by Marie Force
I turn to face him, looping my arms around his neck. “It’s okay.”
“What’re you talking about now?”
“It’s okay to admit that you like me and that you like being with me. That doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad employee or a bad lawyer. It makes you human.” Oh my God, I love that fierce feral look of his. He’s clearly not accustomed to women who force him to confront his feelings. Or, maybe it’s just that he’s not used to having feelings. That’s probably more like it, and we have that in common. I’m not sure why I’m so calm in the face of these overpowering feelings, but the more wound up he gets, the calmer I become.
“I thought there was going to be food. I was promised food.”
I kiss his pouty lips and step back to salvage dinner. I’m sure the pasta will be overdone and the carbonara was perfect an hour ago. But how can I be bothered caring about such trivial things when I’ve got much bigger things to be concerned about. Such as how am I going to live until his wounded penis heals and we can get down to serious business.
The carbonara is good—seriously fantastic. Or maybe it’s just that I’m famished and it’s food. No, that’s not it. It’s that good. And so is she. Fuck my life. I blame Connor. If he hadn’t kicked me in the junk, we wouldn’t be here right now eating her delicious pasta while I try to pretend that she hasn’t burrowed completely under my skin in the last twenty-four hours.
It started long before then, my blasted conscience reminds me, that fucking pain in my ass. I can’t recall exactly when I realized that every time she was in the room, I was drawn to her, even as I told myself I shouldn’t be.
I take a bite of chicken that melts in my mouth.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asks.
The question startles me, and I debate whether I should lie or tell the truth. I go with the truth. “Once.”
“What happened?”
What didn’t happen? “Didn’t work out.”
“I’ve only been in love once, too.”
Don’t ask. Don’t ask. “What happened?” I take a sip of crisp white wine from the Quantum vineyard that I opened to have with dinner.
“I don’t know yet. I’m waiting to see how it’ll work out.”
I choke on the wine. Son of a bitch. What the hell is she saying? You know what she’s saying. Shut the fuck up!
She jumps up and smacks me on the back. “Breathe.”
I’ve got wine in my sinuses. And let me tell you, that’s almost as much fun as needles in the penis. When I can breathe again, I hold up a hand to fend her off. “I’m okay.” I blow my nose and wipe my eyes, which burn because… wine.
“She must’ve done a real number on you,” she says after we resume eating.
“Who?”
“The one you were in love with.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn’t.
“The possibility of me being in love with you makes you choke.”
“You’re not in love with me.”
She laughs. “You wish you could control how I feel. That’d make everything easier for you, wouldn’t it?”
I concentrate on shoveling food into my face so I won’t say something that makes this worse, if that’s even possible. She is not in love with me. She’s nursing a crush. She likes the orgasms. Hell, I do, too. That’s all this is. Leave it to a woman to turn sex into love. “You don’t even know me.”
“I love how you keep saying that, and P.S., I know you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She sits back in her chair, crosses her arms over breasts that I now know are perky and supersensitive. “What don’t I know?”
“That I like it rough and kinky.”
Goddamn if her eyes don’t glitter with interest and arousal. “So? Is that supposed to be a turn-off? If so, it had the opposite effect. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
I shake my head and release a gruff laugh. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. If you did, you’d run for your life.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
“Yes! If you had any sense, you’d be scared.”
“Well, I’m not, so what else you got?”
“That ought to be enough.”
She rolls her eyes, gets up and takes both our plates to the sink to begin cleaning up the kitchen.
What is wrong with her? I tell her I’m a kinky fuck who likes it rough, and she just rolls her eyes and goes on with her life like that doesn’t matter? “Do you even know what it means to be with a guy who’s kinky?”
“I know enough.”
“No, you don’t.” She doesn’t have the first fucking clue.
“How do you know I don’t? You’re not the first guy I’ve ever dated or fooled around with.”
Why is it that the thought of her fooling around with other guys makes me want to pound something—namely the other guys she’s fooled around with? I can’t allow myself to think too much about why that is, or I might be forced to admit that she’s gotten deeply under my skin, where I most definitely do not want her to be.
“And stop glaring at me. I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish with all the glaring and snarling, but that doesn’t turn me off you either.” She soaps up a dishcloth and wipes down my countertops and stove, and then loads the dishwasher. “Do you have storage containers somewhere? There’s enough left over for another meal.”
“Bottom drawer.” This would be a good time to tell her that she shouldn’t bother to learn her way around my kitchen. She’s not going to be here again. That’s where I made my first mistake—letting her in last night and again tonight. If she wasn’t here, she couldn’t be under my skin.
She stores the leftover food in the fridge and washes the pans by hand.
The entire time, my gaze is glued to her. I gorge on the sight of her when there’s no one around to see me staring and when her back is turned to me so she doesn’t know either.
