by Amy Valenti
“There is something I would like to ask you, but I don’t know how you will react,” Gaius said.
“Just ask me.” I planted a kiss on one of the bumpy muscles of his back.
“I don’t want to chase you away,” he argued.
“You won’t.”
“You cannot be sure of that when you don’t know what I’m going to ask,” he pointed out.
“Gaius, there isn’t much you could say to frighten me away at this point,” I admitted. “I told you, I’m addicted to you.”
“The problem is that what I have to ask you conflicts directly with what you told me you were looking for when you came here,” he said.
I arched one eyebrow behind his back, wondering what exactly he was getting at.
“Gaius…”
“Everything that you have seen from me thus far… it isn’t me,” he explained. “It’s been a shadow of me. It’s been a sanitized, washed down form of me.”
“What are you getting at?” I asked him boldly.
“I’d like to take things further,” he said.
My stomach clenched, and I instinctively dropped my hands from his shoulders and wrapped them protectively around my midsection.
“In what way?” I asked.
He set his glass on the counter and turned to face me, his golden eyes serious.
“I’m not proposing marriage, or even dating,” he said. “I know that isn’t what you want, and I’m not even sure if it’s what I want.”
“Gaius, please get to the point.”
“I want you to be my permanent submissive,” he blurted out.
“Your what?”
A part of me was relieved that he didn’t want that traditional commitment, which was something I was unsure if I could ever give to anyone again. But I was confused.
“It’s what I came here looking for,” he said. “You came looking for no-strings-attached sex, correct?”
I nodded silently.
“I came looking for a permanent submissive.”
“But you said…”
“I know what I said, Victoria, but I was lying to myself. I told myself I didn’t want to get involved with one woman, because there was too much room for disappointment. But then I’ve seen all these men with their submissives… and I’m jealous. I want that. I want that connection with a woman. No… I want that connection with you.”
The way he said it, like the world rolled off his tongue and wrapped its way around my heart… you… it opened me up to feelings I had promised myself I’d never feel again. I wanted that connection, too. With him.
“I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you’re asking of me,” I told him.
“As my submissive, you will obey every command I give you, twenty four hours a day, every single day,” he said. “Sexual, non-sexual, it doesn’t matter. You do what I say.”
“Every single day,” I parroted.
I said nothing else, but my mind mulled the thought. It slowly dawned on me what he might be asking.
“Gaius are you asking me…”
“To live with me,” he nodded.
“Here?” I asked.
“No, at my house,” he answered.
“But I have a life,” I said. “I have a job, and school, and friends…”
“I would never force you to give those things up,” he said. “It would do both of us a great disservice if I made you unhappy. I want this to work for both of us.”
“What’s the catch?”
“Catch?”
“There has to be a catch,” I told him. “You don’t need me to pay rent. You can get all the sex you want from me here at the club. What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that I want you to belong to me,” he said. “If you aren’t living with me, I can’t be assured that you truly do.”
“I told you…”
“Stop,” he interrupted me. “I know what you told me, but I need to be sure. I need to see you at every moment. I need to feel you all the time. And trust me, I’m not trying to control you in the way you think.”
“Then how are you trying to control me?” I demanded.
“In a way that will benefit us both.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I told you in the beginning the one thing I needed was for you to be mine alone,” he said. “I just didn’t realize to what extent that would become true. I want to own you. To possess you. I want you to be mine.”
His words began to sink in. Own. Possess. Mine.
“You mean like a slave,” I muttered.
“A slave is unwilling,” he said. “I only want you if you’re willing. But I hope you are because… god help me… I need to possess you.”
I inhaled deeply through my nose and pressed the air sharply through my pursed lips. This was a lot to digest.
“I will never hurt you in a way you don’t wish to be hurt,” he promised me. “And I will never keep you from anything that makes you happy. Friends, family, job, school… whatever you want is yours. And I will spend every waking moment making sure you have it all.”
I was silent. This really scared the shit out of me. And yet, it intrigued me greatly. There was something that made me feel so safe… so protected by him. The way he clenched my hand. The way he promised to give me everything I wanted. The way he defended me to those stuck up bitches outside the club.
“Can we try it for a while and see how…”
“No,” he stopped me cold. “Commit, or walk away.”
“Now?” I asked, my eyes wide.
“Now.”
My first instinct was to walk away. I could call Erica to come get me. I could leave and never come back, and maybe in time I could forget him. Who was I kidding? There could never be any forgetting of a man like Gaius.
It was now or never. Carpe diem. Seize the day.
“I commit.”
Gaius was utterly stoic. I could gauge no emotion in his eyes, and not a muscle twitched so much as a hair. He was like a stone gargoyle waiting to come to life and fulfill some purpose for which even he was unsure of.
“Gaius, I commit.”
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“I am.”
“May I ask why you’ve made this choice?”
