by Ruby Laska
“…Sir.”
Ricardo had to turn away from her so he didn’t betray himself. She drove him crazy with a single word. A single syllable.
She was his for the taking if he was strong enough to give her what she needed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Chelsea arranged herself on a long sectional sofa that faced out toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the sky was streaked and purpled, twilight giving way to the last rays of the setting sun. Night would come fast on its heels, and soon the stars would sparkle high above Los Angeles.
Boris was dead. But so was his killer.
Was that justice? Chelsea wasn’t sure she knew.
With Ricardo out of the room, the anxiety she had fought off earlier threatened to return. She wasn’t from this world of violent retribution. Death, though it had taken her father when she was still very young, had not been a regular presence in her life.
She didn’t know how Ricardo could stay so calm—and she feared that she would give herself away. She didn’t want him to see her as weak, and she resolutely pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. The dress—silk spun with cashmere—felt heavenly against her skin. She wasn’t wearing panties, mostly because she didn’t have clean ones. Mr. Smith had either forgotten or omitted them out of respect for her modesty. Either way, she felt exposed.
When Ricardo came back to the sofa holding a bottle of wine and two glasses, she forced a smile for him. She clasped her hands tightly so their shaking wouldn’t betray her. Her spine felt stiff, her muscles tight.
He set the bottle and glasses on the smooth ebony coffee table, and reached for her hand, slipping his fingers into hers, a move so tender that her careful reserve fell away and she leaned into him.
He cared for her. He protected her. He would put his life on the line to keep her safe.
“Querida, what is it?”
“I’m…I’m just…”
He drew her into his arms, lifting her into his lap. Her head fit perfectly under his chin, and she gave in to the embrace, her cheek against the smooth, bare skin exposed at the V of his shirt. She could feel his breath ruffling her hair, his hands encircling her back.
This was what safe felt like.
She drew a breath. “I’ve never…needed anyone.”
He was silent for a moment, his hands moving over her skin, cherishing her. “That is where you are wrong,” he finally said. “You did need others, but they left you. They let you down. The people you were supposed to be able to trust took advantage of you. The ones who were supposed to protect you allowed harm to befall you.” He sighed, running his fingers through her hair, cradling her against him. “I have often thought, in my life, that I have been given difficult challenges. But I see now that I was also given great gifts. The love of my family. Parents and grandparents who did everything they could for me. A community of elders who looked out for the children as though we were all family.”
Then he told her the rest of the story. The racketeers who, sensing an opportunity after his father died, tried to extort money. The rivals who tried to put him out of business. The old feuds between long-dead ancestors, returning to threaten his mother’s security in her declining years.
The choices he had to make, to ensure her safety. And later, to fund his education. His dreams of becoming a museum curator…ended by his mother’s health crisis and the need to provide for her care. That he stole the money from the same Galician crime ring which had attempted to extort from him.
As he spoke, Chelsea found that the assumptions she had made about him faded from black and white into many shades of gray. He wasn’t trying to hide who he was, but as she learned the reasons for his choices, they were all meant to help others.
“I am not proud of everything I did,” he admitted, “but my mother never knew a day of want or worry after my father’s death. And the things I did then…changed the course of my life.”
She tried to imagine him as a teenager, a young man, shouldering burdens no one that age should have to bear. Learning a business without the benefit of a financial education. Holding his own in a competitive market, with a dozen employees relying on him for their livelihood.
Was it so different from some of the choices she had been forced to make in her own days on the streets? Shoplifting toothpaste…stealing from a grocery store…carrying a knife in her pocket and knowing she wouldn’t hesitate to use it?
“You had difficult decisions to make,” she finally said. “I understand that.”
“Sometimes one must find justice by whatever means necessary,” Ricardo said. “There is no other way. There are times and places in this world where the law does not reach far enough, where the tools of a civilized society, with its police and its courts of law, are not enough. In this world, some men must make hard decisions. They must lead with whatever means they have. I was forced to become such a man.”
He gently pulled away from her, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I am not always proud of what I do, querida. I regret the lives I have taken. I wish there was some other way. But you must know that I will not change. And you must be able to live with that.”
“I don’t suppose…” Chelsea said, feeling his erection pressing against her cleft as he shifted her on his lap, “that you’ll tell me what you really do? Where you got my painting? Who you go to see when you are not with me?”
He was already shaking his head. “No. I cannot. To keep you safe I must also keep you apart, to some extent.”
“It isn’t…fair.”
Ricardo’s hand stilled in her hair. Then, slowly, he began to wind it around his fist. Once, twice…until it was tugging hard, beginning to hurt.
“When,” he said, his voice hard, “did you get the impression that our relationship is fair?”
“N-never,” Chelsea said, the prickling of desire quickening at every point they touched.
“I know you are strong, Chelsea. I know you are your own woman. I will never tell you what to do in your work, your gallery, your world. But in two things I demand your acquiescence. Do you know what they are?”
She tried to nod, but he held her immobilized by his grip on her hair.
“First, in matters of your safety, you will do whatever I ask of you. This is for your own good. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” she managed to get out.
