Tad reached up with his left hand and tucked an errant curl behind my ear, then ran his hand down to my chin. I had just enough time to wonder if he was going to kiss me, then he gently but firmly tilted my head up and leaned in. His lips burned like fire and they sent tendrils of flame down my body. I groaned as Tad’s tongue pressed relentlessly into my mouth.
He smelled amazing, like musk and cedar and sex. I wrapped an arm around his back and ran my other hand up into his hair, pulling him closer to me. Tad cradled my head in his hands, holding me exactly like he wanted as he nibbled my lips and sucked at my tongue. When I tried to pull back, he groaned and held on for one more kiss, then slowly released his hands from my hair.
I grinned mischievously at Tad and pushed him back to his side of the carriage. “Aren’t you going to look at beautiful, historic downtown Memphis?”
“Nah,” he rasped, locking eyes with me. “I’m looking at something beautiful right now.”
My breath caught in my throat and I blushed. I’m cute enough, but I’ve rarely been called beautiful, and I’d never believed it, not even now. My brain fumbled for conversational banter.
Tad grabbed my right hand and kissed the back of it. Before I could even giggle about the silliness of his gesture, his kisses moved to the crease between my first two fingers. His warm lips reignited the fire in my belly, and when he started kissing the knuckles between my fingers I groaned. His fiery tongue flickered out into the folds between my fingers, and all I could think about was what that tongue would do between my other folds. I reached out to grab his hair with my free hand, but he caught my wrist in his hand.
“No, Alex,” Tad said.
I concentrated on the muscles in my face and managed to put together something that resembled a scowl. I grumbled, “I thought you liked it rough!”
Tad’s eyes sparkled. “Oh you thought that, did you?” He reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear again – my curly hair is a curse in our summer humidity – then let his thumb roam across my cheekbone. “What made you think that, Alex?” His thumb made a right-angle turn and started down my cheek, then rubbed across my lips.
It was hard to breathe again. My lips fell apart slightly as I tried to drag some thick, overheated air into my lungs. His thumb found the opening and exploited it as he kept talking. “I think somebody told you that.”
His thumb was like an invading force, irresistible, inexorable. I felt like I’d never been touched like this before, like I would explode if I moved at all. Somehow I didn’t explode, though, as I slowly wrapped my lips around his thumb. It was rough, salty, and felt enormous in my mouth. “Answer me, Alex. Has someone been telling tales about me?”
Nobody bosses me around. I’ve spent too many years in hot kitchens, standing up for myself against uppity men, holding my ground in the never-ending turf wars. There was no way I’d just rat Lisa out! I ran the tip of my tongue around his thumb, delicately, just a taste, then pulled away from him entirely. “I won’t tell.”
His green eyes flashed. “Whoever you’re talking to doesn’t know anything about me, Alex.”
I’d hit a nerve! “Tad, it’s not like that.” I reached out for his arm, my body hungering to get back to the kissing.
He snatched his arm out of my grasp and yanked his wallet out. Without looking at me, Tad pulled a hundred out of his wallet and handed it up to the carriage driver, who’d been studiously ignoring us. “Thanks, ma’am, you can take her wherever she wants to go, but I’m gonna walk.”
Before the carriage driver even had time to stop the horse, Tad had jumped out of the slowly rolling carriage. We were in a tiny park on the bluff above the river, and I watched him stalking off with my mouth agape.
I turned to the carriage driver, who’d coaxed her big, amiable beast to a stop. “Did that just happen? What an ass.”
The driver shrugged noncommittally. She was a young woman, about my age, but sporting multicolored hair and multicolored tattoos. “Uh, I guess so. Do you want the rest of the tour?”
I looked from the driver’s face to Tad’s retreating back and made a split second decision I hoped I didn’t regret. “No. Uh, thanks though. I want to finish my conversation with him.”
I climbed out of the carriage as the driver peered down at me. “Be careful!” she called as I walked briskly after Tad.
