“I do. I can’t tell you why…well, I can a little. You asked about me. You never once looked at my tits, or decided you had a right to grope me because I’m a model. You saw me. I’ve never had that. Even if, after tonight, you don’t want to see me, that’s okay. Because I’ve been waiting to feel like this, and now I do. Take me to your bed, Penn Black.”
Slowly he stood and took her hand. They walked to his bedroom, the tension between them palpable. “We can take this slow, baby.” He allowed her to undress him, to study his body as if she were discovering a new world, running her hands over the planes of his hard chest, his flat stomach and when he was naked, she studied his cock, trailing her fingers up and down the long shaft as it became erect. Her eyes widened when she saw how thick and huge it became.
“How am I…?”
He smiled. “Darling, I swear, I will get you so wet that it won’t hurt at all.” He pulled her to her feet and began to strip her. He kissed every part of her exposed skin, her shoulders, her breasts, taking each nipple into his mouth and sucking and teasing them until they grew rock-hard. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, her stomach flat, a little concave, her hips slender. Her legs went on for days. He kissed, licked, tasted every part of her and when his mouth closed around her clit, he heard her give a long moan of pleasure. He brought her to the edge of orgasm, before slipping a condom onto his straining cock and slowly, gently pushing into her.
Marlowe gasped, her eyes wide and he kissed her mouth tenderly. “If you want to stop at any time, just say the word, baby.”
She nodded but tightened her legs around him as he moved gently. He made love to her slowly, making sure at every moment that she was okay. Marlowe gazed back at him, wonder in her eyes. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, her voice a whisper.
He smiled down at her. “You’re stealing my lines.”
He gave her the most mellow, sublime orgasm before he himself reached his peak. Afterward, he excused himself to go to the bathroom to get rid of the condom, but returned to her arms. She was shivering and he frowned. “Are you okay?”
Marlowe laughed. “God, yes, I’m just…I don’t know, the adrenaline is rushing through me. Thank you, Penn, I mean it. That was incredible.”
Penn stroked her face. “For me, too. It’s a long time since I made love.”
She blushed, but looked at him skeptically. “Sure it is…have you seen you?”
He grinned but nodded. “Making love totally different from fucking. Don’t get me wrong, both are damn good, but tonight has been a rare occasion for me.”
Her smile faltered a little. “Why me?”
“Because you trusted me.” He said simply and saw the tears in her eyes. Marlowe cupped his face in her hands.
“I guess we both have damage. I’m glad it was you, Penn.”
He brushed his lips against his, holding her tightly. Their bodies fit together so perfectly, he marveled at it. “It was an honor. Marlowe…what did that guy do to you, the one in the garden? You brushed it off but I could see it was more than a clumsy pass he made.”
She hesitated then sighed. “I didn’t see him come up behind me. Suddenly I felt this hand between my legs, groping me. I turned and he was laughing. Laughing. I asked him what the hell did he think he was doing. You know what he said? ‘Sampling the goods on offer.’ So, I punched him out. Hard. My older brother back in Washington taught me how to punch properly – and I don’t think the creep expected a stick-insect like me to be able to throw down.”
“I heard what he called you.”
Marlowe have a lop-sided grin. “I was actually thinking of having ‘Deranged Slut’ tattooed on me.”
Penn laughed but he shook his head. “The bastard. I could kill him.”
Marlowe ran her hands through his dark hair. “I dealt with it,” she said. “As much as I want you, I didn’t need you in that moment.”
“Heroine.”
“Shucks.” Marlowe kissed, but her eyes were serious. “Penn, look, I’m not asking for anything here so if you never wat to see me again, there will be no hard feelings.”
“I do want to see you again. In fact, I’m loathe to let you leave this bed.” He grinned and she wound her legs around his, laughing.
“Well, I do have to work in the morning, but for tonight…”
Penn stroked her face. “Shall we see where this goes, Marlowe? No promises, no hang-ups, just you and me and being friends and lovers, if that’s what you want. Fun. I’m in desperate need of fun in my life.”
