by JA Huss
I gulp some air and then look over my shoulder. He’s standing near the concrete pathway, leaning up against a close concession stand, looking as free and content and in control as any person I’ve ever seen.
And why not? Why shouldn’t he feel that way? He’s beyond rich, he’s beyond beautiful, he’s beyond talented, and he’s so far beyond sexy, I’m powerless to resist his offer and he knows it.
“Say yes,” he commands. “You want to say yes, so just say yes.”
He’s so right about that. I do want to say yes. In fact, I’m a yes girl. I hate telling people no. I really do. But for some reason, this one person who I want to say yes to more than anything else in my entire life has reawakened the no girl inside of me and I’m having difficulty understanding why.
“Say yes right now or I walk away and you never see me again. Because I require your commitment tonight or I’ll just find someone else.”
“I want you,” I say breathlessly, my heart pounding in my chest. God, that was the total wrong move. What the hell am I doing?
“Of course you do.”
“I want you, but I’m not signing that paper tonight. I need to think about it. I need to be sure.”
“Grace, you have one more day left here on Saint Thomas and then you’re gone. So you’re wasting time.”
“Wait, you said you’d punish me when I was ready, implying we had lots of time to figure this out and now you’re in a rush?”
“Yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’m in a rush because I want to fuck you, woman. I want to fuck you bad. I’m dying right now because I’m all the way over here and you’re all the way over there, and all I want to be doing is fucking you. But instead I’m having this stupid conversation, convincing you, of all things, to let me pleasure you back if you pleasure me. But if you work out and you meet my needs, I might see you again. Some other place, some other time.”
“Then no.” I hang up the phone. Oh my God! I did it again! Where the hell are all these no’s coming from?
My phone buzzes in my hand but I ignore it.
A few minutes later I feel him walk up behind me. “May I join you on the beach?”
“It’s a free beach. Or is this one your personal property too? Am I just a beach to you? Something you own and enjoy at your leisure?”
“I don’t own you, Grace. Not yet. So I’m asking if I can join you so we can sort this out. And that’s one more spanking.”
“We’re never going to get to the spankings, Asher. You just admitted to it, so stop.”
He chuckles. “That’s it, isn’t it? You want the spankings and you’re afraid I’m not going to make good on my threats.”
Pfft. “You wish.”
He kneels down and then sits. “Grace?” I look over to him, annoyed, and as soon as I look him in the eyes, he grabs my arm and pulls me to his lap, forcing me to lie across his knees. “Would you like a taste and a promise?”
My heart is pounding in my chest. He pulls my dress up over my ass, leaving my ridiculous underwear exposed.
“Panties on or bare ass for your sample?”
OMG. I bite my lip.
“Answer me, dammit.”
“Bare, please,” I squeak out.
“Bare, please, what?” he asks, prodding for the word master.
I’m not in the mood to submit that far. But I will meet him halfway since he’s giving me a free sample. I almost snicker at that. “Bare, please, Mr. Asher.”
He huffs out an almost inaudible laugh and I know he’s smiling.
Chapter Thirteen
#DirtyFilthyGirl
“YOUR disobedience is alarming, Grace. It makes me wonder if you really want to submit to me.”
“I do,” she says hurriedly.
And I know she does. She’s having a hard time following through, but she wants to submit, that’s clear. I hook my fingers under the waistband of her underwear and tug on it gently until one side slips over her hip bone. She draws in a breath, loud enough for me to know this is turning her on, and then she lets it out slowly. I slide the other side of her underwear down and leave them bunched up in the crease between her thigh and her ass.
This makes her squirm in anticipation.
“Have you ever been physically or sexually abused by a man, Grace?”
She hesitates for the slightest of seconds, perhaps wondering at my line of questioning. But then she says, “No.”
“Erotically punished?”
“No,” she says again. Her breathing is faster now.
“But you want to be, don’t you? You want to be spanked like a bad little girl. Like a dirty, filthy girl, don’t you?”
She tries to turn her head to look at me, but I push her back down into the sand and then slip my hand under her neck and palm her throat.
She swallows and my dick expands. God, I want her mouth on me. Right now. I want to fuck her mouth and come down her throat. But I want to make her beg for it and she’s not even close to begging for that.
“Answer me, Grace. You insist on making me wait and that will earn you a punishment.”
She grunts against my palm.
“Darling, I already have you figured out. You like the spankings. Or at least the thought of them. The erotic stimulation they will bring you. But there are many, many other ways to punish you. Ways that are not so appealing. So think before you speak.”
“Yes, Mr. Asher,” she replies.
OK, she’s not going to call me Master, so fine. We can play that game. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Mr. Asher.”
I swat her bare bottom lightly with my hand and count out, “One,” for her.
She doesn’t even move.
And this makes me smile.
“How was that, Grace?”
“Um… well, what was that?” She turns her head, stretching her neck against my hand , and this time I let her look at me. “Was that it?”
“Did it not suit you?” I ask with a grin. “Was it not everything you expected?”
