“You touch me when l say you can touch me from this point forward.”
Her eyes flash with defiance. “And if I don’t agree?”
“Then I don’t touch you.” I walk her to me, her elbows bending, arms resting between us. “We both know what you want from me.”
“Which is what?” she demands, a hint of vulnerability in her voice that I find sexy as hell.
“An adrenaline rush. The kind that pushes your limits but comes with a burn for more tomorrow, not with the regret your nerves fear I’ll give you. But your hard limit pushes for just that. It says, all or nothing tonight. It says, go there now or there is no chance to go there later. I won’t go there now just to live up to your hard limit.”
“I didn’t set sexual limits. I set a time limit.”
“If you didn’t have a sexual limit, you wouldn’t have gotten spooked earlier and you wouldn’t have gone untouched for two years.”
“That two years has nothing to do with us tonight.”
“It does to me. You have limits. Someone broke them.”
“I don’t have limits tonight.”
“Except one night. And that creates a limit for me. I won’t take you too far and find out it’s too far, too late, to turn back time. Consider that my new hard limit, added to my promise to make you want more than tonight. Because I do.”
“If you plan to treat me like a delicate flower, this ends now.”
“I don’t do delicate flowers, sweetheart. Cowering females don’t get me off. But you aren’t that, and you do. You get me off, Faith. But submission isn’t weak. It’s fearless. It’s pleasure. But it’s also trust. You have to trust me like I did you with the knife. Trust for trust.”
“That’s why you let me use that knife.”
“I gave you what I give no one. My submission.”
She laughs. “That wasn’t submission.”
“As close as you’ll ever get from me. But that’s not what you want from me anyway, now is it?”
“No,” she whispers. “It isn’t.”
“And I want your trust, but I’m not demanding it. I’m asking you to let me earn it.”
“You’re asking?”
“Yes. I’m asking. Do what I say, but tell me to stop at any time. Just say stop. Or no. Or whatever language you want to use. I’m not the man who’ll tell you no means yes. Understand?”
“I understand that you are not what I expected.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“That’s a good answer. Because you shouldn’t, and if you did, you wouldn’t be the woman that has me this fucking hard.” I lean in and brush my lips over hers, licking into her mouth, before I add, “You taste like temptation and I am never tempted.” I inhale. “And you smell like amber and vanilla, not flowers tonight. This suits you better than the flowers.”
She breathes out with those words, her face lowering as if I’ve punched her in the chest. I release her wrist and cup her face. “What was that?”
“You talk too much and ask questions I don’t invite. Fuck me or leave.”
Her tone is defensive, but I’ve observed and pushed enough people in depositions and in the courtroom to know torment when I see it. And I don’t like where torment leads us. I don’t want to be there with her right now. “You’re right. Too many words.” I rotate her and press my hands to her shoulders, stepping into her, lowering my head. “Trust for trust. On your knees, Faith.”
She inhales deeply, but she does as I order, kneeling in front of me, and her spine is straight, her hands on her knees. A submissive position, and more and more, I am curious about her past, her sexual coming of age that she then denied until tonight. I squat behind her, stroking her hair away from her neck, my hand on her naked shoulder, my lips at her ear. “I own your pleasure for the rest of the night.” I brush my lips over her ear lobe. “And we’re going to start by getting you out of your own head.” My lips trail down her neck to her shoulder, where my teeth scrape before my tongue soothes that bite. “A nice guy doesn’t bite.”
“And you’re not a nice guy,” she whispers.
“Nice guys are boring,” I say, caressing down her arm and back up again, my fingers stroking the edge of her breast in both directions, “but you already know that, now don’t you?”
“But safe. They’re safe.”
“Like I said,” I gently tease her nipple, “you didn’t want a nice guy.” I cup her breast and meld it to my palm, two fingers tugging at her nipple. She reaches up to cup my hand, something I’ve noticed she does often, and I lean into her. “You don’t touch me unless I tell you to touch me.”
