by Nikki Sloane
The heat of his body left as he pulled back and the expression on his face was immoral. “Only if you’re good. And quiet.” His hands balled fistfuls of the maxi skirt I was wearing. “Can you be quiet, Payton?”
I nodded.
“I don’t know if I believe you. Let’s find out.”
He tugged off his outer coat and dropped it to the ground, leaving him in his suit and tie that was like the male equivalent of lingerie. Then, hands pushed up my skirt as he sank to his knees, kneeling on his coat. Cold air hit my knees and thighs where my boots stopped, and I held the skirt for him. He liked having use of his hands, after all.
His fingers hooked under one side of my thong. Dominic used both hands on it, gripping and pulling hard until the elastic stretched beyond capacity and the destroyed underwear fell to my ankles. I stepped out of it eagerly, lust making my knees weak.
I moaned softly as his fingers parted me. I bit my bottom lip when he leaned forward and licked me.
“God, you taste good,” he whispered.
I shivered from his words, not the cold. My hands clenched the skirt tighter, straining against the fabric. Staying quiet was going to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life.
“Is this why you wouldn’t let me go down on you this morning?”
“Ssh.”
I swallowed a breath. His tongue stroked and massaged my clit. Heat swelled and expanded in my chest, strangling my breath. Quiet, I whispered to myself. Prove you can do this or he might not give you what you really want, that connection.
He slipped a finger inside me and it felt so fucking good but I made barely a sound.
“Do you want to come?”
He’d programmed me with his words, night after night of it. The starting sequence triggered waves of pleasure deep inside, and anticipation left me breathless. “Yes.”
“Do you need to come? Would you do anything for it?”
I was already too frantic to notice the subtle difference. “Yes.” The next thing he said would be the order I was desperate to obey.
His gaze turned up to me, his eyes shockingly blue. “Then, stay with me.”
chapter
SEVENTEEN
My stomach twisted into knots, and this unexpected command threw my brain into chaos. “What?”
Dominic continued to work his finger in and out of me, keeping me right on the edge of the orgasm. There was a crease in his forehead and his expression was uncertain.
“I need another week.” He took a deep breath and his voice plummeted to a hush. “I’m not ready to let you go.”
All this had been calculated. Last night his heart had hammered out of his chest because he was setting this plan into motion. The plan to manipulate me into staying. I should have been upset, but this was a stay of execution.
“Please.” He kissed me softly where the ache for him was unbearable.
I sighed when a second finger speared into me. It filled me with more need until there was room for nothing else. My hand tangled in his hair. Not stopping, just desperate to touch him.
“You don’t need to hurry back, right?” he said. “Another week.” His soft tongue teased and begged, and was more convincing when it wasn’t using words. “Stay.”
This was crossing into dangerous ground, but there was no other answer. “Yes.”
He exhaled loudly as his shoulders relaxed. “Holy fuck, come for me. Right now.”
My eyes slammed shut. The vise of the orgasm gripped me. His hands braced my hips against the wall while my body rocked and writhed with pulsing pleasure. My strangled cry was crushed under his lips, wet with my own taste. Another week with him. Yes.
I was tingling and still in the floating, weightless place he took me to, when one hand abandoned my hip. It tugged his belt open. A zipper rang out. His pants slid down to his ankles when the condom wrapper was in his hands.
“Dominic,” I moaned. My hands dove under his boxers and lowered the waistband down over his cock, helping him get ready to take me. You’d think we’d gone a year without sex and not a single day from the desperation in me. I hooked one of my legs around him. “Fuck me. Fuck me now.”
He held his dick in his hand, positioning it against me, and when the angle was right, he slipped his hands under my ass and lifted so I could slide down on his thick, impossibly hard cock. I took all of him in deep, and he blew out a sharp breath right by my ear.
“You needed this, didn’t you?” he asked.
The rough voice . . . it pumped desire in my veins. “Yes. Oh my god, yes.”
“Is it all you can think about, like me?”
My arms crossed behind his neck and I held on as he began to fuck me against the side of the container. It escaped my lips. “Yes.”
His teeth skimmed the pulse pounding in my neck. The climb toward another orgasm began, tugging me upward, and this one threatened to be epic. I panted and moaned. My hands clutched at his suit jacket while Dominic drove into me.
What would we look like if one of his coworkers stumbled upon us? Dominic’s ass was only half covered by those boxers and my boots were locked at the ankles around his back. Would the man run off? Would he stay and watch? Fuck, the idea turned me on.
“Are you close?” Dominic asked.
I nodded. “I’m gonna come all over you.”
Abruptly his rhythm slowed and his voice was harsh. “No, you’re not.”
My eyes popped open in alarm. What just happened?
“You’ll come,” he said, “when I tell you to, and only when I tell you to.”
Holy. Fucking. Shit. I don’t know if I’d ever heard anything hotter in my whole life. My ass was cold in the briny ocean air as he thrust deep and hard, and I held my pleasure at bay for him. The quiet, repetitive thud of my backside thumping against the hollow metal container sounded vaguely like industrial work and not Dominic pounding into me and making me quiver at the edge.
