by Ann Jacobs
“I’m sorry, Master.” Lying beside him, her blonde curls pale against the black sheet, Talia looked and sounded beaten. Broken. And more than half afraid that he would punish her.
Clenching his jaw, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked into her glistening, tear-filled eyes. “Stop it. I’m not Reinhart, and I’m not about to blame you when I should have remembered about your knee.”
“But you didn’t—”
“No, I didn’t come. You didn’t, either. There will be plenty of other times, so it’s not the end of the world. I’m not about to do anything that may do some further damage to your knee. Lie back and let me taste you.”
She stirred against him then raised her head. “Would you let me suck your cock?”
“My cock is your cock, sweetheart. But not right now. I want you to lie back and enjoy.” He hated the fact that she sounded so afraid, as though something horrible might happen to her if she didn’t get him off. Sid held back a vicious curse, pissed that once again the ghost of her former Master was intruding into his head. Then he sat up and ruffled Talia’s hair. “Spread your legs for me, but don’t strain your knee.”
“Yes, Master.”
He stroked along the sides of her soft, curvy body, gentling her the way he’d soothe an agitated kitten as he stretched out on his belly between her legs and blew on her damp, musky cunt. Then he found her clit and began to flail it with his tongue. When she let out a little moan that let him know she liked what he was doing, he slid his hands down and spread her outer lips.
Her soft pubic curls tickled his lips and fingers, reminding him he preferred his pussies shaved. When he’d watched her playing at Rebels’ Roost, he’d noticed she didn’t shave her pubic hair and promised himself he’d do it for her if he ever had the opportunity.
Fuck, Conyers. Don’t go there. She’s yours now, and you don’t need to torture yourself, thinking about the past. After all, he reminded himself, he was hardly a virgin. She’d seen him playing at the dungeon, too. And with many different partners. As Sid recalled, Reinhart had never offered to share Talia. “Would you let me shave your pussy, sweetheart?” he asked, lifting his head to look up at Talia’s beautiful face.
“Of course, if you’d like to. Or I could do it for you, Master.”
He lowered his face again, found her damp cunt and tongued it while he ringed her anus with his fingers. By God, if it took him the rest of his life, he’d show her that her submission didn’t mean unquestioning acceptance of his every suggestion. It unnerved him that she lay beneath him as though she was afraid that any reaction she showed might result in him hurting or humiliating her.
He wanted her to come. And he damn sure didn’t want her to be afraid of him. Sid raised his head again, stopping as he did to nibble at her clit. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
“I’m trying, Master.” When she laid her small, cool hand against his cheek, as though to calm a fractious beast, he felt a tiny tremor in her fingers. “I love what you’re doing to me.”
“You do? Then relax. Let go of whatever’s bottled up inside you.” He lowered his lips to her clit, worried the tight little nub with the tip of his tongue. “Feel good?”
“Oh, yes.” He felt her movement when she angled her hips to give him more room. Her soft, wet heat enveloped his fingers when he sank them inside her cunt and began a slow, rhythmic motion. “Mmm,” she moaned, and he felt her thread her fingers through his hair. His balls ached like crazy, but he was determined that this would be for her.
Please, sweetheart. I know it’s not pain that makes you come. “Concentrate. Feel me inside you, stretching and filling you. Feel the heat building up. Let go of everything else in your head and give me your climax.” Sid kept finger-fucking her, deeper and faster, until Talia rewarded his efforts with a shudder that racked her whole body. Her little scream of satisfaction sounded better to his ears than any music.
“Thank you, Master.” Talia wanted to return the favor. No, she wanted to taste her Master’s long, thick cock, to serve his needs as he’d just served hers. Her pussy still tingled and twitched from Sid’s gentle touch. “May I—”
“As long as you don’t hurt your knee.” When Sid spoke, his words sounded low and sexy, almost like a growl. “Lie back and relax. I’ll do all the work this time.”
He shifted, but instead of moving up her body and straddling her face as she expected, he slipped on a fresh condom. Then he fitted his body to hers, belly to belly, and slid his hard cock into her pussy. “Oh.”