“Because the uncertainty of committing is nowhere near as terrifying as the thought of walking away from you and never seeing you again.”
“I told you to make the decision now – commit or walk away,” he said. “That was unfair, perhaps. So I will give you until midnight tonight to back out. I will spend this night giving you a sample of what will be. If you decide you cannot keep your commitment, you can walk away any time before midnight.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you are mine.”
CHAPTER NINE
His words continued to move through me, plucking at little bits of my heart and soul. You are mine.
Every fiber that tingled within me, every nerve that sang with his touch, every beat of my heart and breath I took wanted to be possessed by Gaius. I knew before the evening started that I would not walk away.
It was all I had ever wanted. I wanted to be desired, wanted, needed. I wanted to be possessed by a man who wanted nothing more than to possess me.
“Before we begin, I’d like to get everything out in the open,” Gaius told me. “Come sit with me.”
I followed him into the living room and he motioned to the sofa. I sat, and this time he sat beside me instead of across from me.
“If you have anything you’d like to ask me, or anything you need to tell me, now is the time to do it,” he said. “Neither of us should go into this blind.”
“Alright, I want to know details about your father,” I said. “You said he was abusive and your mother allowed it to happen. What exactly did he do?”
His jaw hardened, and I could tell this was the one question he’d probably hoped I wouldn’t ask him. But he nodded in acquiescence.
“Yo
u name it, he did it,” Gaius answered. “Beatings, whippings – usually for no good reason at all.” He lifted his arm and showed me a long scar about a half-inch wide near his armpit. “This? Mother’s curling iron.” He lifted his foot and pointed to a circular scar on the heel. “This? Cigar.” He twisted his body around and located a small white scar near his spine. “And this? His belt buckle.”
My eyes began to sting, and my nose tingled. The wind had been sucked from my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak.
“What about you?” he asked. “Where are your scars?”
I pointed to my chest and said, “In here.”
He nodded knowingly and said gently, “Explain.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Where to start. Hmm. Well, I was always the chubby kid in school. Kids made fun of me all the time. I can’t even stand to say the words they used. They say sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you. I beg to differ. I still hurt.”
He nodded and waited patiently for me to continue.
“I dieted a lot in high school,” I went on. “I thought if I could only be thin, someone would love me. I started forcing myself to throw up nearly everything I ate, but my sister found out and told my mother who told me I was weak and that if I wanted to lose weight I should do it like a real woman, with hard work, dedication, and exercise.”
Hearing my mother’s words in my mind felt just as painful as the day she’d said them, and I bit my lip and had a hard time continuing.
“Please go on,” Gaius urged me gently, touching my knee softly.
“I don’t really have any contact with them anymore, because my whole family thought I had the plague or something because I was overweight,” I explained. “So I turned to men for attention. And I got it.”
“I’ll bet,” he said glumly.
“No, it’s not what you think,” I said. “The first boyfriend I ever had got angry at me one night for spilling his beer and he beat me so badly I ended up in the hospital. It wasn’t the first time he’d hurt me, but it was the worst. I had a broken arm, two teeth knocked loose, and I needed forty-one stitches.”
Gaius clenched his jaw and balled his hands into fists. I could see a vein throbbing prominently across his temple. But he said nothing.
“I didn’t date for a couple of years after that,” I told him. “I tried to distance myself. But I got lonely. So I tried dating a few other guys, but every time it was the same thing. They’d either put me down for my weight, or they’d claim I was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen and meanwhile they’d go cheat on me with some skinny chick behind my back.”
“Preposterous,” he snarled, his teeth grinding together.
“My last boyfriend… Philip…” It disgusted me to even say his name. “He’d bought me an engagement ring and he got down on one knee and popped the question.”
“What did you say?”
“I was honestly about to say yes when he said that his one condition before marrying me was that I lost weight so he could introduce me to his family without feeling ashamed.”
“I hope you told him where to go!” Gaius nearly shouted.
“I did,” I said. “And I’ve been happily single ever since. Well, mostly happy.”
“But you got lonely.”
“And so did you.”
He nodded in agreement.
“I realized eventually that I couldn’t live without that human interaction,” he said. “I never had that as a child. That closeness. That safeness. I finally realized I need it now or I’ll go crazy.”
“Me, too,” I breathed. Then I had to ask him, “What about your relationships?”
“I haven’t had any,” he said.
“What? None?”
“Nothing serious,” he said.
“Ever?” I gawked at him.
“Ever,” he confirmed. “I was convinced I was a danger to any woman I might try to be near. After all I’d been through, I had these dark fantasies. The only way I could get off was to fantasize about controlling… possessing… demanding obedience. I was afraid of myself. Afraid of what I might do.”
“You thought you’d hurt someone?” I asked.
“I was sure of it at one point,” he admitted. “I knew I had to stay away from women for their own good. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I knew what it felt like.”
