Out of Control

by Roberts, Teresa Noelle

  That was how it had always been for him. He’d play with someone, and it would be great, but it wouldn’t be a relationship. At most, there’d be texting and e-mailing of teasing suggestions now and then, when he and the lady in question weren’t too busy with what he called Real Life. He’d never met someone he wanted as a full-time sub or slave, someone he could claim and own within the boundaries of a BDSM relationship, though he’d certainly considered the possibility in an abstract way. Okay, fantasized about the possibility, but without a face for the nameless woman, just that it would be fun to have someone in that role someday. He’d rarely had the urge to have a full-time girlfriend. It would be great to have someone to share his life, in theory, but sharing your life was messy. Hard to control. Led to emotional explosions and revelations of the sort he didn’t like.

  When he did play with someone, he negotiated carefully first, making sure they were on the same page. He didn’t want surprises, didn’t want to harm anyone while he was hurting them, didn’t want to misunderstand what they wanted and end up with a damaged reputation, or worse yet, a damaged lover.

  He’d seen that before. He wasn’t going there.

  Except he’d come perilously close to doing it just now. Luckily, Jen’s response was hot sexy fun with a guy I like not scary asshole who deserves to be kicked in the nuts and possibly arrested. But he’d had no way of knowing that except a gut instinct that she was a submissive or at least a bottom, wanting to be on the receiving end of strong sensation even if she didn’t want to give up control.

  Why the hell had Jen gotten to him this way? Why did she make him throw caution to the winds and act like a stereotypical Asshole Dom, making assumptions, making decisions for her without knowing her, pushing her without negotiation? Sure, in their limited interaction it had worked. But that was just luck. They needed to talk. Needed to make sure they were on the same page.

  Or maybe he just needed to run away.

  He shook his head against that thought. Too late for that now, considering they were sharing a house and he’d just jumped her. This was either going to be a relationship of some kind or it would be an awkward year spent tiptoeing around each other, but he’d started this—whatever it turned out to be. Whether it would be a disaster or a revelation (or both—he doubted the two were binary), he had to face it.

  “You make me feel like a sixteen-year-old, all hormones and no brain to speak of,” he said quietly.

  Jen’s voice was dreamy, like she was talking from between the stars. “Yeah. Ain’t it great?”

  “Except at sixteen I couldn’t have imagined the stuff I’m imagining doing with you now—and before you ask, I wasn’t an especially naive sixteen-year-old.” Far from it. Despite the geek stereotype that Drake knew he projected, he’d never been sexually naive. Growing up in his father’s house hadn’t allowed for naiveté. But long before sixteen, he’d set his boundaries, having seen what out-of-control dominance could do. And he hadn’t reset them until Jen Kessler appeared on his doorstep and shook the foundations of his world.

  “I’m not normally like this. I don’t grab women and start having sex with them—and we were having sex, even if I kept my pants on. I’m not a particularly nice person. A good one, I think, but not a nice one. I can be cruel and domineering and possessive, and some of the things I think are erotic, many people find alarming. But I keep it under control. I came really close to losing control with you, and I’m sorry.”

  Jen sat up, the dreaminess gone from her voice as if he’d dumped cold water on her. “Did you hear the word no cross my lips?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you get any hint from my words or my responses that I wasn’t willing? Hell, that I wasn’t excited and eager and having a great time? Did you miss the massive orgasm? I don’t think I was being subtle about it, but if you like, I’ll do a replay á là When Harry Met Sally.”

  “Pretty hard to miss.” Troubled as he was, he couldn’t help smiling at the memory of how she’d melted.

  “And I was busy floating away on a wave of lust, but I remember you asking if it was all right to keep on spanking me.”

  “But I started before I asked.” Words tangled in his head. They did that sometimes. Numbers were a language that made sense to him, allowed him to communicate elegantly within their limits and with people who also spoke mathematics, but English sometimes confounded him. “That was wrong. It’s my responsibility to take care of you.”

