Escalation Clause (Stewart Realty Series)

by Crowe, Liz

  He bit back a retort, as the fear flared to life in his chest. Visions flashed in his head—Sara, the open house, the hall of her office, the night of the building opening, the blood when Katie was born, the stupid soccer tournament when they’d fought, all of it. He gulped. The scary emotion was back, clouding his brain and making his vision dim. He stared down, unable to meet her eyes.

  “It’s okay, Jack.” She walked around behind him and whispered into his ear. “I’ve got you.” Cold metal clamped around his wrists. He started to stand as his internal storm kept roiling, dark and ominous, building strength.

  “I’m not going here, Sara. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m not…you…we….” He heard himself babbling.

  “Shh….” She secured him to the chair.

  “God damn it woman we are not doing this.” He yanked his arms, encountering nothing but cold, firm steel. His eye pounded, and his heart sped up so fast he feared for his safety. Plus, as a bonus, his cock could cut diamonds it was so hard. He groaned when she ran her hand over it. “Christ,” he whined. “I’m cold.” He kept complaining, trying to find something to distract her, but he was shivering. His vision was going wonky, tunneled; he chalked it up to the swelling.

  “I know,” she said as she started to put a soft silk cover over his eyes.

  “No fucking way,” he jerked away. But, she came around to his front and straddled his legs, standing still, but giving him a clear view of her bare pussy. He licked his lips.

  “You want this,” she touched the soft pink of her sex, slipped a finger in, making him break into a cold sweat. She put her fingers to his lips giving him a taste of her familiar sweetness. “You will do this.” She slipped the blindfold over his eyes. He let her, unable to speak lest he curse, struggle, and bloody well come all over his lap. Quite the buzz, but it was more than that. When he reached deep and found the fear, really owned it, it made him sick to his stomach. The dark encased him leaving him with nothing but his nose and his skin.

  “You know what, I do want that,” he mustered a strong tone although his gut was churning and his brain was getting mushy. “And I’ll get it, don’t worry. It’s mine. We’ve already determined that. You have no idea how this works, Sara. You need to… to….”

  “Yes, Jack, we did.” Her breath ghosted over his face. “But we have some business to discuss, and this is the only way I can get your undivided attention.”

  “Bullshit,” he rattled the cuffs, trying like hell to let the tiny flame of fury blaze and overtake the emotional hurricane that had engulfed him. He feared nothing, God dammit. Least of all being cuffed, blindfolded, and topped by his own fucking wife. He heard his ragged breathing, and attempted to calm it, to let her know he was in control.

  Something touched his lips, her finger, covered with honey. He sucked at it, letting the smooth liquid coat his throat. “I’m not…,” he croaked. “I can’t….” The terror pulsed once more like a live thing clawing around in his chest.

  Her lips were at his ear. “Yes. You can, Jack. You will.” The leather flogger draped over his shoulder. He gritted his teeth and tried not to react when she flicked it across his skin. “You spent so much time using all this…,” she used the leather against him, harder. He yelped, and tried not to pant. Jesus. What the hell was she…?

  “Ow, fuck!” he yelled when she hit his thighs. He bit back a groan. His cock throbbed in direct response. Since when did he get off this way? He doled out the pain and control, not her.

  She slid it back up his torso. “Exactly. You used your control to make me lose mine. And I let you. And I will again. But we are going to have a conversation first. A conversation about us. This is not about our particular bedroom preferences. It’s about our marriage.”

  “Whatever,” he whispered, shivering, anger trying to push away the extreme anxiety that threatened to engulf him.

  Something cold hit his exposed nipple. She rolled his flesh along her tongue, using ice and her teeth to make him moan and thrust his hips involuntarily. Then she stopped. All was quiet, even the music had gone silent. He sat, and the distress returned. “Sara?” he called out. “Listen, baby, I get it. A little taste of my own medicine. It’s cool. And we should talk, I mean, you know really talk. I’m ready for that.” He gulped, unwilling to own up to the panic overtaking him. “Now, let me go and let’s…holy…shit.” Something hot hit his thigh, dangerously close to his cock. But, instead of being painful, it made his eye hurt less and the pounding in his head suddenly cease. “Ah…,” he cried out as small splatters hit his other thigh. His cock twitched, he felt himself leak. A whimper escaped his lips. “Sara, please.”

