The Bride (The Boss)

by Barnette, Abigail

“That was before I saw the infinity pool,” I corrected him. “And when I hoped I would be working in the city. Now, it just seems restrictive. If I want to go outside for fresh air, I have to share that fresh air with eight-million other people. I don’t want to do that anymore. Yeah, there will be things I can’t get in Sagaponack. But they’re not that far away. And this isn’t as big a risk as I took moving from Calumet to New York—”

  “It isn’t as big a risk as you took when you planned to run away to Tokyo,” he interjected.

  I was never going to live that bit of teenage foolishness down. “Touché. But what I’m saying is, I’m not afraid to take this risk. I’m not afraid to do it, because I know that if I’m miserable and unhappy, you’ll bend over backwards to fix things. Just like I would for you.”

  “I rather like the idea of you bending over backwards,” he said with a chuckle. “Are there classes you can take to learn how?”

  “I am sure there are.” I lifted my teensy cup of sake and raised it as if in toast. “But I guarantee they don’t teach them in Sagaponack.”

  About halfway through the meal, I started worrying that we would stuff ourselves too much and not be able to move when we got to the hotel. Then I noticed Neil was only eating about half of what was being served, and I remembered his pills.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t objectively understand that it wasn’t his fault he needed a little extra help in the getting-it-up department. He’d nearly died a few months ago. Doctor Grant had warned us about the sexual side effects of chemotherapy, and even without all that, Neil was fifty. It wasn’t like he was the only fifty-year-old man in the history of the world who took ED medication, but it weirdly stung my pride that I wasn’t just…enough.

  I shook that feeling away. It had nothing to do with me. Obviously, Neil wanted me. I saw it in his eyes every time he looked at me. It was just plain stupid to blame myself for a problem I hadn’t caused, or feel resentful because he was willing to take medication in order to fuck me. Actually, looking at it in that light, it more than proved that he wanted me.

  He was a pretty great fiancé.

  When they brought us a small, elegantly arranged dish of thin white sashimi, I almost dug right in, until I heard the word “fugu” in the explanation of what he’d set before us.

  “Fugu?” The blood drained from my face. “Can’t that kill you?”

  “I suppose it could,” Neil said, lifting a slice with his chopsticks. “So could riding in a car, flying in a plane—Bobby Darin died from having his teeth cleaned.”

  “You realize how dated that reference is, right?”

  The waiter looked a bit annoyed at my doubt. “Chef Masa is one of the most highly regarded itamae in the world.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said with a little laugh, hoping to smooth over my faux pas. I didn’t even think about the fact that I was calling the chef’s skill into question, especially when he’d agreed to serve us after normal restaurant hours. “I’ve loved everything so far.”

  “Yes, it’s all been utterly fantastic,” Neil added. “And tell Takayama I give my regards. I’m not ignoring him.”

  Now the waiter smiled graciously. “You’re having a romantic evening. He understands. For anyone else, though…”

  Neil laughed. “I promise, I won’t abuse the privilege.”

  When the waiter left, I cocked my head and folded my arms over my chest. “Is there anyone in this city that you don’t know?”

  He considered. “Jay-Z and Beyoncé.”

  Damn.

  I eyed the piece of death fish still dangling from Neil’s chopsticks. “Are you really going to risk it?”

  “Not this piece. This one is for you.” His raised eyebrows and close-mouthed smirk issued his challenge, but he had to really grind it in. “Unless you’re scared?”

  I leaned over the table and opened my mouth so he could carefully place the nearly transparent slice of blowfish on my tongue. Trying not to think too much on it, I chewed and swallowed and smirked right back at him.

  “I knew you’d do it,” he said, smiling to himself as he took another piece.

  Since I hadn’t stopped breathing yet, I supposed I would survive, and I took another slice. “You knew you could make me.”

  The warm light in the room cast a gleam in his green eyes as he looked up from the plate between us. Every now and again, I would see him exactly as I saw him at the beginning of our relationship, when I’d been so smitten with his good looks and charm that my ribs would ache. He was no less handsome or charming now, but time together had made me take that for granted.

