Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  He shrugged. “If you shut yourself away from everyone and say ‘I’m lonely’, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, when the rest of the world is waiting outside that door. It doesn’t happen instantly, those connections. You’ve got to be patient, work for them. And that’s just normal friendships and family relationships. It’s been my experience the soulmate stuff happens when you’re not looking for one, when you finally get comfortable with where you’re at. When you’re a whole person rather than a puzzle piece looking for a matching lock.”

  He swept his hand around himself, gesturing to the theater. “I know you’ve been in that pit, but this looks like you’re one of the ones who clawed out and found something that works for you.”

  She lifted her other foot off the floor, twitching it left and right in invitation. He let it replace the one in his lap so he could massage it too.

  “Brat.”

  She didn’t deny it. “Is there any time loneliness isn’t selfishness? Wanting that one bright line of connection that belongs to you alone? You really think that’s just romanticism gone amuck?”

  “No, not necessarily. But I think it has the irony of putting blinders on you. Such that when that person’s right in front of you, you might miss that they’re there because you have this perfect picture in your head of what he or she is supposed to be.”

  Another silence ensued. As it drew out, it began to have weight. She felt his eyes on her, and shifted. She wanted to tell him to stop looking at her like that, but she didn’t really want him to stop. So she straightened, putting her feet on the floor, and gestured to the rack of clothes. “What’s that?”

  “Glad you asked.” He rose from the crate and came to her. When she lifted her face, he bent and slid his arms beneath her, picking her up off the seat. Not expecting to be carried, she caught his shoulders with a little yelp.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I had a sudden craving to carry you. You’re a nice armful.”

  He carried her up the side steps and let her feet down in front of the rack, her back to the stage curtain. The dresses were in shades of ivory or white. The full skirts and beaded bodices told her they were all wedding dresses.

  “I picked these out at secondhand shops. They’re in your size, more or less, so they should have a reasonable fit.” He gestured. “Show me the dress you’d want to be married in, if these were the choices you had.”

  She’d had a lot of unexpected experiences with eccentric people. This one took her by surprise, followed by a pressing sense of dismay.

  “I’m kind of tired.” She stepped back, but he caught her hand.

  “Julie.”

  At his look that could penetrate her so deeply, she couldn’t keep herself from saying what was at the forefront of her brain. But when had she ever had a filter?

  “I can’t do that as a game, Des. I’m a middle-aged woman who’s never even gotten close to it, and I’m one of the pathetic saps who really wanted it to happen. It took a long time for me to accept that I’m likely never going to have that, and to figure out how to be happy with my life regardless. It’s a can of worms I don’t really want to open. Okay? Lot of dysfunctional shit goes with it, and I don’t want to feel that with you tonight. I just want…” She swallowed over the ache in her throat, unable to continue.

  He drew her against him, his fingertips pressing into her lower back and the upper rise of her buttocks in that firm way that miraculously conveyed just how in control he was. It also reminded her that, while she was exhausted, the exhilaration of the night and the simmering she’d felt ever since he’d kissed her and given her that tiny, intense orgasm were within reach.

  Hell, the whole damn night had been an overflowing tub of erotic stimuli. Though she’d been busy doing her job, an important part of her brain had been eagerly drinking in all the pheromones, just like everyone else in the theater. She fully expected a few hundred people had gone home to copulate like rabbits. Some would explore things they’d never thought about, or had carefully buried up until now. Hopefully there’d be no ER visits. That was the kind of publicity they really didn’t need. Thank goodness they’d put a bunch of “don’t try this at home without proper guidance” caveats in the program, as well as had Billie reinforce that mantra in his emceeing.

  When he spoke against her cheek, her hand flexed in his simply from the vibration through her skin. Her internal babblings weren’t enough of a buffer against the things he wanted to break open inside of her, force her to release.

  “We’re back to my earlier reminder, love. This isn’t a request. Choose. Trust me to take you somewhere you want to go.”

