"Party?"
"No. I didn't really do parties. High school graduation."
"Mack's drink?"
"Yeah."
I had four Jacks and Cokes. Byron had two scotches. And then we were descending. While my stomach did the in-my-throat thing and my hand practically crushed the bones in Byron's... he was right. It was over. I had gotten through it. It sucked. I didn't like it. But I was fine. We were on land again and, after we picked up our bags, I would be on my way to a beach.
While I hadn't been expecting to stay at some random hotel chain, I hadn't exactly anticipated the giant, sprawling resort we pulled up to half an hour later. "What?" Byron asked as I stood beside the car and looked at the immense white building sitting on its own private stretch of beach.
"We come from such different worlds," I said, shaking my head.
"Not really. I was poorer than you growing up, babe. You get used to this," he said, gesturing toward the hotel as the staff removed our luggage from the rental car, "but I don't think you ever fully shake that feeling you're having right now. Sure as fuck hope I never do. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of it all?" he asked, putting a hand at my lower back and leading me into the lobby. It was, as one might expect of a beach front luxury hotel, very white and blue color-scheme-wise. It very carefully toed the line between beachy and nautically cheesy.
Our suite was much the same. There was a giant bed covered in white, white walls, white sheers on the windows that opened to a large balcony, and just a hint of blue in the accents around the room.
"I think this is bigger than my apartment back home," I laughed, shaking my head at the ostentatiousness of it all. I turned when I didn't hear a response to find Byron shooting off a text on his phone.
"Alright. I have my first meeting in about two hours. So go run your ass down to the gift shop and pick out a bathing suit," he demanded, still not looking up at me. "Charge it to the room. If I find out you paid out of pocket, babe, there will be consequences."
"Consequences?" I repeated, smiling a little at the idea.
"Might not have had a lot of room in my bag for fun stuff. But I sure as fuck had room for a couple belts. And this time, babe, they won't be used for tying your hands up. And I'm pretty sure sand, salt water, and chlorine wouldn't feel so great on a sore ass." He looked up when he said the last part, eyes twinkling enough to take the sting out of the words.
"Maybe I don't want to get a bathing suit," I teased, trying to hold back the smile I felt.
"Babe..."
"I mean I can think of worse things than a sore..."
The rest of my sentence got cut off when his hand reached out, snagging the waistband of my pants, and dragging me the two feet toward him. My whole weight crashed up against him and I had to put my hands on his chest to brace myself. His hand, however, did not release me; it stayed at the front of my pants for a long minute before plunging inside and finding my heat, raking over it, claiming it, drawing an unexpected moan from me. "Fucking wet just at the thought of me using my belt on you. You know how fucking hot that is?" he asked, moving his finger upward and circling over my clit. He worked me fast and unrelenting until I was clinging to him to keep my feet, my sex clenched tight. But then I suddenly lost his fingers; his hand left my pants and panties. "Now go get a suit. If you're quick, I can fuck you before my meeting."
With that, I was pushed toward the door and I numbly led myself toward the elevators and went to the ground floor with my sex pulsating with unfulfilled need. I was barely aware of the suit I picked at first, but as I paid, I decided it was a fair compromise. It was the one-piece I wanted in black, but it had a fancy mesh cutout on each side from the hip to the underside of the bust. It was as close to a two-piece as I was going to get.
"Alright, let's see it," Byron said when I walked in the door. I moved inward to find him lounging on the bed shoes and jacket off. He was putting the phone on the nightstand and as soon as I came into view, his gaze was on me. I moved to reach into the bag and he shook his head. "Nope. Put it on."
"Byron..."
"Fuck off," he laughed. "I've seen you naked in every fucking position. No way are you pulling that shy shit back up. Put it on. Let me see." I grimaced at him which only made him smile wider, then went into the bathroom to slip into it. "Burning daylight," Byron called and I smiled at my reflection. I guess it really said something that, even when he was bossy or grumpy, or downright surly, I still found a reason to smile because I got to be around him.
