Ecstasy Rises (Darker Ecstasy Book 2)

by Lorraine Kathyrn

  “I never was like this…before you,” I said.

  “Hmmm? Think back to what your former lovers were like. Did you tend to choose men who seemed to be strong only to find they were blowhards? That they were bullies or buffoons? Think back to your college boyfriend – Kevin? – and what happened with him. Did it end because it frightened you? And maybe frightened him?” I remained silent, thinking about that, but shrugged. He was closer to the truth than I was comfortable with at the time.

  “I know what you’re going through. The self-loathing, the shame, the doubt.”

  ” Doubt is a germ, Melody,” he said, his tone serious. “If it is allowed to grow it will quickly overrun its host with disease.” He squeezed me slightly, pressing me even tighter to him as I felt his cock start to grow a little against the small of my back.

  “And using a magazine had no particular meaning, it wasn’t a negative reflection of your behavior. I like how you respond to me, to what I do to you. Never be embarrassed. Never. The abandon with which you give yourself to me excites me, and I look forward to more. So much more. The magazine was just the most expedient tool at my disposal. Had my belt been handy I likely would have used that.” An image of Malcolm between my legs whipping my pussy and breasts with his belt instantly came to mind and I shivered.

  “Cold, poppit?” Malcolm breathed in to my ear. I shook my head as he used his foot to flip the lever on the tub, letting the water drain out. “No? You shivered and your nipples are quite hard. Are you certain you’re not cold?”

  I nodded, feeling his cock harden more. He nibbled at my earlobe, making me sigh. I could feel myself getting wet again, my body burning for him.

  “Was it what I said?” He began kissing my neck lightly, giving me goosebumps. He relaxed his grip, sliding his hands below my breasts, using just the tips of his fingers to caress the underside. I moaned, tilting my head to allow his lips freer reign. “Was it my words that excited you?” His lips planted soft kisses along my shoulder.

  “Yes,” I whispered. I turned my head towards him, aching for a kiss.

  Instead, he grabbed my arms and pulled my upper body away from him. He stood up and climbed out of the tub, turning and offering me his hand. I took it and let him pull me up and help me out of the tub. He pulled me to him, our bodies pressed together and our mouths millimeters apart, but I remained un-kissed. I was about to initiate the kiss myself when I felt his hand slide up my back and grab me by my hair. He firmly pulled my head back and I gasped, my nipples and pussy throbbing from being so manhandled. He smirked at me and kissed me, roughly, stealing my breath.

  “What do you want?” he asked gruffly, taking my wrists in his other hand and holding them tight.

  “Whatever you want,” I sighed. No inhibition. No shame. No doubt.

  He let go of my hair and kissed me again, grabbing my ass, pulling me to him. “Go lay on the bed. I’ll be right there.” He let go of my ass and pushed me away from him. I went to the bed and laid in the center, listening to him head down the stairs. I stared at the ceiling, thinking about all the conflicting emotions I’d been feeling the last few days. It astonished me to realize I hadn’t had more than one of his shirts on since Thursday night, and was usually naked. I could feel myself blushing to think of it. I never was very comfortable being naked around others.

  I heard Malcolm coming back up the stairs and raised myself on my elbows, watching him as he came in. God, he always looks so sexy. Tall, broad shouldered, muscular but not beefy. The dark, soft hair on his chest narrows down to his navel before continuing down to even softer hair at the base of his cock. It was like he was made to be naked. He glanced over at me and froze for a moment, smiling.

  He approached the foot of the bed and stood still, staring at me. Not smiling any more, but not scowling either. Just staring. He had a book, twine, some towels and what looked a lot like a roll of duct tape in his hand. I started to squirm, feeling uncomfortable, but stilled again when he gave a slight shake of his head.

  “I have a million things in my head that I want to do to you,” he said darkly. “But when I am confronted, like this, by how beautiful you are, they all leave me, and I am reduced to the simple desire to just…consume you.”