“Well, not really. I expected it to hurt. Or at least sting. But that—” She stops when she realizes I’m chuckling at her. “What’s so funny?” she growls at me.
“You. And your silly rebelliousness at my requests. If you want a proper smacking, Grace, then follow directions.” She squirms under my hold, like she wants to get up, but I place one hand over her neck and the other over the small of her back. “Hold still. You will stay like this until we come to terms.” Her body relaxes and I smile. “Good, girl.”
“I want you to call me Grace. And I’ll call you Mr. Asher, can we come to terms with that?”
“If you do not submit, I’ll get up, walk away, and never turn back. Your choice. The terms are clear, Grace,” I say her name with a little bit of contempt to hammer my point home. “You. Submit. To me. Not the other way around.”
I can almost feel her rolling her eyes and then she says, “Yes, Master,” and I chuckle. “Don’t laugh at me,” she says, growling again.
I smack her hard this time and she yelps, her body twisting to get away from it before she can stop her reaction. “I’ll do whatever the hell I please and you will shut your filthy mouth about it, do you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” comes out a lot easier this time.
“OK.” I put her underwear back in place and turn her over until she sits up. “Kneel right there,” I say as I open my legs and point to the space between them. She scrambles a little until she’s in front of me. We are eye to eye since she’s propped up on her knees. “Should I allow you to look me in the eye? Or should I forbid eye contact?”
I watch her watch me as she tries to put the pieces together. Grace is a true submissive, she just doesn’t know it yet, so I am patient as she works through things.
“Whatever pleases you, Master,” she says quietly after a few seconds.
“You please me, Grace,” I say back. “You please me.” She smiles and quite possibly even blushes. I’d give anything for it to b
e daytime so I could see that blush. “So you get to choose. Which do you prefer?”
“I prefer to look into your eyes, Mr. Asher.”
“You’re bad,” I say, smiling.
“You called me Grace and that means I can call you by your name. So I choose Mr. Asher.”
“Who made that rule?”
“We did,” she says back smartly. “Together.”
“We’ve known each other one day, there’s not enough time for traditions, Grace.”
“Maybe not. But”—she smiles with mischief and I find myself eager to hear her reasoning—“we’ve set a precedent. So same thing. You call me Grace when you want to explain things to me, so I can call you Mr. Asher after you call me Grace.”
I shake my head at her. “Fine, girl. We wouldn’t want to break past precedent, so we now have a tradition. Now, what do you want to do next? Go back to your bungalow and sleep?”
“What’s my other choice, Master?”
Jesus Christ. That right there makes me want to fuck her. “You’re a good girl, so if you’d like to stay here on the beach with me, you may.”
“OK, I choose to stay here on the beach. What will we do here?” She waggles her eyebrows at me and the grin on my face has got to be huge. Who knew she could be so sweetly manipulative? “You’re the master, so you get to decide.”
“I always get to decide, Grace. I don’t need you to tell me that.” She bites her lip to stop her smile. “Tell me about your life. Where do you work and what do you do?”
And then her mouth opens and words and sentences spill out. Paragraphs and paragraphs of details tumble out of her tender pink lips. I listen with an eager ear as she describes her new job, her old job, her loft in the city, her car, her fascination with cats—she doesn’t have any because her building doesn’t allow pets—and then, after she’s all talked out, her pause is longer than it should be and I find her almost asleep.
“I guess I don’t have to play the get-to-know-me game then. You’re too tired.”
“I’m not tired, I just put myself to sleep with my boring life. So, no,” she whispers. “I want to hear, I’m not asleep. My eyes are just heavy. Tell me. Tell me something about you.”
“What do you want to know? The plot in the Invisible Man 2 movie? My upcoming appearances? How much money I made this year? What kind of car do I drive? Choose.”
“Certainly not any of those things.”
“No? Why?”
“Asher, I can look that stuff up online.” She opens her eyes and grins up at me. “In fact, I have. I already know all of that. No, I want to know what it was like to be you growing up. What was schooling on set like? What did you do on the weekends? Who was your best friend?”
I’m puzzled at her request. And now that I think about it, she never told me anything about her childhood. Only her present life.
But it’s my turn to talk about me, and no one ever asks me these kinds of questions. Not anymore, at least. Maybe back when I was a little kid these were the kinds of questions they asked. But I never told the truth. I always lied.
“My childhood sucked,” I finally say.
Her eyes fly open immediately. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t have one. It was non-stop work. I’ve been working since I was five years old. I never had a best friend, or played on the baseball team, or had to stay up late to finish homework. It was all about acting. And don’t get me wrong, my career doesn’t span twenty-seven years because I couldn’t make the sacrifices. Acting is the only thing I know. It’s the only thing I do.”
“You guys have a production company though, right?”
“Oh, yeah, we have our hand in pretty much every aspect of the showbusiness pot. But I’m an actor first. I do love my work, but all the sacrifices are adding up. The lack of privacy, the grueling schedules, the pressure, the politics—they all add up to an extraordinary life. And to be honest, Grace, I’d like a little bit more reality in my life.”
