by Ann Jacobs
And he had a feeling he’d like Selina in a nonsexual way, too. He intended to find out.
“Good morning. Whatever you’re cooking smells awfully good.” Selina came up behind him, smelling of his shampoo and soap. When he turned to kiss her, he noticed she had on one of his dress shirts, unbuttoned to display her impressive cleavage. “Sorry. I couldn’t find one I could button,” she said, raising her gaze to meet his.
“The better for me to see these.” Smiling, he brushed back the shirt to expose both her breasts, caught his index fingers through the rings and pulled her to him for a long, deep kiss. “I hope you like eggs.”
“I do. I can only eat a little, though. And coffee. Lots of coffee.” She looked him over, heat in those deep purple eyes as she looked pointedly at the boxer shorts that did little to hide his growing erection. “Aren’t you going to work?”
“No. We’re going to play, that is unless you have something pressing to do.” He hoped she didn’t, that they could extend this fantasy encounter over the next few days…maybe longer. “Sit down and let’s get some nourishment.”
Once the omelet was gone, Tom reached across the table and took Selina’s hand. “I think it’s time we shared a little more about ourselves than sex, don’t you?”
She bit her lower lip then laced her fingers through his. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” He read her hesitation, smiled to put her at ease. “If you want, I’ll start out. I’m Tom Latimore, born and raised on a ranch northwest of town. Went to Yale for undergrad, University of Texas for my MD. I’m thirty-nine years old, an anesthesiologist at University Hospital. Never married, but I’d been thinking about proposing to the wrong woman. Until I met you.” Pausing, he ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “Your turn.”
She settled her gaze on her empty plate. “Selina Harrison. I’m thirty-five, divorced, living on a trust fund from Grandpa and the alimony from my not-so-darling ex. I dropped out of SMU my sophomore year with dreams of white satin gowns and happily ever after. Love, honor and obey, with emphasis on the obey.”
Tom untangled their fingers and lifted her chin. “He controlled you and you liked it, didn’t you?” From her tone and the unshed tears that glistened in her eyes, he guessed he’d hit the nail on the head. “He had your nipples pierced.” It wasn’t a question. He knew without her saying that she’d never have chosen the heavy, ugly rings for herself. Dainty, slender barbells would have been her own choice, jewels not unlike the one in her clit. The thought of her being pierced with a large-bore needle, of thick, heavy rings being forced through brand-new holes and welded shut made him see red.
She cupped one breast in her hands, and tears flowed down her cheeks. “It hurt so much…for so long. He’d thread a chain through the rings and use it to secure me to the wall of our room.”
Tom imagined her chained up, helpless. He wished the bastard were within reach because he’d like to pierce him in some very tender spot—like his balls—and use the ring to chain him in a firepit. “I’m sorry, honey. You chose your genital piercing yourself, right?”
“Yes. After the divorce. My pussy looked so plain after I had the hair removed…”
“No need to explain. I like it. Like playing with it, feeling your little clit get hard for me.” He went to his knees beside her, brushed his shirt out of the way. “Spread your legs. Keep talking while I finish my breakfast. Tell me about this,” he said, tracing the tattoo with his tongue and rolling the stainless steel ball suggestively over the petals just below her outer labia.
She whimpered then cupped his head in her hands and pressed him closer. “He wanted me to get it before our wedding, so he could show it off to his friends when he took off my garter. But he didn’t get to do it. Mother insisted the garter should go around my calf, not my thigh.” She gasped when he started to tongue her clit, then cupped his head in her hands and pressed him closer. “That feels so, so good,” she said, sliding forward and giving him full access to her sweet, wet slit.
“What happened?” Tom’s deep voice resonated against Selina’s swollen flesh, making the little barbell vibrate and arousing her even more.
“I didn’t obey him the way he wanted. No matter how I tried to please him, it wasn’t enough. I was too fat, too disgusting. At the divorce hearing he sneered at me and said he didn’t know how he put up with me for nearly ten years. Don’t I disgust you?”
He raised his head, his expression fierce. “Damn it, I don’t lick the pussies of women who disgust me.” Then, when he saw her tears, he smiled, took her hands and drew them to his lips. “You don’t disgust me at all. You turn me on more than any woman I’ve ever taken. Honey, the bastard you married had no right to hurt you.”
She might as well tell him everything. Why she’d turned Domme. Why she doubted she’d ever trust another man, even Tom, enough to let him make her completely helpless. “Hurt me? He did everything he could think of to cause me pain. I got off on the physical part of it but not the humiliation he started dishing out near the end of our relationship.”
“Sounds like he was a real loser.” Though Tom’s oath floated on the air, hardly more than a whisper, his revulsion was evident.