Be careful? This was the opposite of careful. What on earth was I thinking, charging off into the night after a guy who’d just freaked out at me for no reason? Well, at least Lisa and Caroline knew where I was and whom I’d gone out with. And my dad had insisted that I take self-defense classes when I started to get serious about being in the restaurant business – I kept up on my judo practice pretty regularly. But most importantly, I’d be damned if I let some jerk get the last word in something that shouldn’t even have been an argument!
I broke into a jog as Tad approached the bluff edge of the park. He paused, silhouetted against the moonlit river, when I called out to him. “Hey. Wait up.”
His shoulders were tense and he wouldn’t look at me when I reached his side. “What?” he said, in a flat tone that was more of a statement than a question.
“You totally freaked out on me back there. I thought we were having a good time flirting, then all of a sudden you’re leaping out of the carriage to run away like I’ve got cooties or something.”
We were standing at the head of a set of concrete stairs cut into the bluff. Tad still wouldn’t look at me, but the mostly-full moon rising in the west gave me a perfect view of him. He stared over the river, to the black floodplains of Arkansas, with a profoundly unhappy look on his face. What had we even been talking about? Whether he liked it rough?
He sighed and started walking, more slowly this time, down the stairs. “I don’t think you have cooties. I just don’t know if we’re going to be compatible, Alex.”
I started down the stairs after him. I was speechless for the first flight but then finally got my mouth back in gear. “I have never been kissed then dumped this quickly. I don’t know what kind of incompatibility you’re talking about, but I sure thought you were enjoying yourself too.” I stopped at the next landing and leaned on the metal pipe railing, looking up the river toward the big bridge.
He stopped too, partway down the next set of steps. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. “It’s just… you don’t know me.”
I sighed. I refused to look at him; refused to let myself be drawn in by whatever tragically sad look he had on his face. The situation was just too weird, but I felt like maybe I’d freaked him out somehow and I should try to make amends. “Tad. Look,” I sighed. “I was talking to a friend of mine about you, and I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to date somebody –” deep breath! “– as preppy as you are. And she said that she’d heard you aren’t as preppy as you look, and that you like it rough. And that’s when I agreed to this date.” I could feel my face heating up. I’d just accused my date of being preppy – true or not, them’s fightin’ words among the people I usually run with – and I’d promptly followed that up with a roundabout admission that I liked rough sex. I was mortified.
I heard footsteps behind me. “Alex…” he sighed. “I’m sorry. I do have a temper, and I hate all the gossip in this town, and maybe I overreacted.” A firm hand on my shoulder directed me to turn around.
I was still blushing, still staring straight ahead. When I’d turned, “straight ahead” changed from a view of the bridge to a view of Tad’s chest. Then a view of an arm, as his hand moved from my shoulder to my chin, and for the second time that night he was lifting my chin. His thumb brushed against my lower lip, parting them slightly, as he bent and kissed me again.
He kissed me like he wanted to devour me, like a feral animal inhaling a meal. I wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling my body spring back to life. I was dizzy and aching and my knees were wobbly as he ran his hands down my back to cup my ass. Without breaking the kiss, he suddenly grabbed my ass and
picked me up off the ground. He spun us a quarter turn and then set me down on the railing of the balcony.
The ground behind me was not a sheer rocky cliff, but it was a remarkably steep hill, almost a hundred feet down to Riverside Drive below. My stomach fluttered and I instinctively wrapped my legs around Tad’s waist. He broke the kiss and nuzzled my neck, murmuring, “I won’t let you fall, Alex.” His breath in my ear sent cold shivers through me, and I groaned and pulled him closer with my arms and legs.
I could feel his hard member pulsing between us. My thin skirt and soaking wet panties were barely obstacles, not like the bulk of his khaki pants. I was panting as I unwrapped an arm from his neck and reached down between us, and I groaned when one of his hands caught my arm.
“No, Alex.” His other hand came up and caught the back of my head, pressing our foreheads together. He groaned and his cock throbbed between us, but his left arm returned my hand to the back of his neck. “I need you to do what I say, ok?”
I tried to get my scattered brain back together. It wasn’t like I was going to have sex with this guy, on what was essentially our first date, in a park downtown, right? “Yes,” I panted. “Yes. Ok. Yes.” I was talking more to myself than to Tad, but he took it as an answer to his question.