“I want to touch you, Nick.”
“And I want you to touch me, sweetheart. But not yet. Now, you let me take you where you want to go. Put your hands on the stool.”
She pants out a breath and does as I command, her palms flattening in front of her, and I notice her nails, a simple gloss, not manicured and fake. I don’t think she’s fake. Just guarded. I cup her face and lean around her. “Don’t move,” I murmur against her lips, kissing her, a slow lick of tongue against tongue before I release her, standing and removing a condom from my wallet. I tear it open, making sure she hears it, that she knows she doesn’t have to think. I’m protecting her. I shove the package back into my pocket and unzip my pants, rolling the condom over my painfully thick erection, but I leave my pants on, removing the ease of slipping inside her, that is tempting, but now is not that time.
I go down on a knee beside her, my hand on her lower back and slender belly. “Elbows on the stool,” I order, and the moment she complies, I lift her hips, placing her on all fours, my hand on her lower back, my lips pressing between her shoulder blades. She arches forward, and I reach under her, teasing one of her nipples, my hand sliding to her backside. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
“Spank me,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say, squeezing her backside. “I’m going to spank you, but I won’t hurt you.”
“What fun is that?”
There is that challenge again, and I caress her shoulder blades with one hand, while the other pinches her nipple, tugging it roughly. She arches forward while her backside lifts into the air just as I expect. I immediately give her nipple another tug, moving my other hand down to her backside and over it, stopping right above her sex. I give her a slight smack there, not meant to cause any pain, just pleasure. I earn a gasp and can hear her breathing now.
“What’s your tolerance level, Faith?”
“I don’t know.”
But she does know. No one plays in this world, and leaves it, without knowing her limits. She just doesn’t want to give them to me. That answer, the knife, the lack of sexual limits. They fit a pattern, that says hard limit. One night. I get nothing else, not even all of her tonight, but there is another layer to this. The layer that screams abuse. I lift her and move her to the stool, placing her hands on my knees.
“Tolerance level, Faith. I’m not—”
“I don’t know,” she hisses. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know, Nick. That’s an honest answer. I don’t know what worked for me. I don’t know what felt like too much because of who I was with and what was too much because it hit the wrong buttons for me. All I know is that I wanted this tonight. And I want you to put me back on my knees and finish what you started for once.”
There she goes. Pushing me. Challenging me, but I don’t let anyone push me. I study her, search her face, and she says, “That is as honest as I have been with anyone in a very long time, Nick. I need—”
I pull her to my lap, straddling me, my hand at her face. “I know what you need,” I say, kissing her, tasting that need, tasting what I’ve wanted to taste on her lips every time I’ve kissed her. Honesty. Hunger. Need. But it’s real now. She’s real, at least one part of her wall has crumbled. “And I’m going to give it to you.”
I stand up with her, carrying her to the couch wh
ere I sit down next to the arm, with her still on top of me, those gorgeous legs of hers spread across me. Her hands press to my shoulders, and I fill my hands with her breasts, my thumbs stroking her nipples, my head lowering, tongue lapping at one stiff peak and then another. “Please tell me why you still have clothes on,” she whispers, sounding desperate, breathless, and I like her breathless.
“I’d be inside you already otherwise,” I say.
“What’s wrong with you being inside me?”
My hands settle at her waist. “It’s not time,” I say, my gaze raking over her body, her long blonde hair draping her shoulders, touching the tops of her high, full breasts. Her plump, tight nipples are rosy red. “On your knees beside me and then lay across my lap, Faith.”
I WANT HIM TO SPANK me. I want to feel his hand on my backside. I want that sting and shock that leaves no room for anything else. No worry. No loss. No death. No guilt. And no room for the way Nick makes me feel too much. The way Nick sees too much. The way he seems to peel back layers I don’t want peeled back. The way he exposes me emotionally. I just want him to fuck me. I just want this to be what it was supposed to be. Nameless, empty sex.
