He's a Brute (Tough Love Book 1)

by Chloe Liese

  “Time to pop your kink cherry, fragolina.”

  She smiled and shut her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

  Twenty-One

  Nairne

  His hands knew what they were doing. My skin burned where he’d touched and woken up my nerves. He retrieved a foam wedge from the closet, slid it under the sheets, and helped me adjust myself onto it. I watched his face as he concentrated on gently tying my wrists and ankles to the bedposts. He sat back and looked me over.

  “Man. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  I glanced down at the rope, black and dramatic against my snowy skin, and smiled. I felt nervous but also content. My eyes grew heavy as he stood there and took his time staring at me. He was still clothed in black joggers and a simple white undershirt. His skin looked more bronze, and his eyes stood out.

  “Relax, innamorata. Breathe.”

  I did. Unevenly. His hands drifted up my legs and he cupped my cunt, slipped two fingers inside. “What made you wet? The waiting?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice dropped. “Being tied up?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “You know why you’re tied up?”

  I bit my lip. “No.”

  “Because I’m going to make you writhe. You’re going to want to curl in on yourself because what I’m doing to you is too much good that you’ll take it anyway. But your pleasure’s mine to give.”

  My throat stuck together, and I sounded hoarse when I answered. “All right.”

  He didn’t say another word, just watched me as he fucked me with his fingers. Until he pulled something out of his pocket and pinched it between his thumb and pointer. It looked like a clothespin, but thinner.

  I tensed. He tilted his head. Smiled. “Relax. Trust me?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard. He set one around my nipple and I bit my lip, stifling a groan. The second around my other nipple made something happen to my body’s circuitry. A hot current traveled in a feverish triangle, one breast to the other, down to my throbbing clit that he scrubbed with a calloused thumb.

  “You’re beautiful like this. Surrendered. Open. Taking your pleasure. Your cunt is soaked, fragolina. You’re going to come soon.”

  I gasped as he added another finger and curled against my g-spot. “Please.”

  “Hush.” He tugged the clamps. Everything grew hot and aching.

  “Don’t fight it.” He paused. “And don’t you dare come until I say.”

  I groaned and felt my sex throbbing. “I can’t stop it.”

  “You can. You’re a disciplined woman, Nairne. Delay it. Breathe.” He took his fingers away and I cried out. I’d been so fucking close. I skittered on the edge of ecstasy.

  He tugged the nipple clamps again and I did just like he said I would. I reflexed as the silk ropes held me steady. All sensation was stuck right at its origin—my breasts, my sex. My body started to feel distant from me, the steady pain in my lower back far away and dull. My tits burned, my cunt ached.

  I wanted to stay there forever.

  “Beautiful. You’re doing beautifully.” Suddenly, blood and heat rushed to my nipples as the clamps came off, and pain crashed powerfully to the surface of my skin. I moaned and he slapped right over my cunt. “Focus. Feel it.”

  I gasped at the impact. No one had ever done that, and the level of pleasure it generated was stunning. He did it again and I swore forcefully.

  “What color is the sky.”

  I blinked at him. The answer was harder to come by than it should be, but I found it. “Blue.”

  “Why?” Another slap.

  “Because blue light waves are shortest. When they hit molecules in the air, they scatter more than other colors of light.”

  “Huh.” His thumb roughed my clit again. “I never knew that. See, I’m not the only one getting a lesson today.”

  He slapped my cunt again and the first rush of an orgasm hit me. “Oh god, I’m going to—”

  “I know. You think I don’t know?” He leaned in and kissed my mouth, plunging his tongue into me like it was his cock. “I’m going to fuck you with my fingers and you’re going to come.”

  I nodded furiously against his lips. I wanted to grab his hair, wrap my legs around his waist. They were both impossible for different circumstantial reasons, and I groaned in frustration. Until rough fingers plunged into me and I came with a hoarse scream as my breasts throbbed and my entire cunt pulsed in the most powerful orgasm of my life.

  “Oh, god.” I banged my head on the pillow.

