Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  He said, “Shower.”

  I may have moaned. “No,” I said. “I want to do it now.” I was working on his shorts, and he was helping me. “I changed my mind,” I told him, when I had my hand on him. “Size matters. I want it.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Shower. Grab my crutches for me.” He put his forehead against mine, held my face in his hands, and said, “I need to slow this down. I need to feel it.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said. “Your leg. You have to take it off. I kept forgetting.”

  He looked at me sharply, and I said, “What?”

  He said, “Nothing.” When we were in the bathroom, though, I was the one who took off the leg. I turned on the water first, so the room would fill with steam. The shower was Kiwi style, separated from the rest of the room only by a partial glass wall, it had seven shower heads, and the air was already misty when I was kneeling on the floor, peeling the sleeve down Jax’s leg, kissing his thigh where he sat on the closed toilet lid, running my hands all the way up and down it, then, finally, kissing the stump. And if you think that isn’t sexy, that it isn’t romantic . . . all I can say is—it was. It was absolutely sexual, touching him there, and it was service. His hands were in my hair, and he wasn’t saying anything at all, but he felt it, too.

  It was like we were in that waterfall again, but this time, it was just the two of us, swimming around each other in the plunge pool, kissing and touching, with all the time in the world. His hands were on my injured arm, peeling away the dressing, disposing of it, checking out the wounds. He lifted my hand, kissed the inside of my wrist, his touch so gentle, and when I got up from the floor, he came with me. Hopping on one leg, his hand on the wall, and into the shower. The warm water hit us from overhead, and from all the way down the wall. Jax had a hand out, propping himself up, and I covered my own hands with body wash, soaped him down, and kissed his mouth, his neck, his chest.

  He didn’t ask me, for once, if the water stung my arm. It did, a little, and I didn’t care. He pulled me in with one hand, kissed me like he wanted to take my soul into his body, ran his hand down my back and up my side, and I was barely keeping myself upright.

  I wasn’t the one who turned off the water. That was him. He let me dry him off, and he let me bring him his crutches, but when we got into the bedroom, he said, “Go get the bag with your present.” No smile at all.

  Oh, boy. I did it, and when I came back into the bedroom with it, he took it from me and said, “Lie down.”

  It wasn’t tattooing, no, but it felt like that when he unfastened first one belly ring, and then the next, and pulled them out. When he brushed a hand over my skin, touching each of the four little holes in turn, exploring them like he wanted to be there. And when he was threading the rubies into me, through me, fastening them closed? It felt like . . . something. I couldn’t even have said what.

  Yes, I could. It felt like absolute domination.

  He got the second one in, got himself over me, lowered himself down in a move like a ballet, and kissed each stone in turn. When he got to the little bow, he sucked it into his mouth, tugging at my piercings. His hands were on either side of my waist, his lips were warm against my skin, and still, he didn’t say anything at all.

  Jax

  It wasn’t tattooing her, no. I still wanted to do that. You could say so, because just the thought of it was winding me up tighter. Putting my rings in her, though, was hot as hell. And when I was done, I made my meandering way south and teased her a while longer, because I needed to make her beg. When she did, because she couldn’t help it anymore? I gave her what she was asking for. I set my mouth to her in earnest, and she rose up into it and called out. She grabbed my hair, and she made some noise. Mostly, she said my name, and it felt like I had tattooed her. Exactly like that. Like triumph.

  I made her come, and then I made her do it twice more, each time wilder than the last, and when she was lying on her back, her arms and legs flung wide, when she was spent and gasping and weak with it, and I said, “Turn over”—

  She struggled up and did it. Hands and knees again, as if she wanted to do exactly what I said. She might not want me to control her outside of bed, but she sure as hell wanted me to control her in it.

  I traced my name on her bum with my hand, exactly where I could see that ink, and she trembled. I spanked her a few times, and then a few more, a little harder, and she gasped. I opened her up and touched her everywhere, and she shook. And when I slid inside her, she moaned.

  Too hot. Too tight. I had to hold still a minute. She didn’t. She said, “Jax.”

