by Marie Force
We put down our suitcases, hang garment bags with wedding clothes in the closet, and when there’s nothing else to be done, we turn to face each other.
I raise a brow.
“Right now?” she asks.
“Right. Now.”
He watches me as I draw the casual dress I wore for the trip over my head and step out of wedge sandals. Standing before him in only a thong, I hook my fingers into the strings at my hips and pull them down. Per his instructions on the plane, I get on the bed, kneel, cross my hands and drop my head in submission to whatever he has planned for me.
I’m trembling madly, which makes me feel vulnerable and needy, but there’s no point in trying to hide those things from him. He’ll see them. He sees everything. He pays attention and attends to every detail in both his professional and personal lives. That’s one of the things that attracted me the first time I met him, the way he projected calm, cool competence as he explained the company’s nondisclosure agreement to me. And yes, I was as attracted to his obvious intelligence as I was to his stunning good looks.
He’s the whole package as far as I’m concerned, and speaking of whole packages, even with my head down, I can see that his package is hard and ready for me as he approaches the bed.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I can’t make it stop.”
“Are you scared?”
It touches me that he never wants me to be afraid of him. I suspect the reason for that is part of what he needs to tell me, but I’m not allowed to ask that now. “No, sir. I’m not scared.”
“Excited?”
“Very.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“What we were doing the other night before it went bad.”
“Before your ass nearly took out my eye, you mean?”
I raise my head to give him a foul look.
He laughs. “You aren’t being sassy to your Dom by any chance, are you?”
“What if I am?”
“Is my baby spoiling for a spanking?”
“That’s not up to me, sir. I would never dare to tell my Dom how he should punish me.” The conversation we had on the plane has freed me to let go and give in to the powerful emotions and desire he arouses in me. He let me know it’s safe to feel everything for him, and that makes this so much more than it was before. And it was intense before. Now, it’s something else altogether.
“Close your eyes and keep them closed.”
I love that authoritative tone he uses only when we’re playing this way. The rest of the time, he is respectful and polite, if a bit bitchy at times. I giggle to myself at the thought of how his eyes had narrowed when I called him that.
“Is something amusing you, my sweet?”
“No, sir.” I love that he called me his sweet, that he’s here with me, committed to trying to make a relationship work after promising to tell me more about himself and his past so I can try to understand him better. That conversation on the plane was life-changing in more ways than one.
“Are you feeling congested or otherwise sneezy today?”
I can’t stop the giggle that escapes despite my best effort to contain it.
His hand comes down on my right ass cheek with a resounding smack that only makes me laugh harder. I completely lose my shit, falling to the bed and holding my sides as I laugh my ass off. When I finally get control of myself, I open my eyes and venture a glance at my stormy-looking Dom. God, he’s so sexy, even when he’s trying to be pissed off.
“All finished?”
Biting my lip to hold back more laughter, I nod. “It’s your fault for asking if I’m feeling sneezy.”
“Well, can you blame me for asking?” He rubs his black eye, which is still swollen but nowhere near as bad as it was after it first happened. “I only have two eyes, and after nearly losing one of them, I’m a little more cautious.”
I start to laugh again, harder than before. I can’t even be bothered to worry about whether I’m making him mad, and besides, what does it matter? He has emphatically declared that I will never be in any danger with him, so I can feel free to let go and be myself.
He comes down on top of me, taking my arms and pinning them over my head before kissing my smiling lips. “Knock it off,” he growls.
“Quit saying stuff that makes me laugh, and quit your glowering, too. It doesn’t scare me.”
Moving slowly, he brings his lips down on mine in a soft, persuasive kiss that makes me forget what I was laughing about. He holds my hands in place with one hand and uses the other to cup my breast, pinching my nipple between his thumb and index finger while continuing to kiss me with gentle strokes of his tongue and lips. This kiss is all about seduction, and I am very easily seduced where he’s concerned.
I wrap my legs around his hips and press against the hard ridge of his cock, which throbs between my legs. I want him inside me, right now. Thankfully, he gets the message and pushes into me, moving slowly so he won’t hurt me. Before him, I wouldn’t have thought it would be such a different experience to take someone as big as he is. From the physical to the emotional, I’m overwhelmed by him and the way he makes me feel.
“Not so funny anymore, is it?” he asks, raising an eyebrow as amusement makes his lips twitch.
I shake my head and tug on my hands, wanting him to let them go so I can touch him.
He releases my wrists, and I slide my hands down his back to cup his muscular ass, wanting to bring him deeper into me. Groaning, he heeds my silent request and gives me the rest of him, sparking wave after wave of sensation that travels from my core to every other part of me. My heart contracts, and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I hold on tight to him as he moves faster, driving into me and then retreating, over and over again until I’m screaming from the release that rips through me like a tsunami, leaving me flattened in its wake.
