by Angel Payne
“Why are you tying me up? Isn’t it better for you and…things developing…if I can move around?”
“Apparently not, with you. I just got cracked in the head. For my own safety, I’ve decided you may need some extra help.” He squatted down so our stares were even, and flashed me a conspiratorial wink. “You know, sugar, you may like it.”
I narrowed my eyes and released a little growl.
Michael chuckled. “Well, are you comfortable? You may be there awhile.”
“Maybe a pillow under my stomach?”
He grabbed one off the sofa and slid it under my torso. “Better?”
“Much. Thank you, Headmaster.”
He gave me a sweet kiss on the forehead before stepping back behind me and flipping my skirt up, exposing my ass.
“Damn it, Margaux.”
“What?” I fought to swing my head around. “What’s wrong?”
Just like that, the insecurity beast reared its ugly head. I wasn’t surprised. Who wouldn’t find themselves stumbling over a few emotional triggers when tied in four places to a piece of furniture in the middle of their living room, taking a bath in streams of autumn afternoon light?
“Nothing.” His tone was a thick rope of meaning. “Nothing at all, sugar.” He ran his rough hands up my thighs and over my ass cheeks, spreading them wide, sinking fingertips into my flesh. “You’re the most stunning creature I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t get out much more than that. The reverence in his voice…it affected me more than physically. Deep in my chest, strange sensations of warmth unfurled. Beautiful sensations…
“Baby…if you had any idea what you look like right now, with the sun on your skin and our passion on your pussy…” He interrupted himself, clearing his throat with a rugged cough. “It’s completely unfair that one person should possess so much beauty. But I won’t be the one complaining to the universe about it.”
I had no response at that point. There weren’t a lot of options after a man flipped one’s heart over a hundred times, right? There was nothing I could do or say but let him adore me—easier said than done—no matter how brainless it seemed. For a girl like me, it could be difficult. Perhaps impossible. In Andrea Asher’s world, you weren’t human if you weren’t perfect. Even now, I worried about all the wrong Michael would see in my body, instead of the right.
No. I didn’t have to believe that anymore. Despite how unnerving it was, I dipped my head, closed my eyes and let his words of love surround me. This was Michael. My Michael. He’d never hurt me and would never knowingly let harm come to me. I trusted him with that surety and so much more. I’d let him lock me down without thinking twice. More significantly, I let him openly stare at me in this state.
I felt his heat against me. He rubbed my back with long, firm strokes, continuing his words of worship in such perfect whispers my mind gave over to my soul…and soared. His physical warmth and emotional bolstering had me glowing everywhere. Everywhere.
Soon, he drifted lower and gently petted my sex from behind. The steady pressure beckoned my senses like a light in the growing twilight of the room. I leaned deeper into his touch with each pass, moaning and purring, opening for him…craving him.
“Michael.” I rasped it like a prayer. “Michael.”
“What, sweetheart?” His voice was soft but urgent. The headmaster was gone. He was now the lover who knew every perfect way to touch me, every wonderful thing to say to me, every exquisite way to love me.
“Please!”
“Please what? Tell me what you need, Margaux. I’m all yours. I’d move a fucking mountain for you.”
“No mountain,” I cried. “Just you. Do it. I’m begging you! Fuck me, Michael!”
He slipped right in through my wetness, barely needing to push. Though we’d been making love night after night for months, he still stretched me to the fullest I’d ever been. It brought pain—but the purest kind. The kind that came with the most perfect ecstasy my body would ever know.
The desk lurched forward with his commanding, demanding thrusts. We started inching across the floor. Neither of us cared. All that mattered was the passion pounding from between my legs then spreading through my lower half. My entire body was possessed by him. His body. His heat. His desire. But he consumed more than that. My spirit. My will. My heart. Everything I had, everything I was…belonged to him.