"Keep your panties on," I called back as I turned to the door and opened it.
As soon as I came into view, he sat up, moving to sit off the edge of the bed. "Good for you," he said, eying me slowly before settling on my face.
"Good for me?"
"I half-expected you to go with the bikini."
"Why?"
"Because it was what I wanted."
"I'm really not that big of a doormat, Byron," I said, knowing there had certainly been many times in my life where that could have been said about me. I had always excused it as family obligation, as looking out for someone who obviously wasn't capable of looking out for themselves. But in my relationships especially, I had always taken more of a lead role, often being the one to end things when I felt they were going south, cutting ties when it was time, saving all the useless arguments, the resentment, the anger. I certainly never just... wore what boyfriends told me to wear.
"I didn't say you were a doormat," he said, shaking his head. "That wasn't even my line of thinking."
"Then why would I buy the suit you wanted?"
"To save us an argument. Look how far that's gotten us," he smiled. He motioned me forward and stood suddenly, twisting, grabbing me at my hips, and tossing me on the bed. I landed with a quiet oomph followed by a laugh as I moved to push myself up onto my knees. "Know one perk to a one-piece bathing suit?" he asked and I felt my belly flip at the devil I saw in his eye.
"What's that?"
He moved to the edge of the bed and reached out, rubbing my shoulders slightly. Then his fingers snagged the straps and in one swift motion, I was completely bare to him. His hands reached out, massaging my breasts, working the peaks into painful nubs. "Easy access," he said unnecessarily. "I don't have time for the belt right now, babe. But we'll get to that over the weekend. Right now, why don't you be a good girl and ride me?" he suggested, dropping my breasts and moving to sit down on the bed, unfastening his pants and dragging his cock out. I moved off the side of the bed to get out of the swimsuit, stumbling twice as I watched him stroke his already hard cock, making it stand even more erect.
My sex clenched as he held an arm out to me when I moved toward the bed. I moved to straddle him, his hand settling on my hip as I lifted up and he held his cock for me so I could slowly slide down onto it. He stretched me to the point of fullness, settling in deep and I leaned down and pressed my forehead to his on a sigh.
"So wet for me," he growled, voice low and sex-rough.
"Always," I whispered back, opening my eyes just in time to see something cross his face. I couldn't quite place it, but it was something deeper than I usually saw there. And, well, Byron was deep as the freaking ocean at any given time so that was really saying something.
But before I could decipher it, his hand went to my ass cheek, squeezing slightly. "Ride me, Prue," he reminded me gently.
Then, look gone, I had no choice but to follow instructions. I rode him slow and steady at first then wilder and erratic as I felt my orgasm build. "Lift up," he told me and I shifted my hips up slightly as he started thrusting upward into me, fast, unrelenting, not giving me even a couple of seconds to try to catch my breath between moans. "Come for me, babe," he growled, his voice barely audible and I knew he was close. I slammed my hips down as he thrust upward and I collapsed down on him on a choked cry as the pulsations built and spread outward until my entire body felt enveloped in the sensation.
I came down sl
owly, feeling him fill me with his release, realizing that it had never been like that before with anyone else. No other boyfriend, no matter how much I thought I loved them, how much of a connection we had, how good the sex was, I never felt like I got torn apart and put back together when they were inside me. I never felt quite so fully and completely present as I did with Byron.
He patted my thigh and I knew him well enough to know it was gentle encouragement for me to climb off. I grumbled, nuzzling into his neck deeper. "You have time," I objected, not sure how long we had been having sex, but pretty sure two hours hadn't passed since we'd checked-in.
"Unfortunately, I need some of that for travel," he said and did genuinely make it sound like he was as disappointed as I was.
"Oh, okay," I said, lifting off slowly then moving to the bathroom.
