Life Sentence

by Jennifer Dunne

  Her mother had sold his boat shortly after his death, blaming it for the swamp sickness he’d caught while helping with hurricane rescue and relief efforts. That illness had rapidly escalated to the pneumonia that killed him. But she couldn’t bear to get rid of the fishing gear that had meant so much to him.

  Sam dusted the rods, reels and lures occasionally, if only because the workshop was her space now and she wanted it to be clean. The only other reminder of her father’s hobby was the small black vise mounted on the end of the table. The rest of the table had been given over to her escape hobbies—piles of books and skeins and balls of yarn.

  She cleared a space on the table and set her newest bag of books down. Taking the heavy, leather-bound volume with her, she crossed to the beat-up brown recliner that faced an old portable color TV. It was so old it still had independent dials for adjusting UHF and VHF stations.

  Unzipping her jeans, she pushed them and her wet panties down around her ankles. Rather than sitting in the recliner, she straddled one of the arms, pressing the rough leather against her swollen pussy.

  She moaned, her head dropping back to rest against the back of the recliner. The pressure felt so good. But it wasn’t enough.

  Slowly she began rocking back and forth, rolling her spread lips against the leather padding, pressing the recliner’s arm deeper between her lips. But no matter how hard she rocked, it couldn’t go as deep as she wanted. It couldn’t slide inside her.

  She whimpered and reached between her legs. Two fingers slid inside her with no resistance, she was so wide open and ready. Her inner muscles clenched around her fingers and she stroked the hot, wet walls of her vagina, her fingers quickly growing sticky with her body’s lubricant.

  It still wasn’t enough. Struggling one-handed, she opened the book. It fell open on a picture of the woman seated at the end of what looked like a padded sawhorse, her legs spread wide and tied to the supports while her body bowed backward to where her arms were tied to the supports at the other end. The man held her by the hips and thrust his cock deep into her open pussy as she screamed in ecstasy.

  Sam scooted to the very edge of the recliner’s arm and arched her back, mimicking the woman’s posture as best she could. As the angle of her hips changed, her fingers slid deeper inside. She pumped her fingers back and forth, imagining the man’s hard, commanding cock was thrusting deep with every stroke. Her thumb teased her clit, sliding across the sensitive flesh at the end of each stroke, pressing as hard as she imagined the root of his cock would crush against her as he thrust deep inside her.

  An agonized whimper built deep in her throat and her hand moved faster, harder.

  “Please,” she begged her imaginary lover. “Please.”

  With a final thrust of her fingers, she came, the spasms lifting her hips and slapping her ass against the leather recliner again and again. She moaned, lost in the waves of heat and pulsing thunder that swept over and through her body with every beat of her heart.

  When her heartbeat finally slowed to normal, she opened her eyes. She was draped half naked across the recliner. The book had fallen to the floor, leaves spread and spine up.

  Her limp and passion-wrung muscles didn’t want to obey her but eventually she turned to her side and reached for the book with one flailing arm. Her fingertips brushed across the leather cover, trailing a line of wet fluid across the gilt title.

  “Damn!” She’d reached for the book with the hand she’d been pleasuring herself with. She hoped the leather didn’t stain.

  The gilt sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight where her juices crossed it. Then a faint steam rose from the leather as the rest of her trail evaporated, leaving the cover looking the way it had when she’d picked it up in the bookstore.

  Sam’s eyes widened. Not quite the way it had been. The gilt lettering had been worn and faded in places when she found it. Now it glittered as if it had been newly made.

  And steam was still rising from the leather in faint wisps, pooling around the book and drifting toward the legs of the recliner. She jerked up her panties and jeans, pulling her legs away from the strange phenomenon, and huddled on the recliner’s seat.

  A quick glance over one arm confirmed that the strange mist had spread across the floor while she’d been pulling up her pants. There wasn’t any way out without going through it and she was reluctant to let the vapors touch her if she could avoid them. She was trapped on the recliner.

  The fog coalesced before her, rising in a column over the spot where the book had been, now invisible in the swirling mist. The scent of the ocean drifted past her, borne on a faint breeze. The wind strengthened, ripping fluttering plumes of vapor from the column of fog, thinning it just enough to show a glimpse of black at its heart.

  Sam held her breath.

  The mist rippled, bulging outward. The wind caught it and tore it to tatters. A man stood before her, shirtless, his strong hands on his hips, black leather pants molded to his legs. A wide belt hung low on his hips, a black leather riding crop dangling from one side and a multi-tailed black leather flogger from the other. A thick silver bracelet encircled his left wrist, etched with delicate and flowing scrollwork that both matched and contrasted with the masculine power of the black tribal tattoo on the back of his right hand.

  Her startled gaze lifted to his face. Black hair curled past his shoulders, softening a face that was otherwise dominated by dark unforgiving eyes, strong jaw and patrician nose. A face she had seen only minutes past in the illustrations from her book.

  “I am Master Giacomo,” he said, his English bearing a heavy Italian accent. “You used the book to summon me. Now you will serve me.”

  Chapter Two

  “What do you mean, I summoned you?” Sam demanded. “And I sure as hell am not ‘serving’ you!”

