by Maren Smith
"Seattle." If he noticed her panicked pause, he didn't show it. "My mother is Egyptian. My father, Italian. I am, according to my grandparents, the best of two very old worlds. What about you?"
The barn door was open and the horse truly gone, and she had no one to blame for it but herself. Having started the conversation, it seemed silly and childish not to hold up her end.
"Right here," she answered reluctantly.
"Granger?"
"Born and raised." Returning the washcloth to his chest, she moved down to his stomach. Her hand trembled in spite of her efforts to quell it. He wasn't semi-soft anymore. His cock was standing, straining toward her, and the longer she stared at it, the more her mouth ran dry.
"Hm," he said, non-committal. Turning, he presented her with the equal beauty of his back—wide at the shoulders and trim at the waist, with countless tiny droplets of water running off him. She had the most absurd urge to lean in and lick one. "What do you do for a living?" He glanced back over his shoulder as he spoke, that faint smile of his softening what might otherwise have shut her down faster than a slamming door. "When you're not robbing people, of course."
It was a perfectly normal conversation; the sort one would expect while getting to know a blind date over coffee, but her stomach still twisted. Maybe because there wasn't enough washcloth to keep her hands from accidentally touching him, skin to wet, soapy skin, no matter how careful she tried to be. He truly was sinful… every inch of him a temptation she was aching not to resist. She followed his back to his butt—God, he had a gorgeous butt—lowering herself to her knees as she lightly scrubbed her way down the backs of his legs. "I go to school."
It startled her when she felt him tense. He snapped around to look at her, no trace of amusement anywhere on his face now. "In Granger? There's no college in Granger. You are eighteen, right?"
He was so serious, and it was so unexpected, Tavy couldn't help it. She laughed. For the first time in a long time, she really laughed. It felt so light and genuine. "In Silverton, at the university. I'm twenty-six, thank you very much."
Shaking her head, still chuckling, she gave his butt a slap. It was right there, after all. Practically at face level, and she just wasn't thinking. Master Alan snapped all the way around, then, before the echo of that smack faded from the tiles.
He caught a fistful of her hair close to her scalp, instantly holding her immobile and sending a race of tingling awareness straight to her lips, her nipples, and her achingly empty pussy.
He didn't look angry. On the contrary, struggling to school his expression into some semblance of severity, he was trying not to laugh. "You just smacked my ass."
All he had to do was step in, just a few inches, and his cock would be right there, at mouth level. All she had to do was open her lips, and maybe she could tempt him in. The hot spray of the shower ran down his lean body, spilling from him in places onto her. It was hard to remember he was the enemy, to be guarded against at all costs, especially when what she really wanted right now was to open herself enough to be devoured. Just one time, she wanted to know what that would feel like when she wasn't fighting so hard to hate every minute of it.
"I told you last night, I'm not a very good submissive."
"Perhaps that's because no one has yet made you want to be."
"Or maybe," she dared to counter, "not everyone who wants to be beaten has a submissive soul."
Again, that faint smile pulled first one side of his mouth into a crooked grin, and then tugged the other up to join it. "If you don't have a submissive's soul, then why are you on your knees before me, your pussy so wet I can smell it, hardly able to take your eyes off my cock?"
She honestly didn't know what to tell him. Because he was there and she was horny. Because maybe, just one time, if she let herself go long enough to simply feel whatever it was she seemed suddenly driven to feel, she could get it out of her system so she could go back to normal. Because she had told him how awful she was and he was still here, and obviously still wanted her. And maybe, the biggest reason of all, because she wanted to be wanted, in spite of what she'd done. She wanted to be so imprisoned in his strong arms that she was helpless to do anything but feel the driving fury of his lust pounding hard between her legs.
Tavy couldn't stop herself. Her gaze was drawn, pulled to the standing jut of his member only inches from her face. She looked her fill, and by the time her eyes had drifted up again, his were burning hot with desire. "Are you going to fuck me now?"
