by Joey W. Hill
"I was jealous of her," she said softly.
The room went quiet as he hit mute. He didn't say anything, though, just kept stroking her hair. Giving her the courage to say out loud what she'd only said to herself.
"I was hurting, and jealous, and I couldn't be around someone so loving when all the love had dried up inside me. I don't think I'll ever stop regretting that. Two years passed in a blink, like no time at all. I thought there'd be time, you know. If I'd been here more often . . ." The hard truth was bitter in her mouth. "I'm eaten up by the idea of her dealing with this without me, when I should have been here. Sometimes I'm so angry at her, as if she hid the truth from me to get back at me for withdrawing from her. Isn't that the most petty thing ever? Because she never stopped being Alice during those months. She sent me birthday gifts, emails, texts, called faithfully every week, no matter how bitchy I was with her. That made me angry, too. God . . . sometimes I wished she would stop contacting me at all so it wouldn't all feel so one-sided. I was so fucking stupid."
That horrible sense of inadequacy welled up like the sticky frustration of a hot, humid day, regret that could never be purged. She was too vulnerable to its power right now, and yet when she tried to push away, give herself some space, Logan merely flexed his arms around her, keeping her in place.
"Ssh," he said. "No. You're not going into that spot in your head. There'll be a time and place to clean out that room, but it's not tonight. Let it go for now, Madison. She loved you, and you loved her, and sometimes love is difficult. That's all. Breathe. Breathe. Focus on what I want from you right now. Tell me what you told me a few minutes ago. Tell me how you saw yourself."
She breathed, twitched, breathed some more. For a moment, that wave of tangled, angry emotions surged back up again, making her struggle once more, but his arms, his inflexible will, was stronger than hers. She found it was a relief beyond measure.
"I was yours," she said at last. A bare whisper.
"Yeah." He eased his hold as she let herself relax, one tense muscle at a time. "It quieted the voices, didn't it? The bad emotions, the good, it all evened out, like a boat going from chop to a smooth current?"
It was a good description. "How . . . does it do that?"
"A lot of subs are worriers. OCD types, overly analytical. They get mired in their emotions. You ever try to meditate?"
She made a face. "Alice would meditate like she was on the moon, floating through space, and I'd peek at her through my lashes, wondering how she could do that. All while wishing I could move so my knees and back would stop their primal screaming."
His lips curved at that. "For someone with your personality, subspace is your form of meditation."
When her brow creased, he shifted beneath her, adjusting her position on his lap so they were both more comfortable. "When I was in the Army, we went into a lot of hairy situations. Saw things that were hard to see. Afterwards, each guy had to figure out a way to deal with it. Everyone copes differently, but the common theme is finding a way to still the voices. There are good ways and bad ways to do that. I found that, no matter where I was, there would always be some quiet place, even if it didn't seem that way. The middle of a mall can be a quiet place. The cushion around you is the key, whether that cushion is anonymity or someone's arms."
He tightened them again, a reminder. "I'd find a patch of woods behind a shack where we were holing up. Or it would be first thing in the morning in the desert, that twilight moment right before the sun starts coming up to heat the sand. I could stand in those places, those moments, shut everything else down and feel how the world was so much vaster than my petty shit or even what had us all there. Whatever big Thing is out there, knows all of it. And it's okay, because when you find that quiet place, you know it's okay, too. Or how to make it better."
He touched her face. "Alice knew, Madison. She hurt for you, prayed for you. The one thing she wanted me to make absolutely sure you knew was that she never doubted your love for her. Never. Sometimes she was mad at you, too, for not pulling your head out of your ass. And at herself, for not being able to figure out how best to help you. That's the bitch about getting trapped in our own pain. We tend to forget other people are dealing with their day-to-day shit at the same time. On first look, maybe that makes you feel like crap, but I'm thinking it might make it a little better, too, when you think about it from the right place. She never lost that connection, but more importantly, she never thought you had, either. She knew you loved her. She had no doubt at all when she called you that you would come."
