by Mari Carr
“Put the necklace back on, Cait. Unpack those fucking bags and stay with me. Give me a second chance. Please.” He picked it up and stepped closer so he could put it on her. He let his fingers linger, as he pretended to struggle with the clasp simply so he could remain close to her, keep touching her.
“Nothing has been resolved.”
“Yet.”
“Lucas—”
“Let’s work through this together.” Lucas could see she wasn’t convinced, wasn’t finished arguing, but his patience had run out. He’d been aching to hold her since he opened the door to his penthouse and seen her. He reached out and gripped her waist, pulling her toward him. Her hands flew to his shoulders and he braced himself in case she tried to shove him away.
She didn’t. Instead, she moved her hands around his neck and rested her cheek on his chest. Lucas tightened the embrace.
“I missed you,” she admitted.
“I missed you too.”
Lucas bent his head to hers, kissed her more roughly than he intended. Even though she was still here, he couldn’t push aside the fear that she’d leave again. He couldn’t let her leave.
“Take off your clothes, Cait.”
She never hesitated as she slid off her slacks and panties, and then unbuttoned her blouse, shrugging that and her bra over her shoulders. It all fell to the floor in a heap. As she stripped, Lucas touched her, stroking every inch of skin as she revealed it.
Once she was naked, he lifted his chin. “Bed. Spread eagle.”
She shuddered. She loved bondage, loved being tied up, helpless, at his mercy.
He pushed away the part of him that had chosen this position as a way of trapping her here. If she was bound, she couldn’t run away. If she realized this was all a mistake, she’d have to stay. He had to make damn sure she never wanted to go.
Lucas shut those thoughts down as he pulled the straps on the corner posts above her head onto the mattress. He wasn’t holding Caitlyn captive. He was making love to her.
He couldn’t railroad her into staying with him the same way he applied force to make others give him what he wanted.
Could he?
Jesus, he was fucked up in the head.
And his stress was making its way to the surface. When he reached for her hand, she jerked it out of his grasp.
He looked at her with a confused frown. Caitlyn never fought him.
But now…
She rolled away from him to the far side of the mattress. Her grin was playful, but there was a wariness in her eyes as well. She was still questioning the wisdom of falling back into his bed.
Lucas didn’t blame her. Given all the dark places his mind was going, she was probably right to exercise caution. “What are you doing?”
“Making you work for it.”
Brattier words were never spoken. And they couldn’t have come at a better time.
Every fear, every ounce of stress, every bad thought flew out of his head as he stood on the opposite side of the bed and let his inner Dom come out to play.
“You have two seconds to get into position, Cait.”
“Or?”
He didn’t answer her sassy question. He said two. He meant two.
Lucas moved quickly. Caitlyn expected a verbal response, so his sudden movement caught her unaware. He managed to leap onto the bed and grab one of her wrists before she could escape from the other side.
She yelped with surprise as he tugged her toward him. She hadn’t been joking about fighting him. Caitlyn fought desperately to escape his grip, a fruitless effort. Within seconds, he had her facedown on the mattress as he straddled her hips to hold her in place.
She still tried to push herself up, so he grasped her wrists, caging them together in one of his hands behind her back. Even then, she continued to wriggle, seeking some means of breaking free.
He tightened his grip on her wrists until she gasped and let out a small mew of pain.
“Finished?” he asked.
Caitlyn’s breathing was heavy, loud, no doubt a combination of exertion and fear. She’d never tested him this way, never failed to obey his commands.
Lucas reached toward the headboard and with one hand, he unfastened a strap. With the other, he kept a firm hold on Caitlyn’s wrists.
Once he had the strap, he used it to bind her wrists, and then, because he had enough material left over, he looped the rest around her elbows. It was a tight tie, and Caitlyn felt it. He recalled their first night on his yacht. He wanted to go back there. Back to the beginning, before he’d fucked everything up.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
He’d heard every single tone in this woman’s repertoire—from pissed off to teasing to sad to scared. His favorite was that reverent whisper that told him she was aroused beyond all control.
Lucas knelt at her side once his knot was secured. Wiping the hair out of her face, he forced her face up until their eyes met.
“I’ve told you from the start, Cait. I won’t be topped from below.”
That was the only admonishment he offered. The rest of this was going to be a test of both their wills.
Lucas rose and pulled a box from below the bed. The two of them had acquired a wide array of toys in a very short time. Actually, he’d made ninety-nine percent of the purchases. She made him insatiable. And what was worse was he wanted to do it all to her. Everything. Every twisted, kinky thing in the book.
She’d teased him once that they would be out of sexual positions by Valentine’s Day if he didn’t pace himself.
“From this point on, I’m going to put you in the position I want. I don’t trust you to follow my orders.”
Cait’s face flushed, but she offered no response. She was determined to put him through his paces. Her mistake.
Grabbing the medium-size butt plug, lube and another strap, he knelt on the bed once more. Her eyes went wide. They’d experimented with the smaller plug quite a bit, but this one would be a bit more challenging.