“You must have been very lonely,” I said.
“We both were,” he said. “I was lonely because I was alone. And you were lonely because you weren’t.”
Boy did he hit the nail on the head.
“And you don’t think you’re a danger to me?” I asked.
“I know I’m not.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“Because I’d rather go back to my childhood and relive every last brutal moment a thousand times than to make you feel that way for one second,” he answered.
I stood up and let my bathrobe fall away. His eyes darted across my body, and he licked his lips as I approached him. I fell to one knee on the couch beside him and then lifted the other to straddle his lap. His arms wrapped around me, instinctively protective.
“Every moment of my life has led me here,” Gaius said. “And I wouldn’t take back one thing that ever happened to me, because it brought me to you.”
I felt the same way, but instead of telling him, I showed him. I took his face in my hands and pressed my lips against his. His tongue forced its way into my mouth and entwined itself with mine, causing my heart to race frantically. His hands explored my back, squeezing my ass and then easing their way upward to tangle through my hair.
I felt him twitch between my legs, and I wanted him to penetrate me. One shift of my hips and he would have slipped right in. But I held back. I wanted him to take me. To claim me. To possess me.
Gaius gripped me firmly, and in one swift moment, he usurped the power of my straddling him, sweeping me onto my back on the sofa. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head against the cushion below me.
His upper lip curled to show his teeth, bared like a wild animal poised to strike. His hardness pressed urgently against my quivering thigh, and he pushed my head to the side with his cheek and snapped his teeth against the flesh of my neck. His teeth raked against my skin, sending fiery sensations straight to my brain and
“Do not move,” he ordered me.
His hands released my wrists and moved along my arms, following them downward to my torso. I left my hands above my head where he’d left them.
His lips moved, along with his hands, down to my breasts. He kneaded their flesh and nipped at the hardening peaks until I jerked slightly. Then he clutched my throat and squeezed just hard enough to make a point.
“Do… not… move…” he repeated firmly.
I was especially careful to remain as still as possible as his hands found their way back to my breasts, where he continued to massage, pinch, lick, nibble and suck. My insides were writhing goo, but I remained still externally, only faintly whimpering.
His right hand trailed down my belly, stopping to squeeze the pocket of flesh below my navel before moving further downward and between my legs. His hand rested on my inner thigh, and I so wanted him to touch me, but he kept sucking my nipple and nibbling at it playfully with his hand motionless on my thigh.
It was growing harder to remain still, but I concentrated every bit of my effort into obedience. I could feel how important it was for him to be in complete control, and I wanted nothing more at that moment than to please him as he’d been pleasing me.
His tongue trailed downward, toward my stomach, dipping briefly inside my navel. My arousal heightened at the implication that he might soon be licking me, but instead, he licked upward and stopped at my neck. His hot breath in my ear brought a round of chills across my skin, stiffening my nipples even further into hard, rigid peaks. A moan caught in my throat.
“Do you want to cum?” he groaned into my ear.
“Yes
, please!” I gasped.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“Good girl. Then I want to make sure you know what I expect of you.”
Disappointment weighed me down as he moved away from me, standing over me, hovering like a gorgeous Greek god. I peered up at him, forcing myself to keep my eyes glued to his despite the desperate desire to roam over his firm, tan body.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered me.
I lifted my eyebrows and stared at him, unsure what he meant. Did he mean all over, or just…
“Touch yourself, now,” he repeated.
I decided to cover both bases by using my left hand to fondle my breast while sliding my right hand between my legs. I felt the warmth of color rising to my cheeks and spreading to my ears as I followed his instructions. This was something I’d only ever done in privacy.
“That’s it,” he said softly. “Make yourself feel good.”
My left hand pinched the peak of my nipple and my right hand spread my lips apart and dipped inside my slick tunnel. Using the gathered moisture, I pressed the pad of my middle finger against my clit and began to rub it in slow circles. I closed my eyes and savored the feeling.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
My eyes popped open, and he captured my gaze with those stunning honey-colored eyes and refused to let go. I bit my lip as I struggled to keep my eyes locked with his through my embarrassment and the pleasure that was slowly building between my legs.
“There you go,” he encouraged me. “I want you to bring yourself to orgasm for me. But look at me while you do.”
I was licking my lips – probably a nervous habit. I began rubbing my clit harder and faster. I was building courage along with my tempo, and soon I was breathing harder and I could feel the warm tightening mounting as I neared release.
Pictures of our time together began to flood through my mind, and remembering the feel of his tongue, the scent of his breath, the hardness of his cock… I began to moan, and I could see the anticipation in his eyes as he watched.
“Cum, baby,” he said. “Cum for me.”
For him. Yes, I would do it for him. My fear had melted away, and now I only wanted to please him. I forced my eyes to stay open and locked with his as I began to quiver, pressing hard against my button and squirming against the couch as orgasm flooded me.