by Nikki Sloane
“I don’t know.” Her voice was unsteady, but fell to whisper-quiet. “I thought it was really hot.”
Fucking hell. She exceeded my hopes every time. “Do you think you could really do it? Would you obey if I told you to go down on another woman?”
Her lips pressed together and her chest rose as she took in a breath. “Maybe.”
We were going to find out soon enough. I’d already put the wheels in motion. “How many glasses of wine did you have to medicate with last night?”
“Just the one.” Her fingers drummed on the tabletop. “Are you going to post back?”
I paused. “On the account? I hadn’t planned on it.”
Her fingers stopped their tapping and her eyebrow rose upward. “How is that fair?”
“Not everything in life is fair.” I shot her a pointed look.
“You sound like my father,” she muttered.
My jaw clenched in annoyance. I didn’t need the reminder of who her father was, or the comparison. “Well, I’m certainly not your daddy.”
She glared at me through those sexy glasses. “If you want me to keep posting stuff, you’re going to have to, too.”
I could feel my blood pressure rising. “You misunderstand how this works—”
“I’m not going to put my secret desires out there for you to just scrutinize and enjoy. Not unless you’re going to give me access to some of yours, too.”
People didn’t tell me what to do, certainly not my submissive. “No, Noemi.”
There was fire in her eyes. “Why the hell not?”
“Because it’d frighten you.” It would scare her away and I wasn’t ready for this thing between us to be over.
Her posture straightened and her expression went narrow. “You’re worried I’ll judge you?”
“Yes.” Absolutely yes. My kink was too much for her.
“Joseph, I’m trusting you not to judge me, why can’t you trust me to do the same? Isn’t this arrangement supposed to be built on trust?”
Fucking shit. I was already hiding so much from her. “Maybe you have a point.”
What she was asking for wasn’t physically hard. And in the long run, this could be another tool to use to push her boundaries. To encourage her to expand her limits. I could find clips that only hinted at the worst and give her a taste.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it, but remember you asked for this. Also, I don’t care for the way you just talked back to me. You treat me with respect, little girl, or you get disciplined.” I let my expression go hard. “I can punish you right now, or we can wait until we’re in private.” I glanced around. “We do seem to have a thing for restaurants, but it’s your choice.”
Her hand curled into a fist and she drew in a harsh breath. Last night she’d driven me mad with her obedience. If she chose here, what would she let me do? A blowjob in the women’s bathroom? My cock hadn’t been inside her hot mouth yet.
She shook her head subtly. “Later.”
Later would work just as well, but my cock ached with dissatisfaction. I needed to stop thinking about her on her knees, sucking me off. “Were you always a good girl before you met me?”
“You’d probably say so . . . Sir.”
She didn’t have to address me like that when we were out in public. Noemi wasn’t my slave. That kind of arrangement didn’t interest me, and I’m sure it didn’t interest her. Having 24/7 control over someone else was too demanding, and I already had enough fulltime jobs.
No, she was mocking me. “You’re only making it worse on yourself,” I said in a low voice. “Who were you, good girl? Straight A’s and home by curfew every night?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t drink, or smoke, or do drugs. I didn’t have sex.”
Yeah, she gave that honor to some asshole named Ross. A week with me and hopefully she’d forget his name.
“I never skipped school,” she said, “or got in trouble. I never lived a life outside of the rules. I never lived at all.”
“Until now.” I smirked.
“Yeah, well,” her eyes gleamed, “nothing lasts forever.” We were interrupted briefly when the server delivered our food and then flitted off. “What about you? Were you always this . . . bossy?”
“No.” I stared down at my plate as a foreign emotion seized me. A need I couldn’t understand, or stop. “You can thank the cancer for that.”
Her eyes widened. Why the fuck was I bringing this up?
“I spent the better part of a year doing exactly what everyone else told me to do. Doctors, nurses, my parents. All of them saying what drugs to take, when I could eat, or sleep, or piss . . . It got really fucking old.”
“The time in your life when you didn’t have control.”
“Yes. I wound up with pneumonia when my immune system had been obliterated. The doctor told my parents only one out of three survive something like that. Right in front of me, he’s telling them to start preparing themselves.”
It didn’t look like Noemi was breathing. She’d turned into a living statue. Stop talking, Joseph.
“I’d been out of school for months by this point. It was already a fact that I wouldn’t graduate on time. My friends stopped coming by the hospital when my hair was gone and my weight went below a hundred. High school kids can be shallow and self-centered, and I couldn’t blame them. I looked dead already.”
Her hand drifted up to cover her mouth. I sat back in my chair, my appetite starting to wane.
“So I had a, I don’t know, a moment of fucking clarity. I’d make it through the pneumonia, because nothing lasted forever, and afterward, I’d be the one in charge of my life. Just me.” I tore my gaze from hers, staring out the large window where people hurried past, living their lives.
The tension between us was suffocating.
My gaze finally returned to her. She was staring at her hands in her lap. Why did I let the conversation get so fucking heavy?