“Hold on, beautiful,” he murmured, then his lips closed against mine again. The hand on my arm slid down toward me, then over to my throbbing breast. I gasped and sucked some of the breath from his lungs as his hand first cupped my breast, then slowly, relentlessly, started squeezing my nipple.
I was writhing, moaning helplessly against his mouth, when his other hand started moving. The arm that had been wrapped against my back, keeping me safe from the edge of the cliff, suddenly trailed down my back and around to the front of my hip. He pulled back from me again to say, “Don’t let go of me, Alex, hold on for me.”
Then his fingers found their way under the bunched-up edge of my skirt. His hand, so hard and hot, wrapped around my pubic bone and pressed my panties against me. The wet cotton was raspy against my sensitive nub, but it felt exquisite. I bucked against his hands, against the mingled pain and pleasure from my nipple and the so-close feeling of his fingers outside of my panties. “Oh please, oh please, oh Tad,” I begged.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, nibbling at my ear.
“Tad!” I gasped. “We can’t!”
“Why not, Alex?” His hand moved against my sex, driving me wild.
“We’re in a park! People!”
“There’s no one around, beautiful.” His hand kept working my nipple, turning up the heat in my body.
“Oh god,” I panted. I squirmed, unable to let go of his neck, unable to escape his strong hands.
Tad grinned, rakish and triumphant, like my whispered words were music to his ears. He bent and kissed me again, thrusting his tongue into my mouth, and I sucked it desperately. His fingers made an end run around the barrier of my panties, pushing the crotch material off to the side. His finger slid down the entrance to my sex, then thrust inside me.
When he broke the kiss, I gasped and stared up at his shadowed face. “The quicker you come for me, beautiful,” he said, “the less chance there is that someone will walk down those stairs.”
I wanted to sob as his fingers curled around to find that secret spot inside me. The base of his thumb ground into my clit, and as his other hand twisted my nipple mercilessly. I couldn’t fight off the wave of sensations any longer, and I exploded into a mind-bending orgasm.
When I could breathe again, and my body stopped twitching, Tad pulled his fingers out and smoothed my panties back in place. His other arm had gone back around me, supporting me from falling off the railing to an ironic death. “Mmmm,” he murmured. “Good girl. That was lovely.”
“I cannot believe I just did that. In a park. On a first date,” I said. I rested my head on his chest, panting for breath.
“Oh, I can.” Tad was as smug as a cat in the cream.
“Are we still incompatible?” I asked.
“Oh, Alex. We might be very compatible — but we need to talk, beautiful.”
***
Lisa slid into the seat beside me. We were meeting for a late lunch on the patio at Bosco’s, a stupendous local brewery/restaurant. I had to open the pizza place in a few hours, but more importantly, I had to talk to Lisa.
Our waiter trailed Lisa, bringing a Flaming Stone Ale for her and another Midtown Brown for me. I preferred to think of the prompt arrival of the drinks as “good service” rather than “predictability” or “incipient alcoholism.”
“Hi, ladies!” he said with a grin. “Salads or burgers today?”
“Burger me, please!” I replied. “Well done, cheddar, garlic fries. Thanks, Tom!”
“Mmmm, I think the salad with grilled salmon, hon. It’s too hot for real food,” Lisa replied, with a mock glare at me. Tom nodded and left, and Lisa took a long sip of her beer.
“I can’t deny beer tastes better when it’s hot, but Alex, darling, why are we outside? It’s seven hundred thousand degrees and I’m melting!” Lisa said plaintively.
I started blushing. Damn my fair skin! “Because I need some privacy, Lisa. We need to talk about Tad.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oooh! Do tell!”
I blushed harder and took a long drink of my beer. “Umm…” I was suddenly hesitant.
Lisa grinned. “Are you blushing? Must’ve been a good date!”
“Ok, look. You said I should go out with him because he likes it rough, and you know I’m sick of boys who are scared to put a hand down my shirt. What did you mean by that? Who do you know who’s gone out with him, anyway?”
