A beautiful red strip blossomed on the pale skin of her ass.
He couldn’t resist pinching it, adding another layer to the painful pleasure. Then he calculated, struck again. This time, he hit harder and Suzanne cried out more violently. At the same time, she shuddered as if something clenched deep inside. “More?” he asked, although he was pretty sure what the answer would be.
She nodded, the movement a bit frantic. “Yes.”
Now that he’d checked in, he could push a few more buttons, sound more commanding. “Five more. You’ll take five more for me.”
He hoped she knew she could say no, use a safe word…but he didn’t need to worry about it because she responded with another nod and a smoky, whispered, “Oh yes, please yes.”
“Then count for me.”
And she did, one to five, although with each number her voice got shakier, less coherent. By the time the last stripe joined the others on her ass, he thought for a second she was going to cry.
Instead she began to laugh throatily. “So good,” she choked out. “Just what I needed. How did you know?”
Because I know you. He wasn’t about to say it because damned if he could explain his conviction and it would probably sound creepy outside of his head. But it was true on some level. He went for a simpler, equally true explanation. “I needed to do it, so I guessed. Doms and subs are mirrors when everything’s working.”
“Everything’s working,” she breathed, and then, “Fuck me, Neil. I need you inside me.”
“Condom…” he said stupidly. The condoms were in the bedroom, where he’d been convinced they might stay untouched for months. They might not really need condoms now that she knew Frank hadn’t been unfaithful, but neither of them were in a place to have that conversation right now.
“Front pocket of my bag. Brought some just in case.”
Women’s pocketbooks were personal spaces, and it had always seemed almost too intimate, with past lovers, to rummage in them. The fact it seemed so natural to fumble in her pretty, soft, expensive-looking bag proved as much as anything else that he had it bad for Suzanne. Like he needed more proof.
He ripped open the condom with suddenly awkward hands, rolled it on at lightning speed. Next time he’d have Suzanne do it, teasingly, but he didn’t want the interruption. He kicked her ankle, not hard, so she spread those wonderful high-heeled legs wider.
And then he was inside her, fast and rough and deep, though she cried, “Oh God, so good,” so it wasn’t too rough or fast. He gripped her hips and forgot everything he’d ever known about finesse as a lover, just fucked fast and hard.
And Suzanne, wonderful, freaky Suzanne, slammed back against him, fucking herself on his cock just as hard as he was fucking her. Her pussy grasped at him, and she was making beautiful, anguished noises like this was simultaneously the best and scariest thing that had ever happened to her. He was fucking out all his fear from when she was missing, all his worry about his job and their relationship, everything. He laughed the way she had earlier because now that he was inside Suzanne, everything made sense again. There was no way he was going to last long, not at the rate he was going, so he slipped one hand from her hip to her slick, swollen clit, found that metal ring like a target and began to circle.
She was already bucking and keening, but that pushed her over the edge. Suddenly, she was clamping down on him like a silken vise and calling out his name. The sound of “Yes, Neil, yes,” as much as that delicious grip, pushed him over the edge.
He was astonished, but maybe he shouldn’t have been, when, after a shower, she turned to him and said briskly, “We need a plan. Let’s brainstorm. Janice knows a good lawyer.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the end, the lavish praise of Neil’s bravery from the Herald and the local news affiliates, coupled with the fact that Neil had narrowly managed not to break any laws except those of common sense, got him off the hook. Maybe he could also thank the politely couched threats of that lawyer friend of Janice’s who, despite his bedroom proclivities, wasn’t at all submissive where his clients were concerned, or the good word of the rich and influential Ly Vo.
But Neil figured it was Suzanne who saved him. It wasn’t so much anything she did or said in the hearings, though it couldn’t hurt that she swore under oath she knew about the tracking software on her phone. No, it was her being back in his life that gave him the strength to deal with the bullshit and the tough questions and the occasional wish to run away to Bora Bora and become a beachcomber.