His fingers skated up my ribcage, reaching beneath my blouse to pluck at my nipples, granting no mercy even when I screamed. If I wasn’t on sensory overload before, that sure as hell hit the max capacity button.
I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. My body jumped back to where it had left off only minutes ago, on the brink of another mind-melting orgasm.
Michael leaned over me, breathing heavily into my neck. “You feel so good, princess. So damn good. So tight around my cock. Goddamn.”
“Harder,” I gritted. “Need it…harder.”
He scraped his teeth against my neck. “Beg me.”
I didn’t think twice. I didn’t think at all. “Please. Fuck me harder, Michael. Do it. Make me cry. Punish me!”
I had no idea where the words came from. Maybe, deep inside, I knew they’d tempt his beast again. And maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut—because out of nowhere came the hell spawn ruler again. This time, he struck the fleshy globes of my ass. I shrieked, though was thankful he hadn’t gone again for my inner thighs.
He didn’t break the rhythm of his cock while spanking me a few times on each side—enough to make sure I’d be standing through meetings tomorrow. Finally, he flung the stick aside to gain leverage for really pounding into me.
“I hate that thing,” I muttered, as it clattered against the wall.
“I love that thing,” he growled.
“You’re a monster.”
“And you’re the sweet girl with the red ass that’s driving me insane.” He lunged even harder. “Let it go for me, Margaux. Come again, princess.”
“I’m so close…”
Not a lie. One more naughty move and I’d be gone. As if Michael read my mind, he reached around, found my clit and pinched my flesh so hard I saw stars. They blinded me, bringing a climax so fast and intense I couldn’t even announce its arrival. I went mute as the explosion lashed my body. Michael kept pounding away, groaning hard as his completion came, too.
Minutes or hours or days might have passed while we drifted back down to earth. “Jesus Christ, girl,” he muttered, still slumped over my back. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
I laughed breathlessly while he fumbled with my bindings. A few moments passed before he was able to fully concentrate and set me free.
We tumbled to the floor in each other’s arms, sweaty and satiated, grinning and sleepy like we always were after a satisfying romp—though I wondered if romp would have to be replaced by a new noun this time. Terms like best sex of my life instantly made that short list.
He pulled the throw off the back of the sofa, down to where we lay on the floor. Neither of us spoke. It wasn’t necessary yet. It would happen eventually though. Michael analyzed everything. It was something I loved and hated about him.
He added a couple of the big couch pillows to our impromptu bed before asking, “Where did the desk come from?”
I laughed again, unable to hold back. “I sent Andre out to find it.”
“Christ. I’m never going to hear the end of this one.”
“I didn’t tell him what it was for.” I batted him playfully.
He grunted. “Sugar, he’s a guy. And not as dumb as he may act at times.” He hitched up, leaning his head against an elbow and tugging on one of my pigtails. “Well…the outfit’s a keeper. That’s an order, Miss Asher.”
I played with my pinkie ring. “And the ruler?”
“You liked that, after all?”
“Took a little getting used to, but, yeah.”
Michael grabbed my hands in his much larger ones, stilling m
y nervous twisting. His warm skin surrounded mine, comforting me at once. His nearness always gave me security and confidence—two elements I struggled with daily, no matter what the world at large believed. I didn’t care what they thought, anyway. The only person who mattered was the golden god of a man sprawled against me now.
I looked into his eyes, floored by the love I saw there. I wondered if he saw the same thing in mine.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he whispered.
I smiled. “I hope I do.”
A peculiar expression took over his face. This was normally the point where he started the post-coital analysis thing, but his expression was far from analytical. It was…pensive. No. Expectant. Not that, either. “Hmmm.”
That sure cleared up…nothing. “Hmmm…what?”
“Funny that we’re bringing up all this love stuff right now.”
“Why?”
“Because after what happened yesterday with your ring, I really started thinking about us. Me. You. The lengths I would go to for you. The depth of how much I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I lifted fingers to his face, caressing his jaw. “I meant what I said earlier, you know. Every word.”
