her body was coming alive at the thought of what else Sheikh Bashir might decide to do to her.
Stella pressed her lips together, and tried not to look at his muscular arms.
“Do you even know how to hit, big guy?” she asked.
