His hand closed over my throat above the collar, and I coughed. He didn’t let up. “Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?”
I nodded. His tongue traced the wet track of a tear up my cheek, to the edge of my blindfold before he released me. I gasped for air around the gag, and a thin stream of drool ran from the corner of my mouth. The position I was in, totally exposed, gagged, helpless, was utterly humiliating.
My nipples were hard, tight peaks. He pulled down my bra and let the ends of the flogger tickle each of them in turn. I stopped breathing; I wanted to know if he was going to hit me with the flogger again. I wanted to know if he was going to slap the flogger across my chest. I wanted to know how much it would hurt.
That’s control, Sophie. You want control. But not just over sex play. I wanted control over the entire situation. I wanted a certainty that Neil would be okay. I couldn’t have that. The more I lamented my loss of control, the less I was able to slip into the sub mindset and enjoy myself.
When my life had been utterly out of order, Neil had swooped in as this larger-than-life Dom and made me forget about everything. Now, he was entrenched in what I wanted to forget. I wasn’t sure I could get back into the sub space I’d become so good at inhabiting.
His fingers dived into the hair at my scalp, ruining my sleek ponytail to jerk me to the floor. My limbs tangled and clattered together as I fell with a cry. Then, in an instant, he was behind me, hauling me against his body to sit between his spread legs. He hooked his feet around my calves to force them apart. I heard the buzz of a vibrator, and I unconsciously bucked my hips.
Lying with my back against him— his back against the bed, if I judged our position correctly— I couldn’t feel his cancer. I couldn’t see the effects, the loss of hair, or the slight puffiness in his face. If I were leaning on his other shoulder, I would feel the apheresis catheter, but he kept my head against his left shoulder, held there with a palm against my cheek.
“Where should your mind be, Sophie?” He’d picked up my distress, and the fact I couldn’t slip entirely into my role. His hand slid down my body, from my face to my neck, over my breasts and stomach, down to my cunt, where he grabbed my mound and roughly forced his fingers inside me.
“This is where it should be,” he growled against my ear. “This should be your only concern right now. Taking pleasure from what I do to you. Feeling what I want you to feel, what I let you feel.”
He jerked the gag from my mouth with his left hand, his arm wrapped around my shoulders to keep me upright. I coughed as I tried to swallow the saliva that had built up behind the ball.
“Where should your mind be, Sophie?” The fingers inside me stretched me painfully, and I whimpered and squirmed on them.
“On what you’re doing to me, Sir.” My voice quavered. “On feeling what you want me to feel.”
His fingers withdrew, and he slapped my pussy, hard. My body bowed and I almost bit through my lips to keep from crying out.
“Very good. Is the gag causing a problem?” He wanted to know if it was my inability to speak that took me out of my sub space. A boneless calm washed through me at that. He wanted me to achieve the mindless peace I felt as his sub, just as much as I wanted to. Merely remembering that we were working toward the same goal was enough to center me.
I shook my head. “No, Sir.”
“For now, let’s go without it.” He left the gag hanging around my neck. “Just for now.”
Wrapping his big hand across my face, he covered my mouth with his palm, his thumb resting against the side of my nose. He pressed the vibrator against my inner thigh, slowly rolling the cool metal cylinder toward my pussy. It was the platinum vibrator, I could tell, the one he’d used on me in New York, when he’d fucked me and forced me to orgasm over and over. I panted and squirmed. The torturous buzz travelled slowly up, and I made high-pitched sounds against his hand.
“Remember, you’re being quiet,” he reminded me. Then he pressed the rounded tip of the cylinder against my clit, and my hips rose up from the floor.
“You’re already wet, you know,” he said, as though we were discussing the weather. “It doesn’t take much, does it?”
I squeezed my eyes shut behind the blindfold and shook my head.
“Do you know why that is?” He leaned his cheek against mine. “It’s because you’re my whore, Sophie. You’re nothing but my filthy little slut, aren’t you?”
