by Lexi Blake
“Yes, Master, being spanked hurts.”
“So does having your pretty asshole plugged with a ginger root, and that’s what’s going to happen next if you don’t stop being sarcastic with me. My knife skills have grown exponentially since the last time we played that particular game. I assure you I can have that plug perfect in no time at all.”
“You know how to threaten a girl,” she allowed. “It doesn’t hurt much, Master. But it also doesn’t feel like it used to.”
“Like it used to?”
“My body is healed, but I haven’t…I haven’t wanted to play.”
“You haven’t wanted to play or you haven’t wanted to have sex?”
Her voice went quiet. “I don’t want it, Sean. I’m not disgusted at the idea, but I haven’t had a craving for it. I don’t think about it anymore and I haven’t even read my books lately.”
He dropped to his knees beside her, relief pouring through him. “You’re not angry with me, are you?”
“No. I’m not upset about what happened. I’m thrilled we got another child. Lucas was a miracle, not a mistake. But I’m so scared that the sexual part of my life is over and I won’t be able to please you. I won’t be able to be intimate with you.”
He ran his hand over her straight back and down to her ass. “Lucas was a miracle, but you lost something when you had him.”
“I knew I wouldn’t have more children. I’m fine with that.”
He felt her shiver underneath his hand as he stroked down her backside. “The surgery was traumatic, Grace. You had a C-section and an almost complete hysterectomy. Your body needed time to heal, but, baby, your soul did, too. You lost parts of your body. You felt wrecked and vulnerable. You felt tired and old.”
Her face turned, tears shining in her eyes. “How did you know that?”
He pulled her to her knees so she could look him in the eyes. “Because there hasn’t been a moment since that day that I haven’t tried to be with you. I couldn’t take that pain for you. I couldn’t fix it, but I could try my damnedest to understand what you were going through. I’ve been online asking questions. I’ve talked to Eve. I found a support group for parents who suffered traumatic births. I gave you space so you could come to terms, but it’s time for you to come back to me.”
“What if I’m not the same?”
“I’ll love you anyway. I’m not the same man I was when we first met, when we married. I’m different and so are you. You’re braver than you were before, smarter, more confident. I have a whole different life I love because I was smart enough to fall for you.” And he was going about this all wrong. He could see that now. Anger wasn’t her problem. Fear was. Worry was.
That he could handle.
He stood up and held out his hand. “Come with me, Grace.”
He would give her everything she needed. He would remind her why he worshipped the ground she walked on.
* * * *
Grace wished she hadn’t said a thing. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t, but then he’d brought her in here and it was so hard to keep things from him when they were playing their roles.
She allowed him to help her stand and then went still as he looked her over.
It was the first time he’d really inspected her body. Oh, he’d seen her naked since Lucas had been born. He’d helped her in and out of the shower, but he’d been more nursemaid than horny Dom.
Now he was staring at her, looking her over like he used to. It hadn’t really been so long, only eight or nine months. They’d gone to Sanctum until her second trimester, when she’d had to go on bed rest. Still, she felt like a completely different person.
He hauled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. Maybe she didn’t want him naked. He was still so perfect to her eyes. Somehow his scars only made him more masculine. He was perfect and muscular, and soon every woman watching his show was going to wonder why he was saddled with…
“I don’t like the look on your face, Grace.”
Because he knew her so well. God, that’s what she’d forgotten. She’d pulled into herself and forgotten how carefully he watched her. She’d thought because he was working so hard that she could become invisible.
The thought of him going out and asking questions so he could understand how she felt…reminded her of all the reasons she loved him. Beneath all that beautiful skin was a man so capable of love and passion, and he’d given it all to her.
“Master, please tell me I’m beautiful. I forget. I get caught up in the day to day of our lives and I forget how beautiful you make me feel.” She could cling to her insecurities or she could place her trust in the man who’d loved her so well all these years. The man who’d never given her a moment’s worry about his fidelity. She knew he’d fired the one server who’d come on to him. He’d been careful about it, shifting her to another restaurant run by a friend, but she’d known. He made it clear to everyone who his queen was.
She hadn’t felt like a queen lately. She’d felt tired and overrun.
She’d felt like a damn new mom. It was funny when she thought about it. This was probably normal, but she’d allowed it to grow because she’d been so afraid she wouldn’t come back this time. Sean was right. She felt like something had been taken from her during those frantic moments, but now she found some hope that it wasn’t something she couldn’t reclaim.
Years of being in the lifestyle should have taught her, but sometimes she forgot. She had to ask for what she wanted, what she needed, what she craved. She had to be honest with him because he couldn’t know how she was feeling. Oh, he might research it and talk to experts, but he needed to hear it from her.
And she needed to tell it because her stories belonged to him. Her anger or fear, her joy and heartbreak, they were part of the story of their life. Theirs.
