“I love it when you talk like a duke in a bodice-ripper.” That was actually true, she realized.
Jake snickered but his gaze stayed on her, dagger-sharp. The air between them had grown charged. “My secret is revealed. You may call me My Lord from now on. But seriously, you should try the not-talking thing. As a friend, I’d be happy to help you out.”
Dangerous, dangerous. Tess felt entirely out of her league, suddenly doing this bizarre form of flirting like a madwoman with Lord Dream-Jake. It was thrilling. “Maybe Your Majesty? You were my Homecoming King, after all. So you want to help me as a friend? Were we ever just friends? Even you can’t make me stop talking, Hogan.”
“I was thinking I’d gag you. You’d look cute in a ball gag.”
“They don’t have a store in Cranston or even Smithville that sells that stuff.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re assuming I’d need to buy one.”
“Oh you have one in your nightstand, do you? Why not do it then, Mr. Freaky Sex Toys?”
“For you? No, I was joking about that part. I wouldn’t use a gag on you. That would only give you another thing to think you had to fight against. It’d be all about resisting the gag, and that would defeat the purpose. It can’t be external. The motivation and the control need to come from here.” He reached over and tapped her forehead twice, then ran his finger down to tap the tip of her nose. His expression was bland as rice. “And I don’t keep it in my nightstand. I have a custom-made cabinet for my special toys, with a lock on it so my cleaning lady doesn’t get the shock of her life.”
She blinked and tried to puzzle through what he’d said, how he’d said it…and then it hit her like a brick. The whole conversation took on new meaning.
Oh, look over here, Alice. A rabbit hole. Mind the edge.
“You’re…you’re not kidding, are you?”
He smiled, cool as a cucumber. “About gagging you? Or about having a ball gag at my disposal?”
Tess studied his face for a moment, her thoughts too fast and improbable to capture. Her toes were at the crumbling rim of that rabbit hole, and the temptation to let herself fall was almost too much to bear. “You have more than just a ball gag, don’t you?”
He acknowledged it with a tip of his head. “Quite a bit more. The gag is really the least of it, Tess. But those are props. Like I said, it’s all up here.” He tapped his own temple this time.
She shivered as the memory of her recurring dream ghosted through her, recalling the pressure on her wrists, the weight of his body over hers. “How long have you…you know…been doing stuff like that?”
“Since I became aware of, you know, stuff.”
Tess tried to slow her breathing to a normal rate. “But you went out with Allison. She isn’t into all that. I’d know if she were.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jake countered, sounding almost weary. “People who do…this sort of thing, whatever you want to call it, we can be very good at hiding it. We have to be. But no, she wasn’t into it, at least not back then. I doubt she is now.”
“Then why were you with her, if you already knew?”
“Why were you with Danny Fields?”
She glared at him for making the suggestion that her dear cousin had been his female equivalent to her own placeholder boyfriend. His beard. “You asshole.”
Jake was already shaking his head, searching for the words to explain. “I was talking about the similarity between you and me, not between Allison and Danny. Why do you think we broke up? Look, I liked Ally. Hell, I would’ve slept with her if I’d had the chance. God knows I wanted to. I was a kid, I was still figuring stuff out. But I liked her too much as a friend to string her along, to pretend we were ever going to last, once I realized she and I needed different things. Can you say the same of Danny?”
He clearly didn’t expect her to answer, which was gracious of him considering they both knew she could not say the same. She had used Danny until she’d no longer needed him. Not that he had ever complained; he’d had his uses for Tess too.
But Jake was going on. “Ally is pretty open-minded. I think she would have played along with some of it, if I’d tried. But she isn’t a natural submissive. I think Lindy’s a bit that way, but she was always more like a little sister to—”
“Lindy? My sister Lindy? Submissive? You have got to be out of your ever-lovin’ mind! She’s shy, but she doesn’t go around submitting to people. And it sure as hell doesn’t sound like you saw her as a sister, if you were speculating on what she might be like in bed. Gross. I am done with this conversation.”