“Having everything taken away from you teaches you who you really are.” The thought stormed into my mind. “You want that from me? To take away your control so you can find yourself?”
She took an enormous breath and blinked her clear eyes. “Maybe.”
“I think you already know who you are, you’re just afraid to let her out of the cage.”
She gave me a half-smile that said she didn’t believe me.
Conversation moved to lighter topics after that. Her lack of plans for spring break. Her terrible taste in music, and yet excellent taste in movies. My overpriced car was still a sore spot for her.
“You realize you live in Chicago, right?” she asked. “When the roads aren’t under construction or clogged with traffic, they’re covered in potholes and snow. Let me guess—you bought it for the spacious interior so you could make out with random girls you met at your club.”
“Making out with you wasn’t what I had in mind that night.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “There’s even less room for that.”
“We would have been fine.” I could have us try it sometime just to prove my point, but containing sex with Noemi in that small of a space would frustrate me. I didn’t want any restrictions. “My brother had sex in the backseat of a Mini-Cooper once, or so he said, so it’s possible.”
“Your brother,” she asked. “What’s he like?”
“A normal big brother. A pain in the ass when he wants to be, but he’s mostly grown out of it. He actually called me the other day and invited me out to visit.” I took my napkin out of my lap and set it on the table. “He’s receiving an award from the Navy. His squadron had twelve hundred hours of flight time without incident.”
“Are you going to go?”
I ran a hand over my jaw. I hadn’t seen Conner in a while. “It’s a long flight to Hawaii.”
“I’m sure he knows that. If he invited you, it’d probably mean a lot to him if you went. I was raised to believe family is important. You make time for them.”
Once again, she had
a point. “My schedule’s a bitch to work around.”
Her expression shifted to amusement. “You have time for me.”
Before something cheesy came out of my mouth, my phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. It was the property manager of a building I was interested in by the lake. The owner had been giving me the runaround about scheduling a showing, and the manager said he could fit me in, but only if it was right now.
Noemi mentioned she didn’t have any more classes for the day.
“Fine,” I told the manager. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”
She watched as I pocketed the phone, an expectant look on her face. “I guess you’ll save my punishment for another time?”
I scribbled my signature on the bill and rose to my feet. “Delayed. We have to make a stop first.”
On the car ride over, Noemi pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail.
“Now instead of looking twelve, I look fourteen,” she muttered.
I chuckled. “Come on, you at least look legal.”
“Great, thanks. Maybe don’t call me little girl while we’re in there.” She closed the visor and turned to me. “Want to tell me about the property?”
I explained how the space was set up. A large parcel on the main floor for leasing as retail space, and currently offices above.
“The plan is to renovate the office space into luxury apartments.”
“Condos?” Her voice had a hint of disdain.
“It’s a great location.”
“There’s no money in property management.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “That’s a blanket statement.” And unreasonable coming from her. “What about what your father is doing? I heard he bought a place in the loop. Don’t tell me he’s moving closer to the city.”
“He’s not.” Her voice was flat. “That’s for Grace and Becca.”
Shit, of course. Her stepmother and half-sister. “Your sister went with her?”
“Yeah.” Noemi’s voice was soft and sad. “My dad’s on his own now. It’s hard.”
I didn’t want to think about Mr. Red as a heartbroken husband. I tried to pretend there wasn’t a connection between him and Noemi, but this was her father. He played such a major role in her life; it seemed shitty not to make an effort. “Can I ask what happened?”
“I’m not sure. Grace’s always been a puzzle. I don’t know what he sees in her, or what he saw in my mother. Grace hasn’t cared about him for years, but once my dad falls in love, he can’t see anything.” She played with the clasp on her purse, mindless. Always fidgeting. “He’s totally oblivious to her faults.”
Noemi would never know just how right she was. It didn’t matter how many times Payton had told Mr. Red she didn’t do love, he’d fallen for her anyway.
“Don’t worry, Joseph.” She gave me a sweet smile. “I didn’t inherit that trait.”
“I’m not worried. We both know you’re much too smart to fall in love with me.”
chapter
FIFTEEN
NOEMI
The showing was a joke, and Joseph was pissed. He’d been used in a negotiations battle between the property owner and the tenant currently in the space. We’d stormed out of the office building, and I’d climbed into the front seat of the Porsche, grateful to be away from the Realtor before anything unprofessional came out of my mouth. Always think before acting, my father lectured me. Think about the brand.
“We’re not going to your place?” I asked, breaking the tense silence when Joseph exited the expressway.
“No, I’ll drop you at yours.”
His gruff voice wasn’t my fault, but it set me on edge. “Drop me off? What about—”
“That’s not a good idea. I’m not in the right mindset, thanks to those fuckers.”
He’d unleashed a craving in me that I couldn’t ignore. The sexual tension from lunch twisted like rope around my body, and I needed him to cut me free, to release me. I still struggled at being bold, but I’d done it before. I angled my shoulders toward him, reached my hand out, and set my palm flat against his zipper, running down the length of him.
