by Kira Blakely
“Please, Master.”
“Oh, you want the best part, don’t you? Do you need release?” he teased, and I could hear the amusement in his voice.
“I want everything, Master.”
His hand disappeared again and this time the satin gloves were on both hands as they spread my thighs apart. His fingers traced the soft material over the lips of my vagina, teasing the folds apart and tempting me further. I spread my legs as far apart as I could and arched my hips, giving him any angle he needed.
Anything, as long as he could keep making me feel.
His fingers found my clit and worked against it, massaging it with dexterity and skill that probably made him legendary. He started by pressing one thumb firmly against my precious bundle of nerves and the electricity was a full-blown AC current whizzing through my body. I could have lit up a damn city block. Then his other hand, just as soft with the satin glove, was curling over my right breast, teasing the hardened nipple there and kneading it with forceful precision. He twisted his thumb clockwise and I pressed my hips up higher, trying to get the right angle for his caress. My body was like a pulsating ball of energy and it felt like electricity throughout me. Then he hit the right angle against my g-spot and I came, and everything went to the next level, as if I’d been struck by lightning.
I screamed again, glad we were in a far corner of his estate where Leonard and Mrs. Johnson would never hear us. I’d never been vocal like this before, but tepid make-outs with a disinterested boyfriend could never compare to the unbridled passion that Drake was showering on me.
Skillful hands slid off my blindfold, and I had to keep myself from frowning back at him. I understood why his jeans were still on. After all, tonight was about my pleasure and about introducing me to the games he wanted to play, to the ways to improve our “negotiations.” Yet even in the water today, he never took off his shirt and it was becoming a glaring pattern that I couldn’t ignore much longer. It was niggling at the back of my mind too much.
His cocky smirk greeted me as he placed the blindfold back on the bedside table. He ran his hand over my shoulder and I shivered at his touch, my body still sensitive from the orgasm that had swept over it.
“I love to see you come. That look on your face, the way your lips curve up as you scream. Everything about you makes me want to take you in my mouth and never stop kissing you.”
I nodded and raked a hand through his dark, wavy hair. The one sign that Drake was firmly not military, not anymore. “That was better than this morning. I did like the… what do you call it?”
“It’s ‘sensory play.’ It doesn’t have to always be pain. I’m not invested as highly in the masochism as I am with the control, with having you know your role when we have our sessions.”
I bit my lower lip but didn’t move my eyes from his. “And if I’m curious even a little about the other side of the sensations?”
“About actual pain?” he asked, his tone perking up.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. So far, everything he’d done with me had blown my mind and left my body weak and quivering with pleasure. If what he wanted from pain from the darker side of BDSM made me feel as good as his skillful fingers or his length or the soft caress of his gloves, then I was interested in that, too. I was beginning to believe that I’d sign up for anything that Drake McManus was offering.
Maybe he was secretly a warlock or a magician, someone who’d cast a spell on me so that I could never refuse him again, never say no. I wasn’t sure anymore that I wanted to resist.
“I just was curious.” He nodded and left the bed long enough to come back with some baby oil and some lotion. That confused me. We’d been talking about floggers or crops or whatever else there was, not massages. “Huh?”
“Everything starts from somewhere, princess. If you want to try just a little of it tonight, then we have to have a code word, we have to start small, and then we’ll have to do aftercare, of course. I need to take care of your tender ass after that.”
“I thought…”
“A lot of places get it wrong. I’m not about to pull out the damn cat-o’-nine-tails and go to town with you. You’re not ready for that, and I want you to enjoy this as much as I do.”
I nodded and sat up in bed, my heart pounding at the thought of what I was going to try. “What do we need?”
“A safe word, and you need to use it if you feel you need to stop. What do you want?”
“‘Negotiations,’” I blurted out.
Drake quirked one lip up at me in a crooked smile. “Are you sure you won’t say that in the middle of the sex anyway?”
“I swear.”
“All right then, princess, so ‘negotiations’ if you’re close to your limit. What’s your no-go word?”
I considered that, thought about what would probably never leave my lips voluntarily. “Wallaby.”
He laughed. “You have the most random choices.”
“Do you talk about fuzzy wannabe kangaroos in bed?”
“No.”
“Then it’s unlikely I’ll say it on accident.”
He laughed again and then sat back down on the bed, his long legs tucked up under him. “Then, princess, let’s start this session. Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“What was that?” he asked, his voice going hard and gruff. I bet it was the same voice he’d have used abroad to command the troops or unit under him while he was in the Marines. “What did you call me?”
“Master,” I breathed, barely trusting my own voice. “Master, we can start.”
“Then get on all fours.” His tone was strict and hard, but I knew I was safe with him. He was leading me through all this, had helped teach me the basic ways to protect myself. I wanted to see his world, see more of it, and this was the only way I’d ever know if it could work. “Ms. Fontaine, on your knees.”
I crawled over his lap, my hands out in front of me on one side of his legs and my knees on the other side. Arching up my ass, I presented myself to him. “What now, Master?”