“Good. Now let me finish.”
“Ohhh…kay.” I almost made it a question.
“I know you wear that ring everywhere—because it means so much to you. That’s why I did what I did yesterday. It wasn’t because of the ring itself, but because of you. Because of how much you mean to me. That could have just as easily been anything else you cherished.”
“I know that.” I leaned over, nuzzling the base of his neck. His tie was loose, but I unknotted it all the way and tossed it to the couch. “My Captain America.”
He scooted a finger beneath my chin and tugged up. “It made me realize something, Margaux. Something significant.”
“All right.” I took advantage of the chance to kiss him. “What?”
He took a deep, long breath.
“I want to make a commitment to you. I want the world to know that I’m committed to you. I want you to marry me, Margaux. I want to be your husband, to take care of you every day in sickness and health, for richer and poorer, through the shining times and the shitty times—for the rest of our lives. I want to be the man you always turn to when you need someone to lift you up and even when you don’t. I’m—this is—hell, it’s not coming out at all like it should, but just make me the happiest fucker on earth, okay?” He lifted my hands and smashed fervent kisses on the knuckles. Then again. “Say yes. Say you will be my wife. Wear my ring, Margaux. Wear a ring that will come to mean as much, if not more, than the one I fished out of the sewer yesterday.”
I answered him with dead silence. And didn’t know if I had anything beyond it.
I sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming.
Chapter Three
Michael
“Michael.”
It wasn’t just how she whispered it.
It was the silence before it. The kind of silence that stretched beyond nervous, even uncomfortable.
Into gut-wrenching.
“Michael.” She looked up. For two seconds. In the first, she yanked out my heart, stripping it of its hopeful joy. In the second, she rammed it back into my chest—full of defeat.
“Right.” I mumbled it while breaking our gazes. “Got that message. Loud and clear.”
“Hey.” She yanked on my hair, pulling me back around. “I love you, okay? I do.”
“But…” I uttered the word for her. Her answering wince shouldn’t have been so encouraging, but misery loved company and all that depressing shit.
It wasn’t like I’d planned for the words to spill out—though, I now realized they’d been pushing all day. While organizing my new office, I’d thought of doing the same in a new home, with Margaux. Over lunch with Carter and Grace, the fraternal twins who’d been charged with showing me the ropes at the firm, I’d considered what it would be like to tell them about my weekend plans with my wife. After that lunch, I’d even paused at a jewelry store window to check out the engagement rings.
“But what?” Margaux sat up, pulling the blanket over her cleavage. The demure move was surprising, considering how I’d just had my wicked way with her breasts and nipples—which made it arousing as hell, too. Great. “You don’t see the dozen ways an engagement would be a shitty idea right now?”
So much for arousal.
I rose and refastened my pants. “So your idea’s the highlight of the night, and mine’s the shitty stuff.”
“Excuse the hell out of me?”
“You heard me.”
“Wait. Whoa. Hold on there, cowboy.”
Hold on. That had been my plan, hadn’t it? I’d wanted to hold on for the rest of my damn life. I’d never laid myself barer for a woman—which apparently, had been a shitty idea.
I stomped across the room, looking for my keys. Another tangle of feeling rolled across my chest, tight but filthy, like a tumbleweed hitting a swamp. Clashing ecosystems aside, the ball collected what it had to off my soul—the acceptance of why she’d really turned me down.
“So, no harm, no foul,” I muttered. “I get it, okay? Dressing up the guy from the apple farm doesn’t make him any less the guy from the apple farm. If I’m Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right, then so be it.”
My keys were on the floor, near the school desk, where they must have fallen from my pants when—
Of course.
Fuck.
I avoided looking at the cuffs still attached to the furniture, afraid of what I’d remember now…of what I’d feel now. All the ways she’d captured my heart, multiplied deeper. That she’d trusted me enough to give herself to me like that…it had gutted me then filled me right back up. Humbled me, but made me soar to the fucking stratosphere. But clicking sexually didn’t mean matching in other areas. Not the important ones. And now, I had to be okay with that. She hadn’t given me a choice.
