The Princess Sub: Club Volare Boston

by Chloe Cox

  And then, suddenly, he turned.

  Conor wheeled the SUV around, turning them down a dirt road that was mostly obscured from the highway. For a second Sierra thought they were going off-road, but it was just that someone had let trees and brush grow a little wild around the turn, probably deliberately. You’d have to know it was there to travel down this road.

  Conor seemed to know every inch of it.

  Sierra looked around. There was high growth on both sides of the road, but on raised ground on one side, like a natural seawall. She inhaled deeply, and the smell of the sea, briny and bright and free, filled her lungs. They were getting closer to the water. A moment later she saw she was right, as a miniature version of the dunes she remembered so well from her childhood rose on their left.

  Huh. She’d been expecting this weekend, with the hellish combination of birthday and launch party at the family compound, to trigger every crappy childhood memory she had. She’d sort of prepared herself for it, as much as she could.

  Instead, she was just…with Conor.

  And, now that they were turning onto a gravel drive, she saw they were at a tiny, traditional Cape Cod cottage, with a flagpole out front, and the entire Atlantic Ocean out back.

  “What is this place?” she said.

  “Granny’s place,” he said. “Mine now. C’mon, Princess.”

  He was out of the SUV before she could say anything, and Sierra hurried to follow him. This was really Granny’s place, whoever that was. She’d sort of thought he was joking, but no, this would mean…

  Don’t get ahead of yourself. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “She inherited it,” Conor said as they came up on the wrap-around porch. “Wouldn’t give it up for anything even when she had nothing. Wanted Mikey and me to always have this place. She used to take us down here every summer, soon as school was out. Like I was family.”

  He placed his hands on the bannister, feeling the old, weathered wood, and looked over at her. This time she saw something new in those blue eyes, something she recognized right away. Grief. But Conor wasn’t ashamed of it or afraid of it. It just was, and he was strong enough to let it roll.

  Her brain recalled certain important facts: Mikey was his childhood best friend, who died. Granny was Mikey’s grandmother. The only people in Conor’s life, apart from his sister. All of them gone now.

  “It sounds like you were family,” she said.

  “This was the place where I knew it, too.”

  “Rourke and Kane…”

  “I’m coming off a few bullshit years,” Conor said. “You’ll know all about it eventually. But I wanted you to see this first. The good stuff. The stuff that helped make me, me.”

  Sierra blinked, and realized she was holding her breath. That might have been the single…sweetest? Thing a man had ever said to her. Ever.

  “Like what stuff?” she said when she could breathe again.

  Conor grinned. “Right there, by the flagpole? That’s the first place I ever kissed a girl.”

  “Just kissed?” she said, grinning back.

  “Hey. I was ten.”

  Sierra watched as Conor pushed himself off the railing of the porch, bringing himself to his full height. God, he was such a powerful man. Even the white tee-shirt under that leather jacket clung to his body like it didn’t want to let go, reminding her of the hard, strong muscles underneath.

  She knew she should talk to him about it all, that they should work out what they both wanted, about what he was still hiding from her, all that responsible stuff. But her body was humming, practically vibrating. She could feel, with every breath, how her dress rubbed against her nipples, how the pressure on her clit changed. Like there was something buried inside her, just beneath the surface, and only Conor’s touch would bring it out.

  “Well,” she said, after a million years of staring at his lips. “Was the kiss any good?”

  Conor laughed.

  “Nope.”

  Sierra swallowed. He was her Dom. But she couldn’t wait any longer.

  “We can fix that,” she said, and stepped forward, grabbed his jacket, and kissed him.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Her lips on his, her hands on his jacket. Her breasts against his chest.

  And then Conor growled into her mouth, and in another second he was on her. His hands pulling her against him as he claimed her, one more time, with his kiss. Running through her hair, down her arms. Gathering her wrists. Pinning them behind her back.

  “We will talk about this,” Conor said as he pulled away just enough to fix her with those eyes. “But right now, you’ve been pushing me all morning, Princess.”

  “Have I?” she said. She was too lust-drunk to keep the smile off her face, or to stop herself from pushing up against him.

  One more growl.

  “You know what happens to subs who don’t know their place?”

  Sierra let loose a giggle. She couldn’t help it.

  “I’m hopelessly ignorant,” she said. “You’ll have to show me.”

  “They get made an example of,” Conor said.

  And with that he stooped down and lifted her up, his big hands grabbing two big handfuls of her ass, her legs wrapping around him of their own volition. Sierra groaned as he carried her towards the flagpole, his hardness pressing against her inner thigh. She felt her back against the flagpole, and Conor slapped her ass with one hand. Obediently, she let her legs go, her dress staying hiked up obscenely high.

  Conor looked down at her with glittering blue eyes as he slowly, slowly, removed his belt.

  He had her hands bound behind the flagpole in what felt like a second. He stepped back for a moment, admiring his handiwork, and the distance between them made her realize just how exposed she was. Tied to a pole, completely under his power. Waiting to be served up to him, or anyone else he might choose.