  I looked at him, a bit stunned by what he said. He moved to the head of the bed and I saw that yes, it was indeed duct tape. He put the book, a slim paperback, on the bedside table. Placing it in a way to ensure I couldn’t see what it was. A very impish thought ran thru my mind and I smiled.

  “What is it?” he asked, taking my right wrist and wrapping a hand towel around it.

  “I was thinking you really don’t need a book. You seem to know what you’re doing.” I glanced at the table next to him.

  “Hush,” he said, wrapping duct tape around the towel on my wrist. I looked at him questioningly, but didn’t speak.

  “Your wrists are a little chafed. I don’t want to make them worse, and since I don’t have the right equipment – and leaving you unrestrained is not an option – this will prevent any further bruising or injury.”

  He did the same thing to my left wrist before turning and wrapping my ankles, too. He then tied my limbs off to the posts, pulling me spread-eagle and leaving me little room to move. He took the last hand towel and balled up one end before moving to stuff it in my mouth.

  “No.” I looked at him, panic stricken.

  “Shhh.” He caressed my cheek tenderly, looking at me reassuringly. “Do you trust me?” I thought for a moment, then nodded. “You know I won’t harm you?” I nodded again. “Then relax, poppit.” He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  I thought a moment, just a moment, and nodded. He gently put the end of the towel in my mouth as he explained. “You can easily push the gag out any time you want to, I’m not tying or taping it off, alright?” He reached in to his bedside table drawer and pulled out a black sleep mask. “I want you to think only of my voice and my touch, poppit, so I am removing all other stimulus.” I could feel my breathing quicken, but it was from excitement and not nerves. “If you need me to stop, snap your fingers three times or push out the gag, alright?”

  I nodded at him again and he leaned over, kissing my forehead before slipping the mask over my eyes and looping the elastic behind my head. I felt him get off the bed and strained to listen to him move about the room. It suddenly grew quiet, and I tensed a bit.

  “Hilda was a beautiful Parisian model who fell deeply in love with an American writer, whose work was so violent and sensual that it attracted women to him immediately,“Malcolm began. He was reading aloud to me. His rich voice seemed to wrap itself around me as I concentrated on the words. They sounded familiar and I was straining to place them when I felt his fingertips lightly caress my calf.

  “She felt that woman was meant to respond to man’s desire. She had always dreamed of having a man who would force her will, rule her sexually…”

  ‘Nin,’ I thought, recognizing the author if not the title.

  Malcolm’s voice washed over me as he read, relaxing and seducing me in to the tale, his voice finding my most secret core and caressing it. I could feel my limbs tensing and pulling against my bonds as I writhed, as if trying to meet and mate with his voice. He was slowly, almost carefully, moving me towards orgasm. Sometimes it was just his voice. Sometimes it was just his touch as he used just his fingertips to lightly dance on my skin. He never touched me anywhere overtly sexual. His fingers caressed my arms, my legs, my sides. He ran a finger oh-so-lightly down the bottom of my feet, making me tense up and hold my breath. Yet I could feel my wetness running from my sex to pool beneath me. I felt myself getting closer and closer to coming. My breathing became shallow, rapid, and I grew absolutely still, waiting, aching, dying for the touch that would push me over the edge, yet not wanting this build-up, this tension to ever end.

  It was the most delicious feeling.

  “He was like a demon crouching over her, his hair wild, his charcoal-black eyes burning into hers, his
strong penis pounding into her, into the woman whose submission he first demanded, submission to his desire, his hour,” Malcolm finished. He leaned over me, removed the towel from my mouth and kissed me, effectively replacing one gag for another, and I came, moaning into his mouth as my body, untouched, vibrated.

  “You liked that,” he said, breaking the kiss after what felt like an eternity.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “Nin.”

  “Very good, poppit.” He kissed me again, briefly. “Close your eyes so I can remove the mask.” I did, nodding to let him know I had done so. I felt him pull the mask off, gently lifting my head to get the elastic band from behind my head. “Open your eyes slowly, or you’ll likely end up with a headache.”