  As soon as the words passed his lips, he knew they’d come out wrong. He’d meant something like, It’s a dom’s responsibility to take care of a sub during a scene, to help her feel safe while she’s pushing her limits but what he’d said didn’t make a lot of sense.

  And it was apparently just the wrong thing to say to this particular woman in this particular moment. She snapped, “I have a father. He’s twice your age and not nearly as cute, and he’s the only man who has ever had the responsibility of taking care of me. Which he hasn’t had since I turned eighteen and moved out, though he still thinks it’s his job. He’s my dad, so he can get away with that illusion. You can’t. I’m a big girl. I make my own choices.”

  “I know that.” He thought long enough to find better words that were clear enough to make sense. “The thing is, I like to play in a way that takes away some of your choices. It seems that you like that too. But I didn’t know that for sure when we started. If I didn’t cross any lines, it was dumb luck. I owe you an apology for the way this happened.” He coughed. Honesty compelled him to add, “I don’t want this to sound like I’m sorry that we played. I’m not. I acted like an asshole, and I am sorry about that.”

  She took a deep breath, and some of the angry fire died out of her eyes. “It’s sweet that you’re concerned. I hadn’t expected us to move so fast, except in fantasies. I certainly hadn’t expected us to move in the direction we did so soon, though it wasn’t a complete surprise. You give off that vibe, you know? I’m sure you have more experience with this kind of kinky rough-play-and-control thing than I do, and maybe we ignored some rules or guidelines. But we both have mouths, Drake. We both have brains. We could have stopped at any time and said, Let’s talk about this, and we didn’t because we were having fun.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. No harm, no foul.” She kissed him on the forehead, clearly conciliating, as if she still didn’t understand the depths of his concern but wasn’t upset herself. “So do we have that talk now, or do I get your clothes off and have my wicked way with you? Or whatever the right wording would be. I have a feeling you might prefer to be having your wicked way with me.”

  Drake’s cock had subsided when they began talking, pushed down by his vague guilt. Now it sprang back to life, making him want to take Jen at her word and spend the rest of the day playing and fucking, maybe stopping long enough to order a pizza or some Chinese.

  But that was a bad idea. He knew it as well as he knew two plus two equaled four. “I’d enjoy that way too much,” he said. “We need to talk first. And right now we’re not clearheaded enough to trust our own judgment.”

  At least it was the case for him. Once again, he realized he’d said a true thing in the exact wrong way. Jen pulled away from him and sat on the bed, chin on her knees. “Oh really? I can’t speak for you. I’m not going to speak for you, because that’s not right. But my judgment’s just fine, and right now it’s telling me you are a bit of an asshole. Just not in the way you were concerned about.” She glared at him. “I don’t need you to worry about me or put words in my mouth. And I don’t need you not trusting my judgment.”

  Drake gaped. There was so much he should say about a dom’s responsibility, about the importance of consent…about the fact he trusted her but needed boundaries in place in order to trust himself. But he knew he was too heated to say those words in a way that wouldn’t make things worse.

  Doms could drop too, get into a strange, spaced-out, emotionally vulnerable state. Drake kept himself under ti
ght control, but it had finally happened to him. It hadn’t been an intensely kinky scene, yet something about it had gotten him rattled.

  Time to get away and pull himself together—before he really said something dumb.

  He stood. “I’m going out for a while. I need to clear my head. You’re right that I shouldn’t have spoken for you. I did it because my brain is still on vacation. I’m going to try to convince it to come home. I hope we can talk when I get back.”

  “Maybe.” He went to kiss her, but she turned her head away, a message too clear for even his muddled brain to ignore. “Or maybe I’ll be out myself, or busy unpacking. Or maybe at the studio. I have work to do.”

  If she were mine, he started to think… But she wasn’t, and if he didn’t rein in those thoughts, he and Jen would never have a chance to be anything more than neighbors with an awkward history.