"Crap." She tried to brush away the tears that escaped from her eyes, but he beat her to it, his fingertips gentle on her face. "But I was too late."
"No. Because here you are, reconnecting with her again. She's as close as the nearest memory."
Madison swallowed. "I'm so glad she had you, Logan. But I also hate you for it in a way. A kind of projected self-loathing, if that makes sense."
"Yeah." He rubbed her back. "You have a lot of regret. Guilt. Things that weigh you down, make it hard for you to trust yourself. It makes it difficult for you to let go, except when you're pushed. Hard."
She sighed, gave him a rueful look. "Is that how you're justifying your sadistic side, Mr. Scott?"
"Mr. Scott. I like that." He gave her a wicked grin, but he stroked her jaw. "That night with Troy, I showed you what it's like to watch another give up control. You were so eager and absorbed, I couldn't resist pulling you into it. Tonight I showed you how it feels with no intermediary, when you give me your trust. But you haven't learned about pain. Where it can take you, what it can show you, about yourself. What it can open up."
When Logan had been whipping Troy with the strap, the young man had shuddered against her, his cock hard and eager against her thigh, his eyes glazed, as if he'd been catapulted to a perfect place. Being bound and blindfolded tonight had stilled those voices, as Logan said. Could she trust him enough to take her to such an extreme step? Maybe not, but she trusted him enough to ask the next question, tentatively crack the door.
"I'm afraid to ask, but what did you have in mind?"
"I think you know what I have in mind, just as I think it's best for me not to give you all the details of it."
"Do I get a safe word? Like Stop that, you fucking bastard?"
His eyes sparkled. "That's a mouthful. Maybe something simpler. Stop isn't useful, because people in the throes of pleasure tend to say things like Stop, Help, God Help Me, Save Me, God, God, God . . . etc."
"So God isn't a great safe word. Check." She thought about it. "Okay. Alice."
He lifted his hand to trace the valley between her breasts, hooking the knot of the thin white shirt. "All right. Alice it is. Next Friday."
"You like Fridays."
"We're wired to be more open to new experiences at the end of the typical work week, even if that's not the end of our unique work week. We carry a higher level of adrenaline on Friday nights. A larger sense of adventure."
She considered it. "Can we hold off setting a date for it, for now? I want to think about it some more."
"Sometimes thinking too much isn't a good thing."
"Neither is bullying."
He lifted both hands, giving her a wink. "I wouldn't dream of it."
She gave him a disparaging look. "You know exactly how intimidating you are. You aren't afraid to throw your weight around."
"And you're not afraid to stand up to it. I approve of that." He sobered, giving the tail of the knot on her shirt a little tug. "A healthy sub--hell, a healthy person--is one who can stand up for herself when the moment calls for it. Even if my top responsibility is to protect you while you're under my care, you never give up the responsibility to care for yourself. When you assert yourself to me, you're verifying that you have that capacity. That actually helps a Dom, relieves some of the pressure. A submissive who will let you kill her just to please you is a lot of damn work to protect."
"Are there ones like that? Is t
hat healthy?"
"It depends. If they're like that even in a day-to-day, nonsession state, yeah, it can be a problem with self-esteem and identity. If they get like that in subspace, that's a different matter. Every sub has the ability to lose herself during that part. Depending on her frame of mind and the ability of the Dom."
A couple weeks ago, she might not have been able to comprehend such a thing. But the way she'd found herself tied to Troy, the point to which Logan had taken her tonight, where there was nothing in her mind at all but his demands, her own desires . . . it was way easier to imagine and understand. It was also very unsettling.
"I really want to think about the pain thing longer," she said firmly. "I think it would help if . . ."
No, don't go down that road. "Never mind."
She looked down at her hands, but he gripped her chin, drew her face up. He had a way of knowing when she didn't want to meet his gaze, and always pushed her to do so. Damn Dom. She almost smiled, wondered at the wistful twist in her chest at the thought, at using Alice's name as the safe word. At all of it.