Tess started to get up, to leave on her own and find a cab home, but stopped cold when Jake circled her wrist with his fingers.
“Sit back down, Tess,” he said softly.
And she sat. Even with no idea why, she did it.
Chewing on her bottom lip, she stared down at the Formica tabletop and tried to figure out what was going on. He wasn’t holding her tightly enough to prevent her from going if she really wanted to. So why wasn’t she out the door?
“You can have that talk with your sister another time. You can discuss it to your heart’s content. I hope you do. But for right now you will sit here and you will at least listen to what I have to say before you leave, do you understand?”
She could hear the implied young lady again, as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.
After a second’s pause, Tess nodded, feeling muddled. Things seemed surreal. Or rather, reality had been reduced to the invisible cord between the pulse in her wrist, where Jake’s fingers still held her lightly, and the pulse between her legs, which seemed to be throbbing in time. Everything else faded into the background.
“I don’t think she’s submissive, I think she’s a submissive—there’s a difference. To me, it’s the same thing as speculating about whether somebody might be gay. It doesn’t imply I do or don’t want sex with that person. And I could be wrong about Lindy anyway. But you, Tess…you’re in another league. I could smell the kink on you back then, and it’s still there now. It amazes me that you don’t even seem to know it. You’ve gone this long and you’ve never admitted it to yourself. Which means you’ve never really had your needs met.”
“There’s nothing to admit,” she stated, not ready to concede that even this, his hand on her wrist, was better than any foreplay she’d ever had. “My needs are just fine, thanks. You’re delusional. And a pervert.”
“And yet you’re still sitting here. Just because I told you to. Just like you used to be the first one to yell ‘how high?’ when the coach said ‘jump’ in gym class.”
“I had a thing for the coach.”
“No. You had a thing for coaches. And not just coaches either. Our yearbook advisor. The principal. You weren’t a front-office aide senior year because you liked the secretaries so much. No, you definitely have a type, even if it’s not the type you’ve ever dated.”
He flexed his hand around her wrist, letting his fingertips graze lightly at the sensitive skin just above her palm. Leaning closer still, he pitched his voice even lower. “You’re very turned on. Your pupils are dilated, you’re breathing fast. Your nipples are hard. I’m willing to bet you’re already soaking wet, aren’t you? Tell me.”
“Yes,” Tess blurted, then closed her eyes and groaned at her own idiocy. They were in a restaurant, for Christ’s sake. “Fuck. I mean—”
“I’ve also been meaning to talk to you about all the language, Tess.”
“Oh what? Are you gonna wash my mouth out with soap?”
That seemed to trigger something in Jake. His lips pressed into a thin line and when he finally spoke, his voice was straight out of her dreams. “No, brat. In fact, unless you tell me otherwise when I get back from paying this check, I’m going to take you home, tie you up on my bed, flog your ass until you don’t know your own name anymore and then I’m going to fuck you into next week. Like we’ve both wanted for years. And if you’re very, very cooperative, and at least
a little repentant, I might let you come too.”
Apparently pleased with Tess’ response of drop-jawed silence, Jake rose from the booth to pay the bill at the register.
Left alone, Tess closed her mouth and eyes and tried to think what possible reason she could name for remaining at the table one second longer. By all logic, she should be racing out the door and as far away from Jake Hogan as possible. Instead, her butt remained firmly seated and her logic seemed to be racing out the door without her.
Seconds, or minutes, or hours later, Jake returned to the booth and scooped Tess’ jacket off the seat, shaking it out and holding it up for her. After a moment she rose and slipped her arms into it, letting him wrap it around her. He held her in that embrace so she couldn’t walk away as he bent to whisper in her ear.