He’s right there with me, his fingers digging into my shoulder and hip as he surges into me one last time, filling me with the heat of his release.
“Christ have mercy,” he mutters as he collapses on top of me.
I take it as a good sign that he’s praying in the aftermath of our explosive lovemaking. I hold him close, caress his back and run my fingers through his hair, which is damp with sweat. Normally, sweaty guys disgust me, but not this guy. Everything about him does it for me.
“We were loud,” he says, seeming only now to realize where we are and who might’ve been listening.
“That’s also your fault for fucking me senseless.”
“Are you senseless?”
“I don’t have a working brain cell left after that.”
“Neither do I.” He raises himself up on his arms and looks down at me. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Not at all.”
“Good.” He withdraws from me and lands next to me on the bed, putting his arm around me to keep me close.
“I meant to tell you I got my copy of Abbey Road back—with apologies.”
“You better have.”
“That must’ve been one hell of a letter you wrote him.”
“It was, if I do say so myself.”
“Thank you for doing that for me.”
“Happy to.”
“There was something you were going to tell me…”
“I know.” He plays with a strand of my hair, curling it around his finger. After a long period of silence, he begins to speak in a soft tone that’s full of emotion. “When I was in college at Berkeley, I met a woman named Elena the first semester of my sophomore year and was instantly attracted to her. She had transferred in from a community college and was so excited to finally be at her dream school. I offered to show her around, introduce her to my friends.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Well, I had an ulterior motive. I also wanted her to fall madly in love with me.”
“So did she?”
“Not exactly. I introduced her to my friend Brad, and she fell madly in love with
his roommate, Andrew.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I was super bummed, especially when I picked up the vibe that things with Drew, as she called him, were less than perfect. She would come to class with bruises on her arms and eyes red from crying. I pleaded with her to talk to me, but she refused to talk about it with anyone, and she begged me to stay out of it.”
My stomach hurts as I try to figure out where this is going.
“I tried to do what she’d asked me, but I was so upset about the possibility of him hurting her that I went to see him and told him if he was knocking her around, he was going to answer to me and her other friends.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was crazy, that he loved her and would never lay a finger on her. He also mentioned that he’d figured out that I had feelings for her and that he was sorry if their relationship had caused me pain.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I left there feeling like he wasn’t a bad guy and maybe I’d misread the situation.”
“Had you?”
“No,” he says, his expression grim and his eyes flat. “I didn’t misread it at all. That night, he beat her up so bad, she ended up in a coma for four months.”
“Oh, Emmett. Oh my God.” Tears fill my eyes as I imagine his despair and heartbreak. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a fucking nightmare. For the first week, we were sure she was going to die, and then afterward, we worried what would happen if she survived. She had surgery to relieve the pressure in her brain.”
“Tell me he was arrested, that he didn’t get away with it.”
“They got him. He’s been locked up since that day. Her friends… We go to every parole board meeting to plead with them to keep him in jail where he belongs. So far they’ve listened to us, but I’m sure they’ll let him out at some point.”
“And Elena…” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“She came out of the coma after four months, but she was permanently disabled. She has the emotions and intelligence of a little girl. Before that, she was fucking brilliant, heading for law school. That was something we had in common.”
“I’m so, so sorry that happened to your friend and that you’ve blamed yourself all this time.”
“Who else should I blame? She met the guy because of me and got the crap beat out of her because I confronted him after she begged me to stay out of it.”
“It’s not your fault, Emmett. You didn’t hurt her. He did.”
“I know that intellectually, but I really do wish I hadn’t made it worse for her by confronting him when she told me not to.”
“You were looking out for someone you loved. No one could fault you for that.” I caress his face and hair, wishing there was something I could do to alleviate his obvious agony. “Where is she now?”
“In a residential care facility in Pacific Palisades. I see her once a month and keep in touch with her family.”
“Pacific Palisades. That must be expensive.”
“It is, but it’s worth every penny to make sure she has everything she needs.”
“How long have you been paying for her care?”
He glances at me, seeming startled that I put two plus two together to get that he took responsibility for her. Sighing, he says, “From the beginning. She’s been in the facility the last ten years, since her parents got to the point where they couldn’t care for her at home anymore.”
“I love you, Emmett. I love everything about you, but mostly, I love how much you care about the people who matter to you and the way you take care of everyone.”
“I didn’t take care of her—not the way I should have.”
“You did everything you could to try to get her out of a bad situation. You have to stop blaming yourself for something that was out of your control.”
“You sound like the therapist I saw for years after it happened. He used to say the same thing. I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life, but the one thing I’d do over, if I could, is that last day. I would’ve grabbed her hand, dragged her to my car and driven her far, far away from that campus, far, far away from him.”
