To the Edge

by Anna del Mar

  “I get to do this to you.” I gasped and tightened my hold on the chrome bar when his finger breached my opening and journeyed steadily up my channel in a procession that announced his official possession. “Get used to having me in you, finger, tongue, cock, whatever I choose.” To illustrate his point he pressed another finger in me and watched me groaning and struggling.

  “Oh, yeah,” he murmured huskily, kneading me as deeply as I’d ever been kneaded, stirring the need in me and bringing the orgasm pulsing in my pussy into a roiling boil. “Plump and soft, but also tight and hot, not to mention dripping wet. This is how I want you around me. Ready, always ready. Your job is to orgasm when I tell you to orgasm and to hold back the rest of the time. Got that?”

  “Yes, Noah.” I curled my hips and swallowed more of his fingers, feeling as if I could come right now if he let me. Instead, he withdrew his fingers and spun me on the stool, so that my head was at the edge the cushion where my ass had been, and my heels balanced on the opposite side. I teetered for a moment, but he steadied and rearranged me, so that my neck stretched back and my head dangled off the cushion.

  “I love your neck.” He brushed his fingers over my throat. “It’s so long and elegant. I bet your throat is deep and supple. Let’s find out.”

  He lowered his sweats and pulled out his cock. My eyes widened. With my head dangling upside down, it towered over my face like an impressive monument. It grew out of a nest of black curls, flushed, filled and tall. I realized this was a significant moment in my life, worthy of a deep thought, or at least a note to blog, and yet all I wanted to say was, “hello, old friend.”

  Noah leaned over me and, thumbing my lips with one hand and leading his cock with the other, stepped up to my face. “You know what I want, don’t you?”

  God help me. He angled his cock toward my mouth. Relishing the imminent breach, I opened obediently to admit his smooth, round cockhead, pursing my lips around his swollen helmet and rolling my tongue around his glans’s raised edge.

  Noah hissed. With a jerk, his cock thickened and a trickle of precome glazed my lips. My heart pumped even faster as I worked my mouth over his length and strained my jaw to admit more of him. His cock grew to occupy all the space between my tongue and my palate. I fathomed he fed me yards of hard, wholesome cock. My neck arched, my lips stretched to the max and yet more of him kept coming.

  “A little more,” he said in a strangled voice. “You can do it, princess.”

  Princess. It was what he used to call me all those years ago. My heart expanded. My mouth also widened. My lips stretched over the wide base of his root. I tilted my head, accepting him all the way into the back of my throat, accommodating as much of him as I could.

  He groaned, a deep, satisfying growl. “Yeah, that’s it, princess. Work it. Come on. Show me how good you can give head.”

  I wrapped my arms around his lower body and, rocking my head, worked my lips up and down his cock, twirling my tongue and soaking him thoroughly with my mouth’s moisture. I loved the way his erection thrust between my lips, large and strong, powerful and demanding. I struggled to keep up with his pace, but sexual thrill coursed through me as I lapped, licked and sucked at his throbbing cock, which felt heavy, dangerously loaded and ready to go off in my mouth. His thighs tightened, his powerful glutes flexed beneath my hands and the corrugated skin of his balls rubbed against my face in an intimate caress that filled my lungs with the scent of his arousal.

  I yelped when he propped up my hips on the chrome bar. For a moment, my legs flailed in the air, until my heels found purchase. Noah pushed my legs aside, grabbed the halves of my ass and opened me up like a print book. I flinched when his mouth returned to my sex. I might have screamed from the pleasure, but my mouth was full and my throat obstructed.

  It was torture, the way he provoked me all the way to the edge of bliss, then pulled back to kiss and lick some other parts of me. From my upside-down perch between the V of Noah’s legs, I was distantly aware of the first inklings of light breaking through the clouds. He took his time, coaxing me to keep up with him in this angled sixty-nine, fucking my mouth as hard as his mouth was working me over, until I was reduced to a shuddering state of liquid need.

