by Riley Murphy
She laughed and the second he reached the banister he turned around. “Now let me see how good you’ve been.”
Without any warning, he turned her around and held her so that her back was against his front. “Were you a good girl? Did you get hot while you thought about me? Did you do as I told you,” his hand trailed up her thigh, higher and higher still under her skirt as he spoke against her ear, “to do? Did you get yourself… Damn, this is one wet pussy.”
Jo’s knees went weak as he skated his fingers through her dampness. Touching and pushing against her clit until she gasped, “Ted.”
“I can’t wait. It’s been a long day and all I’ve done is think about you. Envisioning you with your skirt up and panties down doing yourself for me had me harder than granite for the last hour. We’ll discuss what took you so long to get here afterward. Right now I want to sink my cock into this.” He slipped two fingers into her and she saw stars. The next thing she knew he was seated on the stairs with legs spread waiting for her.
“Take this,” he handed her the foil wrapper, “and put it on me. That’s right,” he said when she dropped to her knees on the first step and undid his pants. “Once you get that on I want you to take off your panties and lift up your skirt. Then I want you—careful, not so fast—to sit on me.”
“Is this good?”
He put a hand in her hair and nodded. His eyes ablaze with dark lust. “I love seeing you like this. Kneeling and breathless with my cock inches from your face.”
Jo shivered at those words.
“I want you to climb up on my lap. I want you to spread yourself and let me feel all that heat. Ride me.”
He didn’t need to say any more. She stood, shimmied out of her panties and lifted her skirt.
“That’s a girl. Right, like that,” he gave a half growl, half sigh when she came down on him.
He was so big, so hard that the width of him going in made her burn. But then he gathered her up. He kissed and bit her neck, played with her nipples, and when his hand slipped down between them to rub her clit, she forgot about the discomfort.
“Good girl. Relax. Let me get into you some more. Just,” he groaned, “a little more.”
It was her turn to groan. “This feels amazing.” She ground down on him.
“Deep breath, princess…”
This time when she went down he flexed up and the full length of him came into her.
He stopped. “All right?”
“Yes. Yes.” She was too afraid to move. The deep contractions she experienced were unique and—
“We’ll go slow. Slow and steady. Slow,” he blew a breath out in her ear as he pumped up and down and in and out of her, “and steady.”
“Ted.” She didn’t mean to yank on his hair or dig her nails into his shoulder through his shirt, but she couldn’t help it. Breath-stealing adrenaline was rocketing to life inside her.
“I’m here. I’m,” his grunt when she slammed into him, frantic and needy for more, nearly pushed her over the edge. “Right here. Easy now. Not so fast.”
“Oh God, it feels so good. So, so good.”
She pushed, jerked, slammed and ground all over him, and yet, no matter what she did, he remained steady and patient. Slow. Oh yes, slow and awesome. Her inner muscles squeezed riding up the length of him and strangled coming down on him. Up and down. Up, she sucked in a breath, down. Up…
“Your tight little pussy is begging for it.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“I want it.”
“Bad? Do you want it bad?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
Finally he changed course and gave her what she’d been after. With his hands on her hips, he was the guide. Lifting her off and sliding himself back into her. Over and over. Until her adrenaline raced and her pulse sped. She closed her eyes and fell into the rhythm. Into the dance he created. Until she couldn’t think anymore. All she could do was feel as the exhilaration built to a heady crescendo that took her breath away. Made her shake. Tremble, as he came to be buried right up into her nice and deep.
“Jesus fuck,” she heard him growl as he hammered into her. Once, twice. “Damn your pussy is squeezing me good and tight. Come for me. I want all your heat. All of it,” he rasped. “Do it. Come. Now.”
Although her mind processed his words it was her body that obeyed them. With one heart-stopping push she flew over the edge and came as she cried out his name, “Ted.”
“Keep saying it.”
She shook and quivered against him. “Ted, Ted, Ted…”
And when he crushed her down on him and rocked her back and forth, she held on for dear life. Happy to feel his body tense, his breath rush out of him and his groan of satisfaction as he slammed into her one last time and found his own relief.
“Jesus,” he exclaimed a moment later and fell back against the stairs. She went with him, refusing to let go. His heart thumped loudly against her ear.
A minute later she said, “This was a surprise.”
He chuckled and the sounded rumbled over her. “Not the surprise I intended.”
“No?”
“Let me show you.”
“Oh!” Before she could protest he’d stood with her in his arms and his—
“I love my cock inside you,” he whispered as though he’d read her thoughts.
She didn’t have anything to say to that so she buried her face against his neck and tried to tamp down her flush of embarrassment.
“I wanted to surprise you with this.”
Chapter Ten
A door creaked open and Jo twisted to look. The second the bathroom came into view and she saw that it was alight with candles of every size and shape with the tub filled with bubbles, she swallowed. It was beautiful. So elegant and feminine. And he’d done this for her.
For her.
“It’s lovely.”
