His voice was full of pain. “When I saw you together with Taylor at Dark Sin, it was like history repeating itself. I wasn’t sure if you had been with him behind my back. I mean, I trusted you, but I’d trusted her, and look where that got me. I was so angry at you, Myka. And then I realized—the reason I was so angry? I truly did care about you. I loved you. I didn’t want to lose you. Not to Taylor. Not to anyone. Certainly not to my own stupidity.”
Myka spoke quietly. “Taylor was just a moment, Gabriel—nothing more than a one-time encounter. I enjoyed the public experience with him, and let him flog me because I was a real person to him that night, not a sex toy. I could do it, or not. I had the power. I wasn’t a robot sub, I was a person being treasured. Do you understand? Sometimes with you—you turned into a cold sex master.”
She finally said it. “With the spoon, that one time? I hated that, Gabriel. And the night when I asked you to push me, but then it was too much. I hated that too. I felt like, at times, you treated me like a—thing. And the way you acted at dinner with your colleagues in Maine? That was just mean. I like the kinky games, even the punishments. But I need, I need there to always be a vein of sweetness in it, of kindness. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “Whenever I felt especially close to you, I lashed out by forcing myself to get cold and turn us back into a dom and a sub. And when I could no longer keep that boundary firm, I pushed you to leave me. I didn’t think I had what it took to be with you in a real relationship.”
His voice broke, and Myka was shocked to see tears in his eyes. “But it was real,” he said. “And I am so sorry for breaking your trust, and for pushing you too far, embarrassing you, treating you like a thing. I want to beg your forgiveness. I want us to try again. Je ferai comme tu veux. I will do whatever you want. “
Myka’s breath caught. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m asking for another chance, to be together, a real couple. Not just sex, but everything.”
“But how can we? If you don’t think you can trust or love?”
His words came faster. “Myka, that night before the club disaster, I did tell you I loved you. I said it in French, and I denied it because I panicked. I kept thinking about Rachel, and how I didn’t want to open myself up to that kind of hurt again. But I do love you. It was true when I said it that night, and it still is true. Je pense à toi tout le temps. Je t’aime. I think of you all the time. I love you.”
“You love me?” Myka’s mind wasn’t computing the words.
“Yes. I love you.” His voice was firm and tender. He got onto his knees and took her hands. “In French, in English, in any language. You are my life, my breath. I meant those words then, and I mean them now.”
Myka’s eyes were blurry. “I don’t even know how to believe this.”
“I think I loved you all along, from that first day we talked about philosophy. I just couldn’t allow myself to feel it.”
Myka was hot and cold at once. “And I’m supposed to—what? Come running back?”
“Give me a chance, Myka. Let me see you again, talk to you again. Spend time together. I’ll never ask you again to do things you don’t want, I swear. I will be what you need this time. Let me take you out for—coffee. French food. Art galleries. Let me love you. I want to show you that I can.” He shifted on the gravel pathway.
Myka didn’t smile, but she shrugged one shoulder. “I think I like having you on your knees for a change.”
His voice was firm. “I want you by my side everywhere, in public, at the charity events, and in private too. I want all of you, Myka. Not just to be a sex sub but a real partner. Is it too late? Have I ruined things between us beyond repair?”
Myka thought for a long minute, watching the koi. Some of them had stopped swarming and retreated back to the cooler depths, stilled from their frantic writhing. But a few of them hung on, hardy and hopeful, still gaping wide, waiting for any crumb.
He whispered, “Je serai chanceux de passer ma vie avec toi. Je t’aime.”
“I love you too,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I want to try again.”
“Oh, thank God,” he said, and jumped to his feet. He pulled Myka up into a tight embrace. Myka felt like coming home as her lips touched his; they fit, their bodies knowing how to move together. She cried as she wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m still so angry at you!” she lashed out, punching him hard on the arm. “But I’m crazy about you too, and I want to be with you,” she added, pressing another kiss to his face. Then she punched him again, as hard as she could, making her hand hurt. “Part of me hates what you did, still,” she said. “It’s going to take time to get past that. Maybe a long time.”