  Giacomo frowned, the aristocratic planes of his face stiffening in hauteur. “As the book explains—”

  Heat washed her cheeks. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I didn’t actually read the book.”

  They both glanced at the floor beneath his booted feet. The book was gone.

  His eyes widened slightly, his mouth softening. Even his posture shifted, becoming more relaxed and less rigid. Without the veneer of arrogance his natural beauty was clearly visible, reawakening the heat deep within Sam that her earlier touches had only placated, not satisfied.

  He studied her as intently as she studied him. “But you performed the summoning ritual. You intoned your request for a master and repeated it exactly so there could be no mistake. Then you anointed the cover of the book with the fluids of your arousal. How could you have done that without reading the instructions?”

  “I didn’t.”

  He shrugged, his broad shoulders rippling and his bare chest flexing. “Yet I am here.”

  The sight of those sculpted chest muscles momentarily distracted her. She hadn’t realized it was humanly possible to have such magnificent muscle definition without having a bodybuilder’s overdeveloped physique. Then again, odds were pretty good that her mystery guest was not exactly human.

  Years of reading fantasy novels allowed her to face this possibility without falling into a gibbering terror. Yet she also knew that magical and otherworldly visitors were never good things, no matter how hot they looked. She needed to get rid of him. Fast.

  Clearly she couldn’t overpower him and she sensed asking nicely would get her nowhere. Her only choice appeared to be negotiating with him. The fantasy novels she was relying upon for guidance in this unfamiliar situation suggested that the negotiations would not go smoothly or have the consequences she expected. But she had to try. Starting with his claim that she’d summoned him.

  Sam thought back to what she’d been doing before his arrival. She hadn’t said anything on purpose, certainly hadn’t intoned anything. But had she called out in the heat of passion?

  “Please,” she whispered. “I said, ‘Please’. That was enough to summon y
ou?”

  Giacomo shrugged again. “Apparently. For, I repeat, I am here.”

  “Yes, you are.” She sighed. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

  He smiled, a devilish light sparking in the depths of his dark brown eyes.

  “Besides that!”

  Another shrug. “I am here in answer to your request. I will stay until you are pleased. Thoroughly pleased. The sooner you allow me to begin mastering you, the sooner you will experience transcendent pleasure.”

  She thought again of the illustrated woman’s rapturous expression, a thread of longing curling within her. She squelched it. The risk was too great, no matter what reward beckoned.

  “That’s not happening any time soon, no matter what kind of sex genie you are.”

  He frowned, his expression returning to the cold arrogance he’d first shown. “I am a man, not a demon or djinn.”

  “Right. A man who steps out of the mist into the middle of my workroom. Nothing out of the ordinary about that.”

  “I did not say I was ordinary, merely that I was human.” He smiled slowly, lids veiling molten chocolate eyes. “You will find little ordinary about me when you let me master you.”

  Sam blinked. “That’s the second time you’ve said that, that I have to give you permission to master me.”

  “But of course.”

  “Well, I’m not going to so you can just go back to wherever you came from.”

  “I cannot. It is forbidden.” His eyes grew shadowed, his physical presence diminishing in some indefinable way as he drew deeper within his own thoughts. “There can be no failure.”

  Her heart trembled, aching to soothe his obvious distress. She always wanted to fix things, to make people feel better. That’s why she was here after all. She could help her mother. But her need to fix things hadn’t worked with her ex-husband and she wouldn’t allow herself to fall into the same trap now.

  “I’m not letting you use me just to get back to wherever you came from. You’ll never have my permission to master me. You’re on your own.”

  “Use you?” Giacomo stiffened in outrage. “I promise you transcendent pleasure and you think I want merely to use you? I have trained night and day for years without rest, all so that when I was summoned, I could wring every drop of pleasure from a woman’s body. From your body. And you call this using you.”

  Sam licked her suddenly dry lips, her body clenching at the barely restrained passion vibrating in his low voice. God, what would it be like to have that passion turned on her, to have this gorgeous specimen of manhood focusing his single-minded intensity on the needs of her body? On being pleased instead of always on pleasing others?

  But his words were as much a lie as any man’s. He would gain her agreement by promising her pleasure then once she was under his spell, he’d care only about his own satisfaction. She wasn’t falling into that trap a second time, no matter how attractively it was packaged.

  He smiled seductively. “You want me, I can tell. Your breathing is fast and sharp, your face is flushed and your nipples strain against your blouse like two ripe olive pits, begging to be squeezed.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Triumph gleamed in his eyes, cut off by her next words.

  “But I won’t be your or anyone’s slave, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you certain? You anointed the book with the juices of your passion. You found the images stimulating. Why are you so unwilling to experience the pleasure I can give you?”

  “Because it will cost too much.”

  Again, he stiffened. “Are you calling me a berdascia?”

  She didn’t recognize the word but his tone left no question of meaning. She shook her head, instinctively reaching out to comfort his hurt before realizing what she was doing and snatching back her hand. He didn’t need any encouragement from her.

  “I didn’t mean I thought you wanted money to make love to me. I meant the emotional cost of opening up, of giving myself to someone who is only going to disappear.”

