Each movement reminds me that I’ve got an unyielding and awkward plug stuffed in my ass.
Butt plugs… I don’t like them.
Hawthorne smiles and approaches me as I gingerly push myself to my feet. He catches my face and looks into my eyes, then kisses me, pulling me up onto my toes.
The muscles in my legs clench as I try to stay balanced, but apparently all my muscles clench because now I feel the sex toy like never before…
Too big and too small. It’s all wrong.
Releasing me, he takes a step back. He’s as smug, as self-satisfied as ever, but it doesn’t irritate me the way it usually does. Maybe because in this particular situation, I do accept that he’s in charge.
And he’s in charge at the office. After all, he’s the boss and I’m the employee.
But outside of that… We’ll see. If he punishes me when he’s not supposed to…
He’s never done that, though. That’s not to say that Hawthorne isn’t a dick. He’s absolutely a dick when he wants to be. And he picks fights with me at the office.
Of course, I pick fights, too.
It makes me wonder how he’ll be as our relationship develops. Assuming things keep going this way, of course.
After he leaves, I make my mincing way toward the closet.
Each time my foot hits the floor, little vibrations travel up my legs, and the thing stuffed inside me shifts. It doesn’t shift much, but it’s enough to be vexing.
I turn on the closet’s lights and bend over in front of the mirror.
All I can see are the flared bases and the flexible rubber that connects them. Wow, the toy inside me looks much more painful than it feels.
Slowly, I go back out and delicately lower myself onto the bed.
Once I’m in place, the discomfort settles to nothing but a dull background sensation. It’s just a bit of pressure, and while I scroll through my phone, looking at cat toys, I forget it’s there.
Exhaustion overtakes me, and I find myself falling asleep, then coming back awake when I shift position.
I carefully put the phone onto the bedside table, and I’m just about to turn off the light when the door opens and Romeo steps inside.
Chapter 11
“You’re awake.” Romeo closes the door behind him. He’s wearing a pair of clingy boxer briefs and a smile.
“Hi,” I murmur. Looking at all those massive, bulging muscles… I can’t help but be a little tongue-tied. I wish the thing shoved up my pussy were half the size of what’s in his underwear.
He stops a few feet away and tilts his head. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head, and he pulls back the sheets and gets into the bed beside me.
Wincing, I flip over to face him.
“Something’s wrong,” he says, his eyes full of concern.
“No, everything’s perfect,” I tell him.
He brushes his thumb over my lips, then pulls me close to him, and I whimper.
“Lindsay, are you hurt?”
I shake my head. “It’s just the… you know,” I say.
“The what?”
My cheeks warm. Apparently, Hawthorne didn’t tell the others about my special punishment.
And I aim to keep it secret. “I received a pretty bad spanking this afternoon,” I say.
“For your own good, I’m sure,” Romeo says.
He pulls me closer, and when his stiff erection brushes up against my leg, I moan—this time in pleasure.
My hand goes for his boxer briefs, but he catches my wrist and pulls my arm away. “What did I tell you about that?” he asks.
I stare up into his dark eyes.
He’s so incredibly attractive, it’s distracting. I often find myself getting intimidated when I least expect it. Things would be so much easier if he were stupid, or shallow, or even if he had a hot face but a mediocre body. But he doesn’t. His body is perfect. His face makes angels weep. And he’s genuine. Romeo is the complete package.
“Sorry,” I say. I hope my thoughts aren’t written in my expression.
“When we’re in bed, you’re submissive. You wait for instructions.” He says it gently enough considering it’s a rebuke, then he brushes his lips across mine, waking in me a painful desire to kiss him—and I definitely know better than to do that.
His fingers touch my stomach, my hip. “Naked. I approve.” His palm cups my breast. “Take off my underwear.”
My hands are already moving toward him before his command registers.
I’ve never undressed him before. It feels intimate and forbidden.
As I slide the boxers down his hips, I marvel at how firm his body is.
What must it be like, I wonder, to walk around with so much strength and power at one’s disposal? How different my life might have turned out if I’d been a large man instead of a slender woman.
His boxers are down to his knees, and I have to curl forward to pull them the rest of the way off.
Thanks to the butt plug, I’m breathless long before I accomplish my task. But accomplish it I do—I’m motivated.
“Lindsay?”
I start to glance up but don’t make it past his hips. Romeo’s enormous cock is swollen, ready for me, to take me…
But he won’t be taking me, I realize. He won’t repeal Hawthorne’s punishment.
His cock deserves to be licked, but I manage to retain control of myself.
“Your breathing is strange,” he says as he props himself up on one elbow. His bare, bronzed chest makes me drool, and I’m dying to touch him, to really touch him, to enjoy the perfection of his body. “Lie on your stomach,” he orders. “I want to see where Hawthorne hit you.”
“Hawthorne didn’t really hurt me,” I protest, but Romeo’s already turning me over.
His hands are gentle on my skin, his touch soothing. He cups my buttocks, slides his fingers underneath. My heart hammers wildly, and heat coils between my legs.
