by Riley Murphy
“My dad,” she panted. “My mom and Anjay.”
That last landed like an invisible punch to his gut. “You told Anjay you loved him?”
“Yes. Like a brother before he…”
“Truth.” He didn’t want to lose her. So he quickly got her refocused by drizzling hot wax on her inner thighs. He was careful to add a few inches of distance. The skin here was much more sensitive than the skin on her stomach.
“I’m not like them, Jo. You know now that I would never let you down, don’t you?”
She flexed and sighed. “Yes.”
He hesitated with the rest of his pour and whispered, “Do you know why I couldn’t? Why it’s impossible?”
She whimpered and pivoted. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“You understand and accept all my needs and desires without judging.”
“Very good.” He dripped some more wax and also upped the dial on the dildo for good measure.
“Last question before the grand finale.” He tapped her on the cheek and waited until she opened her eyes to look at him. “Why do you love your Master, Jo?”
She didn’t blink. “You’ve forced me to grow. To be true to myself and face my challenges. Through you I’ve reclaimed my self-worth.”
“Through me?” The immeasurable pleasure that swept through him with those words astounded him. “Truth.” He searched her face before he tipped the last of the wax on her.
“Mmm…”
“You know what part of your body I want. The canvas I want to paint.”
“Yes,” she rubbed her cheek against her shoulder and whispered, “it’s yours.”
“I want to hear you say the words.”
He took the vibrator out of her and put it aside. Rubbing two fingers over her, he decided the hot liquid there would rival the wax he was sure. He reached for the cap. The little wax clit cover he’d made to protect that sensitive area. Parting her glistening slit, he fit it over her there.
“Close your eyes.” He pressed the hard wax against her hood and softly spoke as he worked. “Relax and breathe. There’s no more questions. Just feeling. Only feeling.”
He went slow as he drizzled the liquid over her breasts and stomach. Alternating between horizontal and vertical lines. Sometimes he moved in circles, especially around her breasts. She had such great tits, and he loved watching her back arch when he came just a little too close.
Now for the fun. He used one full cup to draw a large “V” on her mound. The point of which stopped just short of her slit. He was careful not to let it drip into her folds as he worked. She was in a state of euphoria, he could tell by the pattern of her breathing, the goose bumps across her skin and the way her limbs lay as if they were weighted down or cemented into place.
Perfect timing. He collected the second to last cup and angled it over the apex of her thighs. Making sure she was spread and the wax cap was positioned just right. “Stay still.”
He wasn’t sure she heard him, but he’d know soon enough. He poured the wax in one steady stream as it landed and folded over the cap. Not too much that it would go over it, just enough that it covered it. So that the new heat would melt the old solid and—
“Ahh…”
He liked the sound of that and liked the little twitch her fingers made too. He tipped the tin and more hot liquid fell.
“Mmm…”
She pivoted her hips and some of the wax slid and slipped down into her natural pooling liquid. The sight got his cock swelling harder than it already was. Fuck.
“A little more and this time I want you to come for me.”
He dripped the rest on her. Over her mound, onto the rapidly softening cap and lower, into her heat until he was out of wax. He threw the tin to the table and dropped to his knees. Sliding two fingers inside her slowly, he pumped them in and out while he bent forward and blew on the hot pile of wax that covered her clit. With rapt interest, he watched it harden with each blow until her hips lifted and her breath caught, and he heard the words “I love you, Master”, whispered on a quivering breath that skated right through him. Almost as smoothly as her natural cream that freely flowed.
“Fucking beautiful.”
Waiting for a time, before he began to peel the wax off her skin, as she came down from the endorphin high and returned to herself. He sucked on her breasts and licked her navel, but when he got to the wax between her legs, that was when he got focused and pulled it off her with his teeth. Even after he was done with the wax, he tasted her until she groaned and ground against his mouth.
“Please fuck me.”
“Oh yeah.”
He stood and scooped her up. She was so soft and wound her arms around him so tightly he had the urge to protect her. To drive away all the pain she’d just shared with him.
He looked at the custom-made bed, the mess of the wax and the Sybian and suddenly he felt like the two of them were out of place in here. At least for right now. For this moment and in this instance.
Without a word he walked out of his playroom and took her downstairs. Behind the second-floor staircase to his room.
He kicked open the doors and flicked on the bedside lights and the gas fireplace, before he strode to his bed and put her down.
“Is this your room? Your real room?”
He nodded and stripped off his clothes. He never took his eyes off her and when he knelt on the bed she didn’t hesitate, she held her arms wide in welcome.
“You’re so soft, princess.”
She made a little sound like a sob and crushed herself into him. She must have missed hearing that endearment as much as he’d missed saying it. But then everything was forgotten as she shifted her hips and his cock sank right up into her.
“Damn.”
The embrace unhurried. Unimaginative. One hundred percent vanilla sex had him hotter than any of their nastiest sessions together. The feel of her hands in his hair, not pulling, but softly stroking, went through him like fire. Her lips near his ear, whispering gentle words, touched him deep and when she silkily wrapped herself around him and made sensual sounds low in her throat he sighed, “God, you please me.”