In the weeks it took to go through departmental hearing after departmental hearing, though, he and Suzanne talked every day but didn’t get to spend any time alone. It might look bad, the lawyer advised, like maybe he’d coerced her into saying all the right things. Even if they’d been willing to risk it, he was so spent at the end of the grueling days that he didn’t think he could do her credit. Besides, she was busy herself, commuting between Janice’s place and the Bellwood house, which she was getting ready to put on the market. Too many memories there, she said, and too many of them grim.
She still hadn’t told him where she planned to move once the house sold and he hadn’t formally asked her to move in with him. Every time she told him about something she’d had fixed, some items she’d donated or sold, he bit his tongue. Not time yet, he told himself. Wait until he knew he had a job and a future.
The day he was reinstated, she left work early and he picked her up at South Station on the Indian. “I’m still a cop,” he said, letting the simple words carry the weight of the relief, the joy, the renewed sense of security and purpose.
And Suzanne, wise Suzanne, embraced him and said, “Let’s celebrate.”
“Some of the guys wanted to go out for beer. Said you could come too.” He paused for dramatic effect then added, “I told them we’d make plans for tomorrow or the next day, that my priority tonight was celebrating with a beautiful redhead. I got you a helmet and I borrowed a leather jacket from Janice so you’ll be safe and warm.”
She laughed. “I’m tempted to say how about heading straight to Dorchester and your bedroom, but I’d like a bike kind of adventure too. How about dinner someplace scenic?”
Neil’s heart grinned as much as his face did. And he didn’t stop smiling all the way to the North Shore.
It was early November—the hearings had taken what felt like forever, but now that they were over, Neil could admit they’d wrapped them up pretty quickly for something that involved so much red tape—but the weather was unseasonably warm. Still cool for the bike, and there was no foliage left except a few brown oak trees, but it felt good to ride with Suzanne behind him.
He’d guessed she’d love being on a motorcycle. He was right. She wrapped her arms tight around him and pressed her head against his back. She was grinning like a fool when they stopped for coffee at a rest stop off the highway, and she flat-out laughed with delight once they got onto the winding back roads of Cape Ann, tree-lined, but with glimpses of the Atlantic in the distance.
Why had he waited so long to do something as simple as take Suzanne for a ride on the Indian? Oh, yeah, both of them had spent most of the fall trying to get their lives back in enough order that they could think about dating again.
More to the point, why couldn’t he time-travel so he could find a younger pre-Frank Suzanne and make her his? It would spare them both so much trouble. Too bad it would only work in science fiction.
Neil almost proposed as they watched the sun set over the water near Gloucester, huddled together against the chill, but he bit his tongue. Too soon. They hadn’t known each other long, though they’d bonded quickly because of the stress and fear of those wild days. She also still got that haunted look in her eyes, as if she was musing about Frank or wondering if she was really ready for a relationship.
Give it time, he told himself. She wasn’t going anywhere. And when the ti
me was right, he’d be ready with a ring and everything. But tonight he would ask her about moving in, or at least moving closer to Boston if she wasn’t quite ready to make the leap to sharing a house with him—and his father.
That didn’t seem so premature.
* * * * *
Sunset on the beach, bracketed by rides on Neil’s amazing vintage Indian, almost crashed through the last of the walls Suzanne had put up to protect herself.
They’d been crumpling anyway, getting more fragile as she sorted through the remains of her life with Frank. Ly Vo had told her Mayhew Robotics had been doing defense work all along, in addition to the industrial and consumer work she knew about. So all her memories of Frank were damaged now, even the ones from early in the relationship when they still connected. Not that he’d been a bad person. He’d been an honorable if often difficult man. But she’d never known him. And maybe he’d never known her either, not really, and in her case, she didn’t have national security and military secrets as an excuse. They’d fallen for each other’s shiny surface and rushed into a relationship based on assumptions, sex and hot cars—and once the shiny wore off, it turned out there wasn’t much in common. In many ways, Neil knew her better than Frank ever did.
