He pulls me in for a hug and kisses my hair. “Thank you. Best wedding present ever. Not the house, although I’m excited to see the rest of it, but I love you, too.”
I blush and bury my head in him. That’s what I was trying to say with all of this, and I’m glad it didn’t get lost in translation. I haven’t said it for months, and it seems stupid to keep it locked away for occasions of near death, so I dig out the words that still make my stomach flutter. “I love you, Crispin. I love you.”
Epilogue
‡
Crispin offers me a hand.
“Well, what did you think? Am I going to be able to get you to do that again?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling I’m going to be awfully sore tomorrow.”
“I guarantee it.”
That cocky smile—it gets me every single freaking time. He tugs me to my unsteady feet and anchors me with a touch at the base of my spine.
“Oh, really?”
“But I don’t know that it’ll be from kayaking.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, Mr. Ardmore.”
“Yes, I am, Mrs. Ardmore.”
The warm, wet sand squishes beneath my feet as I go up on my toes, tipping my head back to ask for a kiss. The thin chain around my neck feels heavier, the ring resting on my sternum, my new center of gravity. I usually wear it on my finger like a normal person, but when Crispin insists on getting our exercise out of doors, I wear it this way. Unless I’m bathing, I don’t take it off. I love it.
Crispin lowers his head to mine, his lips demanding, his arms pulling me close. We’re both wearing nothing but bathing suits, and the contact of our slick, sunscreened skin and the salty stiffness of our hair is decadent. His tongue explores my mouth, tempting, teasing. It’s familiar, but it still makes my insides liquefy. It might be even more powerful now. A strange magic indeed.
He pulls me tight to him, applying a welcome pressure to the small of my back. When I can’t get any closer, he traces my scar with his thumb. He can do it without me flinching, though he senses me stiffen and strengthens his grip until I melt.
When he’s got me good and breathless, he withdraws, leaving me flushed and wanting. He turns matter-of-factly to the kayaks and pulls each one in turn onto the beach, and I help tow them over the sand.
“We can finish tying up down here, and then I thought we could do some tying up up there.” He gestures with his head toward the house, and my flicker of annoyance at not being kissed anymore is extinguished. Though I wouldn’t—haven’t—said no to sex on the beach, it’s less sandy up at the house. And there are more toys. House it is.
Crispin hefts the wet bag over his shoulder, and I grab our flip-flops. Yes, I, too, have goddamn flip-flops. A “house-warming” present from Crispin the first time I was in Kona after we got married. I checked two suitcases full of clothes to hang up in the closet and shove in the drawers, as well as toiletries to clutter up Crispin’s spartan bathroom.
“You can bring more things, India,” he’d said, frowning as he put the bags in the back of the Jeep.
“I know. I will. Though I wouldn’t think you’d want me to bring too many clothes.”
I like seeing my sundresses and my short orange robe hung up in what I suppose is our closet. Yes, our closet. The thought makes me smile, and I duck my head in shame. Crispin has made me soft, maddening man.
We tromp through the house, putting things back in their places. After everything’s been put away and Crispin’s taken who-knows-what out of the freezer to thaw for dinner, he prods me toward the studio. A change settles over me when I step over the threshold into the narrow hallway. This is my cue, and I pull on my role as easily as I shed my bikini. I soften and become more pliant for him while tugging the strings at my neck and ribs loose, dropping the sunflower-yellow scrap of fabric to the wooden floorboards before untying the knots at my hips and tossing that as well.
Behind me, Crispin’s breath catches at my casual striptease. I stifle a laugh when I hear him shuck his own shorts. We head straight to the bathroom where I kneel while he rinses off, taking his sweet time under the spray, making me antsy while I watch his muscles roll under his browned skin. By the time he’s done, I could scale him like a gecko on a palm tree. But before I can, he’s pulling on his jeans and a button-down, rolling up the sleeves and leaving the worn cotton open to show his torso and the shiny new St. Michael’s medal I gave him as a wedding present.
