"No rubbing," Miranda told her, pushing her hand away only to replace it with a barrage of punishing slaps and smacks that brought Ana right up over the countertop. She cried out, the toes of her shoes digging in to the floor as she fought herself to hold still.
She tried to buck, but there was no part of her that wanted escape from the sting or the heat. This was rapture. It was heaven, wrapped in a fiery burn that throbbed straight through her bottom and into her sex. One minute, she was clutching at the counter, and in the next, Miranda had her spun around and shoved up hard against the cabinets. Ana didn't mind. She didn't mind the conquering force of Miranda's mouth crashing down on hers. She groaned, the kind of bedroom groan that seemed to make Miranda go wild, when she grabbed Ana's hot bottom and lifted her all the way off her feet, dropping her to sit on the counter.
Miranda stripped her pants the rest of the way off her, discarding them to the floor. Ana loved the hungry way she kissed her way back up Ana's legs, pushing them apart as she feasted her way up into the crux of her, past her sex to her belly, her breasts, her lips. Grabbing Ana's hips, she dragged her right up to the edge of the counter, forcing Ana to catch hold of anything just to keep from falling.
She loved the scrubbed-clean scent of fresh soap on Miranda's skin, the hint of wild berries. She loved the taste of her, the twining of their tongues, the press of Miranda's hands as they came to rest on the inner slopes of her thighs. It was all the direction Ana needed to open them.
A flush of pink, almost as red as the blush on her bottom, stole up Ana's cheeks, but she held Miranda's gaze, watching through smoldering, heavy-lidded eyes as the taller woman pulled back. She stroked the inside of Ana's legs, from pussy to knees and back again. She rose onto her toes, brushing her lips upon Ana's forehead. She let her kisses wander downward, stealing fluttering tastes of her blushing cheeks, eyelids, the tip of her nose. She worked her tender way to Ana's mouth.
Everywhere Miranda touched her burned like a furnace—breast to breast, belly to belly, hip to hip. Ana tried to wrap her legs around her, but Miranda stopped her, forcing her, one caress at a time, to open and splay herself, spreading her bent legs as wide apart as they could go.
Ana had never felt as beautiful as she did when Miranda cupped her sex. She was a furnace there, too. Hot and wet, aching to be touched. To be tasted. And when Miranda did, all Ana could do was grab her hair and shoulders, and hold on tight while she rode the waves of Miranda's suckling mouth as it nibbled all along her folds, parting to pierce her with stroking fingers while her legs shook and shook, and her belly clenched. Her breathing turned ragged.
"Come for me," Miranda commanded, flicking and nipping both with her fingers and her tongue. Every flinch of Ana's stomach amplified the pleasure her muscles tried to withhold. Her hips rocked. Her fingers plucked the bobby pins from Miranda's hair, and she reveled in the tumbling, cascading rush of soft, sweet-smelling glory. She held onto Miranda, urging her not to stop even as her back arched, and her breath caught. Sensation erupted within her as she shuddered, shaking and shaking.
"Good girl," Miranda cooed, letting Ana ride out the waves until only an occasional fit of trembling remained.
Straightening, Miranda dropped one last kiss upon her parted lips and pulled her closer, letting Ana lean against her, her head resting heavily upon her shoulder.
"I didn't do anything for you," Ana mumbled.
"Sure you did," Miranda said, pressing one last kiss upon the highest curve of her shoulder. When her arms wrapped in tighter around Ana, she could have sworn she could feel their hearts beating together in unison. "You came to be with me."
Ana melted.
CHAPTER TEN
It was a lazy morning. Wrapped in a lavender terrycloth bathrobe, Miranda was in the kitchen, flipping pancakes for breakfast. Still in her pajamas—men's boxers and a white tank top—Ana was at the dining table on the opposite side of the half wall that divided the kitchen and living room, struggling her way through the last few questions on her admission paperwork.
"This is silly," she grumbled. "I don't know what half this stuff is, and the half I do know, I don't want to do."
"Finish it anyway," Miranda said, with a maddeningly unsympathetic smile.
"You already know what I like. Why do I have to fill this out when you already know?"