"I want to know more about you," she said. "To torture myself, apparently. Where you live, what you do when you're not tying up people in your back room, or doing whip demos. I don't want you to be larger than life, Logan." Even though he obviously was.
"Why would that torture you?"
She'd known he was going to ask, which was why she shouldn't have brought it up. When she looked down this time, he let her, probably realizing it was the only way she was going to get the words out.
"Because you're a fantasy. That's the way I've been treating all this. That's why it's all going so well. We're both getting off from it, and why can't I leave it at that? I'm never happy walking on the street. I always want to know what lies below it, and it's always a sewer."
He blinked. "Wow. We really need that pain session. I'm tempted to start on it right now, whacking your ass until you cry."
She would have chuckled, but he wasn't smiling. He caught her chin in his fingers, a much stronger grip this time. "If I want to get off, I can go home and watch porn. The best fantasy is grounded in reality, Madison. I don't want any other kind."
"I'm not sure if I'm that brave. Or mature enough."
"Yes, you are. Ask me one question about myself, just one. And no, I do not have a tattoo on my ass."
She summoned a smile, but her fingers curled in his shirtfront. One slipped beneath the opening between buttons and tangled in chest hair. The more she tried to think of a question, the more her fingers dug into him, the bigger the knot in her throat became. She'd brought up the subject herself, and now she couldn't follow it through, even with his encouragement. What a coward she was.
"I don't think I can, Logan." She literally couldn't. "I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm just not ready. Let's . . . let's keep it a fantasy awhile longer, okay? Please?"
He studied her for a long time, enough to make her worried he would try to push her, but then he shifted her so she was straddling him in the long white stockings and little plaid skirt, which put her breasts in the thin white top right in front of his face. He cupped them, running his fingers over the nipples. Her thigh muscles tightened, the ache in her throat turning to something else.
"All right. But if we're sticking with fantasies tonight, we're going with one of mine."
She moistened her lips at the look in his eye. Remarkably, she could feel him hardening beneath her. The man had stamina, though it seemed to be calling the same response from her, because she had to suppress the desire to rub her bare pussy against that tempting iron. "I'm here to serve, Master."
What she'd intended as a tease didn't feel that way at all under that penetrating look. "I want my schoolgirl to take off her top. I'm going to suck on her nipples until she's squirming her cute ass on my lap and begging me for my cock. Until I'm so hard I've got to fuck her or die, and she's so wet, she'd slide onto me like melted butter. When she begs me for my cock, though, I'm going to make her rub harder, until she comes against my jeans. Does that fantasy work for you?"
"No objections," she said in a thick voice. She saw no censure in his gaze, but she did have a peculiar emptiness, now that he'd turned away from the other, at her behest. The vagaries of the female mind, disappointed when she was given exactly what she requested.
"Then open your top, Madison. Show me my fantasy."
She tried to unknot it, and fumbled. He took over for her, undoing it, sliding the cloth out of the way, but leaving it on her shoulders. Giving her an enigmatic look, he put his arm around her, his palm on her buttock, and slid her much closer. It fitted her solidly over his length, making her shudder. He nuzzled both breasts with his mouth, his stubbled jaw, his heated breath, and her hands landed on his shoulders.
"Please . . . will you take off your shirt?"
He'd refused her earlier, but she hoped he wouldn't this time. She was starting to understand the power of denial, how it could drive things higher, but maybe he understood it was a first step to what she'd talked about. Though she might not have the courage to ask him questions about himself, she wanted closer to him, at least physically.
He let go of her to open the shirt, shrug out of it. As he did, he had to lean forward to pull it loose from the back of his jeans. When he did, the cloth was already off of one broad shoulder. She placed her lips there, then her cheek, rubbing. He stilled, his other arm going around her back to hold her in the intimate pose as he wrestled the rest of the shirt loose, then it was both arms holding her, bare skin to bare skin. She let out a little sigh of painful joy. "Thank you."