“I can wait, as long as it takes. I’m crazy about you too,” he said, not letting go. “Can I take you home, to my home, so we can wait together?”
“Not the hotel?” Myka pierced him with her eyes. “Isn’t that my real home?”
He flinched but didn’t drop her gaze. “I deserve that, and I’m sorry. My house. Yours too. Ours. I want us to be together.”
Myka hesitated. “You can take me back to Lourdes’ house, Gabriel. I’m willing to try again. But we need to do things right. If you want to be a couple with me, you need to show me it’s more than words. My trust has been broken, and it can’t be mended in one day.”
He nodded. “I understand. Thank you for the chance.” And his eyes were so full of love and happiness that Myka almost gave him complete forgiveness right then.
Chapter Sixteen
Over the next month, Gabriel dated her. He invited her to dinner with friends, and to dinner alone. He brought her to a donation gala and introduced her as his girlfriend, which made her blush in pleasure. He took her out at night to the country, to see the stars; he took her to the beach to search for her favorite green glass. And the whole time, even though he gave her passionate kisses, he refused to take her to bed or engage in any kind of dominant/submissive play. Myka’s sexual frustration was at an all-time high, but she understood what he was trying to do, and appreciated it on a fundamental level.
Myka found herself opening up, trusting him more, believing that what they had could be real this time, wanting to devote herself to him one hundred percent.
One night, sitting on a blanket in his backyard, having a wine picnic, she admitted, “If I’m being honest, I have to take some responsibility for what happened with us.”
He was silent, but she felt attentiveness in his posture. She continued, “I wasn’t honest with you, either. I should have told you what I’d heard about Rachel, and demanded to know if it was true. But I wanted to pretend I’d never heard it at all. I pushed myself past my limits because I thought it was the best way to keep you interested, and that wasn’t fair to either of us. I wish you had told me more about Rachel. If we had talked about this stuff earlier, we could have avoided so much heartbreak.” Her voice was not bitter. She wasn’t angry, not anymore. She just wanted to understand what had happened.
Gabriel wrapped his arms around her. “We both need to be honest going forward. I was messed up over Rachel’s deceit, and then when she came back and said the baby was mine, I was beside myself. I tried to keep my meetings and phone calls with her secret until I could figure out how to handle it.”
“See, I thought you interested in seeing her again,” Myka explained.
His grip tightened. “I wasn’t in love with her or trying to see her again. I knew logically that I was not the father—and couldn’t be. We ended things before she could have conceived, even with the most generous mathematics and the unpredictability of nature. But she was so adamant. Maybe she wanted it to be so. Maybe she was unhappy with her current life. But no, I did not want her back, even if the baby was mine. She and I are over forever.”
“So you—you saw her?”
He nodded, rubbed her arm. “She was nearly full term, and yet she managed to fly here to L.A. alone, to see me about the baby, to tell me
it was mine. I don’t know how she got onto the plane—there are rules against flying so late in a pregnancy. When we finally reviewed the DNA results together, she backed off. But I still had the responsibility to call her current lover and get her back to him. That was a hell of a mess. Although the love was gone, I wanted her safe.”
“I’m glad you’re not that baby’s father,” said Myka shakily. “That would have made things pretty difficult for us.”
“It would.” He hesitated, then touched her cheek. “But, Myka? I would want to be with you even if I did have a child with another woman. And I realized that I do want to be a father someday, to a different baby. With a very different, special woman.”
Myka’s eyes filled with tears and she shot a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Gabriel, no—”
He persisted. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m sorry about what happened and I want to be with you, only you. To make a life together, and someday, a family. Do you want that too?”
Myka couldn’t answer. Her heart swelled with emotion. Gabriel took a small package from the picnic basket and handed it to her. “Please open this?”
Fingers trembling, she opened the box to find the Tibetan sand painting, the one she’d broken and tossed at Gabriel’s feet outside Taylor’s club. It had been mended in a surprising way: The two cracked halves were fastened together with a vein of gold, a shiny jagged bond. She traced it with a finger, mesmerized. “What—”
“It’s a gold bond, Myka,” explained Gabriel. “The Japanese call it Kintsugi.”