“Well, it probably needs to be warmed up by now.” He carefully disengaged from her and deposited her on the counter. Holding up a finger, he warned, “Don’t go anywhere. It will only take me a minute.”
She nodded and adjusted her skirt. The marble was freezing against her bare bottom.
“There. The temperature is perfect. Now,” he turned back to her, “let’s get undressed.”
He helped her down and she grinned. “You’re getting in there with me?”
“Oh yeah.”
A chunk of hair fell over his one eye and she had to remind herself to breathe. “This feels like…like—”
“Date night?”
“Yes. That’s exactly how it feels.”
“Hm. Maybe to some extent it is.” He made short work of getting her undressed and by the time she’d sank into the warm water he was ready to join her.
She’d thought he’d sit behind her and was more than a little surprised when he eased down in front of her. But then when he leaned back with his head on her breast and positioned her legs and arms until they were wrapped around him, she couldn’t say she hated it. It was more romantic and intimate this way, she decided. And after a few minutes of stroking her fingers through his hair and dipping her head to study his profile in the candlelight, she never wanted for their positions to be reversed. Never.
He let out a deep sigh of contentment. “So tell me, how was your evening?”
“Evening?” She closed her eyes and tried to keep from tensing up. He’d feel it and then he’d know. “Boring.”
“Do you have anything to tell me about it?”
“Well, the food was lousy.” She opened her eyes and waited. Praying to God he wouldn’t start digging. She wasn’t ready for that conversation. She didn’t want him to know the truth. That her mother chose to protect her father over protecting her own daughter.
“And Patel?”
She kept her breathing even. Calm. The last thing she wanted was to give Ted an excuse to do something else to Anjay. The end was in sight on that score. She’d pay the guy off and no one, not even Te
d, would be the wiser. “It was very odd. He, ah, didn’t sit with us. He had some sort of an emergency. He only breezed in to accept his award, and even then he was dressed in his blues.”
“Blues?” Ted looked up.
“His surgical attire. Scrubs and cap.”
“Ah,” Ted nodded and Jo finally relaxed and leaned back to rest her head against the cool ceramic tile.
“How was your night?”
Ted picked up her hand and examined the bubbles sliding down her fingers, deciding what he should say. How best to answer her without sounding like a lovesick fool. “It was uneventful until I sent that text.” He stopped rubbing her hand and whispered, “Then all I did was prowl around the place while I waited for you.”
“You did?”
He could tell by her tone she liked the sound of that. “Yes. Now,” he cleared his throat, “what took you so long to get here? The convention center is twenty minutes away, tops.”
She played with his hair. “Performance anxiety.”
“Really?” He was back rubbing her hand again. “I thought you were rather quick when you sent that text back to me. I guess we need another lesson with that buzzer. It shouldn’t take you any longer than a minute to come if you do it right.”
Her hand shifted and the backs of her knuckles slid down his cheek. “How did you get this?”
He closed his eyes, and for once he didn’t pull away when she continued to trace his scar. He’d already determined that Jo was different. She was special. She had something that was good for him and he hadn’t had anything like that in a long, long time.
“An angry woman.”
Her touch never ceased. He liked that.
“She meant something to you.”
“Yes.”
“Was she your sub?”
“My very first.”
“Oh.”
“She was also my wife.”
Now her hand stopped. “How long were you married?”
“A year.”
“Was she a…a jealous woman?”
Ted’s lip quirked. This was Jo’s roundabout way of asking if they’d fought over another woman. He got that. He brought her hand to his chest and held it over his heart. “The night I got this scar we weren’t fighting over another woman. We never would have fought over that. We had an open marriage. This wasn’t my choice, by the way. She was the one who insisted on it. But as to the argument? We were fighting about having kids.”
“Tell me.”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “That’s usually my line. Are you turning it on me?”
“Yes.” She gave him a squeeze and the unconscious action touched him. Deep.
“Selena thought she was pregnant and she didn’t want to have kids. She said she was too young to ruin her body, and we were too young to be parents. It’s a funny thing. I always thought I was pro-choice and a woman had the right to do what she wants with her body, but when I thought of a piece of me growing inside her and she was contemplating…well, it’s a surreal experience when you’re faced with it.”
“I can see that.”
“That’s what we were fighting about because the next day we were going to the doctor’s to discuss our options, only she was a fiery thing. And when she got mad?” He shook his head, recalling some of the more classic tantrums his wife had thrown over their years together. “Everyone ducked. Only this time?” He touched his face. Felt the puckered lines of the scar and frowned. “I wasn’t fast enough.”
“I’d heard from Colin that a disgruntled sub maimed you.”
“Yeah, that’s the myth behind the legend. My time with Selena was before I met E or David. It was in another lifetime.” He wanted to say “when I was more easygoing. Before I became unforgiving, but he didn’t want to wreck the moment”. He may have a soft spot for her right now. A real Achilles’ heel for her since he’d connected with her pain and was drawn to it, yet until he understood the why of it, he wasn’t going to be sharing those personal thoughts with her.
