Pierced (Tall, Dark, and Handsome Book 2)

by JA Huss

  “You… planned a weekend trip to Germany to get me this bottle?”

  He presses his lips together and then lets out a long sigh. “I’ve been saving it for the day you forgave me. I didn’t want to use it as a bribe. You made it pretty clear that’s how you felt about the promotion. And the office. And the furniture. So… Yeah. I felt like we were in a good place last night so I had a messenger drop it off here this morning so it would be chilled when we arrived.”

  I just stare at him, open-mouthed. This bottle is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six thousand dollars. And the trip. A private jet. A car service to get him to Trier. A hotel. Then backtracking two days later.

  “I hope it wasn’t presumptuous,” he says, drawing in a deep breath.

  “Jesus Christ, Pierce,” I say.

  “See,” he says. “There is such a thing as too rich.”

  It would be ridiculous of me to unbutton one more button on my underbuttoned white button-down blouse right now, but that’s what I feel like doing. I’m flushed all over with… I don’t know. Not desire, because Myrtle Rothschild does not get hot over gifts. Not even one like this.

  But… something else. Gratitude isn’t the right word either. I don’t want to thank him with a boob shot, for fuck’s sake.

  But I am hot for him right now. And I do want to thank him for being… thoughtful. And for being my friend. And invested in me the way he is. And something else too. But I’m not quite sure what that is.

  “I… I don’t know what to say,” I stammer. “But… thank you.” It’s so not enough. These words are not enough words to make him understand what I’m feeling right now.

  He pours me a glass, hands it to me, and then holds up his own bottle of Perrier. His beverage of choice. And so very Pierce. I touch my glass to his bottle and he says, “To something new. I think what we had is gone. And I truly, truly regret that. It’s all my fault and I’m so, so sorry. But we’re not done yet. We can’t be done yet.”

  I take a sip. And he sips his water. And then we just stare at each other. Eye to eye. Soul-searching, I think.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I ask.

  “Of course.”

  “Why don’t you drink?”

  “Partially just because of Paulette.” He has always tended to call his mother by her first name. He shrugs. “And partially because of control.”

  “Control?” He nods. “How so?”

  “I don’t like being out of it.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Isn’t it just?”

  We both take another sip of our preferred drinks.

  “When I came to Colorado I met a man.” I don’t even understand how that came out of my mouth, but it did. And now, just half a second later, I want to take it back.

  He must see the panic in my expression, because he takes my hand and leads me over to the sofa in front of the fireplace. “Let’s sit down. I know we’re been driving and you might be anxious to go outside and shop—”

  Shop? I almost laugh. Because shopping is the farthest thing from my mind right now.

  “—but let’s just relax and have a nice conversation. Sound good?”

  I nod, then sit down like I’m on autopilot. I hold my glass in my lap with both hands, staring down at it.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “But if you do, you should know it won’t matter. Not that it won’t matter. Everything you say matters. But that it won’t change the way I feel about you.”

  I look up at him. “How do you feel about me?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea. No,” he says, putting a hand up. “That’s not true. I do know one thing. I… like you. Like that. You know. I like you like that.”

  I smile, feeling better than I have in months as I look back down at my glass. “It was just a really weird time.”

  “What was weird about it?”

  “Well,’ I say, looking up at him again. “I was weird. I wanted to be someone else. I didn’t want to be the shy, quiet, librarian’s daughter anymore. And I didn’t quite know how to go about that, but I met this man one night in a bar. I didn’t realize it was a kink bar. It was up in Boulder and all the girls in my English Lit class were talking about going there. But… they were not my friends. I just overheard, ya know?”

  He nods at me.

  “So I talked myself into going alone. And it was all this dungeon stuff, right? Mostly men dominating women, but there were a few dominatrix ladies there too. And somehow…” I shake my head as I remember that night. “I was a little bit drunk, and a lot less inhibited, and the guy asked for a volunteer from the audience and… he picked me. The rest is history, as they say. I went home with him and pretty soon I was spending weekends at his house—”

  “As his… submissive?” Pierce interrupts.

  “Yes.” I nod. “But for months after that I kept asking myself, why me? Why in the world did he choose me? And do you know what I figured out?”

  “You were a submissive?” he asks.

  “No.” I laugh. “Well, yes. Because I am.” I hold up a finger real quick. “Just a little bit. Just enough. But that’s not why he chose me. He picked me because I was… alone. I was shy. I was quiet. He picked me because I was a wallflower.”

  “And he wanted to open you up?” Pierce asks, trying really hard not to go down the path I’m leading him.

  “No,” I say. “He wanted someone easy.”

  “He told you that?”

  I nod. “He did. He wanted someone easy. Someone who would just do as she was told. He didn’t want the drama, or the challenge, or the stress of training a difficult sub.”

  “And what did you think of that?”

  “I thought it was bullshit.” I laugh. “I threw plates at him until his cupboard was bare, I was so angry. And I was ashamed too. That I fell for his bullshit so easily. So I packed my shit up, and two months later I entered the dungeon club again, but as a top. And I liked it. I lived it. One hundred percent lived it. I mean, I had men in cages in my apartment.”