“It’s beautiful.” Myka ran her finger up the gold again, then looked at his eyes as he spoke.
“It’s the art of fixing something broken with gold. Instead of trying to disguise the cracks, it emphasizes the fractures as it repairs them, and often makes the thing more beautiful than before. It’s a way of expressing regret at the past and hope for a beautiful future. I want you to know what we have is worth the effort to fix it, and I think we can be even more beautiful together in the future. I’m not going to try and hide my mistakes, or gloss them over. I’ll remember them always, so I never repeat them. I want to make your life golden, Myka, happy.”
Myka still didn’t speak, and he continued. “We talked in the beginning about the end justifying the means. I know what you were doing—you were trying to put up with my odd behavior, and change yours, as a way to get to the goal you wanted. And me, what I was doing? It was the opposite. I wanted to enjoy the means, live in the moment, day by day, and never have to worry about the end. But what if we do both, together? Enjoy the journey and have each other as the ultimate destination? Because I now know, Myka, that you’re it for me. I want you not just today, but tomorrow, and every day.”
He put the artwork down and took both of her hands. “If you’ll have me, Myka, I want to be your husband, to love you, to take care of you always. Will you marry me? Be mine? Do you love me as fiercely as I love you?”
She hesitated for only a second. “Yes, I love you. I will marry you.”
He crushed her into his arms and rolled her over, and she screamed in delight, and then her sounds turned to ones of pleasure as his hands and mouth were on her, urgent, touching, caressing. For a long time they lay together, holding each other, and Myka couldn’t imagine a better place than his arms, feeling his warmth and the beat of his heart against her cheek.
After a few minutes her body sparked with the ever-present attraction to him and she couldn’t resist. “So does this mean that we’re done being virgins again?” she teased him, reaching down to cup his hard erection. “Are you going to be my dom again?”
He held her chin. “Yes, and please swear to me that you will always be honest with what you want and need. Because I don’t care, Myka, what it is, how little or how much—as long as it’s genuinely what you like. Yes? I want to dominate you, have you be my submissive, as long as we’re always in tune with each other, both satisfied, both pleased. It’s never about how hard, how much, in absolute terms. It’s what you want.”
She nodded. “I promise. And you need to tell me too—what you want, and need, and about your past, your dreams. Everything.”
He kissed her lips and his voice was tender. “I will.”
Myka smiled and touched his cheek. Then she added thoughtfully, “But I think I’ve been a little bit bad, these past few weeks. I probably need a spanking to help me relearn how to behave. That is, if you haven’t forgotten how to do it.” She rolled her eyes and tickled him.
“Forgotten?” His voice was at once silky and dangerous. “Oh, chèrie, that’s not something one forgets. Have you forgotten how this feels?” And his hand slapped down hard on her ass.
“Ouch!” she cried out, but with a smile, because she’d missed his rough touch. “Yes, I think I forgot. Better do it again, just in case—ow!”
Gabriel pulled her to her feet and spoke gruffly into her ear. “Let’s go into the bedroom, Myka, and I’ll remind you of a lot of things.” He raised one eyebrow and held out his hand, and she was more than happy to follow him for a delicious reminder of past delights.
* * *
A few weeks later, on Thursday night, Myka was busy on a conference call with a client team, discussing program requirements, rubbing her bare toes into the plush carpet, and letting her shower-wet hair drip down the back of her robe. Gabriel strode in with a large glass of lemon ice water, his chest bare, in worn blue jeans. He kissed her lips, knocking off her headset. Myka giggled and shooed him away, returning to her call.
Gabriel stood smiling at her for a moment, then got down and knelt under the table, right in front of her chair. As she looked down at him, he mouthed, “open your legs,” to her, and slid her thighs apart.
Myka squeaked and coughed to mask it. She put the call on mute. “Gabriel, no! I have three clients on conference. You can’t do that.”