His chest hair was rough against her breasts, but she liked that. When she drew back at last, her gaze slid down the pectorals, flat nipples and hard abs to the waist of his jeans, where he'd left the top button undone. He had no tattoos, either, at least not where she could see.
"Put your hands back on my shoulders, Madison."
She obeyed, though her fingers whispered down to his biceps as that powerful arm cinched around her waist. His hand palmed her buttock, drawing her closer to his mouth once more.
He didn't go after her aggressively this time, as he had before. Instead, when he wrapped his lips around her right nipple, it was a gentle nursing. It pulled things from her heart, from low in her belly. She slid her hands into the hair she'd cut, held on to him, working her hips in slow circles against him, an unconscious natural rhythm. She hummed and sighed, lost herself in the lovely liquid flow of it. He kneaded her backside, stroking beneath the plaid, and when he turned his head to rub his jaw against her soft flesh again, her knuckles drifted along his cheek. He captured a finger in his teeth, flicking it playfully before releasing it to return his attention to her breasts.
"Logan," she breathed, and he made a deep male noise in response. If only . . .
She'd always sought the reality that was a mirror image of the fantasy. But this was a reality that was a window to a different kind of fantasy, one perhaps better than what she'd imagined. In an entirely different, unexpected way. She wondered if that was why he'd chosen this tactic, to prove that to her. She wouldn't put it past him.
He lifted her, rising from the chair with his arm around her waist, holding her without any apparent effort as she curled her legs around him. He helped, holding her thighs at his hips as he took them around the coffee table to the large area rug.
When he laid her down on her back there, she met his eyes.
"I did the cards here. I fanned them out around me and then . . . I lay on them and masturbated. I thought about you."
The muscle in his jaw flexed. He cupped the side of her face, her turning her head to put her mouth on him, teasing his fingers with her tongue, wanting to suck a finger into her mouth again, but he didn't let her take control to that extent. He drew the hand away, with enough reluctance to please her.
"Put your hands over your head, Madison," he said, his eyes glowing in the dim light. The movie had ended and reverted back to cable, a
music channel she'd had on earlier in the day. Children's lullabies, of all things, a channel mothers or fathers could use to help rock the baby to sleep.
She obeyed, and trembled at the look in his eyes. Never in her life had she been with a male who had the confidence to command her, who made her feel as if obeying him was to her benefit. That he could take care of her, that her submission would be a gift to him, not a self-destructive course. She'd been with men for several years, several months, it didn't matter. From the first moment, Logan had given her something none of them ever had.
He knelt between her spread thighs, his fingertips tented on either one, and then he traced them, down to the knee and then back up, slow, until he was under the skirt. "So wet," he said, tsking. "Such a bad girl."
He stretched out on his stomach, his powerful form long enough that his legs extended past the rug. Sliding his hands beneath her thighs, he cupped her bare buttocks beneath the plaid skirt, gripping her under the garter straps. Then he nosed up the skirt and put his mouth right on her cunt.
She arched into that mouth, a gasp escaping her lips. He started with her inner walls, proving what he'd mentioned earlier, that there were so many potential stimulation points beyond the clit. His slow licks progressed deep into those crevices like a kid licking furrows into a dish of ice cream. His nose nuzzled her clit, making her squirm, but he held her still as he continued to worry the inner and outer labia, then his tongue pushed into her, swirling around. She cried out, lifting up so his face was even deeper into her pussy, and he took full advantage of that.
She had to admit, even with her own vibrator, she'd focused on clit manipulation. It was fast, efficient. She'd never realized how sensitive to arousal the labia walls were, but Logan was educating her quickly. She was writhing under his touch, the unusual but not at all unpleasant feelings making it impossible to stay still. Logan stopped, sliding up her body, bracing himself on both elbows, his hard abdomen against her throbbing clit as he gathered up the tails of her shirt. He tied them under her breasts, not over them, so they were displayed in a frame of stretched white fabric. He squeezed them, played his tongue in between them, then left the nipples aching in the cool air as he returned his attention and his mouth between her legs.