  “I told you, god doesn’t get credit.” Zed smiled and kissed my lips once more. “I do.” He was untying me, leaning over me as he did, and the scent of him had my sex clenching for more. I wanted his cock. I wanted his naked body over me.

  “Fuck me, Zed.”

  He kept untying knots like I’d asked him about something trivial like the weather and I could wait. “I’ll take you when I want.”

  I sighed, both satisfied and deeply frustrated. My body was so heavy I couldn’t lift a finger, but arousal jackhammered inside me and held me on edge. “What the hell is the point of this? You going to tease me with your fingers until I’m old and grey? Christ, man.”

  He slapped my arse. Hard. Twice more, then two fingers deep in my cunt.

  “In this room, you don’t talk to me like that. I call the shots. I fuck you when I’m ready. You don’t challenge me, and if you do”—three fast slaps right near my cunt—“there are consequences, understood?”

  Another orgasm was close, and I couldn’t get my mind around it. Since my injury, the project of coming involved thirty minutes with a vibrator and some elaborate fantasies in my head, none of which had been adequately depraved, apparently. The present dictated that all along I’d needed a brute with a deep, arrogant voice and a propensity for spanking to get off. Who knew?

  You did. Touché, subconscious.

  A sharp thwack where he’d slapped already. It was raw and deliciously hot. His voice was low and even. “I said, understood?”

  “Yes. God, yes.”

  “No god here, innamorata.”

  “Yes, Zed.” I gasped and wanted to curl in because he was teasing the rim of my arse with his thumb and it felt too good for me to remind him of one of my few hard limits.

  “Relax, I won’t touch it beyond this.” He kissed hot skin on my arse and bit. “Trust me.”

  I nodded, riding an edge of near-orgasm that made me want to grind against the sheets.

  Zed held my hip and traced his fingers up my back, near my scar. I gasped as he did another loop around the sensitive skin, while his other hand fucked me.

  “Close,” I whispered.

  He laughed quietly. “One day you’ll learn that I don’t need to be told. I’ve got three fingers in your cunt and one on your clit, and the other on your ass, Nairne. I know what’s going on.”

  I was too deep into whatever dream world he’d put me in to laugh at his cocksure attitude. The way he slowed and tortured me and held me on the edge. I was about to beg when he leaned down, hot breath right in my ear, and bit. “So fucking beautiful. Your cunt is mine. This pleasure right now is mine. You may come now, fragolina. Right on my hand.”

  I tipped over on a wail so loud, the birds skittered off the tree outside. The room might be visually private, but it wasn’t soundproof.

  I felt his smile against my skin. Cool lips caressing my neck. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  “I feel blootered.”

  Zed laughed and kissed my hair. “I either need a translation or more context.”

  “Sozzled. Rat-arsed. Drunk.”

  He turned sideways through the doorway with me in his arms and set me gently on the toilet. I had a large, fuzzy robe around me that had made the transition from the sunroom’s sauna temps to the rest of the house bearable.

  Zed leaned to turn on the tub and I caught a glimpse of tan skin and the black waistband of his briefs. If my arms didn’t feel like deadweights, I w
ould’ve reached for him, tried for a few strokes on his cock, but I was exhausted and sated. He dumped something from a glass bottle in the huge soaker tub and the air took on the scent of wildflowers and pungent herbs. My eyes felt heavy and I lulled forward.

  “Hey, easy there.” His arm came around me and I leaned into his shoulder. All muscles and warm skin. Solid. Safe. I breathed in deeply.

  “You smell like rain.”

  “Mm?” he asked. The water pouring into the tub was loud, and I was hoarse from screaming through orgasms.

  “Pheromones. Rain.”

  “You’re out of it. It’s normal. After this bath, you’ll nap, then wake up feeling like a million bucks.” He kissed my hair again. “Promise.”