“I’m going to spank you three times. That’ll be the start for tonight.”
“Really, Master?” I asked, surprise coloring my words. “I thought…”
“It will be plenty, princess,” he said. Then he traced his palm over one bare ass cheek. “This is because you ran away, because you were such a bad girl. Do you understand?” His arm pulled back and he struck the flat of his hand hard against my ass. The sting tore through me, raw and real, something I’d never felt before. It did hurt, and yet, it made my clit throb and my breath hitch as surely as if his length were deep inside me. “You can’t ever run again, princess, not like that. You can’t ever get yourself in trouble.”
His palm hit my other cheek and I went rigid.
This time, the slap was harder than the first, something that told me I might be tender in the morning. A hiss of breath escaped my lips, and I felt the hint of tears water at the corner of my eyes.
“I... negotiations.”
He paused and then reached for the baby oil. Squirting it into his hands, he rubbed it thoroughly between his palms and then rubbed both cheeks, massaging them with such skill that I wondered if he’d lived a dozen lifetimes, picked up talents in all of them: soldier, PR guru, sex god, masseuse. I’d have believed it. His touch was golden.
“Do you want to go for the last one, princess?” he cooed, his voice soft and considerate, some of the harsh formal “master” tone gone. “You’ve done so well right now. More than I thought you could.”
“I can do more,” I said, my body and my voice both shaking. “I want to.”
Drake rubbed my rear more and then traced his fingers over the small of my back. “You don’t have to prove anything to me tonight.”
“I know I don’t.”
I have to prove things to myself.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “I swear if I wanted to stop, I’d call the safe word.”
/>
“Good.” Drake took a breath and when he spoke again, that commanding soldier was back in control. “Princess, promise me you’ll never run again. That you’ll never set yourself up for danger, for any bullshit. If fuckers like that ever mess with you again, I’ll tear them apart.”
“I promise, Master.”
His hand slapped firmly against the first cheek, but it was not as hard a hit as the other two. Then he helped ease me over onto my stomach. I leaned against the satin sheets and let their coolness caress me. Then his hands were on me, this time with the lotion—it had to have something soothing in it like eucalyptus—because it was helping warm my muscles and release the tension still in them.
“Was that all right, Belle? I need to make sure you weren’t going along with all that shit just for me, but that you are okay with it, that you liked it.”
“I did,” I admitted, maybe even surprising myself. “I think at first I was trying it to get a feel for everything, but I don’t even understand it. It makes me feel about as sexy and about as needy as I did when you were stroking me with those gloves or kissing my breasts.”
“Then we’ll keep working slowly on our ‘negotiations,’” he said, the amusement clear in his voice.
I let out a little moan and burrowed more deeply into the mattress. After so much pain and horror last night, it felt surreal how much better my day had gotten. I’d had sex for the first time, been made love to by a master—no, by my Master. We’d shared a great breakfast and he’d given me insight, at least some, into his life before in the Marines, and then snorkeling and sunset in the Bahamas. All of it leading to this moment, this time for the open honesty between us, where I’d literally been laid bare and realized that there was something perhaps kinky deep inside me, something that needed a bit of pain and excitement in my sex, too.
Something that craved putting all my trust in my master.
I let out a happy little sigh and turned my head back to see him before, to really watch those brown eyes as they raked over my own. “Can I ask a question?”
“You can ask anything, princess.”
I reached out and stroked his cheek. “Why don’t you take off your shirt?”
His gaze hardened and he clenched his jaw, making the cords in his neck rope up more tightly. “I don’t talk about that.”
“You said I could ask you anything.”
“Not that. Some things are private,” he growled, jumping out of the bed and hurrying out the door. Drake left me behind out of nowhere, leaving me feeling cold and unwanted.
What had I done so wrong? How could a question be so painful? I wasn’t sure, but I would be damned if I wasn’t going to keep working to find out.
Chapter Ten
Drake
I’m not a complete moron. I know I shouldn’t have walked out on Belle like I did last night. We’d done some aftercare, but probably not enough, especially for her first rougher session, but screw that. She’d pressed. I knew there was a spitfire to her, a real ballbuster, even when I was sitting across from her at the boardroom table. She didn’t flaunt it like her sister, didn’t work to be Daddy’s best lapdog, but there was still a side to her that was nothing but intensity, all prying eyes and desperate inquiry. That was dangerous.
I had some pretty fucking dark corners inside of me, and I didn’t want to go back to them, to remember the IEDs exploding or the blood on my hands that wasn’t even my own. I didn’t want to talk about before, and if she couldn’t learn to respect that, then I’d teach her. There was usually a time and place for a Dom and sub relationship, where the bounds only extended as far as the edges of the playroom, but she wasn’t going to question me. She wasn’t going to act like some reporter hot on a lead when the big story was only mine to share or be revealed to the world. She knew what she needed to, and the rest did not include me being exposed bone deep.
For her to see what I kept so tirelessly hidden.