“Yeah, you were expecting something else, weren’t you?” He bent and took her lips again as he began to move. “I’ll feed you my cock sometime soon, but I want to be inside your warm, wet pussy, the first time I come with you. Like this.” He sank deeper then almost withdrew, over and over until she felt his cock grow impossibly harder.
His face was taut, tanned skin straining over chiseled bone. His teeth clenched, he sank into her all the way, filled her completely. He held himself up on his hands, and when he did, the well-defined muscles in his arms bunched up and twitched.
“God yes, sweetheart. Let me feel you clamping down on my cock. Hold me as though you’re never gonna let me go.” He let out a guttural cry, and she felt him coming. It left her feeling warm and almost loved.
A long time later he went in the bathroom and she heard water running. It stopped, and he came back to the bed and fitted his warm body around her back, his cock now relaxed and velvety against her butt. “Go to sleep. I’ve got to get to practice early in the morning, and I want to wake up this way—with you in my arms.”
* * * * *
The next morning Sid woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Soft, fat snowflakes drifted past his bedroom window and Talia lay curled up under the blanket next to him like a docile kitten. “Good morning, Master,” she said, her smile as bright as the day outside promised to be dreary.
“Good morning. Something tells me you’ve been up already.”
“Only long enough to make your coffee and bring you some so you can enjoy it while you get dressed. I came right back, so I’d be here when you woke up, the way you told me to.”
He couldn’t argue with the aroma, or with the warm, sexy woman in his bed. When she started to get up, he pressed her back against the pillows. “Stay, sweetheart. There’s no need for you to get up just because I have to. If the snow lets up later this morning, you may want to bundle up, take the car and stock us up on groceries.” He picked up his wallet, took out a credit card and set it on the nightstand for her. “Get whatever you think we need, and maybe get your nails and hair done, too.” Talia looked great to him, but he’d observed that women seemed to enjoy a having a day to pamper themselves every once in a while.
“Are you sure you don’t mind taking the truck?” When he rolled out of bed she burrowed under the covers, in the spot he’d just vacated.
“It needs to be driven some, or the battery will go dead. It’s been sitting out in the garage so long, I’m afraid that if I don’t use it once in a while, it won’t move.” Sid had seen Talia drive and knew she wasn’t all that comfortable behind the wheel. He figured she’d have a hard time with the stick-shift, four-wheel-drive Honda Ridgeline. He’d bought it four years ago when he had gotten his rookie signing bonus and had kept it after upgrading to the Acura because it came in handy for hauling furniture finds as well as lawn supplies. He picked up the mug and took a sip of the hot, sweet liquid. “Good coffee. Thanks for getting up to make it for me.”
“I wanted to. If you’d let me get up, I’d fix you breakfast before you go out in the cold,” she said, stirring under the covers and making him wish he had time to crawl back in bed with her.
Sid laughed. “They’ll have a good spread for us at the training facility. There’s no need for you to wait on me. Coach Zanardi wants us well-fed as well as well-practiced for these playoffs, since we weren’t expected to squeak in this year.”
“All right. Do you think you’ll
go to the Super Bowl again?”
Sid didn’t hold out much hope that the Rebels would go very deep in the playoffs. It surprised him that Talia apparently wasn’t aware that the team was in a rebuilding mode after last year’s Super Bowl loss.
“I doubt it, if you want the truth. Yancey has a way to go before anybody starts comparing him with Dave Delaney, and the Rebels’ defense has barely held its own against some of the competition so far this year. I hope I’m wrong, though. I’d like to make some big plays for you to see this weekend.”
“Dave? Yancey? I’m sorry, Master. I don’t recognize those guys’ names.”
Shit. Reinhart had been the Rebels’ left offensive tackle. Surely he’d have mentioned the name of the star quarterback whose blind side he’d been brought in to protect. “You never heard of Dave Delaney?”
Talia shook her head. “Vic didn’t talk to me about football. And I’ve never gone to a Rebels’ game.”
