by Angel Payne
Her senses swam in a thick fog. It felt so good. Everything about him felt so good. “You…really mean that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
Her lips lifted. Only one glass of wine, but everything was limp and carefree, as if she’d had the whole bottle. “I had no idea.”
“Disguised it that well, did I?” He curled a smile of his own. “When all I thought about, walkin’ into your little office at Nellis every mornin’, was how to get you exactly like this. Wait—no.” He swung around to mount the bed, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her with him. She now knelt on the mattress, wrists tethered to the bedpost and ass high and presented to him. He revised with a growl, “Exactly like this.”
Jen lowered her head between her arms. The pose, so submissive, also felt completely right. “Thank you for the clarification, Sir.”
“Sir.” Another satisfied snarl rumbled from his chest. “Do you know how much pleasure you give me, every glorious time that word spills across your lips?”
“Don’t think I do. But maybe you can just…show me instead?” She finished by subtly wiggling her ass, though it was no small feat. With his hand sweeping back and forth across her cheeks, spreading the heat of his first swats, it was all she could do to be coy. She needed more of him, so damn badly. Needed him to touch her in other places. Illicit places…
“Perhaps I can.” But while his voice approved, he pulled his hands away. Bafflement struck but only for a second. A fresh wave of arousal took over—as Sam reached to a control panel embedded in the bed’s footboard. After he pushed a button, the mattress began to raise up—but only beneath her legs. She would’ve laughed aloud, if the action didn’t heat her sex in a hundred new ways. A control number bed, the D/s version. Was there any end to what the Nyte’s creators had dreamed up in the way of kinky delights?
The next moment, even that cognitive thinking was ripped away. Sam dug his hands into her hips, centering her lower body against the hump. Power radiated off his fingertips as he flowed them in, spreading heat across her buttocks.
A gasp burst off her lips. A growl curled off his.
“Fuck. Me.” His hands splayed, kneading her flesh and warming her skin all over again. “So bloody beautiful. So pink and sweet…”
“But…?” Jen went ahead and led where his voice seemed to be trailing and reveled in the approving hum that prefaced his reply.
“But it needs to be red.” And just like that, no more approval. Only his touch, back with a rough purpose, echoed by the wolfish edge in his voice. “Your ass needs to bear my mark, girl.”
Take senses, toss into rock tumbler. But Jen sighed out her gratitude for the ride. How her balance rolled from the magic of his voice and the spreading heat from his possessive strokes along her tingling skin.
“Yes,” she heard herself rasp. “Yes. Mark me…”
He snarled low again. “Ask it properly. I want to hear that pretty word from you again. Say it, sweet Jenny. ‘Spank me, please—'”
“Sir.” She filled it in with eager longing. “Yes. Oh yes, Sir, please. Spank me. Mark me. Oh!”
The exclamation took over for any more coherent words as Sam lowered a thwack across her ass. While her flesh stung, her mind careened. Logic taunted, just beyond her reach. There was a reason she wanted this so badly, especially from him, but did it matter? All she wanted right now was his touch. All she needed was his dominion, full and consuming and perfect. Sam. Sam. Sam. For this moment, for this time, she only existed because of him. Through him.
Another spank. Unleashed power. Reverberations of pain.
She screamed. Or maybe just dreamed it.
“Give me ‘fantasy’ if you need to stop, mouse. I’m only just beginning.”
She rolled her hips, letting the sting spread and dissipate. The tingles down her legs and through her sex…were incredible. “Don’t stop. Please, Sir.”
“So certain.” Why did his voice suddenly sound weird? Almost…wicked? “So sure.”
The answer came with a resounding crack—though the next impact to her ass wasn’t from his hand. It was the harsh stroke of leather in the middle of her left cheek. As Jen struggled to summon a scream, another whoosh whipped the air. She took in the musk of the leather—before pain chomped into her right cheek. When he rained another blow to her left, the shriek finally manifested. The right again. Back to speechlessness, fighting to accept the agony that would soon bring ecstasy. Or so she hoped.