His cock twitched, the muscles of his belly tightening. Shifting his grip in her hair, gathering even more in his fist, he dragged her to her feet. Backing her up against the wall, he let go of her hair and gripped her throat instead. He didn't squeeze. He didn't have to. The dark wanting on his face already made it impossible for her to breathe.
"You haven't earned the pleasure," he told her, and yet, when she dropped the wet washcloth between their feet and reached for him, he didn't pull away from the soapy glide of her fingers closing on his shaft. She had no idea from where she got the courage.
"What about the pleasure you've earned?" For once, having her wrists bound together didn't feel like an inconvenience, and the soap on her fingers made the glide of her hands on his cock silken to the touch. Stroking the full length of him, she rolled the head of him in her palm. "What does the big, bad Master want from his purchased slave?"
She was pretty sure she knew what she wanted, and when the corners of his hypnotically kissable mouth curled up into a seductive smile, emboldened, she tried to take it. Pushing off the wall, she tried to turn him around and press him up against the tiles as she had been. She'd have gone to her knees before him, then, and with a gentle shower of warm water washing down them both, rinsing the soap from his skin, she'd have opened her mouth and taken him in. Her tongue tingled. She could already taste him, the salty masculine flavor… except that no sooner did she push at him than he caught her by the collar on her throat. In one hard motion, he had her flattened to the wall, only this time when he leaned into her there was no space between them anymore, not even enough to take a breath.
"Am I your submissive now?" he asked, his tone cool, his black eyes burning so hot with desire that she could feel the echo of those flames spreading all through her veins. Abandoning her collar, he caught her wrists next, jerking her hands from his thrusting cock and slapping them to the tiles above her head. The fragile illusion that she held any control here at all vanished when she heard the metallic click as he cuffed her to one of the many bondage rings. "I am not yours to control, Tavy. You're mine."
Releasing her wrists, he dropped his hands to catch her nipples instead, pinching both peaks, rolling and twisting to bring her arching onto her tiptoes. Her involuntary cry bounced wildly through the bathroom, but the pain was deceptive. It zipped from her breasts to her belly, amplifying the lusty bonfire and kicking it up ever higher.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped, writhing against the tiles as his hands grew seductively crueler.
"Sorry, what?" he demanded, twisting harder, tugging her nipples straight up until it felt as if he were trying to lift her by them.
"Master!" She caught her breath when he abruptly released her—only to slap, his open hand swatting upward, catching the underside of each heavy globe and her aching nipples twice in quick succession. She ground against the wall, sucking on steam and her own groans as he plucked her nipples between his fingers once more. When he twisted, her knees tried to buckle, dropping her as far as her bound arms would allow.
"I'm the big, bad Master, am I?" he taunted, his grip on her aching nipples dragging her back onto her tiptoes all over again.
A war of pleasure and pain exploded through her when he released to slap once more, a single blow now, nowhere near as hard as he could have struck, and yet catching her at just the right upward angle to make her breasts judder, her agonized nipples scream, and her pussy weep.
"Open."
She was so ready. Tavy snapped h
er legs wide apart, exhilarated and terrified all at once that the next blow she felt would land full on between them, and yet she never once considered refusing. She flinched at his next movement, but he didn't strike her. Pulling the showerhead down off the wall, he doused her in the sudden raining heat while he changed the setting from spray to pulse. At that first hard drum of water against her belly, knowing how much worse that was going to feel beating down on something as tender as her clit, Tavy lost her nerve. She snapped her legs tight together, twisting her hips away.
"Open," he ordered.
"No! Can't you fuck me instead?" Her face burned. She couldn't believe he was making her beg like this. Worse, she couldn't believe she actually wanted it badly enough to beg at all. "Please, just fuck me!"
He did not repeat his command. The desire she had seen in him only seconds ago was gone in the time it took him to shut off the water and step out of the shower. Leaving her cuffed to the wall, he used her towel to token dry himself before abandoning the bathroom altogether.
