by Thea Devine
MJ hesitated. “I don’t know. I need him. I can’t run my life without him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s the boss. And that’s how I want it. A strong, decisive man who runs everything—do you know how rare they are?”
“Do you love him?” Brooke asked again.
“Yes,” MJ said defiantly. Then, “Maybe. I love that he’s taken over. But that’s everything, down to the last detail, and it’s exhausting sometimes. Sex is exhausting sometimes. He just wants it all the time, and expects…Of course, I want it, too. He’s so virile, I do want it all the time, just like he does. Only not so much.”
“And he’s offered nothing?” Brooke demanded relentlessly.
“He adores me, he wants me endlessly—that’s not nothing, Brooke. He doesn’t want anyone else. I own his body, too.”
“Or he owns you.” Brooke looked meaningfully at MJ’s thrall collar.
“It’s a sex thing,” MJ said.
“But you’re at his beck and call all the time. You do whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. And he’s made you believe that you want it too, MJ—only he’s getting it all for free.”
MJ said nothing.
“You’re getting nothing, he’s getting everything.”
“I’m on his turf,” MJ shot back. “He pays for everything.”
“Does he take you out? Buy you things?”
“When did we become mercenary?”
“When we decided the guys were getting everything, and they had the idea they didn’t have to give back anything. Delia’s the only one strong and brave enough to tell a guy she wanted something in return. God, Delia. You make me ashamed of my cowardice.”
“Not me,” MJ said staunchly. “Dallan is my man, and I’m happy.”
Brooke gazed at her a moment. “Okay. But let me tell you some thoughts I’ve been having on the matter.”
“You made a list,” MJ muttered.
“Oh, you bet. Because we got hit like thunder by these unexpected guys, and I didn’t provide us with any strategies to deal with them. Both Delia and I had run-ins with unexpected men who turned into meaningless men. So this is what I thought.” She took out her Rules for the Unexpected Man and gave them out.
“Three weeks? Three weeks and then you dump them?” MJ squeaked. “Forget that, Brooke. I’m not giving up Dallan.”
“You will,” Brooke said.
MJ snorted and tore up the page. “I’m wasting my time here. I can still get home in time to have sex with Dallan. I just hope he’ll let me in the door.”
“Hey, it’s your body, your self. Just be careful how much of it you’re subsuming into him.”
MJ thrust back her chair. “You have no idea how amazing it’s been.”
Brooke stared at her pale, tired face. “Oh, yes I do,” she said softly. “I’d have given myself to that son of a bitch Hugh Steffen exactly that way, if he’d asked me to. And I wonder how long it would have taken me to realize I had to get away from him.”
MJ stalked off.
“You scared the hell out of her,” Delia said into the long silence that followed.
Brooke felt like hell. “I know. But everything she said about that man scared me. He’ll isolate her and keep her from her friends and maybe from her work, and become more and more possessive until there’s literally nothing left of her. Shit. I wish I’d never started this whole thing. I never thought any of us would be that susceptible to bastards like these guys.”
“Don’t do that, Brooke. How could you know?”
“Frank was exactly like that, wasn’t he? Doesn’t it all sound so familiar? He hasn’t begun chipping away her spirit yet, but he will—and I bet she still won’t listen to anything we tell her. You know that even better than I do.”
Delia closed her eyes and nodded. She knew. Sex was addictive with a guy like that. He made you the focus of his world, knowing you’d never had a possessive lover like that ever in your life and that you’d die for one. They traded on your fear, your need, your desperation; they fed on it, on you, until there was almost nothing left.
She blinked and opened her eyes. “We’ll save her,” she vowed. “I don’t know how yet, but we’ll save her. And soon.”
MJ had to beg him to let her in. It was too late, lunch was over, he wasn’t in the mood, she should just go back to work and he would call her later.
Finally, he’d relented and let her in. He was stark naked and highly aroused, but he wouldn’t let her near to touch him or console him over her behavior.
So she phoned the store and feigned some disaster, then she sat gingerly on the sofa arm and watched him prowl back and forth in front of the window and around the sofa, waiting for the moment to have her say.
“So…” he said some twenty minutes later, gesturing to his engorged penis. “This is what you wasted this afternoon. What was so important?”
“It was stupid,” MJ said. “Our friend hooked up with someone who really wanted to have sex with her, and she rejected him. He had a place, he made his intentions clear, and she rejected him.”
“Bitch,” he muttered. “Women are all bitches.”
“And she wanted to know if she’d done the right thing.”
He paused, suddenly still. “Do you think she did?”
“Dal-lan. He went to all this trouble to find her because he couldn’t stop thinking about her after they hooked up. She agreed to meet him, so he set up a private place where they could be comfortable and have sex. And she went there with him, she let him take her, and then she rejected him.”
He went very, very still. Then: “Absolute bitch whore. All women are bitch whores.” He came around to where she perched and speared his hands through her hair. “Except you. My loyal cunt understands all about a man’s penis, doesn’t she? That’s why you came back this afternoon, MJ. Because you have your own man to fuck you whenever he wants you.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I couldn’t take that talk another minute, knowing you were here, and I could be naked with you.”