Fantasy. It already hovered at the outskirts of her mind, tempting her to call out, when a new kind of growl vibrated out of Sam. Jen had never heard a sound like it. Deep. Dark. Dripping with carnality. Coarse with need. “I knew the crop would love your ass, darlin’. Knew that your skin would take my marks so perfectly.” Another rumble, twice as entrancing as the first, flowed as he whipped her again: two more blows on each stinging cheek. “Take it in for me, sweet Jenny. All of it. These memories in your skin…take them into your spirit too. Twist them inside of you. Weave me inside of you.”
She sighed. “You’re already there.”
“Not deep enough.” He emphasized with another two strokes. “Let the pain open it deeper and then pour me inside the crack. Let me into the places that mean you’ll never forget me. That mean you’ll never think yourself unworthy ever again.”
More smacks. More pain. More spaces, so far inside, that cracked open and flooded with the adoration, strength, and majesty in his voice.
More of herself…surrendered to him.
More of the composure she could no longer hold together.
His passion set her tears free. They burst on messy sobs, and she didn’t care. A vision danced across her mind. She was five or six, twirling in the front yard with a “wand” made from a stick and some party streamers. She was magical and perfect…so many years before the world began to tell her she wasn’t. Before she became the dork, the brain, the geek, “the weird one.”
Now, she danced in the light again. Streamers of pleasure and pain blew across her senses. The beauty of it was…intense. Blazing. Blinding. And everywhere in that heaven, there was Sam. Always Sam. Now leaning over her, brushing back her hair to collect her tears with his kisses. Pressing against her so his heat and strength permeated her body. His satin vest caressed her back, his wool kilt scraped her ass…and teased farther between her legs. As if she needed a reminder of how her body craved him as much as her soul did.
“So beautiful,” he murmured. “Damn, Jenny. How beautiful you are to me.”
Sensations continued to bombard. The streamers morphed into other images, full of light and lust and power. His strength, fused into her through the awareness they funneled into each other…through each other. She shivered from the enormity of it. Basked in the perfect, permeating glow of it…
Of him…
Sam. Sam. Sam.
The teasing swipes of his kilt against her pussy were more instigators of the sensations, filling her with tremulous, joyous shivers and sobs. She was like a jet, guided by him through a canopy of clouds, into the blinding light from above. But then he banked and rolled the aircraft, and she was disoriented. Which way was up? And did she care anymore? She only knew she longed for more. Needed it like her next damn breath. Needed him.
“Sam. Sam.”
“I know, darlin’. I know.”
She whimpered in protest. He didn’t know. She needed more of him. All of him…
A crinkle of foil serrated the air. The kilt didn’t abrade her ass anymore. There was furnace heat…and the push of a steely knob at the cushions guarding her intimate tunnel.
“I need to fill you.” He prodded in a little more, circling his hips to stroke every sensitive edge of her throbbing entrance. “Will you have me inside you, Jenny? Will you let me fuck your perfect little cunt?”
She didn’t remember saying yes. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe he’d just heard the cry that echoed from her heart, resonated through her being, drawing his cock inside her, as inevitable
as the sun in her visions.
As undeniable as her love for him.
Ohhhh, shit.
She loved him.
Ohhhh yes, she certainly did.
The truth of it punched free as he peeled back her defenses, replacing her barriers with the fullness of his body. Jen let it crash in, racking her in harder sobs, knowing this would be the only time she could. Between the tears she’d already shed and Sam’s relentless pace, she’d be able to weep for every woe in the world and get away with it at this point.
“That’s it, darlin’.” He was none the wiser either—thank God. “Give it to me, Jenny.” His words were harsh and hot in her ear. His teeth dug into the flesh beneath. His hand was a clamp of demand on her shoulder, securing her as he shuttled his cock in and out, pounding her with the urgency their connection commanded. “Take me deeper. Deeper.”