  “There were there willingly?”

  “Of course.” I laugh. “I know I didn’t show you my professional side this week, but I’m a professional. Or I was. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You already apologized.”

  “I know. But it should be said again.” I shrug. “I’m not proud of who I was back then. I’m not ashamed of her, but I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be wallflower Myrtle, either. I just want to be me, and I thought that’s who I was with you, but it turns out, I just… fell into another kind of top/bottom relationship. I never really moved on, I guess.”

  “Please don’t move on,” he says quickly. “Please don’t go. Whatever it is you need, I want to give it to you.”

  And then, very abruptly, he leans in and kisses me hard.

  And I let him. And then, maybe because I’m done being a top, or a bottom, or anything else having to do with power… I meet him on shared ground. And I kiss him back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - PIERCE

  Once, about five years ago, Myrtle came with me to a conference in Bern. I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time and I didn’t want to go to this event alone. I knew there would be a bevy of Swiss companions from whom to choose, but I just wasn’t in the mood for whatever reason. So I asked her to attend for the simple reason that when Myrtle is around, she takes up a lot of space in the room. She draws attention. And she also scares people.

  She has the ability to be both seductive and repellent all at once. And that is power. A power that is very nearly inimitable. Because I have only ever seen it successfully at play in one other person.

  Myself.

  There was a moment, on that trip to Bern, when I walked her to her suite after dinner, that I thought we might… kiss. Fuck. Whatever. I don’t know.

  But we didn’t. And until about a hundred or so hours ago, I thought that was going to be the only opportunity I would ever have to see if there was something more bet
ween us.

  Missed opportunities are very most often just that. One does not usually get second chances to do the things one wishes one had done in the first place. I will not allow the chance to find out what there could be between me and Myrtle to slip away again.

  My plan for this weekend was vague, but definite. If that isn’t too much of an oxymoron. It began as a power play, morphed into a seduction design, and as of about ten seconds ago has become the intention to get her into bed for the next two days and not let her out. For someone who has a lot of feelings a lot of the time, I sure don’t understand mine very well.

  I lean into the kiss, pushing her back on the sofa. She counters, pushing equally hard into me. We lock somewhere in the middle, rigid, and hungry, and wanting. A smile finds its way into my kiss and it is equaled by the smile on her lips.

  We stand, still kissing, neither one of us willing to give an inch but at the same time not wanting to disappoint the other. Making our way to the bedroom, I pop loose the remaining buttons on her shirt that cling to their cotton/silk blended holds. She strips me of my jacket and does the same type of unencumbering of me from my own top.

  I find the fastener on the back of her bra and remove that as well. And now our chests are pressed into each other. Flesh on flesh. My skin on hers, hers on mine.

  Zip. Her skirt in the back.

  The clang of a belt buckle and another zip. My pants in the front.

  We step back from each other. She gets an impish grin and I feel myself matching it. And then, as if a starter pistol had been fired, we now race to get the rest of our clothes off. Truly. A race. It’s as though we’re competing to see who can strip naked first.

  It winds up as a tie. (Technically, I think I won, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.)

  And we stand, nude, facing each other.

  This week, she has seen me naked. This week, I have seen her naked. But for the first time ever we are naked together. At the same time. In the same place. With the same reason for being so.

  My eye is drawn down to her crotch. I can’t help it. It has a lot to do with the astonishing fitness of her body and the inherent sexuality she possesses, but it also has a fair amount to do with the tiny, metal barbell adorned with sapphires on the ends that crosses the hood of her clitoris.

  Seeing me stare, she bends her head to find my eyes and says, “Hey.”

  “Oh. Hi. Sorry. It’s different than… the other one you had on.”

  She shrugs. “Weekend jewelry.”

  “Sure.”

  I step into her, take her around the waist, and press her to me so that I can feel the whole of her naked body against mine. My mouth finds hers once more and my hardening cock can feel the metal bar between her legs as it continues to fill itself up, readying for what’s next.

  She lets out a moan and throws her head back when my dick pulses against the silver pressing into her skin. My tongue trails down her neck and lands at her collar bone, which I bite out of impulse.

  “Ow!” she says. “Fucker!” She slaps at me.

  “Sorry! Shit. Did it really hurt?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Then she grins and says, “Do it again.”

  The smile that blooms on my face can probably be seen back at the TDH. I oblige. I nibble at her again. Around her neck, across her collar bone, down her breasts, making sure that they both get their due. Once my tongue traces down her stomach and reaches the mound of flesh just above her piercing—the double entendre of which simply fills me with joy—I pause for a moment to decide what I want to do next.

  Everything. Everything is the answer. So I better get started.

  I grab her ass and toss her onto the bed. She lands with a bounce and props herself up on her elbows. Her hair has released from any semblance of being composed or put together and for the first time in seven years, I am getting a look at a completely unmanicured version of her. Wild, and reckless, and feral. It is a side of her that I never thought I’d see. It is a side of her that pretty much no one on earth gets to see, I imagine.

