by Alexis Hall
In barely a handful of minutes, our passports were checked in the most cursory fashion imaginable. And then we were let out onto the runway, me dragging along my entirely disregarded luggage. If I’d ever fancied terrorism or drug-dealing, this would have been a fantastic opportunity.
The chill hit me almost immediately, sharpened by the rough edge of the wind. I shivered and Caspian wrapped his coat about my shoulders. It was probably a demeaning sort of gallantry that I, as a liberated twenty-first-century man, should have resisted. But I didn’t feel demeaned. I felt cherished. And the thought made me blush.
“Why don’t you ever have a coat?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Do you have some objection to dressing for the climate?”
“I have an aesthetic one.” I had a duffel coat Mum’s girlfriend Hazel had found in a charity shop, but it made me look, and smell, like an aging yak with personal grooming issues.
“Come on.” Caspian took my free hand and hurried me across the runway.
All around us the sky gleamed. His palm was warm and his fingers were strong. The wind was making carnage of my hair. It was hard for me to hold on to the idea that this was normal life for Caspian. When it felt so utterly surreal to me.
As we boarded, it was “Good afternoon, Mr. Hart.” Someone took my case. And then I was led into a space that would have impressed me if it had been a hotel. Tastefully decorated in shades of brown and cream and gold, it was essentially just a living room—soft carpets, sofas, cozy armchairs, a wall-mounted flat-screen—except it flew.
It motherfucking flew.
Only the windows, and something about the heavy quality of the light, betrayed the fact we were on a plane.
I must have had an “I don’t think I’m in Kansas in anymore” look on my face because Caspian steered me gently into a chair. He was telling me useful things about where the bathroom was and what to do in case of an emergency but I was too dazed to really take it in. Words like office and conference room and master bedroom kept shooting past me in bullet time.
Although I definitely perked up at bedroom.
Soon enough, we were trundling down the runway. The world smearing a bit as we picked up speed. I’d once mentioned to my friend Nik that I had no idea how planes went from being on the ground to being in the air. So he’d told me. The bastard. And that had taken some of the fun out of it. But this was still my favorite part of flying: the moment just before takeoff, when what was about to happen seemed absolutely impossible.
I loved the tilty feeling in my stomach, the instinct to hold my breath. The way you could sort of sense somehow, in the responses of your own body, the unimaginable, unbelievable grace of all that metal.
“Are you all right?” Caspian asked. “You aren’t afraid?”
“You know, maybe you should have checked before we got on the plane.” He looked so horrified that I took pity on him. “I’m fine. It’s just…I’m not used to this literally high-flying lifestyle.”
There was a slightly weird pause.
And I found myself almost wishing we were back in the relative normality of a hired hatchback, or in my family’s home, where we’d found this…I didn’t know what to call it…this ease. This burgeoning sense of an us.
I’d liked being so close to him. Having so much of his attention. And I’d liked the secretive parts of himself he’d seemed willing to share with me—things I’d previously only glimpsed, or suspected, or hoped for. The Caspian Hart who played chess. Who was antisocially competitive. Who washed the dishes. Tickled my feet.
Right now, though, he was nowhere to be seen.
The man sitting on the sofa in his private jet seemed so far out of my league as to belong to an entirely different sport.
He crooked a finger at me and I shuddered with a kind of fearful longing. “Come here, Arden.”
He said it softly but there was no doubt that it was a command.
And I suddenly remembered that I loved this side of him too. That it was all part of him: the playfulness and the arrogance, the kindness and the cruelty. That he wasn’t really remote at all, if you knew how to reach him.
If you weren’t afraid.
I found myself eyeing the expanse of carpet between us, filled with the oddest compulsion to crawl.
I imagined the rub of the fibers beneath my palms. The ache in my knees. The way he would watch me, the hunger flaring in his eyes. And when I got to him I would push his legs apart and—
Oh, fuck imagining.