  Instead, biting his tongue and driving his nails into his palms so the pain would focus him, Drake slipped away.

  The dojo was open for practice bouts and kata for a while longer, and then there was a high-level class. The ritual of kendo would get him back under control, back into his head where he belonged. Sounded like a much safer place to be than his own house was, in proximity to Jen Kessler.

  Then again, a war zone might be a safer place right now.

  Chapter Five

  Jen’s ass was still tender. Pulling her jeans back on—angrily, jerkily, gracelessly—had been uncomfortable in a weirdly comfortable way. Even now her butt felt red and swollen, the denim pinching and confining, although her jeans were soft and loose.

  Each movement was a delicious reminder of what had just happened.

  And each reminder of the awkwardly ended erotic interlude pissed her off again. Not because it happened but because more didn’t happen. Drake had turned from hot and sexy and connected in the most intimate way to distant and weird and acting like he’d done something wrong instead of something very, very right.

  Jen fumed as she threw sheets onto the bed, fumed as she hung clothes in the closet. What was the matter with Drake?

  Not a damn thing that I can see, her libido opined, flashing her images of gray eyes and silver-dusted sandy hair and godlike arm muscles, vivid sense memories of Drake holding her down effortlessly, making her feel controlled and out of control at the same time. And each movement reminded her of that spanking, that crazy, unexpected, wonderful spanking that she hadn’t thought to imagine before it was happening, even though she’d known Drake was kinky.

  Why the hell had he had to blow it by acting like her choices were his responsibility? She was a big girl. She’d been on her own since she was eighteen, and she’d stopped being a blushing virgin a few years before that. Not that she was planning on telling her father in this lifetime. She didn’t think any amount of time or logic would convince her dad she wasn’t a child anymore. Which was a cute, though occasionally annoying, trait in your father. Just plain annoying in your lover, especially when he was a brand-new sorta-kinda lover, not even a long-term boyfriend who’d earned a right to fuss over you and vice versa.

  And what was with that weird combination of controlling and dominant in a good, sexy way one minute, bossy and domineering in a bad way the next, and then awkwardly apologetic, but about the good parts, not the aggravating ones?

  She didn’t want to write him off as an asshole. He had definite potential, if they could get past whatever was bugging him. Besides, even if things didn’t work out that way, which would suck, she was still going to be sharing a house with him. She had to assume the best. They’d figure this all out, and with any luck in a way that would allow her to finally get her turn to explore his well-muscled form.

  But she was still seeing an ugly puce haze of annoyance whenever she thought about it.

  Should she call Avi again? No, that was just plain embarrassing. Best to try to figure it out for herself and then report success or failure.

  She distracted herself by unpacking the kitchen and trying to get it organized. The kitchen at Melinda and Rafi’s had been much bigger than this one, but this tiny space had better lighting. For the first time in ages, she had a good window for a hanging plant. The sunshine-yellow Formica counters, battered white tin cabinets and weird brown linoleum with turquoise flecks were growing on her.

  And it was hers, all hers. She could arrange things the way that made sense to her. It made it hard, she knew, for anyone else to find things in her cabinets, but the red frying pan had to go next to the red mixer and the equally red vase and her mom’s home-canned tomatoes and any other red boxes and cans, and the blue mixing bowl had to be filled with blue potholders and dishcloths and sit on top of the blue-and-white ceramic pie plate she’d found at a yard sale out in Trumansburg, and the spice jars, the grain jars and the small, clear bud vases she’d made when she was first learning to blow glass went in the same cabinet since they were all cylindrical.

  As she arranged and puttered, making a mental note to buy new dish towels in a color that would make the yellow and brown and turquoise look deliberate, she calmed down. Playing with color and form, even something as mundane as boxes of cereal lined up next to boxes of crackers and pasta, arranged so the colors looked good, soothed her.

  Then she stopped in the middle of the tiny, bright space and burst out laughing at herself.