His hands dug into my ass, tightening. Oh, he was getting close.
“Do you want to come?”
I sobbed my reply with a noise of twisted need. Then, panic. “It’ll be loud.”
He slammed into me, pinning me against the wall and my legs clamped around him to hold on. His rough hand slid across my mouth and covered it to silence my impending scream.
“Come for me,” he ordered. “Right now.”
I groaned against his palm while my whole body shuddered, my pussy clenching at his cock. The orgasm burned up from my legs until I was completely engulfed in flames.
“You,” he said on a broken breath, “are mine.”
Everything focused in on him and forced the orgasm to last a lifetime. I would have screamed, but he held his hand firm on me. Kept me quiet, all the way through his own orgasm. Inside me, he jerked again and again. Dominic was going to ruin me. No man would ever take me like this. Possess me as he did. And in this moment, I didn’t give a fuck.
His lips slipped over mine, pressing gently in a sultry kiss. My head spun. His effect over me strengthened every time we did this.
“I thought you were going to say no,” he whispered.
He helped me down off of him, but I had to take a moment to recover, leaning against the wall as my skirt fell back into place. Dominic hurried to do up his pants, dusted off his coat, and slipped an arm in the sleeve.
I felt out of control, but, happy. “Well, I haven’t been to the Imperial Palace yet.”
A smile broke out on his face. “Oh, of course.”
There was a rumble from beyond the wall of containers and Dominic’s face turned serious. He again glanced at his bare wrist, then dug his phone out of his pocket and checked the time.
“Hey . . .” His arms circled my waist.
I understood. “Let me guess, take your girlfriend to work day is over.”
His eyebrow notched up, like he was amused. “Unfortunately, it is. Do you remember which stop you need to get off at when you take the train back?”
“Yeah.�
�
His forehead was warm against mine. “Thank you.”
“For the fuck?” I teased. “No, thank you.” I didn’t want to talk about what he was really thanking me for. It was scary how quickly I’d agreed to stay.
The corner of his mouth lifted into a knowing smile. “I’ll walk you back, and then I’m going straight to my office to reschedule your ticket.”
I rode the train past the stop to his place, taking it all the way to Harajuku. I needed to walk to clear my head and get a fucking grip, and what better place to do it than Tokyo’s fashion district?
One more week, that’s it. We were both attached, obviously, and time was only going to make it harder to leave. I’d agreed to stay because I was a junkie and Dominic was my drug.
Harajuku was wall-to-wall shops and restaurants, and I strolled the streets along with other Gaijins and tourists, my eyes vacantly scanning the shop windows. I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing. I ended up standing in line outside of a storefront. Standing in line was so normal here, I didn’t notice for a long moment.
In front of and behind me was a seemingly endless line of young women. All beautiful, although I’d always thought Asian women were gorgeous. Their fair skin, glossy dark hair, and delicate frames. I totally got why a lot of men were crazy for Asian women.
I watched the line feed into the building and the women who came out were sometimes carrying a pink paper bag and folder. Free samples? I thought about getting out of the line and moving ahead to see what was going on, but I’d lose my place and eventually I’d get there. I could always step out when I got to the front.
At the door, the woman did a double-take. She said something that was probably a question, but I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese.”
The woman waved that off and gestured for me to go inside. Okay. If she was cool with it, I guessed I was too. I was curious what was inside that had women lined up around the block.
The room was mostly empty. There was a long table with a group of people seated behind it, and a video camera on a tripod to one side. The talking at the table stopped when I stepped inside.
One of the women at the table stood and bowed, and said something that had to be directed at me. I returned the bow, trying to imitate hers and repeated that I didn’t speak Japanese.
There was discussion between them. It didn’t seem like anyone spoke English. The woman standing came to me and motioned for me to turn around. Like she wanted me to leave –
No. She wanted me to turn in place. That was when I noticed the pictures on the table before them. Headshots.
I turned in place so they could evaluate me. Then, the woman walked forward, pivoted and walked back to me. She wanted me to do a runway walk? God, I felt like an idiot. What the heck was I doing here? I put one foot in front of the other and strolled across the room, and turned back to return to my spot. This was going to make for a hilarious story tonight.
More discussion among the group of people. They asked me something, but I could only shrug.
“Thank you,” I said, backing up toward the exit. “I’m sorry for taking up your time.”
“Tomaru,” one of the men said. He reached behind him and plucked up one of the pink bags from the floor. And then he pulled out a pair of . . .
Underwear. Sexy, too. Baby pink with ruffles.
The man pointed from the underwear to me. I giggled, which was probably highly unprofessional, but this was so insane I couldn’t help it. Then, I finally got the bright idea on how to solve the language issue.
“Is everything okay?” That’s how Dominic answered the phone.
“Yeah, but I need your help,” I said, putting it on speaker. “Do you have a minute? Can you translate for me?”
“Translate what?”
The people behind the table stared, their mouths open. They probably couldn’t believe this rude American girl had the audacity to get on the phone right in the middle of a model casting call. But what the hell did I have to lose?