“Dave was the Rebels’ all-pro quarterback until he retired after getting hurt in the Super Bowl last year. Yancey Daniels is the second-year guy who replaced him.”
“Oh. Did you play in the Super Bowl that the Rebels won? That was Vic’s first year with the Rebels. I don’t remember seeing you at Rebels’ Roost that year, though.”
“Nope. I was still in college then.” Sid managed a grin. He did remember, though, that the bastard hadn’t brought Talia to New Orleans to watch the Super Bowl they had lost last year. “If we make it to the big game again this year, you’re going to come and be my good luck charm.”
“Thank you, Master. Vic never would—”
“Damn it, I don’t want to hear that asshole’s name coming out of your sweet little mouth. If I ever see him again, I’ll have a hard enough time restraining myself from killing him, even without you mentioning him all the time.”
He thought he’d held his temper well, considering that Talia had just admitted Reinhart had pretty much kept her in the dark about what had been going on in his life. But the moment she’d said that name, Sid proved his anger management skills to be a big fat lie. Unfortunately his outburst had set Talia to trembling so hard that the blanket shook around her.
Shit. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. “I’m not mad at you, sweetheart, but every time I think about what he did to you, I see red.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re so different—in a good way. I’ve always wanted to go to games. And to go out and socialize, the way regular people do.”
Sid clenched his fists and felt his jaw tighten as he mentally drove another nail into Vic Reinhart’s coffin. Apparently the only times he’d let Talia out had been when he’d taken her to the dungeon. “Did he keep you locked up in the house so you couldn’t get out except with him?”
“Sometimes.” Talia lowered her gaze. “Not at first, though. You know, I think part of the reason he turned so mean might have been the concussions he kept having over and over again.”
So the bastard hadn’t always isolated her. So he kept getting his brain scrambled by head hits. Big fucking deal. For whatever reason, Reinhart obviously had turned into a monster by the time he’d come to the Rebels, since he’d kept her locked away so tightly that she didn’t even recognize the name of the team’s all-pro former quarterback. “I’m not about to hide my sweet, beautiful Talia from the world. You might as well know that now.”
She managed a timid smile when he tilted her face so she had to look him in the eye. “You’re a good Master.”
He intended to be. “Pretty soon, after the season’s over, we’ll do family night at Rebels’ Roost. I wish I’d thought to take you there before, but I had no idea you hadn’t already met most of the players and their families.” Sid leaned over Talia and gave her a long, hard kiss.
“Not all of us play in the dungeon at Rebels’ Roost,” he said when she looked confused. “Some of the guys are plain vanilla. Close those pretty eyes and get a few more hours of sleep. I’ll be home after practice.” He made a mental note to ask Jack to have Tawny call Talia and invite her to the luncheon that was scheduled for later this week for Rebels’ wives and girlfriends.
Chapter Four
In spite of the constant spit of wet snowflakes against his face, sweat poured off Sid’s body and he was breathing hard. Head Coach Zanardi had taken over the offense’s practice. He’d pushed Yancey hard this morning, which in turn had pushed Sid and the other receivers to run a lot of complex routes and dive for Yancey’s passes, which often were barely catchable. Now Yancey was standing back, watching the receivers run the routes he’d had trouble throwing to, so Coach could show the young quarterback where the football needed to go.
Along with Jack, Ty and the other wide receivers and tight ends, Sid ran the routes again and again. When Coach threw, the balls hit him between the numbers. No heroics were necessary, just grab the ball, tuck it and run. Unfortunately, Colin Zanardi wouldn’t be throwing the passes in Sunday’s game. A Hall of Famer, he’d retired from playing before Sid had moved up from Pop Warner Football, but he still could throw with the best of them.
Hopefully some of Coach’s tutoring would rub off on Yancey. God help them if they had to resort to using either of their two backup quarterbacks. Sid figured he could throw better than either of them, and he hadn’t played quarterback since his sophomore year of college, when his coach had talked him in to switching to wide receiver because of his shorter stature and his speed.
