Short pulses of her hips sent him over the edge.
He moaned so loud it vibrated through her and he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her down. Crushing his mouth to hers, he came.
As she tasted his mouth he filled her pussy with his cum.
Spurt after spurt sank inside her, marking her with passion and love.
Her pussy spasmed around his pulsating shaft, making them both groan.
Tabitha’s abdomen clenched so hard she ended up dislodging Michael.
Panting against him, she kissed him again.
He rolled them to the side and they both collapsed.
He fumbled for the covers, patting the bed behind him. He got them covered up just in time.
Never had she remembered being so tired. Complete exhaustion pulled at her with an unrelenting grasp. She snuggled into Michael’s chest and he pulled her closer.
“Sleep, my love.”
Rubbing her nose against his sternum, she breathed him in.
The disappointment from earlier tried to creep in but she pushed it back.
That feeling wasn’t welcome in their bed. Never would be.
She was home. Not in the house. Not even in their bed. She was home in his arms, and she had to believe the rest would fall into place.
Not because it would magically happen, but because she was ready and willing to make it happen.
Because she wasn’t walking away. Leaving wasn’t what she wanted. It never would be. She’d been silent for too long. He was the man of her dreams and he was worth fighting for. They were worth fighting for.
Chapter Thirteen
Michael
The next morning, Michael set a steaming cup of tea down at Tabitha’s place at the table just as she walked downstairs.
“Michael?” she called for him.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Fuck, he liked it when she said his name.
“Dining room.”
As soon as she stepped around the corner she glanced at him then at the table. Her smile fixed him like nothing else on the planet could. “You made me tea?”
He pulled out the chair for her. “Earl Grey. I wanted peppermint but we were out. Thought you might need something to warm you up this morning.”
She stepped closer to him, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts.
And underneath that shirt? Gorgeous skin with faint rope marks around her chest and arms. He’d seen them when he’d gotten out of bed a few minutes before.
They reminded him of something he wanted to talk to Wes about. The desire to learn rope so Michael could tie Tabitha had been a need for a while. And it was way past time he stopped living for tomorrow. He wasn’t ready to talk to her about that just yet. They had much more pressing matters to cover.
To repair their relationship. Their trust. That took precedence over everything else.
Lifting her chin, he then kissed her.
She kissed him back, then said, “I have you. What else could I possibly need?”
Michael stopped her before she took a seat and palmed her cheek. “You wreck me when you say things like that.”
“Nothing but the truth. Ever.”
He sighed against her lips. “Softest lips ever.” After kissing her again, he pulled in a deep breath. Breathing her in filled him with more than just her delicious scent. She satisfied him with love and desire and more happiness than he thought he deserved.
Which brought him to the reason they had to talk.
He kissed her one more time and gestured to the chair. “Sit tight for just a second. I’m gonna grab a cup of coffee. Want anything else while I’m still up?”
She sat down and he headed back into the kitchen to the coffee pot.
“Just the tea is great.”
“Sure you don’t want anything to eat?” He glanced at the clock on the stove and filled his cup. “It’s noon already,” he called out.
“No.” She glanced over at him at the doorway then looked out of the window beside the table. “My stomach’s upset.” Her last three soft words made more than his heart ache.
He kissed the top of her head and sat down in the chair beside her. “I’m so sorry your stomach’s upset.”
She shrugged then attempted a smile. “Kind of to be expected at this point.”
“At this point.” Michael shook his head and took a sip of his coffee before he set it down. “I can’t believe I let it get to this point.”
“We, my husband. We. Don’t shake your head at me.” She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’re in this relationship. Together. It’s not like we have a complete power exchange where all of the responsibility falls to you. Yes, our dynamic is in place all day every day. I can’t shut off what you are to me or what I am to you. I am your submissive. It’s an is. An absolute. At home or work, cooking dinner together or sleeping, I’m always your submissive. Even if you’re asking me what movie we should rent. But that doesn’t mean it would be fair of me to expect you to fix everything. It’s on both of us, so we both have to make this right.”
“But I fucked up, Tabitha. Me. I’m just so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
He scowled at her words. “You’re sorry I fucked up or you’re sorry for something you did?” Only the first option was going to be acceptable.
“Sorry for something.”
A bit of a growl, which he normally kept in check, escaped. “What could you possibly be sorry for? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t I? I knew there was something wrong. I’ve felt it for a while. I thought everything would be okay without facing it, which was a lie.” She took a sip of her tea. “I didn’t want to address it and I hoped it would just disappear. I wanted to sweep it under a rug because I didn’t want to deal with it.” She met his gaze. “I didn’t want to acknowledge there was a problem. That we had a problem. It’s naïve, I know, but I thought we were above that. Immune, maybe.”
“I thought so, too,” he admitted. “Thought things would just even out on their own and we could get back to where we were.”
