He nudged her into the shower, following her using the bench and leaning back against the wall as she adjusted the water temperature. When she noticed gooseflesh on his skin, she turned it up even higher and made sure the jets covered him equally. She liked her showers hot, and had been pleased to find that worked for him as well.
As she closed her eyes, tilted her head back under the spray, his hands closed around her waist, brought her to him again. His palms bracketed her breasts once more, bringing her down on his lap to fondle them with simple pleasure before he ran his fingers through her hair, helping her get it wet.
Retrieving the soap, he lathered up his hands. As he began to work the fragrant foam into her neck and shoulders, her breasts, the sound that came from her was a cat’s purr. She caught his smile, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it. At his nudge, she turned around on his lap so he could work his way around her body. He was hard, of course, but she wasn’t sure he could be pushed in that direction. Truth, she still felt a little fragile, so it was nice to stay this way, a low hum of arousal between them. But that hum was pretty deep and intense, something she felt vibrate deep inside her, wanting fulfillment. Wanting the joining that would make everything right again.
When she came back to face him again, she held on to his forearms, then moved her touch to his biceps, pleased with their flex beneath her fingertips. “I haven’t ever seen you work out,” she realized. “When do you do that? And if you were lying to me earlier and you don’t really work out, I will shoot you. I’m sorry, but it will have to be done.”
He grinned. “Usually at night, before my evening shower. I go to a gym not far from my place. Sometimes I do the outdoor fitness course at the park, hook up with a buddy of mine there. Max works out early mornings, but he’ll do a second workout or adjust his schedule and meet me there so we can push one another. He’s younger than me, of course, so he gets to harass me about being an old man and I get to prove him wrong. Even if I pay for it with a bottle of aspirin the day after.”
She ran her own soapy hands over his chest, sliding her fingers through the chest hair, across the flat nipples. “I love your body,” she said sincerely. Fervently. Then she put her mouth on his. She leaned full into him, feeling every inch of that body against hers. She might still be a bit woozy, but any lightheadedness now came from this, how he put his arms around her, held her close, hand dropping to palm her ass, hold her more firmly against his growing erection.
“Finish your shower,” he growled at her, pushing her back and confirming her earlier thought with his next words. “You’re not going to get me to have sex with you when you were nearly fainting an hour ago. Consider it your punishment. Since it’s punishing me as well, you can expect some more payback for that. Don’t give me the pouty look, girl. You know exactly what that makes me want to do with your mouth.”
She wanted that, too. She could well imagine him forcing her to her knees in the shower, her lips sliding down his hard length, tasting him on her tongue. But he was right. She wanted something her body wasn’t quite up to doing. He was protecting her. Caring for her, even as he threatened retribution. It was a lovely and frustrating combination.
She didn’t want to be alone in that, so when he gave her the soap to finish up, maybe she did slide it over her skin with more sensual intent than she would if she was alone. Her fingers slipped between her legs to rub and massage. She arched her back more significantly to clean between her buttocks, along her thighs, so the tips of her breasts jutted out toward him. He’d shifted to a cross-armed stance, looking like a palace guard watching the queen. Even in a seated position, he was daunting, his molten gaze promising dire consequences for being teased this way. Which only made her tease him more, until the corners of his lips were quivering.
There was another reason she did it, though. He could be a cruel, exacting Master when pushed over that line. She wanted that side of him, wanted to purge the past several days of helpless, self-imposed misery from her mind, drive it all away. She shivered in delicious longing at the thought, and tried not to pout. Somewhat.
—
They slept naked together. Despite their shared arousal in the shower, once she was lying down in his arms, lassitude took over. He made her drink the bottle of water, eat a couple of the cookies. After that, she was folded in his arms, head on his chest, while he stroked the wisps along her brow with his long fingers. She’d braided her damp hair, deciding she’d deal with it in the morning.
“Better?”
She nodded. When her eyes filled with an unexpected flood of tears, she resigned herself to irrational emotional responses until she’d had a good night’s sleep. She pressed her face harder against the hair-roughened expanse of his chest.
“Thank you, Dale. For caring about me enough to come looking for me.”
“I already told you”—his mouth brushed her temple—“Caring for you is part of the job.”
“What job?” she asked, her heart beating high in her chest at his pause. Being her Master?
“Loving you, girl.”
It really meant the same thing, didn’t it? She closed her eyes and slept.
EIGHTEEN
The sunshine through the sheers was bright, telling her she’d slept long past her normal hour. Lifting her head, she saw it was eight o’clock. She rarely slept past six or seven, but she expected being in Dale’s arms was responsible. Just as the fact he was no longer there was probably why she was waking up. He’d left the covers pulled around her, though, leaving her like a nested bird. The thought made her smile.
Lifting her head, she found him. He was sitting in the wing-backed chair, watching her. He was fully dressed, clean-shaven. He was reading her morning paper but, seeing her wake, he set it aside. As her gaze coursed up to his face, everything stilled. The expression he wore wasn’t a lazy morning smile, a lover about to ask her if she wanted pancakes. It was that of a stern Master.
