Clark, Rachel - Alicia's Awakening (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Rachel Clark

  Uncomfortable a little with my thoughts, I missed the part where he woke up. I’m not even sure he has his eyes open, but he knows I’m awake.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

  I’m sure I’m blushing a brilliant red—thank heavens for the dark—but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the idea of having to get permission for everything.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you awake, little sub?”

  “Can’t sleep,” I sort of lie, “too excited.”

  “Perfect,” Doug says as he rolls me onto my back. He kisses me wildly, the amazing, near-immediate burst of arousal taking me completely by surprise. He crawls over me, trapping me beneath him as he lifts my arms outward and fastens them to something only he can see on either side of the headboard. My ankles are next, my legs stretched wide apart as he adjusts something and somehow makes everything tighter.

  His warm tongue over my breasts makes me sigh in pleasure. The gentle bite makes me scream.

  He laughs softly as he soothes the offended flesh with fingers and tongue once again. “I have never known a woman with such sensitive breasts. I suspect the threat of nipple clamps will be a very effective deterrent to bad behavior from my little sub.”

  “Amen to that, Sir,” I promise wholeheartedly. There is no way I’m going to risk nipple clamps for anything. Fuck, just the thought of it makes me want to cry out in pain.

  “Good girl,” he says as he slides lower down the bed. I feel him spread a thin latex square of a dental dam over my pussy. It doesn’t stop me feeling nearly everything as his tongue glances over the soft flesh of my mound, the now-hairless skin quivering with my excitement. I wriggle away slightly, the intense sensation too much to bear. “Stay still.” The growled words vibrate against my pussy, doing nothing to lessen my arousal and making it even harder to just lie there and let him touch me. “Lie still or I’ll get the knee straps.”

  “Sir,” I ask as a nervous flutter invades my belly, “what are knee straps?”

  “They hold you like this,” he says, flattening his palms against the inside of my knees and pushing out and up. With my ankles still bound I am very literally pinned to the bed. The illusion of being able to wriggle away is completely and thoroughly gone. I swallow fretfully. I’ve never been claustrophobic, but somehow it seems to be the only word that fits what I’m feeling.

  “Please, Sir, no,” I say with a cowardly quiver in my voice. Fuck, the messing around we did in the past three weeks hasn’t prepared me at all for the realities of submission. Lying here in the dark, even with a man I care for and trust, I’m on the verge of losing it.

  The pressure on my knees eases up. “Breathe, little sub,” he says, proving that he did indeed notice my cowardly reaction. “Behave yourself and I won’t have to use them.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I say, trying to bring my anxiety level down several hundred notches. Maybe if everything that had happened in the past twelve hours hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be on the verge of an embarrassing freak-out now? God, I hope so. I’m really, really embarrassed by a fear so unexpected.

  Doug watches me in the dark, apparently his view of my face much clearer than mine of his. A calloused hand touches my cheek lovingly.

  “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, little sub.” He leans over to press a kiss to my lips, and I fall for him just a little more. How can one person be so attuned to another? I’ve barely known him three weeks, yet he sees me more clearly than anyone else I’ve ever known. “I’m going to make love to you now.”

  I nod my agreement, even though I realize that was technically not a question.

  Doug hesitates for a moment, seeming like he wants to say something, but then changes his mind. He rolls off the mattress, discards the dental dam, and grabs something from the top drawer of a chest. On his way back to the bed he drags on the condom and covers it with lube.

  He thrusts into me immediately, covering my prostrate body with his own, filling me to the brim as he begins to slide into and out of my pussy. It’s almost normal sex—well as normal as sex can be with me tied spread-eagled to the bedposts.

  But then he kisses me and there is nothing normal or ordinary about the way he’s fucking me. This isn’t a Dom taking his sub. It’s a man making love to a woman.

  Does he even realize the words he used?