She interrupted her sobs long enough to gasp as he shoved her dress higher. Then shrieked as he reached beneath her bra, tugging hard at one nipple. Harder at the other.
“Sam! Shit!”
He twisted her nipple tighter. And again, the other. “Who am I?”
“Sir.” She panted it out, hissing as he pushed his knees between hers, spreading them farther. “You are…Sir.”
He penetrated her deeper. “And who gives you all your pain…and all your freedom?”
“You. Only you, Sir.”
He growled low. Changed his punishing pace into a more determined drive. “And if we were still in the bar, who would you pick to take you here and fuck you?”
“You.” The confession cracked from emotion. “J-Just y-you.”
He released a long breath against her neck. “Christ, Jenny. And I’d pick just you too.” His thrusts were so deep, the clap of their bodies reverberated off the walls. The sound barely registered past the blood thrumming through her ears, especially as he snaked a hand between her legs from the front. “Come with me, beauty. Let it all go for me.”
She couldn’t have denied him if her life depended on it. As his knowing fingers stroked her to orgasm, she wondered if she was dying. Surely heaven didn’t give this kind of gift and expect nothing in return. Her nerve endings were fire. Her heartbeat was chaos. Every inch of her sex was an inferno, blazing and bright, convulsing and cataclysmic, squeezing over Sam’s cock with the needy desperation of a Tolstoy heroine.
Sam…
“Jenny. Oh fuck…Jenny.”
I love you…
“Take it all from me, beauty.”
Yes!
He shoved in hard and then froze. Groaned hard as his cock expanded against her walls and then shot off. Bellowed as he exploded again and again in the dark, tight embrace of her body.
But the very next moment, Sam started pumping again. He threw a leg over, bracing his foot against the headboard, still slicing in and out, as if he hadn’t just climaxed with the gusto of a lion.
“Goddamn, woman,” he snarled. “It won’t stop. I can’t—” Another rough groan. Harder, harsher thrusts. “Fuck. Fuck.”
His lust whipped hers into a new frenzy. Within a minute, Jen felt her sex grab him all over again, clenching his shaft as a new climax tumbled her into darker oblivion. “I can’t stop either. I…can’t…” Unbelievably, it was better than the first. Waves of white heat demolished like a Biblical storm, ripping screams of ecstasy up her already-parched throat. Her senses dissolved. Her body shook.
Her world was changed.
Chapter Eight
His world was changed.
The truth of it wrapped like ropes lashed to moorings in that storm, refusing to be loosened even after Sam released Jen from the cuffs and lowered the bed. It was still relentless as he pulled out, tossed the condom into the bin near the bed, and then collapsed into the mountain of pillows—making sure to take her with him.
Without a word, he tucked her head against his chest, evoking deep intimacy though they lay there mostly clothed. His lungs still heaved, raising her up and down, like he’d just burned through an intense flight. His heartbeat roared like afterburners in his ears.
“Holy God,” he muttered.
“He was probably involved somehow,” she chuckled back—speaking more of a truth than she likely realized.
Because only a force like the Almighty could facilitate the tempest taking place inside him, even as they lay there in sublime stillness. A storm so forceful, Sam had to feign clearing his throat not to roar out the blaring truth of it.
I’m falling in love with you.
Yep. Holy God.
Aside from that, he didn’t contemplate or question how he knew it so fully. Didn’t want to think about the countless times, missing faces and places now, where he hadn’t experienced anything remotely close to this. Hadn’t known half the ache of being outside a woman’s body instead of staying buried inside the hot, tight home for which his body was perfectly, supremely created…
“Well, there’s a fantasy crossed off my list.”
Or endured the celebration in his chest at hearing such soft, satisfied words tumble off her sweet, succulent lips. Or felt free enough to issue a snarky comeback like, “Which fantasy would that be, exactly? Gettin’ to play in this starship disguised as a bed?”
“Close, but no.” She sidled up next to him, proppin’ her chin atop her folded hands, and the recessed lighting turned her eyes into mesmerizin’ emeralds. “Getting to submit so fully to you.”
