“Seventy-two different ways to make you want me.” He captured her lovely face between his palms and rubbed his lips over hers. “Old enough to make you so happy, darlin’, you won’t ever need any other man.”
Chapter Eleven
She gave up total control to him. Trusting him completely as she had not any other man, she stepped into the shower behind him and turned him around to snuggle up against his delicious hard body. The water rained down on them, warm and soft, comforting after their playtime in the sitting room. She couldn’t stop kissing him, his mouth so giving and tender.
“Where have you been all my life?” he murmured as he began a caress of her back with one hand, then cupped one breast with another.
“Looking for you,” she whispered as he bent, took her nipple between his lips and sucked her into his mouth. She arched backward, wanting to give up anything he wanted.
He gave her a little hug, found soap and put it in one of her hands. “You get the honors.”
She arched her brows. “Gee. Don’t know if I’ve had my sugar fix yet.” She ran the bar all over his marvelous pecs, defining the contours of his muscles with a delicate touch.
He guffawed, flattening himself against the tile walls, one of his thighs between hers. “You just keep going until you’re satisfied. I’m not objecting.”
When he smiled at her, the look in his eyes was filled with longing. More than that, it was proprietary. Yes, she belonged to him for as long as he wanted her. The very thought sent a shock wave through her.
He noticed. How could he not? She had stiffened, her hand midair. “What’s wrong? What did I say that you—?”
She dropped her gaze, stared at his chest. Tears stung her eyes and she swept them away. What an idiot she was to interrupt this wonderful time with him with thoughts that would scare him, scare her too!
He took the soap from her, put it in the holder and pulled her against him. “Look at me. Don’t go away from me now. Not when we can learn so much about each other.”
She blinked, examining him for truth. “I want you now. No talk. No words. Just love.”
With a twist, he turned off the water, stepped out of the walk-in shower and gave her his hand to help her out. He covered her in a huge white towel and rubbed her dry until her skin was pink with his efforts. She laughed, drying him in turn.
“That’s better,” he told her as he led her into the bedroom where this afternoon, she had turned down the comforter to the soft ivory sheets. “Lie down. I’ll be right back.”
“Case.” She reached over to the nightstand and held up a handful of condom packages. “Stay.”
He gave her a crooked smile and smacked his lips. Taking one from her hand, he ripped it open as he climbed onto the mattress and hovered over her. “Were you a Girl Scout?”
“Never had time,” she said, admiring how deft he was at rolling the latex down his very impressive shaft. “But I wanted this to be perfect for us.”
“It is,” he told her and bent to savor her lips, “because you’re here with me. You, honey. Just you.”
He drove a hand under her nape and lifted her as he kissed her until she gasped with pleasure. As if he were suddenly possessed by some frantic storm of need, he laved her nipples, her bellybutton and then gripped her hips and drove himself in one smooth hot move right up inside her to the hilt. Fully seated, he rammed her once so that their eyes locked in lazy lust.
She tried to breathe. Suspended in the second of his claim, she dared not move. This was bliss and she had known so little of it. She clutched the sheets, but the force of his strokes drove her up the bed. Gasping, she heard his own cries of delight and rocked with him.
He was fierce, a skilled lover who stroked her with his cock as if the world would end tonight. He was gentle, a tender partner who massaged her cunt with sweet delirium. He was silent, his silver eyes all over her as he pumped himself into her and found her clit to bring her with him into a madness she welcomed.
Captured, she followed him, her mind awhirl, her body on fire, swollen, drenched with need of him. And when they grew frantic as the edge of their orgasms approached, he bound her to him wildly and they both cried out as the ripples of their delight washed over them.
He fell over her, his hands on her hips, the weight of him anchoring her, the musk of their mating wafting over them and binding her to him.
Minutes later, he sat up, removed the condom and strode to the bathroom and back to her. He pulled the covers up over them, securing her to him with one strong arm. She rubbed her oh-so-sensitive nipples against his chest, the feel of his hair a seductive abrasion. He shoved one thigh between hers and moved back and forth. Smoothing back her hair from her eyes and cheeks, he ran his lips over her face. “Need more?”
She buried her face in his throat, undulating her hips. “When you’re ready.”
“Hell, baby, you don’t have to wait for me.” He pushed her to her back, spread her legs with his big hands and buried his mouth in her pussy. With probing fingers, he parted her labia wider and found her clit. “All swollen for me. Let me give you everything you need. God, I want to.”
She gazed at the ceiling as he pinched her tender bud, then laved her with a rough and talented tongue. Groaning her approval, she lolled her head on the mattress while he ate her as though he had never before dined on a woman’s clit. He was kind and ravenous, delicate and rabid. When she arched her hips and dug her nails into his shoulders, he growled and laughed as he sucked her into a bright and blinding orgasm. Reaching for him, she shook in his arms. His lips curved up in a smile against her forehead.
“I love you, Sam.”
Her eyes opened. Gleeful as she’d never been, she lay in his arms, not quite certain she’d heard correctly. She had never made things up, never worked with fables, didn’t read fiction, couldn’t. So this was…too good to be true. A man who loved her. A man to call her own.
