“You okay, love?”
The question came from a soft, feminine voice with an accent Sam couldn’t place. She glanced up to see a shockingly beautiful woman in front of her—green eyes, her skin such a warm brown tone it almost looked like she glowed.
“My kids’ school called. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“I’ll take over your spot for a tick.”
A tick? Where was this woman from? She sounded British, but not quite. Australian, maybe? Wherever she was from, she had cheekbones like a model and lashes Sam would be jealous of forever if they were real.
“Are you sure?”
The other woman came around the desk and ushered Sam out of her seat. “Go on. I’ve got you covered.”
Relief caught Sam on an exhale. “Thanks. I’ll be right back.”
She scurried into the staff kitchen, standing in a corner to listen to the message. Once she’d heard the voicemail and could breathe again, she called the school and informed them that no, Allegra’s extra snack wasn’t missing. It had probably been put in the left side pocket of her backpack rather than the right where her daughter expected it to be. It was one of the instructions Sam had rattled off to Brady the night before.
Clearly he hadn’t been paying attention. She’d deal with that later.
Problem solved, Sam walked back to reception. The woman who’d helped her was smiling as she took a call, all red lips and striking brows. With her blond-brown ringlets pushed back with a headband and diamond studs in her ears, she was flashy in a way Sam hadn’t been able to be in years.
She hung up the phone. “All sorted now?”
Sorted. Definitely not American. “Yes. Minor drama with one of my daughters.”
“You don’t have to tell me. Mine are always giving me hell.”
“You have kids?”
“Two daughters. Eight and four.”
“Mine are ten and seven.”
“Then clearly we feel each other’s pain.” The other woman stood, and Sam’s gaze darted to her left hand. No wedding ring. “I’m Hanna Clay, by the way. Reginald—”
“—Pierce’s secretary. I know,” Sam finished for her. She’d read her name and position on the company roster. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m—”
“Samantha Archer.” Hanna grinned brightly. “Everyone knows. It’s lovely to meet you, too.”
That was unexpected, and rewarding. After so long feeling invisible, a whole company of people knew who she was.
“I’d better get back to it,” Hanna said, stepping around Sam’s chair and walking past her. Sam marveled over the other woman’s sense of fashion. Black turtleneck dress, stunning knee-high boots, and where did she get her concealer? Her skin was so smooth, it looked like it was airbrushed on.
“Thanks again, by the way,” Sam said. “For covering me.”
“No problem, love. We moms gotta stick together.”
Something lit up inside Sam, a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt in ages. No other mom had made her feel a part of something—they’d made her feel like an outcast instead.
The phone rang. Sam reached for the receiver.
“Forrester, Schaeffer and Pierce,” she said, waving as Hanna walked off. Like Hanna, like Lilly and Cassie, Sam was starting to feel like a woman in her own right, taking her place in the world, untapped power at her fingertips.
And she was ready to grab it.
13
By the middle of the week, Brady was a shaky mess.
His concentration issues were a nightmare, his brainwaves scattered between work and home. He’d been up early every day, taking care of the girls while Sam got ready for work. He’d herded them successfully out the door each morning, but not without reminding himself aloud what they needed or where things should go.
He was desperate not to disappoint her—his wife. His Mistress.
There was no clear line between when she was one or the other, no delineation between when she wanted to dominate and when she wanted him to remember things. It was stressful, switching from one role to the other, but he didn’t bring it up. It wasn’t just the fear of his punishment or the reward for his good behavior. It was the fact that he was making Sam happy.
The smile she’d given him each morning as she walked out the door was enough to make him feel like a god, but today she’d emerged from the bathroom with a different look on her face. She’d locked the bedroom door, dropped her towel and ordered Brady to his knees.
He’d been uncertain—the girls were running around downstairs—but he’d obeyed anyway, sinking to the floor at the foot of the bed. It was something he’d only dreamed about, and the reality of kneeling before her was better than his wildest fantasies.
“Is your knee okay?” she’d asked.
His knee had been the last part of his body he was thinking about. “It’s fine.”
“Good.” She’d settled herself on the edge of the mattress, spread her legs and petted the back of his head. “One taste.”
Suddenly he was nineteen again, face between the luscious thighs of the hottest girl on campus. He’d put his lips to her smooth skin, rubbed them back and forth, dipped his chin forward until his beard tickled her clit. Opening her up with one gentle move of his thumbs, he’d sparked his tongue along her flesh until she gasped.
That sound, and the flavor of her on his beard, had driven him crazy all day. So much so that he’d been mentally fucking absent at Helios’ programmer team meeting that afternoon, his head somewhere not at all “SFW” when Paul presented the new payment application.
It was not a good scene.
Paul’s solution worked, but it meant the one-step checkout application they promised the client was going to be late. Brady felt lousy that he hadn’t been the one to find the bug, even lousier that he hadn’t been on the ball in the meeting. With so much going on between Helios and home, he felt like a hard drive running out of memory space; there was only so much data he could hold.