  He fought the restraints, needing to touch her so badly he ached, matching the sharp pain in his wrists when the metal bit into them. She covered his lips, swallowed his protests, then broke away, leaving him panting as what he finally figured out was hot wax dripped onto his torso. Just tiny specks, not enough to do more than sting and sizzle. She touched each spot with her fingertip, and when she reached his nipple he grunted. “I’m gonna come, Sara, if you keep that up. Seriously.” His mind reeled with the realization that he was more turned on than he’d been in a damn long time. It was amazing, terrifying, awful, and somehow utterly sublime all at once. The buzz in his ears was back, and he tried to relax, to let himself have this odd moment of submission.

  And like that, she was gone, and with her the tantalizing candle wax. He tried to get his breathing under control. “Jack,” she said somewhere over his left shoulder. He kept still. “You’ve said something to me more than once that I want to erase from your vocabulary. ‘I love you so much it scares me’ you said, on our wedding day.” A shiver ran down his spine at her words. “That’s bullshit. You have no reason to be afraid of me. None at all. Love isn’t being scared; it’s trust, communication and connection. A connection we have lost. One I want back. ”

  His heart pounded faster at her words. How many times had he said the same thing to himself in the past months? And all this time she had the identical words floating in her brain? Jesus, he was not trying hard enough. The feeling of inadequacy hit him in the gut again. There were too many things he’d been determined to master through the course of his life, many of them in direct response to what a crap example his own father had been. But, now, smacking him square between the eyes, was the fact that none of that shit mattered. Unless he got this right.

  The darkness still enveloped him, more complete than any blindfold would provide. He reached deep and discovered his own murky motivations, the reason he’d tried so damn hard all his life to not be his father. Maybe there were better reasons to be successful and inspiration beyond the negative kind he’d operated under for so many years. He sucked in a breath.

  He sensed her then, right behind him. He stayed still, but took the cream coated strawberry she held to his lips. A bizarre tightness in his throat took up the baton of pain that he’d endured for the last few hours. His eye ached where Rob had hit him. He tried not to ask her to use the wax again.

  “You made me not scared of you, Jack. You forced it on me. You made me trust you. And I took it. Hell, I wanted it. I wanted you. All of you. And I thought you gave it to me, but you’ve been holding back.”

  He opened his lips when she put something there, anticipating the citrusy tang of strawberry. He bit down on the jalapeño and smiled when his eyes watered. “Maybe,” he said, swallowing the hot morsel and trying to form words around the epiphany he’d just experienced.

  “No maybe about it. You are holding back. You won’t let go of your fears. You don’t trust me. Our marriage needs you to. I need you to”

  She disappeared again, let him ponder that as the chemical heat from the small ring of pepper seared his throat. “Drink.” She said, putting something to his lips. He did, sucking down some effervescent alcohol, gulping it in huge drafts, thirstier than he’d ever been in his life. “Give it to me, Jack.” She commanded, straddling him and suddenly dropping
down onto his poor, aching cock taking him into her body without warning. The soft glove of her was familiar yet painfully exotic.

  He groaned when she kissed him, holding his face, her tongue demanding and forceful. She rose, releasing him, and pissing him off. Then sat down again, clenching his shaft and making his head drop back in an honest effort not to come in three seconds. He strained against the cuffs, tried to shake the blindfold off. He felt her then, sensed the familiar clench and pulse of her on the brink of orgasm. “Kiss me,” he whispered. She put her hands on his shoulders and rolled her hips, taking him deep, getting that magical dual contact to her internal and external g-spots. He yanked his arms, dying to get his hands on her. “Jesus,” he moaned when she slanted her lips over his and gave into it, using him for her own pleasure with him shackled like some kind of ….

  “Fuck!” He yelped when she bit down on his nipple, while her pussy spasmed and made him dizzy with the need to blow inside her. “Give you what? Oh, Jesus, woman,” he groaned into her neck. “You got yours without asking my permission I’ll add. Now it’s my turn.”

