by Liz Crowe
The months he had spent calming his excess energy by learning how to dominate, how to please, how to be in complete control of his partners’ pleasure had been a pure buzz. He loved it. There was no denying that, or that he was a natural at it.
More women had been pleasured by him and his abilities than he could even count anymore. He’d “graduated with honors,” and while the old club owner guy would not yet call him a Master, he knew if he hadn’t left for law school when he did, it would have been a matter weeks before that happened. But now he felt queasy and decidedly un-masterful.
A hand touched his leg. He stared at it, the short nails painted a funky brown like dried blood. Her fingers tapered and elegant. The gut-deep reaction Jack was having to her was freaking him the fuck out. He gulped and decided to make this short and sweet and bid her farewell as quickly as he possibly could. Without looking at her he climbed out, then stomped up the steps and unlocked the door, tossing his stuff on the entryway floor. He escaped to the small kitchen to gulp some water.
He heard her enter, then walk up behind him after a few minutes. She waited quietly, until he turned. Gaping at the sight of Jenna, completely naked in his kitchen, her firm, large breasts tipped with deep pink nipples, Jack sensed something in his brain click into place.
Her sex was nearly bare but for a small triangle of dark brown fuzz. He could see it all, more than he wanted to see, including an intriguing piece of body art that he reached out to touch. The black vine-looking thing came around her side, bloomed like a leafless tree across her stomach, reaching down into her tiny patch of pubic hair. His finger shook as he touched it, but the heat of her skin soothed him. The feel of female flesh under his hand cast a pall over his zinging nerves. He pulled her close and everything slowed, including his racing pulse.
She tasted like coffee and like something exotic, as he parted her lips and she went up on her tiptoes to put her arms around his neck and mold her body against his. He stopped. And she stepped back, dropping her gaze. “I’m sorry. I should not have touched you…yet.”
Wiping his lips as the nervousness tickled his brain again, he took her hand, led her back to his room. He hadn’t had any women in his house in a while, much less in his room, even after a year of school. Which was odd considering his previous preference for intimate house parties.
His time at the club had changed his taste for play and he’d kept it separate from where he lived on purpose. Problem was, he wanted this one close, in his personal space. The strength of the wanting terrified and exhilarated him all at once.
He opened a small chest, pulled out a length of soft cotton rope and nothing else. “Lie down,” he said, his voice so low he could barely hear it himself. “Hands over your head.” He bound her wrists, allowed himself a few moments to stroke her amazing body, watching as she reacted, loving it so much he felt like he could keep her here forever. She bent one leg as her breathing quickened.
He kissed her then, unable to stop himself, dove into her mouth as his fingertips found her exposed clit, teased it, then slid his experienced fingers inside her.
She sighed, writhed under his touch and his lips. Then he stopped himself, got off the bed and left her there without a word. He needed space. He should not have brought her here. He wasn’t ready for something that felt so…incredibly…strange. What should be right simply was not. He couldn’t figure it out. After whimpering a little, Jenna stayed quiet.
Jack sat at the small kitchen table and contemplated the odd sensations fluttering around his brain like trapped insects. Yeah, his cock was hard enough to cut a few diamonds but that he could handle. It was his heart, which kept pounding and his head, which buzzed so loudly he could barely hear himself think. What was this?
He ran a hand down his face, around the back of his neck. The longer he sat, the worse it got. So he stood and stomped back into the bedroom, stripping out of his clothes under her gaze. She bit her plump, delicious, lower lip. An odd sensation of ownership enveloped him. That was his lip. He would bite it, and she would do exactly what he told her.
As if in a daze, moving slowly and with purpose but not even understanding what or why—just that he had to do it, he rolled her over. Yanking her hips up, he smacked her ass, hard, open-handed, once, twice, again. Watching as her flesh reddened and hearing her sighs and squeals of pleasure. The ropes at her wrists caught his eye for some reason. She was pulling against them so hard they burned her skin and a drop of blood had appeared, marring their bright whiteness.