By the time I came back, Byron was dressed, looking completely put-together like he'd spent the whole day at his desk, not on a plane then having sex in a hotel room. My bathing suit was hanging from his fingers. "Put it on. Go down to the beach. Get a tan. Take a swim. Enjoy yourself a little, okay? I'll be back around seven." I took the suit, nodding, when I suddenly felt my chin snagged between his thumb and forefinger. "You gonna kiss me goodbye or what?" he asked, shocking me enough to make me jerk slightly. But he used his fingers to pull my face closer to him and our lips pressed together and the sweetness there was enough to make my lips greedy, wanting it to last forever. It ended far too soon and he ran a finger down my cheek. "Should get some interesting tan lines with this," he said, handing me my bathing suit.
With that, he was gone, leaving me to wonder what it meant that we were suddenly in 'goodbye kiss' territory.
But I threw on my suit and thought about that while getting silly tan lines on the beach.
That weekend was like a dream, all sepia-toned beautiful, blurred around the edges. Perfect. We ate together. We fell asleep and woke up together. We sat on a beach together. He might have copped a feel or two, making me squeal and look around frantically, making sure no one was watching, and we might have had wild, kinky, belt-wielding sex, but that didn't detract from the overall sweetness of it. He put his hand at my lower back. He held my hand.
The trip back to the airport wasn't wrought with the expected anxiety of the flight home, but an overwhelming sadness that it was over and the, maybe a bit presumptuous, but inescapable feeling that what we found was going to disappear as soon as we landed back in Jersey.
I leaned into his shoulder and his arm went around me as we lifted off.
He likely thought it was to ease the anxiety.
But, in reality, it was me trying to hold on just a little while longer.
SEVENTEEN
Byron
Something happened on the flight home. I couldn't tell you what it was, but something came over Prue that hadn't been there over the weekend, or perhaps at all since I had known her. Maybe just briefly, the night I forced her to confront her father. Sadness. It emanated from every pore, it seeped into the air around her until she had an aura of melancholy so thick you could choke on it.
Rack my brain as hard as I might, I couldn't figure out what the fuck I had done to warrant that reaction.
I had thought the trip had been a success. It had done what I had intended- gotten Prue out of the mindset of being indebted to me, working for me, of trying to find the balance between those things and whatever-the-fuck was happening between us. It didn't take a genius to see that Prue, like her very name suggested, thought every single little thing through. She weighed pros and cons. She considered all possible outcomes. It was a side effect of growing up in an uncertain household with no one truly solid to lean on. I understood that, having had shitty parents myself. And while I did the opposite of Prue, clinging to her father like it was all there was for her in the world, and left mine behind without a thought, I could see how it happened for her. She was softer, sweeter, while I was a little shit growing up, constantly getting into trouble, always pissing off my old man. I used rebellion to cope while she turned to enabling.
And from the minute I got her on that plane, shaking like a leaf and clinging to me like a life vest, to right before we walked out of the suite at the hotel, things had gone to plan. She had relaxed. The tension that was ever-present in her shoulders fell away. She didn't watch me like she expected something unexpected or bad to happen at any given moment. She laughed and smiled and she even teased me. I caught her when I came in from my meeting on the second day to find her dancing around the bedroom to a fucking Disney song blaring from her cell phone. It was the most at-ease I had ever seen her outside of post-sex exhausted snuggling. And even when she spun around and saw me, she didn't shrink back into herself like I had expected. She had frozen almost comically for a second, then burst out laughing and demanded I not judge her because, "Megara was the most under-appreciated Disney female of all time."
See, I was honest when I told Aaron she wasn't an obsession. I was also right when I told Prue that I had absolutely noticed her and considered her. But it hadn't gone beyond that.