“I love you,” he repeated and curved her more surely into his body. His huge hands stroked her back and her hip. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to love me back. But you have to know, honey, I’m gonna try to make you love me.”
She pulled away to look at him. She’d never had a man declare he loved her. Not even her father, as much as she could remember of him, had ever said that to her, so this was new and grand and mind-blowing. “You don’t have to try, Case. I already do. I love you.”
He groaned, grinning like a fool as he kissed her deeply.
She pushed away. “This is nutty. Crazy to feel like this after only a few days.”
“I don’t think—”
She put two fingers to his lips. “But you have to know that I’m not what you think I am. I have a past that isn’t like yours at all and I—”
“Hell, sweetie.” He got this tolerant expression on his face as he cupped her cheek. “I’m not interested in your past.”
“You should be.”
“I am not asking for your pedigree. How bad could it be? Tell me. Can’t be too bad if you have your license to practice law. Could not have been a hooker.”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, but—”
“A stripper? A barmaid?”
“No. No.”
“A card shark?”
“I am a good poker player. Very good. I’ve won thousands at the tables in Vegas.”
“All right then!” He shook his head once, proud of her. “A lady who knows how to win.”
“You don’t understand, Case.” She slid away from him, crawled out of bed. Okay, so she was naked, but hell, she was about to be even more naked in front of him. “I learned how to play on the streets.”
“Streets? What streets?”
“I was homeless.”
Well, that surely made his mouth drop. And when he recovered, he hauled himself up to rest against the headboard and pulled the sheet up to his waist. He was such a hunk, such a charmer, and she loved him. Madly. Badly. “You were poor. You’re not now. You’v
e gotten an education, which I would say you probably fought for yourself. You took yourself up and out of your past. So I don’t get why that figures here. Your past made you strong, smart and evidently very wise. I like all of that. I love the complete package. I love you. As you are now. So what’s your objection to us?”
“If you want to be more than the mayor, maybe governor or senator, then I am not your girl.”
“Aside from the fact that I never want to be in politics any more than I am, I love you for what you are, not how you lived. All that was beyond your control. What makes you think I give a rat’s ass about your past?”
“Because I’m not eighth-generation Texan, like you. And I’m not successful, like you. Not yet anyway. I’m still working on that. And if I can get this water allocation right, I might get a promotion and more money.”
“So are you telling me,” he asked as he waved a hand in the air, “that you want power and position and money and I come in fourth on your list?”
“No!” She paced at the foot of the bed, running a hand through her disheveled hair. “I’m saying…that I want you to be proud of me. That I want to be a woman you can point to and say she did something in life.”
He tipped his head, his eyes narrowing. “I can point to you now and say you’re the woman I love. What more do I need?”
She stared at him. “But you’ve known me a few days.”
“I know you in my bones. What more do I need?”
“I need time.”
“Why? The promotion?”
“No.” Her insides melted with his endearing words, his enchanting declarations. “I’m not used to happiness. Not used to people, someone, a man who says he loves me.”
He patted the mattress, his gaze promising sweet seduction. “Come here then. This man will give you all the happiness you can hold.”
“My folks were poor. Dirt poor. My mother worked as a cleaning lady in a motel in Amarillo and my father was a drunk. I remember the day I turned eight I had exactly one pair of jeans and two shirts. To go to school was a nightmare. Home was too. My father beat my mom regularly. Then one day, he left. Probably a good thing. I was ten. My mother moved to Austin and I went too, of course. But she couldn’t keep a job because she began to drink too.”
“Honey, you do not have to tell me this.”
“I do. I do! Let me.” She turned away and crossed her arms, then walked the floor. “We were homeless. Lived in a cardboard box under a bridge on Interstate 35. One day, city officials came along and offered us housing in a shelter. We went but soon afterward my mother went on a bender and died in a local hospital.”
“Sam, honey.” Case had risen from bed and took her in his arms.
She sank against him. “I was put into the foster care system and was lucky. An older couple took me in, gave me the chance to go to a good school.”
“Bet you did well,” he said, his lips buried in her hair.
“I did. Very well. Got a scholarship to UT.”
“Not an easy thing to do.”
“No. But I never felt good about myself. Never got over the degradation of my past.”
He rocked back and forth with her in his arms. “You are now.”
“That’s just it,” she declared as she pulled back in his embrace and looked up his handsome face. “I think I got into being submissive because I thought that was who I was. The contact, the emotional ties to the Dominant seemed normal, comforting. But after the incident last summer when the man I was with took a whip to me, I questioned all that. When I went to the Bravado Club last week, I went with a mix of feelings, motives. Was I looking for a new Dom? Was I just looking for you? Or was I also looking for myself?”
“Maybe all three,” he suggested.
“Yes, maybe so.” She wrapped her arms around him and sank against his warm assurance.
He took a strand of her hair and toyed with it as he kissed her forehead. “If you were looking for a new Dom, I doubt that man is me. Not any longer. I’m more into the shibari, the ropes, the art, than the submission of a woman. If you were looking for me, you found me. In more ways than one. And if you were looking for yourself, well, only you can tell me how that plays out.”