He stared at it, caressing her hip and ass that he’d just smacked yet again. To her credit, she stayed quiet, emitting only little sighs and moans as he ran both his hands up her back and into her hair. He gripped tight and pulled with one, then used his other to trace that wild tree-thing covering her lower back and snaking around to her front.
“I don’t know what it is about you…but….” He let go of her and rolled a condom over his cock, still feeling trancelike, outside himself, unable to stop or breathe or think. His control was slipping. He knew it. When he slid into her, inch by exquisite, inch, her body gripped him so tight he gasped. And her sighs turned into a low groan of satisfaction. He closed his eyes and let it happen. The moment was sublime and meant more to him than it likely should.
He fucked her slow, watching as if from a distance, gripping her hips then reaching around to tease her clit, until she cried out. Her whole body seemed to pull him toward something he honestly believed he should run away from.
“Oh shit,” he moaned and grabbed her hair again, yanking her head back as she continued her low moaning and her body kept a firm hold on his cock it almost hurt. Everything froze just as the orgasm burst across his nerve endings, making him yell and lose himself utterly for the first time since Mindy, likely, or Suzanne.
He sighed and draped his body around hers. Pulled her down, and cradled her close as he reached up to unbind her wrists. She still hadn’t spoken but was shaking, trembling so hard her teeth chattered.
“Shh…,” he whispered, pulling the quilt up over her while he hit the bathroom. “Shh…Jenna,” he caressed her name when he returned, loving the feel of it in his mouth as his brain sent up warnings to let her go, not allow to her stay. But she was just so right, here in his arms. Burying his nose in her hair he sighed, and slept.
Chapter Ten
By the time Jack had found a roommate, a fellow second-year student named Evan Adams who was hiding from his own inner Dom with a vanilla girlfriend, Jack felt like he had a complete handle on his life for the first time ever.
It was a buzz. He was on top of everything including the hot woman who was now his full-time sub. They’d declared themselves as such at a new club he’d found, thanks to a contact back in Detroit. Jenna was brash, high-maintenance. At once eager to please and hard to manage, but totally got off on being punished, so it worked. Or at least he thought it did.
The last year of school was a blur as Evan’s family fell apart, he lost his vanilla girlfriend, and both young men dealt with the stress of thinking about the real world and real jobs. During a brief Jenna-inspired break when Jack had exploded in fury at her and sent her away after she refused to come with him to Ann Arbor to meet his family, he had very nearly let her go for good.
But he was programmed by her somehow at that point—if anything more so than she was to respond to his commands. He needed her, his Jenna fix, the way she would obey, yet mock him at the same time. Addiction was the word that sprang to mind more than once both at the club when they were making a public show of it with floggers, hot wax, hard metal and loud, enthusiastic orgasms. Or at home after a long day of class, eating a quick-fix dinner and drinking five-dollar bottles of wine before studying.
He’d catch himself looking at her, in a haze of needy lust that he mistook for love. So when she did obey him and stayed away after he came back from Ann Arbor he went nearly insane from withdrawal.
Finally, he went to a party and caught her there, making out in
the corner, letting some asshole fondle her tits. Jack found that sort of behavior not really a surprise which shocked him as he walked right up to them. Jenna opened her eyes when he cleared his throat, their dark blue depths telling him one thing—she knew he’d be there and was putting on this little slut show for his benefit.
That look on her too-perfect face was one he never forgot. It was a cross between pity and smugness. It took all he had not to yank the dude off her and backhand the bitch into the next room. His inner Dom rose, choking him, making the room fade when they locked eyes. That was his neck, those were his tits, that was his ass and she was …letting…someone else touch them.
He caught the glint of her collar, the thin chain he’d given her as a symbol of their relationship—or at least what he thought was their relationship. That tore it. He really should have walked away then. But he simply could not. Something about her compelled him, made him crazed with lusty possessiveness. He may not have wanted her all the time but by hell, no one else was going to have her either. It was sick, but he didn’t figure that out until it was too late.
