by Poppy Flynn
"I can bunk at Laurel's," Connor rumbled, looking down at the bubbly blonde, his arm slung casually around her shoulder.
Charlotte blinked in surprise at the wave of support that surrounded her and was overwhelmed with gratitude but still flustered at the amount of upheaval she was causing.
"Please," she implored, not wanting to upset Joel and Desi's day any further. "None of this is necessary on my account."
"Don't be ridiculous, of course it is!" Desi exclaimed. "Besides, do you really think I'd want to stay in this place after what they've done to you?"
There were several murmurs of agreement from the rest of the party and tears prickled Charlotte's eyes once again at their uncompromising defence.
"And I know exactly how it feels to be singled out due to moral turpitude and I wouldn't wish that on anyone," a soft voice assured her. Charlotte looked to her side to meet Luanna's reassuring smile and remembered Desi telling her how this woman had fallen pregnant at sixteen and had battled social stigma and the struggle of being a single teenage mother in order to provide a better life for her son. Goddesses! This woman must have put up with people's crappy attitudes for years. What Charlotte had endured paled into insignificance by comparison. The least she could do was allow her friends to assuage their sense of outrage on her behalf with dignity and acceptance.
She turned and gave Luanna a quick hug. "Thank you," she whispered.
Unbelievably, a mere hour later, it all seemed like a distant nightmare. They were sat in a private dining room at a small boutique hotel which had also provided the most ridiculously romantic bridal suite, complete with a balcony overlooking a small nature pool. It was all decked out in deep red and pale gold with a decadent four poster bed swathed in drapes and cushions, rose petals sprinkled across the bed and a complimentary champagne and chocolate hamper.
Vivian had managed to procure the ornate flower arrangements from the other hotel, and being a family run place where the owner, Nick, was the chef, he had readily agreed to carry on in the kitchen and rustle up whatever was available from the menu. Despite his modesty, the food was fantastic, and Charlotte was sure they would be well compensated for their trouble.
She was glad. They were nice people just starting out, and if her own misfortune gave them a leg up in the industry, then it was worth it. Well maybe not worth it, but at least it took some of the sting away. An endorsement from the Blackwoods would make all the difference to this fledgling business.
Nick's wife, Kayla, had even taken it upon herself to repair Charlotte's dress the best she could, and Charlotte appreciated the thoughtfulness of the young woman. The gesture had gone a long way to helping her put the earlier events behind her.
To top it all, the atmosphere was great. Champagne was flowing, everyone was relaxed, and laughter filled the room. Charlotte was certain they wouldn't have been having this much fun in the other hotel.
As it approached half past midnight, Charlotte decided it was past time to head home. She was pretty sure the newlyweds had some private celebrations in mind that didn't involve anyone else, judging by the sultry looks and secret smiles they were shooting each other. The rest of the attendees clearly thought the same thing since, with unspoken agreement, the party started to break up.
The limos that had ferried them to the reception had been retained into the evening and were on hand to take everyone to wherever they needed to be.
Charlotte had said her goodbyes and was speaking to one of the drivers when Jake appeared at her side.
"I'll see you home," he told her in a manner that didn't seem up for discussion. Charlotte was too exhausted from the excitement of the day and too mellow from the couple of glasses of champagne she had enjoyed, to argue with him, anyway. If he needed to ease his guilt after the last time he'd failed to see her home, then she'd allow him that privilege.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up at the door of her Victorian townhouse and although Charlotte wasn't surprised when Jake spoke quietly to the driver, then got out of the car and walked her up the path, she objected when the limo pulled away again.
"Jake?"
"I told you," he interrupted. "I'm not leaving until I know you are safe inside and there are no pent-up emotions hanging over you from everything that's happened today."
"But..."
"The limo can always come back for me once he's dropped the others off."
Charlotte's gaze followed the vehicle's tail lights as it disappeared out of view whisking Laurel, Logan, Connor and Luanna towards their respective residences. Well, except for Connor. Charlotte had a sneaking suspicion that he was heading back to Laurel's.
Jake took Charlotte's elbow and headed towards the front door, then waited patiently while she dug out her keys.
She sighed inwardly; this was just one extreme to the other. All she really wanted to do was get inside and collapse into bed, not deal with Jake or dredge up the evening's events. She was more than happy to forget all that, and she'd been doing a pretty good job so far.
"Look, Jake, this isn't necessary. I'm tired and I just want to sleep."
"Good," Jake replied, taking the keys from her hand and fitting them into the lock. "I don't want to stop you."
A few seconds later, he was ushering her inside and locking up after himself.
"Go and get ready for bed; I'll put the kettle on for a nightcap."
Jake wandered off in the direction of her kitchen but stopped to look around when she didn't move. "I thought you said you were tired."
"You don't have to do this…" Charlotte tried again.
"You can argue all you like, Charlotte, it won't make any difference. I'm staying."
"What do you mean, you're staying?" she stammered with a hint of panic.
"Exactly what I said," Jake reiterated. "I'm staying."
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. What he was saying sounded kind of final, and the air of superiority got her back up.
"I thought you said the limo was coming back for you?" she demanded.