“But things changed,” she continued. “And change is scary. Good or bad, altering anything like this is still scary.”
“I guess you’re right.” He thought about it for a second. “Never really thought about it that way.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”
Michael’s stomach dropped. “That sounds ominous.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”
He nodded, not really certain what he wanted to say, not at all certain he wanted to know what she meant by that. But this wasn’t going to fix itself.
They had to do it.
And he had to start by asking the hard questions. “How close were you to leaving last night? Really leaving.”
Tabitha pulled her arm back, holding onto her mug of tea, and stared out of the window again. It took her a while to answer. “Close.”
“How close?”
She closed her eyes for a second and rubbed her lips together before answering. “Suitcase on the bed. Plane tickets pulled up on the laptop. It wasn’t good.”
He palmed her cheek, bringing her gaze back to him again. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for disappointing you.” Rubbing her cheek with his thumb, he stared at her. “I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Apologizing.” Disappointing you. That ’was what he should have said, but he just didn’t want to voice it.
Tabitha chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second before she continued. “Everyone has their line in the sand, I think. With relationships. And you crossed one last night.”
“Not showing up last night?” he asked, which he knew was heinous.
She shook her head. “Breaking your promise.”
Gut. Punch.
“But…” She started then trailed off.
“But?” Michael had never latched on to a single word so tightly in his life.
“But it’s you. It’s not some random per
son. Not a friend or an occasional lover. It’s you. My husband. My Dom. The man I gave myself to and vowed…”
Michael straight up held his fucking breath.
Tears filled her eyes. One slipped free, which she quickly brushed away. “For better or worse, you know?”
Michael wanted to put his head on the table.
He wanted to get on his knees and pray, so thankful for the woman who wore his ring on her finger.
Instead, he got up, slid her chair back, scooped her up and sat back down with her in his lap.
Kissing her tears away was more than a simple gesture.
It was a vow.
A renewed vow.
Snaking her hand up behind his neck as she laid her head on his chest made everything else inside him settle.
She completed him in ways he didn’t normally focus on.
That was another mistake he was going to rectify from here on out.
Before he could say anything else she swallowed and continued.
“Money isn’t everything. It’s not even in the top five things that are truly important to me. I’d live with you in a hammock on the beach somewhere if it meant we were together. I don’t need a three-story house and a new car each year to feel special. You do that all on your own.” She stared at him and smiled. “You’re important. We’re important. Everything else is secondary.”
“You’re my number-one priority. Always have been. Even with everything else. The disappointments. The missed dinners. The late…everything. Wanting to make the company a success is for us. Please believe that.”
“I do believe that. I do.”
He took a deep breath and rubbed her back. “But? I know there’s a but in there.”
Sitting up, she turned on his lap to stare at him. “But I need you. I need us. Money is awesome. Being successful and knowing you faced a challenge head-on and kicked its ass is even more amazing. But getting to fall asleep with you every night is what I need. Waking up with you, making love with you in the middle of the night, feeds my soul.”
“Me, too. I’ve missed all of that. But I want the company to use the momentum we have and grow huge. I want it to be a multinational powerhouse with the ability to handle any project. And I want…” Apparently, it was his turn to look away.
Tabitha lifted his chin. “What, my husband? What do you want?”
“I want you to be proud of me.” There it was. His second-biggest need, which had been messing with his biggest priority. “I need it.”
Tears glittered in his wife’s eyes and she smiled a second before she palmed his face and kissed him. She kissed him again and he held her close when she tried to pull away.
He breathed her air and licked his way into her mouth until she giggled.
“You have the best ways to try to distract me.”
He kissed her one more time. “It was worth a try so you didn’t have to address that last admission. Pretty sure they might try to take my man card away after that one.”
“You needing me doesn’t revoke your man card. It’s one of the prerequisites for a real man. At least, it sure should be. I want your approval just as much. With little things like my latest crochet project to big things like what happened on my latest hot wife date.”
He took her hand and held it. “And you have it. With all of that.”
“As do you.”
The look of love she gave him let him take a deep breath. And another one. “My old man told me I’d never amount to anything. I have to prove him wrong.” She knew of his background but he’d intentionally never spoken very much about it.
“You prove him wrong every day. Every day you’re a friend. A great husband. Being the owner of your own company is only a piece of you proving him wrong.”
“Well…fuck.” Talk about showing him the answer when it was right in front of his face. “You’re right. As usual, my wife.”
“Being right isn’t what I’m looking for. Not at all.”
“What are you looking for?”
“You.” She shrugged. “I know it’s simple, but it’s the truth. I understand being preoccupied at work. But you also have to let work go so you can recharge and attack it the next day. You have to find a way to leave it at work, which I know is easier said than done. But if you can’t figure out that part than something else will have to give. How I see it, the only other option is us. And…”
Yeah, he already wanted to puke as she paused, but he was the one who had fucked up. The last thing he was going to do was not let her get it all out.