  He grunts, starting to move faster, his cock forcing its way through the delicate flesh of my pussy. Doug keeps kissing me, driving my need higher, giving me far more than I think he intended. I’m undulating against my bonds, wanting to pull him close, needing to wrap my arms around him.

  Almost as if he hears my wish, he pulls away. He undoes my legs first, releasing me and helping me to move to a more comfortable position. I reach for him as soon as he unfastens my arms, but he grabs my hands, denying me, confusing me.

  I’m almost stunned when he flips me onto my hands and knees. He slams into my pussy again, his hand fisting in the hair at the base of my skull, pushing my head down to the mattress. The urge to fight is strong, the need to crawl away claiming me, but he drags me back, fucks me harder, hurts me just enough to force me into orgasm.

  I scream, the sound muffled by the bedding, as he fucks me like a wild man. I feel like I’m on fire, every inch scorched from the heat of climax. My heart is pounding violently. Every single muscle I own is shaking as climax roars through me. Never in my kinkiest dreams have I been taken so roughly. Even I’m amazed by how much I love it.

  He grinds his groin hard against me, cramming his cock as far as it will go. I feel his orgasm, and almost wish he wasn’t wearing a condom. Ridiculously, I mourn the fact that he didn’t fill my womb with his seed. I’m not thinking children—I’m on the pill—but I want his mark. I want to hold on to a part of him even as he pulls away.

  He disposes of the condom quickly, climbs back into bed, and maneuvers until he has me caged in his embrace. “Sleep, little sub,” he says.

  And like a good little sub, I do exactly as my Dom orders.

  * * * *

  Doug held Alicia tight and tried desperately to understand his own feelings. He’d never described fucking a sub as “making love,” but somehow with Alicia it had seemed to fit. He’d actually untied her in a very clear decision to take her in a vanilla way. He’d even been imagining what it would be like as she wrapped her arms and legs around him and gave as good as she got.

  He’d barely covered his gaffe by flipping her into a doggy position and taking her angrily.

  Damn it. He was a better Dom than that. He didn’t let his emotions dictate his actions, but it seemed they were the only types of decisions he was capable of making around Alicia.

  He wrapped his arms tighter around her, tried to remember that this little sub already had a Dom, and refused to fantasize about Lachlan never coming home.

  Fucked up—that was the only way to describe the whole situation.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’m a little confused when I wake up alone. For ten nights now I’ve fallen asleep in my Dom’s arms and woken in the same place hours later—more often than not with Doug already sliding inside me for what he affectionately calls his morning fuck. He tells me that a Dom can do whatever he likes with his sub. If a Dom wants to fuck his sub until she’s about to shatter and then walks away without letting her finish, then that’s what he can do. Thankfully, he only denied me orgasm on two of those mornings. The first time it made me so grumpy and ill mannered that I ended up wearing nipple clamps. As usual the pain was so intense I promised to behave very quickly. The second time I managed to rein in my temper and was very well rewarded. I think I still have a few sore spots from that spanking.

  I roll over and try to see the time on the clock, but it’s too dark. It seems to be very early. Hopefully he’ll crawl back into bed and fuck me silly.

  I smile at my naughty thought. Until this week I would never have guessed I had it in me. Doug has taught me so many things about myself that occasionally
I feel like a completely different person. The fact that I haven’t had an actual panic attack since the day I got here is the most surprising, especially considering some of the things we’ve shared.

  I’m still deciding whether to go looking for him or stay here and wait when I hear his voice. It sounds like he’s on the phone, and judging by the tone, he’s not happy.

  Feeling rather cowardly, I nevertheless force myself to lie here and wait for him. I have no instructions on what I can and can’t do, so it’s best just to stay exactly where I am. In some ways the closeness I felt to him those first few nights seems to have eroded, and I suspect now that our relationship is more like that of a Dom and the sub he is training. I mourn the friendship I thought we were developing, but I also appreciate why I may have read things incorrectly. A Dom-sub style of relationship is extremely intense. In plenty of ways it explains how I misread his feelings.

