by Lilli Feisty
Mark had noticed that whenever Mary would clench her hands, her domme would stop and kiss her gently. It had been a beautiful thing, and from them Mark had learned a lot about watching the signs of a sub and knowing when they were reaching their limits.
After, they’d gone back to his room and spent the rest of the night using Mary as their willing plaything.
He was hard thinking about it. He remembered the way Mary had taken him into her mouth as her mistress—Beth, if he remembered correctly—had spanked her ass. He remembered the way each time he heard that slap of skin on skin, she’d taken him deeper and deeper.
He closed his eyes. “I remember, it just took me a minute.” Suddenly needing a drink, he pulled a bottle of Jack from the minibar. Ah, you knew you were successful when the minibar was stocked with full-sized bottles of booze.
He poured a shot into a tumbler. “How could I forget Detroit’s kinkiest couple? But you didn’t answer my question. How did you get into my room?”
Beth smiled sweetly. “Don’t you remember? You told your manager to let us in anytime you were in town. We wanted to surprise you.”
He laughed, the sound rough and cracked. “Yeah. You did.”
Beth raised a brow at him. “So why are you still dressed?” Bending, she reached beside the bed and picked up a long-handled rubber paddle.
Setting his glass down, he took the paddle and drew the wide end across his hand. He looked at Mary, tied and naked before him. Her pussy was glistening, waiting. Her eyes were dilated and expectant. She was a professional, this one. A true pain slut, exactly how he liked them. He could really let go with her. He could turn her over and paddle her shoulders, her ass, her upper thighs. He could take a flogger and drag the long, leather strands across her open pussy until she cried out for him to smack her clit. And he knew from experience that was exactly what she’d do.
He slapped his palm with the paddle, and the girls both jumped at the sound. He grinned. “Now, ladies. Who wants a drink?”
It was 1:30 a.m., and Ruby couldn’t sleep. Her head hurt, her heart hurt. She was a mess.
She was sitting at the kitchen table staring at her cell phone. She hadn’t heard his voice since she’d called to make sure the Riders would be playing for the Spring Fling. She’d had an excuse to call him then, but now she just had a need. A need to hear his voice. Unfortunately, she’d gotten his voice mail and she hadn’t left a message.
The need to see him burned inside her gut, and she was having a hell of a time putting that fire out.
He was just across the city. She didn’t know for how much longer, but he was there now, and she wanted to see him.
She picked up the phone and dialed.
“Ruby?” He sounded breathless.
His voice was such a comforting relief that she started to cry when she heard it. Pausing, she waited for her throat to relax enough to speak.
“Ruby. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, God.” She started babbling because she had to talk about her experience at the sex club with someone who would understand. She told him everything, from the bouncer to the candle wax to the man who’d invited her to join him at the spanking bench.
“Oh, God. Mark, it was just so…” She trailed off when she heard noise behind him. Voices. She held her breath, filled with an odd premonition. “Am I calling at a bad time?”
“Oh, baby.” There was something in his voice, a haggard strain she’d never heard before. “It’s fine. Talk to me, Ruby.”
“Where are you?”
“Detroit, actually. We got called in as a replacement band at the last minute.”
“Oh.” A chill went through her. “Detroit.” He’d flown across the country and she hadn’t even known. “Okay. So, are you at a party now?”
“Um, not really. No.” She’d never heard him sound so tense, and her stomach lurched with a sickening wave of nausea. The voices were murmuring in the background. Female voices.
She swallowed down her queasiness. “You… you’re busy. It’s fine.”
“Ruby,” he strained out in the slow, measured way one would use when speaking to a person on the edge. “Give me two minutes. Two minutes, and I’ll call you right back.”
“You’re with someone, aren’t you?”
A long pause and then, “Yes.”
A singsong voice came through the phone. “Mark. Are you coming back to us?”
Ruby couldn’t think or breathe or speak. There was a vise clamped around her throat. Even as she told herself she had absolutely no right to be jealous or angry, her words came out in a tight screech. “Us? Us? As in two?”
His voice came at her in a low and intense hiss. “Didn’t you just go to a fetish party, Ruby? Didn’t you just call me because you had to tell me all about your experience and how hot you are now because some guy invited you to join him in a little play session?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like then?”
He was agitated, angry, and the last thing she wanted to do was fight with him. There was a part of her that was still high from her experience at the party, and she just couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t deal with anything, especially him and his sluts.
“What was it like?” he asked again, and in her mind she could see him clenching his teeth.
The experience had left her too raw, too open to lie now. “I wanted it to be you,” she whispered and hung up the phone.
“Goddamn it!” Mark threw his phone onto a side table where it skittered across the wood and landed with a thump against a lamp. Ruby wasn’t answering. She’d been distraught; he shouldn’t have argued with her when she was coming down off a high like that.