  “No,” she stopped and stepped off releasing him. He hissed as a lethal combination of lust and fury nearly blinded him even more than the simple eye covering. “Tell me, Jack. Tell me what’s wrong. What scares you?”

  “This is insane,” he insisted, but the blackness under the blindfold suddenly whitened. He thought she’d removed it but she hadn’t. His breathing hitched in his chest, and a fresh, sheer bolt of terror pierced his brain. “I’m not scared,” he tried to say but it came out a whisper, weak in his own ears. The visions overwhelmed him again—the moment he fell in love with his own daughter, the beautiful, sexy swell of Sara’s belly pregnant with Brandis. “I can’t,” he croaked, yanking at the restraints again. He could smell her. The sensual aroma of her was all over him, all around him. It was maddening.

  “You can’t what, Jack?” She said, near, but yet miles away from him. “Tell me. Let me have it. Just like I gave everything I had to you, including the one thing you taught me how to give—my trust. You have to give me yours, otherwise this will never work.”

  He sensed something about her then—a realization so clear he gasped. She was desperate. That was the strange odor that swirled in and around the passion that enveloped them. Her fear of this, of making him submit on an emotional level to her was so real it was as if he could reach out and touch it. A drop of sweat rolled down his temple. “I’m not playing at this anymore Sara. Release me. I mean it.”

  “No,” but she lifted the blindfold. “I’m not playing either, Jack. I need this and so do you. And if you would just admit it we’d be halfway there.” She walked around him, making him swivel his head so he could marvel at the perfection of the black leather against her skin, of the play of her leg muscles under the silky stockings. He matched her silence, letting it spiral around them and take on a life of its own.

  “Okay,” he said finally, casting around for a way out of this. He couldn’t let himself be this vulnerable. But the dark clouds had covered his brain again, and a weird panic was settling in for a nice visit in his chest. He rattled the cuffs and came close to begging her to use the wax again.

  She touched his shoulder, then moved her lips up his neck putting fluttery kisses along his skin. “I love you, Jack, but you have got to open up to me. I’m so scared—for us, for our family.” She walked back around in front of him, holding the candle again. He gulped and nearly leapt from the chair and dragged it with him to get at her, to hold her and reassure her. Her eyes were neutral as she tilted the candle, letting the drops of wax hit his skin again along his thigh this time. “I know what you need, too. Did you realize that? Could you even admit it?”

  He shook his head, breathless at the pain and sudden resurgence of horny. She licked her lips, straddled him, holding the candle over his shoulder. The smell of her, her chemistry, pheromones, whatever it was they’d used to sustain their connection for so long sang out, made him want to beg, plead, anything just to be inside her. But his brain still boiled with a volatile combination of rage and doubt. He let anger speak first. He ground out his first words. The months of holding them back making his throat close up with the effort. She was so close, standing over his lap, the tantalizing candle in her hand.

  “Blake died, you were sedated in the hospital after giving hysterical a new definition in the hallway. And, when you woke up, you were fucking gone from me.”

  She let a drop of wax hit his chest. He hissed, and his cock jerked, seeking the contact with her that was so damn close. “Go on,” she said.

  He swallowed, unable to say anything, frozen with something he couldn’t name. It was too much. “Go on, Jack. Tell me all of it. We owe it to ourselves to be grownups now, to take on the challenges of our marriage and meet them. I know I am. That’s why I’m doing all this,” she let another bit of hot wax hit his belly, about a centimeter away from the weeping head of his shaft. “I need you to understand that you can be more to me than you think. That you have to trust me to have some of the control, some of the time.” Another drop of wax hit his thigh and dripped down. He gulped, unwilling to admit, even to himself, how vulnerable he felt and how much he wanted to tell her.

  His sore eye burned. His throat ached. She kept talking. He focused on her lush lips, letting her words swirl in his head. “You are an amazing man. I love you, and I am, by god, determined to spend the rest of my life with you. But,” She set the candle on the floor and kissed him lightly. “I need you to open up to me, like I’ve done for you.”

