Then I felt a hand on my throat, just as I’d seen Foster do at the club.
“Are you close, love?” The hand tightened, not to cut off my air, but to press against my pulse. Gray held my life’s blood in the palm of his hand. The whoosh whoosh of my heart pumping deafened me. Stars floated around my eyes.
My lips formed the word. Please. But no sound came out. Every instinct in me body told me to come, but I couldn’t. Not without Grayson’s command.
“That’s it, Angel. Give me what I want, what I need from you. You’re mine.”
Again, my lips said please. I would die, my world would end, if I couldn’t come now.
“Come for me, Angelina. Come now.”
The hand on my throat pressed deeper into my skin and my world exploded. I felt only pleasure. So much pleasure, my world did end. Every muscle I had and some I didn’t know existed clenched and seized, then released in a dark pulsing beat.
“Yes, love. That’s it. Come long and hard for me. Let me see your pleasure. Give it to me. It’s mine, Angel. It’s all mine.”
Gray’s words, his hold on me, his claim pushed my body beyond anything I’d ever felt before. This wasn’t just my pussy releasing, this was my whole entire body.
“Gray!”
I cried his name, screamed his pleasure until I couldn’t scream anymore.
A hazy abyss overtook me, comforted me with a flood of feel-good hormones rushing through my body like a drug.
At least for now and for the rest of the night, I didn’t know anything else.
I had the vague sense that I was being carried and then washed. I floated in sparkling spell-like state through it all. The pillowy softness of my bed soon surrounded me with a warm hard body pressed to my back.
Somewhere in my afterglow I drifted in to lovely, dark sleep.
I awoke the next morning back in my own room. Safe and warm, Grayson’s at least partially nude body wrapped around me. I wouldn’t move even if I could.
He must have been waiting for me to wake up, because his arms wrapped tighter around me with each breath I took. It reminded me of the previous night and sent shivers from my spine to my pussy.
“Gray?”
“Yeah, love?”
I had about a million and forty-two questions for him. Starting with why he wouldn’t actually fuck me and ending with, could we always wake up in each other’s arms like this.
In between were a bunch of questions about BDSM and that whole lifestyle he’d told Foster Bennett I wasn’t ready for. Throw in a couple more about training in high protocol and some of his other admitted kinks and I’d almost have the first question answered.
He ran his fingers through my hair. “Your mind is working so hard I can smell the smoke coming out of your ears.”
I snuggled deeper into him, not wanting the soft morning to become harsh morning-after yet. “I don’t know what to say or ask right now.”
He nuzzled my neck, lingering there like he didn’t want the day to begin either. “Then don’t. Let me ask you something.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to, but my body stiffened a little waiting for the axe to fall.
He sighed, and it sounded worried, like he wasn’t confident about his question or my response. “How was the scene we did with the guys last night for you?”
“Seriously?” Like he couldn’t tell?
“Seriously.”
“Amazing. No wait, that word doesn’t quite do it justice. How about terrific? No, uh, stupendous.”
He chuckled. “Okay, okay, I get it. So, you’d like to do it again?”
“If I say ‘duh’, is that too obvious?”
“Without the puppies.”
Oh.
I needed to choose my next words very carefully. On one hand, it’s all I wanted. Me and Gray and a bed...or anywhere else for that matter. On the other hand, I felt like I was a real woman coming into my own, for the first time ever. I liked having the harem at my sexual beck and call. I didn’t want that to end. Couldn’t I have both? “Umm. Can you elaborate?”
“You’re mine, Angel. I think I can control my darker urges around you, if you agreed to let me train you. I want you for my own if we do that.”
Cono. “No more harem? Is that negotiable?”
He pulled me tighter into his arms and just breathed in and out before answering. “I don’t know.”
Give up my new freedoms to get my heart’s desire? That felt like a betrayal. I’d spent most of my life giving into others’ compulsions and resenting it. I didn’t want to resent Gray and whatever we were building together in our own maze of a way. But even now when I was on the verge of getting everything I thought I wanted, it was still hard to ask for it. I had to try.
“Couldn’t you train me and them? They’re as much yours already as they are mine.” Maybe even more so.
“I’m having a hard-enough time sharing you now. The only thing allowing me to watch them have their hands and mouths all over you is seeing you come apart the way you do.” He took a slow breath. “And the way you say my name when you come.”
Because my pleasure was all his.
He still didn’t seem to know that, or if he did he was still denying it. Last night had moved us closer to what I knew we both needed from each other. Something worked in my mind that I couldn’t quite get a grasp on, but it had a sense to it that if I gave in now it wouldn’t work. That this was a test for us both.
I still didn’t want to be his damsel in distress. He still needed to rescue me.
Only I could rescue myself.
“Please?” I did my very best to use the same throaty plea that had come from my lips last night.
“Damn, you’re hard to resist, Angel. I think maybe I’m the one being seduced here.”
Hell yes, he was, right into our eventual happily ever after.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
No Fun
I drummed my fingers on the windowsill and huffed hard enough to make a circle of moisture on the window. Never in my life had I been this downright bored...or horny as all get-out.