And then he stops.
“Oh,” he says. Just one small word, pronounced on a low exhale. I can’t tell if he’s upset or shocked or disappointed or what.
His fingers spread my ass cheeks, and my face burns with humiliation as he chuckles, the sound low in his throat. Wrapping his arms around me, he turns me over again.
Even then, he doesn’t let go.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he asks, cradling me. “I came in here to fuck you.”
I groan. Goddamn Hawthorne! I should have protested more, should have made a bargain with him. Not that it would have done any good.
Romeo gently lowers me back onto the bed.
“Are you going to leave?” I ask.
“Well… Sex is out. I wouldn’t want Hawthorne going around my punishment, so I won’t undermine his.” He slides his long body out next to me and turns on his side, his head propped in his hand. “I think I’ll stay a little longer,” he says. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Talk? Discussing work is the last thing on my mind.
“I could suck you off,” I offer hopefully, but Romeo shakes his head. “Or give you a hand job?”
He laughs. “Nothing sexual tonight. It’s probably just as well because we need to have this conversation. It’s long overdue. I noticed you were looking at the photo on my desk earlier.”
Not at all what I expected him to say. “I’ll admit that I was curious.”
“You’re wondering why it’s in such a prominent place.”
This time I shake my head.
“You’re not wondering?” he asks.
My tongue feels like glue. “Slade explained it to me. That she was your girlfriend, and the breakup was particularly hard on you.”
He considers that. “The three of us haven’t discussed what happened at the end,” he says. “None of us really wanted to dwell on it. You figure, if a man can’t make a woman happy, that’s one thing, but when three men can’t make her happy… It stings a little.�
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He turns onto his back and laces his fingers behind his head. It makes the muscles of his chest flare wide.
I want to trace the outline of his biceps and follow it across his shoulders to where it merges into his pecs, then down, like a trickle of water taking the path of least resistance…
He sighs, and I jerk my eyes away from his sculpted abs. The image of his erection, its swollen length lying on his stomach, is etched into my memory.
This would all be so much easier if we were just having sex.
“You know, I’m glad you’re still in love with her,” I say.
Frowning, he looks at me. “Who told you that?”
“Slade,” I say. “But it’s obvious that you’re not over her.”
He digests that. What he doesn’t do is tell me I’m wrong, and despite my best efforts to be casual, humiliation eats into my confidence.
I’ve long known I’m just a substitute. No one expected things to get serious between us, yet it happened.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not essentially a rebound. Being the first serious woman after a heartbreak… I’m fighting a losing battle.
“Why are you happy about that?” he asks.
“Because… because… I don’t know.”
At least he doesn’t look at me like I’m an idiot. “You’re confused about us,” he guesses. “Who do you think you love?”
I shake my head. “I really don’t know.”
“But not all of us.”
“I… don’t know.” My heart is going faster and faster. I can’t be having this conversation with him.
“So instead you fall into and out of love with us?” he asks. His attention is focused completely on me.
It’s too much scrutiny, especially from him, so instead of answering, I just shrug.
“Tell me, Lindsay, what do you want? When you think about how this will all work out, what would make you happy?”
I lick my lips, but I can’t look away from his penetrating gaze even though it feels like he’s trespassing in my soul, browsing through my secrets.
If I lie, if I hold back, he’ll know.
“To keep going on like this,” I say. “I’m happy with the way things are.”
“If you had to choose one of us to be with, to settle down with? Who would you choose?”
“You,” I whisper.
“You told Slade that you wanted to run away with him,” he says. His words, though gentle and nonjudgmental, send adrenaline shooting through my veins.
“I…”
“Yes or no?”
“I did,” I admit. I’m beyond exposed to him. My soul has been peeled back. My heart sits on the table, waiting for his rejection.
“You would marry Hawthorne, wouldn’t you?”
“No way,” I say quickly.
Romeo just waits.
“What?” I ask.
“You never imagined it?”
My heart pounds, and my cheeks burn. “Ok, yes. But I think we’d be miserable.”
“You’re wrong there.” He goes quiet, lets me digest that. “Right now, you would choose me,” he says. He leans in close, so close.
My gaze drifts down to his full lips. Like everything else he does, Romeo is an amazing kisser.
“Yes or no?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“If I had a ring and asked you to marry me, what would you say?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
I can’t tell if he’s teasing me intentionally or if he’s just curious, idly poking at this because it’s mildly interesting to him. It doesn’t matter. The fantasy of Romeo wanting me forever… Yes, yes, oh yes.
He doesn’t, though, and he won’t, but having heard him say the words… That, at least, is mine.
“What do you want, right now?” he asks, his voice so seductive.
“To kiss you?” I say, and heaven help me because it comes out like a question.
He moves close, until our mouths are only inches apart. “You don’t need permission to kiss your lovers,” he says.
“But—”
“Sex is off the table. That’s already been established. Right now I’m not your boss, and I’m not your dominant lover. Right now, I’m your boyfriend, nothing more. You can kiss me.”