“That’s why I want time to grow into this with you. I can’t give up my profession, not my job either. Not when it still means my own…”
“Worth? Definition?”
“Both of those and more. I want you and I want to love you but I want to feel like your equal.” She held her breath, because this she knew was the crux of her issue. If he was still a Dominant to the extent where he would demand she come live with him now, then she would have to refuse. For her own integrity. Heartbreaking though it would be to lose him.
“I want you whole,” he told her then. “If you need time, take it. But know I want you in the meantime.”
She laughed, relieved, overjoyed and squeezed him tight. “You have me.”
He swung her up and around, the two of them laughing. Walking her backward to the bed, he led her down and crawled over her. “Come here on the weekends, or I’ll come to Austin.”
She grinned at him, her fingers tracing the high arch of his rugged cheekbones. “What are you doing for the Fourth of July?”
“Making love to you, darlin’. Come for Labor Day.” He nuzzled her neck. “Come for Halloween.”
“And Thanksgiving,” she said as she caressed his hips and his nice hard ass.
“Christmas, New Year’s. Come anytime,” he urged her on a whisper. “Just come for me only.”
“Always,” she promised as he kissed her to seal the deal.
Epilogue
November, six months later
Whenever she wasn’t with him, he was half a man. Half alive. He didn’t laugh as much, didn’t think too hard. Worked himself blind to fill the hours of the week until she swung her little Volkswagen into his driveway on Friday nights and he got her into his house. Got her thoroughly kissed and stripped. Naked and moaning for his touch and his kisses in his bed.
Tonight, he looked at her across the private room of the Bravado Club and worried. She slid her arms into a kimono, her shoulder-length red waves framing her oval face, her blue eyes brilliant with expectation. She was going to join him outside for an exhibition in front of an audience and his guts churned with anxiety.
She was the most precious human to him in the whole world. Over the past few months, he had discovered more to love about her. She played the state lotto Texas Two Steps as if she were a renegade from justice. She loved old forties movies but only with her popcorn slathered in butter while she watched.
She liked him any way at all. Across a dinner table. At an election rally. Up against a wall fucking her. He adored her, more of her each time she saw her. He learned new things about her. The fact that she was about six inches shorter than he. Eighty pounds less. But with that taut Rubenesque body he wanted to lick her all over. Her expressive eyes. Her waist that flowed to those hold-me-while-I-fuck-you hips. And legs he needed around his shoulders while he ate her pussy until she screamed.
She cast a smile in his direction.
Tonight he had decided to strip bare nearly as much as she. He would wear a white cotton loincloth so that his audience could see how he loved her, this sweet jujun, above all others. He and she had practiced in his home for this performance, and each time, he had learned new lessons in restraint. To bury himself inside her after tying her in intricate knots was a reward he rushed to quickly. Tonight he prayed he would have a bit more patience and give their audience the time they needed to fully appreciate Cho’s luscious beauty.
Tying the loop of his fundoshi loincloth, Case slid on his hakama trousers, tied the belt and strode toward her. His cho. His butterfly. The red hair, the pale flawless skin, her full breasts and heavy labia were so extraordinary that he questioned if he really wanted to share her nude perfection with anyone. But she had asked for this bondage exhibit. And he would give her anything she wanted. Anything.<
br />
“Not too late to back out. Are you sure about this?” He lifted her chin and gazed into her dreamy eyes. “If you are doing this to make me happy, I have to tell you again. This isn’t necessary.”
She stepped forward to mold her warm flesh against his. She wore the loose kimono only as a drape to walk out onto the dais. Beneath the thin cotton, he felt her well-honed muscles, the points of her huge nipples, the lithe curve of her stomach and her thighs and the heat of her cunt. “I want to give you this. I want to feel your hands tying the knots. Pulling at my nipples and pressing into my pussy. Opening my wet lips. Letting others see how you care for me. Let me experience this pleasure to show others how you are mine. Let me.”
Her words made him quake with need to bind him to her and fuck her. “If at any time, you want to stop—”
“You will know if I do.” She cuddled into his bare chest. “Over the months we’ve been together, you can now tell me what I think before I myself know. I want to experience you as my nawashi. My master of rope.” She tipped her head to one side and gave him a look of serenity. “You are already my friend. My lover. My love. Let me learn you as this too.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He winced at the thought that he might tie her too tightly, crush her beautiful full breasts, mar her skin or cut her circulation. He had taken a rope to her privately in shibari form each weekend these past two months. He had bound her knees backward to her thighs to fuck her long and hard. Later, when she begged him for more, he had tied her large breasts and suckled them so well she came three times from one binding. Occasionally over the past six months of their relationship, he had tied her wrists and ankles to his bedposts and she had done the same for him. The excitement, the fervor of those sexual encounters had been as glorious, as tender, as meaningful as any of their others. But they agreed after each binding, ordinary or erotic kinbaku style, that they did not need ropes or chains or swings or toys to make their loving experiences stronger or longer.
Tie Me Down: 2 (Knights in Black Leather) Page 11