“Say, ‘Would you like me to try that on?’”
There was a pause, and then Japanese came from the phone I outstretched toward the table. The man holding the pink underwear dropped it back in the bag and said a long phrase.
“Where are you?” Dominic asked.
“You tell me. I think I’m auditioning to be an underwear model?”
“Uh . . . they need a Japanese model for today. But they have a swimsuit shoot on Friday where they’re looking for international girls. And, they like you.”
I smiled, kind of thrilled. “Okay, so how do we make that happen?”
Japanese came once again from the phone. We worked it out so I would strip and walk in my underwear and if they continued to like what they saw, they’d give me the address and time of the photo shoot on Friday.
“Payton,” Dominic’s voice was urgent. “You can’t do this.”
My neck began to get hot. Was he really so possessive of me that he didn’t want these casting people to see me in my underwear? Wasn’t he fucking aware of what I had done for a living?
“Oh my god, just because I’m yours doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”
It sounded like he fumbled with the phone. “I don’t have a problem with that, but you don’t have any underwear on. Remember?”
I blinked, and then chuckled. He was probably bright red on the other end of the line. “Don’t worry, they’ve got some stuff here for me to try on.”
“Oh.” He let out a sigh of relief. “Okay.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. I can’t wait to hear about this tonight.”
On Friday evening, he came home with carryout dinner and was eager to hear the story about the shoot.
“It was way less glamorous than it sounds,” I said with a mouthful of kimchi. “They sell swimsuits in catalogs, at least, that’s what the photographer told me.”
“But the fact remains, I’m now dating a swimsuit model.”
“You’re such a guy.” Meredith was right, he was going to rub it in. “The whole thing took, like, two hours.” It didn’t pay much, but it had been fun. “Oh, I got to keep the suits.”
“Bikinis?”
“A few, yeah.”
His bottle of beer clunked on the table. “You’ll have to model them for me.”
“You want to see them?” I gave a small laugh. “Of course, because you like checking inventory.”
“I like looking at your sexy-ass body, is what I like doing.”
It was silly to attempt a fashion show. I only modeled one before he pulled the strings loose and we sank to the living room floor. I’d become an expert at getting him out of his suit.
Saturday morning I Skyped with Evie while Dominic slept. She stared at me like I had two heads.
“Boyfriend,” she repeated.
“Yeah.”
She blinked and looked like she was evaluating me to see if I were an imposter. “Okay. So, what happens whenever you get back here? I mean, you’re coming back, right?”
Was she crazy? “Yeah, I’m coming back.” I couldn’t live in Japan. It was a nice place to visit and all, but Dominic was right. People all around and yet it was isolating. I didn’t think I’d ever feel like I belonged here. I’d mentioned that to Dominic yesterday and he shot me a strange look, maybe an ‘I told you so.’ “I don’t know what happens. We don’t, like, talk about it.”
“You’re going to have to, eventually.”
“I know,” I said, annoyed.
“Hey.” Her body straightened in her chair. “I got a weird call yesterday from Joseph.”
Ugh. I’d deleted the few voicemails he’d left me, without listening to them. He’d always call when I was asleep, probably unaware I was on the other side of the earth.
“What’d he want?”
“He asked if I knew where you were. He said he really needs to talk to you.”
Forget it. That part of my life w
as in the rearview. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were out of town. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m sure he wants to see if I’ll come back to the club.”
She shot me a sly smile. “Don’t think the boyfriend would like that.”
I snorted. “No, he wouldn’t.”
If last weekend went fast, this weekend went at warp speed. I blinked and it was Monday. I blinked again, and it was Tuesday. Every morning was one day closer to leaving, and I started to panic. I was in bad shape as he got ready Wednesday morning to go to work. I sat in his bed and stared blankly at the generic art on the wall. What was I going home to on Friday? What was I leaving here?
“Are you okay?” he asked, cinching the tie at his neck. It probably freaked him out that I was sitting like a statue.
“I’m thinking about how it’s going to work.”
“What?”
We needed to have the conversation. It’d been put off long enough. “After I leave on Friday.”
His hands froze. He turned slowly, his expression unreadable. “How do you want it to work?”
Hearing his voice unstable gave me a sinking, sick feeling. “I don’t know. How do you want it to work?” It was immature to throw the ball right back in his court when I was the one who initiated it, but fuck it. I was suddenly terrified.
His chest expanded as he sucked in a large breath. “How do I want it? You stay through New Year’s. That’s how I want it.”
My eyes went so large, my eyeballs almost fell out of my head. “Are you crazy? That’s another two weeks.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair and approached the bed, hesitant. “I looked at pushing your ticket back another week and the flights between Christmas and New Year’s are like double the price.”
I swallowed, even though my mouth was dry. Two more weeks. A total of five weeks with him. Holy shit.
“If you only want to stay another week, I’ll pay it. It’s worth it for another week with you. But, can I be honest?” He sank down on the bed to sit beside me, his face only inches away. “I already know I’ll ask for another week by the end of it.”
“Dominic, I can’t.”