She’s totally not my type. I like curvy women who have some meat on their bones. Leah is tall and lean and spare in the curves department, in other words, not my type. And yet… Here I am gorging on the sight of her, watching the way she moves and turned on once again by the hint of sexy pink cheeks. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I don’t want to like her or want her, and yet I’m staring at her. Again.
It occurs to me that I should’ve offered to help clean up since she did the cooking. If she hadn’t been so matter-of-fact about my kinkiness, perhaps my brain would’ve come to that conclusion before she was nearly finished. I’m a dick. But I already know that. It’s probably good for her to figure that out before too much longer.
When she’s finished, she dries her hands on a dish towel that she folds in half and hangs over the door handle on the stove. In eight years of living here, it’s never once occurred to me that I could hang a towel on that handle and that it would give the kitchen a homey, lived-in sort of vibe.
“Do you want me to go?” she asks, again so blunt and matter-of-fact when I’m much more accustomed to women who’d do whatever it took to stay, even if it was clear I wanted them to leave.
“You don’t have to.” Yes, she does. She needs to go so things can get back to normal around here.
“Maybe I should anyway. You’re in a mood.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” She stares me dead in the eye in that honest, unflinching way of hers that makes me feel ashamed of myself for being so much less than her. “Look, I like you. I haven’t made any secret of that. This was fun tonight, but I don’t want to be here if I’m not wanted.”
“I believe there was ample evidence of the fact that you’re wanted earlier.”
She shrugs. “That was awesome, but since then, you’ve been kinda… bitchy.”
I’ve never met anyone like her, and I know a lot of people. There’s not an ounce of pretense or artifice about her. If I’m being honest with myself, and I a
lways try to be, there’s something so fucking refreshing about her that gets to me. I stand and go to her, wrapping an arm around her waist and jerking her toward me. “Bitchy?” I ask in my most sinister tone, the one that has no effect whatsoever on her.
She looks me dead in the eye, fearless and gorgeous. “Yep.”
“Telling a Dom he’s bitchy can get a little sub in a lot of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” she asks, her eyes glittering with excitement again. Most people have a “tell” or two. Leah’s entire face is a tell. It provides a direct channel to her innermost feelings, and knowing she feels that way about me…
“The kind that makes it hard for her to sit for a week.”
She gets very close to my face, so close her nose is nearly touching mine. “You. Are. Bitchy.”
I go from not hard to hard enough to pound nails in the flash of an instant, and holy shit, that hurts.
“I want to change my safe word.”
“To what?”
“Bitchy. As in you are bitchy when you don’t get your way.”
I don’t want to laugh or smile, but she makes me do both. A lot. Another thing to think about later, after I show her who’s boss in this relationship or whatever this is we’re doing. It’s not a relationship. It can’t be that because I don’t want that. But I do want her, badly enough that I might defy medical advice and fucking have her before I die from too many erections. If I have her, perhaps things down south will settle down enough that he can actually heal.
As I carry her into the bedroom, I remember that I’d intended to make her leave, and here we are back in the bedroom, where I’m about to teach her a lesson about talking back to one’s Dom. What’s it they say about best laid plans? Laid is the keyword here.
I stand her up next to my bed and strip her naked.
She participates by raising her arms when I tell her to. Kneeling before her, I flatten my hands over the backs of her legs and up to squeeze her ass, and yes, it’s not lost on me that I’m on my knees before her rather than the other way around. But as I breathe in the sharp scent of her desire, I can’t bring myself to care about what I should be doing. Not when everything about this feels so good and, fuck me to tears, it feels so right.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
But this… This is happening.
Chapter 10
Seeing him on his knees does something to me. My heart pounds and my own knees go weak when he touches me with such reverence. And yet, I can still sense the conflict raging within him. He wants me. But he doesn’t want to want me.
I run my fingers through his hair while I wait to see what he’ll do. This was supposed to be about punishment, but it feels far more like pleasure than punishment. I love pushing his buttons and watching his eyes flash with arousal and maybe a hint of anger at the fact that I get to him the way I do. All of it gives me hope—even anger means he’s feeling something. If it’s even one iota of what I feel for him, then it must be completely overwhelming to someone who doesn’t do emotion or feelings or relationships.
And why is that exactly? I may need to do some digging to find out if he won’t tell me himself.
I lie on the bed and watch him strip off his clothes, wincing to myself at the sight of his bruised penis, which is so hard, it’s leaking. Does that hurt? I want to know, but I don’t dare break the fragile accord to ask. The whole time, he keeps his gaze locked on my face, watching my every reaction.
If this is how he plans to punish me, sign me up. I’m so turned on that I squirm, seeking some relief.
“Be still,” he says, stroking himself with careful movements that are probably far gentler than usual.
Most guys like to be stroked hard and fast. I can’t imagine he’s any different, but he probably can’t take hard or fast right now.
“Does that feel good?” I ask him.
“Not as good as usual.”
“Let me do it.”
“Not this time.”
“Not even with my mouth?”
His eyes flare with heat and interest. “If you want to.”