And that was both beautiful and terrifying, because all the time they were celebrating Neil’s reinstatement, she wanted to ask about the future, wanted to ask about moving in after she sold the echoing McMansion in Bellwood. But that didn’t make sense. Their brief relationship had been one dramatic upheaval after another—punctuated by incredible sex and that just made it trickier. The sensible thing to do was to spend time together now that things were on more of an even keel, when spies, national security and grave danger weren’t involved.
Having more of that mind-melting kinky sex, sure, but also figuring out how much of their bond was real and how much was shared stress and kinks in common.
That was the sensible thing to do. Years ago, she’d rushed into a marriage with a handsome man she didn’t know well, with less than stellar results. She and Neil wouldn’t have anything like the same kinds of problems, because he wouldn’t keep secrets. But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be issues they’d need to work out, especially considering their age difference.
She didn’t want to be sensible where Neil was concerned, though. She wanted to exclaim, “Whee!” or something equally articulate and throw herself into building a future with him. Without worrying if their seeming feelings for each other were real. Without thinking fifteen years older way too often.
Luckily once they got back to his house, she didn’t need to be sensible, didn’t need to worry. Because in the confines of the bedroom, he wasn’t going to give her that option.
He didn’t. “Strip. Kneel,” he commanded as soon as he closed the bedroom door.
Then he said, “I need to touch you all over, then whip you. And then I’ll need to touch you some more.”
That was only the beginning of the evening.
* * * * *
They ended up snuggled together, at first too spent to speak. Neil had pulled up a light blanket and even though it wasn’t cool in the bedroom, Suzanne was grateful for its comforting softness.
Especially when Neil pulled her even closer, pressed his body against hers and said, “So, I know living fulltime in Bellwood’s right out for you and sooner or later you’re going to want to get out of Janice’s spare room.”
“It’s kind of putting a cramp in Janice’s style,” she admitted. “Some of the boy-toys don’t like knowing there’s someone else in the apartment. And some of them like it so much it’s distracting for all of us.”
“Want to move in here?” Neil’s words tumbled out in a mad rush, as if he just wanted to get them out into the open, or as if he hoped if he said them fast enough and she didn’t like what she heard, she could pretend she hadn’t caught it.
Oh, she caught it, all right.
And she liked it way too much.
Her body was still singing. It thought that being with Neil, playing with Neil, getting all sexy and kinky with Neil, was the answer to everything, and she wanted to believe it was right.
She and Neil might have the best sex ever—and she was willing to believe that—but great sex didn’t eliminate the age gap between them.
They really needed to address that. Like now, before they made any life-altering decisions, even ones they both wanted.
Suzanne jumped to her feet and began to pace. She was naked and that should have made her feel self-conscious. It didn’t, and that was just a testament to how over her head she was.
“You’re thinking about Frank again,” Neil said. “Don’t. I get that you’ll need to sometimes because that kind of shit takes time to heal but for now, try to enjoy.”
“I’m thinking, but not about Frank. Just about how insane this all is.”
“This”—Neil gestured to himself and then to her—“us being together, having crazy-good sex, is probably the least insane thing that’s happened to either of us since early September. Longer than that for you, maybe. We work, Suzanne. We’re hot together. If you move in, we can do this all the time.”
Of course. They were hot together. Suzanne couldn’t argue that. But the way he put it proved her point. Insanity lay down this road. Great sex, sure, but also insanity. What she thought she felt for Neil must be an illusion, comfort in a dark time. And what he felt for her was a combination of lust and protectiveness, which was pretty awesome for a mind-melting fling, but wasn’t likely to grow into something long-term. Didn’t mean she had to dump him, but she couldn’t expect too much either.
Much as she wanted to. Much as she thought she might love the kid, he was still a kid.
