I dreamed of doing that forever. Falling, falling, falling, for my master.
And never ever trying to stop.
Unless he puts a stop to it, a nagging voice whispered.
Even in sleep, I refused to listen. Refused to feel the bolt of anxiety that whispered voice caused me.
Because there was a chance, whether I liked it or not, where Jaxon’s need for control won out over his fight for love.
The sound of the shower roused me the next morning. I was sore all over, but I had to get used to that. Jaxon worked every inch of my body every chance he got. I stretched my legs out, the moon having been replaced by the winter sun. I tossed the blankets aside and padded into the bathroom, finding him in the shower.
“Can I join you?” I asked softly.
His head snapped up. Water clung to his obsidian lashes, elongating them into dark feathers. His rich brown eyes seemed to immediately sizzle. In response, he opened the shower door and held his hand. “I was going to bathe you,” he explained. “But this will work.”
After he’d washed my body, taking his time cleaning his favorite parts, he led me out and had me sit on his lap on the end of the bed as he dried my hair with a towel.
“You’ve been quiet,” he stated. The towel slipped down around my shoulders, giving him enough room for his lips to kiss a trail across my throat. He found my pulse and sucked, pulling my flesh between his teeth, and bit down softly, sending a hit of pain into my veins.
I exhaled, a soft moan leaving my lips. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted. He’d shut down my plans to go back to the beginning. I had one option. To grab his hand and pull him forward, and not give up when he pulled back. And he would pull back. Love made little sense to him. It made sense to hurt in his heart. “Have I been?”
“Mmm hmm,” he murmured, sliding his tongue along the bite mark on my throat. “I enjoy marking you.”
I bared my throat to him. Maybe I could implement my plan without his say-so. I’d never tried to be his submissive. I’d tried to be his everything else, and that had left us at an impasse. “I love it when you mark me, Master,” I breathed, my tone husky.
He hummed in pleasure and bit down harder, sending a flood of heat to my pussy. I could feel myself dampening and readying. “Should we ditch breakfast and eat each other in bed?” He grabbed a fistful of my hair and tugged my head back, giving him complete access to my pounding pulse.
I closed my eyes and gave him what he wanted. I would be his submissive and seek nothing but his order. “I’m starving.”
He pulled the grip on my hair and sent me flying back into the bed, his body gone behind me for a second. He wrenched the towel aside and settled between my thighs, his thick, hard cock bobbing between us. In seconds, his hand was over my mouth and my legs were wrapped around his waist. He held my eyes as he shoved his length into me so deep, I felt my cervix expand.
I cried out into his palm, my eyes stuck on his heavy-lidded gaze.
“We’ll finish here, and then go out and eat breakfast with the rest of the normal world. How does that sound?” He grinned when I hummed against his hand. He added his second hand over my mouth, pressing my head into the mattress, his intense dark gaze sifting through my soul. “I asked you a question, Miya.”
I wasn’t sure how he expected me to answer him. I adlibbed, clenching my inner pussy muscles around his cock. His dark brown eyes gleamed with hunger and humor.
“Is that a yes?” He pumped into me rougher, his hips slamming into me unapologetically.
Heat started to pool in my lower belly and my eyes were harder to keep open. I hated it when he did that. Forced me to think as he jumbled my brain. I nodded under his hand and clenched my muscles around him once more.
“This new form of communication pleases me.” He stretched me so deep, I began to quiver around his girth. “Are you going to come?”
I clenched him twice, slobber coating his palm as I mewled senselessly into his hold. I could hardly be heard. But Jaxon didn’t need to hear my pleasure to know he was giving it to me. He owned it.
Knew it.
Played with it like a puppet master.
“I can feel you coming. Your body tenses, your tight cunt clamps down on my cock. Your blue eyes turn to sapphire stones. You look at me like you’re mad with lust.” He fucked me impossibly harder, impossibly deeper, stretching my body to only mold to his. He pressed his forehead to mine and soaked up the look in my eyes. “Every time you come, you tell me the truth.”
I came, so hard and so intensely, I felt like stone and velvet all at once. Soft and hard. Cold and warm. Pleasure pooled so deep in my groin, I felt like my world shifted, and the entire time I let him see it all.
All of my love.
All of my pain.
All of my hopes.
He held it all in his gaze, and when his hips stilled, and he poured his hot sweet seed into my body, I saw what he wasn’t saying either.
All of his fear.
All of his want.
All of his love.
I saw the truth in him, too. But I knew the part of him who craved control wasn’t motivated by some perverse desire. He needed control to feel safe because every ounce of control in his life had been stripped from him in some way. So had mine. I found strength in his control, and he found peace in my submission.
Maybe it was that simple.
Maybe I complicated things because the idea of not being what he needed was too painful to truly consider.
I lay beneath him, mind displaced in the dark swaths of clouds from his storm. I was covered by his weight and in his attention. Both things felt so incredibly good to have, I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on for dear life.
“This is all I want, Miya. You, me. Naked. Bare. So fucking consumed we cannot see straight.” He pulled back to pin me with his intense stare. “If we have to stay in this house forever to make that happen, we will.”
I should have argued. Told him that was insane. To lock us up in his house just to keep us. Could he feel it too? The overwhelming feeling that we were going to explode into a million particles that could not be saved?
Instead, I nodded mutely, trapped in his gaze.
He gave me a slow grin. “Good girl, Miya. Put on something warm and then we can go downstairs and make breakfast.”
I didn’t realize what he’d done until I was downstairs whipping eggs. He’d tricked me into his trap and locked the cage. He came down dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt, and black sweatpants that hung deliciously low on his hips. His gait was predatory as he stalked through the house and turned all the locks on the front door.
