His hand moves from the back of the couch to the strings on his pants. He twirls them around his finger, then he cups his hand around them and begins to pull and tug … oh my God! Is that growing impression on his pants his cock?
“This is what I’m going to do,” he says, and my guilty eyes snap to his smiling ones. “I’m going to refill my glass, and then I’m going to go grab something from the back room. You may choose to leave”—he gestures at the door with his empty glass—“or you may choose to stay. The choice is yours, but know that if you stay, you’re consenting to put your trust in me. You’ll do as I ask, and if you don’t want or like something, the only word I’ll recognize is mercy. Not stop or no, just mercy. Got it?”
“Mercy, like you say for that hand game, or, oh, wait, is that Uncle?” I blush, a nervous laugh erupting between each word.
His response to my nervousness is nothing more than a smile before he proceeds to do as he said; pouring himself a glass of wine and disappearing down the hall into what I can only imagine is the “back room.” And oh-ho, believe me, that’s not the only thing I can imagine. My brain’s filling with all sorts of things like running down the hall to the elevator, pouring myself another glass of wine, wondering what’s in the “back room,” or worse, using the word mercy tonight. I head over to the counter and pour more wine into my empty glass as I debate my options a little longer.
What to do?
I tap my fingernail against the glass. Damn! I take a big, long sip or, rather, a gulp. He magically appears out of the dark hallway. Still with no shirt on and that growing impression on his pants, my eyes take a quick check. Yep, it’s still there.
Shit, I just know it! I’m going to say mercy tonight.
I smile, tipping back my glass to indulge in a few more sips.
Debate over.
I’ve made my choice … but now a movie and some pancakes sound good. Well, safe.
He moves over to the counter and places his wine glass on top of it. “Are you comfortable?”
With a little head toggle, I reply, “Yeah.”
“Is the wine doing what you hoped it would?”
Getting me loosened up? Yes. I laugh with a single shrug.
“Did you think about what bra to put on before you came over tonight?”
Oh, boy. Here we go. My cheeks heat as I answer now with a weak double shrug.
“Do your panties match your bra?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I smirk and raise my glass, draining the wine from it.
“Yes.” He takes the glass from my shaky hand and sets it on the counter beside his. “That is why I asked,” he says, the severity in his eyes chasing my sassiness straight out of the room. “Take your shirt off and show me what it looks like.”
“What, my bra?”
“Yes.”
“It’s red, and there’s lace on it,” I say as the garment in question strangles my swelling breasts.
“And?”
“And yes.” I take a deep breath, more aware of the ache rapidly increasing inside my red bra. “I thought about it before I put in on, before I came here. And yes. My panties are red. They match my bra as well. There, is that what you want?”
“No.” He folds his hands together, resting an elbow on the counter. “I want to see it. Take your shirt off.”
And there it is, that steady, stern, in control voice he uses during shoots. The one that everyone seems to listen to. The one that keeps everyone safe. The very one that gets my panties a little damp by the end of the day. Damn him!
Well, I’m here. I agreed to stay by not running when I had the chance. Somehow, my shaky hands obey long enough to finagle my shirt free. I fold it and put it on the counter. Challenge accepted and conquered. Proud of myself, I lift my chin ready to take him on.
“Good.” A small smile twists his lips. “I’m going to rub my finger over your nipple now.” He lifts his hand.
“No.” I ball my hands, preparing for his touch. Obviously, not that ready.
His finger lightly scraps across the thin material of my bra.
“I told you”—he pinches my hard nipple—“no doesn’t work here.”
My back arches with a deep, three-year-old repressed moan. His fingers tighten on my erect bud.
“Please,” I whimper in a tone I haven’t heard in eons. “Please,” I beg, but I’m unsure for what. My body to stop quivering, the wetness to stop flowing between my legs, for him to continue? What? What do I want?
He releases me, calmly folding his hands back together. “You want to take your bra off?” Yes! Yes! That’s what I want! “It’s okay, Jay. You may do so now.”
As though I needed permission, I reach behind my back, unclasp, and free my hot, hard breasts from the tight thing.
