by Joey W. Hill
“You can’t possibly be hungry. I should hate you.”
“I bet I can talk you into some more of that homemade ice cream. I’ll just spread a couple tablespoons on your pussy and have it that way, warming up everything I make cold.”
“Well, if you put it that way, I could have a spoonful.”
He grinned. “Then go get it, woman. Wait on me like a proper sub.”
She snorted and tugged his chest hair. “If you think you found yourself a service sub, think again. I’m in this for the sex.”
He turned his head and nuzzled her neck, adjusting to his hip to push her back. He pinned her wrist to the bed as he kissed her throat and bit her. When he raised his head, his eyes were intent and sharp.
“Get your pretty ass out of this bed and bring me what I told you to. Else you’ll be very, very sorry.”
Her pulse leaped at both tone and look, and she swallowed, a quiver running through her. Her lips parted, but before she could think of what to say his own quirked, his eyes gleaming.
“You’ve got some service sub to you, love. I can promise you that.”
He put his mouth back on hers, silencing whatever indignant response she could have summoned, which she suspected wouldn’t have been much, given all her brain cells had seized up at his command. When he finally lifted his head, though, she’d rallied.
“I’ve got some news for you,” she said. “Tit for tat. You can say you don’t care much about being called Master, or giving orders about touching or not touching, because you have your rope do all that for you. But you have quite a bit of that kind of Master in you when you want to use it.”
“Well, you bring out the desire for variety in me.” He nipped her ear. “We’ll have a while to explore all the different things we can be for one another. Things neither one of us may have anticipated.”
“More than a while,” she said, refusing to allow any fatalism to infiltrate this moment. “A lifetime.” Sobering, she touched his face. “Say it for me. Please.”
“A lifetime,” he said, capturing the hand and pressing a kiss to her palm. When he lifted his head, she saw the hope for it in his own eyes, that hope reflected and feeding off hers. “A lifetime, and then some.”
A delightful warmth spread through her. With a quick kiss and a provocative wriggle, she slipped out of bed, evading his grasp. Throwing a grin over her shoulder, she grabbed up a robe on the way to the door. “Our lifetime starts with a bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream and leftover pie. How can that not be a good sign?”
Epilogue
Lila’s second play was a hit. Even though a couple sexually repressed critics panned it and another group tried to challenge their permitting, Madison had the continuing staunch support of the two county commissioners, one of whom was in the lifestyle himself. But ultimately, Wonder’s success rested in the hands of word-to-mouth recommendations. Since those were overwhelmingly favorable, the naysayers couldn’t pose a real threat.
Julie went to sleep exhausted in Des’s arms but happy and content. Madison was already planning a couple more productions and an impressive schedule for next year. Julie had agreed to stay on as managing director and Madison was going to start paying Harris a modest salary from ticket sales.
“I’m taking you somewhere, love. Just keep dreaming.”
She blinked, coming back to the surface and registering that it was between one and two in the morning. She was groggy but receptive to the kiss Des placed on her lips. No theater success was complete without being thoroughly ravished by one’s Master, after all, and Des had seen to that with great detail, part of why she felt boneless and in a dreamy Elysian Fields as he bundled her up in a blanket and picked her up off his bed.
“Where are we going?” she mumbled.
“It’s a surprise.” He was taking her car, so he’d reclined the passenger seat. As she settled in, she noticed he’d put a tote in the back that looked like it had some snacks and a change of clothes for her, which was good, since she was naked under the blanket.
“Don’t get stopped for speeding,” she said.
“If I do, showing the cop what’s under that blanket will get me off the hook.”
She snuffled a laugh into the blanket. “Unless it’s a girl cop.”
“If it is, one of my most prurient fantasies could come to life.” Tucking a bed pillow under her head, he kissed her before he circled around the front bumper and took the wheel.
She fell back asleep easily and didn’t wake until dawn. When she did, it was to the cry of seagulls. She opened her eyes to find she wasn’t dreaming. They were at the ocean.
The car was parked and she was alone, the windows down so she could inhale the fresh sea air. When she pressed the lever on the seat so she could sit all the way up, she saw they were parked at a public beach access, where the low rise of dunes and gently waving sea oats gave her a panoramic and peaceful view of the ocean at sunrise. The sky was a mellow hue of rose-grey and pink, the sun close to making an appearance.
Des was close by, not a surprise since she knew he’d never leave her unguarded in the car. He was standing on the hard-packed sand closer to shore. His hands were tucked in his back pockets, hair fluttering over his shoulders as he contemplated the view.
She understood why he’d wanted to look at it by himself first. There’d been so much unsaid, when they’d talked about seagulls and a postcard from a mother he never knew. But she suspected he could stand some company now.