“Come here. On your feet.”
I take up my position, hands against the tile, and relax under the familiar process. He’s being extra thorough today, and I wonder if he’s got something special planned. His fingers work into the muscles of my shoulders, and I close my eyes.
“How are you doing today?”
He asks me this sometimes, and I used to say, “Good.” He’d scold me, and I’ve gotten into the habit of being very truthful, even when it’s hard.
“I’m really happy.”
He nuzzles my neck and kisses below my ear before biting my lobe. “Me, too. I thought maybe…” That gets my attention.
“Today?”
“If you’re ready.”
“I don’t know.”
“I know.” He tightens his grip on me, rubbing out the tension gathering under his touch. “Do you want to try? No is always an acceptable answer. And you have your safewords if you change your mind.”
I mull it over, my body calming under his sure touch even as my head races.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He rinses me off, pats me dry, and leads me into the studio, having me hop onto the edge of the table. My feet swing childishly in the air, and anxiety overtakes me while he brings over an end table and gathers the rest of what he’ll need.
When he’s collected everything, he grips my knees and spreads my legs so he can stand between my thighs. He kisses me, a sweet, soft kiss, and slides his fingers into the hair at the base of my skull.
“I love you, mili.”
“I love you, too.”
“The second this is too much for you, you’re going to tell me to stop.”
“Yes, sir.”
He steps in closer, and his hands glide down my body. They come to rest on my low back, his thumb tracing my scar, which I swear tingles under his touch.
“Tell me your safewords.”
He rarely asks me this—only when he’s going to push me hard—and the words that come easily to my lips reassure us both. “Yellow for caution, red for stop.”
“Good girl.”
He reaches under the table and brings out a wooden box that makes me smile. When he’s not coming back to San Diego with me, he still sends me home with dinner. But this box is shaped differently than the bento boxes that accompany me on my flights east.
“This is for you.”
I blink up to his grey-blue eyes. “What is it?”
“I guess you’ll have to open it to find out.”
I fake-scowl at his sass, take the box, and remove the lid. My eyes alight on the contents and brim with tears. Why does he have the ability to do this to me?
“Do you like it?”
“I love it.”
He reaches in and pulls out a beautiful, brown leather collar, outfitted with a brass buckle and a single O-ring and embossed with a vine. Setting the box aside, he wraps the collar around my neck and fastens the buckle. The smell of the new leather is intoxicating. My lids close, and I inhale, shuddering with delight at the familiar feel.
He cups my face, and I lean into his palm. “Still like it?”
“I still love it. What made you change your mind?”
I finger the O-ring while I wait for him to answer. I never thought he’d give this to me. And though I wanted it, wished for the concrete manifestation that I belong to him in this way, we all have our limits. It’s been a small sacrifice in the face of how perfect he is otherwise. We fit together.
“You’re so many things to me, India. I thoug
ht if I treated you the same way I treated my other partners that what we have would somehow mean less, but that was ridiculous. I want to be with you in every possible way, and this is one of them. It has no bearing on how much I love to hear you talk about your job and swear at your boss, how much I adore lying next to you and waiting to catch up to the place in a book that made you laugh because I know it’ll make me laugh, too. But mostly, I wanted to see my collar around your neck so badly I could taste it. And I thought it would make you happy. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making you happy. When I’m not driving you crazy, of course.”
“Of course.”
I break the rules and reach for him, threading my fingers through his hair and pulling him in for a kiss. He lets me get away with it for a few moments before he pulls back with a tut.
“Enough, pet.”
“Yes, sir.”
He takes the cuffs from under the table and wraps them around my wrists and ankles and then another set around my thighs. He cradles the back of my head with one hand and wraps the other around my back, laying me down on the table. When I’m settled, he attaches the cuffs on my wrists to the top of the table. As he applies the rest of the restraints, I try to focus on every sensation of now: the fine grain of the wood on the ceiling and the sunshine filtering through the high windows; the flex of my muscles when I pull and the resistance of the leather containing me; the familiar smells of verbena on my skin and the faint almond of the cleaner he uses on the wood; the trace of the taste of him still on my lips.
