“So what if I left? I had to work today and I didn’t have any clothes with me. I had to go.”
And that was the truth. Partially.
“You leave when I say you can leave.”
“Oh, is that how it is? Well, let me tell you –,” I started before he abruptly cut me off.
“There were important things that needed to be discussed last night. I only dozed off for a few minutes. That did not entitle you to make an impromptu exit,” he boomed. I felt myself wince. Alexander was not the type to shout, as his quiet authority was enough to get any point across. He must have realized how loudly he was talking, because when he began again, his voice had noticeably lowered several octaves. “Did you talk to your roommate last night when you got home?”
“Um…no. She was asleep when I got in. Why?” I asked, completely thrown for a loop by his question.
“That’s one of the things that I wished to speak with you about last night. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to find that you were gone,” he added with a frown.
“You wanted to talk about Allyson?”
“Not Allyson. My privacy. Remember what I said about keeping my affairs quiet? You cannot tell your roommate about us.”
“It’s going to be sort of hard to hide, Alex. I do live with her after all.”
“I don’t mean about the two of us being together. You can obviously tell her that much at least. I’m referring to what we do behind closed doors.”
I raised one eyebrow at him in surprise.
If I told Allyson the truth about you, she’d hull my ass to a shrink so fast that my head would spin. She would think that I had lost my damn mind.
I loved my friend, but I knew that she’d never understand. Allyson could not know about Alexander’s naughty bedroom antics.
“Oh, no worries there. I won’t tell Ally,” I quickly assured him. But after I spoke the promise, I immediately felt a small pain of guilt over not being truthful with my best friend.
“Nobody else can know either. I’m very serious about this. I am often in the public eye. What I do, what I like…it can be viewed as dirty laundry by most people. I would prefer not to have it aired.”
“Oh, and here I thought I might call the gossip columnist from –,” I stopped short when I saw his face pale. “Alex, I’m only kidding. I’m not the kiss and tell type. Even with Ally. My sex life is nobody’s business. You can relax.”
“Don’t joke about this, Krystina.”
I put my hands up in mock surrender.
“No more jokes. I promise.”
He leaned forward on the desk and pressed his forehead against his palms. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he eventually looked back up at me. He seemed calmer, yet there was a certain level of torment in his eyes.
“I’m not one to lose my head like that, Krystina.”
“It’s fine, Alex. You seem like you’ve had a rough day. Don’t think twice about it,” I blew off.
“No, no. It’s just that…I tend to forget myself with you sometimes. In all honesty, I don’t think that you’ll go running your mouth about us. I’m just pissed off that you left last night. I wanted you to stay. I’m sorry for raising my voice the way that I did,” he apologized, catching me by surprise with his admission.
“I suppose I owe you an apology as well. I’m sorry that I slipped out on you. And since we’re being honest with each other, it wasn’t that I didn’t have a change of clothes – although, that was a small part of the reason. I’m just trying to keep this thing between us as simple as possible. I thought that staying at your place would only complicate things.”
“Only if you allow it to, Krystina.” He smiled wryly at me. “If you’re going to be my submissive, you’ll be doing overnights.”
Whether or not I was going to do overnights was subject to debate, one that I didn’t want to get into at that particular moment. I had just gotten him to calm down and I didn’t want to rile him again. Besides, it was my submission, or rather his freaky-deak ideas about what he expected me to do, that really needed addressing.
“Yeah, about that. I’ll try to keep an open mind about overnights,” I began. “But first, we need to go over the list that you wrote. However, I’m not sure if this is the most appropriate place for talking about it.”
“For Christ’s sake, Krystina. Forget the stupid list! That’s negotiable, and doesn’t even begin to explain what I expect from you.” He got up from his chair and came around to where I was sitting. He pulled me up to my feet and placed his hands firmly on my hips. His heated eyes zeroed in on mine. “The list is only words on paper. Being in a dominant and submissive relationship means more than textbook terms. It’s a lifestyle – one that I want to teach you. For your sake, I’m going to take it slow. As for the overnights, you’ll have to stay at my place if you want to learn. And I’m serious when I say, you’ll have to stay over often.”
“I don’t see why I have to spend the night with you in order to learn anything, Alex.”
“It’s my job as your Dominant to see to your every want and need. I can’t very well do that when you’re not with me. We got off to a more conventional start than what I am used to. But that ends now. You’re staying the weekend with me.”
“It would have been nice of you to ask, rather than order –.”
He placed a finger over my lips to silence me.
“Remember lesson number one? Unconditional obedience. You want to learn, don’t you?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. It was more like a challenge.
I could feel the heat coming off of him, his body so close to mine, yet not quite touching. His eyes burned into me, blazing with desire. I slowly let out the air in my lungs that I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
“Yes,” I finally answered hesitantly.
“Good. Then here’s another lesson for you. When you are in my home, you will be naked. Always. Unless I command you otherwise. Since you’re so focused on my list, you’ll remember that nudity was written on there. I want you easily accessible to me at all times.”