  People couldn’t understand her kitchen organization principle until she pointed it out—sometimes even after she pointed it out. Obvious as it was to her, it wasn’t the way most people thought. Probably the same thing was happening with her and Drake. She was missing some key piece of the Drake puzzle that would make her say, Oh! That’s what this is all about! when she figured it out. It wasn’t as if she knew Drake well, not as well as she probably should know someone who was spanking her, and that left a lot of room for mixed signals.

  Add to that that he was a guy. There was some truth to the stereotype that men were poor at articulating emotions. Drake, being a mathematician, was probably worse than most when things were fuzzy.

  Fine, then, she’d let it go and have that potentially awkward but potentially important (to him, at least) conversation. Maybe she could figure out what he was going on about.

  And maybe then she could get him undressed, touch the long, toned legs she’d seen that first time, see if his chest was muscular enough to compete with his biceps and his crazy-strong forearms. Check out that cock. Suck that cock. Feel that cock inside her.

  He might spank her while he fucked her. He might even tie her up first—he’d threatened to tie her up, or maybe it was more like a sweet promise. Or perhaps he’d just hold her down, using his strength “against” her but for her benefit, her pleasure.

  Oh yeah.

  Lust surged through her again, its warm hues wiping out the last dull irritation. Her nipples tightened. She brushed her finger over the place where he’d bitten her, feeling a lovely twinge of tenderness. She hadn’t bothered to look at her breast as she’d jerked her T-shirt back on, too annoyed to indulge herself. Now, both curious and aroused, she headed into the bathroom and hiked up her shirt.

  The underside of her breast bore a bruise, a beautiful bruise, red and purple to match the colors in her mind, with the marks of Drake’s teeth clear. A real, old-fashioned hickey, the kind so-called bad girls tried desperately to hide from parents and teachers back in high school. But this mark was no trip down memory lane. High school hickeys had been accidental, the result of awkward, overenthusiastic teenage passion. This had been a purposeful way of proclaiming I was here! A mark of possession, however temporary.

  That should have been troubling, considering how little she knew Drake, and how gifted he seemed to be at pissing her off as well as arousing her. Instead, it was erotic as hell. That might be troubling too, once she took the time to think it through, but she’d enjoy it for now and worry about the ramifications later.

  Her hand strayed inside the waistband of her jeans, ran over the curve of her belly. Someti
mes she looked at herself in the mirror and cursed her small pooch, but when she felt sensual, as she did now, she liked that curve—a pretty line, and a nice combination of strength and softness. Her skin felt warmer than usual, more sensitive. Each touch was intensified, as if someone else was touching her instead of her own familiar hand. As if Drake were touching her, stroking her, teasing his way down to her mound.

  Her hand took that path. She hadn’t bothered with underwear when she got dressed again. It made it all too easy to stroke her soft pubic curls, imagining Drake’s hand there. Somehow in their play, he’d never done that. Would he be gentle or would he pull? Probably both. She gave a tentative tug and decided that it might feel good if he did it, but it didn’t work as masturbation. Then again, she didn’t think spanking herself would be the same either. She petted her soft fur idly, enjoying the sensation as her arousal built. She could hardly see the bathroom’s retro black-and-white tiles and magnificent tub over the red-and-purple swirls in her mind. Images of Drake and her entwined, fucking—of Drake tying her up—of Drake spanking her, or using that mysterious crop on her—danced among the colorful swirls. He’d said something about being cruel, about some of his desires being “alarming”. What else might he be into—and more to the point, would she like it?

  It was her fantasy, and in her fantasy, she knew she would. She didn’t go into specifics, but every tantalizing, erotic, harsh image she’d ever seen or read about flashed into her mind in hot succession. Ropes. Chains. Whips. Paddles. Silk stockings and black leather. Hands on her body, manipulating her, holding her down, making her feel small and helpless, yet desirable and desired and loved.