by Eden Myles
“You would. You would need to give your gentleman complete control over yourself.”
“What about our past history makes you think I’m even capable of that?” My voice rose an octave.
He blinked slowly. “It’s my job to tame you, to train you to be a proper courtesan, Charlotte. And I take my work as a gentleman very seriously.”
I wanted to back up, but I was already against the sofa. Nowhere to run. “I don’t want to be tamed, Lachlan.”
He moved to fill my personal space. He bowed his head over me. He was big enough to tuck my head under his chin, if he wanted to. He took my chin in one big hand and pinched it gently between his thumb and forefinger. This close, I could see the dark shadow of his beard at his chin and throat. Even as a teenager he’d needed to shave twice a day. I knew the scratch of his stubble all too well. When he finally kissed me—gently, with just a nibble of teeth against my lower lip—I felt the space between my legs immediately dampen in response to him. My hip canted in an effort to connect with him. I hated how my body so easily betrayed me. “I would never hurt you in any way, Charlotte. You know that,” he rumbled softly against my suddenly breathless mouth.
Yeah, I did. I wanted to run. I wanted to say hell no. I saw myself do it. Yet I shifted closer so I was against him, enveloped in his heat and scent. He brought his other hand around me, cupping my jeans-clad ass easily in just his one hand. He scooped me forward, held me against the front of his cashmere suit. God he was big, and hard. I had forgotten that—the sore and wanting way I’d come away from our lovemaking.
I felt so embarrassed. After Lachlan had been put away, I never so much as saw him, wrote him. I was too angry, completely mortified by his arrest. What could I tell my dad? That my boyfriend was a felon? He’d never accept Lachlan. I knew I couldn’t. And now he was holding me like he wasn’t angry that I’d abandoned him. How could he not be angry with me?
He held me against the shelter of his body and I mewled against him like an eager kitten.
“See?” he teased, sliding his lips to the side of my face and speaking against the soft, jumpy skin of my throat. “You want to be trained.”
Tears filled my eyes. “Oh god, Lachlan…”
He scooped me up into his arms like I weighed nothing and carried me up a winding flight of stairs to his bedroom. It was done up in the same rustic but elegant charm as the rest of the house. The bed was a Californian king-sized, four-poster monstrosity. Lachlan’s whole house made me feel tiny, like a too-small doll in his dollhouse.
He deposited me on the foot of his bed and went down on one knee. We saw each other eye to eye as he unbuckled my rig and started unbuttoning the shirt I wore.
“I can get undressed,” I started protesting before he leaned forward, grabbed my ponytail much too hard, and kissed me. His tongue whispered over mine and fluttered against the roof of my mouth.
“Uh…” I began as he withdrew, but he quickly cut me off.
“I want to undress you. Play with you. You should always honor your gentleman’s request, Charlotte.”
He got the shirt off and I wriggled around a little so he could slide my jeans off, then crossed my legs demurely. We’d been lovers, but I still blushed to be in my underwear in front of him. Partly it was plain ol’ embarrassment—I wasn’t exactly what you would call voluptuous—and partly the fact that on a cop’s salary, I couldn’t afford nice underwear. I wore sensible cotton briefs and a racerback sports bra—workout underwear, really. But the first time I’d had to run down a suspect in a regular bra, it was the last time I wore it. Nylon bra straps chafe like a sonofabitch.
He stared at me so intently I had to look away. He started undoing the front clasp on the bra, but I stopped his hand. “You next.”
“No.” He leaned down and kissed the side of my neck, his stubble grazing me in an oh-so-familiar way. I wondered how it was possible to be so excited and so at ease at the same time. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams…
“Lachlan…”
“Your job is to obey, Charlotte.”
I sighed. “At least take your rig off. It makes me a little nervous.”
He compromised that much, at least. As I had suspected, he’d been packing a Desert Eagle semi-automatic, a regular hand cannon…and an illegal one in the State of New York. It made me remember that Lachlan was a bad guy. A very bad guy. He was a felon. A gangster…
I gasped as he undid the bra and, without even bothering to remove it, leaned forward and kissed me hungrily on the lips. I hated that he kissed me. Every time he did, I felt a little more of my will slip away.