  Noah’s voice echoed from between my legs. “Very soon, I’m going to ask you to come.”

  Had I been able to speak, I may have told him the truth. I’d lost my ability to come a while back. Coming wasn’t something I could do anymore. But my mouth was completely full with his cock, and his tongue rasped against my clit, and his fingers breached me, reached inside and found a spot I didn’t know existed.

  “You’re going to come,” he said. “You’re going to come right now.”

  The blast ambushed me. It shot me out of my body and into a different dimension where I saw my body convulsing on the stool, and Noah, withdrawing from my mouth at the last minute, pumping his cock in his fist and spilling his seed in the vicinity of my breasts. The last thing I remembered thinking was that, yes, I’d missed my orgasms, but I’d missed Noah more.

  Chapter Eight

  Noah

  I stood at the threshold of my cottage and watched Clara get into Martha Crockett’s cab. My throat squeezed. I hated to see her go. I loathed myself almost as much for staying behind. I was such a useless piece of shit. I wished I could at least drive her to the ferry dock. Hell, I wished I could go with her, follow wherever she went and stick to her like her shadow.

  I padded over to the kitchen and cleaned up the remains of breakfast, processing everything that had happened in the last two days. I’d come back to Avalon so that I could feel close to Clara, to my memories of her, to our time together. I’d known that one day, I would see her again, when I got better, when I was ready. But seeing her here, now, had taken me by surprise. And finding her as I had, in that cage...mind-blowing.

  If Clara was mine, then she couldn’t chance the kink world with anyone else. She’d be safe, able to write her article and try her hand at the merger with RelevantSex.com without the huge risks her original plan entailed. Maybe she’d break free from her mother someday, but that was a big maybe. In exchange, I got to indulge in my deepest desires and test my darkest fantasies. Best part? I got to be with her, at least for the next three weeks, and maybe even longer, if I could reclaim her heart. No complaints here. Why then wasn’t I jumping with joy?

  The fear roiling my gut explained some of that. Best-case scenario, I got to spend the next few weeks with Clara. But in my current condition, I couldn’t keep her prisoner in my home forever. What would happen after that?

  I remembered her reaction this morning. She’d cried when she came, big tears that streamed down her cheeks like tiny rivers. I was so worried that I almost lost it.

  “What’s wrong?” I rasped, heaving from my own explosion. “Did I hurt you?”

  She didn’t answer, couldn’t, sobbing as she was. I lifted her from the chair and lowered us both to the floor, where I gathered her in my lap and enveloped her in my arms. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe she hadn’t realized what her proposal entailed. Or maybe I’d missed my cues, moved too fast, or overlooked something.

  “Princess?” I said, holding my breath. “Are you okay? Can you please say something, anything?”

  “Not hurt,” she mumbled. “Happy.”

  She was happy. In my arms. Relief coursed through my veins like a shot of bourbon. I tightened my hold around her and breathed again. But if she was okay, then why was she crying?

  I knew that sex could be a powerful catalyst for release, more so when power became central to the act. I also sensed that something had shifted in Clara, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Talk to me.” I nuzzled her hair and kissed her ear. “What happened?”

  She hid her face under my neck. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

&nb
sp; Talking had never been a problem for Clara. She could keep up with the best. But talking about her feelings? Not so much. Her mother had taught her by example to hide her emotions and she was fairly good at it.

  “You can talk to me, remember?” I tucked her long side bangs behind her ears. “This is me, not one of your mother’s operatives looking for dirt. You agreed to be honest with me. You can start right now.”

  She flashed me one of her shy looks, lips moist, eyes liquid with her tears, face flushed.

  “A deal is a deal,” I reminded her.

  Still, she hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she was ready to share her secrets and trust me with the things that really mattered to her.

  “Clara?”

  “Okay.” She let out a long sigh. “I cried because I’ve missed this so much.”

  “What do you mean ‘this’?”

  She shrugged. “My orgasms, I guess.”