“Mark, you want another drink?” Mary pulled on her coat and tied the belt at her waist. “Before we go?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Beth cocked her hip to the side, emphasizing her long, gorgeous legs. “You sure you want us to go? You seem upset, and we have just the girl for you to take your frustrations out on.” She winked at him. “Our offer still stands. It’s not too late to change your mind.”
He’d just finished a drink with the girls, and they were on their way out. Despite how sexy they were, they didn’t appeal to him. He’d figured one cocktail would be enough to send them on their way without too much argument, and he’d been right.
But now? He was tempted, so fucking tempted. He knew from experience that sex was a fan-fucking-tastic way to forget his problems.
The thought of some other man touching Ruby made his chest pound with cold jealousy and anger. He knew damn well he had absolutely no right to those feelings, but he couldn’t stop them.
Playing with these two women would get his mind off things, chase all those fucked-up feelings away.
At least temporarily.
Beth took a step toward him. She rubbed her hands up his chest and purred like a kitten. “You sure you don’t want us to stay? Me on bottom. You on top, just like last time.” She bit her lip in a practiced way. “I haven’t let anyone top me since you, babe.”
He doubted that very much, but he appreciated the effort. His gaze darted between the women, so beautiful, so sexy, and so available.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, ladies. Not tonight.”
After they’d gone he went to the window and pulled open the curtain. A million lights twinkled in the skyline. He stared until the bright colors blurred together.
Last year he’d had a great night of meaningless sex with two gorgeous women. And tonight he’d sent those same two women away. If he’d been here a few weeks earlier, he would have been fucking ecstatic to find them in his room.
Then why did he feel as if he’d just dodged a bullet? What had changed?
Of course, he knew. The answer came in the form of a wickedly smart, sexy raven-haired woman who smelled like jasmine and tasted like heaven.
So, yeah. He knew the answer. The question was: Wha
t was he going to do about it?
Chapter
Twenty-One
Ruby woke from a recurring nightmare.
It always started the same. She was back at the house at the beach. It was dark and she couldn’t find her sister. She was in her nightgown, running through their small house, calling Claire’s name. But she couldn’t find her; not in their room, not in their mother’s room, nowhere…
She jerked awake, her heart jackhammering in her chest.
It was ridiculous to feel guilty about a dream. Ruby tossed her covers aside and padded to the bathroom. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were wide, scared. Her body felt empty.
Making her morning coffee, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. But as her mind slowly awakened she realized it wasn’t really the dream that had her upset; it was the experience from last night. The party, the things she’d seen. The late-night call to Mark.
What the fuck had she been thinking? With her coffee, she went to the living room and plopped into her favorite chair. She took her cell phone out of her bathrobe pocket and dialed.
“It’s nine a.m.,” a gravelly voice answered. “This better be good.”
“I had a bad dream.”
“Aw, sis. The geyser dream? Or the locked door?”
“Locked door.”
She heard the sounds of Claire stifling a yawn, moving in her bed. “It’s okay, honey. It was just a dream.”
She laughed shakily. “You’d think I would be used to these by now. I mean, it’s been what? Twenty-some years?”
“You’re too uptight. You never allowed yourself any room to get pissed or frustrated. I’m not surprised it all comes out in your dreams.”
“Thanks, Freud.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“I guess.” She blew on her coffee. “Claire, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you think I failed you? Be honest; I can take it.”
She heard a quick intake of breath. “What? Are you kidding? Growing up, I thought you were better than any mother I knew. And way cooler, too.”
“Mom did her best.”
“Mom’s a flake and you know it. You’re the one I always looked up to. Even now, you’re still my role model.”
“I’m no role model, far from it.” What would Claire think of her perfect sister if she knew where Ruby had been last night? She didn’t want to know.
After they’d disconnected, Ruby stared at the phone. Ten missed calls, all from Mark. She wasn’t even sure why she was avoiding him. Partly from anger, but was she mad at herself or Mark? Or both?
She threw the phone aside and went to her bathroom, suddenly in need of a soothing, warm soak. She loved her bathtub. It was a claw-foot that was probably as old as the Victorian building in which she lived. It had been a rusty old beast when she moved in, but one weekend she’d holed herself up and painted the exterior a shiny black to match the black-and-white tiled floor.
She turned on the ancient brass faucets and squirted a healthy dose of jasmine bubble bath into the water. She slid off her robe and nightie, and once the tub was full she sank into the warm water. Breathing in the pungent jasmine scent of the bubble bath, she immediately began to relax.
Steam filled the small space, fogging up mirrors and windows. She’d wanted the water extra hot this morning, and it felt good, cleansing. Closing her eyes, she steadied her breathing, listened to the flow of water from the faucet as her heart started to slow its nervous pace.
For the first time since last night she was calm enough to really think. And she couldn’t get the images of what she’d seen at the fetish party out of her head. When she went to bed last night, she was too upset to allow herself any pleasure from the experience.
She turned off the water and suddenly the room was quiet. So silent she could hear the murmur of her neighbor’s television and the traffic on Clement Street. The sounds of normal San Franciscans going about their normal Sunday routines.
