The Dani Collins Erotic Romance Collection: Mastering Her RolePlaying the Master

by Dani Collins

  “Why are you here, Porter?” she asked. “Why do you like inflicting pain?”

  “I wouldn’t say I like it.” He took his time rinsing the cloth and watching the water wring out. When he spoke, his tone was carefully neutral, quiet and not quite steady. “If you knew how much pain there was in my childhood, you’d understand that when I found a place where pain happens for a reason, and has rules that govern how and why it’s delivered, it drew me in the way that drugs pull others. It was an escape of sorts, too, given the focus it demands.”

  He draped the cloth over his finger and traced her mouth, avoiding looking into her eyes.

  “And it turns you on?” she asked against the rasp of the cloth.

  “Sex isn’t always a given, but when you’re being that physically intimate with another person, it often becomes a sort of foreplay. I don’t feel sexual pleasure when I deliver pain, but some do when they receive it. Their arousal stimulates me. In the early years the bigger payoff was the chance to top and dominate and express every part of myself without being judged…that was a necessary type of therapy as I was dealing with my upbringing. Like you, I had a lot of pent-up aggression that needed an outlet with firm boundaries so I could learn to control it. The fact that my experimenting horrified and appalled my parents was a fringe benefit.” The corner of his mouth pulled in self-mockery.

  She didn’t know what to say. He said he didn’t want monogamy, didn’t want to marry, but she knew he was doing it because his father insisted. She longed to ask about his brother, but as Violet she wasn’t supposed to know anything about his life.

  He set aside the cloth and reached for a tube, squeezing something onto his fingertip before applying it to her mouth. It was tasteless and odorless, but waxy and soothing, making her rub her lips together to spread it evenly.

  Bracing his elbows on the edge of the tub, he regarded her.

  “You look about ten years old. Far too young for any type of sex, kinky or otherwise.”

  “I’m twenty-one,” she protested softly. “How old are you? Twenty-five?” She tried to recall the most recent age she’d read.

  “Twenty-seven.” He shrugged. “But I’m about a hundred years old in experience. Do you want a drink?”

  “Alcohol? No, thank you.”

  He rose and brought her a glass of water, setting it on the shelf beside her before turning away to pour himself a scotch. When he came back, he pulled a bigger chair, one shaped like a hammock built of plush cushions, from the other side of the room. He positioned it close enough that when he sat back in it, he was able to prop his feet on the edge of the tub.

  “How long are we staying here?” she asked, surprised at how he made himself so comfortable.

  “Until I convince you to end your relationship.” He sipped. “Stick with vanilla for now. Straight relationships,” he explained at her frown. “No kink. I realize you’re curious about all this, Vi. It’s delightful to watch, especially because your inhibition level is so low. You’re exciting to someone who wants to push, but he’s taking advantage of a woman who hasn’t learned to say no. You want to, but you need to practice on someone less aggressive.”

  “If I end it, I won’t be back here. Guaranteed.”

  A muscle pulsed in his jaw, but he didn’t say anything.

  Shaken pain struck in her solar plexus as she said, “But if you’re saying you don’t want me to come back here anyway, even to see you…”

  “I didn’t say I don’t want to see you. But this life is not for you. Not at this time in your life, at any rate.”

  “You’re right, I’m not willing to be submissive, but what about other things?”

  “Such as?” He lifted his brows.

  How on earth would she know? She shrugged a shoulder. “You tell me. Is being a Dom the only thing you’re into?”

  “No.” He sipped, studying her silently, like he was memorizing her features.

  She looked away, feeling like she was begging. “I didn’t mean to lead you on. I mean, I guess I did. That’s what Eloisa wanted me to do. But I genuinely want to know more about you. I liked touching you.”

  “I liked it, too,” he said, voice rumbling from deep in his chest. His lids lowered in smoldering memory.

  A smile of warmth spread through her, but she kept her expression sober, fearful of disturbing this perfect moment between them.

  “Can I wash your feet?” she asked on impulse, aching to touch him again.