  I didn’t answer. I kissed her nape instead, and then I put my hand there, circling her neck, keeping it gentle, but letting her know. And she tightened around me like I’d just told her to.

  “This is mine,” I said.

  She whimpered.

  Oh, yeh.

  I ran my hand slowly down her spine, stopping at those two little dimples at the base. “That first day,” I said, rubbing her there just beneath her tailbone, feeling her tightening some more, in a rhythm now, “you had your back to me, showing me this, and I wanted it. And now I’ve got it. Now it’s mine.”

  She said, “Jax. Fuck me. Please.”

  So I did. Hard and fast. She was hot and tight around me, the sensation plunging all the way through my body the same way I was driving into hers, sharp as a knife. She came again, with plenty of shuddering and gasping, and by the time I was spilling into her? I had her saying some things she might be embarrassed to remember. Some things I’d remind her of next time.

  I was going to have to keep her exactly like this. It was going to be necessary.

  When we were lying together, after she’d cleaned herself up, and cleaned me as well, like she wanted to do it, I kissed the back of her neck one more time, and she said, her voice slow and sleepy, “I’ll be walking around today being a mess. Leaking. Why is that so sexy? It’s wet. It’s sticky.”

  I ran my hand over her thigh, then between her legs, and felt for myself. Oh, yeh. That was nice. “Reckon I know why it’s sexy to me.”

  “Right,” she said, when I didn’t say anything else. “Why?”

  I smiled. That could be because I felt good. “If you have to ask, I can’t explain. Say it’s a bit like the tattooing idea. Or like everything I just did to you.”

  She sighed. “Or the way you put my rubies in. That was seriously hot. I feel kind of . . . tattooed. So you know.”

  I kissed her again, between the shoulder blades this time, because I was moving down the bed. “I know. That was why I did it.”

  She rolled over, her whiskey-brown eyes sleepy, her wide mouth for once not smiling. I’d been right. The rubies looked exactly right against her honey-colored skin, and so did that pink gold. She said, “I should probably say something to remind you again. Make some rules.”

  “Mm.” I cupped a breast, because it was right there, then leaned down and kissed the pink nipple. “You could. We could have a talk about limits. Tell you what. You can think about that, and we’ll talk about it over dinner. Very quietly, because I’m taking you out. Right now, I’m going to go for my swim and to have that massage, because I have a feeling that I’m going to have to fuck you again after that conversation, and I need to get in shape to give you all my attention. I’ll dress your arm first, though. Want to come with me?”

  She stared at me for a minute, then inspected her arm like she wasn’t sure what else to do, and I said, “Before you ask—you’re not good to swim yet. And, no, that’s not me failing to appreciate the difference between in bed and out of it. That’s me listening to your discharge instructions, and you still being pretty wonky at the time. You could come with me and lie by the pool, though, if you like. Hang on one sec first.”

  I got my crutches, headed into the bathroom, and found the stuff for her dressings, and when I came back, she said, “I’m going to say no. I’m going to lie on a chaise on your terrace instead, read the rest of your book, listen
to the surf, and maybe fall asleep. And that’s all I want to do today.” She put her arm out for me to take hold of, sighed when I did it, and said, “You’re pretty great, by the way. In case I didn’t say so. Even though you keep switching back and forth between personas and throwing me off.”

  “Well, no,” I said, getting down to the business of dressing her arm, “you didn’t say so.”

  Her expression changed. I wasn’t exactly looking, but I wasn’t exactly not. “Oh,” she said. “Did I forget to say the words?”

  Somehow, I was laughing again. I should be tense, maybe. I should be thinking about what we were doing here, how impermanent our current setup was, and why that seemed to matter so much. I couldn’t manage it. “Well, yeh,” I said. “You did.”

  “Oh. All right. This feels a little momentous, so you know.”

  I finished smearing on the antibiotic ointment, laid the gauze gently over her healing flesh, and tore off a strip of adhesive tape. “I know.”