“You owe me this,” he teased her. “Go back to your call. You’ll hardly notice me down here.”
Myka pushed the button, absolutely sure that wasn’t going to be true. “No, I’m still here, Steve.” She sucked in her breath, because Gabriel leaned in and buried his head between her thighs, and licked at the thin fabric of her silk panties with his warm tongue. She made a small moaning noise and coughed again.
“Stop,” she whispered to him, then added out loud, “No, please keep going. We were at bullet number three?” She nodded to herself. “Mmm hmm. That’s right.”
Gabriel pulled the panties to one side and thrust his tongue into her, licking deep and firmly across her wet body. She squirmed, trying to get away, but he held her hips in his hands, keeping her legs open with his body and arms. Her breathing hitched a bit. “Yes, the next meeting will be Friday at ten a.m.”
Gabriel spread her labia with his fingers and began to tongue her clit, just the way she loved it. He did this when he wanted her to come hard and fast; he knew how to get her crazy for him almost instantaneously. Myka writhed in the chair, not sure if she was trying to get away, or trying to entice him closer.
“Steve, I need you to add some information to the presentation about the user interface.” Her voice cracked and she grabbed at the glass of water, but her hand shook as she gulped, so she put it down hard. “Steve, I’ll need to call you back tomorrow. I have—”
Steve continued talking, and Myka was in a state of torture. She needed to move, to moan, to make sounds. She needed to grab Gabriel’s head and pull him closer. But instead she had to sit here, letting him lick her senseless, while she talked to her teammates about things that had completely fled her brain by this point.
“Okay,” she said weakly. “Let’s wrap it up for tonight. Thanks for the meeting, everyone. Oh!” she cried out, as Gabriel gave her an especially wicked lick. “No, just my pet dog,” she said darkly into the phone. “He’s causing a ton of trouble. Yes, he’s new. Nearly housebroken. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow.”
She hung up and ripped off the headset. “Gabriel, you’re insane! I had three people on t
he phone! And you,” and she went into a moan as he swirled his tongue around her clit. She leaned back in her chair, tensing her thighs. “Oh, God, you know what that does to me, baby.”
“I do know,” said Gabriel, talking into her skin. “That’s why I’m doing it.”
He pushed at her thighs to spread them even wider, then put his mouth back on her clit and sucked. Myka screamed as the orgasm came over her suddenly, no warning, filling her with white-hot pleasure that blanked out her brain and made her whole body tremble. She shuddered under his mouth for a long minute, writhing and crying out, until the spasms of pleasure died down. “Oh, God. Gabriel. That was amazing. But you had me making orgasm noises on the phone!” She tried to kick at him, but he was still holding her thighs.
“A dog, ma chèrie? You referred to me as a pet?” he scowled, but Myka saw the smile in his eyes.
“Well, I had to say something!” she defended herself. “They were all, are you okay? I couldn’t say that my fiancé was under the table licking my pussy.”
Gabriel laughed out loud. “No, I suppose you could not.” He came out from under the table and drank her water, draining the glass. “Hard work, but I’m happy to do it for you,” he said, reaching under her robe to tweak her nipple.
“Hey,” protested Myka.
“And now,” said Gabriel with a wicked grin. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to punish you. You know the rules. No referring to me as a pet. And you don’t ever get to say no to my mouth on your pussy.”
“I never heard the pet one before,” said Myka, stepping closer and tracing the line of hair that lead down his bare chest into his jeans. “I think you made that up right now.”
“I’m going to give you a good hard spanking,” he said softly into her ear, stopping her hand from its gently exploration, and Myka felt herself go all liquid as she always did at those words.
“Go into the bedroom and get out the cuffs and the crop,” he told her.
“Yes, sir,” said Myka, leaning up to kiss his lips. He tasted of lemon and her own arousal. She hurried into the bedroom and got the necessary items, sucking in her breath to see what he already had waiting on the nightstand. But she quickly got into position, kneeling with her palms open on her thighs, head down, legs wide so he could see her when he walked in.
Myka and the Millionaire Page 32