by Flora Dain
Above me he looks stern. ‘Do I take that as a yes?’
In answer I simply take him in my mouth and fold my lips around him with a surge of heat that flies straight to my groin. What my busy tongue and lips are trying to tell him is that I love him, I love nothing better than the chance to please him and I’m glad of my rescue.
What they also conveniently spare me from saying is that I’m scared now. Something terrible happened to him today and I’m somehow responsible. And if there’s any way I can make things better I’ll do it.
Starting now.
After a while he eases me away from his hot, pulsing column, glossy now with my saliva. I can see it’s an effort. His breathing is heavy, like he’s running a race. In a way maybe he is: a race to hold off his pleasure for long enough for me to join in.
I grin, ridiculously pleased that for once I’m calling the shots as he swathes me in a large, fluffy towel, hot from the rail. Bundled up like a wiener I’m still grinning as he carries me into the bedroom and dumps me on the bed, then joins me with a low growl and stretches out lazily beside me.
He unrolls me slowly, mussing my hair with one corner of the towel to dry it before sweeping it back from my face to fasten his mouth on mine. His kiss tells me not that I’m forgiven, exactly, but that in some respects things between us cannot change. Not just yet, anyway.
He wants me and needs me and he wants me and needs me now.
His erection juts painfully against my thigh as he shifts position. For now he ignores it, clearly amused by my impatient, straying fingers. ‘We’ll eat soon. You understand we have a date later this evening?’
I smile up at him, relaxed and content, awash with relief that we’re still speaking and I’m not yet dead. ‘What kind of date?’
With a meaningful smile he reaches across the bed to the side table and slides open a silent drawer.
All at once I hear a clink. I stiffen as my mouth goes dry.
‘This kind of date.’
He’s smiling at me now, his look fond and loving, full of soft warmth and gentle promise. Very different from the object he’s dangling over my face: a pair of hard, glinting metal handcuffs.
CHAPTER TEN
We eat light. Me because I’ve hardly any appetite, what with the day I’ve had and the entertainment he’s got in store. Him because he’s a predator with prey in his sights, so food’s just a sideshow.
I avoid any mention of the play. I ask instead if he’s heard any more about Cola’s stalker.
‘Maybe you can tell me. Maybe there’s some link to yours.’ He looks grim as he says this.
I’d thought the same. Now I shiver. My stomach shrivels a little more. I toy with the Caesar salad Verna, his housekeeper, prepared for me. I’m not really hungry. She tossed in extra croutons when Darnley snarled I was losing weight.
Now he pours himself some wine and idly twirls the stem, holding it up to the light. ‘You’ll have a minder to drive you to work and back. They’ll shadow you during the day and try to blend in. Sit in back of your classes, maybe. That’s about it. It’s just for a day or two till we sort this out.’
‘Sort this out? As in, find out she’s not a stalker at all and I’m just a paranoid freak?’
His eyebrow tilts. ‘Or as in she’s an accomplice of the person stalking my sister. Or as in she’s some dangerous lunatic fixated on part-time poets.’
‘Actually, that would be you, Darnley.’
I duck as he flicks a crouton at me, and then another. Our Caesar salad quickly turns into a playground war and I drop the topic.
After supper we toy with coffee and toss back a small brandy, then he leads me to the bedroom. It’s getting late now and the strange looks he’s been giving me since I got in are playing havoc with my arousal. Now it leaps into overdrive.
‘Strip.’
His quiet command sends heat rocketing through me, where before I was simply aching. While he lounges in a sleek armchair I slowly remove my clothes and pirouette for his inspection. I was told to prepare for this session with a thin, strappy bra in simple black. Diving into my Darnley-date overnight things, still in the bag I’d left in Billy’s hallway and transferred here by his staff during our meal, I unearthed a pair of lacy black hold-ups and shiny high heels.
Now I see myself in the mirror the effect is startling. I look raunchy, but somehow exposed and vulnerable. The effect on him I can only guess.
His dark gaze gives me no clue but I fear the worst.
