by C. L. Parker
“Did you complete the questionnaires I sent home with you after our last session?”
“Oh, yes,” Cassidy said, opening her purse to retrieve our separate envelopes.
We hadn’t been allowed to know how the other had answered the rather naughty questions. They were all about either how we saw ourselves, our confidence level, or our secret fantasies—things we’d done before, things we had not, things we wanted to try, and things that were a hard no for exploration. There wasn’t much I’d said no to, but I was surprised by how vanilla my experiences had actually been. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good in bed. On the contrary, I was very good at what I did. It just seemed like my reach into new territory hadn’t been as broad as I’d thought.
One of the questions referred to whether we ever had been or would be curious about being with someone of the same sex. While my answer had been a negative, after witnessing the ongoing seductive interactions between my significant other and our sex therapist, I wondered if Cassidy had answered differently.
Katya opened the envelopes and read each of them over, a grin tugging at her lips. After a time, she put the documents together, folded in half, and then tucked them beside her. “You both seem eager to explore areas you have not before. This is good.”
I tightened the grip I still held on Cassidy’s leg, sending up a silent prayer that she wanted to try some of the same things I wanted. One in particular made my cock jerk in my excitement to learn what might be in store for us next.
Katya became contemplative when she sat back, her posture imperial as she considered her next move. With a graceful tilt of her chin, she finally spoke again. “I have decided what your next assignment must be.”
Preparing herself to receive the new information, Cassidy aligned her own carriage to mimic Katya’s. There was something about it that made me believe it was possible this woman possessed characteristics that Cassidy wished she had for herself. Which was absurd because my Cass was about as close to perfection as a woman could come.
“But I will only give the instructions to you, Shaw.”
Sure I’d misheard her, I drew my head back. “Me?”
“Yes.” The devilish grin that followed solidified one thought: she was setting me up for failure. Again. “And it must take place right away.”
Cassidy
Everything about our next assignment was hush-hush. When Katya had said she would only give Shaw the instructions, that was exactly what she’d meant. With a quick dismissal, I had been promptly escorted from the room and out of the house by Teodor to where Nikola was waiting by the car with the door opened. It felt like I waited there forever, in total darkness, before Shaw joined me. And he wasn’t the least bit interested in enlightening me as to what Katya had said.
What was it about secrets that could make life so sensational and dramatic? The mystery behind the puzzle needing to be solved, that human need to fill in the blanks made our existence exhilarating and gave us purpose. That was what Katya Minkov had done for me. I’d become settled, though not content, in my routine. There’d been no “what’s next?” for me because I’d somehow reached the end and there’d been no other goals that I’d set for myself. Goals were what had driven me before, had kept my feet moving forward. Before I’d reached one, I’d already had the next in mind.
Now, I was just a mother who got up every day to follow the same routine, over and over again. That wasn’t to say that being a mother wasn’t of significant importance, but that importance had revolved around nurturing the development of someone else without any thought of furthering my own.
Time and time again, I’d accused Shaw of being selfish. Could I have been guilty of the opposite? An extreme selflessness that had actually been a flaw rather than a strength?
The mirror in the bathroom Shaw and I shared had begun to fog over, thanks to the steam from the hot shower I’d started. Standing naked before it, I forced myself to take a long, hard look at myself. I had many imperfections. Shadows beneath my eyes, crow’s-feet, faint creases at the corners of my mouth, and “stress hair” that was graying at the roots with a lackluster coloring that had once been vibrant as a fresh-stamped copper penny. My breasts weren’t as perky as they’d once been, nor were my waist and hips as trim. I turned this way and that, desperate to see something different, but as I blew a limp lock out of my eyes, I knew it was hopeless.
Maybe I should turn the idle time I had on my hands while Abe was away into something productive. Hit the gym, get my hair and nails done, possibly even do a little shopping for some new clothes that wouldn’t make me look and feel so frumpy. Rejuvenate myself. Yeah, that’s what I’d do.
Stepping into the shower, I pulled the door shut and closed my eyes to the sting of hot spray I pretended could rinse away the layers of yuck my body had been building up over the last few years. Blindly reaching for the shampoo, I squeezed a dollop into my palm and washed my hair, rinsing and then conditioning as I moved farther under the spray.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt a pair of arms encircle my waist and then a very naked, distinctively male body being pressed to mine from behind.
“How long has it been since we’ve showered together?” a gravelly voice said at my ear. Two hands slid over my ribs to cup my breasts and gently roll my nipples between agile fingers as a warm tongue and firm lips sucked at my neck. Shaw…
Not since I’d been pregnant with our son. Back then the changes happening to my body had been a novelty, sexy to the man who’d been partly responsible for the life growing inside my very round belly. He’d been particularly fond of my overly swollen breasts, and the ass he’d been obsessed with before had given him more to love.
The swollen breasts were now gone and a flabby tummy had replaced the novelty belly, but the fat ass had remained. Gravity had had its fun with all three, and at my expense.
Self-consciously, I covered the pooch of my stomach, not wanting his wandering hands to venture anywhere near it. “What are you doing?”