  Until moments like this. And when they happened, they stole my breath away.

  His lips curved in a barely perceptible smile. “I can’t make you do anything, Sophie.”

  After dinner, Neil made one last attempt to wrestle his surprise out of me. As he got into the car, he asked, “Shouldn’t you tell Tony where we’re going?”

  “He knows where to take us.” It was a wonderfully smug feeling, being the one surprising him again.

  “You know, my life has been filled with such uncertainty as of late,” he joked, but I knew he hated the lack of control. He’d enjoyed his party, but I could tell it irrationally bugged him to not be captaining the ship, so to speak.

  “It’s going to be worth it,” I promised, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

  The ride was mostly quiet, with Neil staring out the windows, trying to guess where we were headed. He spared the occasional glance at my purse, as though he could see the collar inside. I practically bounced in my seat. I was so happy that he hadn’t figured it out.

  We pulled up to the curb, and slowly it dawned on him.

  “Sophie…you didn’t.” Neil took in the front of the building with wide eyes as he stepped from the car.

  “The Wow suite,” I said, answering the question he hadn’t explicitly asked. “I thought it would be a good birthday present.” I slipped my arm through his and led him inside.

  I already had the key in my handbag, so we headed straight for the elevators and rode up. It amazed me how easily just being in the building brought up those old feelings of giddy anticipation. I remembered every moment of our first encounter there with vivid detail, right down to the shape of his hands on my body. But we’d been different people then, something that hadn’t struck me as particularly important before we’d opened the door and stepped across the threshold.

  The W prided itself on its customer service, in which seemingly nothing was off the table or impossible if you gave the staff enough time and the money with which to execute your plan. I’d taken full advantage, though I wasn’t sure I could ever look the concierge in the eye again, now that the staff had laid out my selection of sex toys in the upstairs bedroom.

  I almost didn’t recognize the suite; the warm glow that lit it now differed so much from the lights of the city illuminating the room all of those other nights. But nothing had changed, from the acrylic panel art on the light, smoky-hued walls, to the enormous windows that reached all the way up to the second-floor loft.

  While Neil gazed around the room in shock, I stepped over to connect my phone to the built-in sound system. I brought up the playlist I’d prepared, hit play, and TV On The Radio’s “Will Do” slithered through the air.

  He remembered the song; I could tell from the way his quiet surprise faded into a darker, more focused mix of emotions that slowly transformed his features into an expression of pure lust and heady memory. The last time he’d heard this song, in this room, it had been the first night of our illicit, no-strings affair. He’d walked through the door to find me, legs spread, fingering myself as I waited from him to arrive for passionate, entirely platonic friends-with-benefits sex.

  We’d really fucked up that arrangement.

  I took slow steps toward him, sliding one strap of my dress off my shoulder. “Do you know what the best part of tonight is going to be, Sir?”

  As I stepped into his arms,
his hand slipped beneath the other strap, and he slowly rolled it to my elbow, then up again. “What will the best part be, Sophie?”

  “You get to do whatever you want.”

  He jerked the strap down.

  “I always get whatever I want,” he said in a disapproving tone. “Don’t I?”

  “Yes, Sir. Anything. Any time.” I grinned.

  He slowly leaned down. With the lightest, softest pressure, he brushed his lips across mine.

  “Then we need to discuss our boundaries,” he whispered against my mouth.

  “All right.” I took him by the hand and led him to the sofa. “Let’s talk.”

  “What better place than where we first had one of these discussions?” he asked with a wistful note. “Can I tell you how stunned and touched I am by all this?”

  “You can tell me anything. It’s your night.” I swung my bare legs over his lap. His gaze drifted down my thighs to where the short skirt had bunched up to reveal just a tiny triangle of my panties.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to concentrate, if you keep on sitting like that.” He leaned his elbow on the back of the couch and rested his tilted head against his hand. “Let’s start with what’s off the menu.”

  I considered. I wanted to say, “nothing,” but there were definitely things I didn’t like. “No flogger directly on my clit. The paddle is fine for pussy spanking, but that flogger fucking hurts.”