  He didn’t let her wait much longer. He pushed the neckline of her dress down, popping out one breast, then the other, leaving her exposed in the morning light. Sierra’s breath hitched, her body straining forward against the bind. Conor looked down at her hardening nipples, his face betraying nothing until he pinched them both, simultaneously, his big hands pressing against the flesh. Sierra let out a groan.

  “Better,” he said.

  He let one hand fall and slipped it under the hem of her dress, shoving her legs apart. Without warning he thrust two fingers deep inside her, hooking his fingers and pressing his palm into her mound, tearing a cry from her throat.

  “Think you’re ready?” he said.

  “Please…”

  She heard the sound of his jeans unzipping, and there wasn’t a greater sound in the universe.

  Keeping his fingers inside her, he pushed her back against the pole until her back was fully braced. He dipped down to grab one thigh, lifting her leg and wrapping it around her waist.

  “I asked you a question, Princess,” he said, and he pulled his fingers out of her, only to smear them on her cheek and push them into her mouth.

  Sierra moaned as she tasted herself on him.

  “Please,” she said, choking on it. “Yes. Please, just—”

  But Conor wasn’t listening. Whatever game he’d been playing as a Dom ended with his final growl. He shoved her panties aside and lined up the head of his huge cock against her heat.

  He impaled her with one smooth thrust. Conor lifted her other leg, taking her weight in his big hands, driving her into the flagpole behind her. Sierra cried out as Conor filled her, and then collapsed into him as the sensation began to spiral out from her core, her mind losing itself in her body as he fucked her.

  He was it. He was the relief she’d been looking for. He was perfect.

  It was terrifying.

  Twenty-Nine

  Sierra steadied herself against the shower wall, her legs still shaking as hot water streamed down her naked body.

  Good Lord, that man could just about cripple her whenever he
wanted to.

  Conor had carried her inside after fucking her to oblivion and back against that flagpole — a flagpole that, she was pretty confident, would have much different memories for him from now on — and rubbed her legs until she’d felt like she was able to stand. Then he’d sent her to the bathroom with orders to first make herself comfortable, and then to dress for a night on the beach.

  She had no idea what he’d been planning in the meantime, other than a mysterious night on the beach, but she had a feeling tying her to the flagpole and making her come screaming hadn’t been the surprise he’d had in store for her. Which meant there was more.

  And as she came out of the little bathroom, her hair still wet and her body feeling brand new, she saw that she was, in fact, correct.

  Conor was standing in the kitchen surrounded by buckets, all of which teemed with seafood. Living seafood.

  “Good,” he said. “Everything’s set. We’ll just have to get the seaweed.”

  Sierra looked at him hopelessly.

  “The what?”

  Conor grinned. “I knew you’d never done a real clambake,” he said. “Grab that shovel, and let’s go.”

  Sierra looked around the kitchen. There was, for some reason, a shovel in the corner.

  “The what?” she said again.

  This time Conor laughed as he kissed her.

  “You’re serious?” Conor said. “You came up here every summer as a kid and you never once had a clambake?”

  “You seem to be carrying a lot of lobsters for something called a clambake,” Sierra said, eying the buckets. “And I am also unclear how we’re going to bake on the beach? But no, never had a clambake. That what the wood is for?”

  Conor shook his head as he led Sierra up the last little stretch of boardwalk and down onto the dune above the secluded beach. There was already plenty of wood piled on the sand, along with the rocks and a picnic basket. Everything they’d need but the seaweed and the seafood. Conor had called the old guy who’d lived next door to Granny’s since the dinosaurs roamed the earth and asked him to set it up. Gus hadn’t failed him.

  “That’s what the shovel is for, too,” he said.

  Sierra gave him a look. “Well now it makes even less sense.”

  Conor laughed and held out his hand to help her down the side of the dune. Together they climbed down at an angle, doing their best not to disturb the sand too much. This little pocket of beach was bounded on both sides by large dunes that came close to the water’s edge, and practically invisible from the walk high on top of the hill unless you knew to look for it. At high tide it was completely cut off from the beaches on either side, leaving this perfect little hiding spot for the locals. It was probably illegal to climb down there now, but Conor had done it his whole childhood, and he’d damn well take the fine to do it one more time with Sierra.

  Of all the things he’d heard and seen about Sierra’s childhood with her mobster father and her psychopath brother, for some reason the clambake thing…man, that got to him. Nobody didn’t like a clambake. It was hanging out around a fire with people you loved, drinking beer and eating food and feeling good. That’s all it was. And with that much money, on a private goddamn compound, the only reason not to have them was if you didn’t want to spend time with your kids. Or you were afraid of one of them. Or both.

  Conor had brought her here to show her some of the happy memories from his childhood, but he was starting to realize that Sierra didn’t have many of those memories of her own. She grew up with money, and not much else.

  Well, that was gonna change.

  “Start digging,” he said.

  “That is weirdly ominous,” Sierra said.

  Conor grinned. Man, he loved this woman.

  It was easy work, doing it with her. Setting up the fire, digging the pit, explaining all the steps along the way. Making his squeamish little sub go collect the seaweed from the edge of the water, watching her laugh and shriek and be grossed out all at once.

  “It feels weird,” she said, more than once. “Seriously, touch this weird green nonsense.”

