SEAL'd Legacy (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts)

by Gabi Moore

  God, not this again. I didn’t know if I was more irritated with him refusing to play by any of the rules or by the fact that I seemed to morph into a bitch in heat around him, no matter what the hell he did.

  “The most pleasure, huh? Ok,” I said, and cracked my neck. “I want a gift.”

  “Sure. What gift? You are welcome to anything I own.”

  “Anything?” I said cynically.

  “Yes. Anything.”

  Fine, I’d call his bluff.

  I gestured to his wrist.

  “Give me your watch,” I said. He removed it and I could see that it was even more expensive than it had seemed from afar. I dropped it onto the floor, reached over to grab a Chinese vase from the side table, got to my knees and in a second brought it thudding down onto the watch, crushing it into fine pieces. I placed the vase back on the table, then stood so I could crunch the broken bits of watch even deeper into the carpet with the sole of my boot.

  “Now can you see what a heartless bitch I am?”

  It had to be at least a few grand, laying there in crumbles on my floor. I calmly sat again. But he was unmoved. It didn’t seem to bother him at all. The wind puffed right out of my sails.

  “In any case, gifts don’t really mean anything to me. What do I care for gifts, when it’s so easy for you to buy any old trinket? I want the things that money can’t buy,” I blurted without thinking.

  He cocked his head at me.

  I hadn’t meant to say it. But it came out like a confession. I was almost starting to feel embarrassed when I noticed him smiling.

  “You’re right. You’re worth more than that anyway,” he said plainly, and ignored the crushed watch. “So, if not money, then what can I give you?”

  He seemed to be enjoying himself. At least we were getting somewhere. I don’t know where we were getting, but still…

  “I want you to strip,” I said, also without thinking. My heart was pounding. I never came into a session without a script, or without a plan. Speaking impromptu like this felt so dangerous. But I liked it. He stood tall and looked down at me sitting before him.

  “You can’t hide behind fancy clothes here,” I said. And it felt strange to say it. I had no idea if it’s what he wanted to hear, but I liked saying it. Then I realized: it was true. I did want him to strip. To take it all off.

  The whole house, in fact the whole world could have come tumbling down around me at that point and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  He started by gently sliding his finger into the knot of his tie and pulling it loose. I didn’t know if he meant to do it like that, or if it was just me, but the whole movement seemed so wildly suggestive. His hands were strong and large, but the way his fingers stroked gently over the silk of his tie as he unwound it from his neck and set it carefully aside was achingly delicate. It made me feel funny.

  With the same slow, careful hands, he went to work loosening the buttons on his shirt one by one, each becoming a notch on a scale that seemed to measure the irresistible heat growing between my legs. By the time he had loosened the last button, I had seriously began to wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

  You would swear I’d lost my mind. I had seen so many naked bodies in my life. So many men. There wasn’t a bulging, hairy, purple, freckled, bald, tanned, muscular, goosebumped, wrinkled, shaved, smooth, stubbled, naked part of a human male that I hadn’t had the misfortune of witnessing. And yet the thought of what this man had underneath his clothes was threatening to unhinge me.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  He spread his legs wide and moved his hands to his belt buckle, applying the same slow attention to sliding out the loop, pulling it back, then pulling it through his belt loops and laying it over the tie. Did he know that the slower he did this, the more it was turning me on?

  His hands lingered on the zip, then pulled it down, and the soft sound his trousers made as they crumpled to the floor was the sound of my breath catching in my throat. He clumsily wedged off his shoes and kicked them aside, still bundled with his trousers. He then stood before me in tight cotton boxer shorts, and the contours of his crotch became a white-hot sun in my little universe – I knew it was there, it was all I could think of, and yet I was afraid to stare at it directly.

  His hands rested calmly at his side. You wouldn’t think it was possible, but he looked even more powerful and commanding without his fancy executive suit and tie. He had the posture of a tribal chief, or an ancient Greek athlete on a vase, no more ashamed of his nakedness than an elk or a mountain lion would be of his. Look at me going about chiefs and mountain lions. Embarrassing, right? I was ready to compose an ode to him just then, let me tell you, that’s the kind of physical presence he had.

  “All of it,” I said, thrilled that he seemed to be waiting for my instruction to remove that last scrap of cloth standing between us and his complete nakedness. They came off easily, and my heart skipped a beat to notice that he was already half erect, his cock thumping heavy against his leg as he bent over and stood straight again.

  I gulped.

  Now I’d done it.

  My burning curiosity got the better of me and I stared at him now, all of him, relishing the fact that he was visibly as turned on as I felt. His cock was short and thick; a fat, violent-looking stump nestled in a sparse nest of blonde fuzz. Just to stare at that wide slab of meat sent a deep kick right through the center of me. It was too much. Too thick. Fucking him would be like the carnal equivalent of a giant nine course meal: completely over the top.

  He smiled quietly at me as I examined him. It felt like a miracle that he could be so calm and composed when I felt like I was about to burst my own seams and explode there and then.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked, his voice husky.