Deciding she didn’t care about the clothes, since it appeared to be just them on the beach, she wrapped the blanket around her and left the car, trudging over the sandy path through the sea oats.
When she’d opened the car door he’d turned, warming her heart with his awareness of her. His brown gaze caressed her from mussed hair to her bare feet framed by the trailing blanket. Turning back to the view as she approached, he lifted his arm and she slid under it.
“Good morning,” he said, gathering her close and kissing her forehead as she nuzzled his throat.
“Good morning. Where are we?”
“Cherry Grove. North Myrtle Beach.”
“Like the postcard Christine left you.”
“Yeah.” He stroked her shoulder, pushing the blanket away enough to find skin and coil his fingers in her loose hair. “I was wondering if she stood at an access like this while she was pregnant with me. If she was thinking about what to do. Maybe she intended to drive home to Elaine, ask her for help, but she reached Charlotte and lost her nerve or something. Maybe she needed a fix and the city was just too tempting. Whatever.”
He lifted a shoulder, banishing a darkness she suspected he hadn’t intended to summon. She put her hand on his chest, tugged on his T-shirt.
“All that may be true. But when she stood here, maybe she thought about how it could be if she was different, if life was different. Maybe she had one pure moment, you know. I think everyone does that. No matter how many bad choices you make, there are these blinks in time where you wish you could be the kind of person you should be. Maybe she thought about being a good mom, about loving you. And if she did, that’s good. That’s cool. That one moment’s enough. Right?”
He touched her face, his eyes caressing her. It made her want to hold him tighter. He made her knees weak, and she knew he’d make her feel that way now or in a hundred years. And he could make her laugh when her heart was breaking.
She opened the blanket, wrapping it around both of them as he held her and found her mouth, parting her lips and sliding in to stroke her tongue with his. As he became more demanding, his hands closed around her waist, sliding down to cup and fondle her ass until she was pressing more insistently against him.
He broke the kiss, glancing ruefully at the rows of beach cottages that flanked the beach access and gave way to high rise timeshares and hotels. “Much as I’d love to take you right here on the sand, I think we might get busted. Want to sit and watch the sunrise?”
“I’d love that.”
She beamed up at him, reaching up with both hands to cup his face. He uttered an amused oath and grabbed for the blanket, salvaging her modesty.
“Woman, you have no shame.”
“I trust you to take care of me.”
His mouth firmed. “I will, you know. Even if I can’t promise that you won’t sometimes have to take care of me.”
“Progress.” She lowered her hands to his shoulders, fingers curling inside the neck of his T-shirt. “Taking care of each other is kind of the point. I want to take care of you. I want you to take care of me. I want to finally know what it is to love someone until the end of our time here on earth. To know what those old couples walking on the beach hand-in-hand know.”
He brought her down to the sand with him, holding her cuddled up against his side so they could watch the sun start to break over the horizon. As it spilled the light of a new dawn upon them, Julie lifted her face to its warmth, even as she savored the feel of Des’s warmth and life next to her.
She thought of sitting with her feet in the Hampton Inn pool. That hadn’t been so long ago, but the paradigm shift since then made it feel like a lifetime. She was certain she’d found now what she’d hoped to find then, in the complex yet intriguingly simple man beside her. Even better, she thought he’d found it with her.
Glancing up at his profile, his absorption with the sunrise, she thought that type of gift made a change of heart possible. Des had said he’d embrace life for her, and she’d hold him to it, because she fully intended to live the entirety of hers with him.
For better or worse was beside the point. There was no worse, not as long as they lived that life together.
“You kidnapped me. You owe me breakfast,” she whispered against his throat.
“I can think of a lot of things I’d like to do to you as my kidnap victim,” he responded, his arm still around her. “Breakfast wasn’t at the top of the list, but I’ll feed you before I check us into a family-run cheap oceanfront hotel and have my way with you.”
“Hmm. Will it have a pirate’s lair kind of name, like the Porthole Pelican?”
“Absolutely. Or Bob’s Beach Hut.”
She grinned. “I want hash browns. And coffee to wake up.”
“Baby, I have ways of waking you up that will put caffeine to shame.”
He tugged her onto his lap then, finding his way under the blanket as she held onto it and him as much as she could, enjoying the sunrise, the gentle roar of the ocean, the touch of his hands and the promise of a new and glorious day.
A steady heat, holding fast for a lifetime against the coldness of the world.
She couldn’t ask for more.
THE END
Afterword
WARNING: Don’t read this before you read the book, or you’ll get some major spoilers!
