The Matchup

by Alice Ward

  “What did you mean when you said you didn’t date. You don’t date at all?”

  He bit his lip. God that was sexy. I wanted to bite it too. Down, Ava.

  “So,” he cleared his throat, completely ignoring my question, “in designing an outfit for yourself, you’ll have to make allowance for implements, such as rings for leashes.”

  I couldn’t believe the casual manner in which the word leash rolled off his tongue.

  “Oh, you’re hilarious. A leash,” I said with a sarcastic bite in my tone and gave a half snort.

  “What’s funny about a leash?” He blinked his long eyelashes at me, playing at innocence. But in his lap, his thick, steely erection straining his zipper told another story.

  Seeing his cock struggling to break free had my insides clenching. He obviously was very turned on by the lifestyle. I didn’t know what to think about that, or my response to him for that matter.

  I shifted in my chair and refocused on the blank spot on my sketch pad. “Right. Nothing is funny about a leash, except the fact that you think I might let you lead me around on one. I’m not going to be dragged around like a pet like you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons.” I crossed my arms over my breasts.

  “As the submissive, you only have to do what the Dom wants up to the point you can’t handle it. There’ll be a safe word you will use to signal when you’ve reached that point.” He took a deep breath, and there was a sound in his chest that reminded me of a groan. “I do, however, hope you let me push you past your comfort zone sometimes. I think you will like it exceedingly well.” He leaned closer to me, his head coming in like he was going to kiss me.

  The air between us sparked. Millions. Had to concentrate on millions.

  He breathed, “I just want to—”

  “Don’t,” I whispered, wondering if the audio from the cameras in the rest of the suite could pick up our voices in here.

  His lips curled. “I have more restraint than that, and we both have a lot riding on this competition. I was just imagining…” He tilted his head even closer until his lips were maybe three inches from mine. His warm breath caressed my face, and I breathed it in, causing a twisting feeling in my chest. “Imagining what it would be like to taste your lips. To pull you up against my body. Sink my teeth into that delicious looking full lower lip and make you moan.”

  I whimpered. His eyes were nearly black, his pupils covering up all the grayish-blue. “Oh, god. Stop. Can anyone hear us? I mean, I know there are no cameras in here, but what about the other cameras? Could there be listening devices?”

  “I don’t think Unc will try to get ahold of anything in the bedroom. It wouldn’t be advantageous, even in his world, to broadcast bedroom scenarios of the new CEO.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded. He was being so reasonable, and it was obvious he liked the kinkier lifestyle. That made me wonder if it wasn’t as crazy as I thought, if maybe it was actually pleasurable.

  I decided to play on his side of the fence. “Are you sure I’m going to be the submissive? You never know, your uncle might turn things around.”

  Lucas looked up from the pad with an evil grin. “That’s never gonna happen.”

  “Oh…” I halfway held back a gasp, my eyes widening at the realization that I was, in fact, going to be his submissive. The idea was scary — and exciting and erotic — so I put it away for later. I’d find a way to hold my ground. I always did.

  “The BDSM-wear does need to have loops for other things. Metal rings. One at the neck, one at the waist, and I’d sure like one… between your legs.” He sounded like an overgrown kid with a Christmas list. My breath caught in my throat.

  “Yes to the neck, no to everything else. My clothes, my design.” I placed my hand on my hip, letting him know I wasn’t afraid to defy him.

  “Fine, but you can’t wear underclothes with the outfit. A leather strap should go across your ass to the front, and it’s essential to add leather bands for grabbing hold at the waist. Also, your breasts should be fully exposed.”

  My mouth dropped open at his controlling attitude. No way, buddy. “Okay, I’m done with your input. I have an idea of what I’m doing now.” I ignored him and put pencil to pad, inspired by what not to create.

  “You’re not gonna put any of those things on there, are you?” He was almost sulking next to me now. “How are we going to win this competition if we bypass things like this?”

  “We’ll win it, but without a leather thong going up my twat.” I winked. “Unless you wear one too, Romeo.” I laughed and added the final touches to my work then held the design close to my chest. I knew what I had to do to win. “I’ll let you see what it is on one condition.”

  He perked up with interest, but said, “It’s probably a nun outfit, just in leather.”

  I gasped and hit him with the pad, and he grasped the edges, pulling it from my fingers.

  I thought at first he did it to avoid my condition, but he held it to his chest without looking at it. “What’s the condition?”

  His world scared me, yet was fascinating as well. I’d bring my own flavor to this, and whether we won or lost, I’d keep my dignity. But I’d have to give in too. “Will you push me? I want to know more, but I’m afraid, and if I chicken out we’ll both lose. I just… I don’t want you to hurt me. So would you push me and do the stuff that’ll hurt really fast?”

  His entire countenance changed, like he’d melted then turned into a hard as stone Greek god statue. “Ava, part of the attraction is the pain, the way it amps up the pleasure. I’ll show you in a way that will push you to the next level on your own terms. And I promise not to hurt you. Ever.”

  I gave him a slow smile because it was all I could manage.