He rolled them so she was on top, for no other reason than he wanted to watch her come. He wanted to see the expression he loved. Hear the words he loved to hear panted from those lips.
“That’s right. Let me hear—”
“I love you, Ted.”
He barely felt the hot silk drench him when she came undone. He was too stunned as she collapsed over him and rubbed her cheek on his chest in a gesture that told him she meant it.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He blinked as if coming out of a trance. The first thing he noticed was the ceiling. The flat swirls in the plaster that always reminded him of a repeating pattern of bowling balls grouped in clusters of five. He was in his room. His normal room. Vanilla approved. No wonder she’d forgotten herself. No wonder—he flipped her over and thrust into her. The heat. The softness. God, she smelled like apples. He loved apples…he loved—he thrust in deep one last time, slamming home—her.
His climax was kind of anticlimactic on that note. As his breath rasped and his heart rate slowed to a more reasonable pace his thoughts collided. He’d been crazy to think this could work. It couldn’t. He knew from firsthand experience it wouldn’t.
He fell over onto his side and was back looking at the ceiling again. But instead of the plaster swirls, he saw the white walls of the hospital. The doctor’s white coat. Selena’s white face as she shattered.
No. No, this wasn’t going to happen.
“W-where are you going?”
Ted yanked on his pants and left the room without answering her. By the time he returned she was sitting up in his bed. That gorgeous black hair scattered around her shoulders and her eyes wide and watchful.
“Gather your hair, Jo.”
She started to do it and then stopped to ask, “Why?”
“Do it.”
> When she did, he took the wire cutters out of his back pocket and said, “Chin up.” He didn’t wait for her to comply, because she was confused and he used her confusion to his advantage. Efficiently lifting her chin aside, he held her jaw up and cut off the collar. Just then she realized what he was doing and tried to jerk free.
“Stay still! It’s sharp.” Very carefully he opened the circle and took it off her. Tossing it onto the nightstand where it reverberated against the wood.
“Now the cuffs.”
“No!” She screamed and wrenched sideways, but he caught her.
“Jo.”
“Please don’t do this. Pleeeease. What did I do? I’m sorry.”
He made it a point not to look her in the eyes. He couldn’t. “Stop moving.”
She didn’t, so he had no choice. He pushed her down on the bed and wrestled with her until he had her pinned. With both of them breathing heavy from the struggle, he cut off one cuff, then the other with quick snaps. It was harder pulling them open enough to get them off without cutting her, but when he did, the broken cuffs joined the collar beside the bed.
“I’m going to have Cam take me to the club.” He stood and retrieved his shirt. “Then I’m going to send him back here to take you home.”
“No.” She grasped the bed sheet and pulled it up. No doubt she felt more naked now than she ever felt in his home. He didn’t blame her. He was feeling stripped bare himself.
“You don’t belong here.”
“Yes I do. I know that now.” Her fists strangled the linen as she came up on her knees. God, she was beautiful. Gorgeous, but not for him. “I understand about being authentic and—”
He finished doing up his shirt. “Enough, Jo. Enough.”
“No.”
Tears. He couldn’t take her tears spilling this way. In pain-filled desperation. Normally he loved the way they hit her cheeks and soaked her thick eyelashes, making them spikey and sexy as hell. But when the real waterworks touched down? The droplets shone like diamonds against her bronze skin and called to him so he couldn’t—wouldn’t—look. He wanted to remember all the tears she cried for him, not because of him.
“Don’t go.”
But Ted knew he had to…
Jo sat in the middle of his bed in shock. What just happened? Why? She looked around the elegant bedroom and tried to make sense of the last few minutes. To make sense of the whole night. Quickly going through the moments and when she got to the one where she’d said “I love you, Ted” something snapped inside her. How dare he? How. Dare. He?
She flicked off the covers and ran for the door. “Ted. Ted!”
Stumbling she caught hold of the railing as she raced down the stairs. Reaching the bottom, she halted when she spotted him at the open door. Within sight.
“Wait.”
He turned his back on her. He was going to leave.
“No fucking way, you asshole!”
She grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on. It was the vase his late mother had given him. He deserved it. He so… The door slammed and she screamed in frustration. “Fuuuuck!” No matter how mad she was at the moment, she couldn’t throw his mother’s vase. She took a calming breath and then put it back down on the hall table with a sloppy, albeit delicate, pat, saying, “Sorry, but your son’s an asshole.”
She collapsed onto her haunches and grabbed her clothes. Standing, she flicked her hair behind a shoulder and would have marched off, but she caught sight of herself in the mirror. One glimpse, and she didn’t like what she saw. It was the old Jo staring back at her. The unauthentic Jo, who fooled the world with her fuck-you bravado that everyone not close to her loved. And the same bravado that everyone she wanted to be close used as an excuse to keep their distance from her.
Not Ted. He’d seen right through it.