"Wait! Where are you going?" she cried after him, hardly able to believe he'd just leave her there. Or that she'd care. But she did, and she couldn't stop herself or the plaintive wail that came pouring out of her when what she should have said was nothing at all. "Why won't you fuck me?"
"Because you haven't earned it," he called back, just as maddeningly calm as ever.
She was just desperate enough to beg, "How do I earn it?"
He did not reply.
Baffled, anything but calm herself, Tavy stared at herself in the foggy mirrors. She felt like an idiot, sexually charged right to the edge of being unable to bear it, and unable to do one damn thing about it.
She yanked at her cuffs, tried unsuccessfully to unclip herself, and then threw a mini fit complete with stamping feet, muted squealing, two good cuss words and a lot of useless panting once she was done. Helpless to do anything but stand there and drip, she flopped against the tiles, watched the steam dissipate, and tried to wait him out.
She just couldn't understand it. Although not the first time she'd ever begged for sex from a man—many Doms seemed to have a special love for that sort of thing—this was the first time she'd actually wanted one to follow through, and it was beyond maddening that Alan hadn't. He'd wanted her; she knew he had. His eyes hadn't lied to her, and neither had his cock. He couldn't have been any harder, or more ready, so why wouldn't he take that last step and just own her?
Her clit pulsed. Her sex clenched, rhythmically tightening to cling to something that just wasn't there. The phantom roughness of his hands continued to make her nipples ache. She shouldn't be this turned on by him, for him, for any of this, and yet every deprived inch of her was a rabid mess of wanton trembling.
Tavy glared at the showerhead, a poor substitute for a penis if ever she saw one, left to dangle at the end of its hose and drip water down the drain. She shivered as a wisp of cool air drifted through the heat of the room, allowed in by the door he'd left open.
One minute bled into two, and still he did not return. Now and then, she thought she heard movement from the outer room. His abandonment was a punishment she didn't know how to handle, and it began to make her angry. She twisted her hands, trying again to reach the link that kept her fixed to the wall. Someone double-jointed could have managed it, but Tavy wasn't, and she couldn't.
She threw another fit, yanking, writhing and panting, but all she did was knock the metal links against the tiles and rub her wrists raw on the cuffs. She deserved this. Her rules were in place for a reason. This was what ought to happen when she broke them. She had to get her head back where it was supposed to be, back on the pain and the penance, and into that dark, cold place where nothing else mattered.
The only problem was, she wasn't sure she knew how. She'd never had a problem falling into the role of O before. Usually, she was so ready to be cleansed that by the time she stepped down off the bus, O just… was. Try as she might now, though, Tavy was having trouble finding her. She couldn't feel the detachment over the raw wanting of her body. She couldn't feel any part of O. All she felt instead was lost, grossly aroused, and scared because of it.
Alan had done this to her. He was destroying the only way she had found to clear the ugliness out of her. He was stripping her open, killing O and laying her bare, and she didn't know how to stop it.
She heard the whisper of his bare feet on the stone floor just seconds before he walked back into the bathroom. The needy thrum of her body was every bit as desperate for him now, as he stepped back into the shower, as it had been before he'd left. She tried to school her face so it wouldn't betray just how badly she wanted him, or how scared that made her, but something in the way he looked at her, as he picked up the showerhead by its hose and turned the water back on, told her she wasn't hiding anything.
Alan remained silent, holding his fingers under the massaging pulse of the water until the temperature was right, then he raised his dark eyes to hers. "What's your safeword?"
She shook. She also kept her mouth shut and her lips tightly sealed.
Nodding once, and then shaking his head, Alan fisted his hand in her hair, pinning her head so she couldn't escape the prison of his stare as he moved in. The heat of his body burned her everywhere while the pulse of the water struck her feet, punishing them.
"Spread your legs," he commanded, in tones as soft as silk. "And this time, keep them open."