“Perfecting my control.” His teeth nipped at my shoulder, distracting me as he took my wrists and forced my hands away from my body to plant the palms against the wall in front of me. “Stay.”
“Shaw, I—”
“Shh. Stay,” he ordered, cutting off my protest before the feel of his body against mine disappeared.
Thick strands of my own hair clung to my forehead and cheeks as the shower continued to pelt me. My eyes were closed to the deluge of water running down my face, so I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard the sound of my body wash being opened and then closed. Though I didn’t need further proof, the aroma of vanilla and lavender hung heavy in the confined space.
“Do you know how crazy it’s made me that I’ve been forbidden to touch you?” The soft, spongy feel of my loofah made contact with my back as he began to wash me. Jesus, it felt good.
I arched my back, encouraging more of it. “About as crazy as it made me that no matter how badly I wanted you to, it was against the rules.”
Shaw’s husky chuckle returned to my ear, and the loofah had now moved to my front. “You’re beautiful, you know.”
I shook my head, not bothering to voice my disagreement and becoming even more self-conscious about him seeing me. All of me.
“Yes, you are.” His empty hand joined the loofah, cupping one breast again while the texture of the loofah played havoc on the other nipple. Soft suds cascaded down my abdomen with a teasing caress. “Your breasts are full and heavy, capped off by those delicious nipples, which happen to be the same shade of peachy pink as your succulent lips. They make my mouth water to suck on them.”
My breath hitched when his fingers and the loofah circled both with a delicious sort of pressure, and then he tugged at the one beneath his hand to mimic the suck.
“You don’t notice how often I watch you, how much I stare in awe of the woman I get to look at every day for the rest of my life. And I haven’t done a very good job of reminding you just
how sexy you really are. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”
“Shaw, you really don’t need to say these things.”
“Yes, I do. Because I forget that unlike me, you aren’t full of yourself and you need the reminder.”
I shook my head again, though he was right. Hadn’t I just been examining all of my flaws?
“Do you know that your ass, the way your hips move back and forth when you walk, is enough to bring me to my knees? I’ve seen men watching it, but you don’t notice them. If I didn’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you belonged to me, I’d rip their heads from their shoulders, Cass. I swear, I would.”
Now he was just being silly. He was also moving lower down my belly and farther still, even as his hand continued to knead my breast and tweak its nipple.
“You’re mine. All of you. And you are perfect, make no mistake about it.”
I moaned when I felt the bunch of fluffy mesh dip between my legs and begin to methodically move up and down. Opening my eyes, my lashes batting away the drops of water, I watched as he worked me.
Shaw’s breath was hot against my neck, his hand sure, and his cock rigid on the cleft of my ass. “Open wider for me, sweetness.”
I took half a step to the side, granting him the room he sought, though I knew it might be a mistake.
“Is this the assignment?” I asked, taking a chance that maybe I was wrong.
Another chuckle that was just plain sexy. “You know how this works, Cass. If she’d wanted you to know, she wouldn’t have sent you out of the room.”
“Am I at least allowed to come?”
He nipped at my ear, sucking the lobe between his teeth and sending a shiver of pleasure down my spine before he released it. “Did she tell you that you could come?”
I shook my head, mentally chastising myself for setting up my own failure by agreeing to go along with this show and for lacking the restraint to end it now because I was already too far gone.
“Then I guess you have your answer.” I could feel the pressure from three of his fingers behind the mesh, circling my clit with every intention of pushing me to the brink of the cliff and not allowing me to fall over.
Oh. So this was supposed to be my lesson in control. Shaw had been tortured and now the tables had been turned. Redundant, but I supposed Katya had felt it necessary.
When the long strokes back and forth over the apex between my legs started up again, I almost came undone. Shaw’s teeth were on the back of my shoulder, nipping, before his lips kissed the same spot. His hips moved against my ass, his cock nuzzling between the cheeks.
“You’re beautiful. I want to hear you say it.”
“I’m not,” I told him with another shake of my head.
“So you’re saying I chose to spend the rest of my life with someone who isn’t?” He sucked at the most sensitive part of my neck, rolling the loofah round and round.
I shrugged, and the pressure on my pussy intensified, causing me to bend forward more in an effort to back away. But Shaw was there to prevent my retreat, and he wasn’t budging.
Crossing his free arm across my chest, he held me still even as he began to torture my other nipple, squeezing the mound beneath it and rolling the taut peak under his palm. “Say you’re beautiful. Say it and mean it, and I’ll think about letting you come.”
“But Katya didn’t tell me I could come,” I reminded him as much as myself.
“Then I guess you better not break her rules. If you do, I’ll tell her what you did. Every. Single. Detail of it.”
There was something wholly erotic about Katya knowing I’d orgasmed and how. And Shaw seemed to know I’d be turned on by it because he continued to work the loofah in circles over my clit until my legs began to shake. Of their own accord, my hips started to rock in time with his movement, the momentum of something wicked building and building from deep inside me. “Shaw…You have to stop or I’m going to come.”