  His body seemed to twitch, but he only said in that same smoky voice, “If you like.”

  She shifted with a swish of water onto her knees and eased off one boot and sock, then the other. He could see her naked breasts, slick and wet, topped by nipples that tightened at the chill of rising from the water. She didn’t mind, rather hoping that the sight pleased him.

  Just thinking about him looking made her nipples prickle and extend even more, all of her flowering with delight at the mere possibility of his warm stare. She didn’t have the nerve to look up and see whether he was really looking, but her gaze lifted as high as his lap.

  Perhaps he did like what he saw. A firm shape filled out the space behind his fly, making her giddy with joy.

  “You like being looked at,” he accused with indulgent warmth.

  She looked up as she leaned to set his boot on the floor, aware her ass went into the air like the top curves of a heart. “If you’re the one looking,” she agreed. “Do you mind?”

  “Not one bit,” he murmured.

  The way his gaze traveled her back to her rump, like a stroke of his hand that slid into the exposed flesh behind her, was so tangible she tensed internally, throbbing with need.

  Blushing, unsure whether he still felt teased or led on, she finished pulling off his boots and socks, then settled back into the water and used her cupped hands to wet his feet.

  “I want to have sex with you, Porter,” she admitted as she ran soapy fingers up his wet feet and worked it between his toes. “I just don’t want…that.” She nodded to the other room.

  “I know.” He flexed against her touch. “Now.”

  “And you think that makes us incompatible.” She dug into the tendon of his arch with her thumbs, trying to relax him. “Like what you said about gay and straight? You and I aren’t a good fit.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She looked up to find his eyes closed, drink paused near his lips, face contorted with pain. She lifted her hands.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “No.” The word came out in a cut of breath. Taking a pull off his drink, he tipped his head back, obscuring his expression as he stared at the ceiling. “No, I just can’t see us being incompatible. I’m about to come in my pants from you playing with my toes.”

  She grinned. “What if I sucked them?”

  “Who ever thought you were sub material?” He lowered his chin to send her a feral glare. “You have a cruel streak in you a mile wide.”

  “I’m not trying to be cruel.” She sobered and used the cup to rinse his feet, saying indignantly, “I want to give you pleasure. You’re the one saying we can’t be together. I told you my terms.”

  “I’m getting married. That bothered you the other day.”

  Here it was, an opportunity to come clean, if she dared.

  “What if I said you could have me even when you are married?” she asked, settling on planting a seed.

  “No, Violet.” He pulled his wet feet away and put them down on the floor, sitting forward to confront her. “Believe me, I don’t have much regard for marriage, but I’ll be damned if I’ll become my father, deliberately flaunting a mistress under my wife’s nose. There’s a reason my mother became so sour and malicious.”

  “Why is this marriage so important if you don’t really want it?” she demanded, so frustrated she barely kept herself from raising her voice.

  His hands spiked into his hair. He sat like that a minute, elbows on knees, body like a statue.

  “I let my bro
ther down,” he finally said, his voice so dreadful and heavy with pain, she found herself sinking into the water, instantly aching with cold. “I failed him so badly. He couldn’t take the pain of being belted and belittled so he did anything they wanted, never once showing the least bit of resistance. He wouldn’t run away, even though I begged him a hundred times to come with me. He was too scared to leave, and I couldn’t abandon him so we both put up with hell. I stopped caring that they didn’t love us, but he never did. That was something I missed. We were adults. I thought we were both past letting it matter when they said vile, hurtful things. Tomas just didn’t let on to me that he still felt it. I know he wanted to be strong, like me. I wanted to teach him to be, but he wasn’t.”

  Acute, helpless pain flashed across his expression.

  “Maybe it was easier for me because I had found kindness and acceptance here, in places like that,” he lifted his head and pointed to the door to the dungeon. “Hard to believe, I’m sure, but it’s true. And the more time I spent playing, barely going home, the more Tomas was in the position of taking the brunt of things there. I thought he was…”

  He rubbed his jaw in a slow, hard scrub, like he was trying to erase the line of his narrow beard from his skin.