  “The first time I thought I was in love with you,” she said, “was that first night in the tent, after the waterfalls. And ever since then, I can’t stop thinking it. It’s the way you’re so sweet, and then the way you’re not. You just . . . burn me down. You make my knees shake. You make me weak. And every time you do it, I want it more.”

  That seemed to be all I was going to get. I guessed I’d take it. I finished bandaging her, pressed my mouth to the tender inside of her wrist, and said, “Well, good. You keep on thinking about that. Think about how bad you’ll want it by tonight, maybe, and how much advantage I may take of that. I’m going swimming.”

  Karen

  I had two guys here, I thought at eleven o’clock the next morning, as we lifted off for a three-hour flight after dropping the Actually Sexy Lexus off at a very high-end car dealership whose manager was more deferential to Jax, even if he expressed that with typical Kiwi understatement, than Jax was comfortable with. There was the Jax who was holding my hand now and saying, “You don’t have to do this with me today unless you want to. The Limb Centre, or even dinner with my parents, for that matter. You could visit Poppy and report on the dog, or go to the Settlers’ Museum, maybe. That’s not bad, and it’s only about ten minutes’ walk from the hospital. Or go shopping, of course.”

  I said, “You’re sounding pretty eager to get rid of me. Do you actually not want me at your appointment, do you not want to introduce me to your parents, or do you think I don’t want to come? I’m good either way. Any way. Just tell me, because I can’t guess.” Which, of course, I wasn’t, but if he really didn’t want to introduce me to his parents, I needed to know.

  He looked a little less remote. “You have to know I want you. I keep forgetting that I can actually come out and tell the truth.”

  “I could point out that you’ve met my family, complete with me exposing all of my weaknesses and insecurities around them. If I were the arguing type, that is.”

  Now, he actually laughed. “If anybody in the known universe is now or ever has been the arguing type, it’s you.”

  “Not what you said last night.” I didn’t grab him while I said it, or do anything similarly unrefined. I may have looked at him from under my lashes, though. It was the sort of thing that was normally beyond my level of subtlety, or my level of flirting ability, but it could be I was learning.

  Because, yes, that was the other guy. The one who’d camouflaged himself at first by holding my hand while we’d walked the few blocks down Maunganui Road to a little restaurant called Post Bank as the evening shadows grew longer, then sat beside me on a red velvet banquette in an intimate room lined, for some reason, with shelves of books reaching all the way to the ceiling, so you were eating haute cuisine in a library, hence combining two of my favorite things in the world. The one who’d enjoyed some truly delectable examples of high-end New Zealand cuisine with me, had drunk almost certainly too much Otago Pinot Noir with me, and had proceeded to ask me, two feet from the diners beside us, low-voiced questions about my sexual limits that had had me alternately trying and failing not to gasp, which he loved, and trying and failing not to squirm, which he loved more.

  If you’ve never been asked exactly how much bondage you’re into while you’re tipping a green-lipped mussel into your mouth, I’ll clue you in. It’s seriously distracting. Are scarves as far as you want to push things, or do ropes sound better, and how do you feel about having both your wrists and ankles tied down, so you can’t move? Also, how comfortable are you with having him move you into different positions and take you different ways? Once your arm’s healed, of course, because until then, he’s going to be so careful, baby. Or how about being asked what your safe word is, when you’ve just taken your first bite of roast lamb with balsamic and rosemary? And when you’ve just swallowed that first, incredible mouthful of dark, rich chocolate torte with raspberry sauce and are absolutely dying from the taste of it sliding down your throat, and he asks how hard you want him to spank you? And is his hand enough? Because if it’s up to him—he wants to feel it.

  Well, yeah.

  I finally whispered, with half of my torte left, as well as a third of whatever-glass-of-wine this was, “I’m still injured.”

  “Yeh. I know.” He picked up my hand and kissed my knuckles, smiled at me, and said, “That’s why I want to make sure I take special care with you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I did my best to scowl at him. It wasn’t easy, since I couldn’t feel my face, or much of anything other than the insistent throb that had started up with the first question, and the kind of shocks you’d normally expect from scuffing your feet across the carpeting and then touching the lamp. “I’d say you’re just exactly not trying to do that. I’d say you’re trying to make me suffer.”

