by Joey W. Hill
The setting didn’t really lend itself to thinking about parents, but the look in Savannah’s eyes, the memory her question had unfolded, did. And led to another.
He remembered a night Savannah had asked to see a picture of his mother. He’d pulled out a scrapbook, something one of his aunts had given him after Jonas’s funeral and he’d put away in the back of a closet. It was a collection of pictures of both Jonas and Gianna Kensington. It was when they’d reached one of the two of them holding him as an infant, that he did what he never had. He broke down and cried. Just sat down hard on the carpeted floor of their enormous walk-in closet, Savannah curled over him, holding him with surprisingly strong arms, as he wept for the two people who’d loved him and cared for him, as long as fate had given them. Which had been too goddamn short.
“I was surprised I lost control like that, that night,” he said. Coming back to himself, he realized she might have no idea what he was referencing, but from the tightening of her lips and the swirl of emotions in her eyes, he knew he was an idiot for thinking otherwise.
“I’m glad you didn’t say you regretted it. I would have had to hurt you,” she said. “It’s a memory I cherish. Not of your pain; of course not. But it was the night my husband proved to me he knew he could trust me enough to lean. To break.”
“Afterward, I was worried that it had hurt you. To see how much I loved my parents, and how much they loved me.”
She shook her head, shadows crossing her face. “I had a very difficult and cold father, Matt. I’m so glad you didn’t have that same experience. They gave you the ability to love.” Her lips curved slightly. “It sounds like your mom put her stamp of approval on your tenacity about going after the woman you want. Now, are you going to answer my question, or are you deliberately trying to distract me?”
She knew the right moment to tease him. As much as he did trust her enough to have such a mental break, being vulnerable was far from his most comfortable state. Clearing his throat, he made a show of sighing and gazing up at the tented ceiling.
“I can’t remember the question.”
He laughed as she punched his side, and grabbed her wrist, protecting himself from further assault as she made a face at him. “Okay, okay. Give me a second to think about this.”
But he knew a way to answer her that straddled the line between his feelings for her, and information about the past that only mattered because of how it had taught him to pleasure her.
“The very first time I exercised my skills as a Dom, it was on a balcony, with a woman at a party. I told her to take off her panties and give them to me. No ties, no restraints, just feeling that click when I met her eyes and we knew exactly what we wanted and needed from one another. She surrendered herself to me in between one breath and the next.”
He shifted, so Savannah lay under the shelter of his body. Resting his hand on her throat, just above the collar, he bent closer to speak in her ear.
“I’m the kind of Dom that feeds off just this.” His hand constricted. “I close my grip, and I feel your pulse trip. I see your body tighten, then soften, giving way to my will. I hear the whisper of your escaped breath. With only words and touch, I take you over, like the flow of water, carrying you where I want you to go.” He raised his head, met her eyes. “I need nothing but my will to have you, because I know your body and soul better than I know my own."
"How is that possible?" she said, her voice thready, eyes brilliant.
"Because I find yours far more interesting."
She smiled. Releasing her wrist and coaxing her to lie back down, her head on his chest, Matt tightened his arm around her, kissed her head. “I’m okay with the mechanics. Equipment and toys can be lots of fun.” He tossed a glance to the far corner of the bed, where he’d left the ones they used. “But in the end, it’s always been about the mind-to-mind connection. The give and take, psychological reaction. That’s where the charge is, for me.”
“I felt that from you,” she murmured. “From the first time we met. I didn’t know exactly what it was, or why it drew me so, but I can see you doing what you described with that first woman perfectly.” Her lips curved against his chest. “Though I prefer to imagine the woman as me.”
“So do I, no disrespect to the lovely lady who allowed me that honor that night.” He kissed her head again. “I think of it like business skills. You learn as much as you can, so you have a lot of tools in your arsenal, but over time, you find your own style, what’s most effective for yourself.” A smile touched his lips. “Ben, Jon and Peter took my basic understanding of restraints and toys to a higher level, so I could employ them when needed. Or when it added to the pleasure of my partner.”