Selina hesitated. But there was no getting around it. If she was to have any hope at all of having a relationship with Tom, she needed for him to understand the life she’d lived—a life she never intended to return to, no matter what. “Once he stripped me naked and put me in a wooden yoke—you know, the kind oxen wear when they’re pulling wagons. He fastened it to a fence post so I had to stay bent over and steady myself with my hands, and then he hooked my breasts to a milking machine, the kind they use to milk dairy cows.” The pain came back, made her shudder, almost as much as the next memory. It helped that Tom was holding both her hands, rubbing his thumbs in circular motions over her palms. “Part of me wanted to scream, run as fast as I could, as far as I could. But I’d gone so deep into submission to his every whim, I kept quiet. I hoped that by submitting like that I was making him happy, and I tried to ignore the shame of having some of the ranch hands see me that way, but…”
She had to tell him, say it out loud and purge the hurt and shame from her mind. But remembering brought back the pain, the feelings of inadequacy she doubted would ever go completely away. Tears ran down her cheeks like a raging river as she tried to stop herself from trembling, gather the words that might send Tom running for cover. She bit her lower lip, welcomed the pain as she steeled herself to relive that last, awful day before…
“The last straw was when he stripped me naked and tied me to the paddock fence by running a chain through my nipple rings. He invited all the ranch hands to come fuck my ass and pussy while he chopped off my hair and shaved my head.”
Tom’s grip on her hands became painful. “Damn him. I don’t blame you for leaving.”
“Bad thing was, I didn’t. I must have come a dozen times. I’d have stayed if he’d let me, but when it was over he jerked off all over my scalp, unlocked the chain and dumped me into the Ferrari he’d bought me for my birthday. He told me to get lost, that he had no more use for a fat, ugly whore.” She couldn’t believe she was saying this to him, but then again, looking back, she couldn’t believe she’d allowed Les to do that to her. As his demands had become more and more extreme, the fact her whole world had become him—no job, no friends, living isolated on his ranch, nothing but waiting for him to come home at night—she kept submitting, hoping to hold on to a love she’d never had to begin with. She’d talked to the therapists and understood the whole phenomenon, but she wasn’t sure if it would make her appear any less pathetic to Tom—or to herself. Tom was going to hate her now. She just knew it.
But it didn’t seem as though he hated her. His touch gentle, he stroked her pussy, and when he lifted his head and met her gaze, she saw fire in his eyes. Fire and tears, as though he hurt for her, hated only what Les had put her through.
“You’re not ugly. You’re bea
utiful. Don’t believe anything less. I love looking at you, touching you, fucking you.” His words sounded so sincere she almost believed him, and when he lowered his head again and licked her slit with incredible tenderness, she wanted nothing more than to give back to him, take him into her and provide him all the pleasure she’d once offered her ex. But Tom was apparently determined to push her over the edge, as if doing that would wash away the hurt that had driven her now for four long years.
Longer, if she were honest with herself because Les had turned mean almost before the honeymoon had ended.
Omigod. Tom had his tongue in her cunt, licking and teasing and going for her G-spot with that arousing metal ball. “Oh, yes, like that!” she screamed as the first waves of her climax rushed over her.
It wasn’t over yet, this fantasy come to life. When Tom told her to go to his bedroom and wait for him in bed, Selina was quick to obey. Every cell in her body longed for the rush that came every time Tom touched her. But maybe because she was still raw from what she’d just told him, as she drew off his shirt and saw herself in the hated mirror, her doubts returned. The sunshine caught and accentuated every roll, each imperfection no one could fail to notice—and disparage.
Lying on the bed, she curled into herself. Try as she might, she couldn’t hide her self-disgust. Or the snide voice inside her that said this was nothing more than a fanciful interlude…and that Tom would soon come to his senses and throw her out, the way Les had done so long ago.
Chapter Five
It was almost as though fate had brought Selina at a time when he’d finally figured out he needed more than just a D/s relationship at the club and a friendship that provided him an escort to take out in public. He’d never expected to find it in just one female body, although he’d hoped.
It was too early to be sure, yet Tom was. Selina would be his perfect mate. A sexual submissive who’d fit in with his friends and colleagues. One his mother would welcome into the family. More important, he’d discovered that she needed sexual domination as much as he needed to provide it. Tom sat staring out his kitchen window, mentally enumerating what he had to do before demanding that Selina become his slave.
But this was going too fast. They’d just met last night, after all, unless he was going to count that chance encounter years ago. So maybe he’d slow himself down, take some time with her. That meant extricating himself from the OR rotation for long enough that he and Selina could properly explore their new relationship. Not at all sure this was going to be possible, Tom dialed the surgery scheduling desk and prepared to grovel.
God, but he hated having to beg. At least the conversation with the OR supervisor wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined it might be, probably because it was the slow season for elective cases, a time of year many of the surgeons scheduled their own vacations. He managed to get the next two weeks off, and all it cost him was a promise to take first call for emergencies on the next three major holidays.
Oh no. What was Selina going to think about that? He hoped to hell she wasn’t big on taking part in family gatherings or watching fireworks displays. Oh well, she’d have to get used to the fact that she’d have to share him with his job. Memorial Day was coming up in less than sixty days, so he still had a little time to drop the news on her at the right moment.
Now his only obstacle was Selina herself. And how to make her believe he’d never hurt her the way her sonofabitch ex-husband had. He had an idea just how to do it. It involved a very public announcement of their relationship, and a new piercing, one no one except him would ever see. No, not a new one, but the removal of the rings he imagined had to remind her of ol’ Les every time she looked at them. He’d borrow a colleague’s office and a surgical saw to get rid of them, and replace them with ones that held special meaning to him—to them.