“Don’t you dare do it,” he warned, though he made no show of stopping the thing in the driver’s seat of my disobedience in the first place. “You’re beautiful. I want to hear you say it.”
But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t let the lie spill.
The tempo of his manipulations increased and his cock slid along the cleft of my ass with a sinful sort of pressure right where I wanted it most. And still Shaw was making demands. “Say it.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. My will was not greater than that of my body’s, and definitely not greater than that of the selfish woman inside me yearning for release.
“I-I’m beautiful….”
“Goddamn right, you are,” he growled, and then the loofah…oh, God, the loofah did things to my pussy that inanimate objects just should not be able to do. The friction, the delicious pressure, the creamy glide of silky soap over the hypersensitive bundle of nerves shoved me headlong into oblivion. The orgasm that had been building surged forward and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I came, grinding against Shaw’s hand unabashedly because I’d already failed.
I’d failed. Shaw had passed the test Katya had given him, but I had failed.
“That’s my good girl.” Shaw growled his approval, his movements slowing to ease the pressure against my swollen clit.
The loofah dropped to the floor of the shower with a wet thud, and I could do nothing but look at it lying there as my shame—my failure—washed down the drain.
Struggling to get my breathing under control, I straightened and turned to a very smug Shaw. “Why? Why didn’t you stop?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I wanted you to fail.”
“But why?” Was he really that competitive?
He reached around me and shut off the water. “Because now I get to punish you.” Whipping open the door, he stepped out and then grabbed me by the arm, saying, “Get out. Now.”
Stunned by his sudden change in demeanor, and still hyperventilating from the astronomical orgasm and the failure he’d just forced upon me, I did as he said and remained standing on the bath mat awaiting further instruction. It was clear that whatever was about to go down next was Shaw’s call, and I was expected to do as he said.
Now he’d get to punish me? I had no clue what that meant, but a kaleidoscope of emotions was merging inside my confusion. My body was still trembling, though not so much from the orgasm or the cold air hitting my wet skin. This quaking was all about fear of the unknown. I wasn’t afraid of Shaw, per se—I knew he’d never hurt me—but punishment was something we were all groomed to dread from childhood.
Still holding my arm, he moved me in front of the mirror and stood behind me, pointing ahead. “Look at yourself and say it,” he told me.
I focused on the reflection in the mirror. Not at mine, but at his and the hungry expression in those paralyzing blues as he looked back at me. There it was…the way he used to look at me, the way his proximity oozed a predator-like threat. And I knew I was about to be ravaged.
“Not at me. Look at yourself. See what I see and fucking say it,” he ordered again, the gruffness of his voice threatening.
I averted my attention to my own reflection, the flush of my skin, the glow surrounding me—all courtesy of the way the man standing behind me had made me feel. Everything about the mother, the lover, the woman before me was just as he’d said. As I set my chin in newfound confidence, my voice was sure. “I am beautiful.”
“Yes, you are.” Pressing himself to my backside, he moved the hair off my shoulder so he could reach my ear. “You’re also in very deep shit because you came and you weren’t supposed to do that. Were you?”
I shook my head, and that was all the admission he needed. Before I realized what was happening, the top half of my body was flat against the counter of the sink and both arms were stretched out behind me, both wrists held captive by one of his big hands at the small of my back.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, unsure whether he’d actually answer.
He did, but not with words. Shaw
moved his other hand forward so I could see what he held in it—his leather belt. I gasped, wriggling and trying to get my arms loose, but there was nothing doing with the grip he had.
“Be still,” he said, the thickness of his cock wedging between my ass cheeks as he pinned me further. I fell in line, a surge of excitement jolting my body to awareness yet again. “Good girl.” He backed off of me just a bit. “Spread your legs.”
I did the best I could with my limited mobility, but that didn’t seem to be good enough. “Wider,” Shaw ordered, and I managed to eke out a little more.
He hummed his approval, the leather of that belt caressing my bare skin ever so gently. Tracing the curvature of my ass, he let it dip between my thighs to rub against the tender flesh of my pussy. I moaned, arching my back and trying to push against him for more.
“You like that?”
All I could do was nod.
“Well, you won’t like this.” I jumped as the belt lashed across my backside, leaving a slowly dissipating sting in its wake. Shaw’s tongue followed up, the warmth of his mouth mixing with the sting to create an unbelievable mix of pleasure and pain.
The sound that came out of me couldn’t have been human. It most certainly hadn’t been premeditated.
Shaw and his mouth were gone as quickly as they’d come, and then another lash from the belt followed. Only this time, it was lower, across the place where my thighs met my ass. I arched again, moaned again, thought myself crazy for getting any sort of pleasure out of this. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Wider,” Shaw ordered again. And, hell yeah, I complied. The next smack was reserved in force and centered only on my pussy. Tugging at Shaw’s hold on my wrists was a fruitless attempt to free myself so I could throw the man against the wall and have my way with him. This was supposed to be punishment? Oh, yeah, I could see it.
Again he whipped at my pussy, and I was sure he’d left it dripping wet from the contact.