Holy fuck. Those forbidden words, the ones I was never supposed to self-apply, the ones I should never let a man apply to me, ramped up my excitement unbelievably. If I’d had any indication that Neil would use those words against me in a derogatory way, I would have been out of there and on a plane back to New York in a heartbeat. But as a part of our sex play, reveling in the taboo of those words in a safe way, I had never been so turned on in my life.
“What are you?” he demanded, releasing his grip on my face so I could speak.
“I’m your whore.” The word sent more blood pounding to my already engorged clit, and I rubbed myself against the vibrator with small, desperate movements of my hips. “I’m your filthy little slut.”
I came. Oh, sweet fucking lord, I came so hard that my feet jerked against the carpet, my legs thrashed, and I seriously thought I might hurt him, myself, or both of us, with my wild flailing. He covered my mouth, muffling my relieved shout, and moved the vibe in circles over my clitoris while I whimpered and twisted in his grasp.
He didn’t wait for me to come down before he got to his feet and hauled me to mine. His fingers spread over my face, he gave me a shove with his palm to push me onto the bed, and I fell, bouncing on the mattress.
“Did I give you permission to come?” he snarled, and a hiccup of fear escaped me. He forced my legs back, held together. “Give me your hands.”
I extended my arms, still wearing the cuffs around my wrists. He tugged my hands so that my arms looped behind my knees, then clipped the cuffs back together. I was my own binding, my feet brushing the backs of my thighs, my dripping, satisfied cunt tilted up and helpless.
The smack of the paddle against my pussy was an unpleasant shock, and I couldn’t help my scream. He reached up and shoved the gag back into my mouth. The vibrator pressed against my aching, over-sensitive clit, and I bit down on the rubber ball between my teeth.
“Careful,” he admonished, as though I had any control over what my body was doing. “You don’t want to ruin that pretty smile.”
I managed a garbled, “Fuck you,” around the gag. That shocked me; when I was acting as a sub, I usually didn’t want to back talk. I wanted to please him.
He pulled the vibrator away, and smacked me again with the paddle. I yelped.
“I don’t like bratty subs, Sophie. I’ve told you that before.” The vibrator pushed against my clit, swirled in tight circles. “I was going to make it one, but now I think it will be five.”
One what? Five what? My mind circled furiously, but it was really hard to think as my body was forced closer and closer to another climax. I dragged ragged breath into my lungs, gulping and gasping under the mingled pain of my burning flesh and the pleasure of my singing nerve endings. My hips lifted against the wand in his hand, coming closer, closer, so close that I didn’t care that I’d just had an orgasm; if I didn’t have this one, I wouldn’t make it through the night. I hovered on the edge, my toes curling, and I hugged my legs tighter.
Just as I reached the brink, just as my body was about to let go, he pulled the vibe away and slapped the paddle down on my open, wanting flesh.
“Fuck!” I couldn’t help my loud groan. My groin ached, not just from the slap, but from the orgasm that was cruelly ruined at the last possible second.
“That’s one.”
At least sound didn’t travel as well in this house as in the New York apartment, because everyone would have heard my despondent wail.
“Please, please, please,” I begged around the gag. I couldn’t see him, but I could imagine how he looked
down at me now, somehow cruel and loving at the same time. He treasured me, he loved me, he tortured me; I needed it. By the time we reached five horribly ruined orgasms, I was sobbing, pleading, the black silk over my eyes soaked with my tears.
He unclasped the cuffs and pulled my aching legs down, then jerked me to my feet and marched me across the floor, wobbly in my heels. The sound of the air changed; we were in the dressing room. He whipped the blindfold from my eyes, and I blinked in the beam of recessed lighting.
“Look at yourself,” he ordered.
The woman in the mirror didn’t look like me. She was shivering, flushed across her chest, swollen and red between her legs. Her mascara ran in long tracks down her pale, sweaty face; her lipstick smeared around the gag.
Realizing that the woman really was me was a shock to my system that renewed my desire. Like getting a second wind during a run, I was ready to keep going.