He rises to his feet and silently signals me to stand easy. ‘Hands behind your back, legs straight, shoulders back and head up.’ He walks slowly around me, inspecting me from all angles.
‘And don’t giggle.’ He looks so stern I stop, but only for a second, as more laughter bubbles up.
‘I’m trying. I find this ritual thing hard to handle.’
‘Good. That’s why you need practice. Now come over to the bed.’
He clamps my wrists into one half of the cuff and clamps the other half onto the bed rail.
‘Remind me why we’re doing this? Sir?’ I add quickly, in case he’s being picky over etiquette.
‘Because I want to talk about what happened this afternoon. And this will help you to focus.’
I swallow. Focus? Right now all I can think about is what he’s going to do and what it’s going to feel like. My brain’s in a whirl, my senses consumed by sex. This is going to be hard. ‘I told you. I don’t know anything about what happened.’
He’s making tiny adjustments to my position, bending me lower, pulling my legs apart so I’m wide open, fingering the taut line of the bra straps cutting into my arms, which are stretched out before me, my wrists clamped into the brutal, unforgiving metal, my hands pressed together in prayer.
I try hard not to think what this reminds him of. But of course, that’s just why he does it, and why I’m letting him, urging him, to do this, in the hope it’ll eventually change the experience for him and make it fun.
What it’s doing to me is another matter. I keep quiet about that part, even to myself.
His cold look hints this discussion may take a while. ‘I find that hard to believe. Eldon told me you’d been rehearsing for a couple of weeks. He must have hinted at something like that before.’
I sigh. ‘It’s true. Tomorrow I’ll ask him what he was playing at, if you don’t. Until then that’s all I can say. Except –’
He leans close. ‘Except what?’
Is it the right time to say this? Is there ever a right time to say this? I close my eyes and take the plunge.
If I never tell him he’ll never know.
‘Except, I love you, Darnley. I’d never knowingly hurt you.’
In the silence I feel the long, smooth sweep of his hand on my backside. I whimper. Things are already stirring down there, complex, disturbing things that may take an awful long time to reach full orgasm.
He can prolong his play for hours when he wants. He leans over me and follows his long, stirring caress with hot touches of his mouth in a low trail of kisses that fill me with heat.
His voice lowers, deep and sensual. ‘I know. That makes it worse. Think, Ella. You must have hinted at it somehow. Maybe without even knowing?’
He’s growing impatient now. His touch is firmer and more purposeful. He starts to knead and squeeze my bottom like I’m dough. The thought of what he could do to me is scary. I’m completely at his mercy. And now the thin black straps of my bra are starting to cut in as my muscles pull at the unforgiving metal cuff.
‘Nothing, truly, could have been further from my mind.’
‘Did you whistle that jingle, maybe? Hum it one day? Did Eldon refer to it in any way? Maybe he talked to the students about the filming, about the things he liked as a kid, about TV commercials? Passed round some popcorn candy bars? You must have noticed.’
All at once he slaps me hard and I cry out – not from pain, exactly, I really need this – but from shock. ‘Ow. That’s unfair. No. The
re was nothing like that.’
He strokes me again. ‘It came from somewhere. So it can only have come from you.’ His voice is lower now and hard-edged.
I sense trouble. His hand slips deep into me, his touch live as a wire, sending instant heat through me. ‘I’m going to spank you, Ella, and before you ask, yes, it’s because I want to. And then we’ll fuck, because I know from this –’ he eases his hand away from down below and dangles his fingers casually over my face ‘– that’s what you want too. Fair?’
‘And if I want you to stop?’
‘Then just say so.’ He’s running his juice-laden finger along my lip. I lick it automatically, knowing that comes next. Right on cue he slips it into my mouth.
‘Good girl. Suck it clean.’
I do it, my tiny submission a kind of rehearsal for the far bigger thing that he’s planning, and all at once he pulls his hand away and starts. The blows are harsh and stinging, both hands working in an alternating frenzy that sends shockwaves through me. Each jolt drags at my wrists and every blow thuds straight to my groin, jolting me ever closer to release but never close enough.