I move to bend over his lap, but he catches my hips, his gaze probing mine, penetrating, and I want to look away, but I have learned that will only make him look harder, dig deeper. So I meet his stare, and I mask my emotions that I can’t even name. His eyes narrow on me, a flicker of something I also cannot name in their depths. His hands fall away from me, a silent offer of freedom and that free will he vowed to pull from me. And he has it. I want this and him. Of that, I cannot even begin to deny, nor did I intend to when I invited him here.
And so, I take that free will and settle my knees on the couch facing his legs. But nothing with Nick is just fucking, which is what I know, what I understand. He wraps his arm around my waist, tangling fingers in my hair, leading my mouth to his, and then kissing me until I think I might shatter. “I’ll warn you before I spank you,” he says. “Understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and just hearing him say “spank you” has my sex aching, and my nipples tingling. As if he realizes this, as if he can read my mind, or perhaps just my body, he leans over and licks one of the stiff peaks, swirling it with his tongue, and then sucking it deep, teeth scraping ever so slightly, the pull on my nipple like a pull on my sex.
His hands moves to my hips, mouth trailing lower, and lower, and suddenly, I don’t want that spanking as much as I want his mouth on the most intimate part of me. But he stops short, pressing his mouth to my belly and lingering there, his tongue flicking, licking, before he looks at me, and says, “Not yet, Faith. I want you across my lap, on your elbows, backside up.” There is a command to his voice that I have always resisted from others, resented even, but for reasons I cannot explain with this man, I’m aroused, vulnerable in just how much he affects me. But most striking is the moment I dare to submit, to spread my body across his, his hand on my belly and lower back. There are nerves tingling and fluttering through me, but no dread, no fear. Things I know as preludes to pain that lead to oblivion, things that perhaps, I wanted tonight, because I feel like I deserve them. But just aren’t here now and I do not why. I don’t know this man. I can’t trust this man, but my body appears to disagree.
“Ah, Faith,” he murmurs, running a hand up my spine. “How did you manage to go untouched for two years? You are too beautiful to be left untouched.” His voice is low, gravelly.
I was too damaged to be touched, I think. I needed a break. I needed something that I couldn’t have. I need something that felt as right as this man’s hands on my body. His teeth scrape my hip, his tongue following, and I’m really starting to like that combination. That tongue that I know is wicked magic, but always denies me the reward of that magic. He caresses a path to my backside, and at the same time, his other hand finds my sex, cupping it. And then he is stroking my bottom at the same time as he is stroking my clit, teasing me, touching me until I am so wet and aroused that the ache in my sex is as fierce as the ache I know will come from his palm.
“Faith,” he breathes out, and I don’t know why, but it feels like a question. Am I ready? Am I okay? Am I sure?
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. And yes.”
His reply is not in words. He begins to pat my backside, just above my sex, while deft fingers slide through the wet heat of my body, an attack on my senses from all directions. And we are never going to get to the spanking because I’m going to come. Or maybe that’s the idea. He wants me to come. He wants the sting to be lost in the pleasure. But I don’t want that. I want the sting. I want—“Nick,” I pant out again, so close, I am about to tumble over.
His hands still, and he replies with, “That’s what I wanted, sweetheart,” seeming to understand exactly what I was telling him. “You on the edge, but not there yet. I’m going to spank you now, Faith. Seven times. The first two will be the hardest, but they will get softer from there. Count them out. Repeat that.”
“Count,” I say, adrenaline setting my heart into a gallop. “Harder then softer.”
“And then I’m going to fuck you, Faith. I’m going to turn you around, and you’re going to ride me. Understand?”
“Yes. Please stop talking or my heart is going to explode from my chest.”
“Deep breath, sweetheart. This isn’t new to you, but I am. And I’m not going to hurt you.”