Neil’s grip on the back of my neck was firm to the point of pain. “Look at what you let yourself do for me.”
My knees trembled.
“Get back out there. On the bed, on your hands and knees.” He gave me a rough push, and I did as he told me, pressing my thighs hard together with every step. I wanted him to fuck me. I prayed that was what he was going to do.
I positioned myself as he’d ordered and waited, almost weeping with the anticipation that curled through me. When he came back, I didn’t look at him. He hadn’t given me permission. I felt the brush of his bare thighs against the backs of mine, and I held my breath. Would he be rough with me, or gentle? Would he let me come?
A cold stream of lube slid between my ass cheeks, and I startled. Oh.
The tip of something rubber slicked over my opening, and with nothing to ready me, no careful attention this time, he pushed the toy into my ass.
The dildo he used was definitely not as big as some of the implements he owned. It hurt enough as it was, but the thrill I felt far outweighed my discomfort. I whimpered around the gag as he moved the toy in and out. Then the head of his cock pushed against my swollen labia, and with a slippery glide of his fingers to part me, he was inside.
He hissed at the tightness, and I shuddered as his cock pulled out, then plunged in again. He worked the toy in my ass in an alternate rhythm, pausing only to reach up and release the gag. “Do you like this, Sophie?”
“Yes, Sir,” I moaned, shivers of hot and cold, pleasure and pain, skating along every nerve ending in my body. I was too full, not full enough. I wanted him deeper, wanted him to fuck me like he was going to tear me apart.
“Why do you like it?”
“Because I’m your whore, Sir!” I exclaimed, the word jarring to my own ears.
“Don’t you ever fucking forget it,” he growled, bending low over me to lick the sweat from my spine.
He pushed the vibrator into my hands. “Make yourself come.”
I held the cool metal against my swollen, painful clit, and sucked in a breath. I shouldn’t have been able to feel a damn thing, after what I’d already been through, but a combination of the filthy talk and Neil’s utter Dominance turned me on beyond the limits of the physical. I’d never felt so used and dirty in my entire life, and I loved it so much I couldn’t help but be turned on.
“Tell me you love my cock, Sophie.”
“I love your cock, Sir!”
“Tell me you love getting fucked in your ass.”
“I love getting fucked in my ass, Sir!”
I would have told him anything, done anything. And that... That’s what scared me. Not his control over me, but the fact that I’d willingly ceded it to him. That I would do anything for his cock in me, his hands on me.
I’d told him to make me afraid. Well done, Neil.
When I finally reached a true, unspoiled released, I screamed, and there was no power on earth that could have stopped me. Luckily, Neil was quick to react, and clamped his hand firmly over my mouth, pinning the dildo between us, grinding his cock so deeply in me I saw bright red starbursts of pain behind my eyelids.
“Oh, fuck.” He withdrew, and through the haze of post-orgasmic bliss, I heard the snap of the condom coming off. Still hunched over me, he came, spraying heavy droplets onto my back before collapsing into a slick, sweaty mess on top of me.
“Well,” I panted beneath him, wriggling, the dildo still inside me. “I think that will definitely sustain me for a good, long while.”
He laughed and rolled off, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me, a sticky hand in my hair, the other pulling me hard against him. And in that moment, I felt so loved, so cherished, I was absolutely certain that nothing in the world could bring me down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I’d thought the induction chemotherapy had been bad. I had no idea just how much worse the high dose would be.
As with the induction chemo, Neil received the first treatment in the hospital. We arrived at seven AM, and I staggered under the burden of not having any coffee. Neil wasn’t supposed to have caffeine or anything else dehydrating before we checked in, and I didn’t want to torment him with a steaming hot cup of you-can’t-have-any.
I’m not entirely sure he wouldn’t have just smacked it to the ground, anyway. He was in a fine mood as we’d left the house, completely at odds with the loving, sensitive man whose arms I’d fallen asleep in the night before. He grumbled about everything from the itchiness of his hair: “Why is it even bothering to grow when it’s just all going to fall out again in a few days?” to the indignity of having to be admitted at all: “I had the other drugs at home and nothing went wrong. Besides, if it did, I could practically crawl to the bloody hospital.”