I slid off my chair and dropped to the floor. Making sure to arch my back, raise my arse, bowing my body in supplication. Invitation.
Caspian’s reaction was way better than any fantasy. The gasp he uttered sounded almost shocked. And, God, the look on his face. Desire and this terrifying gratitude. As if I’d given him something wonderful.
Maybe it should have been humiliating. Crawling to someone’s feet. But, honestly, I felt sexy as hell. Very aware of myself: the roll of my shoulders, the curve of my spine, the shapes I could make, sensuous and brazen and all for him.
Caspian was shaking when I got there. His head thrown back, lips damp and parted to admit his harsh, unsteady breaths.
I rubbed my cheek against the inside of his knee, then up a little higher. The denim was rough but he was hot, hot, hot underneath. And he smelled amazing. Not a trace of cologne left. Just his skin and the promise of sex.
Before I could get much further, his hands closed around my upper arms and he yanked me into his lap. His mouth was frantic against mine. His passion unrestrained to the point of need. Making me squirm and whimper and surrender. Leaving me bruised and breathless and dizzy on pleasure.
He shoved a hand into my hair, pulling hard enough to melt me. “Tell me again. What are you, Arden?”
“I’m a…I’m a slut.”
“No, you’re not.” He pulled harder. Pain this time, but so good, so sweet.
I moaned helplessly, confused and blissed out and sensation lost. “I’m not?”
“You’re my slut.”
I garbled something along the lines of yesyesyesoyesplease.
“And what happens to my slut?”
I opened lust-heavy eyes. Stared deep into his. Found words. Important words. Put them in a sensible order. “Anything you want.”
He pushed me gently to my feet. My legs had apparently gone all shaky.
“Strip,” he told me.
I couldn’t help glancing toward the front of the plane. When I’d offered anything he wanted, I hadn’t quite realized he’d take it right now.
“We won’t be disturbed.”
He sounded certain but I couldn’t shake the mental image of a horrified air hostess—did you get those on private jets?—finding me all naked in the middle of her day job. I liked performing for Caspian, exposing myself to him, but exhibitionism was not my thing. In fact, even the idea of casting some stranger in the role of nonconsenting voyeur was wang-wiltingly embarrassing.
“Arden?”
Oops. I must have been lost in my own head. “Um. Yes?”
His eyes met mine, pale in the silvery light that filled the cabin, and softly gleaming. “Will you trust me?”
It was the last thing I’d expected, somehow. I guess I’d thought he’d command me. Force me even. And I probably wouldn’t have minded. But I had no defense whatsoever against…against being asked. It was neither plea nor demand but God, it was intoxicating. And it slipped between the edges of my heart, twisting it open like an oyster.
“Yes,” I whispered.
The moment I said it, I knew I meant it.
And suddenly I found myself thinking about the story of Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnelle. Not that I was hideously cursed. Or that we were being forced into matrimony because the King of England had made a deeply spurious promise to some random woman he met in the woods.
But still. Caspian had given me my sovereynté.
And now I was ready to surrender it to him.
&
nbsp; My hands were unsexily damp as I peeled off my T-shirt and it was only when I was wriggling my jeans down that I remembered shoes were a thing I was wearing. So I had to stop, with everything bunched around my thighs, and hop about for a bit. By the time I was finally done I was all warm and flustered and pretty much the opposite of attractive.
And so…so naked.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal. Caspian had seen me before—he’d fucked me for fuck’s sake, a bunch of times—but it had never felt like this. As if my skin was too thin and my heart too hot.
All I could think was: what if he’s laughing at me.
But no. When I managed to meet his gaze, there was no mockery in it. No exasperation at my failure to spontaneously launch into an alluring striptease. Just this fierce, glittery excitement, that was, in itself, exciting. Definitely worth getting starkers for at thirty-five thousand feet.
My cock, which had been retreating like it didn’t want to know me, was definitely back in the game.