This time, Tavy did, and almost from the moment the pounding spray of the water found her clit, he made the bathroom sing with her moans, her cries, and finally, her screams.
Chapter 8
Tavy awoke for the second time that day back in bed. Alan must have put her there, though she couldn't recall his carrying her from the bathroom. In fact, she couldn't remember much at all beyond the point when he'd shut off the water and uncuffed her from the wall. She remembered the orgasms though. Oh yes, she remembered those.
Her clit felt swollen and sore. Her wrists were raw where, in the throes of pleasure too intense to hold still for, she'd fought to break free of her restraints. Bruise-like hickeys marked her shoulders and neck. She could still feel every burning, suckling kiss he'd laid on her breasts. He'd put his fingers in her—her mouth, her pussy, even her ass. He'd licked and nipped and tasted every part of her, giving every physical indication that he intensely, aggressively, wanted her… just not with his cock. He hadn't fucked her, not even at the height of his desire when deprivation had darkened him, when he'd growled into the side of her neck as her whole body convulsed to the ecstasy his fingers and showerhead wrought, and still he hadn't taken her. He'd rubbed against her, but never once 'taken matters in hand' and jacked off, marking her as his with a spray of ejaculate across her face, belly or breasts. This was twice now that he'd given so much to arouse her without compensation, forcing her to come over and over again when mentally she knew better than to indulge him. He'd wielded her pleasure until he'd whittled it down to a knife's edge, cutting her with it until all she could do was cry, it hurt so beautifully and so deep.
Curling over on her side, Tavy stared across the empty bed at the side Alan should have occupied, but didn't. The room was so still and silent. All she could hear were her own soft breaths; all she felt was the bonelessness that came over her after the last ripples of orgasm faded away, and before that niggling sense of despair crept back in.
What was so wrong with her that Alan would rather not come at all than put his cock in her? He had done nothing for his own release, nothing to ease the raging erection he'd still sported even as he'd turned away from her. No other man had done that with her, not in all the time she'd been coming here. She couldn't understand it. Was she doing something wrong? Did she look wrong, somehow? Maybe his heart was committed elsewhere. Of all the times her body had rocked to the pumping thrusts of one, two, sometimes three or more men at a time, she had never once wasted a moment's thought wondering whether they liked her. Or if her breasts might not be big enough,
or perky enough, or if maybe her intimate taste or smell might be turning her partner off. With Alan, however, she couldn't stop thinking about it.
She hugged her pillow to her cheek, refusing to let herself pine simply because his sexual agenda didn't match her own. He was a man like any other, and his was just a penis, for crying out loud. A little bigger around than most, perhaps, but she didn't need to lie here thinking about what it would feel like sliding into her. She certainly didn't need to lie here indulging thoughts capable of making that low sexy pulse come thrumming back to life between her greedy legs. She squeezed them tight together, trying to feel only the soreness and none of the wanton desire. When that failed, exasperated with herself, Tavy thrust a hand down under the red satin comforter Alan had so thoughtfully covered her with. She closed her eyes again, burying her face in her pillow, her cheeks burning shamefully—not just because she couldn't banish the unwelcome lust, but because her mind insisted on making it all worse by conjuring Alan, naked in the shower, his devil's gaze piercing soul-deep into her while his cock strained to reach her.
"Three strokes for touching yourself while I watch," Alan said, from where he was sitting, unnoticed, in the breakfast nook behind her. "Three more if you tell me what thoughts you're masturbating to."
Fingers stilling, Tavy jerked onto her back. She had to sit all the way up before she could see where he was sitting, simply watching her.
He'd dressed now, at least partially, in only his black leather pants. He looked good in them, too. Nothing but hard, lean angles, rippling abs, and the thinnest line of sparse black hairs trailing south of his navel to vanish in the low riding waistband. Elbow propped on the table, a coffee cup resting lightly on his knee, he waited for her answer.
"They have names for people like you," Tavy said, covering her embarrassment with irritation.