I make the mistake of looking into his fathomless dark eyes, and I find myself drowning in them.
I move forward a bit, perhaps an inch. Perhaps not even that.
But I can’t go any farther.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “I thought you wanted to kiss me.”
“Not… not if you don’t actually want me to.”
His sweet breath stirs across me as he laughs a little. “Do you think I would have given you permission to kiss me if I didn’t want you to?”
Of course I have no answer to that.
The way Romeo’s acting… I don’t understand it. I can’t wrap my mind around it, can’t make sense of the things he’s saying, things that contradict everything I thought I knew.
“Kiss me,” he orders in a low voice, and it’s enough to pull me across the small space that still separates us.
Our lips touch.
He doesn’t react, and it reminds me of the first night I slept with the three men. We were squeezed in the back of a car, and I made the mistake of trying to kiss Romeo. He didn’t chastise me, and instead he was just still. It wasn’t until I realized he wasn’t into it that he told me his rule about kissing.
This feels like that… yet it doesn’t. That was humiliating, and this is just… awkward.
“You can do better than that,” he says. “Do you need me to show you?”
Almost since the moment that Romeo entered the room, I’ve been tossed between different levels of humiliation, but now it reaches a whole new stage.
I close my eyes. “It’s fine,” I say. “Really. You asked me what I wanted…”
He catches my face in his hands and slants his mouth over mine, our lips grazing.
“The first time you kissed me,” he says, “there was a hundred times more passion in it than just now. You say you’d marry me if I asked, but then you give me a chaste smooch. No way, Lindsay. You want to kiss me, so kiss me.”
When he says So kiss me, his voice turns into a growl.
Blood rushes in my ears. My heart sounds like it’s trying to bang a hole through my chest, like it wants to flee.
His lips nibble at mine. He’s not using his teeth. This isn’t one of his dominant, claiming kisses.
Sighing in frustration and need, I soften my lips for him, but he doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity. Instead, he pulls away.
“Try again,” he says. “Kiss me like it’s the only time you’ll ever get to do it. Like tonight is the last night we’ll see each other.”
My pulse flutters. “It’s not, is it?”
“God, I hope not. It’s just an expression. I understand why you’re intimidated, but c’mon, Lindsay. You’re not afraid of a kiss, are you?” His teasing smile… so sexy.
Even though it makes the toy in my pussy and ass do uncomfortable things, I push myself up to sitting and shove Romeo down, onto the bed.
Laughing, he throws his hands up in surrender, and I’m absolutely charmed at how he pretends that I’m somehow stronger than he is.
I slide a thigh across his hips.
“Watch your plastic bits,” he says, still laughing, and I rise up a bit so that I don’t scratch him up.
I’ve never seen Romeo so playful. He’s almost like a different man. It makes me wonder what it would be like to be on a real date with him. One where we’re not discussing office work or my grandfather.
My hair spills around us as I come over him.
He grins up at me from inside our blonde waterfall. “I’ve never had a woman work so hard to try to kiss me before,” he says. “I wonder if I should be offended.”
And then I’m grinning as I move my face toward his. He’s tempting, delicious, and unattainable. I
t’s a wicked combination.
And there’s something irresistible about the way he’s giving me full control.
My eyes close as my lips meet his, and this time he kisses me back. Even now, he can’t help taking charge—I feel it in the way his body moves.
His arms come around me, and I’m not the least bit surprised when he flips me, his body over mine.
Suddenly, we’re making out, hungry for each other. The feel of his erection between us, forbidden and impossible, only makes me hornier.
Romeo, too, it seems.
My hands go everywhere, touch everything… his soft, thick hair, the prickly stubble on his jaw and throat, the warm ridges of his chiseled chest. I dig my nails into his thighs. They’re like coiled steel. I could ride one to orgasm.
His tongue strokes mine, then thrusts. My body knows this pulsing tempo, and it’s almost like I can feel him between my legs.
Moaning, I press my torso against him, my nipples crushing into his hard chest.
My pussy touches his thigh. The dildo shifts slightly.
That’s all it takes for my core to begin shuddering. I grind my hips against his leg.
He growls, then rocks to the side without breaking our kiss and pushes my waist down, keeping me from rubbing against him.
As I struggle to move closer, I can feel the tip of his cock sometimes touching my stomach.
I slip one of my hands around his huge arms. Damn, I need to come.
But it’s not going to happen.
He won’t let it.
I pry my mouth away from his. “This is torture.”
His easy smile all but kills me. “Like high school all over again.”
I smile like I know what he’s talking about. I didn’t really date much in high school before I ran away, so I didn’t have the experience of long and frustrating make-out sessions.
There’s something exquisite about this particular form of torture, of Romeo’s hands sliding down my hip and under my ass, the way he squeezes me, his desire apparent.
And I want him just as bad.
Eventually he pulls away.
“I should suck you off,” I say.
“Because this is your punishment, not mine, right?” he asks. “Nice try.”
He settles on his back and pulls me against him.
Forbidden Fix (Executive Toy Book 6) Page 8