"It's standard—"
"Operating procedure," Ana finished with her. It was everything she could do not to roll her eyes. "This sucks."
Putting her spatula down, Miranda came around the wall to the table long enough to press a kiss on Ana's brow. It mollified her, but only just. "What's the next fetish, lovely?"
"Bondage," Ana obediently read. At least they were done discussing anal. She glared at the line, tapping her pen on the paper. Did she like to tie or be tied? "You know, you could just fill this out for me. I'll agree with whatever you say."
"That's not the way it works," Miranda said and chuckled, already headed back to the stove. "Get it done."
Like a naughty school child—and there was a program for that; who'd have thought grown women would want to pay this kind of money to pretend to be back in school—who had to finish her homework before she could play, Ana checked 'be tied' and plodded through the list. The idea of fisting appalled her. She couldn't imagine getting a sexual thrill out of playing with fire. Now and then, she found a fetish on the list that interested her. Corsetry was one, though the word left too much open to interpretation.
"What exactly does this mean: corsetry?" she finally asked. "Is that strutting around in sexy underwear, or—"
"It can," Miranda said, flipping the pancakes over again. "Or it can mean being bound in a rope corset."
"Wouldn't that be part of bondage? Handcuffs would be bondage too, wouldn't it, except it's got its own line way down here." Ana perked. "Ooh! That could be our costume. We could be Good Cop and Bad Cop, and Good Cop gets restrained and spanked!"
"Wouldn't Bad Cop need the spanking?" Miranda asked, laughing.
"It'd take a pretty bad cop to do that to another cop, so… no."
Miranda flipped the next pancake and threatened Ana with her spatula. "Young lady, stop cracking jokes and finish that questionnaire!"
"How am I supposed to know if I like something when I've never tried it?" Ana complained. "Look at this; leather. That's all it says. Leather. What exactly does 'leather' mean?"
"Restraints," Miranda said. "Clothing. Also, being a Leather man in the community has its own rules and connotations. There's also suspension harnesses."
"What's a suspension harness?"
"It's where a dominant rigs you up so you can be hoisted off the ground. Those who enjoy it say it feels a bit like flying."
Ana's eyes lit up. "That sounds like fun, actually. Can we do that?"
Miranda looked at her over the stove, considering. "That's pretty advanced for a first-timer. We could start with beginner bondage games and see how things go."
Ana continued down her list. "All right, here's another one. What's ageplay?"
"When a Dominant becomes a parent for his or her submissive." Leaving the pancakes to cook, Miranda pulled a tray of fresh fruit and cubed cheese out of the fridge. "Does that interest you?"
Ana frowned at the paper. "Like I need another parent telling me to marry a nice Methodist boy and give her grandchildren. No, thank you."
Miranda laughed and brought the tray to the table. "Fruit juice, tea, or coffee?"
"Black tea with milk and sugar if you have it, please, but let me do it." She got up and moved toward the old-fashioned teakettle.
Miranda pointed to the table. "In your seat, young lady, until you finish your application." She slapped her spatula against the pan for emphasis, making Ana jump.
Sinking back in her seat, Ana let out a frustrated sigh. "If you're so dominant, why are you serving me? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
"A dominant woman makes the decisions," Miranda corrected. "You need your paperwo
rk finished before you can leave this apartment. Do you want to be grounded for the next week?" She rounded the wall to lay a dainty teacup and saucer in front of Ana, along with a cup of tea at the head of the table for herself.
"Here with you for a week? Yes, please." Ana grinned, enjoying any chance she could to make Miranda laugh. "Your wish is my command."
"Your Mistress commands you to finish your application." Miranda tapped the paper to help redirect her attention and then returned to the stove. "Or she is going to have a wonderful time devising all sorts of punishments should you fail to obey her rules."
"What kind of rules?" Ana asked, crinkling her nose. She couldn't tell whether Miranda was joking or not. "Is this like 'eat all your vegetables' sort of rules, or 'walk three steps behind with eyes downcast'?"