I have no flippant remark this time. His hand is caressing my cheeks, warming them, as it should be, but too often, I have known a hard palm with no preparation. But he doesn’t rush. One second. Two. Three. Four. “Nick,” I plead.
“Now, sweetheart,” he says, and I barely have time to realize the impact of that endearment before his palm is on my backside, a hard sting that arches my back and oh God. It’s back. “Count,” he orders.
“Two,” I breathe out.
And another. “Three.” I can’t breathe, and fingers are stroking my sex. I forget to count but he does it for me. “Four,” he says, and then another palm, softer now, just as he promised.
“Five,” I breathe out.
“Six,” he says, that gravelly tone to his voice is back now, the force of his palm on my skin following.
“Seven,” I breathe out, and it’s done. He smacks my backside and then to my shock, his mouth is on it, kissing it, a strange tenderness to that act that I swear has me as breathless as the spanking. And then he is turning me to face him, cradling my body against his, his mouth coming down on mine, and it too is tender, a slide of tongue, but I can feel his passion, his need that he controls, as he has me.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he demands.
“I am,” I say, shocked that he’s asked, that I believe he cares.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I promise, my hand on his face. “I liked it. I like it so much that it’s…”
He is kissing me again then, and this kiss is different. This kiss is hungry, greedy even, and fierce. Addictive. Seductive. And it unlocks those things in me. I am kissing him back, and kissing him and kissing him. And he is touching me and I am touching him, hard, sinewy muscle beneath my palms. And I can’t get enough and that is what I feel from him. It’s not enough but we try to find that place where it is, where it will be. And some part of me knows that he’s given me what I want. There is nothing but this man, and yet, this experience is nothing as I expected. It’s good now.
I am so lost in Nick that I barely remember him pulling me around to straddle him or how his pants got down. But they are, and his thick shaft is between us. I reach down and stroke it, and I revel in the low groan that slides from his lips. “I feel like I’ve needed this since before I ever fucking met you.” His hands go to my waist and he lifts me while I guide his cock to my sex, and press him inside me. He’s so hard, so big, stretching me, filling me, and it’s been so long, and I can barely catch my breath. I breathe out as I take all of him, and finally, we’ve reached the place where we are here, wher
ever here really is.
But we don’t move. We’re staring at each other, and there is this magnetic pull between us that has nothing to do with sex. Or maybe it does. I just don’t know. But I feel this man inside and out. I feel him and see him as he does me and it’s not what I wanted, and yet, I am hypnotized by this moment, by him. A charge seems to spark suddenly between us, and we snap. He moves first, or maybe we move together, but he’s cupping my head, and my breast, and as our lips collide, I reach around him to the band at his hair and pull it free, sinking fingers in the long strands that surely must touch his shoulders. I tug on them, using them as an outlet for all the crazy sensations pulsing through my body.
Nick deepens the kiss, and then we are moving, swaying, fucking. Slow. Fast. Slow again. Our mouths lingering a breath apart before we erupt into wildness again. And I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to go back to reality. I want to stay lost in this man. And I fight to make that happen, to stay right here with him, but the build of pleasure is fierce, the passion on his tongue, in his touch, consumes me, and I have been so on edge for so long. And when he pulls me hard against him, thrusting into me as he does, I am there, in that sweet place that tenses my body.
The next moment, I’m tumbling over, my body spasming around him, my head buried in his shoulder. He wraps his arm around my waist, and thrusts again, a guttural sound sliding from his lips as he shudders beneath me. Time spirals and sways until we collapse into each other, and for long moments, neither of us move. We just lay there, breathing together, heavy, then slower and softer. And still we linger. It’s Nick that breaks this silence. “Faith, sweetheart,” he says softly, cupping my face. “As much as I want to hold you like this the rest of the night, and I will again, I had better take care of this condom before we make baby Tigers.”
We won’t, I think. We can’t, but I don’t say that to him. “Yes. Of course.” I start to move away, but he shifts us and rolls me to my back, pulling out before he says, “Always trying to run.”