“So be it?” She stood as she bit out each word, wearing an expression I couldn’t decipher. On one hand, she’d never looked more an incensed princess, though, her gaze bore the pain of a lost little girl. I blinked back, confused—until she shot out a fist, brutally clipping my shoulder.
“Hey. Ow! What the—”
“You are such an idiot.”
“I’m an—” I rubbed my arm but froze as she let the blanket fall. Nothing like this woman, pissed off and nearly naked, to strip me of coherent thought. “I’m not the one who said no,” I growled, shoving back the arousal.
“Did you hear me say no?” Margaux snapped. “Ever?” She stepped around me and marched to the kitchen, reaching for the bottle of wine we’d started last night after capping off our passion in the car with another round on the counter in here. She recorked the cabernet, reaching for the Scotch instead.
“Pardon me for splitting hairs. Where I come from, a shitty idea translates to the same thing.”
“A shitty idea right now.” She dumped the amber liquid into a highball then shoved it at me. “Drink. That’s not a request. You have to calm the hell down.”
“I am calm.”
“Not working, buddy. Not with me.” She tossed back half the liquor in her own glass. Was anything more erotic than this woman, still spilling from her schoolgirl threads, downing Scotch like a Highlander? “Just because you’re not punching the wall doesn’t mean you don’t want to.”
I shot out a huff and downed the damn Aberlour. At least it would take the edge off my growing fantasy to fuck her again—a fact my bedraggled suit would be shit for disguising in a minute.
“You ready to listen now?” she prompted. I replied by nudging my empty glass forward, demanding another round. She obliged, though kept her stare locked on me as she tipped the bottle. “Tell me something,” she murmured. “Why do you think I’m such a freak about keeping this ring?”
I waited a second to respond. Was she serious? Did she think I didn’t know that answer?
No. That wasn’t the case. But she wasn’t playing around, either. Raised with little knowledge of the word play at all, Margaux was only comfortable with the word in the bedroom or the shoe store.
“It represents happier times,” I finally responded. “And the woman you experienced them with.”
Her lips inched up. Her eyes softened. Damn. Knowing I’d touched her heart…I felt as huge as a Sequoia.
“And what else?” she pressed.
A frown pushed my forehead. “It probably centers you, too,” I guessed. “Focuses you on a stronger version of yourself.”
Long before I’d even kissed the woman, I’d figured that the sass she slung at the world was a sham, ordered there by an equal hoax of a mother. Andrea Asher had simply expected Margaux to be strong, without the necessary lessons for the integrity beneath it. Fast-food character building, doled out by a woman now on the International Wanted List for her caviar taste—and the white-collar crimes she’d committed to finance it.
“Hmm.” Margaux inched her grin up a little more. “That’s a good one. And true, as well.”
“But there’s more.” I inserted the word willingly this time.
“A lot more.” She set down her empty highball and made no move for a refill. Instead, she leaned against the counter, thoughtfulness taking over her face, twisting the ring with the fingers of her opposite hand.
“It’s okay,” I urged. “I’m here.”
She pulled in a deep breath. Finally uttered, “Connection.”
“Connection?”
“That’s the more. The ring…it’s connecting me. Back to…me.” She shook her head and I almost thought she was going to laugh off the introspection. Though it made no more sense to me than her, I was glad when she pushed on anyway. “For so long—too long—I’ve been living as an extension of Andrea Asher’s world. Okay, so I was probably the best-dressed one in the garden, but it was still her garden. Yet now…”
“You don’t know what your garden is supposed to be about.”
Her shoulders lowered, releasing visible tension. The fact that I’d said it, not her, cleared a lot of the air between us. She reached for my hand and squeezed despite the sadness of her next words.