One would think a woman with a harem of her own wouldn’t be in such a sorry state, but they certainly weren’t providing me with any entertainment. Not that they didn’t want to. I wasn’t allowed to play with them. Which ticked me the hell off. Even if I had agreed not to let them touch, or fondle, or kiss, or suck or...Hay. Dios Mio.
I had to do something about this right now. Enough was enough. I stomped from my perch staring out the window to go find Gray.
Why wasn’t I allowed to do whatever I wanted? I had money, I had my new and improved fuck-you-all attitude on life. There was just one little thing holding me back.
Grayson Baker.
Body guard, valet, driver, best friend, almost lover. Bastard. He was all of the above on any given day.
Today he was a bastard.
I stomped my way into the kitchen. No Gray. Dominic lounged against the island eating a peach looking like his normal devil may care African god self. A dribble of juice crept down his chin. The tingle between my legs that had been building for three days jumped at the sight of his tongue darting from his mouth to catch the drip.
That hunka hunka hot man had the most talented tongue I’d ever met. I wanted it between my legs immediately if not sooner.
“Hello, mistress. Would you like a taste of my peach?” He offered the fruit to me with a twinkle in his eye and another lick of his lips.
“You’re killing me.”
“It is not me that is doing the killing.” His voice rumbled in that low baritone I could eat right up. He was on the edge of a chuckle too.
I was not in the mood. Mostly because right he was. I growled, actually growled. I was about twelve seconds from throwing a major temper tantrum. Yes, I was being a silly bitch, but that’s what happens when one had eleven-hundred of the best orgasms of her life and then gets cut off entirely.
I swiveled and continued my stomp through the house. Cade and Ila
rio were both at school so I didn’t bother checking the second floor. Gray didn’t spend much time up there anyway. In fact, I knew exactly where he’d be. I’d just been having a good ole time getting myself more riled up for a showdown with him.
I hadn’t been told I wasn’t allowed to do something since I was about fourteen years old, unless I counted the time living with Marc. But I didn’t count that as life anymore.
I lived an entitled privileged life and it hadn’t done me a damn bit of good. Thank God I left Marc the Schmoe at the altar. Well, not the altar, far from it, but whatever, that sounded good and it was close enough.
I threw open the garage door, or, uh, opened it enough to slip into the sacred domain of the car gods. Gray squatted next to his motorcycle, tinkering again. Besides controlling my orgasms, it was his favorite hobby. I loved seeing him in a t-shirt and jeans instead of the suit he insisted on wearing when he played the part of bodyguard. Not that Grayson in a suit was hard on the eyes. I just didn’t get to see his casual side all that often.
Sweet Heaven and Hell. I wanted to see a whole lot more of him after doing my first BDSM scene the other night and then waking up in his arms.
Instead I was reading books on BDSM.
Sigh.
He reached for some tool and I practically came simply watching his muscles stretch and move under that soft white t-shirt. It was threadbare and all the better to admire and fantasize over those muscles and what they could do to me. I didn’t say anything for the span of a whole fantasy where he...
“What do you want, Angel?” He didn’t get up or look at me, just kept tinkering.
Most of my bluster slipped away. He took care of me even when I didn’t want taking care of. Which, of course, both annoyed me and enamored me to him even more.
I crossed my arms into a self-hug. “Gray, I’m going crazy.”
He kept his back to me, doing a great job at pretending this conversation hadn’t happened three or four or seventeen times already. “No, you’re not.”
Esas son mamadas. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
“You’re not crazy. You’re cranky.”
“What did I just say?” I snapped. Ridiculous. Yeah, I was damn sure cranky, and it was his frickin’ fault.
He shrugged, oh so nonchalant. “If you can’t handle a little bit of orgasm denial...”
“Three days is not a little bit.” I stomped my foot ready for a full-on fight. At least that would give me something to do with all this pent-up frustration.
Gray matched my tantrum, spinning on his heels and pouncing to the spot ten centimeters in front of me. He stepped in my space staring down, hulking over me, giving me a taste of his Dom side. “You have no idea.”
I gulped, searching for air or saliva or courage.
“I allowed you some negotiated points, you agreed to my terms. I say when, I say how, I say come. Are you ready to reneg?”
I’d agreed to be trained. After a whole lot of negotiations, part of which was that I got to keep my harem, we’d come to an agreement. He’d train me in submission and high protocol.
I’d been giddy, mostly because I thought he would finally give in and we’d have sex.
Kinky, kinky sex.
Instead, I wasn’t allowed to touch myself, or let anyone else touch me either.
“I thought when you said I had to do everything you told me to we’d actually be doing something,” I whispered, aka begged. Besides the sex I was currently lacking in, I thought I’d get experience in all the flavors of BDSM, so I could eventually get back to the goal of understanding what true domination meant.
That, and getting a more-than-bodyguard relationship with Gray were my sole focus in life right now. I finally found something I could be excited about, that I might be good at.
“I need to know you can follow my orders. The Asylum is not a place to play bratty games. If any of the sadistic bastards who call themselves Doms even guess I don’t have total control over you, they will do their damnedest to take you away from me.”
His eyes flicked back and forth over mine, fear and anger mixing with an emotion Gray never let himself feel for me.
