Gasping for breath, I opened my eyes. Neil sat up and pulled the bottle away. The glass glistened, and he licked around the neck to catch every drip my body had left behind. Then he took a deep swallow of champagne.
“Oh god,” I whispered, clenching my thighs together.
He winked at me, still drinking, then held the bottle out to me. I lifted my head, and he tipped a swallow past my lips. I tasted myself on the bubbles.
It took him just a moment to put on a condom and settle between my legs. I loved the way we fit together now, the way he sank into me easily. I lifted my hips and welcomed him in, and he rested his forehead against my shoulder, his back bowed over me.
If I could have hung onto him, I would have. I settled for winding my legs around his back and moving with him. I was tight from my orgasm, my flesh all pillowy and satisfied, my cunt totally unaware that Neil wasn’t finished with me. I savored every moment. Tomorrow, we would return to the real world, and I wanted to take this with me.
His hands slipped beneath the small of my back, and braced on his knees he pulled me onto his cock, rocking my pelvis back and forth. The exquisite pressure on my g-spot became almost too much, and I sobbed, “Oh no.”
“No?” he asked, catching my chin in his hand. “Did you just say no to an orgasm?”
“Um...” I could barely think of words, let alone figure out a good lie that would keep me from punishment.
“Answer me.” He thrust harder into me, and I squirmed.
“Yes, Sir!” I shouted. “I’m sorry!”
He leaned over and grabbed the vibrator. He pushed the head of it against me and flipped the switch. Then he leaned over me, pushing my face aside, pinning my head flat to the bed. The roughness of his touch made me want to struggle, shoved a spike of fear into me that I’d never felt with him before. I spiraled out of control, my legs bucking, trying to get away from the pleasure that crashed over me.
“That’s one,” he said in a warning tone. My legs and arms still jerked, and the buzzing never let up, his movements inside me never let up.
“H-how many do I have to do?” I asked, my throat hoarse from shouts I didn’t realize I’d uttered.
“Ten.” There was no room for argument. “That should teach you to be grateful, yes?”
He rolled the wand in circles, twisting my tortured clit beneath the soft vibrating head. I clenched around him, so hard it hurt.
“You’re like fucking iron,” I groaned, throwing my head back.
His deep, dark laugh brought goose bumps over my skin. “I’m glad you noticed. You do that to me, Sophie.”
Moving his hand down, he held still inside me. He stopped at my throat, and pressed his thumb and index finger in the hollows on either side of my trachea above the collar. He squeezed with gentle pressure. My brain pounded, my clit pounded, and my body convulsed with another release.
He loosened his hold, but left his hand there, possessive over the collar. “Was that all right?”
“Oh, fuck yes, Sir!” With my hands bound, I had no way to struggle. I had no choice but to lay there and let him choke me.
Well, I had a choice. I could always safeword. But then he would stop, and that was the last thing I wanted. I had never experienced “runner’s high” before, but I was pretty sure that’s what I felt now, my entire body breaking out in chills while my heart pumped hard and my brain was flooded with endorphins that made me giddy. I came again, but I was going numb; it took a long time to break over the edge, and my whole body cramped up when I did.
Neil pressed the vibrator tighter against me, and I screamed.
“They’re going to send security,” he warned with a grin.
“Oh no, no, no,” I chanted in dismay as another intensely painful climax shook me. Though I was keenly aware that it was that word that had gotten me into trouble before, I couldn’t control any of the noises coming out of my mouth.
“How many was that?” he asked. “It sounded like number three.”
“Four! It was four!” I shouted, almost weeping in my desperation.
He slapped my cheek, and I choked back my cry. “I said it was three. Are you arguing?”
“No, Sir.” I bit my lip so hard, I tasted blood.
He must have seen it, because he pulled the wand away. “Careful, careful,” he murmured, brushing the drops from my swollen bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “Let’s call that last one ten.”
“Thank you, Sir,” I gasped gratefully.
“Can you continue?” he asked, smoothing my sweat-damp hair back from my face.
