by Lacey Savage
I was humming under my breath as I walked into the kitchen, but the tune died in my throat when I flicked on the light and found Erik sitting on one of my barstools at the kitchen island, cradling a cup of coffee in his large hands.
I immediately flashed back to the way those fingers had cradled my breasts, and a flush crept into my face.
“Good morning,” I mumbled, turning away from him under the guise of refilling the coffee maker. I had expected him to be long gone by now, and the fact that he wasn’t unnerved me to the core.
I heard him rise. The chair made a scraping sound against the floor, and his footsteps fell with dull thuds as he neared.
He stopped just behind me. “Are you all right?”
I busied myself with the coffee filter. “Fine.”
“What you experienced last night…” He hesitated, and I detected a catch in his voice. Uncertainty? Or something else? “We call it subspace. It happens when a submissive goes so deep within her own emotions that she crashes after a scene. It can be…dangerous.”
His words sent a trembling shudder through me. My emotions had been overwhelming after he’d unstrapped me. For a moment, I’d felt myself teetering between despair and euphoria, knowing I had a choice to make. I could have easily chosen despair.
I spun around to face him and flattened the base of my spine against the countertop. “Did you know that would happen?”
He shook his head and ran a hand through his loose blond hair. “I suspected there was a part of you that you didn’t want to show us, but I didn’t realize you’d kept it hidden from yourself too.”
I searched his face for the smallest hint of deception but found none. He looked perturbed, and more serious than I had ever seen him.
“I like pain.” I said the words slowly, testing them on my tongue. To my relief, they didn’t burn or scathe or even dredge up the shame and humiliation I’d grown so used to feeling.
Erik crossed his arms over his chest. He propped a hip against the kitchen island directly across from me. “This was never about the pain.”
My pulse kicked up a notch. “Of course it was. You said it yourself. I’m a pain slut.” That moniker didn’t hurt either, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. It seemed I was reclaiming the words for myself, using them to define a part of me I knew I’d have to learn to embrace.
His blue eyes held mine steady. “But it was never your preference for pain that was the problem. It was your inability to be yourself with your partner that kept you shackled and unsatisfied.”
I dropped my gaze and tugged on the silk material of my robe, making sure it was pulled tightly over my breasts. My piercings made tiny raised circles against the soft fabric, and my nipples stood out in sharp relief as well.
I sighed and let my hands fall. “What man wants a wife who prefers to be hurt—no, who needs to be hurt before she can orgasm?”
“The one you’ve got upstairs. Me. And countless others.”
I blinked up at him. “People as screwed up as I am, you mean.”
Erik took a step forward, closing the distance between us. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers grazed my jaw, lingering there as he pulled away. “Last night, you came unbound. You freed yourself from the shackles that had chained your sexual identity for so long. Don’t bind yourself again by labeling your needs with terms you can’t respect.”
My breath hitched in my throat. He stood so close, all I had to do was rise on my tiptoes and press my lips to his.
So I did.
The kiss was fleeting, a mere grazing of mouths, but I hoped it communicated everything I couldn’t put into words. “I don’t want to see you again,” I said as I brushed past him on my way to the fridge.
He didn’t answer, and I took a long time to locate the milk, even though it was right in front of me on the top shelf, where it always was.
When I turned around, Erik was gone.
Epilogue
A Year Later
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” Donna stared into her martini as if it held the answer to her question. “The next time Paul sends me to one of these conferences, I’m just going to say no. Seriously. No way, no how. I refuse to waste four days of my life listening to pompous know-it-alls regale me with the latest and greatest discoveries in the world’s most boring industry.”
I laughed and picked out the olive from my drink. “It wasn’t that bad.”
She inclined her head. “Okay, what’s with you? Spill. The last session of the day knocked me out faster than a glass of wine and a Vicodin, and yet you were on the edge of your seat for the whole thing. Tell me you didn’t really find database administration as fascinating as you appeared to.”
I hid a smile behind my glass, not quite knowing how to admit to my best friend that sitting on the edge of my seat had a lot more to do with the butt plug in my ass—and the fact that my butt cheeks were ten shades of purple—than the fascinating discourse delivered by the elderly man in the tweed suit jacket at the front of the room.
Donna set her glass down then spread out her hands. “I give up. Will you share whatever happy pills you’ve been taking? Because girl, you’ve been positively glowing for the past few months.”
I chuckled. Glowing. That was one word for it. Especially fitting considering the burning glow of my ass cheeks most days.
Donna shook her head. “That must be some amazing sex you’re having.”
I hadn’t been able to get away with keeping my secrets all to myself, so I’d had to tell Donna a few things about my greatly improved sex life. I’d kept the details vague, so all she knew was that things between Cole and me had gone from lukewarm to incendiary in the past year.
I lifted my glass. “What can I say? Getting laid on a regular basis will do wonders for your outlook on life.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “Spare me. Some of us haven’t had sex in months.”
“Maybe that’s your problem.” I glanced around the hotel bar, which was buzzing with activity. I inclined my head in the direction of an attractive middle-aged man in a business suit sitting at a nearby table. “Conferences are great for stress relief.”
