Taken

by Jennifer Dawson

  He stops abruptly and shakes his head, pulling out.

  I suck in air, attempting to catch my breath, but before I can orientate myself, he leans down and gives me the dirtiest, most savage kiss of my life. He pulls away and whispers against my lips, “Surrender, Veronica. Don’t think. Don’t try and improve on my behalf. Don’t worry about how you look. This is exactly how I want you, your lips swollen, your chin and eyes streaked, looking like a hungry little cockslut. That’s what I need from you, the surrender you’ve never given to anyone else.”

  Inexplicably, my eyes grow bright. I don’t want to fail, but I don’t understand what he wants. “Okay.”

  He kisses me one more time, and straightens.

  He pushes between my lips. My instincts want to fight, to control, but he said to surrender, so I ignore the desire and relax my hand on his thigh and the hard clench of my jaw.

  “Good girl. That’s perfect.” He strokes a finger over my cheek, the gentle touch at complete odds with his expression and the demanding rhythm of his cock on the back of my throat.

  He pushes deep, but when I gag, I fight my body’s natural response, relaxing more.

  Satisfaction washes over his face, and he nods.

  In a sudden flash, I get it. Crystal-clear clarity settles in the center of my chest and I know what he wants, what he needs. What only I can give him.

  I surrender. I ease the tension in my jaw, release the tightness in my shoulders and neck and force all my muscles to melt for him.

  For Brandon.

  This man who I knew, from the second I saw him standing on that balcony that night, would change me.

  He must see it in my eyes because all his hyper focus on me fades away and what is left behind is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  Pure, primal lust.

  He goes faster, deeper, thrusting hard into my mouth, down my throat.

  I’m choking, my eyes water and tears stream down my face, mixing with my saliva.

  And I don’t care.

  All I care about is him. What he wants. Pleasing him.

  The very air around us transforms, thickens with sex and desire.

  He’s breathing harsh now, panting, his lids heavy as he gazes down at me with utter possession.

  It’s surrender and it’s power and something else I can’t put a name to.

  “Don’t look away,” he orders, his voice holding no hint of kindness or deference.

  I might be surrendering to him, but in return he’s revealing his true self to me. It’s harsh, unrelenting and unleashed. It makes me greedy for everything he’s been holding back from me.

  I moan.

  He curses. Thrusts harder. Bruising my lips and throat.

  I let it all go. The thoughts empty, my mind goes fuzzy, and all I want in this world is to make him happy. To show him what I can give him, what I’ll do for him. How he won’t be sorry he chose me.

  His grip tightens in my hair. “You’re fucking mine.”

  Yes, yes, yes. Unable to speak, I vibrate the word.

  “Fuck.” His eyes never leave mine. “I’m going to own every inch of you.”

  I agree, with my eyes and my compliant mouth.

  Holding tight, he pushes deep in my throat. “Don’t look away.”

  I hold his gaze, our eyes locked, and something indescribable passes between us.

  His grasp becomes painful, but I don’t break contact, don’t resist.

  He growls, low and animalistic, before he thrusts hard and comes.

  I swallow around his cock, and never looking away, he shoots hot and thick down my throat. I can’t breathe, but I don’t struggle as he moans and pulses one last time before he pulls back.

  And still, we never look away, even though there’s something unbearably intimate about what passed between us. His strokes become softer, gentle. He rubs a crooked finger over my cheek. “What am I going to do with you?”

  I can’t even speak. I don’t know why, but my throat tightens like I’m going to cry.

  He falls from my lips and crouches down. He brushes over my swollen mouth and I choke on the emotions storming through me, mixing with the most incredible, consuming desire.

  He pulls me close, kisses my temple, before moving to sit on the floor and dragging me on top of him, settling me onto his lap. His arms close around me, and kissing my forehead, he holds me tight. “It’s okay, it will pass.”

  “Touch me,” I murmur into his neck. “Please touch me.”

  I can’t explain what I need. How I feel.

  He rubs my back, holding me close. “Tell me.”

  “I need something.” I start to cry.

  “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He presses me into his chest. “Let it all out.”

  I take his hand, shift, and put it between my legs where I throb.

  “Is this what you need?” He grinds his palm against me.

  I nod. “I ache.”

  He kisses my temple again. “I’ll take care of it, baby. Nice and easy.”

  With expert hands he unfastens my shorts and slips his fingers into my pants. He breathes into my ear. “So wet. So hot.”

  I lift my hips, but he holds me still. “Just let me do the work.”

  Eyes closed, I burrow close. “Please.”

  “I’ll take care of you. I promise.” His fingers circle my clit, over and over, sliding over slick flesh, making me gasp and shudder.

  The crushing need surges and swells, and I clutch him tighter, burying deeper, my face pressed into his neck as I weep and wish I could crawl inside him.

  “Sssshhh… I’ve got you.” He circles faster, and I gasp and shiver.

  Then the orgasm overtakes me and I tremble as the ecstasy sweeps me under and I melt into him. Hoping and praying that he’ll never let me go. I’m his.

  I only hope he’ll keep me.