“It was just easier to tell them that. Less to explain that way.” Which wasn’t true at all. He hadn’t shared this part of his past with his friends because he’d wanted to keep it to himself. It was his memory and he never thought he’d share it with anyone and yet here he was. In a bubble bath, no less, pouring his heart out.
“Where is she now? And the baby?”
He inhaled and closed his eyes, waiting for the anger. The physical manifestation of his frustration whenever he’d thought about this, but it didn’t come. All he felt at the moment was Jo’s hand in his hair. Her warmth enveloping him.
“Turns out there was no baby. The changes in her body occurred because she was ill. By the time they isolated the source, it was too late. She wound up having a full-blown hysterectomy. She was barely twenty.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes it was. She never got over it. She used to cry at night. When she thought I was sleeping. Her biggest fear? That God had punished her. She believed that her right to give birth was taken from her.”
“Why would she think that?”
“From the moment she suspected she was pregnant she was adamant about aborting my child, despite how I felt about it.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I never wanted to judge her. I tried like hell not to.”
“So the marriage…?”
“Fell apart no matter how hard we fought to keep it together.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well, it was a long time ago. We were children ourselves.”
“You must have been.”
He squeezed her hand. “Yep. Began messing around in high school. She was fourteen and I was all of fifteen. By the time she turned eighteen it seemed the logical thing to do was to get married, so we did.”
He was quiet for a minute thinking back. “You know what the worst thing was?”
“What?”
“The people we knew. Really knew, assumed because we had an open marriage and we were both involved with other people, I wouldn’t even miss her. That losing her would be less painful for me than it was for other people in monogamous relationships. You know, I’d get comments like, you’re lucky. It could be worse. You could be alone right now.”
“You loved her.”
“Hell yeah, I loved her. She was the first woman I…”
“What?”
“I connected with.” That statement stopped him cold. This was the draw with Jo. The unforeseen attachment. At some point he’d let her into a place he’d kept guarded since failing with Selena. He gave himself a mental shake and finished his explanation.
“And by connection I mean a connection that was deeper than mere physical. It was beyond that. It was down to the soul and you know? When you connect with someone like that and see them for all that they are and too, all that they will never be, and you accept them on those terms, they become irreplaceable to you. Unique. There isn’t another person in the world who has that kind of impact on your life, so when they leave you there’s a void that can never be filled.”
The hand that rubbed his neck stopped. “But better to risk that and get married than not, right?”
“Uh oh, you’re not of the mind that any marriage is better than no marriage at all, are you?”
“Maybe. Aren’t you?”
“No. Definitely not. The way I see it? The problem with marriages today is that people get married out of fear of being alone. They don’t wait for that deep connection. They rush to get settled and what happens? There’s no real intimacy and without that, your partner will never be unique to you. And, not to go all Sigmund on you here,” he plucked up her hand and kissed it, “but if there’s nothing compelling about your partner, that person is interchangeable. In my mind this comes down to intimacy. If you’re not willing to share the deepest part of you with your significant other you are no more special to them than you are to everyone else in your life. You’re giving, or not giving the same of yourself across
the board.”
“Is this why you demand the women in your life bare themselves to you?”
He twisted to look up at her. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Demanding you bare yourself to me?”
She hesitated before answering, “Yes.”
He reached up and swept the side of her hair behind her ear. “I demand you bare you to yourself. Once you’ve accomplished that tricky bit of honesty then we’ll talk about you baring your soul to me.” He turned and eased back against her. “All I demand from you at the moment is for you to be faithful, obedient and trustworthy.”
This was it. The opportunity to tell him the truth about her night. The truth about Anjay and maybe—
“Rub my neck again,” his soft command snaked through her. “It feels so good when you do that.”
Absently she did as he wished, while she mentally argued with herself. If she admitted to seeing Anjay tonight she’d have to tell him everything. How her mother had cheated on her father when her father was so close to death. Worse, how her mother had chosen to sweep the matter of her daughter’s rape under the rug in exchange for the rapist’s silence. How could she tell him that when she hadn’t had a chance to really think about it herself?
For years she’d carried frustration and grief deep inside thinking that her mother had an affair with some random man. Someone who meant nothing to her. Who was nothing to them. And now? Uncle Vic… No. She wasn’t going to cry. She swallowed hard twice and rapidly blinked and—
“Hey, hey,” Ted whispered, turning and cupping her cheek. “Was that a teardrop splashing on my shoulder? Aww, it was too. What’s the matter? This isn’t a time to be crying. Tell me, what’s wrong?”
She couldn’t tell him. That’s what was wrong.
“It-it’s nothing.”
He brushed away the tears and waited.
“Really. Nothing.” She searched his face and the tender expression she read there tore at her heart. “The bath. It was such a nice surprise. No one has ever done anything like this for me before.”
It was a truth, but not the right one to share with him.