“And second…when you are with me as a woman, when you are in my bed, when we are alone together. On these occasions, you are not my equal. You are my submissive, my little one, my slave. I own you. You serve me at my whim. Whatever I desire becomes your desire. However I decide to use you, it is your destiny to be used.”
He pushed her head down, slowly, giving her time to experience every exquisite millisecond. She thought he would open his zipper and force her mouth onto his cock, but he didn’t; he kept pushing down, down until she was doubled over, her face level with her knees.
“On your knees on this sofa,” he said. “Put your cunt in my face.”
His rough words elicited a moan. She was wetter than she’d realized; when her dress gaped open she could feel the cool air on her pussy. She maneuvered into place as he asked, her forearms resting on the arm of the couch, her ass pressed up against his shoulder, her knees sinking into the soft couch cushion.
He pushed the dress up over her hips, exposing all of her to him. With the edge of his thumbnails, he traced a firm line from her hipbones, over her ass cheeks, down the back of her thighs as though tracing the seam in a pair of stockings. Every inch of the way, it was as though an invisible thread connected her skin to the center of her body, longing and need emanating out in concentric circles. She collapsed on her forearms, her will giving way to her need.
Ricardo growled his pleasure. He kneaded the flesh at the crook of her knees with his thumbs, and she responded by moving her hips, the dance of her desire begging him closer.
“You are so swollen,” he murmured. His face was inches from her pus
sy, her ass; she longed for him to take those dexterous thumbs and plunge them inside her, to stroke her clit, to rub her tight asshole. But he did none of those things, just massaged her as though he was trying to bring her knees to orgasm.
And she began to think it might actually be possible.
“Little niñita…what shall I do with you now?” he mused.
Chelsea shivered at the possibilities. As much as they had done together so far, she knew they had only scratched the surface. Perhaps he would tie her. Perhaps he would whip her. Perhaps he would introduce her to degradations and humiliations she hadn’t yet imagined.
But despite the hard ache, the desperate desire for him, after the anxiety and danger of the last few days, she knew that none of those would be enough. Not unless he took her the one way he hadn’t yet.
He had never fucked her pussy, never spilled his seed deep inside her.
“Y-you say you own me,” she whispered, forcing out the words between chattering teeth. “But you’ve never made me completely yours. You’ve done things to me, and with me. But I need...” She pressed her face to the arm of the couch, feeling more vulnerable than she ever had in her life. “I need it all. Everything.”
His hands stilled on her calves. He didn’t speak. Neither of them moved; the only sound in the room was the faint hum of the air conditioner, a vacuum cleaner running out in the hallway.
If he rejected her, she would live. He had warned her from the start that he couldn’t be with her. But in the past twenty-four hours they both could have been killed. He had lost a friend and she had lost the security of her former life. That changed everything, didn’t it?
The silence and stillness continued so long that Chelsea was sure that the answer was no. Finally, Ricardo placed his hand flat on the small of her back and gently pushed her down so that her knees were tucked under her. He got up, took her hands and guided her so she was sitting up.
Her face was at a level with his cock, and as she stared at the intimidating bulge under the fine fabric, he ran his hand over it, cupping his balls and stroking his shaft. She looked up into his eyes, and there was no hesitation there.
“Beg me,” he muttered.
A thrill raced through her. Perhaps another woman, baring her soul to the man she was falling in love with, would need gentle entreaties and promises of fidelity, sweet nothings and butterfly kisses.
That was not what Chelsea needed.
His words cut to the core of her, searing the blood in her veins, causing electric sensations to race down every nerve, swelling her nipples. She moaned with need and pleasure; she could reach climax from his words alone, from the vibration of his vocal chords, the change in the air when he breathed it.
Slap. His hand glanced off her face, hard enough to knock her head sideways. The shock of it—he’d hit her!—was quickly followed by blood rushing to her face and a nearly uncontrollable urge…for more.
“I said beg me, whore. Beg for it. Show me how you need me to fuck your tight little cunt. Show me what a slut you are, tell me all your filthy needs.”
Before he finished speaking, she was sliding off the sofa to her knees, clasping her hands in entreaty. “Please,” she whispered, “Please sir, please use me, please shove your cock inside me and ride me, ram me…”
His cock was right there, straining against the fabric, impossible to resist. She reached for his belt buckle and hesitated, wondering if he would hit her again for her audacity…wondering if she wanted him to.
But he seized the buckle and yanked it open with such force that the leather end whipped against her cheek. The sharp, focused pain was different from his open hand but just as arousing, and she turned her face upwards.
“You like that, don’t you,” he murmured. He shoved his pants down, freeing his cock, which swayed toward her as though it had a mind of its own. His throbbing length was beautifully veined and sculpted, the smooth tip glistening with pre-cum, tapering to his gorgeous tight balls, his muscular thighs. He wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked it once, twice, throwing his head back and groaning.
Then his hand was in her hair again, seizing a fistful and yanking her face down onto his cock. She barely had time to open her mouth as he plunged inside her. There was no warming up, no tentative strokes to get a rhythm going: just her throat and his cock filling it, jamming hard, forcing her.