“You have nice tits, not something you should be hiding for so long.” My breasts slightly lift and thrust forward as he draws a slow and steady finger along my cleavage. “You wanted me to see them?”
“I … ah …” His touch stunts my response. “I … I don’t know.”
“Yes. You did. You’re not the type of woman who does something just because she’s told. So, I’ll ask again.” He leans down, takes my erect nipple into his warm mouth, giving it a few, long sucks, and then lets go. “You wanted me to see your tits?” He nips my hard tip once more. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes!” I’m throbbing everywhere! I need this. Oh, God, please forgive me. I need him.
“Good.” He winks, picking up his wine glass. “Now. The pants. Remove them.”
Autopilot flips on, and I unbutton, unzip, and drag my jeans off. I look up, pausing at his crotch at his full-blown erection pressing against his heather gray pants.
He chuckles, setting his wine glass back on the counter. “You don’t get any of that tonight.”
“Why?” I find his dark eyes, my fingers itching to inspect him, to touch him, to make him feel as I do right now—frustrated, sexy, hot, exposed, and vulnerable. He could tell me to do anything, and damn, I think I’d do it.
“Perhaps another time but not tonight.” He reaches into his pocket. “Lift your hands.” He pulls out my black stocking, the same one he stole from me in the hospital, the one I tied him up with the other night.
Oh, I get where this is going.
My heart races with excitement, palms sweat, and I’m a little wetter between the legs.
“Lift them.” He gestures with a nudge.
Things are starting to move fast, real fast. I’m standing all but in my red panties in his kitchen with him holding a makeshift bondage in his hand.
“Tonight is about trust, Jay.” His left eyebrow rises. “Are you ready to trust me?”
Trust! Now there’s a word I haven’t practiced in a while. I haven’t put my faith in, relied on, or believed in anyone in a long time. I’m not sure that’s the kind of trust he’s talking about. Surrender, yielding, abandoning my indecisions, my doubt, and my fears—that’s what I think he’s trying to accomplish here. He wants me to forget about everything and let go.
The thought of what that might get me prompts me to lift my arms. I’m ready to submit. I’m ready to offer him my body.
He wraps the black silk around my wrists. “I’m going to take care of you tonight.” He ties the bow tight. “I’m going to make you come so good, Miss Rigsby,” he says with firm confidence.
“I’m counting on it.” I pause to catch my unsteady breath. “Mr. Kane.”
He moves the stools out of the way and pushes me against the counter. I hold my breath as he kneels in front of me.
What’s happening? What’s he going to do?
Strong hands grip my hips. He kisses along the top edge of my panties, half on the material and half on my skin. It forces the curbed air from my lungs. The more he kisses my belly, the firmer his grip gets. My hips sway, seeking and searching for his next kiss. His mouth moves down onto the silk covering my wetness and heat.
Oh, shit! Is that his tongue pressing against my clit through the thin material? I lean back into the counter with a low cry. If he keeps this up, it won’t take long for me to come!
As if hearing my concerns, he pulls my panties off, stands up, and spins me around. “Hands on the counter,” he instructs, and I lift my bound wrists to obey. “Lean forward.” He pushes my body down onto the cool granite. “And grab the far edge of the counter.”
I stretch forward, tilting up on my toes. “Like this?” The position presses my sore nipples into the hard countertop, rendering me defenseless. I welcome it. This is what I want … to be his for a spell, to belong to him if only just for a moment.
“Yes,” I hear him say followed by something that resembles a growl. “Spread your legs.”
“Like this?” I pull my feet apart and thrust my hips, again rewarded by that manly growl. Oh, the sound soaks me. I tip back up on my toes, bringing my ass higher. “Is this what you want?”
A deep moan hits my ears just as a hard hand hits my ass.
“Hey!” I push up, only to be thrust back down.
“Don’t tease me, Jay.” He swats my ass again, not as hard this time. “Or I’ll make this ache last all night and”—his hand gently rubs my tender ass cheek—“we both know how bad you need release.”
The muscles in my body relax. He’s right. I need to get this over with. It’s not like all the other times, which were orgasm by proxy; a vibrator. Tonight, it’ll be inspired by a real live sexy, gorgeous man. The thought alone makes me squirm where I stand.