“Don’t talk during the ride home. Not one word. Use the time to think, because I don’t want you to do this lightly. When we get there, you have two choices. You can either ask me to drop you off at your place, or you can come inside with me. If it’s your place, fine, and this conversation never happened. If it’s my place…”
He took her earlobe in his teeth, scraping the delicate skin and sending a flood of heat through Tess’ body. “If it’s my place, I’ll do exactly what I said earlier and a whole lot more. And I triple-dog dare you not to say a word while I’m doing it.”
With a final flick of his tongue over the rim of her ear, he released her shoulders and headed for the door, calling back, “I’ll bet you can’t last five minutes without making a smart-ass comment.”
She could never ignore a dare. Especially not a triple-dog dare, the nuclear option of the dare magnitude system. She grabbed her purse and marched after him.
Oh, it’s on.
Chapter Four
The silence was as much for his sake as for Tess’. Jake needed to get his scattered mind back in order and consider the consequences of what he’d started.
Jake was no fool, or at least not usually. He knew Tess had made up her mind back in the restaurant. Exactly how he knew, he wasn’t quite sure, because she was so familiar to him he hardly had to think about it. Like family. He just knew.
That disconcerted him, because he was used to thinking about it. Used to figuring a woman out, getting to know how she thought, what she needed, whether that matched what she said she needed. That was the game.
He considered that part of his responsibility as a sexual Dominant, to figure out how to lead a submissive to the very edge of what she thought she could take, then push that tiny bit more. Or sometimes a whole lot more. Find her real limits, not merely the ones she was willing to admit but the place where she flew past those into a new realm of sensation. Pleasure, pain, whatever it took. To Jake it really didn’t matter which; it was the result he craved, and he was used to working hard for days, weeks, sometimes months for that payoff.
With Tess, it was all different. He had been pushing her buttons for years, and he knew their sequence now like he knew the controls of his own car. He knew her—possibly better than she knew herself, because she didn’t seem to know herself very well at all. No stalking had been necessary to learn her this way. It wasn’t even work. Tess was there, a part of his life, a part of this town. Even after moving to the city she’d still called this place home, as he had, and had made regular pilgrimages. Jake wouldn’t have been able to avoid her if he’d wanted to.
He had never wanted to, even though he had planned never to make a move on her. Even this week, right up until he’d gone and done it. Too much history, he’d told himself, and their friendship was worth too much to risk it over sex. But he’d known her too long not to guess what she was, or at least to have a strong suspicion. He had watched her brat off to friends, boyfriends, to stupid Danny head-up-his-ass Fields; to her father, who had sort of tuned out for a few years after his wife’s death.
Jake came to know it well, that flash of contempt and disappointment on Tess’ face when they responded, never in quite the way she seemed to hope. The way she listened to a respected few, following directions without hesitation and basking in their occasional praise. She was eager to serve when she thought nobody was looking. But only then. She’d never been accused of being a teacher’s pet. Tess sought direction and approval from authority figures only in a clandestine way, as though it were a vice. Which it was, in a way, for someone like her.
When she mouthed off to Jake, he usually stared her down with a hint of a smile, then hid his own pronounced reaction to the way she would pause, flush or bite her lip, before she shrugged and turned away. He’d once overheard Tess say that he bored her because she could never get a rise out of him.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Which was why he’d always resisted the temptation to push for more, and up until now avoided spending too much time alone with Tess. He liked control, and she did strange things to his. It messed with his rhythm, how easy it was to get inside her head. It was beyond appealing, the stuff of fantasies, and he thought it might well be addictive. Once he started, he didn’t know if he’d be able to make himself stop.
That was an uncomfortable place for him. Especially now, when his kinkier side was only unleashed on the occasional weekend in the city. His dating closer to home had been strictly vanilla until now. He’d always kept his two lives separate, but right now that separation was extreme. His special cabinet had remained locked since he’d moved it into his bedroom in the Cranston house, except for the few times a year he packed a bag to take to the club in the city. He’d restocked supplies as needed then too but ended up throwing away condoms and lubricant unused more often than not as their expiration dates passed.