  A small, amused smile canted his lips. “Noted.”

  “Don’t be too hard on the hair. I just had it highlighted and I’m prone to breakage. You can pull, just, you know, don’t drag me around by it.” I considered a moment more. “When you slap my face, don’t hit the same side all the time. Sometimes you do that, and it not only feels weirdly lopsided, but it starts to really hurt. If it leaves a mark, that’s awkward to explain.”

  “Done.” He nodded. “And filed away for the future.”

  “That’s it for the don’ts. What do you expect from me tonight?” That was an important question to ask. I needed to know what level he was looking for. “Are we being playful, are we just doing light stuff…”

  “Oh no,” he said, a mischievous squint to his eyes as he slowly shook his head. “No, Sophie. I want total submission.”

  I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “Total as in…”

  “Total, as in you do not move unless I tell you to, you do not speak unless I ask you to…” He walked his fingers slowly down my thigh. “You do not come unless I allow you to.”

  “But someone needs to remember the physical limitations of the third one,” I reminded him, reaching down to pluck his hand from my thigh. “You can’t put a freaking Hitachi on my clit and expect me to not come. No mental trick could stop that.”

  “Darling, if I use the Hitachi on you, believe me, I’m not going to ask you stop coming.” He dropped his hand to my knee. “Just so we are clear, I’d like to go…fairly hard tonight. I want to do things to you that I’d only dreamed about when we were here before.”

  “That’s fine with me. You haven’t been hard on me in a long time. I thought you were wimping out on me.” I tried to be playful, but heart and stomach both fluttered. It still caught me by surprise, how much he wanted me. How much he’d wanted me since the very first time we’d been together, even though we’d spent six years apart.

  His hand snapped up and caught my jaw, and he leaned forward to kiss me, an act of tenderness incongruent with his rough hold. Then he released me and promised, “Never.”

  I carefully wiped at my lower lip line, in case my lip gloss was smudged, then remembered how futile an effort it was. It was going to get plenty smudged up tonight, anyway.

  “Do you want to go over everything point by point?” he asked. “I wouldn’t do anything that conflicts with your established hard limits.”

  “No. I can always use my words and signals, and you’re good about checking in. I trust you.”

  He gazed at me, speechless, an indecipherable mix of emotions crossing his face. When he spoke, he was hoarse, as though he didn’t trust his own voice. “That’s a gift in itself..”

  “There are toys and things upstairs.” I gestured with my head to the loft. “Shall we go up, or…”

  The song had ended, and a new one had begun, “Cola” by Lana Del Rey. The sexy, insistent beat echoed the pulsing tension between us. When he spoke, it was with my Sir’s voice, the dark tone that always took over when he slipped into the role. Dominance and submission was quite a bit like acting out a character, except the character was a secret version of oneself.

  I sometimes wondered if, in my case, the secret version wasn’t closest to my true identity.

  “Are you ready?” He leaned back on the couch, one elbow resting on a throw pillow, the other arm stretched along the top of the back cushions.

  “Oh, yes, Sir.”

  He looked so fucking sexy sitting there in his jacket and tie, the dim light picking up the silver threads in his hair, one long leg out in front of him. His total ease was a facade; he was calculating. My nipples hardened, and my suddenly very interested clit throbbed.

  “Stand up.”

  I did.

  “Take your dress off. Top down, slowly, one strap at a time.”

  I slipped one strap off, then the other, holding his gaze as I did.

  “Eyes down.”

  I looked instead at his legs, at the crease in his trousers.

  I pulled my other arm free and rolled the top down, over my strapless black bra.

  “Come here.”

  I was only a step from him. He could have reached for me, if he’d wanted to. He waited until I came to him, until he didn’t have to do more than raise his hand to grip the front of my bra and jerk it down, hard. He sat up straight and closed his mouth over one nipple, and without thinking, I raised my hands to his hair. He released me and gave me a little shove backward.

  “I didn’t give you permission to touch me,” he scolded.