She took a deep breath, as if she needed some encouragement. “Being neglected doesn’t make me feel emotionally safe. Especially with our extracurricular activities. The rules—”
“Our rules,” he corrected.
She smiled and punctuated it with a nod. “Our rules. Your permission to let me be me is part of our foundation. When those things disappear, so does my hold on that part of us. Sex has always been important to us. I hope it’s always important to us. But we have to be on the same page or it will never last long-term. And, honestly, neither will we.”
Nodding, he rubbed her back and took a minute to think. “Are we still on the same page?”
“Before last night I would have given you an emphatic yes. But everything got shaky last night. You’ve never broken a promise to me before. And breaking it when it comes to me being with someone else and you not being there when we were done scared me. I hate saying it. Hate owning it. But without you there to reconnect with me, to give me aftercare, especially when I’m with Wes and his edge is harder than most, it made me feel lost. I don’t want to feel like that again.”
“Fuck, baby. I know I messed up. Just…fuck.” He pulled her close, kissing her mouth. The shiver running through her body when he held her was another gut punch. “‘I’m sorry’ isn’t good enough for what I did last night. Leaving you in the hands of someone else to put back together is unforgiveable.”
“No.” She pushed back to look at him again. “I forgive you. Don’t for a second think that I don’t forgive you.”
“Why?” The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it. He kept going because he had to know. “Why would you forgive me? What I did was even more horrible than I thought it was. And add subdrop into the equation, too.”
“Several reasons, I guess. You’re truly sorry, for one. And I believe you. But also, we’ve been together for almost six years. One bad thing doesn’t negate years of the best relationship I’ve ever had. It’s like a husband savings account you’ve been adding to for as long as we’ve been together.”
“I think that’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever heard.”
She shrugged. “It’s true, though. You have to admit.” Her smile would have knocked him over if he hadn’t been sitting. “And I am pretty amazing.”
Michael chuckled and ran his fingertips along her cheek before he tugged her forward for another kiss. “Yes, you are.”
“Thanks,” she whispered against his mouth.
Her lips on his tasted as sweet as the vow she’d given him on their wedding day. He’d let her down, more than once. “It won’t happen again,” he mumbled more to himself than he meant to say it out loud.
“What won’t?”
“Giving you the impression there is anything more of a top priority than you. Breaking a promise I make to you. Giving you a reason to be disappointed in me. Any of it. All of it. I give you my vow it won’t happen again. I’ll find a balance. I swear it.”
“I believe you.”
He stared at her. “Just that easy?”
She thought for a second. “No. Just that important.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. “Good thing your savings account was so big, huh?”
He hugged her close. “So very good.”
“And I have a thought.”
“I’m all ears.”
She paused and moved her arms as she sucked her lips between her teeth. “I don’t think
I’ve ever really told you how much our rules mean to me.”
“I know you like them. You smile any time we joke about them.”
“They’re more than just a simple list of things, though. Definitely not a joke anymore. They make me feel loved. Safe. Like you’re with me all the time, even when we’re apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve kind of been thinking about making them more official. Kinda.”
“That’s super-hot.”
Her smile was like sunshine. “Really? You don’t think it’s stupid?”
“That is so far from stupid they’re in different countries. And I’ve been thinking something a bit more formal between us is way past due. You’re mine. In the simplest and most complex sense of the word. Vanilla, kink, everything. Starting with our rules sounds like an amazing place to start.”
She kissed him and moved off his lap with a purpose. “Hold on a second. Let me go grab something out of my purse.”
“’Kay,” he called after her as she ran out of the room. His cock jerked when she cleared the doorway again. “You know I want to fuck you right now, don’t you?”
“You do?” She lifted the edge of her shirt, exposing her naked pussy, then straddled his lap and sat down.
“Fuck. Yes. Maybe we should have a new rule. Have all hard conversations with me inside you.”
She held his shoulders and wiggled on his lap until he gritted his teeth. “That’s actually what I want to talk to you about.”
“Then I’m all ears.” He palmed her backside and pulled her a little closer.
She glanced at his crotch and bit her lip. “All ears? That’s it?”
Holding her to his chest, he stood, pushing his boxers down his legs one-handed. His cock sprang out of the fabric, slapping her pussy, and they both groaned. “Let me show you instead.” ‘Cause he was going to explode if he didn’t get inside her. “Hottest thing ever.” Bending her knees a bit, she half stood as he fisted the T-shirt out of his way.
He rubbed some spit around the head of his cock and grabbed the base, pointing his dick at the opening of her sweet pussy. As soon as she made contact, he hissed. “Fuck, you’re wet. Guess I didn’t need any spit.”
Our Rules Page 17