  “Your orgasms?” What the hell was she talking about? “You didn’t have a problem with orgasms the last time we were together. Granted, that was a while ago, but back then there weren’t any glitches. In fact, you were the original orgasm factory, and you did quite well today.”

  She blushed, a trait that had always charmed me. “After you left, I wasn’t so good at it anymore. Then a few years back, I stopped altogether. Go figure.”

  So I wasn’t the only one who’d had trouble getting over us. I could buy that. But a trace of unease tickled the back of my mind, waving like a red flag. “When exactly did you stop?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe the year before last?”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Not really.”

  She hadn’t come. In two years. It had bothered her. A lot.

  The intelligence analyst in me activated. Whether she knew it or not, she’d just given me a tangible clue to one of the reasons that powered her sexual explorations. I filed the knowledge away.

  “I’m honored,” I said with a straight face.

  “Honored?” Her gaze probed my stare.

  “To be present on the momentous occasion in which you reclaimed your rightful orgasmic state.”

  She laughed, rich, sweet, quiet peals that rattled her body and had her shaking in my arms. I drank the joyful sound with a foolish grin on my face. Her laughter was the missing element in my life and so was her scent, which I now wore like fine cologne. She trailed her fingers over my cheeks, finger pads rasping softly over my stubble, a caress that sent pleasure rippling all over my body.

  “Noah.” Her eyes danced on her face. “I missed you, your sense of humor.”

  I kissed her, because if I started to rattle off the list of things I’d missed about her, it would take weeks.

  “Are we going to...?” she asked on the shy.

  “Have no doubt about it.” I smiled. “I’m going to fuck you, I’m going to fuck you until you cry for mercy and it’s no longer physically possible to fuck you.”

  She lifted her face and met my eyes. “When?”

  Vintage Clara. When, how, why and where. In control. On top of things. Dictating, organizing, anticipating. She was not a natural at submission, but she’d put herself in my hands. I intended to give her what she needed, when she needed it and not a moment before, even if it killed me.

  “I’ll fuck you when I deem you’re good and ready,” I said. “I will not fuck you in a hurry, casually or carelessly. And when I do, it will be something that neither one of us will forget. By then, you’ll have earned the right to be fucked and, I swear, you won’t regret it.”

  The fine hairs on her arms rose. As if it were possible, her nipples sharpened even more and my cock, so recently spent, followed suit. I dived for her mouth, kissing her, trying to control the need in me without much success. This was going to be hard.

  Her stomach chose that particular moment to grumble.

  “Sorry.” She laughed, hand on her belly. “I’m loud when I’m starving.”

  “I recall I was adept at fixing that particular problem, back when.”

  “You remember?”

  “How could I forget the dangers associated with a ravenous you?”

  We laughed, this time together, and the world seemed like a place worth the trouble. I felt alive, revived, repurposed. With a grunt, I found my feet and helped her off the floor, before I straightened my sweats, retrieved the robe and slid it over Clara’s arms.

  “Until we meet again.” I kissed her nipple before I tugged the fabric and belted the robe around her waist.

  “You hear that?” She bent over and planted a quick kiss over my sweats in the vicinity of my dick. “Soon, I hope.”

  Laughter followed us all the way down the stairs to the kitchen. She fixed the coffee while I made her favorite, French toast, heavy on the cinnamon. It was surreal. Clara chattered nonstop through breakfast. Her throaty laughter rang in my ears and resonated within the cottage’s usually silent walls. She asked lots of questions about my life. I knew a lot about hers, but it was nice to hear her stories and watch her expressions live. I was used to being alone, but Clara fit naturally within my walls, as if she’d always dwelt in my space.

  After breakfast, I had no choice but to call the cab while she showered and dressed. She was late, and hyperstressed about it, but when she kissed me goodbye, she tasted happy. The sparkle in her eyes cheered me up. If only I could go with her.