I wanted Gray and I had finally discovered the way to get him. Years of prim and proper flirting, even if it was under the nose of every sad-sack boyfriend I ever had, never got me anywhere near his pants. One night at a BDSM club and I finally got him to at least touch me.
I shortened the space between us by half, breathing in the fierce scent that was all Gray. “Then teach me, test me. I’ll prove to you I can be whatever you need me to.”
The fire swirl of emotion faded and the dead-eyed Gray who was my protector, but not my lover, blinked back unflinching. “That’s not how this works, babe.”
He wiped his hands on a grungy towel and tossed it with the rest of his tools, like we weren’t having the biggest catalyst conversation of our relationship.
I was so close to getting the dirty, naughty Gray, I couldn’t stop now. A lick of my lips and in a breathy Bambi voice, I said, “Then show me how it works.”
His jaw pulsed but he didn’t flinch for a second. “You’re not ready.”
The hell I wasn’t. It was time to bring out Rich Bitch Angelina. The one who took charge and got what she wanted. “I hate it when you do that. I left my fiancé, I damn well took charge of my own life, not to mention my sexuality, and am working on learning a new career. What more do you want from me? How the hell else am I supposed to prove to you I am ready? Dammit, Gray, I thought we were past that.”
We were toe to toe, I was breathing hard. Gray was a god-damned iceman.
A car pulled up the driveway and we heard Ilario talking, teasing Cade. They went into the house like there wasn’t a showdown happening in the garage.
Gray’s eyes flicked from my mouth toward the house and back to my eyes. His façade broke. “Why don’t you go play with your boy toys? You don’t want my world. You want to pretend you’re in charge. So, go. Do that. Have all the orgasms you want. Let those boys fuck you silly.”
Now who was being a brat? “Is that what this is about? The boys? You agreed I could keep them. Are you jealous?”
I wish. There was no way it was true. They might be at my beck and call, but they were under Gray’s control. He was the alpha.
“Don’t try that game with me.”
Oh, ho ho. I was playing. “You are. You hate that I have three other men who please me and take care of my every need, in and out of the bedroom.” I almost giggled.
I would have too, if Gray wasn’t on me like a lion attacking a hippo. His arms clenched me into an embrace that had me on fire. One hand crept up and wrapped around my throat. There was no pressure and he didn’t squeeze, but we both knew he could if he wanted to. We both also knew what happened when he had.
I closed my eyes, wanting it, waiting for him to make me submit.
His breath floated across my skin, fast and hard. I didn’t move. He applied the tiniest pressure, tightening his grip. My heart beat almost out of my chest. I didn’t move.
Instead of closing his hand around my throat, pressing on my pulse, Gray pushed down on my collarbone until I couldn’t stand under his power. I lowered myself, bending at the waist until I was nose to his thighs.
“Kneel.” His voice was like darkness itself, filled with need.
Coño. I did as he told me, sinking to the hard asphalt of the garage floor. The intense beat of my heart pulsed between my legs. Three days he’d made me wait, and my body would have it no more. I was wet and achy and it would take only a few movements inside my pants, pressing against the seam, to make me come. I could do it so easily.
“Don’t move a muscle. I can see how close you are. It’s exactly where I want you. The flush on your skin, the raggedness of your breath. Submission is beautiful on you. I always knew it would be.” He circled me once, taking his time.
“Please.” It was the magic word and it had worked well before. I prayed it would now.
Gray stopped in front of me again, his fists at his side. “Look at me, Angelina.”
I blinked, trying to move my focus from between my legs to the muscles in my neck. It took me three whole breaths to move my eyes up his body, catching sight of the bulge behind his zipper before I looked into his eyes.
He met me with a fierce gaze of pure dominance and slid a hand into my hair, gripping it tight in his fist. “When I claim and collar you, you will belong to me and me alone. I will never share you again. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” My voice was less than a whisper. I hated that I craved these words from him, but years of rejection from other men, the world, had carved a giant unmet need in me that was partially filled with him.
“Until then, you will do as I say, and if I say you don’t get to come, you don’t get to even think about coming. If I want every man in this city to fuck you until you’re senseless with the euphoria, you will spread your legs willingly. Don’t question me or my commands. Ever.”
His frank words sent shivers through my body. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t want to say I was sorry. That didn’t feel right. So, I stayed silent, hoping he’d see I heard him and at least partially understood.
“The correct response here is, ‘yes, sir’. I don’t want your platitudes, I want your submission. Absolutely and totally.”
“You have it.” I wasn’t sure I’d actually said the words out loud.
“No, I don’t. We both know that. Until I do, I will train you as I see fit. You’ll do whatever I say because we both like it when you do.”
This was way beyond like.
He pushed his hands into my hair, not pulling, but gripping the strands tight, tugging at my scalp. “Say it, Angel, or we’re done before we ever start.”
The words were stuck in my throat, they tasted bitter sweet there.
“Angel,” he growled.
“Yes... sir.”
Gray closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he was inhaling the sweetest perfume laced with opium. It half surprised me that his eyes weren’t glazed when he opened them. They were filled with the fire of the hottest star, burning blue.