  “Well,” he said, “maybe a bit. Here’s something else you could do for me, if you want to suffer a wee bit more.”

  “Uh . . .” I said, half of me wondering pretty hard whether he was thinking about doing any of this tonight, or if it was just dinner conversation. I’d had at least four orgasms already today, and, yes, I wanted another one. Or three. But whatever guys said—all right, I was talking about Josh here—they didn’t really want it as much as I did. Also, it wasn’t like a man carried around his bondage supplies in his luggage, just in case he got lucky. And found a woman who liked it a little kinky. He’d jumped straight to ropes? Seriously? And we hadn’t even discussed sex toys.

  “Because if you do,” he said, leaning in a little closer and running his thumb slowly over the inside of my wrist, then my palm, like he wanted to let me know how patient he was willing to be, “you’ll get up right now, go on back there, and take off your undies for me, so I know you’re ready. If you say you’ll do it, I’m going to check your purse for them, so you know. And if you haven’t done it . . .” He sighed and took a sip of wine. “I could do a bit of . . . punishing. I could do it anyway, in fact. Maybe I could think of some way you’ve disappointed me.”

  Did I do it? Of course I did. And when he did take my purse from me, when I came back, unzip it, check inside, then lift his eyes to me with all that slow smolder? I may have shuddered.

  It was four blocks home. I counted. Jax held my hand again, he didn’t hurry, and he didn’t say anything at all. He just went into the apartment with me, and then into the bedroom, and said, “Get on the bed and lie down. And tell me how you’re feeling. Arm still OK? Too tired?”

  And there was that other guy again, confusing me. “No,” I said. “I’m not too tired, and I can’t even feel my arm.” Well, that was true, so I decided to tell him so. “The only things I can feel right now are the parts of my body that contain erectile tissue, but I’m feeling all of those to the point of serious discomfort, because that’s what happens when you have too much blood flow to those areas for about two friggin’ hours. You get engorgement. After that long, it’s almost painful, and the only way to relieve it is with an orgasm. Or several of them. Which can happen any time now. Since you a
sked.”

  He was laughing, and then he was sitting on the bed, leaning over, kissing my mouth, and brushing his thumb over my cheek. Still smiling. “Got a scientific explanation for everything, eh. You do know your biology. Here’s another question for you.”

  I eyed him with some suspicion, because he was looking smug. “What?”

  “Where’d you get this dress?” It was my sundress, the one I’d been wearing the first day, and every time since that I’d had to dress up at all. His hand was tracing the neckline, and not where you’d expect, between my breasts. Around the outer edges of the halter top instead, in that tender place between your shoulder and the start of your breast that no man touches enough. Except that he was doing it. His hand drifted up to the side of my throat, and then circled it gently, barely touching, but I remembered how he’d held the back of my neck earlier today, and swallowed.

  “I don’t want to be choked,” I said. “Something you neglected to ask about. That’s not hot, it’s just scary. Also dangerous. And I’m a big, big believer in lube. Just putting that out there.”

  He looked, fortunately, horrified, and took his hand away. “I’m not going to choke you. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Oh. Well, good.” I was right at that edge, where you’re so excited, you’re trembling, and you know you could tip over to being scared too easily.

  “I do want to know, though,” he said, “where you got the dress. And you’re not answering me.” I thought he’d kiss me, but he didn’t do that, either. Instead, he moved down the bed and unfastened the little ankle straps of my sandals, because I somehow hadn’t remembered to take them off at the door. He slipped them off, dropped them beside the bed, put his hands around my ankles, and moved them a couple inches apart. And—whoa. Just that was making me ache harder. Maybe it was remembering that I wasn’t even wearing a thong, and that I’d been as aware of that as a woman could possibly be during that walk. And now. Maybe it was wondering what was coming next. Maybe it was all of it.