She had to cut off her stupid fantasy in the bud because there was no way a guy like Neil was seeing a future with a woman like her. If he thought he was, it was because he hadn’t thought the situation through. That sucked, but she owed it to both of them to bring it up, make sure they weren’t going to make a tempting, terrible mistake.
Neil was staring at her now, and the calculating look in those blue eyes told her she had about three seconds before he got all dominant on her ass and reset the moment back to sex.
God that sounded tempting. Still, there was something she needed to say first. “I’m fifteen years older than you,” she said slowly.
“Yeah, and?” He got off the bed too, stalked closer. And it was a stalk, like a big predator circling prey. Her heart skipped a beat and her pussy clenched. He was way too hot for her.
“When you’re the age I am now, I’ll be sixty.”
“So. You’ll still be you. Still be gorgeous. You’ll look great with white hair.”
One step closer. If he touched her, she’d be lost.
“All I’m saying is I know this can’t work in the long run. I shouldn’t move in, tempting though it is. But if you’re all right with continuing as we are…”
“I’ll be your personal fantasy-fulfillment service if that’s what you need from me.” Oh God, now his hands were on her naked skin and she was lost, just like she’d thought, no doubt about it. His grip on her shoulders was rough, real, erotic and grounding at the same time. “I’m not really all right with it though.”
She froze.
“The Dom on Demand thing is fun for a while, but it means leaving walls up between the Dom and the sub. I want to tear those down between us.” His grip on her shoulders tightened, bruising. Pain zinged and damn, her body wanted anything he’d give her.
Then he stepped away, swallowing hard. His gaze clouded and he looked like he was struggling for words, or maybe for control. That lasted for about half a second, then he was back in her face again, blue eyes fierce. “Do you really believe this can’t work in the long run? Do you not want it to? Or are you just scared? I need to know.”
She looked away, unable to meet that
clear blue gaze. Seconds ago, she’d been sure, but Neil’s ferocity made her question in wonder. Could he…
Oh my God, maybe he did feel what she did. They were both talking around it rather than saying anything outright, but maybe this wasn’t so impossible.
“I’m scared,” she finally said. “I’m so much older than you. I can’t have kids. And…” She could say it. She’d been through actual danger, the kind where she could have died, and Neil had come through for her. She could take this risk for both of them. “It’s the wrong time and it’s crazy, but I’m falling in love with you. I think it started before you rescued me, so it’s not some kind of delusion born of gratitude. I just can’t imagine—”
“Imagine it, Suzanne. Know it.” Neil stepped forward, swept her roughly against his naked body. “I love you. Plus, I think you were born to be a cop’s wife.”
It took her a few minutes to process what he’d said. “Did you just…”
“Propose in a way we could both pretend hadn’t happened if necessary?” He hesitated then nodded. “I think I did. I was going to wait until we’d spent more time together without any spies involved, and then do it right with a ring and all that shit. But yeah, I just proposed. Because I think you needed to hear I love you and I’m serious about making this work. It doesn’t get more serious than asking you to marry me.”
She took a deep breath. Logic told her all the reasons this was a bad idea, but she ignored most of them. “I’ll still get gloomy about Frank sometimes,” she confessed.
“I’ll just beat it out of you.” He said it with such good humor she had to smile.
Suzanne wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, but instead of doing either, she rose up and kissed him. He pulled her closer, close enough she swore every inch of his skin was burning into her and her hard nipples were drilling into him. He teased at her mouth with his tongue, and then he stopped teasing and began to move in her mouth like he was fucking it. At the same time, he clasped her tender butt in his big hands, raised her even higher. Heat bubbled inside her and she moaned deep in her throat. She straddled his thigh and knew she was leaving a hot, wet trail on his skin. His cock jutted against her, hard and proud again. Advantage to a younger lover, she thought shamelessly. Then she didn’t think about anything much for a while.
Drive: Cougars, Cars and Kink, Book 1 Page 21