  * * *

  Brandon

  Veronica finally relaxes in my arms, and I hold her close as she cries out what I’ve done to her. The tears don’t surprise me. They’re not uncommon. Submissive girls often experience a swell of unexplained emotion after they’ve experienced something intense.

  It’s everything else that surprises me. That shakes me.

  Veronica becoming mindless and needy, surrendering herself over to my pleasure is expected. Me losing all sense of time and place, overcome by the driving needs of my body, are not.

  She shivers in my arms, nestling closer, nestling her face into my neck.

  I brush my lips over her forehead and keep rubbing her back in slow strokes.

  I always care for a girl after I put her through the wringer. Always. Because it’s the responsible thing to do, but in my darkest moments of self-reflection I recognized that even though I did it with care, I did it mechanically. It’s what good dominants did. It’s not like I minded, or resented it, because I didn’t. But there was something detached when I held the girl in my arms.

  With Veronica, detached is the last thing I feel. Instead, I feel impossibly conscious of her, impossibly soft. I want nothing more than to protect her, and take care of her until she feels like herself again.

  Against my neck, she murmurs in a heavy voice, “Was that the…thing?”

  I smile, pulling her closer. “Yes, that was the thing.”

  She tilts her face to me; her eyes fairly glow with the brightness of her tears. “Why do I feel like this?”

  I run a path down her back. “It happens, you’ll feel better soon. I promise.”

  “Okay.” She turns back into me and puts her palm over my heart. “I liked it.”

  “Me too.” Her mouth around my cock had blown my fucking mind. I’d lost it in the end, all my vicious desire to claim her riding to the surface and refusing to let go. And even though I’d violated her throat in the most filthy, possessive way possible, basically refusing to accept anything other than her complete surrender, it wasn’t close to enough.

  “I want more.” Her words are thick, sleepy.
>
  My chest squeezes. “What do you want?”

  “Everything.”

  My throat is strained with foreign emotions I don’t really understand. But I promise anyway. “I’ll give it to you.”

  “Brandon?”

  “What, baby?” I’m not even sure where the endearment comes from. I’ve never used it before.

  “I want to be ruined.”

  Every single barrier I’ve erected over the last ten years is slowly and systematically being stripped away by her. I don’t want it, but I don’t know how to stop it either. So I tilt her chin, force her to look at me and say simply, “You will be.”

  17

  Brandon

  We’ve been messing around for over a week.

  Since we’re not fucking, we seem to have channeled all pent-up sexual energy into fighting. I’m not sure why we have all this pent-up tension, because the truth is, I can’t keep my goddamn hands off her. Our last argument ended with her straddled on my lap while she rode my fingers to orgasm. She’d braced herself on my knees and flung her hair back, giving me a show, her hips grinding and rocking in abandon. After, I pushed her to her knees and fucked her throat, my hands latched onto her neck to ensure the bruises I put there stay there. I like her marked.

  That was about two hours ago.

  And we’re arguing again.

  Her hands on her hips, her shoulders thrust back, her face tilted with defiance. She yells, “His numbers are wrong!”

  It’s gotten to the point that anytime she raises her voice in that sassy manner, it makes me hard. In a calm, reasonable tone, I say, “Cary’s numbers are not wrong. He’s been doing this for years, you’ve been here for two weeks.”

  She flings out a paper and it flutters to my desk. “I don’t care if he’s been here a century, his numbers don’t add up.”

  I raise a brow. “I review those numbers every month. Are you saying I’m wrong?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Of course I am. You’re not above it.”

  I sit back in my chair and rake my gaze down her body. She’s dressed in a black dress, all very conservative and businesslike. I want to rip it off her, but she’s making serious accusations so I focus instead. “Explain.”

  “He’s very good at it, but I think he’s skimming.”

  She believes the head bartender at my underground club is stealing. This is the kind of thing I hired her for because I’m getting too big to keep an eye on these types of details. But I sincerely hope she’s wrong, because Cary is one of my original employees, and I’d hate to think someone working for me for such a long time would do something like that.

  She walks closer to the desk, opens the spreadsheet she’s sent me, clicking on a cell to reveal an impossibly long equation. “Before you were doing inventory the simple way, ordering when your inventory got low, considering it profitable when you were in the black. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially when you were smaller, but times have changed. I thought it would be more efficient to order for both bars, especially when you’re thinking about opening a new place next year. I wanted a better way of tracking inventory, sales and maximizing our buying leverage. So I developed a simple algorithm designed to help correlate inventory and sales more tightly together.” She runs her fingertip along the line of code. “I have accommodated for comps, variables, broken bottles, and of course there’s always going to be some variance but his variance doesn’t add up.”

  In the time I’ve worked with Veronica I’ve discovered she’s some sort of math whiz. Her definition of a simple algorithm makes zero sense to me and might as well be written in a foreign language. I frown at the numbers. “How does that mean he’s skimming?”

  She tilts her head toward the computer. “Pull up his monthly reports and I’ll show you.”

  I pull up the latest report, opening up the spreadsheet, while her intoxicating scent wafts over me. Serious discussion or not, I can’t resist the urge to touch her. With my free hand I wrap my arm around her waist and tug her down on my lap.

  She doesn’t protest.