Marlowe nodded, her eyes soft. “That sounds just about perfect, Mr. Black. No expectations…just fun and we’ll see where it goes.”
Penn nodded, grinning. “We’ll see where this goes…”
Italy…
Two years later…
The sun was beating down, the ocean, so blue and beautiful, before her, Marlowe stretched her legs out along the sun lounger and grinned at her friend. “Sofia, this place is heaven, if I haven’t told you before.”
Sofia Zacca smiled. “You have, a million times, but thank you. It’s so wonderful to see you both again…we miss you when you’re away for so long.”
“Sorry, boo. So many contracts came up all in a row and Penn’s been frantic at work so until now, we didn’t have the time.”
“Nomads, the pair of you. Have you finally made a decision on where you’ll live?”
Marlowe smiled. “Seattle.”
Sofia looked delighted. “You’re going home?”
Marlowe nodded. “I didn’t pressure Penn but he knew I always wanted to go back there. We’ve spent a bit of time with my family, out in the wilds up there and I think Penn fell in love with it. Last Christmas we were snowed into a small cabin up in the mountains, and it was heaven…you know what a hermit he is – he loved it just being us.”
“He was a hermit,” Sofia corrected her, “until you. God, Marlowe, I’m so happy for you both.”
Marlowe smiled at her friend, to whom she become almost like a sister. “Thank you, darling.”
Later Penn and Marlowe took a stroll alone, along the cliffs, walking slowly, hand-in-hand. Penn’s thumb stroked a rhythm over the back of her hand and he stopped her before too long, to take her in his arms and kiss her. “You have changed my life, Marlowe Dupont.”
Marlowe smiled up at him. “And you mine, Penn Black.”
He took her face in his hands, his eyes intense on hers. His lips against hers, he mouthed the words “Marry me?”
Marlowe’s eyes widened with surprise and he knew, without a moment’s doubt, what her answer would be…
The End.
The Dungeon of Decorum Sneak Peak
A Billionaire Bad Boy Halloween BDSM Romance
A Submissives’ Secrets Novel
By Michelle Love
Chapter 1
Grant
The constant click-clack of the train moving over the tracks lulls me into a state of complete calmness. A thing I haven’t been for the last few days. I’ve felt more pain and anguish in these last three days than in my entire twenty-five years.
Why did Dad do it?
I keep asking myself that question, over and over again. He loved my mother with a passion one doesn’t see too often. How could he have extinguished what they had?
My Aunt Betsy, Mom’s older sister, runs her arm around me and leans her head on my shoulder. Her hair is silky and soft just like Mom’s was. But Mom’s always smelled like roses to me. Aunt Betsy’s smells like lemons and honey. Not bad, but not Mom. “They had a true love. I can’t understand it at all, Grant.”
I look out the window at the dark night, my forehead resting on the pane of glass that separates me from the outside. “Me neither.” My stomach twists on itself, the way it has since I got that phone call that wrecked my world, my mind, my entire belief system.
Trekking through the vast wilderness of South Africa at night is a daunting task. None of us would be here if it wasn’t for what my father did.
My younger brother, Jake moves up to sit in the empty seat across from my aunt and I. His hair is blonde and wavy, just like Mom’s was. He has our father’s light blue eyes, though. A perfect mix of them both. “Aunt Betsy, can you tell us about the day they met? I love that story. And you can even leave in the risqué parts if you like.”
My head is heavy as I pull it off the window. I turn my body to lean back on it and listen to the story our parents have told us a number of times. Maybe there’s something more to the story that we’ve all ignored all this time. Something that will let me know why he’d do such a horrific thing.
With light laughter, our aunt starts the story about how our parents met, “Jack Jamison and Daphne Dupree were about as much alike as night and day are. It was beneath the branches of a willow tree, that grew along the bank of the Frio River in the hill country of Central Texas, they met for the first time.”