As my arousal burns ever hotter he pauses to get his breath and fondles my burning backside, laying his cheek against it and licking deep, his hands cool now on my scorching skin. He leans over me, his erection freed. It jabs against the backs of my thighs, hot and eager, infuriatingly close.
‘How are things down there? Ready for more?’ His hands are caressing me without cease and my trembling eases as I lean into his touch, feral with lust. He drops kisses all along my back and ends up somewhere near my neck. ‘Well?’
He reaches round to tweak my left nipple as he says it and I jerk to attention. ‘Please. Sir.’
Is this helping him? Or inflaming him? I know so little about this. All I know is the effect he’s having on me. And that part hardly bears thinking about. ‘Do we get my side of the bargain yet?’
‘In a while. First we’ll try something stronger.’
He goes to a cupboard to fetch something. When he comes back I feel something being drawn slowly over my rear. It’s hard and flat and cool.
And now I’m scared. ‘What is it? I can’t see from here.’
‘It’s a paddle. Here, have a good look.’ He holds it up in front of me so I can see. His voice is thick with laughter now, like he’s really enjoying this part. I feel a shiver of dismay. It looks huge.
‘Kiss it.’ His voice is a low, menacing whisper.
I do it, feeling arousal jolt through me.
‘Good. You’re getting good at this.’ His hand slips between my legs and fondles me from behind, his fingertips reaching right up to my hot, swollen little centre. They flutter there for a moment, making me shriek in pleasure.
Oh, yes, oh, yes. More, please, please …
‘But you’re not coming just yet. Punishment first.’
‘I thought I’d had it,’ I say wildly, as my orgasm teeters at the brink, still cruelly denied. ‘What was all that spanking?’
He puts a finger under my chin and raises my face up to his. My dismay deepens. His look is cold, his eyes burning with some deep, suppressed emotion that comes from some terrifying place I’d sooner not know about. ‘That was just the warm-up. You thought you’d play a stunt like that today and get away with it? Big mistake. Now you’ll get the hiding you deserve.’
Before I can protest the paddle thing lands with a crash on my backside and then again, and again. The shock of it robs me of breath. Mercifully, the harshness of my spanking earlier has also deadened the effect. All I feel is fire, all the way down, all the way through. But as the blows go on and on I gather my wits and sense that somehow, somewhere this is wrong. It’s unjust.
‘Stop.’ I writhe against the cuffs, my struggle making the metal bite deeper. Now I’m in real pain. ‘Stop. Stop. Finish,’ I yell again and again but he keeps on – and finally I haul in air and scream.
All at once he stops, panting. I hear the paddle clatter to the floor. I sob quietly into the sudden silence.
‘Ella?’ He sounds dazed.
‘Let me go. I’ve had enough.’
All at once he springs into action, releases my wrists and raises me up to face him. He’s sweating now, his face drawn and tense. ‘Shit, Ella. Are you OK?’
I look away and rub my wrists, swollen and sore now, the places marked with bright red welts. ‘That was wrong, you know it was.’ I sniffle as I raise my eyes to his face. ‘You’re angry. It doesn’t feel right.’
He’s ashen now. He pulls me to him, his face troubled. ‘Christ, Ella, I’m so sorry.’
I’m badly shaken. I refuse his offer of a shower because I know where that will lead. Still upset, I snatch up my things, march into my room and run a quick solo shower in the en-suite.
Afterwards I lie on my bed, swathed in a towel, my hair still damp. In my mind I run over all the awful things that have happened today. And the more I think about it, the more I think that running out on him now may just about count as the worst.
He’s trying to come to terms with something so bad I can’t think about it at all. But he has to think about it all the time, because he has to ward off its effects and he has to protect his family from its shadow and all at once I’ve plunged him right back in the thick of it and now I’m whining about a spanking …
What was I thinking?
Slowly I get up, unlock my door and go in search of him. From a door at the end of the corridor I can hear singing, something calm and beautiful. I think it’s Handel.