It all serves to distract from what’s coming. He touches my inner thigh, and I’m brought out of my trance.
“I’ll be right back.”
A quick nod of acknowledgement and he’s gone. In his absence, my game stops being so effective, and my breathing becomes shallow and fast. When he comes back, he lays a steaming hot towel between my thighs, and I suck air through my teeth. After a few seconds, the heat dulls. It feels good as he rubs through the cotton and cups me before he removes the towel. The shock of cool air makes me tense. His hands rest above my knees, widely spread and cushioned by rolled-up towels.
“Hips up.”
He slides a towel under me and strokes my hipbones once I’ve set my behind back down. He reaches for a cup on the end table and swishes a brush inside, making an exuberant white lather he spreads on me. It tickles, and I squirm as the badger bristles skim over my most sensitive parts.
During the two weeks I stayed in the studio after Crispin’s accident, I’d realized the shaving kit that had resided on an open shelf when I first came to Kona was no longer there. When I’d asked him about it, his answer had been sharp.
“I put it away.”
“When?”
“After you told me about your sister.” He’d blanched, no doubt remembering how I got the scar on my back.
“Why?”
“If I’d known, I would’ve put it away before you got here. I’m surprised it didn’t trigger you. I knew you didn’t play with sharps from the contract, but I had no idea.”
“I didn’t think much of it, other than to notice the strop. Honestly, I thought of it more as an objet d’art. What did you use it for? Clearly not your face.”
I’d stroked his cheek, the fine stubble. No straight razor use there, thank god.
He’d studied me for a moment. “My submissives. I used to shave them.”
“Oh.” Yeah. Oh. Hunter had left that alone, hadn’t touched it with a ten-foot pole. No sharps, end of story. Crispin had never mentioned it either. Off-limits. “Do you miss it?”
I’d been met with an uncomfortable shrug.
“It’s okay to say yes.”
“Sometimes. I enjoyed it.” His tone had quickly taken on a defensive or maybe protective insistence. “But I would never, ever ask you—”
“What if I offered?”
“That’s crazy, India. Why would you do that?”
“Because that’s how much I trust you.”
He’d held his arm open and waited for me to slide under, careful of his bruised ribs, and held me. “We can talk about it if you want, but I want to be a hundred percent clear I’m not demanding this from you.”
We’d talked about it since then, but now that it’s here… My stomach riots in protest when he stands over me with the horn-handled razor.
“Yellow.”
I tug at my wrists, muscles straining against my bonds. He lays a hand on my ribcage, his thumb extended between my breasts.
“Mili…”
“I said yellow, not red.”
“You said yellow, and I haven’t touched you.” His dark brows are crunched in concern, and his thumb strokes my sternum where my heart beats hard. Will I ever be able to let him cut me? No. But I can allow him this. At our most vulnerable borders, that’s where the good stuff lies, right?
“Please? I’ll tell you if it’s too much, I promise.”
He shakes his head. He could tell me no, we’re done, but instead he takes a step back and picks up the razor again.
“You need to be really still.”
“I know.”
He’s staring at me, looking for reluctance. I may be petrified, but I’m not backing down. I want this. And I can tell by his expression that he wants this, too. Me giving him something none of my other Doms have even been allowed to contemplate is making him burn for me. When he holds up the razor, the sharp edge glints in the light of the afternoon, and I try to silence the ugly voices in my head. I close my eyes before he lowers the blade to my skin.
He’s not going to hurt me. He never hurts me. He loves me, and I’m offering him a gift.