But he didn’t want to be Brady the boss right now. He wanted to be Sam’s pet, wanted to be on his knees until she was wrung out with pleasure and smiling at him.
And he definitely didn’t want to talk to his brother on the drive home.
The call rang a second time, chiming loudly through the car speakers. They hadn’t talked since Jack came back from his honeymoon. Groaning, Brady pushed the button on his steering wheel connecting his car to his phone and picked up the call.
“Hey.” He squinted through the pellets of freezing rain hitting his windshield. The roads were icy, the sky pitch black, something he could use as his excuse to hang up if he needed to. “Happy to be back?”
“I wasn’t missing this weather, that’s for sure. How’ve things been with you?”
Great. My wife figured out I like to have her control me, and I’ve had a hard-on for a week.
“Fine.”
“Things at work good?”
“Same old. Can’t complain.”
There was a beat of silence, the only sound the road noise and his wipers squeaking across the windshield. Brady’s heartbeat kicked up. Please, please let Jack not ask any questions about him and Sam. He didn’t want to lie, but the last time he and his brother had talked about his marriage had been bad enough. Exactly zero percent of him wanted to talk about it now. How Lilly and Nick discussed this shit was beyond him.
“Well, I wanted to check in,” Jack said. “Sam enjoying working at the firm?”
He could’ve been imagining the undertone of competition here—the weird sense that at least Sam had gone into law. Helios was a massive success, but Brady felt second-rate when compared to his brother.
“She loves it.”
“Lilly mentioned she seemed happy.”
“She is.” And not just because of the job. He was making her happy. Brady slowed and turned onto his street, his body both relaxing and winding up knowing she was close. “I’m home. Can I talk to you later?”
“Yup. Take it easy.�
�
Brady knew he was being distant, but his mind was on one thing. Like a moth to a flame, he hurried inside, called to Sam and this thing they’d found between them.
Later that night, after dinner had been cleaned up and the girls had been bathed and put to bed, Sam sat on the edge of the bed brushing her hair. Stretched out behind her, Brady watched the rubber-tipped bristles run through her long red strands, watched the small of her back and the curve of her ass until he couldn’t stand not being the one touching her.
She looked over her shoulder. “Are you thinking how much this resembles a paddle?”
Brady chuckled. “No.” But good to know she was. “I was thinking something else, though.”
“What’s that?”
He sat up. Scooted forward. Put out his hand. “Can I?”
“Can you what?”
“Brush your hair.”
Sam held his gaze for a breath, then offered him the brush. He moved forward until he was behind her, slid his legs along either side of her until he’d enveloped her, his front to her back. When he passed the brush gently over her head, she sighed softly and sank into him.
“I love that you remember how much I like this,” she said.
“How could I forget?” The first time he’d randomly done this one night in college, she’d closed her eyes and told him if he wanted any that night, he wouldn’t stop what he was doing until she said so.
The rubbery tips made a soft hush as they moved against her shiny strands. He ran it through her hair over and over again until all knots were gone and the brush slid through it with ease. It was good, comfortable, but having her butt nestled between his legs had him wanting more. He wanted her gasping, wanted her pointing out what a mess he was with that hint of playful irritation.
But how? He still couldn’t initiate, so how did he get what he wanted?
“Can I brush…all your hair?” he asked.
Smooth, Archer. Smooth.
There was another tilt of Sam’s head as she looked over her shoulder. “All of it?”
“Yeah.” He’d been dying to get closer to that little patch of red all day. “All of it.”
She smiled, laughing. “Is that what you want?”
He shrugged. “I think it could be hot.”
“I think it’s weird,” she said. Before Brady’s heart completely plummeted into his stomach, she added, “But you’ve been a good boy, so I’ll let you watch me. And buy me a new brush when we’re done.”
His disappointment faded, lost in the echo of the words good boy and in the shape of her body as she stood and took the brush from him.
“Lock the door,” she said.
Brady was on his feet in an instant, crossing the room and ensuring their privacy with an audible click. Returning to the foot of the bed, he watched as she sat against the pillows, sexy as hell in her tank top and tiny shorts. She maneuvered the brush between her spread legs, passed it over the cotton, and Brady’s breath caught at the same time hers did.
“That’s an interesting sensation,” she said. “Never done this before.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “Never thought of my hairbrush as a sex toy. But I guess you have, dirty boy.”
He hadn’t, but he grinned anyway. “Do more with it.”
She slanted an eyebrow, and Brady immediately backpedaled. “I mean, please do more with it, Mistress?”
He swore his heart stopped completely until she said, “Better.”
Jesus. Was it normal for a sub to be so worried about displeasing their Dominant?
Was any of this normal at all?
Sam lifted the waistband of her shorts and tucked the brush beneath it. All Brady could see was the rectangular shape of it moving under her shorts and the flex of her hips as she rocked against it.
“God,” he whispered, needing to palm himself, to stifle the ache.
“You like to watch?” she asked. “My great big bear of a voyeur?”