  He looked down at the sketch. I’d created a tailored, long leather coat that only fastened at the breast. For underneath, I’d drawn a velvet bustier with large clasps that were easily undone. They fully covered the nipple area yet offered up a lot of bust to anyone’s view. The bottoms were a pair of matching tap pants that left just enough to the imagination. I’d given the man his leather choker with a ring, and opted for Sanskrit writing on the lapels of the jacket using the symbols that meant “sacred” and “goddess.”

  He stared at the design for a moment, then looked at me. “It’s BDSM light.” He said it as if he were a teacher giving my work a grade.

  “Exactly. Is there such a thing?”

  “Yes. What do these symbols mean?”

  I explained, then unconsciously licked my bottom lip. When I looked up, he was staring at the place my tongue had been.

  “Fuck, this is going to be a long night.” He stood and then flopped onto the bed.

  “Don’t you want to see the rest of my creations?” I tried not to sound disappointed.

  “On you. I want to see the rest on you. Rather, honestly, I want to see them off of you.” He looked at me and clenched his jaw, which for some reason sent bolts of electricity through me. “Come on over here.” He tapped the pillow beside him.

  “You want me there?” I nearly squeaked. “I have to turn this in by midnight.”

  “You have ten minutes. Go turn it in. We need to get some sleep. Somehow.” He stared up through the skylight. “No telling what Unc has in store for us tomorrow.”

  I put the finishing touches on the last drawing and decided that since he would be pushing me to who knows what limits, it was my opportunity to do the same to him. “I’ve got to get dressed for bed,” I announced.

  He groaned under his breath. “No, you’ve got to get undressed, so I can at least look at you.”

  “That’s not going to help…” I looked pointedly at his crotch, “your situation there. But you’ll be happy to know the nightwear they gave me is barely-there nightwear, so you’ll be seeing plenty.”

  “Score one for Lucas.” He raised a playful fist in the air.

  I laughed and sauntered into the foyer to meet the guide from before, my hips doing an extra sway of their
own accord.

  Once I handed the drawings over, I realized that left us alone… for the whole long night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lucas

  Damn Uncle Harvey. He knew what he was doing to me when he stuck Ava and me in the same room together with the no touching rule. My only consolation was that Mason had to be suffering the same way I was.

  When Ava came back to the bedroom, all the breath was pushed out of me. Her hair was brushed into soft curls, and she wore a short, sheer nightdress that barely brushed the bottom of her ass. In the dim light, I could see the contours of her large, perky breasts beneath the gauzy material. I was so frustrated about not being able to leap up off the bed, crush her against my chest, and dive right into a kiss that would have her breaking any rule she needed to just to be with me.

  Rather than kill any chance I had of achieving my lifelong dream, I grabbed a pillow and put it over my face. “Get in bed.”

  There was silence, and I kept the pillow over my face, purposely constricting my air flow in the hopes the blood would return to my brain from my lower regions, until the bed dipped on her side. I felt her slide in beside me, then she peeked under my pillow. She was so near, I could smell her lavender body wash and the clean scent of her hair. I wondered if her pussy tasted as good as the rest of her smelled.

  “What’s going on under there?” she teased as she lifted the pillow partially off my face.

  “Get on your own side.” I was being playful, but it came out as a growl.

  “Want a snack?” She held up two packs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

  I wasn’t particularly hungry. My cock was though. He wanted a pair of melons with a side of clam. I ripped the pillow away from my face, wanting to have her under me so I could grind myself right into her deepest recesses.

  I threw the pillow at her. “Where did you get these?”

  “Out of a bowl in the bathroom. There’s like a bowl full of candy in there. Why would there be a bowl full of candy in the bathroom?” she asked, unwrapping a chocolate sphere.

  I stared at her in disbelief. She was probably the most vanilla girl I’d ever met. “Well, there’s lots you can do with candy before you eat it, but you would probably end up with chocolate on the sheets.”

  Her fingers froze, and she turned a cute shade of pink. “No!” She looked at her candy with a measured level of disgust. “Really? With chocolate? Not in… there?”

  “In anywhere.” I smirked and licked my lips, just to freak her out and make her want to stay on her side of the bed. I couldn’t take much more of being this close to her. Soon, she would need to tie me up, leash me to the bedpost like the wild animal I was. That thought led to thoughts of tying her up. I was so fucked.

  I was even more fucked when her eyes got big, then she shrugged and licked the inside of the peanut butter cup with her tongue. My cock shot straight into the air. It’d been a long time since I’d been this hard, and I knew I had to do something to turn the tide before I begged her to put where my brain currently was in her mouth too.

  “It’s very yummy. I could show you how that works.” She stopped midlick, and I almost didn’t have enough willpower to continue. “But I think we need to learn more about each other. For the game’s sake.” Plus, I’d been about to share some things with her that I was reconsidering now, and I needed to know more about her before I spilled beans I couldn’t get back.

  She nodded slowly, her eyes a mix of emotions, some I was sure were the same ones I was feeling.

  “Tell me about you, like your upbringing, et cetera. Tell me about your family, what led you here.” I waited as Ava blinked a few times, like she was trying to clear her mind and focus. God, I hoped I was having the same effect on her as she was on me.