Lucas gripped her hips and drew her ass up, her knees bent below. With her hands tied behind her, she couldn’t lift her head or chest from the mattress. Time to add to her sense of helplessness.
He tied the strap around her bent knees before securing it around her waist. She squirmed, testing out the bondage. He gave her a few seconds to determine she was truly trapped, and then he spanked her ass.
He’d chosen the position on purpose, planning to rekindle memories of their night on the yacht. He hoped it would remind Caitlyn of a better time. Help her forget what an ass he’d been this past weekend.
She continued to wiggle, seeking freedom she wouldn’t find until he gave it to her.
“Hold still,” he admonished.
Caitlyn wanted to obey him. She really did. But everything Lucas was doing to her was too perfect, too much.
She hadn’t intended to fight him when she crawled on the bed. Bondage was her favorite thing. But she had seen something in his face. Something that scared her as much as it broke her heart.
Lucas said he loved her. And she believed him. But at the same time, she understood that emotion didn’t come naturally to him.
Not that she’d ever fared much better in the love category. While Lucas had protected his heart, held on to it with the tenacity of a pit bull, unwilling to let anyone in, Caitlyn had done the opposite. She’d handed her heart over countless times, tossed the sucker right into the ring, to the wrong men, always hoping that maybe—just maybe—they’d be the one.
They were both scared right now. That much was obvious. He was a stranger to love and she was an idiot for it, which meant they were on very shaky ground.
But neither of them faltered when it came to sex. It was a firm foundation. Probably not a great thing to admit to herself, but it was all they had at the moment. That, and the love, and the hope that all the rest would turn to concrete eventually as well.
Lucas had looked helpless earlier, something she’d never seen in him. He needed thi
s moment as much as she did. Lucas needed to find his inner strength, and she wanted—oh God, please—to finally be with the one man who touched not only her body, but her heart and her mind, her very soul.
Lucas was it for her. There was no question about it.
She jerked when he squeezed the cold lube into her ass, and he spanked her again.
“Cait.”
It was a quiet warning.
Holding still was an impossibility. Everything he did had her wanting to scream, to demand more, to push herself toward him rather than away.
She was thinking too much. Again.
Caitlyn closed her eyes, shut down the thoughts and let herself float and feel.
The plug he’d selected was bigger than the one they usually played with. For a brief second, she wondered if that meant Lucas finally intended to take her there, to fuck her ass.
That thought, like all the others, drifted away when he pressed the tip to her anus. She sucked in a big gulp of air and held it. It was the wrong thing to do, but she didn’t have to worry about that.
Lucas never let her go too far astray. “Breathe, Cait.”
She expelled loudly. At least she thought it might be loud. Her ears were ringing, the blood in her body pulsing aggressively through her veins. It was always like this—too intense, too potent.
Lucas was a patient lover. He’d proven that over and over again. Each incremental progress he made in filling her with the plug was followed be a brief retreat. He was getting her body used to the toy very slowly, letting it naturally adapt to each deeper swipe that opened her wider.
Time passed without meaning. They could’ve been in this bed minutes or days for all Caitlyn knew.
And then, with one last push, the thickest part of the plug penetrated her and held.
She gasped. “Oh.”
Lucas punctuated the claiming with a spanking, a delicious one that wiggled the toy inside her as she cried out, begging him to take her.
How could she feel so full and so empty at the same time?
When the spanking ended, Lucas bent lower, kissing her sore ass cheeks gently, running his warm tongue over her hot flesh.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Her pussy throbbed, and for a moment, she wondered if mere words could make her come.
“I love you too,” she said, grateful to be able to speak the words at last.
Lucas stroked her ass one last time before rising again. She was disappointed when he left the bed, but she didn’t voice it. She understood perfectly well that he would take her when he was ready and not a moment before. She also knew that until then, he would test her limits and drive her arousal to a peak a few thousand miles higher than Everest.
She was surprised when he pulled a slim vibrator from the box.
“Shit,” she murmured, the curse prompting a wicked smile from her handsome lover.
Handsome. She recalled her first impression of him the night they’d met in the pub. Handsome had been just one of the words that had popped into her mind, but she’d thought the attractiveness dimmed by coldness. When had her vision of him changed? Morphed from the idea that he was a stern, intimidating asshole to a warm, funny, sexy-as-fuck man.
They said love was blind, but Caitlyn wondered if that was backwards thinking, because it appeared love had cleared her vision and allowed her to see everything she’d missed.
Lucas knelt beside her once more and pushed the vibrator into her pussy. One thrust and it was there, despite the tightness from her bound knees. While he had taken time with the plug, the same care wasn’t needed with the vibrator. For one, it was thin and nothing she couldn’t handle. For another, she was wet enough to float a damn cruise ship.
Lucas turned the vibrator on.
“Fuck.” The word fell out the instant the small toy started. It packed a punch. She was too hungry for more, and after so long without being touched, her greedy pussy was ready to roll.
He chuckled but didn’t speak, didn’t admonish her. Instead, he skipped the medium speed, went straight to high, and left the bed.