She could feel her eyes tearing up, her gag reflex protesting the massive bulk of him, but he was unrelenting. She tongued greedily at the underside of his shaft and reached for his balls, cupping them in her palm, feeling their heaviness. “More,” she tried to beg, and though the word was unintelligible, her meaning was anything but, and Ricardo pumped his hips against her.
The sensation of her hair being pulled from her scalp was sharp and intensely painful, the feeling of the slick head of his cock forcing its way down her throat a blunted urgency. She was intensely aware of the thick carpet under her knees, the earthy scent of him, the jangle of his belt buckle every time he thrust. The taste of the precious drops of his seed made her crave more, and she milked him with her mouth, feeling her throat giving way, opening itself to the unfamiliar pressure, taking him deeper, deeper until her face pressed against his dense, curling hairs, his firm muscular abdomen.
Abruptly he released her hair pushed her away, hard enough that she fell back against the couch, her mouth glistening with her saliva and his slick pre-cum.
“Diablada,” he snapped. “Not so fast. I am nowhere near ready to spill in you. Were you trying to make me?”
“No, no, I—”
He grabbed her hand and twisted her wrist back on itself, sending an intense pain shooting up her arm, making her cry out. When he didn’t release the pressure, she twisted away from him, her arm up behind her and her chest pressed against the couch. He released her wrist and shoved her down on the couch with his hand between her shoulder blades, pressing her face into the soft fabric.
“I come when I’m ready,” he growled. “It’s not your call.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her words muffled by the couch cushion. She didn’t dare lift her head, but she was incredibly aroused at the way he was handling her. Using her.
Every stinging slap, every crushing squeeze, only intensified her need for more. For the first time, she wondered how much she could take. Her safe word, magnolia, was available for her at any moment. All she had to do was utter it and she knew that Ricardo would instantly stop. For some reason, the further he pushed her, the more she trusted him.
In fact, it seemed to her that the trust ran both ways, that as Ricardo took her further and further, the path he was following was his own emotional connection to her. Did he love her? Maybe not, not yet—but intuitively Chelsea understood that he had gone further with her than with any other woman.
The fire between them was rare.
It was also irresistible.
He pushed the coffee table out of the way as though it was made of Styrofoam, then knelt behind her and shoved his hands roughly between her legs, forcing them apart. Then he grabbed the hem of the dress and pulled. Her arms were yanked back as the fabric ripped and slid off of her, and Ricardo tossed it aside like trash.
Now she was naked, her hair mussed and knotted, her face slick with their sweat and saliva. If she had any makeup on, it would be streaked across her cheeks, but Chelsea hadn’t been home in days, and home itself seemed like a concept that was part of another lifetime. All that existed was the two of them: this ethereal place, the sooty twilight outside the windows, his cock pressing against her hip as Ricardo pulled his own shirt off, then tossed it to join her dress.
She was as vulnerable as she’d ever been, her parted legs exposing her ass and pussy to him, her arms cradling her head on the couch. Very lightly, Ricardo traced the outer lips of her labia, feathering his fingertips in an oval from one end to the other. He dipped one fingertip lightly between, then used it to paint on her back with her own fluids. “You’re so wet for m
e, putita,” he breathed. “You gush for me, don’t you?”
She nodded, murmuring her assent.
“Late at night, when you are alone, you touch yourself, thinking about me. About my cock, ramming you, taking you. Don’t you?”
“I do,” she moaned because it was true. So many nights she’d woken to dreams of him, slick with the fever of her longing, and found relief imagining it was him who touched her, rubbed her, plunged inside her. But it was never enough. She could never fuck herself as hard as he took her; could never coax the sensations he could command just with a look, a word.
“Fuck the couch,” he ordered, continuing to stroke her softly, now and then interrupting the rhythm to slip his finger in and out, in and out. She rocked against him, trying to force him to take her harder, but he was maddeningly imperturbable. Didn’t he feel what she did—the same urgency, the same need? She tried to twist around, thinking she might touch him, guide him inside her, but he pushed her back.
“Stop it,” he said, “unless you want to be restrained.”
She fell against the couch, resigned to his torment, and then replayed his words in her mind.
Unless she wanted…
He had restrained her before, and it hadn’t been meant as a punishment. Now he was dangling the threat before her…taunting her…tempting her. A small smile crept onto her mouth.
She was his to use, his to own. But maybe, just sometimes, she was a bad girl.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Chelsea twisted again and grabbed for his cock, barely brushing its hard, throbbing surface before he grabbed her wrist. She held her breath, waiting for him to bend it again, but though the pressure of his fingers dug into her flesh, he didn’t repeat the punishing maneuver.
“Really?” he mused, his voice low and throaty. “Is that how it’s going to be?”
She kept her face down so he couldn’t see the excitement in her eyes. She was as shocked at her behavior as he was…but it felt so right.
She darted out her other hand, through her legs, trying to reach him that way. This time she got her hand around his shaft for a second before he jumped to his feet, yanking her with him.