Sam growled out his initial approval. He reached for a thick twist of her hair, working the rosewood-colored strands around a couple of his fingers while lifting a shit-eating grin. She returned a look so sultry, his cock twitched again like a badger wakin’ up in a cracked log. “It was a fine thing, Jennifer Josephine, gettin’ to put my personal signature across your gorgeous backside.”
She stirred and then rose a little, treatin’ him to a most memorable sight of her creamy cleavage. “Well, okay,” she spurted, lips tremoring with half a laugh. “That settles that little curiosity for me.”
Sam pushed the pillow higher under his head. “And which curiosity would that be?”
“The one in which I wondered if you could possibly turn me on so totally again.”
He pushed up, giving himself a better view to really contemplate her pure bonnie features. “You liked it that much?”
She pulled in a breath, closing and then opening her eyes. “Yes, Sir. It was…nice.”
He focused tighter on her. He could practically see his gaze darken by a few shades, reflected by her shimmering greens. “A little nice…or a lot?”
“Depends.” She met his stare directly, as if able to see that he still didn’t fully believe her. “If it was fulfilling one of my daydreams, then just a little. But if this was a fantasy from one of my nights, alone and thinking about you in bed…”
“You’ve thought about me? In bed?” After she nodded, he pressed, “And…daydreams? You’ve thought about me at the office too?”
Not that he hadn’t thought about her in that way at the office. Perhaps a few times.
Okay, so he’d done it damn near every time he’d walked into the place.
Especially when he’d stroll in and catch her unawares, teethin’ the bottom of her lip while tappin’ out numbers on a calculator, or laughin’ from some meme Lola showed her, or just starin’ out the window at the tarmac and absently stirrin’ her coffee. Perhaps in one of those moments especially—because he’d hoped she was gazin’ out at the planes and entertainin’ a few ruminations about him.
Now that he knew she likely had been…
His soul. Sandstone.
Done. Crumbled. In all the very best ways.
“You’re a damn hard one not to think about, Sam Mackenna.”
No. Not sandstone. Just a slip of sand itself, like the fine silt between the boulders at Sango Bay, ready to be washed out to a sea of emotion from the crashin’ wave of her declaration.
What she did to him…what she had the power to always do to him…
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And what the hell was he supposed to say in return—without bletherin’ too much about the tempest truly takin’ over his senses right now? At this point, it all felt like too much—but at the same time, none of it was enough. He yearned to call out of duty tomorrow, climb into the cockpit of a skywritin’ plane instead, and plaster the Vegas Valley skies with one message only, over and over again.
I’m in love with Jennifer Josephine Thorne.
Och. What was the worst that could happen, truly? In two weeks, he’d be buggin’ back home. He and Jenny could surely manage an awkwardness tango for that long. Seemed a tinier price to pay than the lifetime that was the alternative: the what if of never saying anything at all.
So he took the plunge. Sort of. He tossed out the skywritin’ idea in favor of turnin’ to the tousled woman next to him and joltin’ up one corner of his mouth at her.
And bravin’ it out to blurt his heartfelt confession out to her.
“And you’re an impossible one not to think about, Jenny Thorne.”
All right, he managed to keep the L word out of it, but the partial exposure was well worth the risk. At once, her features went all gooey and sweet. His senses turned to a matchin’ texture of mush. The feelin’ wasn’t completely uncomfortable, but it sure as hell wasn’t easy to keep sustained.
“Is that…a problem?” she finally asked, addin’ the most breathtakin’ lick along her lips.
“The fact that I can’t stop thinkin’ about you?” Sam grinned. “No, mouse. That’s so not a problem.”
“But…” With darkening features, she sought out the center of his chest with one of her palms. “But there is a problem…?”
He pointed to the foot of the bed, where the cuffs still dangled as proof of the pleasure he’d just given—and taken from—her. “You said that was a fantasy crossed off your list.”