  Twenty-Two

  Zed

  The good dominant did aftercare, then let her sleep it off. Gave her some space from all your touching and barking orders. Even if she’d begged for every moment of it, came more times than you could count, anybody who’d gone through that needed solitude and silence to recoup. It was a demanding and gratifying cycle between agony and ecstasy. And it required rest.

  I’d taken it easy on Nairne, especially her ass, because she had to sit on it all the time. I’d had some subs who stood the whole next day rather than put a lick of body weight on their raw backsides. Not my thing, but they’d asked for it. Explicitly.

  The woman may well deny it to her dying day, but Nairne liked it more than just rough. She liked a sharp touch, and my dominant voice, words kept minimal and direct. When I told her to hush, she’d bit her lip and swelled like a fucking balloon. I was learning her, mapping the network of her mind and body. Finding where I could push her tolerance, sustain pain for a high of pleasure, and where it was best to simply tease out timing, withdraw then come back suddenly, for a shock of reward and sensation.

  Nairne was fun because she was uninhibited. I didn’t enforce silence with her, and she was responsive as it got vocal, enjoying it. Maybe one day, the challenge of silence would be good for play, but right now her voice was an important cue for figuring out her kink. I didn’t need her quiet. I needed to know her, to shape and conduct the arc of her release.

  I wanted her to lean into me like she had in the bathroom. A freefall of trust in my arms. To let me hold her and spank her ass then call her endearments in Italian and serve her tea.

  At first, I hadn’t thought too far into why my possessiveness toward Nairne came out so strongly, because it fell squarely within the realm of the lifestyle. Possessiveness and domination went hand in hand.

  But after this, I couldn’t deny there was a difference. Like a seed that had begun in native soil, sprouted familiar, and flowered into some one-of-a-kind hybrid, my need to protect and claim Nairne now felt more complex. What did that signify? Fuck if it even mattered. She was going, I was staying. Better to just enjoy her while I had her and leave the philosophizing alone.

  She slept in my arms, on her side with a pillow between her knees because they knocked against each other otherwise. My fingers slid through her damp hair that smelled like heaven.

  The same perfumer who made my cologne made a bubble bath that smelled like Nairne, as I’d requested. A garden by the sea I’d told her. She’d nailed it.

  Nairne shifted and her ass grazed my cock, which hadn’t dropped from half-mast the whole day. It had taken herculean will not to sink into her the moment she turned and laid herself bare for me, but that wasn’t what this dynamic was about. It was about denial and delay, power play, withholding then lavishing, and how deeply satisfying that was to both of us.

  “Zed?”

  Her voice. Smoky. Warm. Like the whiskey she loved. “Yes, innamorata.”

  “Would you please fuck me?” She was half asleep and her throat sounded shredded from yelling. I’d given her two screamers and I had plans for a third here soon.

  “No.” I kissed her neck and she groaned. “When it’s time, I’ll tell you.”

  She wiggled again. “You’re torturing me. Punishment for not jumping your bones the moment you propositioned me.”

  I pulled her close and bit her ear. “I didn’t proposition you. You’re not a whore. You’re my partner. My lover. Innamorata. That’s what that means. It’s a title of admiration, not scorn.”

  “Then what is it? You don’t want to have sex?” She glanced over her shoulder and blinked slowly. “You just like the bondage and control?”

  I shook my head and kissed her. “Nairne, sinking my cock into you is pretty much all I think about. But it’s not how this goes. You surrender that decision of how and when we fuck because it pleases me, and it pleases you, too, whether you admit it or not.”

  “Maybe it does, but I don’t like it,” she whispered. She turned to get a better look at me. “The inequality. I want to feel like I affect you the way you affect me.”

  I tried to figure out how to word it. “You do affect me deeply, Nairne. It’s not that at all. Just because I’m exhibiting self-control doesn’t mean you’re not ripping me apart inside. Believe me.”

  She sighed and turned back, looking thoughtful. “All right.”

  I laughed. “Write it down, ladies and gents. She took an answer without a lick of sass.”

  “That’s because you finger fucked the sass right out of me.” She squirmed against me again and held my arm. “And now I’m going to nap some more because apparently you finger fucked all energy out of me, too.”