  “I’m sorry, Sir.”

  “That will be your very last warning, Sophie.” He motioned for me to step back. “Get the rest of your fucking clothes off.”

  I unfastened my bra and tossed it aside, remembering how we’d scattered our clothes everywhere the first night I’d been here. He’d been so overwhelming to me then, even without being my Dom. It was the aura of power around him, a feeling that had been a bit intimidating when we’d first gotten together. Now, after all we’d been through together, he was just Neil. Except when he took control of me completely, until I no longer felt desire or fear, merely pleasure and peace at his command. Then, he was my Sir.

  I rolled my dress down the rest of the way, and he stopped me when I pushed my thumbs into the waistband of my silky black thong.

  “Leave that,” he said on a ragged whisper of breath. “Go get your collar.”

  I retrieved the platinum band from my purse and brought it to him, presented reverently on my upraised palms.

  “Get on your knees,” he ordered, pointing to a spot on the floor in front of the sofa. He sat there, legs spread so that I was forced to kneel between his feet.

  I kept my eyes cast downward. If we were going for full submission, this is what he would expect of me.

  “Pick up your hair.” His voice was a deceptive caress, so gentle and loving that all I wanted was to please him, though I knew how deliciously cruel he would be later. I gathered the hair at my nape with both hands and held it up as he positioned the collar around my neck. The cold touch of the platinum against my skin, the familiar weight pulled answering pulses from my groin. I was instantly excited, instantly ready for him. It was shamelessly Pavlovian; I was conditioned.

  “Look at me,” he ordered in his low, serious voice. I raised my head, and when our gazes met, he snapped the clasp closed. My breath skittered between my lips, and I forced my eyes open despite my longing to close them, to moan in anticipatory ecstasy.

  He stroked my
cheek with the pad of his thumb then traced the tip along my bottom lip. At the slightest pressure, I opened my mouth and sucked his thumb in, down to the knuckle.

  He pulled his hand back. “I didn’t give you permission.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir.” I really was sorry, it wasn’t a coy play-along. This was a deeper level, and I wanted my ever action to reflect mindfulness of that. I wanted to please him.

  The consequences would be harsher tonight. Though I wanted desperately to know what my punishment would be, if any, I kept studiously still. I didn’t even let myself breathe too heavily.

  He got up and walked away, leaving me there, not bothering to tell me to stay, because he knew I would.

  “On our first night together here,” he began, wandering idly around the sitting area. “I had no idea what to expect when I walked through that door. I thought maybe some sexy lingerie, or that I would find you naked in my bed. Another part of me feared you wouldn’t be here. And yet, I stepped through that door and found this gorgeous, incredibly sexy woman with her legs spread, fingering her beautiful cunt.”

  The named part clenched at the picture his words painted in my mind.

  “There are very few things in life that surprise me,” he continued, and only the direction of his voice gave me a clue as to where he was. “But you…you surprise me every day.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” I whispered, and I closed my eyes. I wondered what he played at. He was making me anticipate my punishment, that much was clear, but I couldn’t tell if he planned to punish me or torment me with the possibility.

  “Shall I surprise you tonight, Sophie?” he asked, his voice full of dark, unspoken promises.

  “I-I would like that, Sir.”

  “I am going upstairs, to investigate what you’ve brought for me. You will stay there, and stay still, until I return.” I heard him take a few of the stairs up to the loft before calling to me, “You know, I’d like you to count your breaths while you wait.”

  I couldn’t imagine why, but I did as he asked. At ten breaths, I noticed my inhalations had become deeper. At twenty, my mind went with them, deeper still. At thirty, I was no longer kneeling on the carpet, but far from myself. Though my body was tense with anticipation, my mind was perfectly still. I was waiting. That was my only task, and by the time I reached fifty breaths, then a hundred, I was nearly euphoric at the thought of my next command. My chest hitched, my fingers flexed and clenched rhythmically beside my thighs. Between my legs, a hot, heavy desire bloomed and flourished. I needed him, his stern, commanding voice, his orders that I followed unquestioningly.