“Yeah, right. He’s probably married.”
“Maybe,” I admitted, “but I bet there are plenty of men in this place who aren’t.”
Donna drained the last of her martini. “So you promise that if I have some hot sex, I’ll be as blissfully happy as you?”
“Nope.” I lifted my own glass in a silent toast. “But it’s a good place to start.”
She feigned throwing something at me, and we both laughed.
My giggle vanished when an intense, trembling vibration started deep in my pussy. I sat up abruptly, scooting to the edge of my chair, and gripped the armrest in my free hand. I set the glass down on the table between us. My nipples tightened and my belly quivered.
Duty calls.
I glanced around quickly, trying to find Cole. The vibrator he’d inserted in my pussy that morning had a twenty-foot range. He had to be here somewhere.
“Don’t tell me you’re looking for someone to fuck,” Donna commented dryly. “Your husband’s halfway across the country, and you never struck me as the cheating type.”
I dismissed her comment with a wave of my hand. Cole had flown out with me, but I’d chosen to keep that little tidbit from her. The vibration in my cunt intensified, as did the urgency building in my belly. I stood abruptly on shaky legs. I dug around in my purse and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Gotta go. Work to do.”
Donna’s protest followed me as I walked out of the bar as fast as my high-heeled shoes and trembling limbs could carry me. I didn’t spot Cole, though I continued to search for him.
He hadn’t used the remote all day. Not during the conference sessions, and not even when we broke for lunch and Donna and I tried the hotel restaurant’s buffet. But knowing it was inside me, along with the rubber plug in my ass, had been more than enough to kee
p me in a heightened state of awareness all day. With nothing but a minute shift of my hips, I could drive a jolt of pure pleasure straight to my clit. If I sat a certain way, the throbbing of my butt cheeks would spread delicious torment through my nerve endings. I’d worked myself into a frenzy half a dozen times today, only to stop just short of coming time and time again.
Cole and I had dismantled the BDSM dungeon and returned most of the items to Erik, but we’d kept a few toys along with some of Erik’s rules. No orgasms without permission was one of them.
I pushed the elevator button and shifted my weight from one foot to another as I waited. Fisting my hands at my sides, I counted backward from a thousand, trying to distract myself from the waves of pleasure streaming through my cunt. All I wanted to do was reach under my pencil skirt and tweak my clit. Tug on it sharply, just once, and come with a shuddering, mind-blowing intensity.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t, for many reasons—not the least of which was the fact that I stood in a busy hotel lobby.
I gritted my teeth, loving the way my release built and built inside me. I had no more fears about not being able to reach completion. Those had vanished along with my shame.
When the elevator finally arrived, I stepped inside and pressed the button to the twenty-ninth floor repeatedly until the doors began to close. Slumping against the back of the cabin, I let the relief of being alone wash over me.
As the doors were about to seal, a man stuck his shoe between them, forcing them to open. I groaned and yanked my hand away from the apex of my thighs.
Cole walked in and my pulse quickened. His gaze flicked over me without recognition. His face remained impassive as he pushed the button to close the doors once more. This time they sealed smoothly and the elevator shot into motion.
He kicked up the intensity on the vibrator. I quivered, unable to speak, barely holding myself up. I tracked the numbers indicating the floors we passed. Eight, nine, ten…
“Honey,” Cole said abruptly, his voice deep and husky, impossibly loud to my hyperaware senses.
The orgasm detonated in my body like a flurry of small blasts, culminating into a massive explosion deep in my core. I cried out and arched my back. Sensations ravaged me from the inside. I felt my release everywhere—in my pussy, my ass, my breasts, but also in my throat, my chest, my stomach. My head reeled with it. My vision clouded. I had no choice but to close my eyes.
Arms enveloped me and I sank into Cole’s welcoming heat.
“Shh…I got you,” he murmured in my ear.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on for dear life as he scooped me up. Through my foggy cocoon of ecstasy, I heard the elevator ding its arrival at our floor. Cole carried me out.
He had me. And he was never letting me go.
About Lacey Savage
Award-winning author Lacey Savage loves to write about her dreams—or more specifically, she loves to breathe life into her steamy fantasies (and she’s got plenty!). She pens erotic tales of true love and mythical destiny, peopled with strong alpha heroes and feisty heroines. A hopeless romantic, Lacey loves writing about the intimate, sensual side of relationships. She currently resides in Ottawa, Canada, with her loving husband and a mischievous cat.
Lacey welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Lacey Savage
A Stranger’s Touch
All the King’s Men
Diva in Denial
Fighting Chance
I, Nefertiti
Mirror, Mirror
Wed and Wanton
Voices in the Dark
Print books by Lacey Savage
All the King’s Men
Fighting Chance
I, Nefertiti
Naughtiest Nuptials anthology
Tantalizing Treats anthology
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Coming Unbound
ISBN 9781419945069
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Coming Unbound Copyright © 2013 Lacey Savage
Edited by Kelli Collins and Julie Naughton
Cover design by Valerie Tibbs
Cover photography by Kevin Willis/Dreamstime.com
Electronic book publication April 2013
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