  Comprehension dawned in his eyes and he nodded. “Ah, certamente. You thought I would return to the half world after I gave you pleasure and denying yourself was the only way to keep me beside you. But so long as I am your master, I will stay here to pleasure you.”

  She shook her head, denying him, even as the urgency of his fervent plea vibrated low and deep within her, making her ache to accept his offer.

  Her pussy pulsed, throbbing with each slow beat of hot blood filling her desire. Warm lubricant slid over her lips, pooling in her still-wet panties.

  Giacomo sniffed, his aquiline nose flaring. “Even now your body hungers for my touch, to know the ecstasy of submitting to my will. Why do you resist?”

  “I can’t let you in,” she whispered. “I was married. It nearly destroyed me. I can’t go through that again.”

  He tipped his head, considering. “Then you will not let me into your body. I will not touch you.”

  Sam straightened, a sense of imminent loss driving her from her curled position on the recliner to her knees, reaching out to stop him before he left.

  He smiled. “You say you do not want my hand, but your body betrays you.”

  “I do want you—your hand, your mouth, your cock. All of you, inside me, again and again. I admit that. But it’s never going to happen.”

  He nodded, accepting her terms. “But I can still give you pleasure. If I can not touch you, you will touch yourself while I watch and tell you what to do.”

  A wave of cold washed over her, followed by a wave of blazing heat. Touch herself while he watched? The idea was shocking, outrageous…and deeply erotic. But really, it wasn’t that different from pleasuring herself while she looked at the book for inspiration, was it?

  The heat coiling low in her body told her it was very different. It was the same in the most important way though. She’d be in control. She wouldn’t be trading her hard-won independence for a brief physical gratification. She could stop at any time if she didn’t like what he was telling her to do.

  Her muscles trembled, her nipples tightening with eager anticipation. She could stop but she knew she wouldn’t. Doing what others wanted was too deeply ingrained in her. Once she let him tell her what to do, he could tell her to do anything, no matter how outrageous and she would comply. She felt both ashamed of her weakness and at the same time liberated. If she did something to please him, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty or selfish when it pleased her too. She just had to make sure she didn’t sacrifice her own pleasure for his.

  She licked her lips. “What would you want me to do?”

  He smiled and took a half step backward as if, now that she was close to giving in, he didn’t want to do anything she might perceive as threatening.

  “Take off your blouse. Let me see your breasts.”

  Before good sense could stop her, Sam jerked her T-shirt over her head. His gaze locked on her swollen breasts, the nipples thrust against the thin cotton of her bra. Her breath grew shallow, her breasts swaying with her rapid inhaling and exhaling. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her flesh, a soft pink flush coloring her skin. Her nipples tightened even more, becoming hard pebbles that tingled with the need to be freed from the restraint of her bra, free to be touched and tasted.

  “Now the brassiere,” he instructed.

  She reached behind herself to pop the hooks, the motion further straining her sensitive nipples against the cotton.

  The bra snapped open, freeing her breasts. She gasped at the sudden sense of release. Tension began building in her pussy, hot and eager for a different kind of release.

  If she’d been pleasuring herself, she’d have one hand inside her panties already, following up the feeling with some long, hard stroking. That she couldn’t touch herself there, constrained by her agreement to follow Giacomo’s commands, only increased the trembling need between her legs.

  She snatched her bra away and tossed it to the floor, exposing her breasts in all
their swollen, hard-nippled glory. Giacomo breathed deeply, as if he could inhale her arousal. Judging from how wet her panties were, he probably could.

  “You are beautiful. Ripe and red, like two pomegranate seeds atop the velvet skin of twin peaches. If I were touching you, I would taste you now, taking each of your nipples into my mouth. Licking. Sucking. Scraping your sensitive flesh with my teeth.”

  Sam moaned, arching her back to offer her breasts to him. She wanted his mouth on her, to feel the sweetness of his tongue and teeth caressing and possessing her. She wanted him, but feared him more.

  Giacomo sighed, deeply and theatrically. “Alas, I am not touching you. So you must put your fingers in your mouth, two fingers, and lick them then swirl your wet fingers around your nipples.”

  She put her fingers in her mouth, slipping them over her lip and swirling her tongue around them, sucking and drawing her fingers deeper into her mouth as if it were his cock between her lips. She slicked her fingers in and out twice then put her wet fingers on her nipple and squeezed.

  Her fingers were hot and wet, just like his mouth and tongue would be. Sam put her head back and moaned. With one finger to either side of the nipple, she rotated her hand.

  “Harder,” Giacomo ordered. “And do the other one.”

  Sam whimpered softly, squeezing her nipple hard enough to spangle her vision with stars. Her pussy pulsed with need. She sucked her other fingers, one fast thrust into her mouth, then grabbed her other nipple and twisted.

  She rose onto her knees, hips tilted forward and head back, a low groan torn from her throat.

  “Undo your slacks. Take them off and your panties as well.”

  She considered ignoring the low growl of his voice. Her fingers felt so good on her nipples. Another few sharp tugs and twists should send her over the edge.