“Yet when I told you I didn’t want you to go to this lunch, you were reluctant to follow my wishes. It turned out just as I said. I’m hard for you and you cut short your lunch, and it’s wasted because I just don’t feel like fucking.”
“Whatever you want, Dallan. I made a mistake, seeing those…those bitches. Anyone who rejects a man that way can’t be a friend of mine.”
“You don’t need any other friends but me, MJ. And my penis.”
“You’re absolutely right, Dallan. You’re my best friend and I wasted our sex time together and I had to get back to you as soon as possible to make it up to you.”
He made a low growling sound.
“I’m not going to see them again. I made that clear.”
“Good.” He stood in front of her and stroked himself. “You made the right choice to come back to me sooner than later.” He stroked harder, sliding hard and rough until a pearl of semen oozed from the tip of his shaft. “And you finally understand that. So you can lick that. Just that drop. And we’ll say my afternoon cum hasn’t been wasted since you learned something important today.”
Brooke was having a crisis of conscience. “We know nothing,” she told Delia two days later, when they met after hours at Park Blue for a good bottle of wine and some food from the small plate menu. “There’s something I’m missing, and until I figure it out I’m declaring a moratorium on the Mistress Club.”
Delia shook her head. “You’re just upset about MJ.”
Brooke nodded. “She’s never had that kind of attention before. She used to be tall and gawky and flat-chested and ignored; now here’s a sophisticated older man panting for her body. What woman wouldn’t give herself over to that kind of possessive lust?”
“She’ll figure out what’s really going on,” Delia said. “She’ll look in the mirror one day. She’s too thin, too pale. I was shocked by how she looks. She’ll see it; she’ll get it; she’ll break away.”
“God, I hope so. And we need a new strategy, or we’re going to be dragged right down with her. These are strong men with hard needs, and we have to learn to deal with them.
“The problem is, they can have anyone they want. I was flattered when Hugh Steffen called. He looked at me like he wanted to devour me, but all he wanted was a young female body to spend himself in. So how do you separate the spunk spenders from the splurge spenders?”
“We have to train ourselves to remain distanced. This is not for love, and it’s not forever,” Delia said.
Brooke nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. Listen, I had a thought.”
“Ye-e-e-s?”
“Belly-dancing classes.”
Delia burst out laughing. “How do you go from controlling men to belly dancing?”
“What’s more seductive than undulating moves that are as explicit as sex? We can learn how to entice, how to keep our distance until we get what we want…and it’ll tone and exercise our bodies, besides.”
“Only you would think of that,” Delia said, clapping her hands. “I love it. Where? When?”
“There are belly-dancing classes at the Broadway Dance Center, during the week and Saturdays.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. So let’s start tonight.”
Tonight was a deprivation. MJ knew it because Dallan wanted her on her hands and knees in the most subservient way.
She didn’t care. Whatever way he wanted her tonight was fine. She climbed onto the edge of the bed, following his directions. He wanted to stand behind her, to just jam himself into her and let his orgasm rip.
But I didn’t reject you…
The thought dissipated as he mounted her forcefully and the pleasure of his possession radiated through her. She lived for this, she existed for this—this hard-driving, hard-pumping lust that he expended so violently in her body. Her, not some voluptuous bottle blonde or mindless bimbo. Her.
He held her bottom tight; he thrust at her body in short, hard, pistonlike bursts, grunting in rhythm with his movements. One-two-three-four…MJ found herself counting…two-three-four…coming…She could feel him stiffening deep inside her, getting ready, hotter, harder—one last ramrod thrust—one and two—and he blasted his thick cum into her.
He stood there, still grasping her buttocks, still embedded, still as a tree.
He was a tree—strong, tall, thick, and mighty, every inch of him everywhere. MJ couldn’t move. Her nipples grazed the bedcover. Her body felt fragile with emotions that would crack wide open if she moved.
“This is nice,” he said. “I like this. It’s just me, my penis, and your cunt.”
MJ winced. She felt panicky, she didn’t deserve this. What could she say that would make him enfold her body with his again?
“If a man just concentrates on cunt, he’s much better off,” he went on. “What else does a man need but a tight, moist place to occupy? Of course, there’s no such thing as nice cunt. If a man could just buy himself one without all the crying, complaining, and rejecting, he’d be a lot happier. But they’re attached to bitches, so what can a man do?”
“He can have me,” MJ whispered. “He can have me any way he wants me.”
He rocked against her, flexing himself inside her as if he were flexing his power. “Except when your bitch friends make demands.”
Exhaustion. “That’s over.”
“We’ll see.”
“Dallan…”
“Or maybe that fucker should have been more forceful with your friend. A man doesn’t let a cock tease blow him off.”
“No. She shouldn’t have done that.”
He undulated his hips, pressing deeper. “What should she have done, MJ?”
She took a deep breath, girding herself to pacify him. “She should have made an accommodation with him. He probably would have discovered she wasn’t as good as he thought. Brilliant of him to arrange their assignation where he did. She’d be forced to leave if he’d rejected her.”
“You do understand a man’s penis pride, MJ. At least, some stranger’s penis pride. It makes a man wonder. And I can’t fathom what you understand about mine after this afternoon’s debacle.”