She became quiet again, but he didn’t sense she was unhappy with what he’d just shared. Instead, she seemed as if she was in a nice, drifting post-coital haze, which he liked, because she was at her most relaxed and trusting, curled in his arms without further questions or worries.
He curled her long hair around his large hand, watching the strands fall. As they did, he inhaled the haunting scents they’d used to clean it. Appropriately, it didn’t overpower the familiar scent of the woman herself.
He thought about buying a place here, a cottage near the beach where they could come back as often as they liked. The Resort had a select number of properties available for purchase on the opposite side of the island.
But in truth, they both loved New Orleans. This would be a nice repeat vacation experience, though.
“I admit, the bathing part took me by surprise,” he said after another long pause. “It’s not every woman who’d have the confidence to let her husband be bathed and massaged by naked women, even if it was to prepare her Lord and Master to be pleasing to her.”
“You’ve had your fun with me, O Lord and Master,” she said sleepily. “I won’t rise to the bait.”
“But you like calling me your lord. Admit it.”
She batted away his tickling hand. “I meant the women. You were in charge of all of this. And you did it…this was beyond my wildest dreams.” She laid her arm over his chest, her hand curling around his neck as she tucked her head deeper under his chin. “I love you.”
It never failed to stir him, hearing it. But now he was getting an uneasy feeling. Best to let it lie, lest his extremely sharp-witted wife would…
Savannah shifted and propped herself up on an elbow. Her curtain of thick blond locks tumbled over one eye, but it didn’t diminish the sudden gleam in the visible one.
“Wait. That surprised you. I could hear it in your voice. What women?”
Oh hell. He cleared his throat. “I assumed you amended the scene plan.” It had fit in with his imaginings of her wrinkling her nose at the stench of the battlefield lingering on him. But he figured now was not the time to point out that his own efforts to get into the scene might have contributed to a serious oversight.
At her expression, Matt gauged how close anything sharp—or even just this side of not-too-blunt to use as a shiv—was to his very exposed sensitive parts. When Savannah slid off the bed, he manfully chose to snag his trousers and put them back on. He didn’t have time to tighten the laces, but he was at least covered by the time she rose, pushed her hands through her hair and pivoted to face him, a flush climbing into her fair cheeks.
“And exactly what did these women do?”
“Just bathed me and gave me a massage.”
He knew the spike in his gut when he’d missed a key piece of information. When it happened as a matter of business, there were usually ways to fix it. Plus, he had the help of four of the savviest businessmen he knew, in their respective fields of experience. In a relationship, reparations were quite a bit trickier, and he had no backup. As his mind scrolled rapidly through all the earlier prep and detail, his bad feeling increased exponentially. His shrewd wife reached the same conclusion only a blink before he did.
“I am going to kill Ben O’Callahan.”
A pair of robes hung o
n two hooks near the bed, one a feminine garment of textured white silk. She snagged it and swirled it around her like Wonder Woman about to take the battlefield. Matt barely made it around the bed in time to catch her elbow and keep her from marching out of the tent in search of his company lawyer. Who he might just kill himself, but there was judicial process to consider.
“Hold on.” He drew her back to the bed, keeping a firm grip on her. “Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Ha. That…man, has never had an innocent day in his life.” But Savannah crossed her arms, which created an interesting effect with the robe neckline parting to show her cleavage. The thin fabric outlined her nipples. Her color was high, her eyes snapping. He figured it probably wasn’t wise to try throwing her back on the bed and seducing her into forgetfulness.
Yeah. Savannah would merely pop back up after being thoroughly, repeatedly ravished, and ask if he had Ben’s head on a pike yet.
Keeping a light hand on her, he pressed the bell that summoned a servant girl. A blink later he realized he was totally off his game. Because the one who responded to his call was the redhead with the mouthwatering breasts, just as naked as before. And of course she knelt as close to his feet as she could get.