He placed a hand on my stomach when I tried to move closer to him. “No,” he said, his voice thundering over me. “Obey.” His hand spanned practically my whole waist and he easily pushed me down onto the bed and pinned me there. Now I knew why he wouldn’t get undressed; there was something specifically dominant about him staying in his suit while I lay there naked and vulnerable and open and pink to him. I was about to say something, but he kissed me again and all the fight went out of my body like he was devouring my will.
He deepened the kiss, crushing his lips against mine. His tongue moved into me much more aggressively now, pinning my tongue down. He moved his massive hand up my side and covered my already peaked breast. He grabbed me with a sudden, urgent greed I wasn’t prepared for. His touch sent a shock of almost electrical sensation through my body.
I hated the fact that having him atop me, holding me down like this, thrilled me. It was like for once I didn’t have to be tough. I didn’t have to be the “guy”. I could just lay here and let him take me apart.
I placed my hand on the back of his neck as he kissed me. I sighed softly into his mouth as his fingers moved to the edges of my panties and slid them down over my slim and rather (in my own opinion) boyish hips. He touched me and I immediately spread my legs further and arched my hips in an attempt to reach him.
“There, see…you were made to obey me,” he mumbled against my mouth. His finger swirled gently over my exposed sex, dabbled in my wetness. He parted my labia and teased all my soaked wet inner flesh with his touch. My face reddened further when we both realized how wet I was already, how ready I was for him.
He buried his face in the side of my neck, biting and licking the tender skin there. I let out a little moan of pleasure. I moved my hand down the slope of his back, feeling the hard wall of muscle he kept contained in that beautiful suit, and cupped his slim ass.
“No,” he said. “You mustn’t touch me, Charlotte,” he whispered, his beard grazing me as he nuzzled my cheek. “That privilege has to be earned. Lie still. Arms at your sides.”
I tried to obey, but it was hard. I wanted to touch him, grab him. When we were lovers back in the old days, I liked being on top of him, holding him down. Old habits die hard. As he kissed a trail down over my breasts, my hands went to snag the shoulders of his suit, my fingers digging in.
“That’s it.” He got up, sounding exasperated, and grabbed both my wrists up in one big hand. He yanked me to the head of the bed while I gave a little squeal of surprise. He hadn’t hurt me, but he’d damned well surprised me. I hadn’t even realized there were fur-lined handcuffs attached to the frame of the bed until he snicked them closed over my wrists.
“Lachlan!” I cried, pulling on them. “Let me go!”
He stood over me. “No. You agreed to obey. You will obey.”
“I agreed to be your courtesan, not your punching bag!”
His face darkened with insult. “Is that what you believe this is, Charlotte?”
I rattled the chains. “I don’t know you anymore, Lachlan!”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned down to kiss one hard, erect nipple. He took it in his mouth and sucked gently upon it until it gleamed with his saliva. I felt my body melt and I relaxed completely. He reached up and curled one of my fingers over a small button in the cuffs. “Push that, and the cuffs will release you anytime. Or tell m
e to stop and I will.” He looked up at me with a hungry and serious face. “Do you want me to stop, Charlotte?”
I gave the cuffs one last tug. Then I told him the truth. “No.”
“But you want to fight.”
He knew me so well. “Yes.”
“In that case, we’ll use common safewords like green for go, red for stop, and yellow for slow. Is that acceptable?”
I pulled on the chains, wanting him nearer me. I nodded.
“Tell me you consent.”
“God, yes,” I blurted out. “Fuck me, Lachlan.”
He needed no further encouragement. He lingered over my nipples, teasing them and suckling upon them until I gave a low groan of satisfaction. Then his tongue, teeth and lips moved over my ribs as if he were determined to taste every inch of me before he took me.