  I finished loading the dishwasher and padded down to my office. It was time to get back to work, my team and the cyber world, where—as Clara had guessed—I made my living as part of a private-public collaboration, an interagency task force cyber stalking the world’s most wanted terrorists, a pilot project currently earmarked for expansion. I sat down in front of my desk and booted up my system. The room lit up as a wall of monitors came online. The work had piled up. It would be a merciless day.

  I had a few other things to do as well, errands I had to fit into my work week—a bit of cyber spying on Mark Walker, Annette Collins and RelevantSex.com, and maybe even a little hacking if it became necessary, something I did well. The work would probably take some time, but I was a patient hunter.

  I had no evidence that Clara was in danger. I would’ve never let her leave my house if I did. But something about the fire continued to bother me and I needed to discard any possibilities that entailed Mark Walker setting the fire on purpose.

  I forwarded the pictures I’d taken to a good friend of mine, an ex-SEAL who’d become a fire investigator in Detroit, a guy I could trust. He’d tell me if I had to go after Walker. Now, that would be a pleasure.

  I went straight to work, but when I was done with my shift, I meant to fit in a quick but comprehensive review of my basics. Not for anything, but I was going to be the best Dom a sub could have. I had a lot of planning to do and an extensive shopping list. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be fun.

  Fun wasn’t an adjective I used to describe my days very often, but today, thanks to Clara, I had a lot of things to look forward to, including five thrilling days of exploration and, if I had my way, the weekend of all weekends. My fingers began to fly over the keyboard and off I went to consolidate my gains, brush up the old skills and fashion a world in which I could be the man Clara needed and she could be exclusively mine...at least for the three weeks ahead.

  Chapter Nine

  Clara

  What a weekend. Talk about beginning with one end in mind and ending up with a totally different mind-set. As I sat on the ferry on the way to the mainland, my heart beat faster every time Noah’s face streamed through my thoughts. Since he was all I could think about, I had a solid case of tachycardia.

  To see him. After all these years. What a fright. What a treat. What an incredible sequence of events. My own daring dazzled me as much as it frightened me. Talk
about being reckless. God, the things I did.

  The payoff had been almost instant. The memory of his tongue savoring my pussy as if it were some sort of addictive delicacy had me pressing my legs together. The guy sitting across from me gave me a curious look, but I didn’t care. I felt giddy. I couldn’t remember feeling this happy in a long time. True, I’d hated to leave Noah’s house. Moreover, I hated to leave him alone there. But I was determined to come back. I had a new fantasy: one day, I was going to break him out of there.

  The ferry offered Wi-Fi, so I was able to begin my research right away. I fired off a few questions to Dr. Dodd and asked him to call me when he had a moment. I wanted to know everything there was to know about PTSD.

  A quick glance at my calendar showed that my day at the foundation looked like a wreck waiting to happen. I had to get to the blog now or risk missing my daily posts altogether. I spent the last half an hour of the ferry ride curating questions and posting them for discussion. I’d already posted several when my eyes tripped over a familiar debate.

  To: Sextattle.com

  From: Southern Belle

  My boyfriend says I’d be the perfect girl for him with new boobs. I’d never felt the need and I’m afraid of having surgery, but I wonder: Should I do this for my man? Will he leave me for someone with bigger boobs if I tell him I won’t do it?

  I thought about my experience last night, about the doubts that had plagued me about my body. Noah’s admiration chiseled at my self-loathing. As imperfect as I was, when he looked at me, I felt beautiful. There were simple ways in which two people could praise each other without words.

  To: Southern Belle

  From: Raven/Moderator

  I think that perfection is the realm of fools. It doesn’t exist. Pursuing it only leads to disappointment. The beauty of being human is not being perfect, but rather being ourselves. If you want to get implants because you feel like it’s the right thing to do for yourself and you’re willing to take on the risks, then by all means, go for it. But if you’re doing this because you think big breasts will keep your boyfriend around then you may want to take a hard look at your relationship. Acceptance is the greatest gift we give each other. True love grows from it. That’s my take. What does everybody else think?