He pulled the guy off his woman with ease, keeping his gaze on hers. She stood, chest heaving, eyes full of tears but with that evil-looking, bitchy smile on her face. “Jack,” she said, putting a hand to the chain at her neck. “What do you want?”
“Nothing more than what is mine already,” he said, surprised at the calm tenor of his voice. Because in his head he was howling, roaring with fury. And his cock was so hard it made him wince when he took another step toward her and reached for her arm. “Let’s go now, Jenna. We need to have a little chat.” He guided her out, hand planted in the small of her back, firm, and in control.
He drove them to his house in complete silence, opened her door, and helped her out. Without a word, he took her jacket and hung it up before turning to her. She stood, jaw set, eyes flashing, daring and mocking him at the same time. Her look was not so much “bitch” anymore but it was definitely not the “sub” he required. None too gently, he yanked her to him, threaded fingers in her thick curls and pulled hard. She hissed but didn’t speak.
He used his other hand on her neck, his vision dimming as he imagined the utterly unimaginable. “You are very lucky,” he whispered, keeping his fist in her hair and his fingertips against her pulsing jugular vein. He leaned in and bit her shoulder hard, making her shiver. “Very, very, very lucky,” he slid his lips up her neck, slowly tightening his grip in her hair, “that I am a nice guy.”
When he finally smelled what he required from her—fear—he let go. And left her standing there, staring at the floor. “Go down on your knees. Now.”
She obeyed him, shaky, sniffling, sufficiently afraid so that he knew he’d made his point. “Stay there, Jenna. Think about what you did. And what I should have done to you. And what I won’t be doing for you.” He looked down at his trembling hands. He had very nearly choked her. He, Jack, the guy who loved women, who did not harm anyone to the point of danger.
He looked at her, hating her guts at that moment. She did this—her constant contradictory behavior—the willing sub, the eager slave, then the whiny, overly dramatic bitch keeping him on a knife’s edge of horny frustration when all he wanted was a little stability. And that little stunt tonight, letting that guy paw her while she still wore his collar? He took a deep breath and walked away from her.
He left her there all night. He heard doors open and shut, assumed Evan was in for the night. But his roommate knew not to interfere. They respected each other’s proclivities, even though Jack realized Evan did not care for Jenna at all.
When he woke with a jolt, he grabbed his phone and saw it was nearly five a.m., his usual weekday alarm time. After staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, he got up, went out to the foyer where she remained, now on her hands and knees.
Reaching down, he gripped her arm and helped her to her feet. Knowing her legs would be screaming in pain by now he led her to the kitchen and got her water and a painkiller. She took it, swallowed the water eagerly, clutching the glass with two hands like a little kid.
The look she flashed him when she handed it back for more bordered on self-satisfied, but he let it pass. When she’d finished the second glass she sighed and looked at the floor. Jack pondered her for a moment, and let the fact that he was half inclined to let her go right then for good hit his nervous system.
“Don’t make me leave, Sir. Please,” she whispered, her voice rough. He tilted her chin up, still in turmoil, his heart at odds with the increasingly powerful messages from his brain. He had every intention of denying her sex, the rough punishing play she adored with ropes that burned and whips that striped and wax that sizzled. He closed his eyes a split second, getting a grip on his urge to shove her out the door and out of his life. “Jack,” she said clearly. “I…I’m sorry. I l-l-love….”
“Shh.” He put a finger to her mouth, unwilling to hear her say it because he knew she did not. She loved herself and what she got from him, pure and simple. He did love her, however. That was the shitty part. And that breathless dual realization made him even angrier.
She looked up at him, huge blue eyes watery, color high, her need clear. Without thinking or speaking he picked her up and carried her to his room, dropping her without ceremony onto the bed. He stood and watched her a minute, pondering his own utter stupidity as he reached down and ripped her dress in two, his breathing loud in his ears. “You will never do that to me again, do you understand? Jenna?” he growled. He put a hand to her neck, squeezed, then let it trail downward, horny and pissed off all in one thick emotional stew.