  Palm splayed low over her belly, I pressed her tightly against me. Imagined driving into her from behind and strumming her clit. “I’m a man of my word. I told you that you’d be boneless.”

  “True, Mr. Salvatore.” She smiled as her eyes drifted shut. “That you did.”

  “You know about my family,” I said. “You’ve unfortunately met Teo. But I don’t know anything about yours.”

  She paused mid-chew, resumed slowly, then swallowed. I’d had her help me make meatballs. And after I stuck them in the oven, I’d set her on the counter and ate her out, edging her over and over until she sent the birds flying from the branches again.

  She twirled her pasta three hundred and sixty degrees, seven twenty. She was making me dizzy with that damn fork. “Nairne.”

  “I’m trying to think about where to start. I don’t talk about it often.”

  Her fork fell to the plate with a clatter and she looked up at me. “I don’t know my father. Mam never told me his name. She was married to her work and rarely social, so I assume I was an accident, the product of an atypical night.” She shrugged, went back to twirling her pasta.

  “She had me, hired my au paire, Claudette, which is how I learned French, and continued her surgical residency. I remember asking her when I was around three or so where my father was. She told me he lived far away, and even though he wasn’t here, didn’t mean he didn’t love me. That people who love you can’t always be there to tell you, but they never stop loving you.

  “Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. After a hospital shift, she was coming home from meeting a friend for dinner and got hit by a freight-truck. It ran a light at an intersection. She died instantly.”

  I squeezed her hand, rubbed my thumb against her soft skin. “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and squeezed my hand back. “So, Granda and Nan came for me, and brought me to Prestonpans. It’s a small fishing village northeast of Edinburgh. It was a simple, quiet upbringing. I was happy for the most part, read my books and played footie. Nan died when I was fourteen. Granda passed the summer after I graduated school, while I was off at training.”

  “Jesus, Nairne.” She’d lost everybody. “So, soccer was your world.”

  “Yes, for a time. I met Elodie and gained a sister. Had some wild years…” Her face sobered. “And then the rest, well, you know how it goes.”

  I stared at her, seeing the parallels and divergences between how we coped with our losses. I’d watched my mom fight a losing battle with an indiscriminately ravaging disease, and I’d sworn myself
to a life that was a lie, because it protected the people I loved. I’d felt completely trapped by my circumstances. And I wasn’t idiotic enough not to connect my sexuality to that traumatic helplessness coinciding with my adolescence.

  As for Nairne? She’d lost them all, and she’d built a fortress around herself for protection. Then here I’d been, demanding her unflinching trust and total dependence on me. I’d held her reluctance against her and made it about me and some perceived character assassination, rather than considered she may have had good reason for holding back.

  She tipped her head to the side. “You look deep in thought.”

  “You give me lots to think about, Ms. MacGregor.”

  “Ah, back to peers, are we?” She smiled and speared a meatball.

  Yeah, we were. Because outside that sunroom, she was a strong-willed woman who did shit her own way and told me to shove my demands up my ass. I had to pick my battles with her. Honor her independence and autonomy in ways that didn’t make me insane.

  I jerked my chin toward the meatballs. “How’d they turn out?”

  “Fucking brilliant.” She shook her head side to side like she was jamming to good tunes. It made me wonder what music she liked. “Your father’s recipe? A neurosurgeon who cooks like this doesn’t seem fair. You’re Renaissance men, you Salvatores.”

  A laugh burst from me. “Don’t give Teo too much credit. He’s a pretty shitty cook so far. I learned to do it because Dad worked, and Mom got nauseated from the smell of everything when she had chemo. Teo was just too young at that point.”

  Nairne’s face got serious. “He was a boy still.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It was hard for him with Mom. He’s impulsive, always been a little daredevil, but he kind of went crazy for a while when she got bad. Outright recklessness. Drugs. Kink that makes me look tame. Zio— Uncle—Gianno could talk to him sometimes. He’s more Teo’s speed.”