by Evelyn Adams
I’d intended to make it through the rest of our time together without touching her for anything other than to keep her from falling. She’d completely shot that plan to hell, backing her ass up against me and trying to top from the bottom. I was supposed to leave her wanting—begging me to touch her. Instead, I’d pushed her up against the wall and had her legs wrapped around my hips before I thought things through.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d lost control like that. Scratch that; I could. It was with her earlier in the day when I’d gone on my professional self-destructive spree and recused myself from the case I’d brought into the firm. I wasn’t done feeling the pain from that. I still had to explain it to Jared and the other partners. There wasn’t an excuse I could give that my friend wouldn’t see through. It didn’t matter. I held the beignet to Alexandra’s lips, told her to bite and watched her sharp white teeth sink into the pastry. Given the choice, I’d do the same thing all over again. But this time I’d be ready for her when she wielded her sexuality like a finely-honed sword, and she’d never get a chance to draw first blood.
Everything about her railed against giving in to being fed. I could read her conflict in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head. In the way her pulse beat against the slender column of her pale throat. She hated the idea of surrendering, of letting me take care of her, but she wanted it too. I imagined the conflict going on in her head was as voracious as the one I was experiencing.
Whether she’d admit it to herself or not, she’d submitted beautifully, with a lot less argument than I’d expected. If you ignored the biting, which was hard to ignore. I shifted in my chair, giving my perpetually hard cock more room. I’d started to feel like one of those four-hour warnings on erectile dysfunction commercials. I’d been hard since halfway through the deposition, and it showed every sign of getting worse before it got better. Watching Alexandra take the first tentative steps across her studio and then later out onto Saint Charles, seeing the way she braved something she was unsure of—the way she trusted me to keep her safe—made me want to push every boundary she had and see how far she’d let us take things. And it made me want her more than was rational.
“Any chance you ordered coffee?” she said, licking the powdered sugar from her lips.
Feeding her wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. Her cheeks were flushed, and I’d bet more money than I paid for this session with her that her nipples were hard. And her pussy wet. She wanted this—wanted me—but she’d laced her tone with enough bored indulgence to tell me she wasn’t focused on the sensations around her, not completely. If she spent too much time in that gorgeous head of hers, I’d lose whatever temporary advantage I’d managed to gain.
I weighed my options. She’d play along with eating out of my hand because regardless of what I still had to learn about Dr. Smithson, I knew without a doubt, she didn’t lose. Not if she could help it. We had that in common. For now, she saw her submission as a kind of winning—a false kind maybe and not the kind I hoped she would by the time we were finished, but enough that she’d play along and not feel anything genuine. I already knew she had no problem shedding her clothes and precious little trouble with public displays of intimacy. The ones that had nothing to do with genuine intimacy.
I could get her to slip her panties off under the table, maybe even bring her to the edge of orgasm with my hand, but I doubted if any of that would make her feel truly vulnerable. Sex was a currency she traded in. I wanted more. And despite my better judgment, I found myself wanting to look into her eyes, to watch her react to the beauty around us.
“Hello? Coffee?”
“It’s sitting in front of you.”
The crease in her forehead deepened, and she blew out a breath, clearly frustrated. When she slid her hand carefully over the linen-covered table, I caught her fingertips, stopping her.
“Let me guess. You want to hold the cup.”
Brat. I didn’t give a fuck about the cup. I wanted to take care of her. To offer her something from my hand and have her take it willingly. Eagerly. I wanted something real.
“Take off my tie.”
I felt her fingers stiffen against my palm as if I’d asked her to strip naked. She pulled free of my hand and reached for the blindfold, pausing when her fingertips brushed the silk.
“This isn’t the same as safewording, right? I’m not giving up?”
She acted as if she was concerned about losing a bet. She may as well have said giving in. Surrendering. Losing. I could tell she thought they were all the same thing. The realization made me sad, which was its own special kind of fucked up.
“No, kitten, you’re not safewording. Not unless you want to.”
She shook her head and then made quick work of the knot at the back of her head. When she pulled the silk away from her eyes, she blinked, her eyes going wide as she took in our surroundings.
“This is lovely,” she said, her voice taking on a slightly breathless quality that made me want to find other ways to steal her breath.
Given her line of work—or perhaps because of it—she seemed out of touch with her desire. She wielded her sexuality with a cutting precision that left little room for simple sensual pleasure. With the exception of the rush that came from holding power, I wasn’t sure her pleasure had any place at all in the way she experienced sex. Wanting to change that bumped itself to the top of my list of priorities. She might appear experienced to the point of being jaded but I had a feeling when it came to honestly experiencing genuine pleasure, Alexandra was a virgin. I wanted to be the one to share it with her.
We were seated at a small garden table in one of the private alcoves. We were the only ones in the open air courtyard but it wouldn’t have mattered if we weren’t. Only members and their guests had access to the space and no one who made it past the front door would talk about what happened on the other side. Madame Arlene’s was a hidden gem with a very exclusive clientele: my partners at the firm and the club, a few local politicians, and the occasional business leader. Membership was invitation only and had more to do with discretion and power than personal wealth, although I doubted anyone without considerable means had ever been offered a spot.