He’d called her an independent, strong woman, and she was that. She was capable, self-sufficient. Yet that expression awoke deeper, far more primal responses, bringing the submissive in her to full alert, uneasy and anticipating at once, though it was a little more weighted on the uneasy side, given his forbidding countenance.
“That thing I said, about teaching you every day not to handle the things that aren’t your job to handle?” His eyes glinted. “I’m a man of my word. Bring me your hairbrush. No robe. You stay naked until I give you permission to wear clothes.”
She slid from the bed, shivering a little in the morning air as she moved to the bathroom. The tile was cold under her bare feet. She picked up the wooden brush. It had the carving of a hummingbird on the back, surrounded by petunias. She’d bought it at one of NOLA’s craft fairs, the brush carved by a local artisan. She brought it to Dale, lowering her eyes as she stood between the span of his boots.
“Am I your friend right now, Athena? Your equal?”
She shook her head.
“Then how should you be addressing me, girl?” he snapped, making her jump.
“Master. Sir.”
He latched onto her wrist and pulled her forward. He directed her down over his knees, such that her breasts were pressing into his calves, her legs sprawled ignominiously over his other leg, spread by his knee there. He put a hand on her ass, holding her in the precarious position. “Put your palms on the floor.”
It required her to shift forward, perching her ass at the highest point, centered between his legs. Her knees were bent, toes barely holding on to the floor, only his hold on her backside keeping her stable. Then he changed that anchor point, putting his hand between her legs and clamping it around her pussy, his thumb pushed against her rim. “You keep your legs spread. You don’t worry about balance. That’s up to me. Why are you being punished, Athena? Why will I punish you every day like this until I’m satisfied you’ve learned the lesson?”
&n
bsp; Every day? Did that mean he’d be here every morning? Her pussy dampened at the thought, even as her pulse increased in trepidation. As tender as she knew he could be, he was equally capable of this, silencing every voice in her head but the one that told her she better follow his every order to the letter.
“For . . . for trying to handle things that I shouldn’t. For trying to handle my Master.”
“And?”
“I—I don’t know, sir.”
The brush came down on her left buttock, stinging and sharp, making her jump. “For not caring for your Master’s property. You are my property. You understand, girl?”
“Yes sir.” She bit back a yelp as he struck her again. “Yes, Master.”
“I’m going to give you a pretty severe spanking this morning. Enough that by the end of it you’re going to be trying to get away. But I’m just going to hold you down and keep going until I’m sure you understand. Because words alone won’t do it.”
“I’m sorry, Master,” she said, trying to hold on to the floor as he shifted.
“Not as sorry as you need to be, girl.” And then he made good on his word.
She was sure he was holding back, because he looked powerful enough to put someone through a wall, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. She tried to be still and quiet, accept her punishment, but he’d predicted that correctly as well. Before he was done, she’d lost track of the count and was squirming, screaming, trying to get away. He proved without a doubt then that he was far stronger than she was, holding her in that position with one arm, bringing the brush down again and again until she was jerking at every blow, sobbing, clinging to his pants leg. Then he made her let go of him and put her palms back on the floor as he’d commanded, before giving her five more strong whacks. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face into his leg, shuddering with the pain.
Her relief at seeing him place the brush on the side table was overwhelming. She was panting, her heart thundering. He eased her to the floor between his feet, positioning her so she was facing away from him. He wasn’t in a mood to be tender yet, though. “On your ass, girl. Don’t you try to avoid it. Draw your knees up to your chest, link your arms over them.”
She winced as the position stretched the skin over the most abused portions of her throbbing buttocks, but she clenched her fingers together over her knees, rocking forward. His hands were on her hair, undoing the braid. As her sobs slowed to little hiccups, she wondered at his silence, wondered what he was thinking or planning next. He stroked his fingers through the wavy strands, loosening them. Then he picked up the brush and began to use it on her hair.
Deep, massaging pulls, the bristles scratching her scalp in a soothing way. She sniffled, shook, rocked against his touch. When he reached forward to pull a loose strand away from her face, she brushed her mouth against his fingers. As he stopped, holding his hand there, she turned her face into his palm fully. She cried, even as she nuzzled him, touched her tongue to the creases between his fingers.
She was a wreck, but that hard shell she’d formed around herself these past few days had literally been beaten to pieces. What was left beneath was raw and vulnerable, but not broken. If anything, she felt as if she was kneeling over her own soul, retrieving it from that shell, seeing it free at last.
He took his hand away and began brushing once more. She closed her eyes, letting the tears run freely, her ass hurting, every part of her shaking. At some point, she realized he was humming, a quiet, soothing sound as he followed each stroke of the brush with a stroke of his hand through her hair.
She wasn’t sure how long he did it, but it was the most memorable aftercare she’d ever experienced or witnessed. The clock ticked on the wall, the only noise beyond the tiny adjustments normal to the house, the faint sound of birds outside. She was glad she’d given the staff off until next week. She liked it like this, just the two of them.