“Huh,” she says softly. “That’s funny. I’m always on the lookout for a little more fantasy, myself.”
I wait to see if she’ll expound, but she doesn’t. Just lies there, her head in my lap as I talk about everything and nothing all at the same time.
I like her, I realize once the darkness of night is breaking for the light of day. So I scoop her up and take her to her bed. I stare at her for a few moments after I place her on top of the sheets.
She’s different, I realize. She’s real.
I’m not sure what makes me think that or why it matters, but she’s real in a way I haven’t seen in a while. She’s got an innocence to her, but at the same time, she seems hardened by something. I want her. I wanted the last sub too. But I never liked the last sub. She was just a body to use, a mind to manipulate.
But Grace…
I turn on my heel and walk out of her bungalow before I ask myself any more questions. She has one more day here at the resort and then we both have to go back to our normal lives.
It’s best not to think too hard about her. I’ll probably never call her again after I fuck her wild tomorrow.
Chapter Fourteen
#PleasePullMyHair
I WAKE to Bebe and Steve in the room. Bebe is right next to me, and she’s not hiding her lackluster feelings for her boyfriend, because she’s arguing with him in a nasty tone. “What’s going on?” I ask as I roll over.
“I’m so sorry, Grace!” she exclaims. “I feel terrible for leaving you here all day yesterday and then brain case over there forgot to put gas in the boat he wanted to rent after parasailing, and we got stranded on that stupid island. We had to beg a local family to take us in. Did you know there’s like, no real services over there?”
I didn’t, but I’m thinking her question is rhetorical, so I don’t even bother answering.
“And now he”—she snarls that last word out as she points to poor Steve standing sheepishly over by the door—“is mad because I refuse to go snorkeling with him today.” She looks down at me and smiles her big Bebe smile. “I’m not leaving you again. It’s bullshit. And I’d be so pissed at you if you did this to me, so I don’t blame you one bit if you hate my guts.”
I’m thinking about Vaughn and all that happened yesterday when Bebe pops in with another question. “So who did you see that you wanted me to play the guessing game with you?”
“Um—” And in that moment I know I’m going to lie to her. Vaughn never said I had to keep quiet, but if I’m going to sign a NDA, it would be a huge girlfriend mistake to tell her half the story and not the rest. She’d never forgive me. So I lie. “Oh, I think I saw like, some guy from back home. You know that one asshole who makes our drinks at the Starbucks in LoDo?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s such a dick. What’d you say to him?”
She’s smiling a bit. Steve is forgotten and she’s all interested in my gossip.
I’m glad I’m lying. That sounds wrong, but I want to keep Vaughn for myself, and sharing any part of him with Bebe just opens him up to being fair game when we gossip.
“It wasn’t him. Luckily I realized that before I said anything.” My phone buzzes under my pillow and I reach for it, absently wondering how it got there when I don’t remember walking home from the beach.
“Who’s that?” Bebe asks, leaning over into my space so she can read the text.
The number comes up with no name, but I don’t need a name to know who it’s from, because it says, Good morning, girl.
“Just a guy I met last night on the beach. He’s a local guy, so I’m not even going to bother with him.”
“Hey, we have one more night!” Bebe says. “Don’t cut yourself off just yet, Grace.”
“Yeah, but you—”
“No! Seriously, if you found a hot man to hook up with today, by all means, go for it.”
“See,” Steve says from his spot by the door. “I told you she’d have something to do. Let’s go snorkel and enjoy this day.”
I sorta hate Ste
ve right now, but I don’t say anything because he’s what Bebe and I call two-hour parking. Get in, get out, move on. “Yeah, if you guys want to go snorkel, that’s fine with me.” I text Vaughn a message that says, Good morning, Master, just to see what kind of response I get back.
My phone vibrates almost immediately, but I stuff it under my pillow until Bebe leaves. It takes me several more minutes of convincing, but she finally changes into a clean bathing suit and leaves with Steve to go snorkel. I run to the bed after I close the door behind them, and reach for my phone.
You have thirty minutes to get ready. To the left of your bungalow is a closed path. Follow that until you get to a bougainvillea-covered wall, then turn left and follow that south until you get to a clearing. Remove your clothes. Kneel down. And wait for me.
I’m already tingling with anticipation. I was too tired last night to think about sex once we decided to be friends on the beach. But now that I’m rested, I’m hornier than ever.
I shower and change into my yellow bikini and white shorts, then pull a white tank top over my head. I dry my hair to make it dead straight as opposed to mostly straight, and then put it up in a ponytail that hangs halfway down my back. I stuff my phone and key card into my beach bag, and rush out the door, eager to see what all this master stuff is about.
It’s weird that I don’t think it’s weird. But I’ve read my share of sexy romance books and you can’t play Dirty Heaven every weekend without at least having some kind of cursory knowledge about this stuff, so maybe I’m just desensitized. At any rate, I’m more curious than alarmed at what I’m doing. Curious as to why I’m doing it? Maybe a little. But much more curious as to what he might ask me to do. How he might treat me. And what might happen after it’s over.