She thought for a minute. “Oh, you know, a couple friend-of-a-friend types. And Stacy, Mitch’s ex’s sister, do you know her? They wouldn’t talk, but everybody blushed! Stacy said she wasn’t in to what he was in to, but that he was plenty hot. I figured that meant he pulled her hair and she freaked out.”
“Um. Well. We had a super hot first date, absolutely blazing, and then he said he wanted to talk.” I was very carefully making a set of Olympic rings on the table with the condensation from my glass. “And it turns out he’s actually pretty kinky.” I finished my masterpiece and glanced up at Lisa. She was staring raptly at me.
“Oooh, like, he wants to tie you up? Are you gonna let him?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I wanted to talk to you! Is he going to kill me? Is he going to take pictures and put them on Facebook or something? Do you know anything about this guy, about whether or not I should trust him?” I wiped up the circles with my soggy napkin and knocked back the rest of the beer. Time to switch to iced tea; the pizzeria was just a mile away but I didn’t want to risk a DUI.
“Hmmm.” Lisa leaned back in her plastic patio chair and drummed her long nails on the table. “I will make some inquiries, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy. And he did ask you. It’s not like you woke up the morning after and you were tied to the bed!”
I dragged my gaze from Lisa’s nails to look her in the eye again. “Well, yeah. But - am I a bad person for even thinking about this? Is this, like, totally wrong?”
“You’re both adults, right? And this is just in the bedroom, not some freak show where you’re wearing a collar and following him around and fetching beers for him, right?” she asked.
“Ewww, no. I’d be terrible at that!” I said.
“Well? Don’t clam up on me now, girlfriend!” Lisa leaned forward and stared me down.
“He. Um. He says he wants to tie me up and torment me, then fuck me hard.” I bit my lip, thinking back to the conversation. He’d actually said, I want to tie you up and torment you til you come for me and then fuck you hard til you come again, for starters. I’d asked, For starters?, and he’d said, Let’s just see how you like that, beautiful girl. But I couldn’t bring myself to repeat that whole conversation, not even for Lisa’s titillation.
Lisa squealed with glee. “Yes! Do it, ‘Lex! I will dou
ble-check with my sources, make sure he’s not blackmailing anybody, but you should so totally try that. Go for it!”
I glanced up at her blue eyes. “Ok. Ok, I will.”
***
That night at work, I dropped a pizza on the floor, burned my wrist on the oven, and had to count the drawer four times because I kept getting distracted. I could not stop thinking about Tad. He had a really nice body, and his green eyes were pretty sexy, but what was really bothering me was his voice. The way he’d told me – no, ordered me to hang on to him when he was fingering me in the park. The raspy little hitch in his throat when he’d explained what he wanted to do to me. The confident way he’d said goodbye, like he knew I was going to agree to his crazy scheme. Damn that man! And damn me, if I wasn’t going to do it!
When I finally got the till reconciled and the bank deposit made out, my patient closing crew had already finished cleaning. I shoved the deposit bag in my backpack and slammed the office door behind me. “Demetrius, you gonna follow me to the bank?”
Demetrius, a boisterous black guy who was one of the most reliable workers Pizza Perfecto! had, nodded. The stop at the bank was on his way home, and not far out of my way. I hated walking out into a Midtown night with a backpack full of cash, but it was all part of the job. The other closers headed out and Demetrius waited by the back door as I set the alarm. As I yanked the sticky old door shut, I made up my mind. I was going to let Tad tie me up and fuck me.
It was well after one am, but now that I’d come to a decision, I couldn’t wait any longer. I hopped in my beloved but ragged ’02 Civic and started her up, then while Demetrius was coaxing his old station wagon to life, I texted Tad.
Ok mr. Youre on.
Much to my surprise, the phone in the cupholder buzzed as I turned onto Union.
Goodie. When?
I pulled in to the bank parking lot by steering with my knees while I tapped out a reply. Bad Alex!
:o u were up?
The reply came in while I was unlocking the night depository.
I was awake. Now im up. When?
Southern Submission (Southern Submission (A Southern BDSM erotic romance)) Page 2