The club didn’t offer anything a five-star hotel wouldn’t. In addition to the café we were sitting in, there were a few smaller rooms that could be converted to private dining rooms and a handful of lavishly appointed guest suites upstairs. What Madame Arlene provided was much more valuable than superior service and luxury. She gave members a place to meet with whoever they wanted—no questions asked, no possibility of the press stealing a photograph. For some, it was a place to have clandestine meetings with mistresses or for the few women members, the male equivalent, without leaving a pesky paper trail the divorce attorneys could find.
For me, it had been a place to bring submissives, where we could push boundaries outside places like Bacchus without risking either of us being exposed in a way we didn’t want. I hadn’t brought a submissive to Arlene’s since Julie. Bringing Alexandra was a bigger step than I’d expected to take with her that day—hell, ever. My initial intention had been to show her all the many ways she’d fucked up, give her a taste of real submission and go back to my regular life while someone else at my firm finished the lawsuit, and I finished thinking about the arrogant woman who thought she could teach something she didn’t believe in.
After I got a taste of her, that all changed. I found myself wanting more time. She followed my orders without questioning but she did it because she wanted to best me, not out of any kind of partnership. I knew it was crazy to expect it from her or to even want it. She hadn’t come to me willingly. Why should I expect her to act like she had? I hadn’t had that kind of genuine intimacy, the kind of power exchange that felt like my partner and I were performing a duet or making a beautiful piece of art together since Julie, and we’d been together for three years before our relationship ended. Even then, the fluidity of that kind of relationship had been
intermittent. I’d known Alexandra for a sum total of a couple of hours. It didn’t stop me from wanting that kind of intimacy with her. Which meant I was well and truly fucked, because the one thing I was fairly sure Dr. Smithson didn’t do was intimacy.
Like many of the private courtyards in the city, the small space held a gazing pool with a small bubbling fountain. Jasmine climbed the brick wall on one side, perfuming the air and adding to the sense of barely restrained wildness, while verbena and other herbs fought for space in the small planting areas carved out between the cobblestone pavers. It was a lush, humid oasis and an exercise in barely restrained excess. The perfect place to bring the woman who seemed determined to keep her desires under lock and key.
“I had no idea this place existed,” she said, glancing around the room.
“It’s not open to the public.”
She arched a brow in question as she sipped her café au lait.
“Members and guests only. Discretion is paramount. I was confident that was something you could both appreciate and respect.” Despite my earlier lapses in judgment, I wouldn’t have brought her to Madame Arlene’s if I’d had any question about her ability to keep a secret. Her livelihood depended on maintaining others’ privacy.
She tipped her cup in mock salute before reaching across to snag a beignet from the plate sitting in front of me. The simple act illustrated how little she cared about impressing me. Normally, I’d correct her and serve her myself either from my plate or my hand but coaxing Alexandra out of her shell was going to be more challenging than making friends with a reluctant hermit crab. I didn’t want to bash through her shell; I wanted her to come to me willingly.
She bit into the pastry and let out a groan of pure pleasure that made anything else I’d been thinking irrelevant. That sound—the sound of her surrendering to the shear sensual pleasure of an experience—became my new Holy Grail.
“These are better than the beignets at the Café du Monde—different somehow,” she said, taking another bite and letting her eyes drift closed.
When she licked the powdered sugar from her lips, it was because she wanted the taste, not with any kind of artifice designed to seduce. It was for her pleasure alone, which had what I was sure was the unintended consequence of amplifying mine.
“They infuse the water they use to make the dough with herbs.”
She looked at me as if I’d just spoken Greek. Reaching over, I ran my thumb over the crease in her forehead, smoothing her pale skin. Her gaze stayed locked on mine, her brown eyes slightly wary, and I felt the way her breath hitched at my touch. I wanted her on edge, unable to hide behind her normal carefully constructed walls. The easiest way to do that seemed to be sneaking in gentle touches when she was preoccupied with something else and couldn’t slip into her practiced routine. I gave myself the pleasure of sliding my hand down to cup her cheek for a moment before letting go of her and relaxing back in my chair. She leaned forward at the absence of my touch and I felt a small flash of triumph. Not a victory—not yet—in the war or even the battle, but all parties were present on the field.
“You know how they make the beignets?” The crease was back in place on her forehead but this time I stayed my hand.
“I like to cook. I could arrange for them to show you if you want, or I could teach you myself.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew it would be the latter. Before we were done with each other, I’d have Alexandra in my kitchen, eating out of my hand not because of some dare, but because that’s exactly where she wanted to be.
“I don’t cook. This is New Orleans. People come here to eat. Why would I think I could make anything better than what I can get from one of the over a thousand restaurants?”
I tipped my head to the side, watching her for a moment. “For the pleasure of creating something yourself.”