“I like to watch you.”
She shuddered, eyes heavy lidded. “It’s the hottest thing ever, the way you’re looking at me.”
“What do I look like?”
“Like you want to be this brush. Like you can’t stand that you’re not.”
She wasn’t wrong. Her hand wrapped around the handle, and she moved it faster. Her head fell back, and she widened her legs farther.
“Tell me about the toys you want me to use on you, pet,” she said. “You’ve pleased me with how good you’ve been, paying attention to your language. I want to think about how I’m going to reward you.”
His brain stopped at the words you’ve pleased me. So simple, and yet they had the power to undo him, to build him up and fluster him as he imagined what was happening beneath her shorts. Imagined her pleasure mounting, imagined being the cause of it, the vulgar things she could do to him until he was crying out in desperation.
“Hello?” she asked. No irritation, just a smile on her lips as her breath quickened. “Did you forget what I asked you already?”
Fuck. He had, but he couldn’t answer, his own hips thrusting in time with hers.
She chuckled. “So turned on he can’t recall a single question.”
That made him uncomfortable, but his cheeks burned and his erection stiffened further. He didn’t like bringing his attention issues in here, but her pointing it out reached that tender place inside him, the place that enjoyed her mockery.
“Tell me, pet.” She was breathless now. “What do you want?”
“I want you to come,” he said.
“You’re gonna get your wish.”
She quickened her pace, the brush making sharp up-and-down motions under the cotton, and then her back was arching and her toes were curling and Brady was lost to the look on her face, to her fist twisted in the blanket, her gasps silent as she rode out her release to the end.
“More?” he asked, already moving closer, ready to bring her what she needed.
She shook her head. “You didn’t do what I asked.”
“Do what?”
Sam’s head dropped back in mock-frustration. Was she surprised he was blanking? He couldn’t have remembered his own name right now if she’d asked him.
Sam slipped the brush free. Putting it on her nightstand, she shifted forward, crawled toward him and licked the shell of his ear. “You didn’t tell me what toys you wanted.”
“Oh.” He’d been thinking about those today, too. “The…vibrating ring,” he said, his eyes cast downward.
“That’s not what you want.”
“How can you tell?”
Sam moved around in front of him, stood at the edge of the bed, put her hands on his chest and spread her fingers. Brady could’ve resisted, but it was so much better when she took control, when she threw that lasso around him and coiled it tight.
He let her press until he was flat on his back on the bed. Her hands found the waistband of his pajama bottoms, fingers teasing back and forth over his skin.
“Your cheeks aren’t red enough,” she said. “That’s how. When you’re turned on your face turns crimson.”
“Oh.” Was it not blazing now?
Back and forth her fingers went, until he thickened up and tented the flannel and she made that damn humming noise again.
“That sound makes me crazy,” he said.
“What sound?”
“When you hum.”
“Hmm.” She smiled, like the seductress that undid him at nineteen and tied him to her for life. “I do it when you’ve made me happy.”
“I think that’s why I like it.”
Her fingers dipped lower, teasing at his pubic hair. “I want to play.” Her gaze flicked up. “May I?”
She was asking his permission?
“Yes,” he croaked. Like he was going to say no.
Sam was slow, tantalizing as she hooked her fingers into his boxers and pulled them along with his pj bottoms down to his knees, leaving them there. There was no warning
—no teasing or stroke of her hands before she took him deep into her mouth.
“Jesus.” Brady’s hips lifted involuntarily, head digging back against the mattress. “I thought…fuck…I wasn’t allowed to come until the toys arrived.”
She popped her mouth off him—“You’re not.”—then went back to sucking.
A stroke of her tongue had him panting. “So you’re gonna torture me?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
The vibrations in her mouth made him moan. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He’d been waiting ages for this. Her total lack of gag reflex was insane. “Please don’t. I’m not gonna…shit.”
She opened up on the upstroke. A lick around his tip was a power play, one she definitely had the upper hand in. “Guess you’d better tell me which toy you want then.”
He shivered. This wasn’t only pleasure. It was a test. To see how much he could take before he snapped. Wet suction enveloped him again. So good. So damn good. But a harder suck was a warning.
“The butt plug,” he choked out, not wanting a repeat of last time. “I want that.”
She popped off him. “Really.”
It was the toy he’d thought about the most, and fuck if that didn’t embarrass him even more. Logically he knew it shouldn’t. There was nothing wrong with being interested in anal, aside from his constant fear of seeming weak.
But weak, apparently, was right where Sam wanted him.
She tugged his bottoms until they were off. Kneeling, she palmed his shins, wrapped her hands around his calves—as best she could anyway.
“Didn’t your coach once call your legs powerhouses?”
Brady nodded. And she was moving them like they were feathers, until his knees were up and his feet were on the bed. One loud crick of his bad knee gave her pause, but when he shook his head, she dipped hers down. The last thing Brady saw was the mischievous glint in her eyes until the crown of her head was all that was in his view.
Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3) Page 14