He moved in behind her, his big hands on her waist. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me. You were the first time I saw you. You will be when your hair turns gray and we’re both using canes. You’ll be the woman who moves me, the woman who makes me happy to wake up in the morning and the woman I need to curl my arms around so I can sleep at night. Nothing will change that. No surgery. No baby weight. No period of time. To me, you’ll always be the mermaid in the pool I found one night. I’ll see you with the moonlight on your hair, and do you know what I’ll always do?”
“You’ll jump in with me.” It struck her suddenly that the leap he’d taken that night had been the real beginning for them. A leap of lust. A leap of love. A leap of faith. “You’ll always choose to jump in with me.”
“Always,” he whispered as his hands moved over her. “Like you jumped with me. Grace, you married a man who depended on you financially for the first years of our marriage.”
She let her head fall back, giving over to the feel of his hands. She didn’t need a freaking uterus to enjoy that. “Well, you finally paid off, Master.”
“Only because of you.” His hands cupped her breasts. “If I hadn’t met you, I would still be working for my brother. Wait. I would be in jail for murdering my brother.”
She had to laugh. “You would never kill Ian. You would have gone to culinary school. You still would have done it.”
He rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. “I don’t think so. I wanted to for years before. Sometimes we have to meet that one person in the world who makes us want to be the best possible person we can be. That’s you for me. Don’t ever think for a second you’re not everything I could have hoped for. Do you know what I did last night after we talked on the phone?”
He’d been in New York, signing the deal that would make him a culinary star. Most men would have gone out and partied, but Sean had called at nine p.m. and gone over everything the day had brought them. He’d asked her to look over the contract to ensure she was comfortable. He’d talked about bringing her with him next time, when the baby wouldn’t be so young. When he’d hung up he’d told her he loved her and she’d known that
he wouldn’t head down to the bar. He would go to sleep and come home to her the next day. “What did you do?”
She had a suspicion, but she definitely wanted to hear him say it.
“I got into bed and yanked my own cock while thinking about you. I closed my eyes and stroked my dick, and all the time I could feel that sweet pussy of yours clenching around me. And then I thought about your ass. I thought about how tight it is, how different it feels from the heat of your pussy. I thought about how tightly you cling to me and I came all over my hands.”
A hum started low inside her. A warmth she hadn’t felt in forever. “I haven’t touched myself in months.”
His hand slid down. “Is that the real problem? Are you not feeling sexy?”
His hand was inching closer and closer to her core. How did she explain this to him? It had seemed like something that would come between them, but knowing how hard he’d tried to understand, now it seemed like something they should solve together. How easy it was to drift, to forget that he wasn’t merely her husband. He was her partner in all things. Her problems were his problems. Her worries belonged to him as his belonged to her. “It’s hard after you have a baby to feel like anything but a mom for a long time. I felt that way every time I had a baby. I think every woman does, but this time was different.”
His left arm held her firmly back against his body, while his right hand found her pussy and started to gently tease her. He moved slowly, as though this was for comfort and not immediate gratification. “This time you know there won’t be any more babies. This time they took your ability to have more and you worry they took away some piece of your femininity, of your sexuality.”
It felt so good to be close to him. This was what they needed. They could have sat in some therapy room and discussed this, and that could work for some people. But this was what they needed. They needed to strip down and bare themselves. They needed to touch and be touched, to lose themselves in the roles they’d chosen so long ago. “Yes. I know it’s not rational, but I feel it.”
“You’re mourning that part of your life, but, Grace, I’m here. I’ll mourn with you. I’ll be with you. And I will show you that while we won’t have more babies, that doesn’t mean our intimacy is over. Not even close. We’re going to play and love and fuck until we physically can’t anymore. When we’re old and gray and our kids have shoved us in some nursing home, I’ll be climbing into your bed trying to get some.”
She had to laugh, though she was fairly certain her kids wouldn’t shove her anywhere she didn’t need to be. But his words were working magic on her. She could feel her body heating for the first time in months, felt her skin coming to life. “I want that so badly, Sean. Help me feel sexy again.”
He slid his finger over her clit, gently, with slow intent. “I can do that because you’re the single sexiest woman in the world. I can do that because you’re the only woman I’ve wanted for years. I can do that because before I met you, sex was a bodily function and not something that fed my soul. Only you, Grace. So trust me now.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t do anything else. He was the most important part of her life.
“Then go and lie down on the bed. I want your ass at the bottom of the bed, knees up and legs spread wide.”
A shudder went through her and not all of it was arousal. He would be so close to the new scars. It wasn’t the prettiest part of her body now. She was healed and the doctor was satisfied she was fine, but there was still a wary part of her that rejected the change.
“All right, then. Lean over the bed, ass in the air. Stop thinking and take your discipline. We’ll do this all day until I get what I want. And what I want isn’t really your compliance. What I want is your pleasure, but it seems to me you need permission to enjoy your body again. I’m going to give it to you. Please me, Grace. Stop thinking about anything but pleasing me. Stop thinking about how you look or how I’ll respond. We’re here in this room, and in this room, what is your main objective?”
“To please my Master.” It was a simple thing since she knew what his main objective was.