“But I learned my lesson, Dallan. I’ll never abandon our sex again, I promise.”
Are you sure you want to make that promise?
WHAT?
“How do I know you mean it?”
How do know?
WHAT AM I THINKING?
She knew what it was—it was Brooke’s comments, and Delia’s strength in telling Bill what she wanted. But she couldn’t picture saying those things to Dallan.
Things like: We’re together morning, noon, and night, why can’t I just move in? Why can’t we go out to dinner? Why am I not happy, when I always wanted a commanding man to take charge of things? When I love giving myself wholly to someone much stronger than me?
Why are you always punishing me?
STOP IT!
She took a deep breath and forced herself back to the moment. She was on her hands and knees on Dallan’s bed with his shaft still embedded in her. Just what she yearned for, longed for. A big, strong man with a thick, hot root to fill her in all ways and take her away.
She was a mistress, the lover of a man who liked to be in control, who possessed her in every way imaginable and whose jealousy was proof of how much in thrall he was to her body.
Or how gullible I am.
WHAT?
Get back to him now. Answer him.
God, this was tiring.
“I mean it, Dallan. Tell me what to do to prove it. Anything, I’ll do anything.”
He slowly withdrew his shaft from her hot tunnel, yet another deprivation. “I’m glad you feel that way, MJ. Actually, I rather thought you would.”
Chapter Seven
She was not made for belly dancing, Brooke thought disgustedly. There was something about the way you had to undulate your hips that she just couldn’t fathom when she was vertical.
Not that she was the only one. There were a dozen other women who couldn’t get the rhythm or the ripple. But that was small comfort when Delia immediately swirled and shimmied like she’d been born to it.
“Don’t give up,” Sharla, the instructor, encouraged. She was barefoot, dressed in a gauzy costume festooned with bells and beads, and she remained enthusiastic in spite of the fact that half the class was dancing off rhythm. “It’ll come, it’ll make sense. Practice at home.”
And on they went, twirling and swirling as best they could to the exotic rhythm of the insinuating music.
“Why didn’t someone tell me?” Delia demanded breathlessly when the class ended.
“Me, too,” Brooke groaned. “I never should have started this. How do you get your hips to bobble like that?”
Delia grinned. “I’ve got bobbly hips. You know what? We need one of those tapes, so we can practice at home.”
“Terrific idea. Then I’ll never have to humiliate myself in public again.”
“We’re not coming back?”
Brooke looked at her face, alight with her exertions and something more—enjoyment, accomplishment, arousal? “Sure—Saturday.”
“Good. You’re right, this was a great idea.” Delia bobbled her hips.
“Show-off.”
Delia grinned. “I’m so flaunting it.”
They walked in silence for a while along Broadway, still crowded and teeming on the cusp of midnight.
“Delia…”
“What?”
“Try to talk to MJ.”
They came to the corner where they had to separate.
“She’s not answering anything, not her cell, not texting. Nothing,” Delia said.
“I know. Me neither. Shit.”
“Yeah. I keep trying, I don’t know what else to do.”
“Short of kidnapping her—which is not a bad idea,” Brooke said.
“You’ve just got harems on your mind. She’ll figure it ou
t,” Delia said. “Didn’t I?”
They hugged and Delia turned east and grabbed the first cab that turned the corner. Brooke waited until the taillights were out of sight, then slowly walked to her apartment, feeling a pinprick of hope.
Saturday’s routine was for touch-ups and takeout, clothes and culture, manicures and man-watching. All the good stuff that Brooke loved about living in Manhattan. Everything she looked forward to after a week of problem solving at the office.
By Saturday, she was also feeling a little less upset about MJ and by her own experience with Hugh Steffen.
“Maybe we just have to get through some of these meaningless men to prepare for the men we’re meant to be with,” she told Delia after another belly-dancing class that afternoon. “We just have to remember that this is not about falling in love.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Delia said slowly.
“No. That is totally against the Mistress Code.”
Delia shrugged. “I’m not so sure; I just won’t argue with you about it. I’m feeling pretty powerful after my showdown with Bill.”
“We need to raise a toast to that. We’re pretty near the river. How about we go to the boat basin café for a drink?”
“Sure.” As they headed to Riverside Drive, Delia added wistfully, “I just wish MJ were with us. I tried to get her this morning, about the tenth time I’ve called her at work and on her cell. This is ridiculous. Why can’t she be with us?”
MJ was tucked in Dallan Baines’s arms, wrung out from yet another draining bout of sex, while he lay sound asleep, finally worn down by lust.
Thank goodness.
What? I didn’t mean that.
Yes, you did.
The familiar weariness swamped her. It usually crept up after sex, when she was depleted, tired, raw from penetration, and emotionally exhausted from trying to pacify all Dallan’s irritations.
But he’s perfect. He wants me. He’s mine.
Is he?
Shit—stop that.
If anything, he’d become more possessive, more demanding. Wanting things, different things, new things, things that involved her body—like dressing her naked torso in leather strips, cuffing her wrists and ankles and then spreading her and holding her captive as proof of her devotion to him.