When Coach called them off the field, Sid rubbed his sore neck. “You okay, Sid?” Coach asked.
“Fine. Just a little sore.”
“You and the others did good, dragging down some of Yancey’s high passes. I’m gonna work with him and the quarterback coach a little more this afternoon. I want you and Jack to join us in the field house for more passing drills.”
“Okay, Coach. I hope you’ll be the one doing most of the throwing,” Sid said.
Jack shot Sid a thumbs-up. “Second that.”
“Don’t let Yancey hear you. I want him feeling confident when he steps onto the field Sunday.” Coach gave them both stern looks. “I’ll be doing some of the throwing, though. I don’t want my receivers ragged out before the game starts. Besides, I’ve put Yancey on a pitch count to rest his arm. We’ve noticed he’s more accurate when he’s fresh.”
What time do you want us back out here?” Sid didn’t look forward to having to dive for another fifty or so of Yancey’s passes.
“About two o’clock. I sent Yancey in to ice his arm. You two might want to spend an hour with the trainers.”
“Good idea. Jack?”
“Sure.”
Sid turned to his friend. “Do me a favor. Have Tawny call and ask Talia to meet her at that luncheon thing the wives are having later this week.”
“I would, but she had to fly to Chicago yesterday. Her mom’s having what she hopes will be some minor surgery. If it turns out to be not so minor, she may not get back in time to make it to the game.” Jack shook his head. “Why don’t you ask Coach to get his wife to invite her? You mentioned having had dinner with them last night.”
Sid looked over at his friend. “Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll do that. Tell Tawny I hope her mom doesn’t have anything major.”
* * * * *
Talia set down the land-line phone and just enjoyed the warm feeling it had given her, talking with Sid. It was sweet of him to call and say he’d be home late, and to tell her what he’d be doing at practice for the rest of the afternoon. Vic had never bothered.
Damn it, you’ve got to get Vic out of your mind, even if you are thinking how much better a Master you have now in Sid.
Closing her eyes, she stood there in the kitchen wearing a cozy velour sweatsuit and cozy slippers, waiting for the buzzer to go off and let her know the brownies were ready. She couldn’t help reliving what had happened last night, how Sid had patiently coaxed her until she came—something she’d never done before except in BDSM scenes. He’d hones
tly cared that her knee still hurt, and that meant a lot.
He even seemed to enjoy being with her, and he’d made it pretty obvious that he wanted to show her off to his teammates, so maybe he thought she was good enough. Good for more than being a convenient sex slave in a dungeon. That gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling she hadn’t experienced for a long, long time—if ever.
The least she could do for Sid was to bury Vic Reinhart in the farthest reaches of her memory, because the mere mention of him made Sid furious, and she didn’t want that. Not that she was seriously afraid that he’d hurt her. He treated her as though he thought she’d crack at the least harsh word. But she worried that he’d do something stupid like going after her ex, and if he did she knew he’d get hurt.
Was that disloyal? Talia didn’t know, but as fit and athletic as Sid was, he’d be outweighed by at least a hundred pounds. Worse, his scruples would keep him from using the dirty tricks she knew Vic—there I am, thinking his name again—wouldn’t hesitate to use to destroy an opponent.
When the oven timer rang, she opened her eyes and shoved those worries to the back of her mind. The brownies smelled so good she wanted to dig into them right away, but she resisted the urge and set them on a rack to cool. She’d found the mix in the pantry and figured Sid must like them. She hoped so, because as she watched the snow falling harder now, she knew she wouldn’t make it out to the store.
Having gone since high school without driving a car until the last couple of weeks when Sid had started sending her on small errands in his Acura every few days, Talia wasn’t anxious to go sliding all over Savannah’s streets during this unusual winter storm. They’d have to make do tonight with what was already on hand in the way of food.
Good thing I put those chicken breasts in the refrigerator to thaw. She’d bake them with brown rice and vegetables, and they’d have their meal. It was good, too, that Sid seemed to enjoy just about every dish she’d made so far. She went to the living room, picked one of his books and curled up to read.