But first he had to take her again. Push her—and himself—over the edge. He was like a teenager with his first lover, fully charged and insatiable. There was a difference, though. A big difference. With Selina it wasn’t just lust, as it had been with the string of casual subs he’d played with at BDSM clubs. He wanted not only to dominate her sexually, but also to earn a spot in her battered heart. If he dared, he’d hunt down Selina’s ex-husband and punish him for hurting her so much she was afraid to let go and fully accept his own domination. What he could and would do was try to wash away her deep-set doubts she had about her own worth, her own attractiveness.
That last, he definitely had a handle on. Rising, Tom strode to the bedroom, hoped she’d be waiting as he’d ordered. He’d bring her around, and if in doing so he had to accept a temporary switch of power now and then, that was okay, too.
* * * * *
When he went upstairs, he found Selina on his bed, her body bathed in sunlight from the bank of windows. Knees raised to her belly, arms obscuring his view of her magnificent breasts, she lay still, her eyes closed although he could tell by her shallow breathing that she was awake. Hiding herself in a way, yet open to be taken. A picture of submission, yet more. One of a sort of hopelessness he didn’t like seeing from his lover.
He was going to have to do something to bolster her self-confidence. Show her he found her desirable. Shedding his clothes, Tom stretched out behind Selina and stroked the reddened indentations the corset stays had made on her back. “Your skin’s so soft. So pretty. Too pretty for you to hurt yourself like this.” He followed his hand with his tongue, sliding it along the ugly grooves as he massaged her rounded buttocks.
“I’m not pretty. There’s no need for you to lie.” Her voice was small, muffled by the pillow. She sounded resigned, and that set his temper off until he reminded himself what she’d been through.
Tom rolled away then came back, this time sitting on his haunches next to her. Staying close yet not close enough to intimidate. “I’m not lying, Selina. I’m telling it as I see it. There’s no way you can fail to know you turn me on. You’ve got to believe me when I say the chemistry between us is worth exploring further. Turn over. Show me you’re not afraid I won’t like what I see.” When she obeyed, he saw her eyes, wide open, scared, their expression a lot like that of a deer he’d once observed closely through the telescopic sight on his rifle. “Come on, baby, where’s the hot Domme who captivated me out at the club, looking on and cracking her whip into the air? She wasn’t afraid of showing off her stuff.”
Tears spilled over and wet her face when she looked up at him. They tore at him. God, the last thing he wanted was for her to cry again. “Let me see you smile.”
Her lips turned up slightly. But she still had that haunted look in her eyes. He cursed himself silently for having insisted she share the highlights of her life with him, when what had gone on before had little or no significance compared with the emotions and passion running hot between them now. Smiling down at her, he stroked her cheeks, brushed the tears away. “That’s more like it. Now come up here and give me a kiss.”
The salt from her tears stained her lips, emphasized her vulnerability. The hard grip of her hands on his shoulders told him she was trying ever so hard to be strong, maintain control. The tremor in her fingers confirmed her doubts. He had to get through to her, make her believe he wanted her with all her hangups, not just any woman who happened to be available to satisfy his lust.
He cradled her face between his hands, concentrated on the feel of their lips locked together, their bodies growing more aroused by the moment. Heat radiated from them, a cocoon of warmth surrounding them. Silent testimony to the connection between him and her, testimony he refused to let her deny or compare with old relationships, old hurts.
“This time’s for us,” he said, his lips still close to hers. “I’m going to make love to you, no props and no power switches, just me getting to know the real Selina Harrison and you starting to trust that I want you not just to fuck—but to learn every inch of you, inside as well as out. Okay?”
She nodded, the gesture hesitant yet encouraging, and when she did he nibbled a
path from her jaw to the hollow between her breasts. Her heart beat strongly against his cheek as he stroked her throat, her chest, ignoring the heavy nipple rings and concentrating on fondling the tips of her nipples, tracing around them. “So pretty. So mine.” Gently he cupped her breasts and kneaded them with his fingertips.
As if the marks from her corset fascinated Tom, he traced them first with his fingers and then with his tongue. Selina moaned with the pure pleasure of being seduced, not mastered, with feeling his hot, damp breath on her flesh, the sensations of heat and moisture and of being possessed. Could her fantasy man be real? Could Tom truly want more than just a convenient vessel for his desire?
She wanted so much to believe. To take that leap of faith that once had propelled her into the arms of a monster. But she was afraid the loving domination would morph into uncaring meanness once she dropped the façade of control and…
Oh God. His morning stubble slid along her belly, the abrasion incredibly arousing. Without her consciously directing them, her legs opened, giving him access to her wet, swollen pussy. His tongue, minus the tongue ring he’d been wearing last night, felt like warm velvet as he lapped up her cream. His hot breath stoked her fires, made her desperate to have him take her. Any way he wanted. She raised her arms, wrapped her fingers around the headboard as she lifted her knees and opened herself fully for his pleasure and her own.