by Lilly Black
After we eat, I brush my teeth, and as I turn to leave the bathroom, Cain is standing there watching me, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue, silk pajama pants. His body is exquisite, not too ripped, just perfectly outlined muscles on his chest, stomach, and arms. His chest is smooth, though I can’t tell if it goes all the way down, I can’t wait to find out…in the dark…feeling my way with my tongue. Rattled at my own salacious thoughts, I slip by him shyly as he steps into the bathroom with his toothbrush.
I put on my nightgown, a cotton shift that I admit is not sexy in any way, and when Cain comes back to the bedroom, he comes up quietly behind me, lifts it back over my head, and tosses it in the corner. I freeze, suddenly powerless, reduced to an automaton by years of conditioning just because he took off my gown without asking. With his hands on my shoulders, I feel his breath on my neck, and though I know if I don’t stop him right now there won’t be any stopping him at all, he surprises me by sliding my arms into the sleeves of the shirt that matches his pajama bottoms. He reaches around me to close the buttons, my usually insensitive nipples tightening as his wrists graze them. He stops, turning me around, looking at my hard nipples through the thin silk with a lusty stare. Shy, I try to quickly button the shirt.
“Uh-uh,” he says as he lifts me up and sits me on the dresser then starts to pull the shirt open. I tense. I won’t look at him.
“Shhh…” he breathes, and I become more withdrawn. I can’t tell him why, even if I could find my voice, but somehow he seems to know just what I need.
“May I?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper, those words making all the difference in the world, and as I allow Cain to open the shirt, I only feel the natural anxiety of anyone else in a position like this for the very first time.
“You have beautiful tits, Evan,” he says, gently tracing his finger around one nipple of my natural C-cups. He wets his finger, but it’s the thought of it, not the sensation, that turns me on, even when he takes it into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it.
“They aren’t sensitive, are they?” Cain asks.
“You’d probably have to bite them to get a reaction out of me,” I admit apologetically.
“Then I’ll bite them,” he growls, and as he gently takes my nipple between his teeth, an intense wave of pleasure rolls outward, awakening every part of me from my jaw line to the back of my knees.
Fuck me, how have I never thought of this before?
“More?” he asks.
“Yes,” I murmur, and he bites harder. It’s exactly what I need.
“More?”
Oh, yes! But…
“We have to slow down,” I say reluctantly.
“As you wish,” Cain says, and as if I were a living doll, he buttons the shirt. When he sets me back on my feet, I notice his cock is hard and pushing the fabric of his pants as far as it can go. I want to touch it, run my fingernails along the shaft through the thin silk hiding it from me, get down on my knees and feel my lips around it through the fabric, yank his pants off and…
But I don’t. I haven’t touched a man there since I raised the price of admission, and before that, I was just an awkward teenager with no idea what I was doing.
“I’m not apologizing for it,” Cain says, his eyes blue and his expression intense. “I’ve suffered for you since the night we met.” I don’t know what to say, and embarrassed by my own arousal, I take the easy way out, making a joke.
“That’s a pretty melodramatic way of saying you’ve been a walking hard-on,” I snipe.
“That’s not exactly what I meant, but if it bothers you, you can always put that thing back on.” He indicates the nightgown he took off of me, and I giggle.
“Is that the sexiest thing in your lingerie drawer?” he asks.
“I don’t have a lingerie drawer,” I admit.
“What about your panties?” he asks, lifting the pajama shirt a little to see the side of my plain, black, cotton underwear. “Are they all this boring?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll begin remedying that when I get back from Boston,” he says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world as he leads me toward the bed. He slides his arm under me, positioning me on my side to lay my head on his bare chest where I can hear his heartbeat. It’s too fast for sleep.
“Goodnight,” Cain says. I echo him, but I don’t want it to be goodnight. He’ll be gone when I wake up tomorrow, and I won’t see him until Tuesday afternoon, which seems like an eternity to me now. I feel restless.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier,” Cain whispers, then he kisses me atop the head. “It just makes me crazy that you can’t see how perfect you are.”
“I thought you weren’t going to kiss me until I begged for it,” I tease.
“That was not the kiss you’ll beg for, little girl, and when I do give you that kiss, you’ll shamelessly beg for more.”
“Goodnight, Cain,” I say sternly as I take a swat at him with my free hand for being such an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but inside I’m begging already.
August 30
We wake Friday morning before Cain’s cell phone alarm. It’s early, though I’m not sure how early as the blackout shades keep my room dark as night, but with Cain’s arm around me, my head rested on his chest, I feel like I’ve slept at least eight hours.
“Hey,” he whispers.
“Hey,” I echo, beginning to pull away from him, but he braces me, grabbing my leg to keep me from moving.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “You?”
“Not really,” he says, disappointing me.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I ended up like this,” I say, trying to pull away again, but he holds me firm.
“That wasn’t the problem,” Cain explains, and it only takes the slightest movement of his hips to draw my attention to the exact location of my knee. What I had assumed was a hip bone, I now realize is his cock, hard as a bone against my leg. I slowly move it, feeling every inch of his erection slide against it, and though I know it would be a mistake, all I can think about is climbing atop him to unleash everything that has been smoldering inside me since I first laid eyes on him.