There could be no keeping things separate with Tess. It would have to be all or nothing.
Jake risked a glance over to the passenger seat, where Tess sat still as a statue. An angry, needy, beautiful statue. Spite-sex, that’s what she thought she was doing. Scratching their ancient itch. And a dare. He hadn’t been able to resist that touch, even though he knew it wasn’t really playing fair. Pushing that button was too much. Like a gag, instead of a command for silence. He knew she would bite, so in a way it was cheating, taking the choice from her without her realizing it.
He hadn’t been able to resist. Because she was hard and brittle, like fine marble, and he wanted her to turn into clay under his hands. He wanted nothing more than to soften her, make her malleable and work her into a pose more pleasing to them both.
He knew just the tools for that.
His beautiful statue sighed and drew her knees up to her chest, long legs folding neatly, indicating a very promising flexibility. Jake ignored the urge to adjust his cock and forced his eyes back to the road.
She’s an adult, he told himself. She knows what she’s getting into. It’s her choice.
The angel on the other shoulder reminded him that Tess was a screwed-up adult at best, that she was broken, that he didn’t mess with broken, bratty subs because he wasn’t a therapist and didn’t have an interest in playing Daddy. That was why he had always been careful, when pushing her buttons, not to push them in this particular order. Not to push the big red one at the bottom, the one with all the warnings around it. Beware, here be dragons. Danger, Will Robinson. Contents may be toxic.
He’d finally given in and pushed that one. Hard. The contents were almost certainly toxic. He’d done it on impulse, rashly, which he knew was no way to begin. But how could he hold back when she so clearly needed something, and he knew of only one thing to offer that might help? Poor Tess, who not only seemed to be in a depression but had apparently never figured out her own deal. He’d taken a huge risk back in the restaurant, assuming so much about her. Acting like he had Dominant Spidey-senses. Saying what he’d always suspected—wished—as though it were a certainty. That she was his counterpart, his complementary flavor, bottom to his top.
I can’t believe I made her tell me she was wet.
It had been a moment of pure hubris
. He’d been half convinced even as he spoke that the conversation would put her off forever, and he really didn’t even know why he’d gone there except that he’d always wanted to go there with Tess. Get it out in the open and out of the way. Or possibly it was pure instinct, too long suppressed. She pushed his buttons too. They’d been wise to avoid being alone together to often all these years. It had taken only a week of neighborly dinners and one serious lunch to bring them to this point.
He couldn’t believe he’d made her tell him, but he could believe her answer with no hesitation. When he’d put on the Dom face, used the discipline voice with her, she’d responded instantly. Completely. Beyond his wildest dreams. She’d planted her lovely butt on the seat and listened to all he had to say. And she’d done it despite herself, making the whole thing even more delicious. Watching that struggle on her face, the consternation at her own body’s betrayal, was too much like every dream he’d ever had about Tess back in high school. But also not quite enough like those dreams, because she still had her clothes on and wasn’t tied up or sucking him off.
He bit back a groan and rolled his shoulders. The drive back to his house had never seemed to take so long. They were nearly there, however. Here was the turnoff, the back road that led to both their houses. Jake slowed a bit, trying to keep from looking at Tess, not wanting to influence her decision.
He failed and cut his gaze over, to see her own flicker toward her cottage as they passed by then back to the front.
He turned onto his property, and the crunch of gravel under the wheels filled the silence until he swung onto the smoothly paved main driveway a few dozen yards from the house. Tess was still staring out the front windshield, and Jake’s heart thumped out his excitement and hope as he hit the automatic door opener and pulled to a stop inside his garage.
The customary animation had drained from Tess’ face over the course of the ride. Now she looked scared, and part of Jake thought that was a good look for her, even as he reminded himself that she was new to this type of thing and would need help navigating such an unfamiliar path. Fear was only fun up to a point.
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