His wife was the most beautiful woman in the world to Matt. No woman could compare to her. That was what he felt and saw when he looked at her. But his wife was closing in on forty, and he knew what she was seeing. A nubile twenty-something, who might have had hands on her husband.
Since they’d been together, he’d encouraged Savannah to show her temper if things happened between them that upset her. He’d wanted her to know he wasn’t goddamn Geoffrey Tennyson, reacting with frosty disapproval if his carefully groomed ice princess didn’t keep every human emotion bottled up.
For the first time, Matt had a feeling he was going to wish he hadn’t made that helpful and loving suggestion.
“Slave.” He cleared his throat over it, but the rules were fairly strict about breaking scene while it was in progress. “Who instructed you to bathe me? Told you of the captive queen’s wishes?”
“Your Lord Seneschal, my lord,” the redhead said instantly. “He said putting such temptation in your way proved your commitment to your queen, confirming how strong and eternal your devotion and love to her would be.”
“And how does it do that?” he asked, hoping Ben had left him an out.
“Because you took nothing from what was freely offered by the both of us, and we are the most attractive and well-instructed of the pleasure slaves at your command. He directed me to remind you of this if you asked that very question. And he told me to say it word for word in the presence of the queen.”
“Does the Lord Seneschal have green eyes, dark hair and a manhood big enough for me to beat him to death with it?” Savannah asked pleasantly.
It startled the girl enough for her to look up, her expression wisely cautious. Matt figured they’d both acquired the answer from her face, however, so he dismissed her with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It was a rhetorical question,” he murmured as he courteously guided her around his wife, keeping his body between them until the girl exited through the open tent flaps.
“You need a new lawyer. He won’t leave this island alive, and he’ll be severely maimed before he begs for death.”
She was pacing, her color still up, fists clenched. She glared at him. “I know you knew nothing of this, because you’re impossible to surprise, and you looked poleaxed. But how did he know you wouldn’t take advantage of ‘what was freely offered’?”
That he had an answer for. Plus, he was getting his feet back under him. Since the flash of her legs and sway of her breasts were not making him any less distracted, and he couldn’t deny entirely unwise amusement was building in him, he chose to act.
He caught her around the waist on her next turn and tumbled her backward into the pillows on the bed. She fought him at first, but when he pinned her wrists and held her body down with his own, her resistance grew more half-hearted. Especially when he began to kiss her throat, teasing her pounding pulse with tongue and lips.
“Because he knows me,” he murmured against her flesh. “He’s an ass, and a prankster, but he’s right.”
He lifted his head and met her blue eyes. They were still fired up, but his words had softened her mouth, somewhat. Fortunately, she had a sense of humor too, so he also saw some of that making its way through her annoyance. He pressed between her legs and went back to enjoying her throat, pleased when a thready sigh suggested he was helping move her away from anger.
“You could line up every slave girl on this island in front of me,” he said. “There’s only one woman who interests me. Only one who I want enough to kill, live or die for her. Be with her always.”
When he glanced up, he saw her blue eyes had at last warmed fully, her lips twisting. “Charmer.” She took a breath. “I’m not going to ask you about this. About how pretty, or soft, or young…”
“No. You won’t.” Raising his head to lock gazes with her, he released one wrist to touch her face. Now the Master took the upper hand in his tone, quieting her. “Because there’s nothing to tell, and all I want is you. When you walked in here and I first saw you, my knees buckled. I almost knelt at your feet.”
She tilted her head, a little smile coming back to her serious features. “You know, it’s not quite as big a fantasy for me as this was, but there is a part of me that wonders…”
With an impish look rare for her, Savannah pushed against him, indicating she wanted to get up. Intrigued by her intent expression, Matt sat back enough to let her wriggle out from under him and make her way to the side of the bed. When she reached out and took his hand, tugged him to his feet, he followed her.