  I wanted to scream, yes oh god yes your body is like all my Christmases come at once, but I bit my tongue. I wasn’t about to show him what a quivering mess he’d made me.

  “It’ll do,” I said with a cheeky smile and cocked my head at him.

  Why wasn’t he doing anything? Was he waiting for me to tell him? And yet I was all out of orders. I didn’t want him to kiss my feet or say “yes, Mistress” or any of that other crap… but it was too dangerous to think of what I really wanted him to do.

  With me.

  To me.

  He was the one without any clothes and yet I felt exposed.

  “Tell me a secret,” I blurted. “It’s not enough for me that you’re naked.”

  His eyes lit up.

  “A secret? Any secret?”

  I nodded. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else before. Something that makes you ashamed.” I had no idea where I was going with any of this. He thought for a few moments.

  “You must swear never to tell a soul what I’m about to tell you,” he said. I pricked my ears.

  “Of course.”

  He took a deep breath and his eyes glazed over, like he was looking at something that only he could see.

  “Deep down,” he said at last. “I know that I’m responsible for my mother’s death.”

  What the fuck?

  “I should have done more to protect her. Her passing is my fault entirely and I’ll carry that shame with me for the rest of my life.”

  The mood in the room instantly dropped. Were you expecting him to confess to some dirty kink? Some sordid secret from his past about how he cheated or that he has a crush on his secretary or something?

  Me too.

  But the moment he spoke I instantly had a swell of respect for him. I had asked for a secret. And he had given me one. One look at his expression told me he was speaking from the heart.

  I suddenly felt awful.

  “I’m sorry, that was stupid, I didn’t mean to…”

  He shot me a look.

  “Don’t apologize. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted me to open up to you, to show you that I trusted you. Haven’t I done that?”

  We had gone from zer
o to sixty in no time at all and all I could do was stare at him dumbfounded.

  “Yes… yes, I guess that was what I wanted,” I said absentmindedly.

  So, the scared woman who approached me wasn’t his mother after all. I wanted to know why his mother died, and what made him think he was to blame. But I already felt like I had demanded too much. For the first time in my life, hiding behind a bossy persona just felt …wrong.

  Would he ask me to share a secret? What the hell were we even doing here anyway? This wasn’t sex. It wasn’t any kind of BDSM game, that was for sure. It felt more like two children playing a game of show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine, in a strange world they’d temporarily made for each other.

  Flustered, I gestured at his clothes and told him to dress again. I was embarrassed, but I didn’t know why. All my usual lines, all my fallback moves just didn’t seem appropriate for him. He dressed as quietly and carefully as he had undressed, and I sat opposite him, cheeks burning, trying to find somewhere to put my eyes.

  He sat beside me when he was done, but it didn’t help much. I knew what he was, underneath all that.

  “I’ve made you uncomfortable?” he said simply.

  “Not at all. I’m just… I’m not sure what’s happening here.” And wasn’t that the god’s honest truth. He reached over to touch my cheek and I turned to catch his eye.

  “I told you. I’m here to serve you. What’s happening here is precisely what you want to happen.”

  I laughed.

  “But that’s not …you’re turning everything inside out!” I said. “With my other clients I would make up punishments for them, and I’d take complete control over them and--”

  “And what? Do you get any pleasure out of doing all that? What’s in it for you?”

  I laughed again and gestured around my luxurious living room. The priceless Chinese vases. The expensive furniture. This room in this neighborhood that only celebrities and tech millionaires could afford.

  “That’s all?” he said. He looked unimpressed. “You have these men, these powerful men at your disposal, you have their minds, their hearts, and all you ask of them is… money?”

  My embarrassment felt like a stone in the pit of my stomach.

  “Haven’t you ever thought of pushing that, and seeing where it goes? Isn’t there something else you’d really like from a man?”

  “But what else is there? I get to feel like I’m in charge. Nothing compares to that.”

  He shook his head and smiled, again, but this time he seemed genuinely disappointed in my answer.

  “You sound just like my father,” he said quietly.

  I snapped to attention. I had all but forgotten that I had had an evil plan at all. Dean was nothing like his father. And the fact that he thought I was like that horrible old man made me feel awful.

  “I only meant… Oh God, this all feels so awkward. This is how I make my living, Dean. This is what my customers want. What we did here today, the stuff you’re talking about, I don’t even understand it, to be honest.”

  “Would you like to?” he said, and moved in closer to me.

  Yes, with all my heart, I wanted to say. But this was all too weird. I wasn’t sure if I trusted him. Being Mistress Morgan was the game I knew, and I was good at it. I didn’t want to play another game, if I couldn’t be sure that I’d win.

  So I said nothing.

  He stood to leave and I mutely followed him to the door. There were about four million different emotions swirling around me at that moment. If you know me and know what I think about emotions, you’ll understand why this constituted an extreme emergency. All the delicious electricity we had stirred up in the other room suddenly vanished. I felt stupid in front of him. Overdressed. A fraud.