  He guided her reluctant hand to close over one handful of rich fabric. “It worked out nicely that you’re wearing white lace tonight,” he observed, sliding a finger just under the neckline of her black silk blouse to trace the edge of the undergarment. A tingle of sensation shot straight to her nipple.

  Shifting behind her, leaving her facing the rack, he reached in front of her to slip the buttons of her blouse. She’d noticed he preferred to remove her clothes himself and, since he combined it with plenty of caressing strokes of his strong fingers, she had no objections.

  He’d revealed the lacy cups of her white bra. It was low profile and pushed her up, which won his hum of approval as he slid his touch back over the quivering curves. Her grip tightened on the dress. He moved his hands down her arms, making her release the dress as he drew them back behind her, dropping his grip to her wrists to hold her in that position. His knuckles pressed against her ass as he nudged her hair aside to kiss her throat, tease it with his tongue.

  He did that for a while as she swayed in his grip, staring at those dresses, the sparkles and satin. Releasing her wrists, he slipped the button of her slacks and took the zipper down with a quiet tick-tick noise. After he had her step out of them, he looked down at the knee high stockings she was wearing.

  “Take those off for me, love. My rough hands will snag them for sure.” But he held her as she removed them, leaving her clad only in her filmy underwear.

  Her eyes closed. Her head was already tilted for the light kiss he brushed over her lips.

  “My gorgeous woman,” he murmured, thrilling her. Molding his palm over her buttock, he played with the elastic of her panties for a musing, provocative moment. Then he stepped back, gesturing to the rack again.

  “Choose. I’ll be setting up behind you.” He stroked her hair, caressing her bare back. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head. “Not right now.”

  He hadn’t addressed her reluctance about the dresses. He didn’t try to reassure her about things no amount of words could fix. He refused to turn the light away from the dark chambers of her heart, and she kept stepping into those rooms to risk herself with him.

  As he retreated, she looked at the dresses. “Des.” Her voice sounded strange to her, strained. “I love you. I mean, I’m falling in love with you. Is that a problem?”

  A pause, then she heard his footsteps as he came back to her. She was grateful and wary when he pressed against her back and folded his arms around her, one over her breasts and one around her waist. They constricted almost to the point of taking her breath, and he kissed the sensitive and pulsing spot just beneath her ear.

  “Yeah, it’s a problem.”

  She couldn’t tell what he meant, not with the mixed message of being in his embrace. He nipped her lobe, dipping a hand to pinch her buttock. “Stop stalling and pick a dress. Don’t turn around until I say you can.”

  “I tell him I’m falling in love with him and I’m stalling,” she muttered. But his tone hadn’t rejected her feelings. It was just a response she couldn’t decipher.

  Since she sensed he would work back around to an answer in his own way, she let the statement hang in the air, drift and fill the space with feeling and density that increased as she flipped through the dresses. When she found the one that was right, she knew it, but she still checked out
the other half dozen.

  “This one.” She’d been listening to his rustlings, but she hadn’t been able to discern much from them. Not turning around to look was difficult. She was curious by nature, but he knew that. She suspected it was just another way he’d found to torment her.

  Before her curiosity overrode his direction, he returned to her. As he reached over her shoulder and unhooked the dress from the rack, he put another of those pleasant kisses at the base of her throat. She leaned into him as he held the dress against her, a crinkling crush of satin, his palm warm on her breast even through the layers of fabric. “Let’s get you into this.”

  The beaded bodice had an off-the-shoulder, scalloped neckline that framed and outlined her breasts, offering a provocative amount of cleavage that pleased him, if the flare in his gaze was an indication. In the back, the dress dipped down below the shoulder blades, leaving a lot of bare flesh to stroke.

  He had her raise her arms so he could handle the side zipper. He hooked three small fabric buttons at the lower back that sculpted her upper torso further. When he turned her to him, the dress floated around her, covering her bare feet.