I nodded. “I just don’t want to come anymore. We’re at a yellow.”
He gave me that half-smile I loved and kissed my nose. Then he took off the condom and stood. “Get on your knees on the floor.”
This, I could do. I got my breath and did as he’d told me.
He pressed the tip of his cock against my lips. My mouth dropped open obediently, and he pushed inside.
As I sucked and bobbed on him, my head cleared a bit. I’d been deeper than I’d ever been in the submissive mindset. If he hadn’t stopped me, I wouldn’t have stopped, even if I’d wanted to. I had to appreciate the fact that he’d been able to know when to call it off.
When he came, it wasn’t down my throat, as he’d done before. He held my jaw open and hit my tongue with every drop as he jerked himself off, groaning in relief.
“Don’t swallow,” he panted. “Let me see it.”
I opened my mouth wide, showing him the little pool of cum on my cupped tongue. He groaned, and reached for the half-empty bottle of champagne. Holding the neck of the bottle high above my upturned mouth, he poured a stream in to mingle with his semen. It splashed down my chin, but I didn’t swallow. Not until he gave me permission.
“Swallow, Sophie.”
I looked up at him, champagne and cum dribbling down my chin and onto my breasts, my body trembling from the pure exhilaration of total submission. At that moment, I honestly thought I might die from the swell of emotion I felt. It stole my breath, and a tear slid from the corner of my eye. It was insane that I could love surrendering so totally.
It was insane that I could love someone as much as I loved him.
“I love you, Sir,” I murmured, the taste of him still on my lips.
“Oh, and I love you, Sophie. More than I could possibly express.” He helped me to my feet and unshackled my wrists, kissing the reddened skin beneath. “Everything alright?”
“Mhm.” I nodded and smiled at him. “I’ll be back in a few.”
I went into the bathroom to clean up. I looked at myself in the mirror, my eyeliner smudged from sweat and tears, hot, red patches on my breasts. The sheen of semen and champagne on my skin was as sticky as it looked, and I turned on the shower, carefully unclasping the collar from around my neck.
I wasn’t sure how one cleaned a diamond BDSM collar, so I carefully wiped it down with a damp washcloth and dried it.
Neil came in and washed his hands in the shower spray as he tested the temperature. “Let me see your lip.”
I stood in front of him with my face upturned, blinking from the overhead lights as he carefully examined the place where I’d bitten myself.
“It looks puffy, but not serious.” He brushed his thumb across it. He lifted my chin high and examined my neck. “Nothing. Good.”
“Were you worried you’d bruised me or something?” I felt my neck, where he’d choked me. “I don’t think you pushed that hard.”
“Was that all right?” He turned back to the shower, tested the water again then held the glass door for me. He followed me in. “I won’t do it again, if you didn’t like it.”
“It was fine,” I assured him. “Don’t choke me unconscious or anything—”
“No, no. Never.” He shook his head. “Turn around. Let me wash your hair.”
“Oh, the super special after care treatment,” I teased, doing as he asked. The feeling of his fingers moving across my scalp was ab
solute heaven.
“It’s partially selfish of me,” he said softly, working the shampoo down the ends of my hair. “I want to take care of you, while I still can.”
“Before I have to take care of you?”
“Precisely.” He urged me to step forward, into the spray. “Rinse off.”
As the suds washed from my hair, the gravity of his statement truly settled in my mind. I pushed the water back from my eyes and turned to him. “You take care of me in more than a physical way, Neil. And I really doubt that a little cancer is going to change that.”
He wrapped his arms around me and we stood, wet skin to wet skin, hugging each other hard.
After our shower, Neil headed to bed and left me to finish up in the bathroom. I thought for sure he would be sleeping by the time I was done putting on moisturizer and combing out my hair. I was tying the ponytail holder around the end of my braid when I clicked off the light in the bathroom.
“It’s difficult to believe that this all ends tomorrow.”
He’d said it so softly, I barely heard him.
I slipped into the bed and spooned up behind him, bringing our naked skin together under the sheets. “I thought you’d be asleep.”
