by CD Reiss
“I haven’t told you this in a long time, so I want to remind you. You are mine. Any time. Any place. Without questions. You get on your knees when I say. You spread your legs when I say. You open your mouth and take whatever I put in it. Do you understand?”
He must have felt me swallow against the heel of his hand. He was back. I didn’t know when or how, but this wasn’t the sick Jonathan who got pissed at his handful of pills. This wasn’t the guy who let me top him, or the man who made love to me fearfully and gently. That man was a good husband. He was difficult, because he felt as if his body wasn’t his own, but a good life mate by any standard.
But for as long as I’d been married, I hadn’t felt safe. Until then, staring at the ceiling, unprepared to hear the voice of my king again. My insides vibrated like a piano string, and I shut my eyes tight against tears.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Pull your pants down.”
I worried about the door. Was it open? And the door to the engineering room. Anyone could walk in.
This was a simple matter of trust, which I’d forgotten how to do. Trust him. You’re safe with him.
I opened my pants and wiggled them down. I wore lace and garters, which felt scratchy and uncomfortable under jeans, but I wore them because I’d promised I would, even if I’d promised a different man. He slipped his finger under the straps. His touch had gone electric, exactly right, like when we first met. I felt it through layers of skin and muscle, down to my bones.
“All the way off.”
I stepped out of my pants.
“Why are you crying, goddess?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your safe word?”
I blurted a laugh to the ceiling. “Fuck. I forgot.”
“Do you want a new one?” He slid his finger under my bra, pushing it up and releasing my breasts. My nipples were hard candies, ready for him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your choice.”
“Invictus.”
He pinched a nipple and pulled it to the point of delicious pain. “‘Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, for my unconquerable soul.’”
“Jonathan…” His name was a prayer.
“Turn around.”
I faced the piano, putting my back to him. He slid his hands over my neck and under my shirt collar, pulling the shirt down my arms and drawing his hands over my skin.
“I’m going to ask you something,” he said, pulling my long sleeves halfway off. He twisted the sleeves around my arms, wrapping them and tying them tightly at the elbows.
He paused long enough for me to say, “Sir?”
“Are you happy?” he asked.
I heard the distinct clack of his belt buckle. I didn’t answer. He slid his belt out of his pants with a whook.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that the answer?” He gripped the back of my neck.
“It’s confirmation that I heard you.”
With a sharp push, he pinned my face to the shiny black piano. “Are you happy?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Sure.”
With a thwack that was as hard as it was unexpected, he slapped my ass with his belt. I screamed.
“Too hard?”
“No, sir.”
It was. A fierce burn settled where he’d hit me, and I already wanted more. I wanted him to tear me apart. In the breath’s worth of time it took for my body to register pain, I cracked. I didn’t want to go to dinner with Jerry and the guys, and I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to hurt, and hurt deeply. I wanted to feel pain, and safety, and surrender; to lose myself and my will. I’d forgotten how much I needed that, but like a woman waking from a dreamless sleep, the reality of who I was came back to me. I swore I wouldn’t say my safe word until I was near death.
“Behave then, before I gag you.” He whacked me again and again.
I grunted but didn’t cry out, even when he hit the sensitive area at the backs of my thighs.
“Now”—his breath rasped with effort—“tell me, goddess, are you happy?”
His last stroke was so hard it felt like a blowtorch on my ass. He fisted the hair on the back of my head and brought his face close to mine. “To avoid misunderstandings. Are you happily married?”
I swallowed. He put his belt down in front of my face and squeezed my ass. The pain was overwhelming. I could barely see through it, nor could I form words past the gushing arousal between my legs.
“Answer me,” he said. “And the truth. Are you happy?”
His face was foggy through my tears, but his voice was clear enough to focus on.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
As much as I broke down into tears and hitched sobs, he seemed unfazed by the news, as if he’d already known. And as if he didn’t give a shit about my happiness. He brought his hand over my burning cheeks and laced a finger in the crack, down to my opening.
I was soaked. Dripping. Gushing readiness for him. I wished he’d asked me for the truth after he’d fucked me, because how could he now? I told him I’m miserable and expected a body-ripping, passionate screw? Crazy, magical thinking.
He slipped a finger inside me. I’d fucked him a hundred times in the past six months, but that finger cruelly jamming into me, his palm lying against my scalding ass, was the best thing I’d had in half a year.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said. “But you’re wet. And crying.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Poor goddess.” He pulled his finger out and slipped it onto the hard nodule of my clit. My eyes shut. My mouth opened. My cunt was awake with anticipation as he continued. “Even in love, you need pain.”
“I love you,” I whispered.
He drew his hand back and slapped my ass with full force. I bit back a cry.
“Don’t talk,” he growled. “There’s been wholly too much talking between us, and not nearly enough.”
I nodded.
He folded the belt in two and said, “Open your mouth.” When I did, he put the belt in it. “Bite.”
I bit the leather. It was still warm from hitting me. Had he ever been this cruel and hard? Had he ever been this dominant? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t think.