  “For a while he was hurting himself. Cutting. That was his outlet, but God. I try not to judge people, Vi, but I couldn’t let him do that. I told him to stop and he did. I thought that was the end of it, that he was okay, especially in those final few months. Every time I saw him, he seemed calm. At peace. I’ve since learned that a placid mood like that is common when someone has made the decision to kill himself.”

  She bit her lips together, deeply saddened as she looked into his bleak eyes. “I’m so sorry, Porter.”

  “So am I. I go over it and over it in my head, trying to find a way to make it not happen.”

  “And you think marrying will help?”

  “No,” he admitted flatly. “But marrying Ann will allow me to take over their company. Me. I’ll own those shares even though the company itself will be absorbed into Navarro Holdings. Those shares will secure my controlling interest over the whole of our corporation. Right now, my father is in charge. His share is sixty percent and Tomas and I each had twenty.”

  “And your mother—?”

  “Nothing. Another reason she’s such a bitter pill. Tomas left me his share, so now I have forty. Our corporation tops most lists in assets and income generation. My fiancée’s is around number twenty. If one of our competitors scoops up their company, we’ll be pushed out of the number-one spot.”

  “And you like to dominate, so…” She couldn’t help the light tease in her tone. He was rather predictable in some ways.

  One corner of his mouth pulled in self-deprecation. “My father would have committed bigamy and married Ann himself to maintain the position, it’s that important to him. If I thought it would genuinely hurt him, I’d let us fall. I was tempted to, but then I realized that by marrying her, taking on those holdings as they merge with ours, I’ll be in a position to challenge him. He thinks I’m finally coming around, doing as I’m told, but he’s wrong.” His eyes narrowed with anticipation of vengeance. “Once I’m married and running things, he’ll learn what it means to be at the mercy of someone who doesn’t give a single golden damn about him.”

  He leaned to the side, retrieving the towel that had been on her head from the floor. After drying his feet, he stood.

  “You should come out. The tubs have coils and insulation to keep them warm, but you’re going to shrivel.” He reached past her for a bath towel, holding it for her.

  Dumbly she stood, processing how his revelation changed things. Cain might kill her if he knew all she’d done to jeopardize the marriage, but suddenly it looked like Porter’s view of the same could be even worse.

  He helped her from the tub then wrapped her in a cuddling hug, the embrace smothering and claustrophobic, but she suspected he needed it more than she did so she let her head make a wet patch on his shirt and submitted to the gentle roam of his hands over her towel wrapped form.

  “I don’t expect you to wait for me. I don’t know how long it will take,” he said against her hair, voice vibrating in his throat.

  Full confession rose in her throat. On the surface, it seemed easy enough to blurt out who she was and all the power that would give him. They could do and be whatever they wanted together.

  But would they stay together? Would he marry her because he wanted Violet? Or because he wanted to destroy his father? They might have chemistry, but in the long run, she couldn’t give him what he seemed to need in a mate: an outlet for his pain by submitting to it.

  She let her head weigh heavier on his chest, content in the moment as he petted and soothed her, but troubled by their lack of future.

  When he cruised his hand down to her behind, shaping and squeezing as he pressed her into his erection, her dark worries fell away, replaced by surprise and tendrils of intrigue.

  Lifting her head to read his expression, she found herself unable to move more than that. He kept her cocooned, making her heart skip lightly at being trapped, but the way he zeroed in on her mouth with his hot gaze sent a pulse of excitement into her center.

  “What are you doing?” Her small struggles abraded her nipples against the terry fabric while her thighs rubbed together, creating friction not quite where she wanted it.

  “I wondered if you would respond to constriction. You seemed excited when I talked about tying your legs open so I could look at you as much as I want.”

  Her breath hitched and she couldn’t hide the flush of arousal that bloomed in her.

  He laughed softly, breath wafting across her lips. “I’m going to look at you, Violet. I’m going to lick you until you scream.”