“Not yet. I don’t want to sleep and waste our last hours here.” He captured my hand and brought it to his lips. “I don’t want anything to change.”
“I don’t, either.”
He rolled over, smiling in the dim city light that softy illuminated the room. “I like some of the changes so far, though.”
“Oh? Like me coming to London?” I walked my fingers along the arm he’d draped over my waist.
“The relationship we have now.” He stroked his hand down my arm. “I feel much closer to you than I did even in New York before the... unpleasantness.”
“I feel the same way.” I leaned my head against his. “I thought it was just because you were spoiling me rotten.”
“Ah, the real Sophie rears her materialistic head. I knew she was in there.” He squeezed me tight and buried his head in my neck, tickling and nibbling until I squealed with laughter.
“Stop, stop!” I gasped, trapping him beneath me. I pinned his hands to the pillows beside his head, and he grinned up at me.
“I want to remember exactly this,” he said with a happy sigh.
“Hang on.” I jumped from the bed, ignoring his protests, and ran to get my phone. I slipped back into bed beside him, and arranged the sheets around my body so I wasn’t showing too much. I held the phone above us and leaned my head against his.
“Okay, smile you grumpy old man,” I ordered. The camera flashed, nearly blinding us, and when my vision cleared I saw the image of the two of us, happy and smiling against hotel pillows. Our hair was wet and mussed. My makeup wasn’t quite washed completely off, leaving black smudges beneath my eyes. Anyone looking at the photo would know instantly that it was a “we just fucked” picture, but I hadn’t taken it to show anyone else. This was just for us.
It was absolutely perfect. “There. You can look at that whenever you want, and we’ll always have Paris.”
He kissed my forehead. “And I hope we have it again and again.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Upon our return to London, shit got incredibly real.
One of the bedrooms in Neil’s house in Belgravia were opened up for the live-in nurse who would stay throughout Neil’s induction chemotherapy. Our bedroom now held a hospital bed in addition to the actual bed, a change that wasn’t necessary yet, but likely would be.
Three days after our return from Paris, Neil went for an outpatient procedure to put in a port for his chemotherapy. And even though it was a “procedure” and not an “operation,” I was freaked out.
Neil had decided, after much deliberation with his doctor in the preceding two days, that he would opt to try chemotherapy to get his cancer in remission or as close as possible, then proceed with an autologous stem cell transplant. He’d have a catheter placed today, and a second one placed for the stem cell harvest at a later date. I didn’t know why they couldn’t just use the same catheter for everything, but I hadn’t asked. When Dr. Grant had brought out an actual catheter and showed us how it would be inserted in a vein deep below Neil’s skin, I’d almost passed out. I didn’t want Neil to worry about me, when he should be worrying about himself. I was keenly aware of what he’d said to me the night we’d reconciled.
After they took Neil back for the operation, I sat in the waiting room, bouncing my knee, checking the clock. They’d told me it would be a thirty minute procedure, but it had been forty-five.
What if something had gone wrong already? What if his “counts,” numbers I didn’t fully understand, were too low, and he bled to death? Could that happen? What the fuck was going on?
I resisted the urge to bother the nurses, until an hour had passed. I got up, rubbing my palms against my denim-clad thighs, and tried to look casual as I approached the desk.
A harried-looking brunette in a dark blue uniform raised her eyes from her computer screen as I approached. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, um... I’m really sorry to bother you—” The woman’s expression made it plain that by beating around the bush, I was making it worse. “They said the procedure only takes thirty minutes, and it’s been an hour—”
“If you’re here with someone, a nurse will come for you when the patient is out of surgery.” She wasn’t being unkind, but I got the sense that her efficiency was born from years of dealing with worried family impatience.
“Thanks.” I went back to the chairs and sat, bouncing my knee.
An older woman, probably in her sixties, with what I expected was dyed ginger hair, gazed at me sympathetically. She wore her glasses on a chain, and she peered over them while her busy hands worked a crochet project in her lap. “Nervous, dear?”
