by Maren Smith
“What a jerk,” Jackson corrected, and it took everything he had not to show the depths of his disgust by growling.
Marshall’s snort of agreement was as close as he’d ever come to maligning a paying customer. “I want this treated carefully,” he said, studying the open file. “If she leaves the scene, it’s not going to be because of anything that happened in my castle.”
Jackson crossed the rug, head cocked. “Is that what she said? She wants to leave?”
“Not in so many words, but it’s all over her face. She wants to go home, but the next bus isn’t scheduled to arrive until ten, tomorrow morning. That gives us—” Marshall consulted his pocket watch. “—twenty hours to make this the best damn experience she’s ever had. Or at least one that doesn’t suck quite as much as she thinks it does right now. We need an experienced Dom—someone with a gentle hand, who knows what the hell he’s doing and can take her through to the end of her stay without causing another panic attack. I think Kade would be a good match for her.”
Another hard tightening. Anymore and he was going to throw up right here on the floor. It was all he could do not to snap. “No, you don’t.”
Startling slightly, Marshall looked up. He blinked at Jackson twice. “I don’t?”
“No.” Coming to stand in front of the large desk, Jackson took off his security belt. When he set it down, his pager thumped, the master keys jangled, and he all but tossed the security over-riding keycard right smack in the middle of Sara’s open file.
Marshall stared at that and then cautiously back up at Jackson. One golden eyebrow began to arch. “What is this?”
“My notice.”
“You ride herd on this bunch of nuts—never mind the customers—like no one else I know,” Marshall said flatly. “There’s no way I’d ever let you quit. I may never let you retire. Hell, I may never let you die.”
“I never said I was quitting.”
Staring up at him from across the desk, now it was Marshall who cocked his head. “What are you saying…exactly?”
“I’m saying you need to find another head of security for the next few days.” Taking the pen out of Marshall’s hand, he turned Sara’s file around, crossed out Kade’s name on the top and wrote in his own. He didn’t drop the pen so much as he threw it, glaring at the Castle’s most notable Master as if daring him to challenge the change. “I just officially went on vacation.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Sara sat at the foot of the king-sized bed—the only bed—in her assigned room. It was the same ground-floor room she’d been given before, only now all of Robert’s things were gone. They’d shared a suitcase. A brand new duffel bag was sitting in the bottom of the closet underneath a stack of all her stuff. If she packed carefully, she might be able to squeeze everything into it when she left. And then what? Go home? She had moved into Robert’s apartment last spring. His had been bigger. She was going to have to find another place to live. Even if they went home together and talked this out, chances were good this relationship was over. Sara rubbed her hands, upset, but to be honest, not as upset as she knew she should be. What did that say?
So much for reuniting.
Maybe this lifestyle wasn’t for her anymore. Maybe she’d outgrown it somehow. Yes, she still fantasized. Certain looks, certain words spoken in certain tones could still make her panties wet. But there seemed to be a big, big difference these days between fantasy and reality. Reality had become just too…scary.
She needed to go home. She needed to stop being foolish and just go home.
Deflating with a sigh, Sara looked around the small apartment-style room, trying to gather enough of her scattered thoughts to start packing. She didn’t even know where to start. Standing up would probably be a good first step, but even as she dragged herself to her feet, she heard an electronic keycard slide through the lock, the door rattled and then opened, and every inch of Sara’s skin came prickling to life when Jackson stepped inside.
He all but filled the open doorway. Her knees actually weakened a little and she fell back a step, stumbling once and catching hold of one bedpost to help herself stand steady. He still wore his security outfit, jeans, dark shirt with white letters stretched across the breadth of his broad chest. He’d lost his utility belt, however, and his arms were laden instead by a white dress box crowned with a hot pink bow.
He came in and closed the door behind him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, rubbing her suddenly sweaty palms against her thighs. “Master Marshall re-matched me. I forgot his name.”
“Master Kade,” Jackson intoned.
“He’s going to be here soon.” She couldn’t believe that had just come out of her mouth. What was she trying to do, warn him off?
“No, he won’t.” Jackson crossed the floor to lay the box on the foot of her bed. “You’ve been re-matched again.”
Sara looked from him to the box and then back again, a steely sinking sensation pulling at her insides. “To who?”
She didn’t think she needed to ask. Something already told her exactly who her new Top was.
Jackson looked at her and he didn’t even bother to smile. It was his Dom face. His assessing stare. The one that looked not just at her, but through her. Seeing her, all of her, even the parts she so badly wanted to keep hidden.
He turned away without answering. Walking back to the door, he took off his belt and hung it up on the coat hook behind the door. “This is your punishment strap,” he said instead. “You will bring it to me if I ask, when I ask, and then you will bend yourself across the foot of this bed and I will not be gentle with you. Do you understand?”
Sara stared at him and her throat closed in on her, making it feel too impossible to breathe.
“You will call me Master Jackson, Master or Sir.”
She understood him perfectly; that wasn’t why she was shaking her head, and he must have known that, because he only stepped closer to her.
“Yes,” he countered. “You will.”