And so what if I did? My arousal asks. I really don’t have a good answer for her, and she’s tired of my excuses anyway.
“You’re trembling,” Cain says.
“Just a little cold,” I lie. “I’m sorry I kept you…up.”
“You tortured me all night.”
“Well then, if it’s torture, we’ll have to do this again when you get back from Boston.”
“You’re so cruel,” he says.
“The way I have it figured,” I say, propping myself up on one elbow. “If it’s okay for you to treat me like your girlfriend when I have expressed no willingness to be your girlfriend, then I have every right to torture you like your Dominatrix even though you are clearly against submitting to me.”
“Is that what you want to be to me? My Dominatrix?” he asks, amused.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“If you can’t stand the thought of submitting, what makes you think I can?”
“If you can’t, why should I?” I give it right back.
“Because I’m so, very good at it,” Cain whispers, his expression positively licentious. I can’t take the heat.
“Do you really have to go back to Boston today? Can’t it wait until Monday morning?” I pout.
“To smooth over walking out of a meeting to come back to you Thursday, I agreed to spend the weekend working with the client, and now I have to go to some boring, black tie event tonight. In fact, since this is all your fault, you should make it up to me by coming with me.”
“I can’t. I have to work.”
“I’m sure we could get someone to cover for you.”
“We? Is there something I should know?”
“That I will buy Prometheus and fire you if that’s what I have to do to get you to co
me with me.”
“Cain,” I say, swatting him playfully, trying to make it just go away. Of course I want to come. I’d love nothing more that to go to a black tie event in Boston on the arm of Cain Ballantyne, but the whole idea of it terrifies me. I’ve never gone to anything like that. Just the thought of it conjures images of me tongue-tied and tripping over my own feet. I redirect him. “Isn’t Lucy coming for you soon?”
“I’m not sure,” he says, laughing at me like he knows exactly what I’m doing. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to make me breakfast,” I say, boldly as I rise to get out of bed. I almost make a clean getaway, but he grabs my wrist, pulling me back to him.
“If I make you breakfast, it will be because you’re tied to the bed and can’t cook it yourself, wench,” he teases.
“You’re only making this harder on yourself, Playboy.”
Cain showers, then I lounge on the bed watching him as he puts on his suit, pleased when I notice that he has hung several other suits in my closet. As soon as I hear the front door close behind him, I drift back off asleep. When I wake again, I immediately regret not going with him. I know I would have been uncomfortable as hell, but I realize I’ve just sent him off, a walking hard-on apparently, to a black tie affair in a city on the other side of the country where rich, beautiful women will be dressed in sexy gowns and falling all over themselves to get his attention. I’m probably going to torment myself until he gets back.
Are you in Boston yet? I text.
Still on the plane.
Sorry I didn’t come with you.
So am I.
I hope you aren’t suffering too much, I type, trying to subtly trick him into saying what I need to hear.
It’s okay. There will be plenty of women there tonight.
Are you fucking with me? I demand, feeling my heart suddenly thrust into my throat.
Of course, I’m fucking with you, Evan. I haven’t been with another woman since the night we met.
Since the night we met?
Yes.
So you hooked up with someone the night we met?
Not exactly. I call him.
“Ice Queen,” he says when he answers.
“Explain yourself.”
“I had a girlfriend when I met you.”
“You had a girlfriend, but you were coming on to me?” I demand, disturbed and flattered as my defenses hiss: If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you.
“I broke it off because I already knew I wasn’t hers anymore,” Cain says.
“But you slept with her first?”
“We were in the same bed.”
“Would you please stop using semantics against me? We both know what you’re getting at.”
“If we both know, then why are we still talking about this?” he asks, pleased with himself.
“Cain!” I snap.
“Alright, but remember, you insisted. If I have to cancel my meetings and fly back home early again because you can’t handle what I am about to tell you, I will spank the fuck out of you when I get there.” he warns me.
“Understood,” I say.
“When I got home from Prometheus the night we met, she was waiting for me.”
“So she lived with you?”
“No, she just showed up, and…”
“She just showed up and?” I demand.
“And I fucked her,” Cain admits, nonchalantly. I knew it was coming, but I still feel a sharp pang of jealousy when he says it. It’s not like that first girl he spanked five years ago. This happened less than two weeks ago. He reads my mind.
“Evan, you have no right to be pissed about it. You were such a bitch to me, you’re lucky I ever spoke to you again,” he says, and I laugh. He’s right.
“Then saying you broke up with her for me no longer counts,” I say, trying to make a joke of it, but it only provokes him.
“Would it help if you knew that I was thinking of you the whole time?”
“Oh, my God! No!”
Is he really so arrogant that he can’t see how fucked up that sounds? Is this some sort of BDSM head game?
“You wanted to know,” he says, dismissively.
“Only because it was obvious that you were hiding something.”