“There you go,” he says, voice deep and low. “That’s good. Relax.” His hand slides over the slope of my ass, making a beeline straight for my clit.
“Oh, shit!” A few proficient strokes and my ass lifts higher. A finger slips deep inside me. I grip the edge of the counter. “Oh, no.” There’s this ache, this hot, begging pull between my thighs. Hurts but feels good. A sort of punishment for depriving my pussy of a man’s touch for so long. “Oh, God!” My forehead drops to the counter. “No!”
“Yes.” His finger slips back out, circling my nub again. “Would you like me to lick you here?”
“Oh, God!” My knees bend, but he’s quick to pull me back up with the pressure of his fingers. “Oh … oh …” I cringe, imagining his tongue on me. “Yes!”
“How about here?” Another finger presents against the pucker of my tight asshole. “You want my tongue here?”
“No!” I pant, raising my hips, meeting the slight pressure of his fingers. “No … no …”
“No doesn’t work, remember?” he whispers into my ear, both fingers pushing, pressing, and prodding me into ecstasy. “You know what to say,” he taunts as he surges deeper, ebbs slower. “Feels good? Yes? You want more?”
“Yes!” My hips thrust against him. “Yes. Don’t stop! I … I want more.”
“Like this?” He moves faster just as another hand comes around the front of me, and when it finds my clit, I begin to shake all over. “You want it like this?”
“Oh, no!” I grip tighter to the counter. “No! No! Please, no,” I cry, plead, beg in the most unrecognizable sounds.
“Yeah, baby,” he coaxes as his calm, controlled voice continues to pull three years of denial from my body.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
STEELE
I’m not sure what happened, or if I knew that it was even happening until I found myself on the couch rocking a tearful Jay in my arms. Almost instantly, the meltdown joined her orgasm as though one would not happen without the other. I should’ve prepared for it. Should’ve taken it into consideration that she hasn’t had sex in years, not since the man she loved died, so other emotions, more than the normal ones, were bound to arise.
Fuck. All good stunts have more than one damn outcome. I should’ve seen this coming, but I didn’t. I cradle her trembling body closer to me.
I didn’t see it coming because she’s not a fucking stunt to me.
“It’s okay.” I stroke her hair, kissing her forehead. She means so much more to me than what I’m letting on. It’s fucking me up.
The shaking and the sniffling slows. Hands clinging tightly to my back start to loosen and retract. Afraid that once her head clears, she’s going to jump up and leave, I pull the fleece blanket draped on the sectional over her. I tuck it around her, selfishly trapping her against me.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffles against my chest.
“Now, there’s no need for that.” I kiss the top of her silky hair, wrapping my arms tighter around her.
“You must think I’m crazy,” she mumbles into the blanket.
“What? Don’t all girls cry after they come?”
Her head tilts back, and she looks at me. I wink. She smiles, and it eases my fears of her bolting. “I’m sorry if I was too rough,” I say, cringing inside for slapping her ass.
“No. It wasn’t you or what you did. You were, ah, it was a good rough.” She rests her head back on my chest. “And you were gentle and kind too. I didn’t mean to come here and … ah …” She pulls the blanket back up and burrows her chin into it.
“Don’t worry about it.” I finally break the silence. “I couldn’t sleep, was just lying on the couch, flipping through the channels. Hey,” I lay my hand on the fleece unsure what part of her body I touched. A leg maybe? “Did you know that there are whales alive who are older than the book Moby Dick?”
“No, I didn’t.” She laughs, sliding off me. At least, she isn’t looking for her clothes. Instead, she claims a cushion for herself beside me. Keeping the blanket up high around her naked body, she peers at me from over the fleece, deep in thought. It slithers under my skin. “Why do you think your mother doesn’t love you?”
“My mother loves me,” I say, totally taken off guard.
“I’m talking about”—she stops to pull the fallen blanket back up her shoulder—“your biological mother.”
“Oh, I get it.” A smirk yanks my lips, wondering who’s been talking to her. Must have been from the other night when we went to see Stone’s band, so it had to be Jaggs or Harley. “You think because I know why you’re broken inside, you need to know why I am? You need an explanation as to why you could never fall in love with me?”