Again, fuck that.
If teaching her those boundaries—--my only ones—required me to be a total prick, then fine. That’s what we’d do. I was completely resolved to that.
That is until I came down the next morning for breakfast. I’d spent the early morning hours working. I had clients everywhere and, even if I didn’t do PR for a huge segment of people in Europe or Asia, my A-list stars were always on location. I could keep myself busy answering endless emails and anticipating the next big disaster and how to head it off. I wasn’t thinking about her. Fucking right I wasn’t.
Or that’s what I told myself.
When I entered the dining room, I found that Belle was that sunny self she tended to be around Mrs. Johnson and Leonard. I couldn’t blame her for that. Both of them had their own appeal. Mrs. Johnson won you over by being like the mother you’d never had, although from what I could gather, Belle had a good relationship with her mom, though she didn’t talk about her too much.
Now that was something I could be jealous about. My parents hadn’t spoken to me in a while. They were Midwest through and through and didn’t approve of me taking off to L.A. Still got on a high horse about how it was a damn sewer out there, and I’d do better to find “honest work.” They bitched a little less about it after I paid off the farm debts and mortgage, but there was a reason I stayed in The City of Angels at every holiday or found excuses to “be on the road with clients.”
Now Leonard was a funny guy. I think one of the only reasons I hadn’t fired him yet for actually talking back to me was because he always said things in the funniest ways. That and the sarcastic bastard was usually right.
I’d seen guys in the business who only had Yes Men around them. They got soft, never had other ideas that went against their own and they lived to regret it, to regret the ruin it led to. If I had Leonard around, I always had someone to pull my head out of my ass, whether I wanted it or not, and I usually didn’t.
Belle’s blue eyes shone with all the tenderness I loved about her as she accepted another sweet roll from Mrs. Johnson. “You should have seen the baby turtles. They were the cutest things I’d ever seen. I even touched a few!”
“That sounds lovely, dear,” Mrs. Johnson said.
Belle’s smile widened, at least it did until she saw me, then it crashed into a scowl. “Oh, I didn’t realize you were up.”
The accusation she didn’t say was that she would have known a lot more about me and where I was this morning if I hadn’t walked out on her in the playroom last night. I still didn’t regret my choice. I wasn’t taking off that shirt for anyone, or revealing anything like that for her. She had a chance to be more than my sub, but some wounds were to be left alone.
“I figured I’d join the land of the living now that it was close to nine. I’m starving and needed to take a break from calling London and doing business.”
“Right, business. I guess that’s all you think about. Everything’s about the bottom line and negotiations.” She held her chin up high but her last word wobbled a little. If she thought she was doing an impressive job in guarding her emotions, then she was wrong. “Can’t imagine what held you up.”
I sat down across from her at the table and clenched my hands the minute she stood back up. “You’re not even done yet,” I said, as if the half-eaten sweet roll and barely touched sausage weren’t a big enough clue.
“Actually, this was my second round. I usually don’t do that, but Leonard and Mrs. Johnson make like this lethal cooking team. I swear I’m going to gain so much weight. It should be worth it though once we work out the contract,” she said pointedly. “I mean it. We need to start going over numbers. Carol and I did work out something that really should sweeten your pot, and I think we need to work on more than just a Bahamian vacation. Don’t you?” With that, she walked back into the kitchen, refusing to let Mrs. Johnson clean up after her, and then headed back through the dining room in double time without even looking at me.
It felt like she put extra effort into stomping through the hallways to sh
ow her anger.
Shit, I really did step in it, didn’t I?
“What? I showered this morning,” I said, miming sniffing at my armpit. “What’s her problem?”
Mrs. Johnson shook her head and set her napkin on the table. “I’ll go see to the child. You know exactly what you did last night. I haven’t seen a girl with eyes that swollen from crying in years. Whatever is going on, fix it.”
With that, she was gone, too.
I was gaining a mad talent for clearing rooms.
I sighed and scooped out some grits and fruit for myself. “Now, seriously, what’s going on?”
Leonard crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorway. “Belle didn’t talk about last night, didn’t say a peep even to Penelope, but I can tell she’s feeling mighty low. I can imagine some of the trouble you got up to with her, but I don’t even think that’s it.”
“I always have willing partners, Leonard. You’ve helped get the paperwork over to my lawyer on that very thing more than once.”
“I am the best courier on the island, true,” Leonard said, shaking his head. “That’s not what I figured. I know you, and I know you don’t hurt anyone like that. The girls who’ve come here before and in L.A. wanted to be here. Miss Belle was relaxed all through the day yesterday so I reckon she’s been wanting things, too, but you know you did something wrong. Hurt that fragile heart of hers. I think you need to work on fixing that.”
“Does Mrs. Johnson feel the same way?”
“Sir, please take this with all the respect it should get, but we’ll both kick your butt if you don’t. Belle’s a good girl, far better than any girl you’ve ever brought here. If you knew everything that was driving her to come, then you’d understand just how strong she was.”