“It is up to my discretion whether or not I omit part of the truth regarding women I’ve fucked in the past when I think it will unnecessarily upset you,” he says and I burst into shocked laughter.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do you forget our arrangement, my friend?” he asks, and though he’s pissed, his tone doesn’t show his temper as he speaks low and precise. “I have every right to go out tonight and fuck anyone I like, little girl. What I’m telling you is that I don’t want to fuck anyone else.”
“And I’m telling you that if you operate like that, I’m not even sure I could stand to be your friend, and I damn sure can’t be your sex slave,” I hiss at him, angry even as hearing him say he doesn’t want to fuck anyone else makes me happy. “I couldn’t imagine being that poor woman you slept with Sunday night and dumped Monday morning.”
“I would never do that to you, Evan.”
“I’ll bet you told her that, too,” I snipe.
“She and I had our own arrangement.”
“And that arrangement said you could drop her cold at any moment because you think you might want to fuck somebody else?”
“Our arrangement was what it needed to be because I don’t make promises I know I can’t keep, however when it comes to you, against my better judgment and my will, I find myself promising things I never thought I could promise anyone.”
“So you are making promises you can’t keep?”
“No, but you’re missing the point.”
“And what is the point?”
“The night we met, you acted as if you would prefer a slow, painful death over spending one more second in my presence,” he says, and it makes me smile. “I knew you were going to be a challenge, and since I already had someone to fuck, I had intended to keep her around while I explored the possibilities with you.” And that’s when my smile fades into astonishment.
“Jesus, Cain!”
“But…” he says emphatically, “I’ve learned that I’d rather wait for you than be with any other woman when you’re all I can think about.” I just sit there on the other end of the line, stunned. He’s awful! How could he think it’s okay to use her like that, and what’s wrong with me that it’s turning me on?
“I’ll wait for you as long as it takes, Evan,” he says.
“I’ll test your patience,” I warn, my smile beginning to show itself again.
“You already do.”
August 31
I work the afternoon shift on Saturday, and when I get home from work, I find an envelope from Cain on my nightstand. Wondering when he put it there, I open it to find his clean bill of health. Soon, we’ll be crossing that line, and though I’m scared as hell to risk losing him, I feel like he could be the one. I think about lying next to him, what his hard cock felt like against my leg when I woke up in his arms, and I wonder what it will be like to touch him, to kiss him, to fuck him. It sets me ablaze.
Feeling guilty, I look around the room, and with my door closed and the shades down, it’s only me and the darkness. Warily, I let one hand slide downward just to see what it feels like. It feels good, so I take it further, slipping my hand inside my panties to find myself wet. I never get wet.
It’s all Cain, and I fixate on him as I allow my fingers to slide over me, following the pleasure as the target seems to move around, waxing and waning, trying to elude me. My muscles clench as my lower body flushes with hot blood, and all I can hear is my own breathing as I grow weak with need. I try more pressure, moving my fingers in fast circles, but suddenly, it starts to fade like it always does. I fight it, thinking about Cain, how he looks at me like he wants to devour me, how it felt to have his hard cock rubbing against me at Envy…
It doesn’t help.
As the pleasure slips beyond my grasp, my desperate mind flashes back to the chat room suggestion, but I refuse to sell my soul. I burst into tears, feeling more violated than ever. I’m fighting to overcome more than the effects of the abuse. I have to overcome what I did to myself. When my body betrayed me that first time by responding to the unwelcome touch, I was so ashamed that I forced myself to suppress the pleasure until I felt completely numb, and here I am a decade later, still numb.
Lost in my private hell, I go to the sink, washing my hands so vigorously as I try to scrub away the guilt that it takes a moment to register when the doorbell starts to ring. I go to the door to find a courier with a small cardboard box. I sign for it, and breaking the tape with my thumbnail, inside I find a handwritten note:
Evan,
Give me the key, and you and all your secrets will be mine.
Cain
I remove the packing material to find a large heart shaped lock with a key. I’ve seen these on the XP website. They’re designed for chastity belts, and I realize exactly what Cain is saying. This key will give him consent to claim me. I’m not ready yet, but on the heels of being ravaged by the ghosts of my past, I’m not bothered that this lock is meant to represent his dominion over me. I feel strangely comforted by it. Soon, I’ll give him back this key because I already am his, and I don’t feel sad at all anymore.
September 1
Time for work quickly comes and slowly goes, and finally around 3:00 am, just after I’ve showered and put on the blue silk pajama shirt Cain left here, my cell rings. It’s him. On the west coast I’m just now going to bed, and on the east, he’s already getting up for the day. He asks me if I am off tomorrow because he wants to take me somewhere, but I think he already knows the answer. I was supposed to work, then for some mysterious reason, Dave asked if I wanted the day off. I wish Cain would let me deal with my boss, but I guess it’s something I’ll just have to learn to accept about him because his need to be in control seems as deeply ingrained as my defense mechanisms.
September 2
I wake to a text message from Cain. He’ll be here in about an hour. Anxious to see him, I get up right away and get in the shower, but by the time I come out of my room ready to go, he is already here. He’s sitting in the kitchen with Nicole, and when I appear in the doorway, the conversation freezes as if they’ve just been talking about me.