"We've already discussed two of them." Shutting off the stove, Miranda came back to the table with twin plates piled high with fruit, cheese and fresh, fluffy pancakes. "Being honest with each other was one, and the other was to keep your mobile in the desk unless you need to use it. But there will be others we'll discover and discuss as we go along so you can avoid earning unintentional punishments."
A tiny spark of sexual excitement blossomed in the pit of Ana's stomach. She liked the sound of punishments, even if she didn't dare admit it. Until now, she hadn't known that about herself. "What sort of punishments?"
Miranda gave her a knowing look. "The kind you won't like."
That made the excitement spark all over again, although she didn't know if that was because of the look Miranda had given her, or because the words had sounded so much like a threat.
"What sort of thing would earn one of those?" Ana heard herself ask.
Cutting into her breakfast, Miranda shrugged with her eyebrows. "How about when you hurt yourself? Do you want syrup with your pancakes?"
"Fruit is fine, thank you." Ana fidgeted with her fork. "I don't hurt myself."
"Not physical wounds," Miranda clarified. "Putting yourself in danger, emotional or physical. Failing to take care of yourself. Putting yourself down."
"I don't do any of that." Wanting to turn the conversation back to more fun topics, Ana asked, "Can't we try the suspension harness maybe today, and then we'll know if I—"
"I'm referring to the comment you made last night."
Her first bite of pancake halfway to her lips, Ana stopped in surprise. "What comment?"
"'I destroy everything I touch.'" Chewing, Miranda looked at her, and waited.
Perplexed, it took Ana a moment to recall being on the kitchen floor, scrubbing what she'd spilled with her fingers. "Oh. Oh, but that didn't mean anything—"
"It meant something to me," Miranda calmly interrupted. "I've been thinking about it off and on all night. No matter how I look at it, all I see is a hurtful comment directed at someone I care about. Make another, and you'll get the disciplinary spanking you think you want. It won't be near as much fun as you might believe, nor will it be erotic. Few submissives believe me when I tell them that. Most have to find out the hard way." She tapped her finger twice against the table, then headed back to the kitchen. "Do you want honey?"
Ana squirmed, trying to process Miranda's threat. "No, thank you."
She honestly didn't know what to think. On the one hand, it was like a scene straight out of one of her spanking books at home, where the dominant woman cared enough about her partner to protect her, even from herself. On the other hand, she really hadn't meant what she'd said. It had just been one of those silly comments that simply… popped out in moments of stress. Miranda wouldn't really spank her—for real, really spank her—for something silly, would she?
Yes, a surprisingly clear voice in the back of her head replied. One look at Miranda's handsome and yet firm expression said quite clearly that she would follow through with any threat she issued, if Ana forced her hand.
That was a scary fact to face. It was also a surprisingly happy one.
"No one's ever said that to me before." Ana watched Miranda drizzle honey over her fruit.
"It's past time someone did, then, isn't it? Eat your breakfast. We have a busy day ahead."
For a while, the only sounds in the small apartment were of the light clatter of silverware on dishes. The pancakes were good, but Ana barely tasted them. Every thought she had was spiraling busily around the prospect of how Miranda might go about taking something Ana enjoyed and turn it into something she wouldn't like. The images she was conjuring filled her in bits and places with a pleasurable tingling.
"Would…" In spite of herself, her voice turned breathy, "would it be very hard? A punishment spanking, I mean."
"Yes," Miranda said flatly. "You'd be in tears before it was over. I don't want to do that, however. So let's concentrate instead on all the many pleasurable experiences I want to give you this week."
Ana blushed, liking this side of Miranda. Smiling, yet serious. The real Domme Miranda, being firm with her because, as she'd said the night before, Ana was hers. Unless, like the uniform she wore, this was nothing more than act. A role she was playing with Ana, much the same as she'd have played it with any other Castle guest.
Where that thought had come from, Ana didn't know, but it was an unhappy one and it instantly killed the sexy tingling inside her.
Something must have shown on her face.
"Are you all right?" Miranda asked, wiping her mouth on a napkin and setting her unfinished breakfast aside.
"I don't know," Ana admitted.