I tense at the first scrape of the razor and bite my bottom lip, swallowing a cry rising in my throat. But when it leaves my skin, I let out the breath I’ve been holding and release my lip from between my clenched teeth. That’s it? I open my eyes to see the intense look of concentration on Crispin’s face as he lowers the blade for another pass. A shiver runs through me at first contact, but then it’s gone. And again. Momentary panic replaced by a cautious ease.
He’s so focused. And I understand what he enjoys about this. It’s not my being at his mercy, although I know he likes that. It’s the ceremony, the ritual, the physical counterpart to how emotionally bare he’s laid me. After the third pass, his gaze flickers to my face, checking on me. “Okay?”
“Yes, sir.” My response is quiet but steady. Though my heart is pounding, I’m confident it won’t beat its way out of my chest. He drops a nod and goes back to work while I watch him. He’s gentle and meticulous, the definition of attentiveness. The more I relax, the more I can appreciate this act and what it means. A potent demonstration of submission, trust, and intimacy. I’m very aware of the collar around my throat. He’ll never leave me; he’ll always be thinking of me because I belong to him, I’m his responsibility.
When that bedrock’s been established under my feet, I’m free to concentrate on the sensations, on how beautiful he is, on how much this means to him. With every few passes, he looks up and offers a few words of praise, encouragement. I don’t know that anything’s ever made me feel so cared for. He’s able to do this because he’s earned it, worked for it. As he finishes, he teases me, brushing against me in ways that aren’t strictly necessary. What had been a torrent of anxiety has slowed into a swift-moving stream of desire.
I yelp when he wipes me down with a cold towel, and his mouth kicks up in a cocky grin. “Helps with the razor burn.”
“Sure.” I get a slap on the thigh for my snark. “I mean, yes, sir.”
“Better.”
He pumps some aloe into his palm, and this time how he touches me is far less clinical, far less impersonal. I’m squirming beneath him when he’s finished. I’ve been bare before—either gotten a wax or shaved myself if one of my assignations had requested it—but it’s been so long I forgot the heightened sensation, the incredible feeling of having nothing between this most sensitive of areas and the touch of your
lover. Or in this case, husband, friend, Dominant, equal.
By the time he slips fingers inside of me, I’m so desperate for him I groan at the minor penetration and get a slap to my breast for my trouble.
“You’re still not so good with the quiet, pet.”
“No, sir.”
“Good thing we have plenty of time to practice.”
Except maybe forever isn’t enough time to be with him. But I won’t be contrary. Not now. “Yes, sir.”
He torments me until I’m panting, my desperation forcing noises from my throat. The reminders to be quiet—a pinch, a slap, a tweak—are fanning the flames instead of banking them. When he stops, I squeal my protest.
“Hush, kitten,” he scolds as he begins to untether me from the table. I fight the urge to hold on and refuse to be moved because I want satisfaction so badly. Right here, right now. But when I’m free, he sits me up and guides me to the bed with a finger looped through the ring on my collar. It’s as if he’s tugged a string that runs to my core. God, I’ve missed this.
He drags a pillow to the center of the bed and urges me onto my stomach over it, then draws a chain from the head of the bed and clips it to the ring. I whimper. A quick dart of his eyes to mine tells him it’s not panic, but craving.
“Head down.” I turn my cheek and lay it against the chain, and I’m flooded. Holy—
Then he’s drawing my arms behind me, clipping my wrists together at the small of my back, and when he reaches for my ankles, I nearly die. When he’s finished, I’m hogtied and helpless. Any resistance I offer is against my own limbs. I lay in fruitless minor struggle as he stands and strips, teasing me with leisure.
Finally, finally, he’s kneeling behind me, urging my hips up so he can enter me. His fingers sink hard into my flesh, pulling me to him as he thrusts forward, forcing a moan from my throat. He picks up the pace, fucking me hard, and between the impact, the penetration, and the friction provided by the pillow, I’m close within minutes. And then there’s his aggressive hand grabbing my shoulder for leverage, his other one twisted in my hair, pulling just hard enough to tug at my collar, reminding me it’s there.
Intimate Geography Page 24