She covered her burning cheeks and then her eyes, barely managing not to moan his name. It might have come out sounding wrong. “Jackson…”
She meant to tell him no, that it wouldn’t work, that they had already tried this once and the dynamic between them had felt all (too right) wrong, but his hand fastened onto her upper arm and everything she had been about to say flew straight out of her head when he abruptly jerked her sideways. The clap of his other hand landing squarely across the center of her left buttock filled the tiny room like a gunshot. Her hips jolted and her bad knee, unbraced for it, tried to buckle. She grabbed at the closest bedpost again; he grabbed her by the waist and in one sprawling motion dropped to sit on the mattress and she fell, landing clumsily on her belly across his knees.
For one tiny, inconceivable half-second, a wave of relief swept her. It died beneath an even bigger wave of fast-rising panic when his hand cupped between her legs and he heaved, pulling her so completely across his lap that her feet left the floor entirely. She grabbed at the rug, her fingernails raking the short fibers, but all the purchase she could find to latch onto were the leg of the bedpost and of Jackson himself.
“You will call me Master Jackson, Master or Sir,” he repeated, catching and flipping that tiny bib of a skirt up off the back of her bottom, baring her to the cool caress of naked air.
“Wait!” she gasped, snapping one hand back, palm up in the frantic defense of as much exposed flesh as she could reach. “Wait, Jackson! No!”
He took her wrist, trapping it in the arm he wrapped around her waist and pinning it there, out of his way. “You never used to like punishment spankings. I guess that must have changed.”
“No!” It wasn’t the belt, but his hand was neither soft nor gentle. It struck her squirming bottom three times in rapid succession, the sharp searing pain winning from her a single gasp and cry.
His hand came to rest on the back of her left thigh. His long fingers dipped into shadowed moisture,
just barely skimming the petals of her labia; his thumb wrapped the outer curve of her leg, lightly caressing the edge of the scars that covered her there from side to front.
“You,” he said patiently, “will call me—”
“You’re not my master!” she spat, anger bursting out of the meek surprise. She erupted into struggling fits, her bucking and thrashing spurred on by the stinging throb in her bottom and the wildly growing need dancing just beyond his fingertips.
“Who am I then?” He held her no matter how she twisted, refusing to let her roll off his lap.
“My friend!”
He grabbed the scruff of her costume and one arm, jerking her up off his lap and plopping her down abruptly to sit on his knee instead. It happened so suddenly she forgot she was trying to get away. They stared at one another: she, breathing hard and doing everything she could not to cry; he, dark eyes flashing but everything else expressing nothing more than the absolute patience of Job.
“Who is the man who Tops you, if not your friend?” Jackson softly countered.
She flinched and twisted, trying to get up, but he twisted too, rolling her down onto her back on the bed, lifting and tossing her by her hips to get her solidly up upon the mattress. She kicked her heels, finding only enough purchase at the foot of the mattress to dig in, her hips bucking up just as he came down on top of her, covering her with his size and weight. Too late she realized her mistake and tried to snap her legs closed, but he was already between them and the rough scrape of denim bumped up hard against her sex. The unexpected punishment in this became the very solid feel of his erection, butting up against her nether lips and pressing into her there as much as the confines of his jeans would allow. It felt so good and yet so wrong.
Her hands became fists at his shoulders. She tried to push, but he countered by grabbing her wrists and pinned them together to the bedspread above her head with one huge hand. She turned her face away, the only avenue of escape she had left, but he fisted his other hand in her hair and ruthlessly forced her to face him once more. And then he punished her with a single hard thrust, his hips driving full into hers, that hard bulge of unmistakable arousal shoving at her with bruising need. Once…twice. Slow. Deliberate. She gasped at the third, her breath fleeing her on the wings of a shaky sob. She remembered too well how it had felt when there hadn’t been a barrier of clothes between them.
“Please,” she begged, the first of her tears spilling free and rolling down into her hair. “Jackson, you’re my friend. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You ran away,” he reminded. “Maybe that friendship is already gone.”
Another thrust, the hardest one yet. It jolted her entire body. The headboard actually knocked against the stone wall. The added punishment of tight circular grinding rubbed his denim fly across her in all the right/worst ways. His imprisoned erection stroked her—up, down, up, and grind.
Need burned her belly, flowing down in molten streams until she could hear the slick wetness of her pussy opening to his movements. She closed her eyes and he punished her again, the violence of his thrust slamming up into her at the same time he yanked back on her hair, forcing her back to arch and her eyes to open as he dragged her head back, and back, as far as her neck would allow.
She gasped, fingers clawing at the air above her. “What do you want from me?” she begged.
He opened his mouth, only to close it again. She thought his eyes darkened, but then he blinked and his face schooled itself into an expression she didn’t know how to read. “One day,” he said gruffly. “I can be happy with that. One day of you and me, the way it used to be. Do that, and when the buses come tomorrow…I’ll let you go.”
She looked up at him only because he wouldn’t let her look anywhere else. Everything inside her was either melting at his touch or desperate to run. She didn’t think she could survive one day with him.
“One day,” he coaxed again, grinding his hips once more and filling the space between them with the unmistakable sound of her wetness.