  So far though, I haven’t been able to convince myself I misread mine.

  I almost told Lachlan on the phone last night. I need someone I can trust to tell me I’m wrong. Intellectually I know I haven’t known Doug long enough to have fallen in love. Add that to the love I still feel for Lachlan and I am one very mixed-up little sub.

  I jump in fright when the bedroom door swings open violently.

  “Get dressed,” Doug growls as he drops my suitcase on the floor beside me. I haven’t seen it since I gave it to him nearly eleven days ago. I barely remember what it’s like to wear clothes.

  “Doug?” I ask, completely forgetting my place. He seems upset and I want to comfort him. I don’t care if that’s against the Dom-sub rule book. “What’s wrong?”

  He gives me a look that shows how startled he is by my words. I’m probably going to be punished later for breaking protocol, but I can’t ignore a human being in pain just because he’s my Dom. He breathes out forcefully, as if trying to expel the anger he’s feeling. He sits on the bed beside me, runs his hand over my face in a tense but affectionate caress.

  “I’m sorry, little…one, this is not how I planned to wake you.” I notice the hesitation and the obvious change in his words. Am I no longer his sub? “I need to get to the hospital. I’ll drop you home on the way.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I say as I clamber out of bed quickly and start rummaging through my suitcase. He’d sounded so angry on the phone that it hadn’t even occurred to me that it might be this kind of news. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He holds his arms open for me and I practically fly into his embrace. I saw the hesitation in his eyes when he silently asked for my hug, but I have no intention of letting him down. His arms are trembling when they close around me, holding me so close that I can barely breathe.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Of course,” I say immediately. He pulls me tighter for a moment, and I hug him closer, not bothering to rein in the affection I feel for this man. Eventually, he helps me back onto my feet. I drag my clothes on in record time, ignore the fact that I have no makeup, and quickly twist my hair into a braid. I reach for my cell phone and purse as Doug reaches for my hand.

  We travel to the hospital in silence, but it’s the group of men we meet there that has me wondering what the hell is going on. They’re all dressed in jeans and T-shirts, so to an outsider they probably look like any other group of friends, but I recognize their common demeanor. I’ll bet my last dollar that they’re all Doms from the club.

  “How is she?” Doug asks the group as they approach.

  “Not good,” one man says with a quick glance in my direction. He seems surprised by my presence. “I overheard the doctors using words like ‘severe’ and ‘massive’ to describe her heart attack. They’re not saying much until her sister gets here, but it doesn’t sound very good.”

  “Do we know who she was with?”

  “We do,” the man says with a grim nod. Apparently, Doug knows who the man is referring to because his hand clenches harder around mine.

  “Her neck?” Doug asks clearly, though he sounds like he’s talking through clenched teeth.

  “Obvious.”

  I want to ask what’s going on. They seem to be talking in code and somehow blaming someone for a woman’s heart attack. But I don’t ask. I stand beside and slightly behind my Dom and try to give him my silent support.

  “Are the police involved?”

  “I’d say that’s about to become a yes,” the man says with a nod to a pair of uniformed officers approaching them.

  “Good,” my Dom says vehemently. The other man frowns but doesn’t comment on Doug’s obvious wish to have a man charged over a woman having a heart attack. Confused, I glance around the area and finally notice two women sitting not far from us. Both have been crying.

  As the first man moves to talk to the police officers, another takes his place.

  “She knew the risks,” he says in a soft voice.

  “So did he,” Doug says angrily. “It was his job to protect her, not kill her.”

  The other man shakes his head, not actually disagreeing with Doug’s assessment. The man guides us to the seats beside the two women. He lifts one of them up and then sits down with her on his lap. She quickly curls into his embrace as Doug urges me to take the seat beside the other woman and then sits beside me. I desperately want to crawl into his embrace, but I’m not sure right now that it would be welcomed. Whatever is going on here, it seems that Doug feels responsible.

  “This isn’t your fault,” the man says to Doug in a clear echo of my thoughts.