Caspian held out a hand—the gesture slightly formal, the way you might invite someone to dance—and I took it instinctively, not really sure what to expect. Which was probably for the best because what happened next was…well, it wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in Jane Austen.
(Though maybe Fanny would do it to a penitent Henry Crawford.)
Basically, Caspian tugged me closer and…arranged me, I guess, over his lap. He wasn’t rough and I was a little dazed, so I wasn’t entirely sure how I went from standing to…not doing that.
Whenever I’d seen this type of thing in pictures or, y’know, porn, it looked a lot less comfortable, the subject hanging there, precariously balanced on tiptoes and fingertips. But Caspian got me up on the sofa and positioned over his thighs, letting me brace myself on my knees and forearms. It felt…natural, actually. Except for the part where my arse was cheerfully right in the air.
It was just on the bearable edge of embarrassing. The ideal mixture of exposure and arousal to make me squirmy. The worst thing was not being able to see his face anymore. I needed the reassurance that he was definitely finding this hot and not ridiculous.
At that moment, his palm glided over my upraised buttocks and I was suddenly too busy shuddering and moaning to worry anymore. Maybe it was the vulnerability of the position, but even that light touch was crazy intense—heat and pleasure spilling across my skin, along with a rush of rising goose bumps. His fingers followed, tenderly skimming the groove of my spine until he reached the taut plane between my shoulder blades and stroked me there. He found nerves I never knew I had and lit them up like stars, sharp and bright and sweet.
I couldn’t help wriggling. It was good, it was so good, being touched that way by Caspian, but also a little bit tormenty at the same time. I hadn’t realized something gentle could ache like something harsh, and it unhinged me a bit.
But then his other hand came down on the back of my neck, cupping my nape, all warmth and pressure and the promise of control, and the tension leaked right out of me, leaving me fizzy and liquid in his lap. He squeezed and I just gurgled in this pathetically eager way.
“Have I told you,” he murmured, “how bewitching you are?”
I guess I would have balked if he’d tried beautiful. I wasn’t unappealing but compared to Caspian Hart I was entirely fucking ordinary. But bewitching, it turned out, I could get behind, since it was as much about my effect on him as it was about me. I liked the idea a lot: this power had been given me, to please him.
He caressing fingers returned to my arse, slipping into the soft valley between my cheeks and reminding me abruptly exactly how my current position presented me: no longer with peach-like discretion, but spread wide and wanton for his looking and his touching.
I was glad my face was tucked away because I was bright red. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had people get up close and personal with my bum before but I was starting to discover that context really made a difference. The very personal activities you indulged in in the dark were one thing. Being laid out not-very-virgin-sacrifice style in broad daylight was pretty explicitly another. And then there was the fact Caspian was still clothed and I was about as bare as it was possible to be.
But, the truth was, I loved it. Especially because, amid the roughness of denim beneath my thighs, I could feel how gloriously hard he was. I’d been jerking off to fantasies vaguely reminiscent of this for as long as I could remember but I hadn’t accounted for the charge that came from knowing he was just as into this as I was. That it wasn’t just something he did, or something I gave, it was something we shared.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t also nervous about it. And getting more so as he…uh…got acquainted with the territory, his hand mapping the curve from the tops of my thighs to the (occasionally rather admired) dimples at the base of my spine.
“Um,” I squeaked. “You have done this before, right?”
“Yes.” He stopped stroking me. His palm just resting there, possessive and protective and vaguely threatening, all at the same time. “Have you?”
Occasionally my lovers had taken a swipe at my arse while nailing it, but as much as I’d enjoyed that sort of play, it hadn’t remotely prepared me for this. “Not technically, no. But”—I pulled in an unsteady breath, suddenly terrified he was going to change his mind, and I’d have stuck my posterior in his face for nothing—“don’t let it stop you.”
“Believe me, the only thing that can stop me is you. Tell me what you want.”
Ahhhhh.