She wavered. She should have said no, but in the very back of her mind, she could already hear that soft and traitorous voice suggesting that maybe, just maybe, she could be happy with one day, too.
“Who am I?” Jackson murmured, loosening his hold on her hair just enough for the pad of his thumb to stroke gently along the hairline by her ear. He caught the next tear that fell, smoothing it into her skin.
“Master Jackson,” she whispered, trembling. “Master. Sir.”
“Lie still.” He released her wrists and hair and shifted to rise. Cupping behind her knees, he rose to kneel between her widely splayed thighs. She lay as he told her, staring down at the wet spot she had soaked into the fly of his jeans while he pulled her legs up. He adjusted himself until her hips rested in the cradle of his thighs and her legs were hooked around his waist. She could feel the warmth of his knees on both sides of her bottom and his fingers—her breath caught; her nipples began to swell and throb—combed down through the ready folds of her hot and aching sex.
“Look at me,” he said, when she tried to hide her face. “When we talk, I want you to look at me. Any time I touch you, I want you to look at me.”
Sara shook, her stomach flinching sharply, her hips tucking into the mattress when he found her clit. It took him very little effort to peel back the sheltering hood and bare her to the full-on caress of his thumb. She locked her eyes on him and fought to keep them there.
“There will be no misunderstandings between us,” he said, above her barely stifled whimpers. “From this moment until I release you, your body is no longer yours. Every part of you will be for me and me alone. I will give you to no one else. Who do you belong to, Sara?”
His fingers caught her clit between them and his thumb pressed in, amplifying the fever of her need and filling her with a flood of throbbing warmth.
“You,” she moaned, her eyes trying to close when he began once more to caress. She fought to keep them open, to keep her stare fixed with his.
“I am going to fuck this pussy.” His fingers pinched her again. His thumb pressed; her hips nearly came up off the bed. Her legs tried to wrap around him, needing to pull him closer. He refused to budge. “Whose pussy is this?”
“Yours!” She arched, lifted up into the press of his hand only to feel him suddenly release her and withdraw. He slapped her sex, a light spank that felt anything but.
“Lie still,” he censured.
Sara locked her muscles. She gripped the sheet with both fists, closing her mind to the ravage of need that screamed out in raw wanting when he slipped his fingers between her folds and abruptly thrust two fingers all the way up inside her. He rocked her with the fury of his pumping hand. His palm slapped her pussy, stinging the flesh and mashing against it, but all she could hear was the wetness of his driving fingers, and all she could feel was the indescribable sensation of being so filled, so deeply touched, so roughly stroked.
She threw out her hands, grabbing as much of the bedspread as she could gather, twisting as she hung on for dear life. Her heels dug into his buttocks, her legs shook. Each breath became a moan, gritted out through tightly clenched teeth as her muscles clamped down upon him, desperate to ride.
He took her right to the edge, the very sharp edge where shivers of pleasure began to override every other crashing need, and then his fingers whipped out of her, abandoning her so abruptly and completely that the sudden lack of friction felt more like a cutting wound. She sobbed; he slapped her pussy, harder than before, taming her need with spanks hard enough to make her whole body jump.
“I am going to fuck this mouth,” he growled and began to crawl up her body, the look on his face almost one of anger as he snapped, “Headboard.”
She scrambled to get up to it and Jackson pursued her every kicking, clawing inch of the way. She destroyed the carefully made bed in her haste to get her back to the pillows and her head propped up against the headboard. In her haste, she got too high, bu
t he grabbed her hips and jerked her just a few inches lower and then he was straddling her chest, with her hair in his fist and her head pillowed in his hand. He tugged and yanked to rip free of the confines of his jeans.
“Sir!” she gasped when the head of his cock sprang into sight beyond his open zipper.
He shoved both his jeans and underwear down just far enough to get them out of his way.
“Whose mouth is this?” he demanded, gripping his cock in his other hand.
“Yours!”
He jerked her head back against the headboard when, in her eagerness, she surged to get her mouth on him. “Hands.”
She grabbed the bedframe, hooking her fingers through the thin slit of space at mattress level and hung on, opening her mouth wide and becoming the willing sheath he thrust his cock into. Oh how devastatingly fast that fall back into the old familiar could be. She hadn’t had this, not in so very long. Not because Robert hadn’t wanted to take her here, to this visceral sexual level, but because she hadn’t let him. She wouldn’t now be letting Jackson either, she knew, but Jackson wasn’t asking permission. He was driving her, taking what he wanted her to give, thrusting into her mouth with the fury of a man intent on conquering it, and he tasted so good. So much like she remembered—salty but clean, masculine and demanding, beating against the back of her throat in short, rapid thrusts that gradually gave way to longer ones.
“Open,” he told her, and she obediently relaxed her throat, letting her jaw go as wide as it could when he pushed to get deeper. He gradually fed her the full length of his cock, until he was right up against her lips and nose. His balls burned hot and tight against her chin; the dark spring of his public hair tickled at her lip, but he held himself deep and still, preventing her next breath while the strain in her jaw grew into painful discomfort and flashes of white light began to dance behind her eyelids.
He pulled out, letting her gasp and choke and catch her breath, before saying again, “Open.”