“She would’ve gone running back the minute she could. You know that, don’t you?”
He takes my hand and links our fingers. “The therapist said that, too. You might’ve missed your calling.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done for her, Emmett. She had to want to save herself, and she wasn’t there yet.”
“Maybe she would’ve gotten there if I’d stayed out of it.”
“I’m sorry you’ve been so tortured by this for all these years. I understand now why you’ve been reluctant to get involved with anyone and why you like to be dominant in bed. It’s because there’re so many things you can’t control.” So much makes sense now in light of this information.
“You’ve got me fully figured out,” he says, flashing a small smile. “Marlowe knows about Elena, but the others don’t, so keep it between us, will you?”
“Of course. Weren’t you friends with Flynn and Hayden back then?”
“I was, but we went to different colleges, so they weren’t around for this. Afterward, it was just too painful to air it out with my friends from home. I told Marlowe about it one night when we got drunk together years ago, but no one else.”
“I get it, and I promise I won’t say anything.”
“I heard what you said before, and I want you to know that I have very strong feelings for you, too. I’m not as good at articulating them as you are, but I feel them.”
“I know you do. I can tell by the way you touch me and kiss me and make love to me that you care.”
“I really do, even if I tried very hard not to.”
“You’re no match for me.”
That draws a bark of laughter from him that pleases me greatly. “I suspect there’s not a man alive who’d be able to defeat Leah Holt when she has her heart set on something.”
“The only one I have my heart set on is you.” I kiss him, putting everything I feel for him into the most passionate kiss I’ve ever given anyone. And when he arranges me on top of him and pushes into me again, I’m absolutely lost to him.
Chapter 16
Peace has been an elusive thing in my life since everything happened with Elena. For years afterward, I was a walking disaster. I left school for a semester before going back to finish, mostly out of fear that if I didn’t have something to do, I’d end up in trouble due to the rage I couldn’t seem to control.
Hayden introduced Flynn and me to the BDSM lifestyle he’d learned about on a movie set. The lifestyle turned out to be a good fit for me because it allowed me an avenue to work out my issues in a safe, sane, consensual environment, but it also gave me a place to hide from real relationships and meaningful connections with women. I’ve been more than satisfied with surface interactions for all these years. Even as my friends began to pair off and settle down, I had no real desire to have that kind of thing in my own life.
But Leah has changed me, and while it may seem to have happened quickly, it’s actually been happening for months now, since I first spotted her at Flynn and Natalie’s wedding in February. I remember thinking then she was hot in her own unique way, but then I found out she was only in her early twenties, and I took a step back. The first day back to work after the wedding, I found out that Marlowe had hired Leah to be her Addie, and my first thought was damn, that’s going to be a problem.
I had no idea how big of a problem she would turn out to be for me, or how she would change my life in ways I never saw coming. Telling her about Elena had been huge for me, and she said all the right things. Her genuine distress for me and for Elena moved me deeply, and watching her now as she talks with Natalie, Addie, Ellie and Aileen, I can’t deny that I’m falling hard for her.
I’m trying to figure out when she stopped being a pesky fly buzzing around my ear and how she managed to burrow her way into my heart. Regardless of how it happened, I’m filled wi
th an unusual sense of peace and contentment, because she’s here with me and because for some strange reason, she’s decided she loves me, and that makes me feel like the luckiest guy who ever lived. She’s wearing a sexy-as-fuck red dress with white flowers on it that clings to her every delicious curve and makes me want her like I didn’t have her twice a little while ago.
I tear my gaze off her and tune in to the conversation that’s happening around me.
“I’ve definitely seen this before—recently, in fact,” Sebastian is saying. “The mooning, the staring, the disappearing for hours at a time, strange noises coming from his room. He’s got all the symptoms.”
Fucking hell, they’re talking about me.
“What have you to say for yourself, Counselor?” Flynn asks, hands on hips, his expression comically serious.
“Would fuck off work?”
Hayden, Jasper and Kristian crack up laughing.
“I’m very hurt,” Flynn says. “As one of your oldest and dearest friends, I have a right to know what’s going on with you.”
“Who said you’re one of my dearest friends?” I ask, amused by him as always.
“He’s got you there, Flynn,” Jasper says, puffing on a cigar as we enjoy late-afternoon drinks on the inn’s sunny back porch.
“How come everyone was allowed to be up in my business when I was first with Nat, but I’m not allowed to ask any questions?”
“It’s none of your business,” Hayden tells him.
“And yet it was everyone else’s business when it was my business,” Flynn says. “I see how this works.”
“Technically, you pay me to be up in your business,” I tell him as I lean in for a light from Hayden. He’s brought the good cigars for the weekend, and though I’m not much of a smoker, when they’re the good ones, I’m in.