Caitlyn fought her bondage, trying desperately to use the toy to find her orgasm. She recalled the last time Lucas had bound her like this. They’d been on his yacht. The difference was, that time he’d forbid her from coming, and she’d had to fight off her climax. This time she couldn’t find it. Not without him. Inside her.
“Cait,” Lucas said harshly. “Hold still. Or I will bind you even tighter.”
She pressed her eyes closed tightly and struggled to regulate her breathing. She needed to find a way to concentrate on something other than all the stuff happening below her waist.
She wanted to come. Badly. So fucking badly.
A tear slid down her cheek. Nothing hurt, yet everything did.
Her body, her head, her heart.
She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.
Couldn’t he see? Didn’t he know what he was doing to her?
She needed him. Needed him to take her, to fuck her, to claim her. To love her.
“Cait. Open your eyes.”
Caitlyn shuddered when she heard his voice. The room had been quiet for what felt like hours, and while she felt alone, she never forgot he was there with her.
She lifted her lids, blinking rapidly to find focus.
He was sitting on a chair beside the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Lucas was studying her face intently. He hadn’t missed a thing. He never did.
He knew what she wanted, what she needed.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. There was a tone of awe in his voice, and something she couldn’t recognize. Sadness? Fear?
“Lucas,” she started.
He stood, shaking his head. “Shhh.”
Lucas untied her arms, only her arms. They fell to the mattress as she struggled to move them. He knelt behind her, his erection, still hidden inside his pants, brushed against her ass, jarring the plug, reminding her of its presence. He massaged her shoulders, kneading the tense muscles. It was bliss, but it wasn’t relaxing. Her body had been boiling, now it was simmering. Either way, she was still too fucking hot, still a powder keg set to blow.
Once she had the feeling back in her arms, she used them to lift her chest upwards a bit.
That was when Lucas gripped the plug and removed it from her ass.
She groaned. While he’d taken ages putting it in, he’d lost no time pulling it out. One tug and she was empty once more.
She hated it instantly.
Through everything, the vibrator had continued to beat a steady pulse against her inner muscles, keeping her on edge, but offering no way to shove her where she really wanted to go.
She heard Lucas unbuckle his belt, the zipper on his pants sliding down. She relied on her sense of hearing, too afraid to turn her head. Her emotions were tied too tightly to his right now, and she couldn’t take it if she saw anything else that looked like self-doubt or unease.
Everything inside her wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know how. What was worse was, she couldn’t even comfort herself.
Because as amazing as this was, there was a little voice in the back of her head telling her she was making a mistake, that she’d hopped into this bed because of hormones, not because of love or anything even close to common sense.
Nothing had been resolved. And she was a fool to be here.
Caitlyn focused on the headboard and shoved the thought away. It was easy to do when she heard the crinkling of a condom and felt more lubrication slide inside just seconds before the head of his cock touched her ass.
Lucas didn’t ask permission. He didn’t have to. The safe word was there.
Blue.
Never once in all their time together had she been tempted to use it. Tonight, she was.
Not because of pain or because she didn’t want what he was doing to her body.
But because her heart wouldn’t survive the aftermath of this.
&nb
sp; It just wouldn’t.
Lucas tightened his grip on her waist and paused. “Cait?”
Fucking mind reader. Somehow he’d sensed the change in her. At some point, she was going to ask him what her tell was. What kept giving her away?
“Please, Lucas.”
Please fuck me.
Please don’t hurt me.
She had no idea how he interpreted her request. All she knew was he slid inside, pressed his cock straight to the hilt.
Her knees were still bound beneath her, still strapped to her waist, holding her in an upright fetal position. However, with her arms free, she was able to rock herself.
They found their pace together, gradually building up the force and the speed. The vibrator that had been too small to help her earlier was exactly what she needed now, especially when Lucas reached around her and pinched her nipples.
She jerked roughly as she came, every part of her seizing up in one giant contraction. Lucas never stopped fucking her ass as she trembled with her orgasm. Once it subsided, he withdrew, removed the vibrator and began to unfasten her knees.
Caitlyn frowned. He hadn’t come yet.
Once she was free, she fell facedown on the bed, her muscles turning to jelly.
Lucas twisted her to her back.
“You didn’t come.”
“I want to see your face, Caitlyn, when I make love to you.”
She lifted her arms to his shoulders and parted her legs.
Lucas pulled off the condom and tossed it on the floor. He pressed his thick cock into her pussy, and she knew he had the right of it. She loved every single thing they did in bed, but her favorite times were these. When it was just the two of them, no bondage or toys or games, kissing and touching as he slowly slid in and out of her body.
For someone who’d spent a lifetime wishing for anything other than vanilla, she appreciated the irony in that. She’d finally found her perfect Dom and, while she loved the hot stuff, she preferred the vanilla.
Be careful what you wish for.
She’d had that fear at the beginning, but it certainly hadn’t taken on the meaning she expected.
Lucas kissed her gently, his tongue touching hers. She ran her fingers through his hair and over his face and beard. She loved to stroke—or pet it, as she teased him.