  He leaned back, staring into her eyes as the dark clouds in his head parted, just enough for him to get a breath. “I tried. I tried to be the man you needed me to be, supportive, helpful, but the timing…Blake, and the soccer thing, the baby, it all fell in on me like a ton of bricks, and, I let it. I know that.” She leaned into him, giving him a whiff of her—the fear he’d sensed, the desperation, it was still there, all mixed up in a nice stew of need. She wanted to lower herself down onto him again, he knew it but he kept talking. “We had our roles. All the emotion we used up preparing for Rob’s death depleted me somehow, I don’t know. Blake was such an important part of your…our lives.” He narrowed his eyes, tried to lose himself in her deep emerald gaze like he used to. “Then, he was gone and if one more person told me how much I had to step up, to be more to you than I already was, I….” He stopped, not even believing the words coming from his mouth. “All of them, your parents, Rob, my sister, they all looked at me like I didn’t already fucking know my job with you—what I wanted to be for you. So, I shut it down, matched your distance with mine. And, now,” he looked up at her, loving the way the candles lit her face.

  He took a huge breath, counting backwards from twenty to keep from coming before he spoke. “I can’t be his father. I don’t know how. I’ll just fuck the kid up. Like my dad did me. We’re too busy. Katie’s all messed up over Blake. We don’t, I’m not…oh.” He blew out a breath when she put her hand along his cheek. He leaned into it. “Fuck,” he gasped when she lowered herself over him once more, jerking him immediately to the ragged edge of a mind-blowing orgasm. Her chest heaved, and she bit her lip. He leveled his gaze at her.

  “You are exactly the man I need you to be, Jack Gordon,” Sara’s eyes blazed with intense determination. “You always have been. But I’m,” she stopped. He strained against the cuffs once more. She stood, leaving him gasping, propped her foot on his thigh again, digging in hard with the leather heel, her face a mask of frustration. “Be still and listen. I’m just as confused as you. Stop trying so hard to be perfect, the constant dominant, or the never-ending fixer. This,” she ran a finger down his neck to his nipple, flicking it before removing the exquisite bite of pain from his thigh, “is a partnership. We have to communicate, with words, a lot, to make it work.” She picked up the candle and drizzled a line of hot wax down his chest making him gasp and flinch and want to come so bad he could taste it in the back of
his throat.

  Then the clouds parted, leaving behind a bright, white clarity of purpose—the first one he’d felt in a damn long time. He knew it now—he was not his father, he was not a failure. He was a man who loved his wife, his job and needed to get the fuck over himself before it was too late. “I love you, Sara. I’ve loved you for years, and I won’t stop loving you. I swear to stop trying so hard, promise to just be me. Now, release me god dammit. We have some business to finish.” She leaned down and unlocked the cuffs. He threw them off, rising so fast the chair tipped backwards. Grabbing her with both hands he spun her around so she was bent over the upturned seat. The sweet, pink heart shape of her ass, between the leather and silk beckoned him. He grabbed her hips and shoved his cock inside her, hard, making her squeal and arch her back.

  “Yes,” she hissed as he pounded into her, matching the pounding in his head.

  “I know,” he ground out, his need so great it turned his entire body into a giant erotic nerve ending. “God damn, Sara, I’m…ah Jesus!” He was blinded for a moment, as her entire body seemed to grip him and yank him over the orgasmic cliff with her. He draped over her back, held her close, sighing with relief. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you so much.”

  As they lay together entangled in a mess of arms, legs, and silk sheets Jack’s brain was finally quiet. He kissed her hair, and she snuggled into his side. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said, never meaning anything more.

  She draped her arm over his torso and her leg over his. “I am, too, Jack. But now,” she rose, and stared at him. He brushed the tangle of hair from her face. “Now we move forward, right? Different, equal, with a better understanding of what we need. No more fronting, not for each other.”

  He tugged her up, so she was straddling him, then pulled her face down so he could kiss her again. “Yeah,” he said around her lips. “That was some kind of a show you put on.” He shifted, loving the feel of her warm, wet sex along the length of his stiffening shaft. “Nice work. The wax thing…kinky…we gotta do that some more.”