Ignoring my revelation, she places the blanket under her arms, exposing her neck, shoulders, and long slender arms. “What did she do to you?”
Fuck it. I bore witness to her meltdown, so why not return with some of my own casualties? Besides, she’s easy to talk to, almost makes me want to bare my soul to her. “She tried to kill me.” I stand, walk over to the fridge, and grab a beer. I hold it up to her.
Eyes wide, she shakes her head. “She tried to kill you?” She follows my every move.
“Yes. Not once but twice.” I wave two fingers in the air.
“What? How?” Mouth partly opened, she watches as I lower myself back on the sectional.
“Well …” I tip the beer back for a quick sip. “The first time, I was five. She tried to put me, her, and Stone permanently asleep with the car exhaust in our garage.”
“Oh, my God,” she barely mouths the words.
“After that, my dad got custody of Stone and me. We moved in with him, Ma, Token, and Nix. We didn’t know it at the time, but Crash was in Ma’s belly, and Lulu, my little sister, she came a couple of years later. Stone and I adjusted well in our new normal family.”
“What’s wrong with her, your mother?”
“First off”—I lift a finger—“she’s not my mother. I don’t call her that, not anymore. But to answer your question, I don’t know. She was a junky. I remember the”—I point at my arm—“needle marks. I think she had some mental issues. Not always, though. Before Stone was born, things were good with us. She was kind. Kissed and hugged me all the time, I remember that and the stories.” I pause, reminiscing the woman who acted like she was my mom for the first few years of my life. “She’d read them to me at night.
Then Dad was gone for months for his job. I vaguely remember fights about it, he was coming and going, and then Stone was born. She didn’t kiss and hug Stone like she did me. She didn’t read to him, either.”
She stares at me for a second, takes my beer, takes a sip, and hands it back to me. “That’s really sad,” she says with misty eyes.
“Yeah.” I tilt back the beer and drain the remainder of it. “I think her head wasn’t screwed on right, and she couldn’t deal with it.” I lift my beer again. “Sure you don’t want one?”
“Yeah.” She shakes her head again, registering what I told her. “Yes. Okay. I’ll take one.”
I grab two beers, pop them open, and plop back down next to her.
“But you saw her again after that?”
“Yeah, well, kind of. Our dad gained custody, and she was granted supervised visitation every month with a social worker. She stopped coming after the first visit.” I hand her a beer. “Stone, he forgot about her, but me, I spent a little more time with her, and it wasn’t that easy.”
“But wait, you said she tried to kill you twice?” Still holding the cold bottle in her hand, she sits up straight, waiting for an answer.
“Yes. I was seven and leaving school, heading toward the school bus. I heard Stone call my name. I remember thinking it was weird to hear his voice at school, so I looked around the parking lot and spotted him sitting in a strange car.” I stop to recollect the abandoned moment. “It was a light blue Nova. When I got close enough to the car, I saw her. Later, I found out she’d kidnapped him from his daycare. Anyway …” I scratch an itch that’s not really there on my head. “I … ah, I had to go with her. She threatened to hurt him. Well, she didn’t say as much, but I sensed it. I don’t know, I think I wanted to see her too. A sad, small part of me missed her.”
“That’s understandable.” She touches my thigh.
I stare down at her hand and what it represents—comfort. The kind gesture keeps me talking. “She took us to a dumpy apartment with padlocks on top of the inside doors. At first, she was nice, and in my young, naïve mind, I wanted to believe she had changed, but as the week went on, her bloodshot eyes resurfaced. The hair pulling, pacing, and swearing all started up again. At the end of week two, like every other night, she filled up the tub for our bath. She asked me to get some clean towels from the basket in her room, and when I came back, I could hear the water running into the tub, hear splashing, and when I came around to her side, I saw Stone thrashing beneath the water. She was holding his head down. All I saw was his little body fighting to survive. I dropped the towels and pushed her as hard as I could. She fell forward, hit her head on the edge of the tub, and slipped into the water. Stone jumped up and threw himself into my arms. I held him, and the entire time, she didn’t move.”
Steele Page 9