  At the beginning of the week, after I’d believed I’d at least taken the edge off my hunger, I’d determined I’d keep things strictly professional at work. That lasted about thirty seconds after my Monday morning meeting and I’ve given up the fight ever since.

  I’m not sure how I feel about admitting defeat, but the rewards seem infinitely worth it.

  She shifts on my leg, leans forward to point at the rows at the bottom of the screen. “It’s not that his numbers are wrong, or don’t total, it’s that his numbers don’t make sense based on the formula I developed.”

  I put my hand on her thigh, and work her hem up so I can touch her skin while I study what she says the numbers should be based on what Cary reported. “You’re right.”

  She shoots me a sly smile. “Does this surprise you?”

  I pinch her. “Brat.”

  She shifts her hips toward me before leaning over my desk and running her finger over the computer screen. “See this is the inventory numbers from the month before.”

  I grit my teeth as her ass nestles against my cock. “Go on.”

  She squirms again.

  God help me.

  “When you plug those numbers into the formula and sales trends, the variance is too high.” She presses back against me. She’s doing it on purpose. Enticing me. “It’s not a ton, maybe a thousand dollars over the month, but it’s still a lot when you consider the place is only open three nights a week.”

  This math I can do in my head, even with her squirming away on me. “About two percent.”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s call him in and talk to him to see what he has to say.”

  “Done.” She slides farther up my lap. “I asked him to come in tomorrow, it’s on your calendar.”

  “Aren’t you a good girl?” I grip her hips. “Are you rubbing against my cock on purpose?”

  “Of course.” She straddles my legs, leaning against my chest before turning her face toward me.

  “What do you want?”

  Her lips skim along my jaw. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  Veronica is not like other women I’ve been with. She’s forward. She doesn’t wait to see my next move, instead she instigates. This isn’t a trait I believed I liked, but I’m wrong. It forces me to plot on the spot, and before her I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I’ve been spontaneous. How long it’s been since I’ve had to think, instead of going through the motions of some scene I orchestrated in advance.

  With her, I’m entirely in the moment.

  I’ve been taking it very easy on her and she’s getting cocky in her power, of which I’ve allowed. I like lulling her into a false sense of security, only to watch her eyes get wide when I pull the rug out from under her.

  Which is what I’m about to do now. I run my hands over her stomach. “No, tell me.”

  “You know.” She smiles against my skin before sinking her teeth into my jaw.

  It shoots straight to my balls. I grip her hair and twist, yanking her head back. “I want to hear the words, explicit and dirty, from your mouth.”

  The pulse in her neck flutters and quickens. “I want you.”

  “Not good enough.” I dip my head and lick across her throbbing jugular. “Tell me what, how and why.”

  “Brandon.” My name is a needy sigh. She swivels her hips, trying to entice me into giving in to her.

  “Here’s how this is going to work. This is your last chance to tell me, if you don’t, I’m going to work your needy little cunt up until all you can think about is coming, and then I’m going to send you on your way. Next time I see you, I’m going to ask again. If you don’t tell me, we’ll start the process all over. During this time you will not sneak off and have an orgasm on your own, no matter how desperate.”

  She gasps and her knuckles whiten on the arm of the chair.

  Power threatens the very confines of my civility. It’s
why she’s such a risk, and so fucking addictive, I keep the beast that lives inside me carefully under wraps. An almost impossible feat with Veronica because I’m like a pacing caged tiger waiting for someone to open the door.

  I give her an open-mouth kiss on her exposed throat. She shivers. Her neck is her weak spot, which makes me hard. It’s so open and vulnerable, available to me at all times, in all circumstances. I raise my head. “In fact, from now on, I control all your orgasms.”

  She arches, her breath turning fast. “What do you mean?”

  I normally start small, safe and easy, but fuck that. I can’t do that with Veronica. Don’t want to. With her I’m greedy and demanding. “I mean you can’t come without my permission under any circumstance. If I’m not there and you want to touch yourself, you’ll call or text me first and tell me how and why you want to come. If I say yes, after you’ll tell me about it and thank me like a good girl. If I say no, you’ll suffer until I’m in a more giving mood.”

  “That’s insane.” Even as she says the words she grinds her hips against my cock. Her lips are parted and her chest is a rapid rise and fall.

  “It is. But you’re going to give me what I want.” I work four buttons of her blouse, then pull her breasts up to spill over her demi bra. I stroke my thumbs over her nipples and bite her throat, right where it curves into her shoulder.

  She groans and bows to meet my hands.

  I tease her, pinching and pulling and twisting until she’s writhing on my lap. She can come like this, and sometime very soon I’m going to show her, but that’s not for right now. Instead I lighten my touch, and drop one hand to her thigh before hiking up her skirt and cupping her silk-covered mound.

  I grip her, hard enough she gasps. “Oh god.”

  Grasping tight, I growl into her ear, “Your pussy belongs to me now. I own it. It’s mine and I control who touches my property.” Lust and a dizzying primal possession runs fast in my blood. “That includes you. So if you want to touch, you’ll ask. Do you understand me, Veronica?”

  “This is crazy.” Her objection is expected, but everything about her body is on board.