“Dad and Mom sure did love to go back there,” Jake mumbles as he sits back. He lays his long skinny legs out on the bench seat and leans back against the window, much like me. He’s always been my little shadow. He’s not that little anymore, but he still mimics me more often than not.
“They sure did,” I agree as I close my eyes and think about all the fun we had when they would take us to the place they met. “Do you remember how mad we’d get when they’d come back from a secret vacation and tell us where they’d gone, without us?”
Jake nodded as a big grin curved his lips. “I do. Leaving us at home while they went to play in the crystal-clear water was a crime in my book.”
“Mine too.” I cast my eyes down, thinking the word crime was a thing we used to joke about and still were. But now that a real crime has been committed by one of our own, our patriarch, it doesn’t sound so funny anymore.
Aunt Betsy pats me on the back. “You silly boys, they wanted to spend time alone, rekindling the love they found that day, thirty years ago. It was a love that stood the test of time. I, for one, thought it would last forever.”
“Me too,” Jake says then looks down and I see a tear fall to his lap. He wipes his eye and turns away from us. “I don’t know if I want to hear about this right now.”
Jake is eighteen, too damn young for this to be happening to him. I’m not a hell of a lot more equipped for it, myself. But I’m the big brother, the oldest of the four of us. Our sisters, Jenny and Becca, stayed back home. Only the three of us came to Africa.
Becca is only fifteen, the baby of the family. Jenny has her hands full with her, I’m sure. I wonder how she’ll take everything, once we tell her what we’ve found out.
Aunt Betsy resituates herself, trying in vain to get comfortable. The seats aren’t made for comfort, I’m afraid. We sit in silence, the sounds of the train, the only sounds we hear. Until Jake starts to snore and his head drops as he’s fallen asleep.
Aunt Betsy smiles, pulls an old blue blanket and a tiny pillow out of the overhead compartment and gets Jake settled in so he’s a little more comfortable than he was. Then she comes back to sit with me and asks, “So, Grant, would you like for me to continue with the story?”
It’s been many years since I heard the story about Mom and Dad meeting. I think I need to hear it again. Maybe in that story will be a shard of information about what would eventually happen to them. Right now, nothing makes sense.
“Sure, Aunt Betsy, tell it to me.”
Chapter 2
Daphne
I’ve lost my family on the river!
The rapids pulled us away from each other and the next thing I knew, I was alone, drifting with the slower moving current and unable to spot my mother, father, or my sister, Betsy. And now my float has a small hole in it caused by a tree branch I ran into.
Steadily, the air leaves my innertube and I go slower and slower as it goes flat. I have no idea what I’ll do and my nerves are piquing. Up ahead, I see an old willow, it’s long branches drag in the clear water, making it look inviting.
The afternoon sun is right overhead and as hot as the African Desert must be. I have to get out of this sun until one of my family members comes back to find me. I can ride in one of their tubes with them down to our campsite.
Sure, I guess I could try to swim the rest of the way down the river. But it’s not easy to swim through boulders and smaller rocks that make the water run swiftly through them. The tubes make it easy to bounce off the rocks, my body would be pummeled if I tried to swim through the rough water.
The vacations on this river are always full of adventure. But this time, maybe a bit too much.
As I near the tree, the last remnants of air leave my black innertube and I have to swim only a few feet in the deep water to get to the rocky shore. The tree is huge, it’s branches nearly hide me from view. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
What if they come looking for me and can’t see me?
But I can’t sit in the burning sun while I wait. My bikini covers very little of me. I’ll just have to stay put and keep an eye out for them. Hopefully, they’ll come looking for me sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, leaning my chin on them. It’s beautiful and peaceful under this tree. I wish we had one of these on campus. College life would be so much easier with a gorgeous tree like this to study under.
Majoring in Political Science isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be.
“Hey,” I hear some guy call out.