  She stares at me with an intensity that, if I were not me, I imagine would be pretty intimidating. Truth be told, it’s still pretty intimidating, I just don’t get intimidated all that easily. I smirk at her and I suppose she takes it as a challenge of some kind because she lowers her chin, looks at me with a lancing gaze, and spreads her legs open. Wide.

  I nod at her, slowly and certainly, say, “Mistress,” and brace my hands on her knees as I bring my mouth forward and place it around the jeweled metal bar that feels to me like a velvet rope at an exclusive club where, inside, dark and dangerous things are happening. Things that don’t get talked about in polite company. Like a place in Denver some old acquaintances once told me about, but to which I declined to go. I’m glad now that I waited. This exclusive club seems much, much better. And even more exclusive.

  When my lips and teeth tug on the bar, her entire body tightens and shivers. She moans a guttural sound from somewhere deep in the back of her throat and falls back onto the bed, letting her elbows give way.

  Funny thing about the bar she’s got in… it’s like a divining rod leading me directly to the most tender and sensitive part of her. It’s a road sign. A guidance device. A lightning rod.

  I feel so tickled that it is my namesake.

  After a few moments of allowing my tongue to stroke the swollen flesh of her clit, just as I’m about to really go to work, she grabs me by the hair and pulls my head up.

  “Ow. Ow, ow, ow. Hi. What’s up?” I say as she jerks my neck backward.

  “Fuck me. Now,” she says.

  “Oh. OK. I was going to—”

  “Now!” she commands.

  “Oui, oui, mademoiselle,” I say, as I lift to my feet, my cock now completely on high alert. She pushes herself up the bed, widening her legs into almost a full side split as she does.

  “Holy shit. I knew you were agile from back when I saw you climb the rock wall, but—”

  “Now!”

  I place my knees on the bed, line my body up with hers, and lean over, allowing my palms to land on either side of her head. Her hair is even wilder now. Her lipstick is almost gone. I assume most of it is on my mouth. And looking into her eyes… I see it all.

  I see the librarian.

  I see the lioness.

  I see the submissive.

  I see the dominatrix.

  The assistant, the VP, the girl in the castle, the woman in the office, I see it all.

  And without losing eye contact with any one of them, I slide myself slowly inside her.

  “Oh, God,” she moans out.

  The feel of her walls closing in on me is unreal. The hard metal of the bar pressing into the top of my pelvis is like… I don’t know. I have no words. It’s like nothing I’ve felt before.

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Yeah.” She sighs.

  “No… Sorry,” I admit. I mean… ugh. Just so you know, I’m clean, and… and I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you have an IUD or…?”

  “I’m clean, I’m on the pill, please shut up and fuck me.”

  “As you wish,” I say.

  The metal rubbing between us as I stroke in and out of her creates a friction that I didn’t know was possible. The long, slow strokes… the short, frantic stabs… all of it is magnified by the piercing.

  And all of it is magnified by the Piercing.

  Or at least I’d like to think so.

  When she finally explodes, the vise-like clamp of her thighs around my waist very nearly cracks my ribs. I come inside her at the same time because if I try to hold out and keep going, I’m concerned I really will get a bone fracture.

  We lie there for a long few moments, me collapsed on top of her and her holding tight, not seeming to want to let go. I give her a minute to catch her breath, and if I’m being honest, I give myself a minute to do the same.

  And after a long sigh, I give her a small kiss and say, “And you wanted to shove my
dick in a tiny box…”

  She smiles and says, “Well, I kinda did.”

  I laugh a bit and then say, “I’m gonna pull out now. K?”

  “Don’t go far.”

  “I won’t.”

  I wink at her. She winks back. And then I slowly draw my semi-softening cock from inside her. A tiny bit of my pubic hair gets caught in the metal and pulls out of me as I pull out of her. It hurts in a beautiful way. I roll over on my side and lie next to her on the king-size bed. I glance out the window briefly to see the mountain in the mid-afternoon, almost autumn sunlight. Incredible place I live. Every time I look out a window I see something beautiful.

  That was even more true when Myrtle sat at the desk just outside my office.

  Well… this more than makes up for that.

  I lean onto my side, prop my head on my elbow and look at her. She counters, mirroring me exactly. What an adorable pair we fucking make.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hello,” she says back.

  “Um… do you want to go shopping?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Good. Me either.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asks.

  “I kind of think I’m doing it.”

  “Good. Me too.”

  Quiet settles in the suite. We stare at each other. After several long moments, she breaks the silence.

  “I don’t need to work for you, you know.”

  “Uh… yeah. I get that. I mean, I guess I get that now. What made you—?”

  “It was about wanting to start a normal life. Be a, whatever, traditional girl. Get a job. All the stuff people do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And then, when I met you… I mean… you’re you. So.”

  I nod. “Well, yeah.” I blow out some air. “And now?”

  She puts her finger on my chest and traces it around the area where my heart lives. “Now? I don’t know. ”

  “What don’t you know, exactly?”

  “I don’t know.”

  OK. Redundant, but I don’t want to push.

  “I don’t trust very easily.”

  “Yeah, no, I… I get that.”

  “The thing that happened with the whole Sexpert…” She sighs. “Something like that can never happen again.”