  “I think someone a few inches taller than me had this dress.”

  “That’s all right. You look perfect.” He ran a hand down her arm, back up to her biceps. Drawing her past the curtain line, she saw the set up was a cushioned mat and a few lengths of rope. So simple, yet it still made her breath shorten.

  Taking her to the mat, he used the pressure of his hand and the direction of his gaze to tell her what he wanted. The skirt was yards of soft satin that, when she knelt before him, looked like a rippling lake reflecting an ivory sky.

  He guided her arms behind her, adjusting them into a boxed position as he dropped to one knee and held her that way with his hands instead of rope, a flesh and blood restraint.

  “A beautiful bride,” he said, his voice a low rumble of meaning and emotion in her dark theater, a setting of drama and dreams come to life. Pushing her hair forward, he bared her neck and set his teeth there. She drew in an erratic breath as he kissed her, giving her a hint of his tongue. He held her overlapped arms, keeping her still.

  “We’re going to get this resolved tonight, Julie, once and for all. So for the next little bit, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. I want you to listen with your whole heart. Not with your fears. Can you do that?”

  She closed her eyes, bowing her head. He knew. Of course he knew. He’d been dropping hints, some subtle and some not-so-subtle, like sending Missive with her confidence about her scene name.

  “I can try,” she whispered. “I want to.”

  “Good.” He paused, his mouth on her, and then she gasped, arching up against him in involuntary reaction as he closed his teeth on her again. Not gently. A hard, painful clamp. His arm snaked around her waist, holding her against him, his other hand still tight on her overlapped forearms. He increased the pressure of the bite and she whimpered. He wasn’t breaking skin, but he was close, and he’d put his mouth over her carotid, so she heard the rush of her blood.

  “Hurts,” she managed. He made a noise of assent, agreeing with her, but he still didn’t release her or change the pressure. The pain was burning through her throat, but the endorphins were swirling in her vitals, her fingers curling and uncurling against his arm around her waist.

  He released her arms to slide his fingertips up one and around her throat, stroking her there lightly, a tender contrast to the ruthless lock of his jaw. She kept her hands clasped on her forearms the way he’d put them, because he hadn’t given her permission to do otherwise. Everything in that throbbing bite was a command for her attention, and he had all of it.

  When he at last eased the hold on her throat and licked the spot he’d offended, the slow swirls of his tongue were met with tingling response. He kissed her throat again, tiny presses of his lips down to her collar bones, and he came to a rest there, nuzzling the pocket between them.

  “You asked me if I was lonely,” he said, low. “No. Lonely isn’t something I’ve felt, not often. I had an ache, though. In my cock and balls, in my gut. I wanted something I couldn’t explain. Haven’t ever really been sure what it was. Just knew when and if I ever saw it, it would always be mine and no one else’s.”

  Lifting his head, he touched her jaw, guided her face around so she was staring up at him. He was standing on his knees, leaning over her left shoulder. The position in which he held her head wasn’t comfortable, but when he shifted his grip under her jaw, he put enough strain on the tilt of her head that she knew he was reminding her again of that edge he liked. That did crazy things to her insides.

  “What I do with rope, the energy I feel when I do it, when I get lost in it, that’s all mine. The sub, she’s this perfect part enhancing it, an angel giving me the center, the reason to tie, bind, shape, create. But she’s never mine. I’ve never looked at Missive, or any of them, and felt that. Don’t move.”

  He sat back on his heels and stroked her hair. “I want you to look down and to your left. Lifting your chin just a little…like that. Stay in that position.”

  When she did, he shifted out of her range of vision. She heard a click, like he’d taken a picture with his phone, but when he came back, he had rope in his hands. He let her relax her head and neck in a normal position and began to use her as that center he’d just described.

  He was capable of intricate designs, but she intuitively understood the simple one he chose this time was intended to only subtly adorn what he felt was already detailed and intricate enough—herself.