On bare feet I tiptoe into the room. He’s sprawled in an armchair, his long legs stretched out before him, his black velour robe knotted loosely at his waist. His beautiful profile is all I see at first. He looks up at I move close and holds out his hand, then draws me onto his lap.
He holds my hand to his lips and kisses my fingers. ‘Forgive me, Ella. That was out of order.’
At least he knows. It’s a small step but maybe we’re getting somewhere. I wind my arms around his neck and lay my cheek against his. ‘I’m OK. I’m still here.’
The melody plays on as I nestle down against his chest and he strokes my hair. ‘I can’t lose you. You’re all I’ve got.’
Later he gathers me up in his arms, carries me to his bed and we fall asleep together, wound round each other like morning glory.
I wake in the small hours, hot and sweaty, my chest and legs so tightly constrained I can’t breathe. It’s nearly dawn but something’s holding me down, stifling me … As I surface I realise it’s Darnley. He’s still clamped round me. He’s breathing heavily into my neck and he’s very erect, his burning column jutting into me like we’re barely minutes from rapture and I’ve been holding him off. But he’s still asleep.
He must be dreaming … I reach back and stroke his leg to calm him. The muscles of his thigh feel rigid under my fingers but as I stroke he starts to relax. Soon he’s breathing normally again. When his breathing is regular I start a series of tiny movements to get clear of his arms and shift towards the edge of the bed.
‘Going somewhere?’
My eyes snap open. He’s awake? With a soft laugh he folds his arms and legs around me again, burying his face in my neck. My efforts to escape come to nothing as his powerful limbs clamp me even more firmly than before, and now he means business. One hand slips under his pillow. The rip of foil is muffled under the quilt. There’s a shift in the covers and all at once he caresses the underside of my thigh, his fingers travelling upwards to my curved, pulsing places jutting back towards him, inviting and eager in our private, sleep-warmed cavern of bedclothes.
I part my legs and wriggle for a moment, inviting him in, and all at once he surges up inside me. He breathes out a long sigh of satisfaction as he starts to thrust, clamping his free hand between my legs with a low growl that makes me shudder with excitement as he presses me back to meet him.
Still sleepy, I thrust back towards him to match his rhythm as we lie perfectly aligned,
his hips doing most of the work, his breathing our only music, his busy fingertips pressing into my centre with a gentle motion that promises more than dawn as my climax builds and we come together, locked in our embrace, perfectly in sync. We stay entwined until we drift back into sleep.
Daylight brings a new day and new friction.
‘But I’m at work. A minder? I’ll be a laughing-stock.’ I glare at him across his gleaming kitchen.
It’s been going on for a while. His kindly housekeeper is back on duty this morning and tries to avoid the flak as she prepares cereal for him, toast for me. Has she heard this kind of conversation before? I close my mind to his past girlfriends. It’s bad enough being one now.
‘So what do you want? Protection or not? We don’t do this by halves.’
As Verna clears our unfinished plates and quietly makes us coffee we reach a deal. He, or his driver, will take and fetch me on condition I stay on site all day. In return I must keep my phone switched on and call him the minute I sense trouble.
I decide to leave it at that. The argument about me going back to Billy’s apartment can wait for another day. One step, or fight, at a time.
Bullen drives me in and on the way I collect some lesson papers. Despite my shaky start the day goes well. Eldon is back today. Now his drama segment is in the can he’ll focus on other subjects: art, science and math.
I’ll have my work cut out to skewer the students’ attention after yesterday’s excitement so I’m setting up a mock discussion panel for them to critique their performance while it’s still fresh. I’ve even brought in microphones and a stenographer to make it more lifelike.
To my disappointment our Romeo’s not in today. He comes in on the subway and sometimes the trains are late, or so he claims. But by lunch he’s still not in. Maybe he’s got some problem at home. I’ll find him tomorrow.
I try to be patient but I’m jumpy as a cat. At the end of the day, long after the lecture room’s emptied, I’m so absorbed checking over my notes for tomorrow’s lessons I hardly notice a movement in the doorway. Assuming a student has forgotten something I look up, and freeze.