“And mine is to please my sub, to give her everything she needs, to be what she needs me to be. If we’re both focused on pleasing the other, we can’t go wrong. So turn around and take your discipline so I can focus.”
He could be a hardass when he got an idea in his head. He wouldn’t care about her scars. He would love them because they meant she survived. He would love them as a reminder of her strength and the birth of the son they never thought they would have.
She bent over the bed and already felt the tears forming before he’d even given her the first smack.
They squeezed from her eyes and she realized she needed this, too.
It had been so frightening. From the moment they’d found out about her pregnancy, Sean had been a wreck. His own guilt had held him back, and sometimes she’d felt alone in loving the baby that grew inside her. She’d felt his fear in those last months and known how he’d hurt.
He smacked her bottom harder than before, but this time she was more relaxed, ready for the play. Each slap stimulated her, sent a shiver of first pain and then heat through her.
It also seemed to open some doorway she’d locked because the tears were falling more freely now. They dripped from her eyes as she gave over to the play and finally let all the emotions she’d been bottling up go.
She’d been so scared, first that her baby wouldn’t make it and then that she wouldn’t. The pain had been incredible and she hadn’t felt anything but alternately numb and aching for days, weeks even after Lucas was born.
“That’s right, get it all out. Let it out. You can’t let it fester. I cried so much that night. I cried right in front of my brothers like a baby, and not a one of them said a damn thing because they were worried, too. I cried like I’ve never cried in my life and I got on my damn knees and prayed because I couldn’t imagine life without you.”
A sob broke free as she finally let go. Sean had her up and in his arms, his hands soothing over her. He whispered to her. He told her how much he loved her. How scared he’d been. How madly in love he was with Lucas, and yet he was still angry with himself.
She shook her head and wrapped herself around him. “Let that go. It’s over. We made it.”
It really was time to let it go. They had made it through the trauma, and if something else happened, they would cling to each other and survive all over again. Sean would be there for her. He would be her rock.
Slowly, her tears eased and she felt lighter and freer than she had before. Sean kissed her and she realized she wanted to let go of all of it. All the pain and insecurity of the last few months. It was time to start again. Time to be herself, a little older, a bit wiser and more accepting of herself than she’d been before.
It was time to grow together and not apart.
She kissed him one last time and then pushed gently away.
An almost sad expression came over his face, but then he smiled her way. “I love you, Grace. Are you ready to get the kids?”
Oh, he totally misunderstood her. Sometimes it was better to show than tell. She climbed on the bed and scooted to the edge, bringing her feet up and wide. She wasn’t afraid anymore. This man didn’t see her through the same eyes she saw herself. This man always thought she was beautiful. “I am ready to serve my Master.”
He dropped to his knees in front of her. “You won’t regret it. And, Grace, you should understand that from now on, no matter what we’re doing, this room gets used at least once a week. We can wire the whole place for the baby monitors. Hell, I’ll put security cameras and motion sensors in if I have to, but we need this. We need to come together this way. And god, I’ve so missed this.”
He leaned over and dragged his tongue through her labia.
All thoughts that her girl parts no longer worked fled completely because she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Heat flashed through her, sizzling along her skin. Yes, there was the magic she’d
worried she’d lost.
He settled in and she had to work hard not to squirm. His tongue was everywhere, laving her with affection. Lust roared back into her life. Lust, love, they were all the same when it came to him.
She opened herself, giving over her body and soul once more to the man who took such precious care of both. Years had gone by since that day when he’d walked into her office and her world had gone from dull to Technicolor in an instant, and yet in this moment she felt young and free again. She felt like Sean Taggart’s lover again.
The first orgasm hit her like a dam bursting and she didn’t even try to hold back. She screamed out his name and laughed with pure joy.
Sean was up on his feet in a heartbeat, jerking at his slacks and shoving them off. He was smiling as he looked down at her. “There is no better sound than you laughing. I’ve missed it. And I’ve missed this. I told you once that this is my home, but it’s you Grace. Not your body. Your soul.”
“I love you,” she said. “Body and soul, but seriously, I want your body right now.”
He spread her legs wide and she could feel his cock hard against her. “You know I like to give my sub what she wants.”
He thrust up inside her. So long. It had been so long since she’d felt him move inside her. She was tight, but slick and wet and ready for him. He held her hips as he fucked her, easing in and out and giving her time to adjust to him. He leaned over, the kisses he gave her long and decadent. His tongue played with hers as he made love to her. She let her hands roam, learning the body she loved so well all over again.
His pace picked up, his gorgeous face contorting as he lost his famous control. He fucked deep inside her, grinding down and sending her over the edge again.
With one last thrust, he gritted his teeth and she could feel heat wash over her as he came.
Pure peace rushed over her as she came down from the high. He stepped away but before she could move he was arranging her on the bed and climbing in beside her, plastering his body against hers.
“Don’t think you’re going anywhere,” he whispered. “We have hours. I’m going to use them.”