  “Alright.” I felt totally wiped out. But I also felt totally at ease. Any embarrassment or shame or doubt I had felt before seemed to be gone. I looked through my lashes as Malcolm removed the makeshift cuffs from my limbs, massaging them as he freed them. He scooped me up a bit and pushed me to the side of the bed, climbing in beside me.

  We lay on our sides, facing each other, not speaking for a while. Malcolm took my hand in his and held it in the space between us. His green eyes met mine and I wanted to lose myself in their expression, in their flecks of gold and grey. I traced along his lips with the fingertips of my free hand and he smiled at me.

  “Your lips are so very soft,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, almost reverent.

  “All the better to taste you with,” he said, kissing my fingertips.

  “Can I ask…what…what happens on Monday?” I pulled my hand away from his mouth and laid it on the edge of my pillow.

  “We go back to the office.”

  “And…?”

  “And what?”

  “Do we just go on as before? As if nothing happened?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No. Of course not.” I gnawed my lower lip for a moment, thinking. “I don’t think…I mean…I think I would like to keep this separate from work. There’s no reason we’d need to tell anyone at work, is there? It would just be fodder for the gossip mill, and I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “Agreed. I can see no reason to air our private business in the office.” He pulled our linked hands to him, kissing the backs of my fingers. “Of course, it will mean you have to keep your hands off me at work. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “Yes, I think I so,” I said, drifting off to sleep. “How about you?”

  “No promises.”

  “Grrrllll! You are absolutely glowing!” Tony exclaimed, handing me a cup of coffee and removing his jacket from the chair next to his. The weather was decent, and everyone in Capitol Hill was out this morning. The wait for a table at Glo’s was already up to 30 minutes.

  “Stop,” I said, feigning modesty.

  “Do we have your English gentleman to thank for the sparkle in your aura?”

  “Did you just say ‘aura’? Did I step through a rip in the space/time continuum and come out in 1988?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “What is the question?

  “You were with Malcolm last night, weren’t you?”

  “Actually…I spent the weekend with him.”

  “Two whole nights together? So soon?”

  “Well, no…I went home with him Thursday night….So actually, it was three,” I said, clearing my throat and looking into my coffee cup as if it held the keys to the cosmos.

  “Really? How was the carpool on Friday?”

  “We didn’t go to work on Friday. We took a PTO day.”

  “PTO? More like PT OH MY GOD!” he drawled, wagging his brows suggestively.

  “Tony!” I punched his arm, laughing.

  “You look wonderful, Melly. Much more…assured than the last time I saw you,” he said, being serious.

  “I do?”

  “Yes.” He sipped his coffee. “I’m not going to pry. I will only say that, as you seem so very content this morning, it is enough for me. You’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” The hostess called our name and we got up to head inside. “But you may want to wear long sleeves at work, Melly. You’re wrists are chafed.”

  “Dammit.” I looked down and groaned.

  “Relax, Melly. You’re in the Swish Alps. No one notices or cares, remember?”

  We had brunch and chatted, sitting for just over an hour, mindless of all the angry stares coming from people waiting outside. We talked a bit more about Malcolm. I know Tony was dying to ask me more questions, but he was kind enough to respect my privacy. After we left, we wandered about the hill, hitting the shops on Broadway before heading to Purr for an early afternoon cocktail. I picked up some falafel and a gyro and splurged on a cab back home, wanting to unpack, shower, and get to bed early. It was a perfect end to a pretty perfect weekend, I thought.

  When I opened my suitcase, Malcolm’s Chelsea FC t-shirt was on top. He must’ve put it in there after I’d packed up. I picked it up and hugged it to me, like a security blanket, and spied a slip of paper, folded in half.

  Smiling I picked it up and opened it.

  ‘I am keeping the knickers’ was all it said. I smiled and got ready for bed.