  “Well, I’m from a very small town in Arkansas. My mom was a teenage beauty queen who fell for my dad, Dale Durant. We were — strangely — local celebrities as Dad’s dad, Grandpa Dick, ran his cheesy commercials for the family-owned car dealership. Until the day he died of a stroke on the used car lot.”

  “Oh, Ava, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. But it only gets worse. You sure you want to know all this?”

  “Please. I want to know what build you into the fabulous woman you are today.”

  She smiled at that. “Grandpa was a local celebrity. I remember seeing his tacky commercials on television. Dad took over the lot but didn’t have the charisma or the drive, and sales fell. After Grandpa died, Dad ran it into the ground. He started drinking. A lot, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

  What a horrible way to grow up.

  “He was always drunk, and my mom was never one to speak up, so she just cleaned up his messes and did her best to smooth things over. She’s his enabler. I love my parents, but I refuse to be like that. I had to get out. I got a partial scholarship, saved money working at the variety store in town and left home vowing to get my sister out and help her become independent.”

  I knew right then that even if we didn’t win, even if we went no further than lying here in this bed with clothes between us, I was going to help her help her sister.

  “How old is your sister?”

  “Just turned eighteen. She graduates this year and has dreams of veterinarian school.” She sucked the chocolate off her fingers, making my cock pulse, and stared off into the distance. “I bet you grew up quite differently.”

  “On the contrary, I can see a lot of similarities in our upbringings. About the time my uncle built his empire, most of my father’s life insurance was used to pay off a bad business investment and what little was left had run out. My mom needed to get a job, so she took the first one offered to her, fearful that she wouldn’t be able to take care of her family. She worked as a bank teller for a lot of years and refused most help. She was an inspiration to me, and I vowed that I’d make enough money one day to repay her efforts.”

  “So you take care of your mom now?”

  “She has wanted for nothing ever since my investment business started turning profits.”

  “Wow. I’d like to help my mom that way.”

  “Well, we’ll see to it that you will. I think we should get some sleep now.”

  “You like to be in charge, don’t you, Lucas?”

  Her words were like a double fist punch to my chest. I did. And when I wasn’t, my entire focus was on how I could change the situation to put me there. “I am in charge, just some people don’t know it.”

  She rolled her eyes and snuggled under the covers so that she was peeping just over the edge of the sheet. “Aren’t you going to change into something more comfortable?”

  I debated on how to answer that then decided on the truth. “I think it would be best for both of us if as many layers of material were between us as possible.” Besides, I had serious doubts about unzipping with this kind of hard-on.

  She swallowed hard and pursed her lips.

  I blinked, then I was practically swallowing a pillow. The little vixen had hit me with her pillow and caught me by surprise. As I was bent over, picking up the pillow from the floor, I felt a sharp thwap on my butt.

  I glared at her, hoping to fake her out, then pummeled her with pillows to her delighted shrieks. We smacked each other and dodged until we were both out of breath and there were feathers floating in the air around us.

  “Truce!” Her face was pink with exertion, and I could imagine that it would look something like that after I made her come.

  I flopped back on my side of the bed, smiling. “Truce.” It had been a long time since I’d had even so few minutes of delirious fun, maybe since Mason and I were kids… back when we’d been friends. The thought sobered me.

  When she raised her pillow threateningly, I said, “If you do that again, we’ll start this all over, and both of us will not get any sleep.” I punctuated that with my pillow raised over my head.

  She fake cowered. “Okay, but this war is only paused, not over.”


  I gave her a mischievous grin. “It won’t be over until I win.”

  I turned out the light to punctuate my statement. She didn’t argue and didn’t emerge from under covers for the rest of the night. I listened to her even breathing as I stared up at the stars. I liked just being near her. I liked her smile. I liked everything about her.

  However this contest was going to turn out, it had begun. And though I had little control over it as a whole, I found myself caring less about that than discovering more about this amazing woman who slept within arm’s reach.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ava

  I woke up at some point in the night and laid there for a while listening to Lucas breathing in a deep, relaxed kind of way. I couldn’t believe either of us had fallen asleep with the sexual tension that hung between us even with him in dreamland. He was unlike any man I’d ever met. And I was more attracted to him than any man I’d run across. I wondered if the chalet had hidden diffusers, pumping out pheromones at an alarming rate, because my state of arousal was ridiculous. Because of it and because, honestly, I didn’t have the strength to deny my body after so long being abstinent, I decided I’d just go with the flow. Let this game take me where it would, and take the pleasure and money and walk away with everything I needed at the end.

  After making my decision, I fell into a wonderfully restive sleep, and when I woke, Lucas was already out of bed.

  Rising, I got ready for the day and went to find Mr. Dominant to see if he knew anything about today’s schedule.

  “Good morning.” From behind the kitchen counter where he was brewing coffee, Lucas threw me a glorious smile that made me feel like I was up for anything today.

  “Morning. Any word?”

  In response, he held up a red envelope identical to the one I’d received last night.

  “It was slipped under the front door. And there’s that.” Lucas gestured to a rack that had been wheeled to a stop near the service door. One that was filled with winter coats and layers of thermals and had a shelf on top overflowing with toboggans, scarves, and gloves.