"I said the limo could come back for me, not that it will come back for me," he said pointedly. "Don't worry yourself, though. I'll sleep on the couch if you don't have a guest room."
Hurt thundered through Charlotte as his words hit home and she swung away from him before he could see the tears that prickled behind her eyes. Her emotions were bubbling dangerously close to the surface after everything that had happened today, but she'd be damned if she'd allow anyone to be witness to any more of her hurt. She'd revealed far too much of herself today as it was. In her admittedly limited experience, people only ever manipulated your emotions so they could use them against you. Well, Jake Blackwood wouldn't get the chance.
"Thanks!" she spat, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she hurried towards her bedroom. She just had to get away from him. If he was set on staying, then he could find whatever he needed on his own.
It was the ultimate upsetting end to an already shitty day when your first and last lover in almost six years told you he'd rather sleep on the damn sofa than sleep with you. Not that Jake Blackwood owed her anything. Oh, no, he'd made it perfectly clear exactly where he stood after taking off before their night together was even over and not bothering to get in touch with her since. She wasn't stupid; she could see a brush off when it hit her right between the eyes like a two by four plank of wood. What had been the most fantastic night of her life had clearly been a dismal disappointment to him. And why would it have been anything else? Jake was into serious kink. He got off on hot blooded women who liked to be tied up and served a side order of pain with their orgasms, not a meek little ingénue who could barely manage to overcome her inhibitions and didn't know the first thing about how to please a man.
And now, on top of all that, he saw her as some sort of obligation because she couldn't even manage to leave a hotel without getting into all kinds of trouble.
Charlotte slammed the bedroom door behind her. Well, he'd soon learn that she didn't need hi
m. She didn't need anyone. She crashed around the room as she threw open drawers and thumped them closed while she collected her night things.
She didn't need the mother who had yanked her grieving daughter out of the only life she had ever known and into a stark and disturbing communal living system, before she chose to commit suicide rather than try to escape the mess she'd gotten them into.
She shoved the sliding door to her wardrobe and had it shaking on its runner.
She didn't need the terrifying God who had been rammed down her throat with all but the basic necessities removed in his name and where sometimes even those were forfeited.
Charlotte thumped her toiletries down on the counter and they clattered so hard it was a miracle the glass bottles didn't shatter.
She had stopped being a victim many years ago when she'd escaped the Disciples of Modesty cult, outing them in her first big special feature expose and managing to get government agencies to investigate the group with her own testimonial.
She wrenched open the shower door, uncaring that it clattered against the wall.
But they'd taught her to do without a lot of things and some of those lessons never really faded. Once you had survived going without food or bathroom facilities or medicines when you were sick, survived seeing your dead mother thrown into a ditch and left to rot as an example for the sin of using suicide to escape the tyranny of the cult and subsequently been beaten for your own sin in the self-centred act of grieving, then doing without a man wasn't really any great sacrifice at all.
And if Charlotte yearned for the touch of human kindness, the contentment of physical tenderness, and the love of someone who placed her above all things, then no one would ever know it but her.
She stripped off the jade dress and hurled it across the room. For all it had cost, she'd be happy to never see it again—just another reminder of the falseness of material things, she could almost hear the Supreme Disciples' autocratic voice preaching the accusation. Hell, he was probably right about the dress.
On the other hand, the lovely, comfortable bed that beckoned her and the en suite shower, where she was headed right now, were luxuries that she appreciated every single day.
Stepping under the cleansing spray, Charlotte tried to let the warm, soothing water wash away the filth, both real and perceived, and thanked the goddess of her own making for the privilege. She scrubbed at her body with a rich, perfumed lather of fragrant vanilla, such a far cry from the scratchy bars of unscented carbolic soap she'd grown up with. Try as she might to hold it all in, her mind craved to purge the emotions of the day and a fresh wave of noisy sobs wracked her tired body as she helplessly let it all out.
Jake closed his eyes and rubbed his palms across his face as Charlotte stormed into her bedroom, slammed the door behind her and began crashing about the room.
Shit, he hadn't handled that well. He knew she had taken his words as rejection and he guessed he could hardly blame her based on his current track record. Even so, he'd only been trying to come across as a bit less autocratic since he realised that seemed to set her off, too, and this day had taken enough of a toll on her without him adding to it. Unfortunately, so far, he only seemed to have made things worse, and now, he found himself groping around for a way to try to make things better.
As the banging from the other room quieted and Jake heard the patter of running water, he wondered whether Charlotte had pounded it out of her system—until he heard the tormented wail of her sobs and the anguished sound tore him apart.
Taking off in the direction Charlotte had headed, Jake searched around until he found towels, a bathrobe, a brush and her hairdryer.
He could make this right; it wasn't rocket science. It was the heart of what every sub needed after a particularly intense scene, just a little bit of TLC. And that was something Jake excelled at.
Dumping his finds on her dressing table, Jake made his way back to the kitchen and dug around the cabinets for cups and spoons and finished making a soothing mug of the herbal tea he'd discovered earlier. Taking it back to the bedroom, he heard the water shut off just as he placed it on the nightstand, so he grabbed the towels and hurried into the bathroom.