Obviously, the main purpose of this book—and what I enjoy most as a writer—is to tell a love story. I hope you’ve enjoyed Des and Julie’s. However, I did want to insert this follow-up note about Des’s diabetes and kidney transplant. Type I diabetes and kidney failure are serious issues that can affect all aspects of a person’s life, and the lives of their caregivers. I hope I was able to convey that in Worth the Wait, but I freely admit there are many details I generalized or left out in order to balance the flow of the love story with the reality of these conditions.
Also, while I made my usual attempt to research and confirm the details were accurate (and any shortcomings in that regard are my fault, not that of my wonderful sources), I also balanced the "must dos" with human nature. My conversations with Jeanie, a caregiver to a diabetic teenager, and the very helpful blogs put out there by people with Type I, gave Des the license to, on occasion, do inadvisable things. Such as disconnecting his pump beyond the recommended time period, or having a food that's not on the approved list (grin).
Another note on timing. Dialysis and transplant preparation usually take more than just a "few weeks" to put in motion, but for the purposes of the book I contracted the schedule a bit. However, with his connections through Betty and his worsening condition, it is possible the time frame could have been stepped up for Des. On the kidney transplant, the availability of an appropriate donor could also have accelerated the schedule.
Anyhow, if at any point my decision to leave out some details made these conditions seem less serious, my deepest apologies to those who know just how challenging they are. I’ll close by expressing my admiration for how people like Des make the most of their lives. Seizing love and appreciating life to the fullest, no matter what physical obstacles are placed in their way, leaves the rest of us no excuse not to do the same.
Oh, and for those who want to tease me about the deux ex machina of how Des found a kidney, I fully accept that it was very much an HEA romance kind of thing. But that’s what makes writing (and reading) romance so much fun! Lol…
Ready For More?
Check out Joey’s website at storywitch.com where you’ll find additional information, free excerpts, buy links and news about current and upcoming releases in the Nature of Desire series and for all of her other books and series.
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About the Author
Joey W. Hill writes about vampires, mermaids, boardroom executives, cops, witches, angels, housemaids... She's penned over forty acclaimed titles and six award-winning series, and been awarded the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Erotica. But she's especially proud and humbled to have the support and enthusiasm of a wonderful, widely diverse readership.
So why erotic romance? “Writing great erotic romance is all about exploring the true face of who we are – the best and worst - which typically comes out in the most vulnerable moments of sexual intimacy.” She has earned a reputation for writing BDSM romance that not only wins her fans of that genre, but readers who would “never” read BDSM romance. She believes that's because strong, compelling characters are the most important part of her books.
“Whatever genre you’re writing, if the characters are captivating and sympathetic, the readers are going to want to see what happens to them. That was the defining element of the romances I loved most and which shaped my own writing. Bringing characters together who have numerous emotional obstacles standing in their way, watching them reach a soul-deep understanding of one another through the expression of their darkest sexual needs, and then growing from that understanding into love - that's the kind of story I love to write."
Take the plunge with her, and don't hesitate to let her know what you think of her work, good or bad. She thrives on feedback!
Find more of her work by following her on Facebook and Twitter, and check out her website for more books by Joey W. Hill.
Twitter: @JoeyWHill
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On the Web: www.storywitch.com
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Joey welcomes comments from readers. Find more of her work by following her on Facebook, Twitter, or check out her website for more books by Joey W. Hill.
@JoeyWHill
JoeyWHillAuthor
www.storywitch.com
[email protected]
Also by Joey W. Hill
Arcane Shot Series
Something About Witches
In the Company of Witches
Daughters of Arianne Series
A Mermaid’s Kiss
A Witch’s Beauty
A Mermaid’s Ransom
Knights of the Board Room Series
Board Resolution
Contro
lled Response
Honor Bound
Afterlife
Hostile Takeover
Willing Sacrifice
Soul Rest
Nature of Desire Series
Holding the Cards
Natural Law
Ice Queen
Mirror of My Soul
Mistress of Redemption
Rough Canvas
Branded Sanctuary
Divine Solace
Worth The Wait
Naughty Bits Series
The Lingerie Shop
Training Session
Bound To Please
The Highest Bid
Naughty Wishes Series
Part 1: Body
Part 2: Heart
Part 3: Mind
Part 4: Soul
Vampire Queen Series
Vampire Queen’s Servant
Mark of the Vampire Queen
Vampire’s Claim
Beloved Vampire
Vampire Mistress
Vampire Trinity
Vampire Instinct
Bound by the Vampire Queen
Taken by a Vampire
The Scientific Method
Nightfall
Elusive Hero
Night’s Templar
Non-Series Titles
If Wishes Were Horses
Virtual Reality
Unrestrained
Novellas
Chance of a Lifetime
Choice of Masters
Make Her Dreams Come True
Threads of Faith
Submissive Angel
Short
Snow Angel