I nodded. “Yup. Just waiting for my boyfriend.”
“Don’t worry, this is a very good hospital.” She frowned and undid a stitch, re-situating her yarn around her fingers. “I’m waiting for my sister. She’s doing her second go. First time it was cervical, now it’s ovarian.”
I’d always had this impression that British people were stuffy and proper; here this woman was spilling her sister’s lady cancer details to me. It reminded me a little of home. Not New York, but Calumet, where every conversation with a family member began with a long list of chronic ailments.
It put me right at ease. I gestured to the doors. “Chemo port.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s not serious?” she asked hopefully.
“Um, I mean, it’s cancer, so...” I shrugged. “But we’re hopeful.”
“Are you engaged?” It was a super blunt question, but she asked it with such authority, I thought I should give her an answer.
“No. No, we haven’t talked about marriage.” We’d talked about children. That was scary enough. I could only imagine the prenup I’d have to sign: In the event of a divorce, Mrs. Scaife-Elwood will receive eleventy-bajillion dollars and Mr. Elwood will continue to blame himself for the dissolution of the marriage and the ruining of Mrs. Scaife-Elwood’s life, in perpetuity, even though it’s probably not his fault.
“If I were you, you might want to get on with it,” the woman advised. “If he has cancer, why waste time?”
“I don’t know.” I looked to the doors, and for once in my life, silently willing something made it happen. The door opened and the surgeon came out in his blue scrubs. “Ms. Scaife? Will you come with me please?”
I grabbed my purse and stood, the woman’s intrusive chit-chat prickling in my brain. What did she mean? I should get married to Neil before he died? Was that supposed to be a concern in the forefront of this whole situation? Not ending up a spinster?
Now, the surgeon’s distracted, serious demeanor was making me a little edgy. Why were we going into a private office to talk? One that had a framed inspirational poster of a butterfly on the wall?
“Have a seat,” h
e said, gesturing to the chair. I surreptitiously scoped out his name tag as he sat, because in all my nervousness about the surgery, I had forgotten it. “Things didn’t go as well as we had planned, but the port is in. He had more bleeding than we anticipated, and he was a bit uncomfortable during the procedure, so we’ve given him something for the pain. You should expect him to be groggy for a few hours.”
“Can he still come home?” Neil hated the hospital, and he’d expressed anxiety that he might end up admitted.
“As soon as we push some fluids and he’s a little less sedated, I don’t see why not. No strenuous activity, he can’t get the stitches wet, but other than that he should be fine. When does he start chemotherapy?” The doctor reached into his pocket for a pen, and flipped open a chart on his desk.
“Um, next week. Next Monday?” I watched as the surgeon scribbled something I couldn’t read.
“I’m going to leave a note for the attending oncologist. I think I’m on that day, so I’d like to check up on him while he’s here.” He said all this with the grim demeanor of a dentist who knows you haven’t been flossing.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, raising my eyes a little to see if I could nonchalantly peer down at the chart.
He closed it. “Yes, of course. As you’re not Mr. Elwood’s representative, I can’t give you specifics, I’m sure you understand.”
“Um, yeah.” I nodded. I hadn’t thought of that. It wasn’t enough to just be there with him; if something went wrong, I needed paperwork.
“If you’d like to see Mr. Elwood, he’s in recovery. I can take you back.”
I followed the doctor into a hallway with individual rooms with glass doors and pale blue curtains for privacy. He paused before one, knocked briefly, slid the door open and said, “Mr. Elwood, are you ready for company?”
“Sophie?” I heard Neil’s voice, small and tired, and I pushed back the curtain enough to step through.
“Hey,” I said with a stupid little wave. What was it about hospitals that drove such distance between me and my loved ones? My mom had her gallbladder out when I was in high school, and I’d felt like I was visiting a stranger when I’d gone to see her in her room that night. Neil hadn’t even been admitted overnight, and I was already afraid that inability to be normal in a medical setting would drive a wedge between us.
The Girlfriend (The Boss) Page 21