But nothing felt normal to Ruby this Sunday. Because she couldn’t get the erotic images out of her head.
And, with a start, she realized she didn’t want to.
When she closed her eyes she saw the woman with the candle wax. Out of nowhere, she had a picture of Mark tied to a bed, covered in hot wax. She imagined what it would be like to slowly tilt a votive until the molten wax spilled out of the candle and onto his nipples, onto the piercings he had there. He’d jerk at the shock of the heat, like the man last night, but his erection would tell her how much he enjoyed it.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, she contemplated what it would be like to dominate someone. She sank under the water, washing the question out of her head. The last thing she wanted was another curiosity creeping up.
But she couldn’t help that just the thought turned her on, and when she emerged she let her legs fall open, let the water caress her now-throbbing pussy. Her juices provided enough lubrication to withstand the bathwater and she slid one finger, then a second, into her vagina. She gasped, her legs twitching as she plunged her fingers deeper.
She continued fucking herself, finding a rhythm, gasping aloud, losing herself in the pleasure of it.
And she imagined Mark was there, watching her. Instructing her. Despite her little fantasy, she couldn’t deny how much she wanted to have him rule her. She craved it like an addict craves alcohol; that exhilarating freedom of giving him her power. How liberating it was to trust him fully.
She pinched her nipples hard enough to make her gasp, hard enough to make her sex throb. She moved her hand to her clit, touched a finger to that swollen tip. She pretended it was Mark St. Crow. Telling her what to do with her hands, her fingers. Rub your clit harder, harder—don’t stop. That’s a good girl.
Her knees splashed in the water as she thrust them open. Her legs strained against the sides of the tub as she bucked against her hand, hearing his imaginary voice in her head. Open up, baby. Fuck yourself for me. I want to see you come for me. Fuck yourself, baby, like it was my cock inside you. Fuck yourself, baby… Harder, harder, harder….
She cried out, her entire body going still against her palm. Her eyes popped open, and she focused on a crack in the ceiling as she came. Her core spasmed in nonrhythmic bursts; she momentarily stopped breathing.
She tried to drag the feeling out because it was so lovely there, floating in that tingly haze. Mark’s imagined voice still hung in her head, but as her breathing slowed and her body sank back against the ceramic tub, the words began to fade. It was like being awakened too soon from a magnificent dream. She wanted to go back to that place. But the reality was slowly returning.
When the tremors subsided Ruby noticed that the sun coming through her frosted-glass window seemed brighter; the noises outside came through the walls louder. Standing in the tub, she grabbed a towel. She loved her flat, but for some reason it seemed stifling today. She wanted to be outside, to see the open sky. She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts.
After she was dry, she went to her room to get dressed. Twenty minutes later she was outside and on her way to the park.
She nearly ran into the tall, thin man as he came around the corner of her street. And when she jerked her head up to see Mark gazing down at her, she forgot everything and felt her smile turn up to full blast. She couldn’t help it.
“Mark! What are you doing here?” she asked, staring up at him.
He seemed to scan her entirely in the sweep of a single gaze. “I was worried about you.”
“So you just came to San Francisco? What about your band?”
His stare was unwavering, slowly drawing her in. “We needed to come back here today anyway. To finish recording.”
“Right. Recording.” Seeing him brought back all her raw feelings from the night before, had her head twisted in confusion. Angry and jealous, excited and scared; her heart beat madly as so many emotions rushed through her.
He drop
ped his bag, reached out and took her into his arms. She buried her face in his neck, inhaled his woodsy scent. He was long and hard, warm against her body, and it was heaven.
Lust hit her. Bone-melting, liquid desire for this man made her entire body go weak.
She felt his voice vibrating right into her body. “Listen. Let’s just be together right now. No promises, no explanations. Whatever happens, I’m here now.”
She nodded silently, her nose brushing the warm skin of his neck. He was here. He had gotten on a plane and come to her. No matter what he’d done while away, he was here. In San Francisco. He’d come to check on her, and that was something.
At the moment, it was everything.
She pulled back and looked up at him. “Do you have the day free?”
He nodded, his eyes dark liquid behind his glasses.
Butterflies were going crazy in her stomach. “What do you want to do?”
He glanced at his bag and back at her. “I have a few ideas.”
Chapter
Twenty-Two
The minute the door shut behind her he backed her against it, overwhelming her with his strength. His hands were everywhere, his lips hot and insistent as he kissed her mouth, her neck, behind her ear. He was pulling off her cardigan and sliding it down her shoulders, pausing to hold her arms beside her.
“Nothing happened last night,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. “With those girls.”
“I don’t care,” she said, but her heart felt lighter hearing him say the words.
He kissed her again and again, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. His tongue searched hers, slowly tasting, licking, sucking. She felt the kiss in her knees, her breasts, between her legs.
“I lied,” she said, pulling his shirt up and over his head. “I do care. I’m glad you weren’t with anyone else. Neither was I. I never wanted to be!”