His tongue teased in and out of my navel until the sensation of him touching me—yet not touching me enough—had me madly fighting the cuffs. I hated not being able to touch him. He trailed a line of kisses over my lower stomach, stopping just short of my aching, empty pussy. He swiped his tongue back and forth, keeping it up until I found myself shamelessly begging to be licked between the legs.
“You never change, Charlotte. Aggressive little minx,” he laughed. He flit his tongue over my swollen clit once briefly before peppering the inside of my thighs with his kisses.
“Give me your tongue, Lachlan,” I ordered, and he smacked me sharply over the pussy with his open hand, which made me scream and jump with anger, but also further wetted me. I gasped with the sensations of pain and pleasure roiling through my body, all these contradictory feelings, appalled by the way I was responding to him—the way my body was responding. “Lachlan, please!”
“Just for that, you’re not getting it, Charlotte. Not until you lean to obey your gentleman. It’s a simple enough system—do what I say, and you get a reward. Disobey me, and I’ll punish you.”
I squirmed in the cuffs. “Tell me what you want.”
He did. I thought maybe he was joking, at first. But the look he gave me told me this was no joke. He even undid the cuffs so I could obey. I sat up on the bed, naked and wet and panting. I wanted to get the hell out of there, but my body wouldn’t listen to the reason my mind was insisting on.
“I never knew you were this kinky,” I told him.
“Neither did I.”
“Do you do this to all your women?”
“No,” he answered. He didn’t take my bait and elaborate. I wondered how many women he’d had, though.
“Lachlan, don’t make me do this.”
He reached for the chair tucked under the Queen Anne-style desk in the corner and sat down. He was large enough to nearly obliterate the dainty chair. “Obey or leave,” he said in a thundering voice that suggested he’d broach no negotiations.
An ultimatum. God, I hated how stubborn he was, how everything was his way or the highway.
I’d run from him once, when he went away. I wouldn’t do it now and prove myself twice the coward. I lifted my chin with as much dignity as I could muster as I went to him. I expected him to grab me, but he sat back and said, “Over my knee. Now.”
So I would need to prostrate myself. Whatever. It was worth it if it meant I could put a scumbag like Castellano away. Anything for the job. I climbed awkwardly over his lap and assumed an over-the-knee position as he had commanded. It wasn’t difficult, but I was hardly used to this. No one had ever disciplined me as a child, not even my dad. I was too good a girl, I suppose.
He stroked my hair and trailed his heavy hand down my back and over my bare ass, making me shiver. I curled my fingers where they trailed on the carpet at his feet. He kissed my hair, rubbed my ass, squeezed my muscles there, and said, “Relax. I’ll make you beg me to do this to you in future. You’ll look forward to it.”
“I rather doubt it.”
His hand suddenly cracked against my ass with such force I screamed bloody murder, then clamped a hand over my mouth, afraid the neighbors would think Lachlan was killing me.
He didn’t let up or let me go. He did say, “You may scream if you want to. The walls of this room are soundproofed, and the Michaels’ house is acres away. Besides, they’re probably doing the same thing to their courtesan.”
I really expected him to stop or ask me if I was all right. Instead, he hit me again, a little higher up this time—not a love tap. The sound of flesh on flesh was as loud as a thunderclap in the room. Jesus Christ. He was fucking serious about his work. The flash of pain vibrated through my whole body, making me writhe and shiver in his lap. His erection probed into my stomach, making it hard to remain still. He waited until I stopped whimpering, then delivered the third blow. The impact against my already smarting ass left me screeching in response.
“Really, Charlotte.”
“That fucking hurts!”
He slid his fingers under me. “So why are you so wet?”
I grunted in response.
“If you stop fighting and just absorb the blows, it’ll be much more pleasurable for you. Try and compartmentalize the pain, if you can.”
“What would you know?”
“A lot,” he answered. “I was a courtier for a short time.”
That took me unaware. Lachlan just didn’t seem the type to submit to something like this. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No,” he said, and delivered his fourth blow, which left me gasping for breath. “Margo Faulkner, a lady in the Society, trained me. Our arrangement was professional, though. I only let her discipline me so I could better understand what it meant to submit to someone—so I could be a good gentleman.”