I look behind me and find a tall guy, wearing swimming trunks, coming up. “Hey,” I say back.
He takes a seat right next to me as if he was invited to and I scoot over a hair as he’s sat too close. “What are you doing here?” he asks me with a grin.
He has a little beard. The kind that only goes around his mouth. I don’t like it. “My float got a hole in it.”
“I see,” he looks up the river. “And your party is where?”
“Ahead of me.”
“Left behind, huh?” he asks me then leans his shoulder against mine. “I’ll stay with you until they come back for you. You do think they’ll come back for you, don’t you?”
“I hope so,” I tell him and move over a bit more so our shoulders aren’t touching.
“I’m from Uvalde, I come here all the time. Where are you from?” He moves a tad bit closer, closing the gap I just made.
“We live in Seattle, Washington.” I scoot over again, hoping he gets the signal to keep his distance. I’m not the type of girl he must be looking for, an easy one.
“Whew wee! That’s far away from here. So what has you guys coming out here to God’s country?” He scoots right on over, purposely getting close to me once more.
Might as well stay put, the guy seems harmless. And at the rate we were going, I’d end up in the water before too long. “My father is from Austin, originally. He used to come here with his family when he was a kid and now he brings us for a week-long camping trip each summer. Well, for the last three anyway.”
Unbelievably, he looks right at my boobs. “You go to college?”
“Yale.” I lean back, exposing my body so he can go ahead and ogle me and get that out of his system. “And you?” I’m not a bad girl by any means, but this guy is kind of cracking me up with his straightforward behavior. I have to see just how far he thinks he’s going to get with me. And teasing him a bit is fun too.
He moves one had through his dark waves as he smiles at me and does exactly as I thought he would. His eyes roam from my piggy toes all the way up to my eyes. “I work for the city parks service. I’m going to be a cop someday. And what are you going to be?”
Here’s where I’ll impress him with my brains too. “The president, I hope.”
He laughs and I frown. “Of the United States?”
“Why not?” I flip my long hair off my shoulder. Like most men, he thinks a woman can’t possibly be president, I’m sure. “You think a woman will never be president or what?”
What th
e hell do I care what the moron thinks anyway?
He leans back on his elbows too as he looks at my face rather than my body. His sky blue eyes dance. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just one goal that can only last a maximum of eight years, is all. You must have a goal that’s set in your mind, other than that one.” His fingers move slowly, closing the distance between our hands, overlapping mine.
I look at his hand, touching mine, and can’t help but notice the spark it made inside of me. “I’m a Poly/Sci major. I’m looking to get into anything political that I can, on the road to the White House.”
A goofy grin takes over his chiseled lips. “So, like start out as a mayor, then governor, maybe a congresswoman, or a senator. Shit like that?”
“Yes, shit like that.” His hand moves even further over mine and heat resonates in my lower regions. I don’t normally react to anyone this quickly.
He runs his hand all the way over mine, leaving it on top as his grin turns into a smile. A devastatingly handsome smile that shows off perfect, white teeth. “There’s a dance tonight at Jimmy’s on the Hill. How about I drop by your campsite and walk you to it?”
“And who do I tell my father is picking me up?” I ask as we haven’t exchanged names.
One dark brow cocks up as that smile grows even broader. “You can tell him that Jack Jamison is picking you up and taking you away for the remainder of your stay here.”
A subtle laugh escapes me as I look away, trying to act as if I’m not getting butterflies in my tummy over the guy and his charming demeanor. “Are you now?”
He nods as he moves his hand over mine, tapping my fingertips with his. “And your name is?”
Little jolts of electricity zap through me with the slight action. It’s crazy how he’s affecting me. “Daphne Dupree.”
“Daphne Jamison, I like the sound of that.” He’s cockier than I usually care for. His dark hair is a bit long and shaggy, it needs to be trimmed. And he needs a shave. His body is long and lean and could use some more muscle. Other than that, he’s cute in a country boy kind of way.
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