  “Bring it here,” Conor said, after transferring the last of the rocks. “Time for the lobsters.”

  “Wait,” Sierra said, the last handfuls of seaweed dripping from her hands. “Wait, wait, wait. We’re wrapping the lobsters in this and then…?”

  “On the hot rocks,” Conor said. “Along with everything else. Cover it up, thirty minutes, you got a clambake.”

  “While they’re alive?”

  Christ, the look on her face was pure Disney princess.

  “C’mere,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

  He showed her the bucket with the lobsters in it, next to the bucket with the clams.

  “See how they aren’t moving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anesthetized.”

  “What, with like…” She looked at him, her eyebrow raised. “Drugs? Seriously?”

  “Lobster drugs,” Conor said. “Or the equivalent. Swear to God. Little bit of clove oil, and they’re on cloud nine the whole time. Tastes better that way, too.”

  Sierra peered into the bucket once more, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. The sun was going down, and the light was dim in the little hidden beach.

  “They do look pretty wrecked,” she said, eventually.

  “You should have seen them before,” Conor said. “Scuttling backwards in circles for like thirty minutes.”

  Conor was pretty sure he’d remember her laugh for the rest of his life.

  He’d brought her here to make sure she had the first good birthday of her life, and to tell her he loved her. He’d also planned to tell her about Jared—just rip that bandaid off, be honest with her. But the more he watched his sub be delighted, and smile, really smile, like she was full of joy, like she’d forgotten about all the bullshit in the world…

  Turned out his favorite thing in the whole world was making Sierra Fiore smile.

  And Conor was human. He wanted to see Sierra like that for the rest of his life. But Rourke’s words still bounced around in his head, and he had to wonder if he could have it both ways.

  “So now what do we do?” Sierra asked, as the last of it was covered.

  Conor threw another few pieces of wood on the fire, stoked it up, let it blaze. The sun was setting. His girl was wrapping her arms around herself, even over the sweatshirt she was wearing.

  “Nothing left to do but wait for it to cook,” Conor said. “Come here.”

  Obediently, she came towards him, and he pulled her down with him to the sand. Easily, gently. He wasn’t even looking to take her again, here and now, though that would come soon. Just wanted to hold her close.

  But for now, Conor leaned back against the mound of sand they’d dug up and gathered his sub in his arms, content for the moment. He breathed in real deep, and preserved it in his mind. Because what was coming next could change everything.

  “This was a wonderful surprise,” Sierra said, softly.

  Conor smelled her hair, her scent, and that thing in his chest stretched itself wide.

  “This isn’t it, Princess.”

  Sierra half turned, just enough to feel her forehead rest against Conor’s bare neck. She loved to feel his bare skin on hers. It was the weirdest thing and it made her feel a little like a creep, but she could not get enough.

  “Wait,” she said. “This isn’t the surprise?”

  She heard a chuckle rumble deep in his chest. He was holding her between his legs as he leaned back, nestled against his chest with a blanket over her while they waited for the food to cook.

  “Three parts to the surprise,” Conor said. “This was part of part one.”

  “Part of part one?” she said.

  A wave of anxiety, of not-rightness, washed over her. Sierra wasn’t used to people organizing surprises for her, especially not surprises with multiple parts. It unnerved her, until Conor squeezed her a little tighter.

 
He just…had a way of melting everything away.

  “You’re really going to turn me into a spoiled princess,” she murmured.

  “That’s the plan,” he said. “That way I get to discipline you.”

  Sierra giggled and groaned at the same time, Conor’s arms squeezing her just tight enough to put some pressure on her breasts.

  “Ok wait,” she said. “What’s the rest of part one?”

  “Your birthday present,” he said, simply.

  Sierra blinked. She sat up, slightly away from him, and he let her. She turned back to look him squarely in the eyes, the pale blue fading to a gray that was still somehow piercing in the light of the fire.

  “What are you talking about?” she said, softly.

  Conor got out his phone, made a few swipes, keyed in something.

  “I took pictures,” he said. “Of your art.”

  “What?”

  “I have this Army buddy,” Conor went on. “He married this fancy ass art dealer in Manhattan. Lives this ridiculous life now. You should see the pictures—he looks like a goddamn bear next to all those skinny artist types.”

  “Pictures?” she said, dumbfounded. “Of my paintings?”

  “Anyway, I sent them to him to show to her, on a strict condition of anonymity,” Conor said. “My buddy doesn’t know who did the paintings, and neither does his wife. She just saw them for what they were. Paintings. And she fucking loved them. Here, this is what she said. Read it.”

  Sierra could barely focus her eyes on the bright phone. She saw a few phrases that stuck out: unique, beautiful vision. Dreamlike. Brilliant.

  “She wants your stuff, Sierra,” Conor said. “You don’t have to do a damn thing about it. It’s not like you need the money. But now you know, for the rest of your life, that you’re the real deal. Your talent is real, your work is real. All of it. It’s fucking beautiful, and it affects people. And you can do whatever you want with that information, but as your Dom I’m telling you that you no longer get to talk shit about yourself, the life you’ve built for yourself, or your art. Not ever again. Understood?”