He spanked me and I screamed out through gritted teeth, “Fuck!”
“Don’t use profanity. It’s not ladylike.” He dealt me three more blows in quick succession—each, it seemed, harsher than the last.
By the time he was done, I was sobbing and tears were streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d cried. Maybe at my dad’s funeral. I thought I could handle this, but I never felt more mortified and…naked in my life, being spanked like some small, unruly child.
“Should I stop?” he asked in a cool and frighteningly detached voice.
I nodded through my sobs.
He picked me up and carried me easily to the bed. He started kissing me again, starting at the tears on my face and working his way down. My tears subsided but I continued to tremble as he nudged the hood of my clit back and swirled his tongue over the sensitive, enflamed little nub of flesh. I arched my back, gasping and clawing Lachlan’s carefully styled hair. He licked and sucked, then blew gently upon me until I was writhing uncontrollably for him.
“Did this Margo teach you all this?” I gasped out.
“She taught me to be a good lover,” he explained. “A better lover.”
“You were never a bad lover. What else did she teach you?”
“You sound jealous.” He couldn’t keep the glee out of his voice over that.
There was no point in lying. “I am.”
“I told you: our arrangement was professional. We never had flesh on flesh penetration. She was a good teacher.” He bowed his head over me again, and his tongue slid stealthily under the hood of my clit.
I hated how good it felt to lie here and be serviced this way, used this way. I hated that it had felt so good to be bent over his knee. “Please don’t stop.”
“Beg me, Charlotte.”
“God, please…please, Lachlan….please, please, please…”
“There’s my good girl.” He nudged two fingers inside my tight hole and all my muscles clenched down around him. He rubbed me inside, stroking over my g-spot first gently, then quickly, until I thought I’d go mad with desire. I arched my back and rolled my hips, his deep, urgent thrusts making me rock uncontrollably on the bed as the pressure of my orgasm built and built. His other hand moved to the base of my stomach and pressed downward, holding me down as he finger
-fucked me. He knew how to bring me hard and fast and to control when it happened. The orgasm finally burst over me in a rush of heat and urgent, shameless lust. I thrashed on the bed for him as my climax crested and I felt myself go in a burst of juice.
My face immediately reddened. I wasn’t what you would call a squirter, and I was never able to do that with any other lover. It was only Lachlan that made me come so forcefully, so completely. I shivered all over as I fell back on the bed, feeling slightly wilted at the edges.
He smoothed the hair away from my sweating brow. “Did you like that?” he asked.
“Christ, yes…I always like it with you,” I told him truthfully. “You’re the only one who makes me come like that.”
He smirked in that victorious, lopsided way men do when they realize they have it all over other men. Lachlan certainly wasn’t immune to that kind of ego. Growing up, he’d been one of the most arrogant men I’d ever known, confident in all he did. Even the day the police came for him he was wearing a shit-eating grin on his face. He’d only done five years, but I knew he’d had the whole prison under his thumb in no time. It was who he was, what he was. A fearless, ego-ridden alpha.
Yet he was different these days, no less fierce, but somehow…less selfish. More gentlemanly. His face changed, became concentrated and charged with a kind of light. “Pretty girl,” he said, tracing the slope of my cheek. He leaned forward and kissed the corner of my mouth, an oddly tender gesture, and not one I expected from him. He’d changed. I’d changed.
“Please, please, please…” I pleaded, still hungry for him. “Fuck me, Lachlan, like then.”
“I’d rather fuck you like now.” He dug out a foil-wrapped condom from the bedside drawer. He gave it to me and said, “Do it.”
I undid his trousers, slid it on around his long, meaty shaft, already ramrod straight and weeping for me. Then he slid my kneels up his broad shoulders and cupped my ass, tilting it up and forward a little so he could rub himself against my seeping hole. I dug my fingers into his shoulders until he grunted. He watched me carefully as he thrust inside me, slowly at first, as if afraid he would hurt me, then started pumping in a slow, undulating rhythm as his confidence grew.