She put her clothes back under the table and grabbed her dragon, taking it upstairs. Not to Ted’s real room, but to their room on the third floor. And an hour later when she heard the doorbell ring, she hugged her dragon pillow tighter. She knew it was Cam there to take her home, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Ted had accused her of not facing her challenges head-on? Well, he better be prepared for a collision because she was staying put until he told her why he had run away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You’ve looked better.”
Ted squinted at Ethan’s face looming over him and then pulled back and looked around. Damn. He was at his office in the club. When the—?
“Ah, I see it’s all coming back to you now. Do you remember the midget in the waders?”
“Jesus fu—oh my head! Midget?”
Ethan grinned and Ted scowled. “Don’t mess with me. I’ve got a two-hundred piece orchestra playing off key in my head right now. Did I get hit with something?” He rubbed his jaw because it sure did feel like it.
“Yeah, your own importance.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? And what time is it?”
“Three a.m. And you’re a jackass.”
Ted sat up and winced. “Last thing I remember Dillon gave me a shot of Yukon Jack.”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m not interested in what you did when you got here. Personally, after I heard what you did before you came? I was hoping I was going to have to take you to Mercy Central to get your stomach pumped.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch is right.”
Ted hated how E looked so in control even in the middle of the night with his buddy sicker than shit and messed up worse than one of those bleeding hearts on the Jerry Springer Show.
“Are you here to talk some sense into me?”
Ethan sat on the edge of Ted’s desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m here because Colin sent me here. You think I’d drag my ass out of a nice warm bed with a woman who has the softest skin imaginable to save your sorry hide, unless I was forced to?”
Ted gingerly eased back against the couch cushions. “Thanks, buddy.”
“What did you do?”
“Why—?” Ted lowered his voice. The pain in his skull was a killer. “Why do you think I did anything?”
“Because Colin told me you did something and I’m supposed to give up a night’s sleep to find out what it was.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t do anything. Jo was the one who lied. Twice.”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. I’m pretty sure there’s a family of squirrels nesting in my mouth and my head feels like a high school band has been using my skull as their lead drum.”
“I was being sarcastic. What kind of lies?”
Ted turned away. E’s cunning eyes always managed to freak him out.
“Were they life threatening or dangerous in any way?”
He wasn’t going to answer him. Although the bastard had a good point there.
“Were they against you, your family or your morality?”
The fucking guy was a prophet. Damn.
“Were the lies she told because she wanted to protect the relationship she had with you?”
Mere prophet? He was the fricking Dali Lama.
“There’s a reason she’s struck a chord with you. Don’t fuck this up. You need her, my man. For whatever reason you do. It’s been my experience that a person who abhors something in someone else is guilty as charged. What the fuck have you lied to her about?”
“What?” He snapped around before he could stop himself.
“You heard me.”
Ted did. Not that he was going to answer him, but it did get him thinking and by the time Ethan left, Ted’s wheels were turning. He took a shower and thought some more.
What have you lied to her about?
He opened the bottom of his desk drawer and took out the photo.
Selena…
He stared at her image like he’d always done over the years, but this time he couldn’t get a visual of recalled memories with her. This time he didn’t feel the bitterness of betrayal or the an
ger. All he felt was sorrow. Sadness for the woman she never became.
He ran the pad of his thumb over her smiling face and whispered, “You could have done great things if only you forgave yourself.”
He sat up straighter because those words resonated. He heard them, and without the grief and anger clouding his thoughts and making him deaf, he listened. And what common sense told him? He couldn’t have saved Selena no matter how hard he tried because in the end she had to save herself.
That thought rocketed through him. It shook his core beliefs. If he’d been her Master wouldn’t he have been able to save her like he was trying to save…?
He thought about Jo. He was so busy trying to compare her to Selena he missed their most prominent difference. Jo was looking for better in her life. She was a fighter. She was trying to save herself despite the terrible odds that had been stacked up against her and what had he done? He’d made it all about him saving the day. Saving her from herself. Jo didn’t need saving from herself like Selena. If she needed saving at all it was from the careless people around her.
And now you’re one of them.
Fuck. Jo didn’t need saving. She was a survivor.
Just like you. That’s why you love her.
And what had she done to survive the latest heartache in her life? She’d lied to him just like he’d been lying to himself for so long. How could he blame her for this when he was just as guilty? It wasn’t she who couldn’t face living in truth, because she had. It was him. Jo didn’t need to be forgiven, she needed to be commended. He, more than anyone, should have known how hard facing one’s rawest pain was and how much easier it was to bury it. Hide it. Lie about it.
“Jesus fuck.” What had he done?
He put away Selena’s image for the last time. There was no more hiding. No more lying. To Jo or himself. Jo had said he’d understood and accepted her needs without judgment and that much was true. He had, but “that much” wasn’t nearly enough with the kind of intimacy he required.
He raked a hand through his hair and left off in a pull so hard his eyes watered. Jesus Fuck. What he’d neglected to do was accept her for exactly who she was with no judgment. She’d placed her trust in his hands and he’d thrown it away by shutting her out. It was time to fix things between them. It was time to let go of the past and head into the future. A future he wanted with her.