My eyes widened and I couldn’t respond to him if I tried. All words had escaped me. I wanted to argue that I couldn’t always be naked, yet a part of me relished the idea. It was so easy to get wrapped up in his words. His fantasies. It was so simple to get lost in the haze, my thoughts constantly muddled in the depths of those sapphire eyes.
I shook my head to clear the fog, the practical side of me winning out yet again.
“Look, I know you said to forget it, but we really need to discuss that list. Last night was beyond amazing, but I know that you went gentle on me. I’m afraid of what’s coming next. If I’m going to do this, it’s important that we talk about it.”
“I knew that’s how you would feel,” he said, shaking his head in resignation. He stepped away from me, leaving a cold and vacant space that was once fiery hot just seconds before. He leaned over his desk and plucked out a sheet of paper that was buried under a pile of folders. “That’s why I brought the damn thing with me today. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to convince you to drop it.”
“You brought the list here?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Well…yes. I mean, what if someone saw it!” I exclaimed, mortified at the thought of Laura stumbling across a list of taboo sexcapades.
“Don’t worry, Krystina. Nobody enters this office without my knowledge,” he said, laughing at my outward shock.
“I just assumed, considering your concerns over privacy, that we would keep our personal stuff a little more discrete.”
“And we will, for the most part. Come on. Let’s sit down and get this over with.” He motioned me to follow him to cushy leather loveseat at the far end of the room. Once we were comfortably seated, he spread the list out on the low glass table that was in front of us. “We’ll go through this together, one thing at a time. You can cross off anything that is off limits and then we can discuss anything that you would consider.”
/>
“You want to go through this here? Right now?”
“I do. And when we are finished, we put this away for good and you’re all mine. Deal?”
“Why are you doing this? You clearly have certain expectations. Why would you consider altering them for me? What if I say that I can’t do any of these things?”
He looked up sharply, tearing his eyes from the paper and fixing me with his steely gaze. For a moment I could see right through him, all of his turmoil and indecision transparent. He wasn’t used to changing his ways. Yet, there was certain amount of savagery in his expression as well, and I believed it to be the driving force behind sorting out his uncertainties.
“There’s something about you, Krystina. I don’t really know what it is – I only know that from the first moment I saw you, all I’ve thought about is burying my cock inside you. If I have to make a few adjustments, trust me when I say that I’m willing to do so. However, you get today only. After we go through this, I won’t coddle you any more.”
His tenacity was inspiring, and I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of determination. I had to do this. I didn’t want to be a scared timid girl, afraid of the shadows that lurked in the night. I wanted to explore the dark edges of desire. With him. And I wanted to please him.
“Do you have any highlighters around here?” I asked.
“Ah, I might?”
The perplexed expression on his face was almost comical, forcing me to clarify my obsessive need for organization.
“My OCD is kicking in. I mean, I’m not really OCD. I just need to color code this stuff, okay?”
His confusion was slowly replaced by amusement, making me fully aware of how silly this all was, despite my crazy need to have some sort of framework outlined for this relationship.
“Let me see what I can find,” he obliged with a slight chuckle.
Alexander went back over to his desk and began rifling through a drawer. I took a minute to scan the list again. I thought about the night before and the way he had worked magic on my body. I certainly enjoyed last night, ropes and all. I was sure that was only a sampling of what he could make me feel.
I need to keep an open mind.
With both pain and pleasure.
CHAPTER 28
As I rifled through one of my desk drawers in search of highlighters, I was dumbfounded over a how quickly Krystina was able to diffuse my temper. When she came into my office, I had every intention of solely focusing on business and calling it quits on the other half of the deal. After all, she had left me alone last night.
When I needed her.
But then she walked into my office. Just the sight of her stopped me in my tracks. As much as I tried, I couldn’t concentrate on the business in front of me. Gone was the thought of ending the personal side of our agreement. I could only focus on her alluring face, and the memory of her head thrown back in passion. And although she was now clothed in tight jeans and a Wally’s t-shirt, I couldn’t help but to envision the sight of her perfect breasts molded in my hands, responsive to every touch.
I walked back over to where Krystina was sitting and held out my hand to show her the findings – a red marker, and a yellow and green highlighter.
“I thought that you could use the red Sharpie to cross off any definite ‘no’, the yellow highlighter for a ‘maybe’ and the green one for a ‘yes’. Is that OCD enough for you?”
“Don’t make fun of me, Alex. But, yes – this will work just fine,” she bit out, snatching the colored markers out of my hand.
I watched her run her finger down the list, immediately taking the red marker to cross off caning.
“Remember what I said, Krystina. I won’t hurt you,” I said, interrupting the striking of her script.
“I know you wouldn’t,” she said, and I was curious as to why she was suddenly so certain of that. Perhaps I was finally beginning to gain her trust.
“I’m glad that you’re starting to have a little bit of faith in me. Keeping that in mind, you shouldn’t cross things off so quickly.”
“This particular thing, it’s not about trust or faith, Alex. It just sounds so medieval. The whole idea is a turn off.”