He didn’t fight me, but it sounded as if he were gritting it out. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing, Sir?”
“I think you’re trying to push me, and I don’t fucking like it. Knock it off.”
Beneath my slow moving hand, the bulge grew and thickened. His mouth said no, but below his belt it was all yes.
“If I don’t do as I’m told,” I whispered, “what happens?”
He glanced my direction for the briefest of moments, but it was long enough for my heart to skip. At the showing, he’d turned his ruthless glare on the property manager and the man had gone ashen. Now the glare was fixated on me, only it swirled with desire. Similar to the devouring look he’d given me in this car our first night, only now the look was amplified by a thousand.
“By all means,” his hand covered mine, “keep pushing and find out.”
I teetered at the edge, unsure which was the right decision. What he wanted was unclear, whether I should be bad and disobey so he could discipline, or if he was actually pissed and I should leave him alone. The good girl would retreat and put her hands folded neatly in her lap. She wouldn’t keep rubbing his dick through his jeans, and she most definitely wouldn’t say what I was about to.
“I want you to fuck me. Do I have to be bad for that to happen?”
His eyes hooded and the hand on mine clenched so hard it was almost painful. “You want this cock inside you, you filthy slut?”
I mentally stumbled over his words. Once again, his mouth put me off and turned me on. No one talked to me like that, and I liked it. I steadied my breathing, but my voice wavered. “Yes, I want you inside me.”
“Unzip and get it out.”
What the hell was he talking about? “You want me to . . .”
He took a hand off of the wheel so he could unbutton and unzip his jeans. “Since you don’t know how to control your mouth, I’ll do it for you.”
My body tensed when his thick, erect dick was freed through the open fly of his boxers. I didn’t get time to react. Joseph wrapped a fist around my ponytail and yanked my head down, putting my face in his lap.
It was after five and the sun was setting, but it was still bright outside. His straight, hard dick was an inch from my face, and he’d made it very obvious what I was supposed to do. “Someone might see,” I whispered.
“Great. I’m sure they’ll enjoy watching you suck me off, but not as much as I will.”
Why did the idea of a stranger watching me do this turn me on so badly? There was something wrong with me, but at least Joseph seemed to feel the same way about getting caught. We could be wrong together.
The center console dug into my stomach, but I wrapped my fingers around him and licked my lips to wet them. God, he was so big, how was this going to work? How would it be pleasurable for him with so little of it fitting inside my mouth? It’s because he gets off on the power.
The tip of his flesh was soft as silk against my tongue, and a quiet groan came from above. Heat flashed down to my toes, encouraging me to take him.
When I did, this groan was louder and so much sexier.
His warm flesh slid against my tongue, until he filled my mouth, all the way to the back of my throat. I pulled back, using suction as I retreated.
“Shit. Use your tongue.”
I began to bob on him, swirling my tongue over the fat head of his dick. Up and down, I let him possess my mouth. His hand covered mine that gripped him at the base, and he squeezed, showing me he wanted more pressure. His commands, verbal and non-verbal, were all over me. It was like Joseph owned every inch.
His breathing picked up and his words grew hurried. “You can take me deeper.”
I relaxed as much as possible, forcing my way further down, and . . . I pulled back abruptly, all the way off of him, and struggled to catch my breath. I’
d gotten embarrassingly close to gagging audibly, and my eyes flicked up to his.
His smile was diabolical. “We’ll work on that.”
His hand, which had been resting on the back of my neck, moved so he could pluck the glasses off of my face and gently toss them on the flat spot of the dashboard. I didn’t mind. I was already a strung-out mess inside, aching and desperate like a hopeless addict. Not being able to see every detail was a good thing, and I closed my eyes anyway when I skimmed my tongue over the slit of his dick. I opened my mouth and wrapped my lips around his hard flesh.
My purse was on the floorboard, and my phone began to ring. It didn’t slow me down. There was no way I was going to answer it. My head bumped against the steering wheel as I tried to move at a faster pace, reminding me where we were. This time when I looked up at him, I had him lodged as deep as possible in my mouth. Without my glasses, I could only see a blurry version of him, one hand on the wheel, his gaze forward. His expression was intense. Pausing on him must have drawn his attention. His gaze shifted to mine.
“You look so perfect with my cock in your mouth. I don’t know if I ever want to take it out.”
The moan slipped out from me and filled the quiet interior. It was like a starting pistol on him. His hand tugged my ponytail, forcing me to go faster. And faster. Control began to swing away from me when his hips moved in a rhythm, pumping against me.
He fucked my mouth. Hard, and fast, sometimes skating dangerously close to my reflex.
“Goddamnit. Fuck.” His hand left the wheel and went to his forehead—the car had stopped moving. When had that happened? I rose up to peer out the window and wiped the saliva from my lips. We were parked on the street a block down from my apartment building.
His dick was still clenched in my hand, and I looked at him. Was I supposed to finish him here? There were parking cops that patrolled the street all the time. If we got caught, it’d be public indecency.
Think about the brand, Noemi.