"Finish your breakfast, lovely," Miranda coaxed, sitting back in her chair to watch while Ana obeyed. "It's okay not to know what you're feeling. It's okay, in fact, to be scared or confused, or angry. One of the things you're going to discover once we start to play is, our emotions can get very mixed up here. You may think you're fine one minute, and in the next, weeks' worth of emotional baggage suddenly come pouring out. I'll be very surprised if at some point you don't become… overwhelmed by all the anger and hurt you've swallowed and which you might even think you've forgotten."
Since you hooked up with Peyton. Miranda didn't say that part, but Ana heard it nonetheless. What faint tingles of pleasure had up until that point survived, died. All Ana could feel inside her now were the knots, twisting at her.
"We should have a safeword," Miranda added.
Picking at her fruit, Ana shrugged one shoulder. "If I don't like something, I'll just tell you to stop."
"'Stop' is not a good safeword."
"Why not?"
Folding her arms on the table, Miranda leaned toward her. "Because, sweetheart, I want you to tell me to stop. I want you to cry out, 'No,' and, 'I can't,' and, 'Please, Mistress, no more.' If I can't make you do that—if I can't make you writhe and shout, while all the while your panties are getting wetter and wetter, and your beautiful little pussy is throbbing so hot you think you'll die if I don't touch you there just once—then I'm not doing my job. Safewords are there to help me tell the difference between all the times you'll cry 'stop' when you really don't want me to, and that one moment when you might actually need me to."
Those knots were tightening into strangleholds. "I trust you."
"Thank you for saying so. Pick a safeword anyway, one that is used only between us. Then, once we start to scene for real, I can feel comfortable knowing that you'll have a way out if your emotions take you somewhere you aren't comfortable going. Otherwise, there's no difference between this and abuse."
"You're not Peyton," Ana snapped, her voice sounding too loud and too angry. She didn't know why her hands were shaking, but she quickly dropped them into her lap to hide them.
"No, I'm not," Miranda agreed. "But I've been doing this for a very long time. You say you trust me, but I need you to trust what I'm saying, too. Peyton crossed the line with you, and something I do may trigger a flash-back of bad feelings. We may go too fast, or you may react in ways you don't anticipate or understand. Any number of things can happen. No safeword, Ana, no scene. It's for my p
rotection as much as yours."
Ana didn't understand, but she didn't want to argue either. They'd been having a pretty good morning up until this point; she really didn't want to ruin the whole day. "Okay, fine. What would make a good safeword?"
"It needs to be something that won't sound like part of a scene." Plucking a berry off her plate, Miranda ate while she thought. "What about 'peace lily'?"
That Miranda would think to use something plant-based, which was how they'd come to meet one another in the first place, as their safeword, was enough to loosen some of those strangling knots in Ana's stomach. "Okay, I can do that." She offered a peace-treaty smile. "If you do something I don't like, I'll use it. Like, peace lily, Miranda. I want to try the rope suspension now."
Miranda sat up, startled. She looked torn between scolding and laughing, eventually giving in to both urges. "A safeword isn't meant for submissive manipulation!"
"You're the one who insisted we have one. So, peace lily, Miranda. I don't want a safeword."
Miranda lightly slapped the table. "Brat. I ought to—"
"Spank me? Yes, please. We both know I'm never going to use it anyway."
"You will if necessary, or we're going to skip the fun and go straight to real punishment."
She didn't for a second think Miranda playing, but that threat still made the flesh tingle across her bottom and the backs of her thighs. Blushing at all the places that now ached to feel Miranda's 'punishing' hand, Ana propped her chin in both hands, batting her lashes as she teased, "Promises, promises."
Sitting upright in mock affront, Miranda reached over and gently slapped the back of Ana's hand. "Eat your breakfast and finish your application."
"Yes, ma'am." Ana popped a piece of fruit in her mouth and picked up her pen again. "What program should I put down?"
"Put down 'Personal Fantasy.' Unless there's something else you'd like to try—and don't you dare say 'rope suspension' again. I've already booked us in to the Sultan's Room. How do you feel about being my Harem Girl for the week? I'll teach you how to do the Dance of the Seven Veils."
Ana Adored: Mistress of the Castle (Masters of the Castle) Page 12