“You have cancer. Some hospital visits are going to be required,” I tried to remind him gently, but I did grit my teeth a little.
“Yes, I know I have cancer, thank you Sophie!” he’d snapped, and that was the last we’d talked on the drive.
At the hospital, I made the mistake of picking up his bag to carry it in. He snatched it out of my hand and muttered, “I can do that myself.”
The lack of control was killing him.
Despite his agitation and antagonism toward me, Neil was sweet as pie to the nurses and receptionists. I bit my tongue the whole time, but I was wondering if I could slip somebody twenty quid to anesthetize him.
In his room, he changed into a gown as instructed.
I folded his clothes and put them neatly in his bag. “Do you want me to help you tie that?”
“Yes, thank you.” He had the good grace to look at least a little sheepish. I stepped up behind him and began tying the little bows one at a time. He turned his head slightly. “I’m sorry. I’ve been absolutely horrible to you this morning.”
My mood thawed a little. “Yeah, you have. But you’re worried.”
“I’m not,” he insisted lightly. “Really, this isn’t the part that worries me.”
“Then what is it?” I plucked at the shoulders of the gown to straighten them.
“I don’t like the idea of you seeing me sick again,” he admitted. “I know it’s only for a short amount of time, but I’ve felt so much better since that last round of chemo. Almost normal. Last night I felt like I had my old life back. Now, I have to give it all up again.”
“You’re not giving it up. You’re just putting it on pause,” I said gently. I wound my arms around him and leaned my head against his back. “I know you want to be done with all of this. But you’re working toward something here. You want to be able to dance with your daughter at her wedding, right?”
“I’d rather dance with her at somebody else’s wedding,” he muttered.
“I’ll still be here when you un-pause.” I didn’t know if that was his concern, but I needed to reassure him, for my own sake. “Besides, after last night, I kind of need a few months off.”
He blushed, but his smile was one of pure, unabashed male ego.
“How about when you come home, we have a night where we just relax and watch T
V and smoke dope?” Busting his stress was priority number one. He’d gotten through the induction phase without too much trouble, but I knew high dose was going to be a completely different ballpark.
“Just the two of us?” he asked hopefully. “Without Emma and horrible Michael?”
“If that’s what you want, I will tell them to scram and she can blame it all on me,” I promised.
“Mr. Elwood?” a voice asked through the curtain.
“Yes, come in, I’m all trussed up,” Neil grumbled, pulling back the blankets on the bed. As he climbed under the covers and got comfortable, the curtain rings jingled and in stepped the most adorable little redheaded nurse. She looked like a sexier, grown-up version of Strawberry Shortcake, with her glossy hair pulled back in a bun. A smattering of freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks, and she smiled a perfect, white-toothed smile at us as she entered.
I smirked at Neil and raised an eyebrow, silently daring him to continue with his complaints. He was insanely attracted to redheads, to the point of fetishization. This woman was like the embodiment of his horniest fantasies. His mood had to improve now.
“I’m Anna. I’ll be your nurse today. Probably all day, at least until seven,” she said, reaching out to shake Neil’s hand, then mine. She looked between the two of us. “Do you have any questions or concerns Dr. Grant didn’t address?”
“No, he was quite thorough.” Neil looked to me. “Sophie?”
“Um.” God, I hated asking these questions right in front of him, when he was the person who had to go through it, but I knew whatever I was imagining would be ten times worse than the reality. “I just want to know that he’s not going to be too miserable.”
“It’s going to be unpleasant,” Anna said gently. “But we’ll try our best to keep him comfortable. The most noticeable side effect today will be the nausea and possibly some abdominal discomfort. Did you have a mouth care routine for induction chemotherapy?”
“I did, but it wasn’t very effective. I still had horrible sores,” he noted bitterly. “I suppose I can expect more of the same?”
The Girlfriend (The Boss) Page 37