I wished yet again that I could see his face but then I was also glad I couldn’t because it reminded me that the last time I’d felt physically closest to him, when the things I’d done for his pleasure had seemed most intimate, he’d only been a voice on the phone.
And that was how I found the courage to tell him.
Well, the courage to burrow into the sofa and then tell him: “I want you to spank me.”
He made a soft, lust-rough noise, but his voice was amazingly steady: “Show me how much you want it. Ask me.”
“Oh God.” I twitched and dripped and nearly combusted with arousal. “Will you spank me, Mr. Hart? I really”—help, breath, words—“I really want you to.”
His other hand tightened on my neck and I swear to God I could feel his pulse pounding in his wrist. “It would be my pleasure.”
And then he…he did it. His palm cracked against my arse—the noise more startling than the pain and the impact more noticeable than either. I juddered forward a bit, though he kept me anchored, and swallowed a gasp. I’d known what was about to happen but it was still shocking for some reason.
He gave me a moment to process but my brain was kind of stuck on he hit me when he did it again—same spot, almost exactly, sending a flare of heat across my skin. The third time made me yelp and it was such a ridiculously undignified sound that I was giggling by the fourth. Then giggle-yelping as it went on. Not because it didn’t hurt—since it soon did, building from a swiftly fading sting to a deep, hot ache—but because it hurt in this totally giddy-making way. Some combination of the helplessness and the attention and the intimacy of his naked hand.
And, oh God, the freedom of it.
Of just being able to lie there and writhe and make silly noises and feel all the things: pain and arousal and fear and pleasure and this wild, wild joy.
Caspian was trembling, his strikes falling with a little less precision than they had originally and his breath sounding harsh in the spaces between. Which was a touch worrying.
“A-ah,” I managed to gasp out, “am I doing it right?”
He made this sound, probably a laugh, though it was ragged. Shot through with things I didn’t have the wherewithal right then to interpret. “I don’t care. Don’t stop.”
He was stroking me again: long gentle sweeps of his palms over my too-warm, too-sensitive flesh until it seemed like every last drop of blood in my body had gone south for the winter and redistributed itself evenly between my arse
and my cock. The hurt was still there but through some strange alchemy of sex and trust, right then it was indistinguishable from passion.
I wailed and bucked against him in a semi-delirious and fully shameless attempt to make him touch me. He laughed again at that, a less broken sound this time. Not mocking, but softly teasing, even a little wonderstruck. His fingers brushed against my hole and I cried out frantically, all my giggling vanquished.
“God. Please. Please.”
He dipped inside and I reared up and swallowed him with my arse like Moby Dick. For a brief second it was the most beautiful, the most perfect feeling in the world: his finger pressing into me, a very slight stretch and this cool-water pleasure in the middle of the fire he had forced into my skin. And then it was just not enough, not nearly enough, relief becoming frustration becoming fresh and fiercer need.
I couldn’t tell if he was giving me cruelty or mercy but I wasn't entirely sure I cared. Trying not to think about how profoundly debauched I was going to look, I spread my legs as wide as I could get them, and…well…yeah, fucked myself on his fingers. It wasn’t much—mainly a sort of desperate rocking—but as self-torture went it was irresistible, teeny-tiny starbursts exploding behind my eyes with every very nearly nudge in the vicinity of my prostate.
I probably couldn’t have got off that way, but I was damn committed to trying. And he let me for a little while, his other hand still curled against my neck, petting me, making me feel tormented and indulged and cared for all at once. I tightened as he withdrew, greedily trying to keep him but, of course, I couldn’t. And so I was reduced to whimpering and twitching my arse pitifully at him instead.
“Ready for more?” he asked, tracing tantalizing circles where he had left me wanting.
I could barely breathe, my whole body strung tight and poised on his fingertip. “More?”
“That was just the warm-up.”
Chapter 3
Warm-up?
“H-holy shit.” I tried to imagine what else he could do to me—but my brain was dopamine dazed and came up blank.