Within a couple steps, though, she’d turned to face him and reversed their positions. Putting her hands on his bare chest, she backed him toward the center post. She stopped him when his shoulder blades and ass hit it. The impish look became a studied one as she ran her hands down his arms, fingers lingering in appraisal of the musculature in his biceps. Her eyes lighted with what was unmistakably female appreciation, but at a blatant level uncharacteristic for her, like a woman at a male strip joint. Matt raised his brows, bemused when he started to raise his arms to touch her and she shook her head.
Dropping her touch to his wrists, she stepped closer, pressing his arms behind him, guiding his fingers to wrap around the pole.
“There,” she purred. “You’re bound with chains, unable to move.” Her eyes on his, she pressed her mouth to his chest, her tongue teasing over his nipple and firing his blood.
“Savannah,” he growled, and that look in her gaze increased.
“Maybe, if the roles had been reversed,” she continued in that same sultry tone, “I would have been the conquering queen, you the captured warlord brought before me.”
“If you’d been in charge of that army instead of your father, it’s possible.” He cocked his head. A submissive he most definitely wasn’t. No more than she was a Domme. But intrigued by this unexpected development, he took a step back into the waters of fantasy, for her.
“And when I’m brought before you, the moment I see you, all thought of escape leaves me,” he said, still in that semi-growl. “I realize the castle means nothing. The woman is the real prize. Serving her. Making her happy. I know if she keeps talking to me in that cock-stroking voice, I’ll come, just from listening to her.”
Her cheeks pinkened and she fanned her fingertips out over his chest, caressing the coarse dark hair, the taut nipple, the layers of muscle over his ribs and abdomen, following them down to the waistband of the trousers. She played with the loosened laces coyly, wrapping one around a finger and tugging it.
His incomparable sub was a multi-tasker. Even as she was doing that, she was plotting her next move. Recovering the chain attached to the pole, the one he’d used to tether her there earlier, she pressed flush against him to wrap it around his wrists by
touch alone. He still was clasping the pole, but with her touching him, it was hard not to try and tangle with her fingers, but he resisted the urge as she tucked the end of the chain in to hold it in place. He could easily get free, but he wouldn’t. Not when she was overwhelming his senses, becoming the provocateur.
Her lush lower lip caught in a distracting way beneath her teeth, she slid her hands back down his chest, along his arms, his sides. Her fingers dipped into the low riding, unlaced waistband of the trousers again. She loosened the laces further, so the pants cradled his cock and balls in an open nest of fabric. Lifting her chin to gaze into his face, she rubbed the tips of her breasts against his chest, a light brush of contact. Her other hand went back to his biceps, nails biting into the flesh, hard. The heated flicker of her gaze registered the flex of muscle as he tested the thin chains.
“Savannah,” he said, a threat.
“My lord?” She murmured it as she reached down to stroke his cock with featherlike fingertips. Her lips parted. “All mine,” she whispered, heat in her eyes. “All for me. I can have and take whatever I want.”
She shot his blood pressure up so fast he got lightheaded. She tugged the trousers down, had him step out of the pants so he was naked, while she remained in the robe.
“Take it off,” he ordered, his jaw tight.
“Soon. It’s intriguing, a slave binding her Master.” Sliding her arms around him, she pressed herself fully against his body once more, his cock against silk and the heated woman beneath.
“What would my lord have felt, if he’d found out male slaves had bathed me, to prepare me to enjoy my captive?” she purred.
“There would be three dead men joining my enemies on the pyre tonight.”
Savannah shivered, responding to the genuine threat in his tone. Keeping her eyes on his, she slid down his body, pressing kisses to his abdomen, stroking his stomach, descending. She’d been on her knees to him many times as a sub to serve him. With his arms bound back and her hands roving over him, his blood was on fire with the need to break free and take. But he restrained himself, again for her. For the obvious pleasure she was taking in being both sub and captor.