  She almost screamed as he lifted her, startled by his words, his swift action, the unexpectedness of being slung into the big chair and swiveled around. Her body weight trapped the edges of the towel under her, keeping her in the tight jacket.

  He dragged her hips to the edge of the chair and the towel rode up, exposing the tops of her thighs. She instinctively tried to pinch her legs together, but he forced her knees open.

  Fantasy and reality collided. Even as heat flooded into her mound, she squirmed at being trapped and exposed. He was staring at her naked pussy, watching it bloom and seep nectar like an orchid luring a bee. Blanketed like this, unable to escape what was happening to her, she was more Ann than Violet. No sense of confidence. She was vulnerable and wary.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured, running hot hands up and down the insides of her thighs to spread her open.

  Ripples of desire followed his touch, making her thighs quiver and her belly knot. Her sex, displayed without disguise, throbbed with need.

  “Porter.” It came out as a husky moan. No matter how she tried to roll, his hands were there, steadying her hips, keeping her in place. Sending a streak of cool air to places that had never been uncovered and open this way.

  “I’m a great believer in justice, Violet,” he growled in a tone that was thick with sexual hunger. “I owe you this.”

  Bending his head, he licked a wet streak up the inside of her thigh to the crease at the side of her mound. Then the other side of her plump lips felt the rasp of his tongue.

  She couldn’t speak, transfixed by the sensation, the reality of sexual attention she had longed for was here. Male touch. Intimate touch.

  His hot mouth opened in a wide-mouthed kiss that drew all her attention into one place, making her long for—but not quite readying her for—the spear of his tongue opening her to its lash.

  Pressing the back of her head into the cushioned chair, she let out a ragged moan, stunned by the delicious sensation of his tongue working along her slit, then drawing on her lips so she couldn’t think, could only feel.

  Wet. Hot. So good.

  He took his time, seeming to know one heartbeat before she did where she wanted—needed—to be licked a
nd sucked. Soft bites, a swirl of his tongue around and around her clit, and then—

  Magic. He slid a finger into her, thick and long, delving deep, making her clench in ecstasy even as orgasm rose up with ridiculous ease to crash over her.

  She didn’t scream, but couldn’t help the cries of release as her hips bucked against his mouth, powerful contractions seizing her as he extended the joy with light thrusts of his finger and playful flicks of his tongue.

  As her sobs dwindled to whimpers, he lifted his head, finger leaving her to roll possessively over her clit. She jerked and he flared his nostrils, watching as he stimulated her.

  “Good Christ you’re easy.” There was rich approval in his tone, nothing but intense hunger in his flushed cheekbones and avid stare and slow lick of his lips. “If you came that quick and hard on my cock, Vi, I’d die.”

  “I want to. Put it in me.”

  He rested the flat of his shaking palm on the top of her thigh and gave her a somber look. “I can’t. I want to, more than you could possibly know.” His hand tightened on her and his expression reflected his struggle for control over himself. “But I’m starting to think that vanilla sex you need has a cherry. You’re really tight.”

  “But I want to,” she cried, managing to sit up and close her legs, something he allowed to her chagrin. Maybe she should open them herself, issue a blatant invitation.

  He rocked back onto his heels and stood, exhaling with regret. “Violet, think about it. If you aren’t a sub, you don’t need a Dom. Get out of here, find a decent man. Learn who you are with someone who cares about you.”

  Because he didn’t.

  She swallowed, but she didn’t have the courage to argue with him. It might turn into begging.

  Chapter Eight

  Porter eyed Violet as he shrugged on his shirt. The excuse she wore for a dress billowed in a cloud of white around her, dipping low at the cleavage to reveal the free movement of her breasts as she leaned forward in the chair to buckle her shoes.

  He didn’t want to leave this room. He wanted to fuck her twelve ways to Sunday, sleep a few hours and do it all over again. But he’d chosen to find a shred of nobility and, boy, did he regret it. Especially because he could tell she was stinging with rejection.