  “I trained her. Without me she would never be living this lifestyle.”

  “Bullshit,” the man says, glancing at me again as if wondering why I was actually there. “If you hadn’t trained her, it would have been someone else. You can’t take the blame for something you had no control over.”

  Doug doesn’t seem convinced, but he holds his jaw tightly like he wants to say more but doesn’t.

  We sit there silently for several minutes. I catch the occasional word or two from the quiet conversation between the first man and the police officers. It sounds like a friendly enough discussion, but the body language seems to say otherwise. Doug notices me tensing up.

  “Come here, Alicia,” he says as he tugs my hand to pull me onto his lap. “I shouldn’t have brought you. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I whisper quickly. “I want to be here for you.”

  “Thank you,” he says as he closes his eyes and encourages me to lay my head on his shoulder. I relax against him, hoping that my presence is enough. After a few more minutes the man finishes talking to the police officers and joins us. He sits beside the woman in the middle, tucking her under his arm as the three men begin to talk.

  “Are they going to arrest him?” Doug asks.

  “They’re going to talk to him,” the man says, giving Doug a thoughtful look. “I was going to ask you to represent him, but it seems pretty clear that would be a bad move for both of you.”

  “You think?” Doug asks sarcastically. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Doug be anything other than polite and charming. This side of him is a little bit of a shock, and I find myself wondering why I’d forgotten the man was a whole person. For some reason in my head, despite the emotional experiences of the first day of our contract, he’s become a two-dimensional, larger-than-life Dom. When did I start thinking he had no feelings?

  I want to smack myself upside the head. Hell, if Lachlan were here, I’d ask him to do it for me—figuratively speaking of course. He’s always been the one I can rely on to point out when I’m not seeing what’s right in front of me.

  The familiar ringtone of my cell phone makes me jump in fright, and I wonder if I’m hearing things. It’s the one I assigned to Lachlan’s number. How the fuck did he know to call me exactly when I needed him? I lean back to look at Doug’s face. It seems to be the middle of the night, and I want to make sure it’s okay with my Dom before I answer it. I know enough about Dom-sub behavior t
o know that defying him in front of other Doms would be very embarrassing for him. Thankfully, Doug nods and helps to swing my bag off my shoulder so that I can grab my phone.

  “Hi, Lach,” I say quietly into the phone. I’ve never liked hospitals, so the urge to speak in a low voice is probably suitable for the situation.

  “Hi, baby. Are you with Doug?” I glance up at Doug, surprised not only by Lachlan’s greeting—he’s never called me “baby” before—but also by the question.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “His phone is going straight to the message bank. Can you put him on, please?”

  “Ugh, sure.” I know they’re friends, but the timing feels so strange. What could Lachlan need to say to Doug that couldn’t wait until he called me later tonight?

  “It’s Lachlan. He wants to speak with you,” I say to Doug. He nods, lifts me off his lap, and places me on the chair. He gives the other two men an apparently silent order, because they both nod, and then Doug walks away to get some privacy.

  Stunned, and maybe a little bit hurt, I glance at the other two women in our little group. They both seem rather interested by what just happened, but since I don’t know the protocols between subs sitting in a hospital waiting room, I hesitate to start a conversation.

  Thankfully, Doug is back quickly.

  “Is he coming home early?” one of the men asks.

  I’m surprised they know Lachlan at all—let alone the part where he’s been away for so long—but the urge to ask is quelled by the fingers resting at the back of my neck. Doug’s grip is not painful, barely even a touch, but it does remind me of my place.

  Thankfully he leaves them there when he answers the question or I might have found myself in a whole heap of trouble.

  “He’s booking his flight now. I suggest you keep him away from Robert.”

  The other two men nod in agreement. I have no idea who Robert is, or why Lachlan—one of the calmest and most laid-back personalities I’ve ever known—would somehow be a threat to the man, but I’m beginning to grow angry. I want explanations. I want to understand.