I simply nodded and allowed her to go back to the list.
She highlighted spanking in green, having already experienced the feel of my hand on her ass, but hesitated over flogging and whipping. She almost color-coded them red, but picked up the yellow marker instead. However, before she could mark them, I stopped her hand.
“Remember the soft feel of the flogger in your hands from last night. Trust me, Krystina.”
I saw the question in her eyes, deep and probing. But after a brief moment of indecision, she coded both green.
“Okay. I can make sense of most of the bondage part of the list, but you’ll have to explain suspension to me,” she said, needing more clarification.
“It’s just like it sounds. I suspend you from the rails of my bed, leaving your body free for me to do what ever I’d like.”
Her head snapped up to look at me. Those big browns went big, as if she were picturing herself suspended in the air. My cock twitched and I shifted slightly in my seat, the image filling my own head.
Krystina. Spread out and on display.
We are never going to make it through the list if I keep picturing all of this stuff.
I hoped she wouldn’t continue to question every little thing. Detailed descriptions of what I wanted to do to her were killing me. As it was, I wanted nothing more than to strip her naked and embed myself in her satin heat. Right here, right now. On the couch in my office.
Patience. Get through the list first. Gain her acceptance.
In the end, she highlighted suspension in green, and I breathed a small sigh of relief when she moved on to the next thing.
“Hog tie?” she mused the question out loud, but thankfully I didn’t have to give her an explanation that would torture my groin further. Her scarlet cheeks told me that she knew the answer almost as soon as she voiced the question.
“I’m going to ask you not to go through and highlight the list of enhancements. Over time, I will get to know your body better than you do and I’ll know how far you can be pushed. Will you just let me use my judgment on those?” I asked her.
“I don’t see why not. There isn’t anything too crazy on here,” she observed, scanning the rest of the list.
“See? This stuff isn’t as bad as you originally thought, is it?”
She almost nodded in agreement, but then her eyes rested on something that had her head shaking back and forth.
“Wait, hang on. I don’t know about the anal bea – .”
“Do you trust me?” I asked again, cutting her off.
Trust.
There was that word again, one that I had thrown out a countless number of times. I could tell that she was thinking that same, as her eyes were looking searchingly into mine. I wanted her to open up to me, but I understood her hesitation. My world was unknown to her, and she was bound to make countless mistakes on the unfamiliar path. She needed to trust that I would guide her way.
“I trust you,” she finally said.
“Good. Then we are finished with this,” I said with an air of finality. I leaned forward and took her chin in my hand. “All of this talking about bondage has made my cock rock hard, and we need to decide how we are going to rectify that situation.”
****
I felt my skin prickle in anticipation as he moved his hand up to tuck a stray curl behind my ear. I shifted my eyes towards Alexander’s big mahogany desk before looking back to meet his sapphire blues. They were filled with heat and desperate need. I could tell that he wanted me. My nipples hardened instantly, longing to be touched.
At the office? Seriously, get yourself in check, Cole. That’s so unprofessional.
We could never do it here.
“Surely, you don’t mean do it right now?” I questioned, horrorstruck and thrilled over the idea all at once.
He didn’t answer me, but leaned in closer. I began to pant softly as the pad of his thumb traced the outline of my lips.
“I love the heart shape of your upper lip, and the way your lower lip is fuller than the top. It’s pouty, always teasing me, taunting me to kiss you. I’ll be kissing these lips quite often, Krystina.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent. He smelled so good, a natural aphrodisiac that provoked my wild desire for him. I exhaled slowly and licked my dry lips.
“Is that a promise, Stone?” I breathed.
He groaned, cupped the back of my head, and sealed his lips over mine. His kiss was firm and demanding, yet perfect as always, with just the right amount of pressure. He tilted his head from one side to the next, deepening the kiss with his tongue. His strength of purpose provoked a tightening hunger in my core.
I reached my hands up to run them greedily through his silky waves, pulling his powerful frame in closer to me, causing my passion to build to a fanatical need for more. I distantly realized that we were no longer in a sitting position, but had managed to become horizontal on the loveseat, Alexander’s body pressed down onto mine. Instinct had me scissor one leg around his hip. I arched my hips up against him, appreciating the feel of his manhood through our clothing. I kissed him back with a fierce urgency, wanting him desperately without regard to our surroundings.
But then I remembered Laura was just down the hall, her severe scowl popping uninvited into my brain.
“Alex, wait! We can’t,” I started, pushing against his chest. “What if Laura comes in?”
“Hmmm…she won’t. She knows better,” he said, moving his mouth down to nip at my neck.
“What is that supposed to mean? Do you do this sort of thing often?” I asked accusingly, wiggling my way out from under him and moving to a standing position.
He looked up at me through glazed eyes, hair sticking up all over, and his clothes disheveled. His tie had been loosened at the neck and his shirt was pulled free from the waistband of his pants. I couldn’t be sure if it had been him or me that ran amuck on his attire.
Heart of Stone Page 26