Then Jonathan put his hands on my hips and let his cock touch where I was wet. I bit the belt as if I wanted to swallow it. He didn’t ask for permission to jam his dick into me in one stroke, making me grunt into the tanned skin. He didn’t ask if my happiness was required. He just fucked me. He fucked me as if I wasn’t even there, slapping himself against my burning ass cheeks, a frame of pain for the pleasure between my legs. He pulled my cheeks apart, stretching them, pain everywhere, and drove into me with everything he had, using me mercilessly. I lost myself in him, in the hurt, in the rising tide of my emotions. I’d told him I was unhappy, and the weight of the misery fell off, leaving an empty place for him to fill with his cock and his searing belt.
I grunted with every thrust. It was coming, the rush of pleasure.
My grunts turned to squeals, and he slowed to barely moving. “I didn’t say you could come.”
I hadn’t had to ask permission for an orgasm in six months. I hadn’t even thought of it. He removed the belt.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I gasped. “May I come?”
“When?”
“Now?” I paused for a hitched breath. “And later, if it pleases you.”
“No.” He slowed, letting me feel every inch of him. He opened my cheeks again, right where my legs met my ass.
I was red and sore, getting his whole length. I choked out a half sob, half moan.
“No,” he said, slapping my ass. “The answer is still no.”
“I don’t think I can stop it.”
He pulled out. I gasped. As much as I expected him to continue fucking me, I didn’t expect what him to quickly guide hi
mself into my asshole and mercilessly push forward.
“No!” I shouted.
He yanked my head back by the hair. “What?”
I couldn’t repeat it. Safe word or no, he’d stop, and I knew, more than anything, that I didn’t want him to stop. “Nothing. Please, go on.”
He pushed the rest of his cock into my ass without preamble.
My soft weeping turned into face-soaking sobs. “God, oh God, it hurts.”
“Pain is the point, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your ass is mine, whether I warn you or not. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He yanked my hair again, pulling back until I faced him. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
The first few strokes were murder. I felt torn apart, ripped from the inside. We’d done some gentle, well-lubricated anal in the past few months, but not like this. Not as a beating.
“You’ve been a bitch, goddess. That’s over. From now on, you step when I say walk. You eat when I feed you. You come when I allow it. If I so much as look at your knees, you get on them and open your fucking mouth.”
I grunted. He reached around me and put his palm on my throat. He pulled me back, and though I felt as though I was falling, I trusted him and put weight on my aching legs, shifting backward. He sat on the piano bench, and with my back to his front and his cock in my ass, I sat into him.
“Spread your legs.” Not giving me a chance to obey, he yanked my legs apart, squeezing my ass cheeks together and tightening me around his cock. “All the way. I want your cunt out.”
I bit back a cry of pain. I spread my knees, on tiptoes to the floor, fighting for balance. My elbows were still tied behind my back, and when it looked as if I’d fall, he pulled me upright.
“Reach back,” he said. “Spread those gorgeous cheeks apart.”
I did, fighting the constraints of my knotted shirt, cursing the stinging skin on my ass as much as I blessed it.
“Now come down, all the way. All the way. That’s it. Bury me in you.” He reached around me and slipped his middle finger in my cunt, gathering wetness, and dragged it to my clit. “You’re not coming until I say. You’re going to hold back by concentrating on one thing and one thing only.”
“What, sir?” I groaned, the pleasure in my clit pushing against the pain behind it.
“Pleasing me. So fuck. And fuck hard. Go.”
I moved up his length and back down, his shaft sliding against my anus, friction hot against the dry muscle.
“Faster.”
His cock beat my insides, shredded me, while his fingers took my cunt three at a time. The heel of his hand kept a constant pressure on my clit.
“Come on, goddess. I’m not pleased.”
I pulled my cheeks wider and slammed down on him harder, my knees aching, my arms on fire, and my ass beyond pain. Yet the pleasure between my legs grew, pressing against the agony and winning.
“That’s good,” he growled. “Very good.”
“Thank you.” I gasped, relieved, relaxed now because he was content.
I heard his breaths getting shorter. I was close, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to have what he wanted. I wanted him to be satisfied. I beat down on his cock, mindless of what I was doing to myself.
“I’m going to come,” he said.
“Thank you,” I squeaked, more tears streaming.
“Come with me.”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
He grunted, but it was more than a grunt. In the second before I lost myself in pleasure, I noted how vocal he was. More than ever. He released, truly, fully, losing control, pulling my hair until I thought he’d tear it out. I was washed away in the pleasure of his hand on my clit, the torture in my ass as my orgasm clenched it around his cock in an undulating rhythm. I came forever, lost in it, in him, his satisfaction, in the pain. I was gone, my identity washed away in complete submission to his pleasure and his will; without ambition or desire of my own, I was simply enslaved, caged, collared. Nothing. No one. Not a feeling of dissatisfaction in my belly, only humility and a feeling of complete, overwhelming gratitude.