With a grunt, he shoved her over onto her hands and knees, trussed her, wrists bound to her ankles, bare ass up in the air. He reached into the trunk of implements pulling out the first thing he found, the cane—a simple wooden rod.
That night was first and last time he ever wielded the harsh instrument. Every time he smacked her she squealed, then after about ten strikes she sobbed, then screamed. Jack’s hands shook, his body pulsed, and his brain rejected what he was doing to her. But he dropped the stick, gripped her hips hard, and shoved himself into her.
Because there was no denying that he was so turned on he could hardly breathe.
She was exposed and wet after the lashing even though she was sobbing nearly uncontrollably into the bed cover. He fucked her hard knowing she wanted it that way and finally reached around and down to stroke her rock-hard clit until she yelled his name and came with the now-familiar pulse and spasm around his cock. Then, he stopped, pulled out of her, and fisted himself. The orgasm had him teetering on the edge but there was something he had to do first.
She dropped to her side as he untied her, noting she had pulled against the ropes again, bringing bloody streaks to her wrists and ankles. “Sit up,” he commanded. “Suck my cock.” She was not a huge fan of this activity. Something she’d made clear from the beginning. So he was gonna fuck her mouth and make her take it all.
She got up slowly, shaking, wincing when her well-spanked ass hit the bedspread. That look was back—the one he had hoped to beat out of her but realized he was totally kidding himself about. He sighed as she fisted him, swallowed him, cupped his balls, and traced beneath them with a finger.
He fisted her hair and pounded down her throat. Then as quickly as he came, he pulled of her mouth and stood there, staring at her. Her lips were swollen. A trickle of cum leaked from her mouth.
“I want you to leave,” he said, shaky, pulling his jeans on and turning away from her. Her hand on his back made him turn. The sweet Jenna was back, the one who did whatever he asked—as long as she got her way. He smiled and ran a finger down her red face, feeling manipulated and too tired to think about it anymore. “I told you to leave. I don’t like…what you’re doing to me. Go…away.”
“I don’t want to leave, Jack. Ever,” she said simply, pulling him back to the bed. And he let her.
The night after their uneasy and very rough r
eunion, they sat watching a movie. Jack was exhausted in mind and body. He put a hand on her hip as she lay draped over his lap. The vision of them together was so clear he had to close his eyes to it. This was it. This was love—the give and take, the understanding and the miscommunications. God knows, he wasn’t perfect. Why would he expect her to be? He needed this, the intimacy, her company, her warm body next to his every night. At the end of it all he wanted to be sitting here with her watching a movie. She rolled over and put a hand to his face. He gripped her wrist, kissed the rope burns she loved giving herself.
“Jack,” she sighed sliding up and straddling his lap.
“I love you,” he said simply, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. She stared at him, opened her lips to speak but a sudden urge over took him and he kissed her and didn’t stop kissing her until he had her pinned beneath him and he was on her, inside her, owning her, or so he told himself.
He woke later alone and stumbled into the bed, remembering she had her bar exam study session the next day and had gone home to get some sleep. He lay staring at the door of his room and realized he never gave her a chance to answer, when he’d told her—had used the “l” word for the first time since blurting it out to Mindy all those years ago.
And he had not let her say it the night before. Mainly because he knew she’d be lying. His trust level was low. But in some crazy backward-ass, emotionally-needy way he wanted her more. Something empty in him had opened up, something he wished he understood but didn’t, not until the next week—graduation week.
“Hey,” Jack said, watching Jenna move around the kitchen, aggravated that she wouldn’t settle. The jeweler’s box pressed against his thigh reminding him why he was here. It held a ring, a nice one, one he’d be proud for her to wear.
She turned, put her hand to the thin platinum chain that he’d given her about six months before, declaring her as his to the world. He touched the box, something bugging him, but he’d determined to do this. He had a job lined up back in Ann Arbor and had every intention of bringing her, his fiancée, with him. If this is what it took, this is what he would do.