She looked so genuinely puzzled at what I’d said, I left the rest of what I’d been thinking trail off and picked up a beignet instead. They’d cooled and the powdered sugar had melted into the fat, making almost a sweet pasty icing on the surface of the pillow of dough, but even cold, Arlene’s beignets were the best I’d ever tasted.
“Would you like a fresh batch?” I asked when she’d finished the last pastry.
“No,” she said, looking at the empty plate with longing. “I think I’m always going to want more of those, but I’m full.”
I loved the way she’d eaten without reservation, and I got the sense that she was saying no because she was genuinely sated and not out of some misguided attempt to deny herself. Some women had strange relationships with food, but that seemed like the easiest way to get behind Alexandra’s walls. She appeared, for the moment at least, comfortable enjoying the pleasure of eating with me, or perhaps in spite of me. If I’d been someone she cared about impressing, maybe she would have acted differently. It didn’t matter what the reason was. I’d found the seam in the oyster shell and I intended to work at it until I pried it open, revealing the pearl inside.
She took a swallow of her coffee and I watched her hesitate a moment as she set the thin china cup back in its saucer.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” I said. I might not answer, but I wanted her to ask.
“Can you tell me more about what happened with Kyle? At the club you mentioned?”
I felt my jaw tighten at the unwanted image of the middle-aged man being forcibly escorted from Bacchus. But he was the reason I’d ended up neck-deep in the clusterfuck of a lawsuit and the reason Alexandra was sitting next to me.
“He was so timid during our sessions,” she said, filling the space when I didn’t immediately answer. It might have been nerves but it felt more like a genuine desire to understand what had gone wrong.
“He beat his submissive with a cane, hard enough to break the skin. If the dungeon monitor hadn’t stopped him, he would have permanently marked her.”
She gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. The shock and horror was clear in her eyes. Part of me wanted to take that away from her—to give her a beautiful image to replace it. The other part wanted to show her the photographs the club had taken to document the injuries in case anything further came of the encounter. I settled someplace in between, waiting for her to deal with the reality of the situation. She’d been playing with power she didn’t fully understand and innocence was no excuse. Not when people got hurt.
“I don’t understand,” she said, curling in on herself.
“I know. That’s part of the problem.”
I took a sip of my coffee, letting the silence stretch between us for a moment. I didn’t know her well, but I understood Dr. Smithson enough to know that her intentions were good, if misguided. If she believed she’d done something wrong, she’d chastise herself for it. She wouldn’t need me to punish her. Not for that.
“Tell me why you started the Gentleman’s Submissive. Why not teach or go back and get your counselor’s license? Go into private practice?”
“I thought I could help people.”
I bit back a snort of disbelief.
“I know. The irony’s not lost on me,” she said, holding a hand up in front of her and suddenly looking very tired.
I took her hand, cradling her slender fingers in my palm while I gently cuffed her wrist with my other hand. I wanted her to feel safe with me. Safe enough to tell me the truth.
“I wanted to be a professor—write a book about the consequences of the shifting power dynamics between the sexes. Something like that.”
She’d gone from seeming like a confident academic to sounding lost, and I stroked her wrist, feeling her pulse beat against my thumb. The desire to protect her, to soothe her had moved in and set up housekeeping in my psyche, and I had no doubt it would come back to bite me in the ass.
“Why didn’t you?”
“There aren’t a lot of professorships in gender studies. Turns out the people in the jobs have no intentions of going anywhere. Classic supply and demand.”
She looked thoughtful and I waited for a moment, giving her space to work through whatever was going on in that gorgeous head of hers.
“I think I wanted to be more hands-on. Don’t laugh,” she said, the smile lighting her up from the inside.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Bullshit.” She paused for a moment, as if deciding how much to share. “I grew up reading Harlequin bodice rippers under the soapstone counter in chem lab and then sneaking my hand into my panties in the bathroom between classes.”
“Please God, tell me you went to a Catholic school.” Images of Alexandra in plaid skirts and knee socks filled my head. I added play professor and naughty schoolgirl to the to-do list I’d started to compile. I’d have to see if I could dig up a wooden ruler from somewhere.
“Sorry, dirty old man, but no.”
I hit her with my best Big Bad Wolf grin and waited until she couldn’t help but smile in return.
“The point I was trying to make before you got all skeezy.”
I snorted. I hadn’t pegged Dr. Smithson as someone who’d use that word.
“The point is,” she repeated, ignoring my laughter, “I knew the books had something I wanted—a fantasy of being taken and made to feel things. I just had no idea what that meant or how to reconcile it with the other things I knew to be true about myself. And I’m not the only one.” She took a swallow of her coffee and I waited, curious to see where she’d take us. “Women want to rule the world and lots of them want to be dominated by the bad boy in the bedroom. Traditional roles for women are the exception, not the norm, anymore and the world is a better place for it. I’m not going to say we have to or we’re expected to succeed in meaningful careers because for most of us work is an important part of our identities, not something we do because someone else tells us to. Women are badass powerhouses. So how is a woman who kicks ass in the boardroom supposed to reconcile that with wanting the man she loves to spank her?”