  He put rope over her shoulders near the juncture with her neck. He also wrapped it around the points of her shoulders, since the dress design left them bare. Further wraps held her boxed arms to her sides. The ropes passed vertically on the outside of her breasts, and horizontally over and under them. He took all the wraps around her boxed arms, securing them and knotting the ends in a line below her shoulder blades. As he did that, he pulled her boxed arms up, increasing the discomfort. Arousal swirled in her lower belly. It amazed her that he could summon that reaction, when she normally whined over the irritation of a hangnail.

  “Enough?” he asked. “Or…here?”

  Higher. She drew in a breath. Oh God, it hurt, but something about it felt so good…

  He repositioned it at the lower level without waiting for her response. His fingertips passed over her shoulder muscles. “These gave me the answer,” he said. “You like the pain, but you’re going to be in this position a while. I don’t want you experiencing the wrong kind of stress.”

  She had her head down, her breath shallow, heart doing that heavy, powerful thud it did when he was tying her, capturing her, taking over. It was a language. Someone standing on the outside would only see him doing knots and wraps, but every one of them spoke to her, said something. She was quivering, wet between her legs, soaking the white panties. She felt vulnerable to him, fragile as porcelain.

  He shifted back again, and took another couple of pictures from behind her. When he returned, he wrapped his arm around her waist, fingers hooking in the rope wraps below her breasts.

  “This is how I would marry you,” he said. “We’d say our vows as I was tying you. The dress and the rope would say you’re mine.” He brought the phone around her so she could see herself on the screen. “This would be the wedding picture I’d carry on my phone.”

  A woman knelt in a froth of satin, her arms bound behind her, the ropes a tapestry between shoulder and bound arms that enhanced and displayed the beauty of her bare shoulders, her exposed nape, the curl of her fingers around her elbows. Her silken hair was pulled over one shoulder. A submissive, waiting for her Master, devoted and in love with him. Totally his. Pictures didn’t lie. At least not that kind of picture.

  “You are fucking beautiful, and I mean that literally. I’d mean it when you’re eighty. I’ve never wanted a woman so much in my whole life.”

  “If you don’t me
an it…please don’t.”

  He caught her face and drew it up, not gently, forcing her to meet his brown gaze. “Do you think I don’t mean it, Julie? Do you think I’ve gone this long in my life without committing to a woman, only to do it casually now, just to jerk her around?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid of how I feel. I never get what I want. Not in terms of love.”

  “Well, I may not be what you want, but I’m what you’re getting. Deal with it.”

  It was an unexpected tease, delivered harshly and gently at once, and she couldn’t help hiccupping over a surprised chuckle, though emotions were thick in her throat. His eyes sparked in response, but his touch went to a caress on her face, registering everything happening inside her. She was lost.

  “Tell me you want me, Julie,” he said. “Tell me you believe me. No matter what other shit I might bring into your life, God help you, promise me you’ll never doubt that one thing.”

  Everything felt taut and too large inside her, no room for anything but the bright, sharp need she showed him. “Yes,” she whispered. And though he didn’t encourage her to call him that, or seem to believe in that formality, she heard it in her mind clearly enough.

  Master.

  He nodded, his jaw tight. “I’m going to have you, right now. I’ll probably get unspeakable things on that dress. But that will be one more way I’ll mark you.”

  He’d tied the horizontal wraps and her arms tightly. As he passed his fingers over them, she felt the way the rope dug into her skin. He bent and captured her mouth, parting her lips with the pressure of his, sweeping in to take over with tongue and teeth. The faint throbbing of her neck told her he’d already left a mark there with his bite.

  He rose and moved to stand before her. He stripped his belt and opened his jeans. He had a practical, efficient way of undressing, as if he wasn’t aware of the beauty of his body. At another time, she might ask him to peel each article off slowly, let her savor. But she needed him too much right now, and he seemed driven by the same urgency.