The simple stasis became something else as the tears died back. She thought of what she’d wanted last night. That had been the lust, the desire for emotional and physical release, but this had a different need entangled with it.
“Master?” Her voice was rusty with tears.
He paused. “Yes, girl?”
“May I . . . thank you?”
His hands resumed their movement along her hair. “Do you think you deserve that?”
“No sir. But I want to give you pleasure. Please.”
He stopped again. She heard him shift, sit back. Eagerness flooded her as she heard the metal of his belt being unbuckled, his jeans being unzipped, the adjustment of clothing.
“Turn around and get on your knees. Arms boxed behind your back, hands holding your forearms.”
He wasn’t going to allow her to touch him except with her mouth. While that disappointed her, another part of it took it as an extension of the same punishment. She’d overstepped her authority with her Master. If she put it in Dale’s terminology, he was sure as fuck going to make sure she didn’t do it again.
As another side effect of his punishment, she realized she’d let go of what had happened with Sheila. It still felt raw, painful, but when her mind turned to it, there was no cringing embarrassment or sense of failure. At least right now. If she even considered those negative feelings, the punishment he’d just given her overrode it. It was a deliberate form of conditioning. God help her, he’d implied he’d be dishing it out to her regularly, but, perverse as it seemed, that made her feel better. He was in control. The punishment reminded her that any attempt to hold control broke his rules. And he was right. That reminder had brought relief. Pain had accompanied it, but as a result, there’d been no room for shame or regret. Paying the consequences of her actions took care of that.
He put his hands on her upper arms and shifted her forward on the carpet, bringing her mouth within range of his cock, jutting up hard from the nest of testicles. He’d merely opened the jeans, freed his shaft from them and the boxers beneath. He wasn’t going to give her a tempting view of his ass or upper thighs. She was servicing her Master, pure and simple, and it made everything in her tighten up and contract, every nerve ending rippling with eager, excruciating need.
He gathered her brushed hair into a tail, holding it in his fist. With the pressure of his closed hand against her scalp, he brought her down to him. Because her arms were boxed behind her, she had to depend on his hold, the hand he had on her shoulder to control her descent and direction. Then she had her mouth on his cock.
She made a hungry noise as she enclosed it, slid down to the root. He grunted, hand tightening in her hair, and he began to control all the movements, up and down, making it clear her mouth was at his disposal, to use as he desired. Arousal from her pussy made her calves slick, but even before that she’d been wet, from the spanking of all things. Through the punishment, her nipples had stayed hard, her heart thumping erratically with arousal as well as pain-induced adrenaline.
She’d accepted she was a submissive, but discovering how much his harshest punishments could turn her on was still new at times. The moment she’d opened her eyes in the bed and Dale had given her that look, telling her he was going to be cruel with her, she’d started to respond. She didn’t think she was a hardcore masochist, but she was realizing the punishment helped her put her mind in the right place. He had figured it out well ahead of her. Which was why he did it, of course. That, and because he purely enjoyed it, in a way that inexplicably thrilled her.
She focused on his taste, his scent, the heat and weight of him. It was more than his cock. She loved the sheer solidity and dense strength he possessed. His toughness was more than a surface thing. He was just as strong inside, a man who’d proven he was capable of handling a great deal, for himself and others.
So often he’d had to fish the words out of her, but during this pure service, she felt everything they’d discussed last night. She saw the difference betwee
n handling things she incorrectly felt like she couldn’t rely upon him or shouldn’t ask him to do, and wanting to do things for him purely out of love. She wanted to make things easier for him because he was her Master, and he loved her. He gave her a sense of safety and well-being that made her want to do the same for him.
It was amazing, what one spanking could do. If he delivered on his daily threat, she might solve all the world’s problems in a week. Maybe they should have Dale hand out spankings to Congress. With a really, really big paddle.
But for now, she had one focus, and she gladly surrendered her undivided attention to it. She sucked on his cock, accommodating him by relaxing her throat muscles as he pushed her down to the root, then brought her back up again. She worked with him, bobbing up and down, flicking her tongue over him with mad, hungry delight, making matching noises in her throat as she increased the suction, nipping at him here and there.
“Fuck . . .” His oath was music to her. She kept at it, directed by his closed fist on her hair, the strength of his arm pushing down, drawing her up. Please come for me, Master. He could take her to a mindless state where she had only one sharp wish. To serve him, to feel his release and know she’d cared for him as she should.
His thighs shifted beneath her gaze, his breath increased. His fingers convulsed in her hair, the grip on her shoulder bruising. Her own fingers, gripping her forearms in the boxed position along her back, were damp from the effort she was putting into this. Then that effort was rewarded.
His cock jerked, convulsed in her mouth. She prepared herself, reveling in it when his seed spurted into the back of her throat, so violently she had to struggle to hold on to it, sealing her lips hard around him as he continued to shove her down upon him. She swallowed, coughed, swallowed, and took him down, using her tongue to lash at him, gather it all up, swallow some more.
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