“I do.” I scramble to my knees and reach out to bring him closer. I don’t like the angle. “Sit on the bed.” Bringing a pillow with me, I drop to my knees in front of him, kneeling on the pillow. Much better. Up close, the bruising is even more pronounced than I thought. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s fine. Just be gentle.”
“Mmmm,” I say, letting my lips vibrate against the wide head. “I can be gentle.”
He sucks in a sharp, deep breath.
And then I take the full length of him in one deep swallow that has him shouting from the pleasure.
“Fuck, Leah. Jesus fucking Christ!” His fingers tangle into my hair. He’s holding on for dear life.
I lash him with my tongue and breathe through my nose while my throat tightens around the head. I learned a long time ago how to control my gag reflex, and my earlier training serves me well now. He’s the biggest guy I’ve ever been with, so it’s not easy to take him this way, but I do it anyway because I want to please him and make him feel good. Normally, I’d tease and torment him until he’s begging for release, but in deference to his injured cock, I decide to move things along by cupping his balls and pressing my fingertip against the spot behind them that triggers an explosive release.
I swallow every drop and then slowly slide up the length of him, which is still hard even after an epic orgasm. “Was that gentle enough for you?” I ask, my voice raspier than usual.
He falls back on the bed, hands over his face as his cock continues to twitch.
I crawl onto the bed next to him, resting my hand on his chest where I can feel his heart pounding. I take tremendous satisfaction in knowing I ruined him.
Quite a while later, he removes his hands from his face and turns his head to look at me. “Where in the hell did you learn how to do that?”
“I told you—high school.”
“Tell me the rest.”
I try not to squirm. I don’t talk about this stuff. Ever. But his unwavering glare puts me on notice that he’s not going to let it go. “The other girls were mean to me, so I blew their boyfriends and made sure they found out about it. Practice makes perfect.”
“They were mean to you? Why?”
“The boys liked me. That pissed off the girls. I don’t know. It’s not like we ever had an actual conversation about it.” They were too busy making my life into a living nightmare in person and on social media.
“How did they find out?”
“I told them.”
“So you went right up to them and said I blew your boyfriend?”
“Nah, I took pictures and texted them. It was more fun that way.”
His face goes blank with shock. “You took pictures of yourself… Doing that?”
“Yep.” I hope he’s not planning to lecture me about all the many ways those pictures can come back to bite me in the ass. So far they haven’t. But that doesn’t mean they never will.
“Leah…”
“Save the lecture. I know it was stupid, but it served my purposes at the time.”
“Which were?”
“To teach the mean girls a lesson about what happens when you’re an asshole.”
“Did it work?”
“Nah, they’re still assholes, but it sure did make me feel better.” For a while anyway, until the boys started talking and things actually got worse. But there’s no need to go there. “It was a long time ago. Doesn't matter anymore.” But oh how it had mattered then. God, how it had mattered.
“Where were your parents while you were blowing the football team?”
“My dad worked all the time, and my mom was usually drunk by the time I got home from school. They didn’t care about what I was doing. My mom fell down the stairs when I was a junior and died instantly from a broken neck.”
“Leah… God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t look
at me that way. I don’t want your damned pity.”
“I’m not offering pity.”
“Whatever it is, then, keep it. It sucked. I survived it, and then I left for college and never looked back.”
“Did you have siblings?”
“Nope—just me. They adopted me when they were in their forties. I’m not sure my mom ever got over not being able to have kids of her own. I think that’s why she drank.” Enough of this maudlin nonsense. “I thought you brought me in here to punish me?”
“I did, but then you blew my head off—both of them.”
“So that’s it? You’re all out of steam? I know you’re older than me, but I didn’t peg you for being geriatric.” The words are barely out of my mouth when he pounces, startling a shriek out of me as he picks me up effortlessly and drapes me over his lap, arranging me facedown so my ass is right where he wants it.
There’s something so fucking arousing about how insanely strong he is, and while I might normally object to being “arranged” by a man, when he does it, it’s sexy as fuck.
“What’s your safe word?” he asks in that gruff, authoritative tone that I love so much.
“Bitchy, as in you are often bitchy.”
His hand comes down on my cheek—hard. Hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. He does it again and again and again until I’m a sobbing mess of want and need and desire so sharp, it takes my breath away. Flattening his hand on my ass, he caresses the area he spanked until pain turns to pleasure. His fingers slide into my pussy from behind, the angle different but no less arousing than what I’m used to. He’s exceptionally good at locating my G spot and presses on it until I explode.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to come.”
“If you didn’t want me to come,” I say, gasping, “you shouldn’t have done that.”
“Done what?” He does it again. “This?”
“Stop!”
“You don’t like it?”
“I love it, but if you don’t want me to come, don’t do that!”
His low chuckle makes me smile because it’s such a rare sound, and I love knowing that I made him laugh. He continues to work me until I’m coming again, harder than the first time, if that’s even possible.