  We had discussed what would happen when we went back to work, Malcolm and I, lying in his bed Sunday morning. And while we didn’t want to pretend that nothing had happened between us, we didn’t want to be fodder for the work gossip-mill. (You know how that can be.) So we decided to keep everything other than work out of the office. I seriously thought it would be easy to be there with him, to be next to him every day, to smell him and feel the heat of his body, and act like it meant nothing.

  Yeah, right. I found out soon enough how difficult it could be.

  It was Thursday afternoon of that first week after Houston, and I was hip-deep in trying to help another account executive, Marly, with a local chip company when Malcolm suddenly appeared in my office. I glanced up from my monitor and smiled as he stood in front of my desk.

  “Good afternoon, Malcolm,” I said, sounding as casual as I could while trying to breathe him in.

  “Melody. How are you doing?”

  “I’m well,” I said, unsure of what he wanted. I sat back in my chair and gave him my undivided attention.

  “Good.” He put his right hand to his face, making a “V” with his middle and index finger just below his lower lip. “I just wanted to state, again, it was a pleasure working with you these past few weeks.” He stuck his tongue out between his fingers and waggled it about in the most lewd, obscene and sexy gesture. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head and I got wet watching him.

  “Thank you,” I said thickly. “I enjoyed it, too.”

  There was a light knock on my door as Krissie came in, making Malcolm drop his hand quickly. “Melody? Here’s the files you requested.” She walked towards my desk. “Hello, Mr. White,” she said, looking at Malcolm with a frank interest that made me feel oddly jealous. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Krissie,” Malcolm nodded at her. “I was just leaving.”

  “Oh man, I really hope he’s not gay,” Krissie said, handing me the files and turning to watch Malcolm as he walked towards his office.

  “Didn’t I hear you say something about a boyfriend?” I asked her. I was half amused by and half angry at her behavior. The anger stemming from jealousy, of course.

  “I know. Still…a girl can dream.” I laughed at that a bit, but I think it was to cover the urge to grab her and scream “Hands off, he’s mine!”

  “Thank you, Krissie. Would you please reconfirm the meeting with Marly tomorrow?”

  “I’m on it, Mel.” She left my office and I put my head in my hands, wanting to laugh and cry and scream.

  This ‘keep it out of the office’ thing might be a lot harder than I had bargained for.

  Submission.

  It’s an interesting word, isn’t it?

  Submission.<
br />
  What comes to mind when you think of it? Weakness? Passivity? Consider that even the Latin root of the word translates to ‘lowering oneself’. Maybe that’s why, initially, I fought so hard against thinking of my self, aligning myself if you will, with that word. If someone were to describe to you a third party you’d never met, and they described them as a submissive, what would you have pictured?

  Me? I would have pictured someone small, frail. A wallflower. No, more than that. Someone shy to the point of neurosis. Mousy. Mostly, I would have pictured someone so personally damaged they held no value in themselves beyond how others used them. A person with no will and little, if any, personality. It would have been the last word I would have used to describe myself in any way.

  Except….

  Except…if I am totally honest with myself, I kind of was a bit on the submissive side. Not so much in the business world, really. I mean, I always strove to keep my clients happy, but that is what we all do. And I was tough, I am tough, an aggressive go-getter, the barracuda of the office. If there was a client that was difficult to secure, I worked my ass off getting them on board and drove all who worked with me like a team of mules. Quite frankly, a lot of people thought of me professionally as a bit of a bitch. But in my personal life…different story.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was never a pushover. And I’m still not. But I was always…trying to please in my personal relationships. Trying to make sure all around me were happy. Never ignoring my own happiness, but always putting theirs first. And the men I dated — when I dated — tended to be physically imposing and have more domineering personalities. Note I say domineering and not dominatingintentionally. I think I was drawn to them because I thought they were more than that, but it was never long before I realized they were all brutes or blowhards, and I lost all interest in them.