Charlotte looked as if a stiff wind would blow her away as she stepped out of the shower cubicle and, before she could muster the effort to object to his presence, Jake swaddled her in a huge fluffy bath sheet and swiftly wound a smaller towel around her hair.
"What are you doing?" Charlotte voice was scratchy and pitiful. She cleared her throat to try again but Jake cut her off.
"Shhh," he soothed, wiping droplets from her face and swinging her into his arms before she could protest.
He strode out of the en suite and set her on her feet, making quick work of drying her off with a deliberate lack of intimacy despite the hardening of his body as she stood, slender and dressed only in glistening drops of water, in front of him.
Jake bundled Charlotte into the soft, fuzzy robe and steered her across to the stool in front of the dressing table where he seated her and then placed the tea in front of her.
"Here, drink this. It's chamomile," he murmured as he gently rubbed her scalp with the towel and blotted the excess water from her hair before proceeding to carefully brush it all out.
Charlotte stared up at him, through the mirror's reflection, with owlish eyes. Confusion and a heart wrenching yearning reflected so very clearly in hazel eyes that had turned as dark as her dismal recollections.
Jake carefully teased out all the snags, then plugged in the hairdryer and proceeded to dry her hair with deft strokes. All the while, Charlotte watched him quietly with those bewildered, soulful eyes. All the fight that had been so loudly evident such a short time ago had completely drained her, leaving the shell of a woman who looked vulnerable and somehow defenceless.
Jake found that he hated seeing Charlotte like this. This was not a rewarding submission given freely with the exchange of power that he so valued. It seemed more as if she was completely and utterly defeated and Jake found no satisfaction in that. He wondered if Charlotte understood that, in his domain, there was a whole world of difference.
Once her hair was dry, Jake couldn't help taking the liberty of running his fingers through the long, sable tresses that tumbled almost clear to her waist. It rippled down her back like a silky curtain and Jake's fingers itched to plunge into its depths and tighten against her scalp or to coil it into a rope that he could use to intimately manipulate her body against his own. Instead, he curbed his baser urges and continued to gently stroke his fingers through her locks, pausing occasionally to massage her scalp and relieve her tension.
In the mirror, he watched her eyes flutter closed and felt, rather than heard, the sigh that eased her body. Finally, he sectioned her hair into three and nimbly twisted it into a neat braid, securing it with a band he found in a pot on her dressing table. Then, while she was still boneless and relaxed, he scooped her up and carried her over to the bed. Deftly, Jake undid the knot that secured her robe and, before she could utter a word, he replaced the damp, bulky garment with an oversized t-shirt he found in her bedside drawer.
Drawing the comforter up and snuggling her in, Jake stripped down to his boxers without a word and crawled into the bed beside her. Groping for the switch on the lamp, he plunged the room into darkness, pulled Charlotte against him and simply whispered, "Sleep!"
Chapter 3
Charlotte woke the next morning to a wonderful feeling of peace and lassitude. She was so very comfortable and couldn't remember the last time she had slept so well. Arching gently to relieve the kinks, she burrowed right back down beside the comforting weight that lay solidly against her spine and drifted gently in that hazy place between sleep and awareness while the pleasurable sensation of light touches whispering along the skin at her hip, up her arm and down her back, lit tiny sparks of arousal that ignited every nerve ending they skimmed across, leaving a heavy mass of desire sprawling low in her belly.
She wrig
gled and sighed as she tried to alleviate the pressure that had started to gnaw at her core until the rumble of a deep chuckle vibrated through her consciousness and she froze, her eyes flying wide open and her breath hitching in her throat.
The fingertip assault didn't stop, though; in fact, it curved around to stroke at her abdomen, pulling her flush against a hard chest and an equally hard erection which nestled against her buttocks.
Flashes of the night before came tumbling back to her, but Charlotte never had time to protest before another hand wrapped around her braid and used it to tug her head back while warm lips nuzzled and nipped at her exposed neck and behind her ear.
Charlotte felt her bones melt into a gooey puddle of squishy compliance and any objection was lost in a haze of delight.
The graze of teeth against her nape had her shuddering. Her nipples pebbled, and she felt the whoosh of moisture to her pussy as if it was a physical sensation of a far greater magnitude.
Jake's roving fingers pushed her night shirt up past her waist, traced the soft skin at the underside of her breast, and Charlotte arched, silently begging him to move his hands to where she needed them most.
Slowly, inexorably, he moved, setting her skin on fire wherever he stroked, softly teasing but never quite finding all those secret places that craved his touch.
Charlotte groaned as his fingers circled the areola of one breast but never got any closer to the rock-hard tip while his other hand sifted through the neatly trimmed hair on her mound but didn't stray into deeper territory. She was surely going to explode from frustration any moment now.
"Jake, please…" she whispered.
"Such a beautiful thing..." he murmured "…the sound of a woman begging."
"I'll beg," Charlotte whimpered. "Just touch me!"
"I am touching you," Jake breathed.
"You know what I mean!"
"Tell me!" Jake urged. "Tell me exactly where you want me to touch you, Charlotte."