  “I hope I haven’t taken more than my fair share of appointment time again,” he said cheerfully.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve cancelled all my other clients this week.” Oops. I shouldn’t have told him that. He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “You cancelled them… but not me?”

  I tried to avoid his gaze. He seemed pleased with this, nodded and turned to leave.

  “If you want to,” he said, “I’d like to meet with you again tomorrow. To go a little further.”

  My poor exhausted heart nearly leapt free from my chest.

  “Of course,” I said quietly.

  After he left, I threw myself on the sofa and tried to think.

  Have you ever had your whole world blasted apart from the inside out? Have you ever had something happen to you that made you question everything you used to think, everything you used to be? If not, then try not to judge my melodramatics at that moment. It’s the people who make a show of looking tough that are actually the weakest among us. It’s those people who scoff at weakness that most wish they could relax into weakness themselves.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I had a ‘crush’.

  A fucking serious one.

  Chapter 9

  Myth: In the BDSM world, there are the Dominants, the submissives and a handful of switches. Oh, and everyone else is “vanilla.”

  Reality: The boundaries are imaginary. The labels of each category are as arbitrary as using “pineapple” as your safe word. It might make you feel safe, but it doesn’t mean anything

  “So, let me get this straight, you haven’t slept with the dude?”

  “What? No way. I told you, that’s not how it works.”

  “He hasn’t made you put him on a rack and flog him?”

  “Of course not...”

  “Hasn’t asked you to do anything to his nipples or told you to put in his pony butt plug?”

  “Oh my god, Melissa I told you never to mention the butt plug thing ever again…”

  “And you’ve seen him every single day this week but haven’t gone into the dungeon even once?”

  I sighed.

  “I know right? It’s bizarre. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “Very weird.”

  “What do you think’s going on?” I said.

  She took a sip of her gin.

  “Oh, it’s pretty obvious to me. You guys are dating,” she said breezily.

  I slapped her arm.

  “Oh come on, Melissa, don’t be ridiculous. He is …unusual. He’s not like any man I’ve met before. And the things we do together…”

  Here Melissa chuckled and gave me one of her looks.

  “No, no, I get it, Nora. It’s serious business. It’s a kink so extreme, even California’s most high profile Dominatrix is afraid of what she’s getting into.”

  “Ok, now you’re making fun of me.”

  “Am not. Besides, you’re right. Who knows, one day you two might even go to the malt shop and kiss afterwards. The craziness never ends with you, for real.”

  I couldn’t help laughing now either, and she ducked out of the way as I tried to get her arm again.

  I took a sip of my own drink and looked around the cocktail lounge, and all the well-dressed, slightly tipsy people milling around us.

  Dating?

  No way.

  All the pick-up lines and rules about calling and restaurant etiquette and worrying about whether they like you and whether you should sleep with them or not and what to wear and what their text means? Nope. Dean and I were most certainly not doing any of that crap.

  “On a serious note, though, he does have me worried. He keeps pushing, you know?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Like he keeps wanting to give me complete control over whatever happens, saying I can do whatever I want…”

  “But… isn’t that how it always is?”

  “I guess. It’s just different with him. It seems like every time we meet we break some new rules of mine that I never let clients break.”

  “So then tell him to stop.”

  “But… maybe I don’t want him to stop?”

  She smiled mysteriously.

  “Have I ever told you that you need a shrink, Nora?
”

  “Only every single time we meet,” I said and smiled back.

  “So, when do you see him again?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Interesting. What’s the plan?”

  I traced a finger round the rim of my glass.

  “I… I’m not sure yet. But I’m excited.”

  “God, I’m so jealous.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yes, of you. And it burns my ass you can’t tell me who he is, either.”

  I smiled to myself.

  “Oh my god, Melissa, if only you knew. He’s kind of a big deal.”

  “So you say.”

  The weather was hot the next morning, and so when he arrived, I led him to the patio area instead, offered him a drink before we both sat, staring out at the pool and watching the clouds roll across the sky.

  I couldn’t say exactly when it happened, but we felt more familiar now, as if we had known one another for far longer than two weeks. Every encounter till now had been strange. And every time he left, he lingered in my mind for hours after, my still unsolved riddle, an impromptu actor who had stepped onto my perfect stage and ruined my whole play. I hadn’t seen another client in over a week. Not even poor Ralph.

  “You look beautiful today,” he said, and nodded towards the silk kaftan belted over my white bikini.

  “Thank you.”

  He looked a little more casual today himself. His suit didn’t seem quite as razor sharp as it usually did, and I almost thought I detected the hint of stubble on his jaw. We sat in silence for a moment, which was something we did often, on these little visits of his. It felt easy to be quiet with him. There were a million irrelevant things I could think of to say at every moment, but none of them felt important enough to break that full, rich silence we grew between us.

  Eventually, he turned in his seat to face me.

  “I’ve told you that I like to play with boundaries, haven’t I, Mistress?”

  “You have.”

  “Well, I’d like to do more of that.”

  “More? You’ve already broken almost all my boundaries, you know,” I said and gave him a teasing look.

  “Have I? Which ones are those?”