“Goddess?” he whispered when I stopped twitching.
I tried to answer, but I was blubbering. I took a few breaths to calm down. “Yes, sir?”
“Are you okay?”
“Thank you.”
He untied me. I put my aching arms on my knees, and he pushed me gently forward, his dick slipping out of my ass. I sucked in a breath.
He pulled me into his lap and kissed the tears running down my cheeks. I held him and wept fully. The emotional release poured out of me as he rubbed my back and kissed my face and neck. My awareness of the world around me—my body, the chair, the room, the building, the time of day—was brought about by the softness of his lips and the way he whispered, “Goddess, goddess, goddess.”
“I haven’t been what you need,” he said softly.
“You couldn’t be. I understand.”
“That’s over now.”
“Thank you.”
He put his hands on my cheeks and brushed my lashes with his thumbs. I let my eyes flutter closed.
“You can’t leave me until I destroy you,” he said.
“If you destroy me, I’ll never leave.”
“Regularly.” He took out a monogrammed hankie and held it up. “Blow.”
I blew my nose. He pinched and wiped for me, as if I were a child. He kissed my lips, owning them with tenderness and confidence. I let his tongue into my mouth, its soothing warmth exploring me as if for the first time. The tenderness with which he kissed me was in such contrast to the beating I’d just received that I broke down in tears again. He held me and rocked me in the soundproof studio for what seemed like hours, saying sweet things in my ear. I felt so good, so calm, so loved.
“You’d better cancel dinner,” he said. “You’re going to need some serious aftercare.”
“You think the guys would notice if I ate standing up?”
“Come home, and I’ll feed you in bed.”
“Yes, Jonathan. Yes to everything.”
“And you shall have everything.”
Chapter 55
MONICA
Sometimes, I felt as though I wasn’t in love with a man. Sometimes when things were tense, or we fought, or we made love, or I was away for too long or in the house for too many weeks, or even when he kissed me on the back patio, I stopped seeing him as a man. I stopped seeing him as even human. I felt as though I’d married a time bomb.
I thought once, as my plane crept down a runway away from some dipshit town, that he was more human in that ticking time bombness than he’d been as a normal man with a normal heart. More human in his mortality, his vulnerability, his lack of control.
Wives care for sick husbands who come back from war. Husbands stand beside wives with illnesses that deteriorate their bodies and minds. We read about their strength and dedication, their stand-by-your-manness. But no one talks about the adjustments and the sacrifices. Grieving for the husband who doesn’t exist anymore isn’t feel-good news. We’re supposed to be chipper and upbeat and never admit to a single soul that we miss the men we thought we’d married.
I felt like a piece of shit for missing the hard, bruising sex. It was different with Gabby. When I’d wanted to go out but had to watch her, I’d felt burdened. I admitted it to myself but did what I had to do anyway. I always felt like shit about that too. But with Jonathan, I was so ecstatic he was alive that I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed him until he asked me if I was happy.
“What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked in the back of the Bentley.
He’d just fucked my ass raw in the studio, just hurt me badly, and I’d begged him for every stroke. I’d never felt closer to him than in those minutes of pain. But on the way back, after I came down from my high and we had a bathroom break, I remembered why the last six months had been so hard.
“Nothing.”
He stroked my arm with his fingertips. Perfect pressure for the gathering of electricity, as always. “Nothing?”
I shook my head, more at myself than at his disbelief. Nothing, my ass. Something. Everything. “That was a lot of exertion back there.”
Exertion wasn’t just a word but a keyword. Code for unreasonable fear. Secret speak for death. Terror in a few breaths of syllables and the tongue rubbing on the back of the teeth.
“You’ve been told a hundred times—”
“I know, please.” I dismissed him. “I know.”
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and turned me to face him, and my scalp became a center of pleasure. “You’re shutting down.”
I couldn’t deny the truth. Not after he’d torn me open. For those minutes in the studio, when he commanded me, I’d forgotten to worry about him, and he was again my master and king. When he pulled my hair, I wanted to be ripped apart again, just for the release from thinking about him dying.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just—”
“Open your legs.”
I was pissed he’d ask at a time like this, and relieved. I spread my legs across the leather seat. Not far enough for him apparently, because he pulled my head back and yanked my knees farther apart. I gasped when a bullet of arousal shot through me.
He pressed four fingers between my legs, where the panels of my jeans met. “I am not going to die fucking you.” He scratched the fabric, and I felt the tease through the layers.
Was this the time to answer honestly? Shouldn’t we talk over dinner or in bed? Or across a desk surrounded by pens and blotters and serious things?
“You might. You could.”
“I won’t.” He pushed against my crotch, and I pushed back as if I had no control over my body.
“You might,” I gasped when he undid my jeans. “And you deny it, and it’s a lie you tell yourself. I’m tired of walking around and pretending it’s not a problem, because it is. It’s a big problem. It’s all I think about.”
He slid his hand past my waistband until the tip of his middle finger reached my