It all changed when she walked into my office with her head raised, sounding as authoritative as her little frame would allow. I'd been prepared for a showdown with Mack. It had been a long time coming. I'd had Aaron talk to him once. I'd had one of my less scrupulous men corner him outside his car one night. He'd proved himself stubborn and utterly unafraid of consequences. My guess was because he was very rarely the one who had to deal with them. Then seeing him walk into my office with his daughter, she being the one to do all the talking, try to set up a payment plan, yeah, it just confirmed my suspicions.
See, when you worked in the business I did, it was an important skill to learn to size up people as quickly as possible. Mack, despite letting his daughter foot his bills, loved her. It was obvious in the way he spoke to me, in the way he looked at her. So I figured the best way to put a fire under his ass was to threaten what he held dearest. While the death threat wasn't wholly empty, it was truly a last resort. My uncle taught me the necessity of brute force once in a while. But it was a final option. It was something you did when someone threatened to bring your empire down. I didn't want to kill Mack. Hell, I actually almost liked the guy until he started stealing from me. He was a hard man to be angry with. I guessed that was why his daughter found it so easy to forgive him.
Taking Prue had been an on-the-spot decision. It had been impulsive. But as each minute passed after I did it, I was more and more satisfied by it. Maybe Mack was okay with his daughter paying his bills or bailing him out of jail or whatever the fuck she had done over the years, but I seriously doubted he'd be comfortable with having her enslaved to a man he knew enough about to fear.
And it had been the right choice in the end.
Not because it worked for Mack, but because it worked out for me.
Obviously that shit did nothing for him because he was back at my tables just a couple days later.
But I got Prue.
Granted at first, I was just enjoying pushing her around, pushing her buttons, seeing how far she would let me take it before she pushed back. Which was way too fucking far in my opinion. Any woman in her right mind would have told me to take a flying leap off a tall building over half the shit I pushed on her.
That night on the couch being a prime case and point. I'd wanted it. She'd wanted it. It was like fucking music to hear her come alive then come just by my hand. But the shit I said after? Yeah, she should have kicked off one of her heels and fucking chucked it at me. She didn't.
And, well, it became my mission to find that backbone of hers.
Then, close to her for reasons both sexual and personal, I got to see just how repressed she was, how much she denied herself for the sake of others, mostly just her father.
And it became another mission to get her out of her shell, to force her to live her life on her own terms for a change.
Why?
Yeah, that
was the fucking question of the century.
I gave a shit. That was why.
But why I gave a shit? That was a mystery. I generally gave a shit enough about women to foot the bill for dinner and make them come before I even thought about coming. But that was about it. I had too fucking much going on in my life to let it go beyond that, a physical need getting met.
At first, I blamed her constant presence. She was always there. It was easy to think about her more than some random chick I saw at a bar. Her strutting around (or more accurately, stomping around) in the uniform I picked for her certainly didn't help. Because, at the beginning, of course that was all it was. She was beautiful, gorgeous in the way that she honestly had no fucking clue how attractive she was, all legs and hair and those light blue eyes, and a voice whose sound I swear went right to my dick. It wasn't long, though, before it became more than just that.
I didn't like Matt looking at her.
I didn't like the way she second-guessed herself.
I didn't like to see her wasted talent in the name of practicality.
Then, once I was inside her that first night in the cabana, yeah, she was mine. There was no other way to put it. She came alive for me. She sparked and exploded. And it was the most fucking incredible thing I'd ever seen in my life.
From there, it was like a virus, like something that worked its way through my system until there was no distinguishing it from what was there before, until it had fucking infected my DNA.
I made her bake for me. I boosted her confidence. Not that she should have needed it, seeing as she literally made the best desserts I had ever had, and, let's just say... I'd had a lot of fucking baked goods in my life. I had one of the girls in my office design business cards for her. I planned a party for the sole God damn purpose of exposing her to what was possible for her future.
Then, yeah, there was the play.
Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of women who were willing and eager to meddle in being submissive, to enjoy pain and pleasure. There were women who could only get off with a man being dominant with them. I'd had my share of those women over the years.
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