“It’s snowing anyway,” he muttered, pulling all the blinds closed on the wall of windows. “And there’s a storm coming.”
I shuddered.
“What’s for breakfast?” he asked, coming into the kitchen to wrap his arms around me from behind. His lips immediately found a new place to bite and suck.
The whisk in my hand dropped and I focused on breathing and not jumping him. I couldn’t jump until he said I could.
“We’ll stay in for a few days,” he whispered, his teeth nibbling on my ear lobe. “We’ll spend the time making love, fucking hard, and bruising your pert little ass. What do you think about that?” He didn’t let me answer. He wrenched my head back by my hair and crushed his mouth down on mine.
By the time he pulled away, I was achy and caught in his spell. It was the way he wanted it. Me, stunned, too enamored to move. To bring up the fact that he’d lied to me. He couldn’t have kids thanks to his vasectomy. He didn’t want a normal life. He didn’t want me to want those things either.
He only wanted this.
Control.
It broke my heart so deeply, I could hardly breathe around these painful cracks. But what choice did I have? Lust had twisted around love, and both emotions now controlled my actions.
I didn’t answer when he let me go. Judging by the edge in his gaze, he d
idn’t want my answer anyway.
I made scrambled eggs and wheat toast, slathering them in butter. We were running low on food, and even lower on reality. I knew the longer we stayed in his house, we’d slip further and further away from it. And then soon, we wouldn’t know it at all. We’d exist solely in his dark fantasy.
And that was okay.
That was fine.
But where were my illusions? Like wearing a wedding dress. Or a little girl running through the house calling for, “Mommy!” I wasn’t sure we could even have those things, if there was any point at all in toying with them in the first place. The moment Jaxon told me I couldn’t have those things, they were all I wanted.
I studied him from across the kitchen table. The light outside had been shut out, so the only light in the kitchen came from the dull bulb above the stove; soft golden light splayed around our feet. I wondered if he wanted it that way. To snuff out all the light in the room until he was my sun.
“You can’t keep me locked up in here forever,” I spoke up, barely having touched my food.
His was almost gone. “That’s exactly what I can do.”
I made a defiant sound in the back of my throat. His eyes shot to mine in warning. Defying him had gotten me nowhere in the past, and I suspected it would always be that way, but there was something inside of me who appreciated a command and even the punishment, but not the emotionless order.
“Are we going to talk, or not?”
He sat back, his face full of shadows and danger. “What is there to talk about?”
“Well, I came to you with a solution. Go back. Start over. Be what you wanted. See if I actually can be your submissive, since all you want to be, apparently, is my master.” And not my heart.
“Miya. I’m not going to rewind us, so you can prove something to yourself.”
“Jaxon, it’s either this, or you break us both beyond repair.” My voice broke. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from crying.
He stared at me helplessly, dragging a hand through his onyx locks. “What do you want from me? We are submissive and Master. It’s supposed to be that simple.”
“We’ve never been simple. We’re complicated and messed up, and so damn beautiful I’d give anything in the world to keep you, Jaxon. Don’t you get it? You’re everything to me. Everything,” I cried, holding his gaze in place like he does mine.
Pinning him down and forcing him to see what I’m feeling.
His eyes almost fluttered closed. “One month. We go back for one month. And then we’ll try it your way once more after that month. You get one month of absolute submission, and then one month of no submission at all. After which we’ll know.”
“Know what?” I breathed, so excited and terrified I could hardly speak.
I wasn’t asking simple things of him.
I was asking two of the hardest parts of this relationship.
Submission and none at all, from a man who only knew the former.
“If we can be together,” he informed me, his eyes burning with nervous energy.
His comment sent a crash of nerves into my stomach. I clutched it, wrapping my arm around myself as I tried to hold it all inside. “And if we can’t?”
“Then perhaps I’ll give up my life and go live in the snow, homeless and starving, with my mother. Without you, Miya, life will be just as hard. Just as lonely.” His voice broke and he put his face in his hands. “But you have to last the entire month. And I have to last the entire second month. No giving up. Even when it’s impossible, remember that you wanted this.” He dropped his hands and gave me a disgruntled stare.
“Yes, Master.”
“Are you ready for this? As soon as we get up from this breakfast table, you’re not my sweet Miya. You’re just a whore with two warm tight holes.” Already I saw the life rush to his eyes. The dark thrill of stripping me of my power and drenching me in pleasure.
I hated it. But he needed this. And I needed to know what it was truly and completely like to be in love with a sexual dominant.
He needed to go to the darkest places; I needed to get him to the lightest. Maybe once I got him there, he’d want it as much as I did.
“You’re to do what I say, when I say, how I say, whenever I say it. Do you understand, Miya?”
I was already breathless. “Yes, Master.”
“Gone are the emotions. No cuddling. No hugging. No kissing. No touching unless you’re on your knees and bound. It will hurt. It will feel good. It will be the hardest thing I ever do to you. I. Control. Everything. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.” I breathed shakily. “I already miss you.”
He gave me a tight look that almost cracked his armor. “There’s always a reward in the pain I give you. At the end of the month, you will get me in a way you never have. No dominance, no control—just my heart. Think of that when you’re too sore to walk.”
I gripped the edge of the table, my fingertips digging into the wood. “I will.”
“You wanted this, Miya.” He stood up, and in seconds he was no longer the same man I walked in the snow with, the same man who cried in my lap. He was a sexual dominant. Power radiated off his body and shimmered around him like he was a mirage.
And I was begging him to be real.
“Get up, Miya.”
I rose to my feet.
PART TWO
The fall into the abyss…
1. – Jaxon
If I wasn’t a monster before, I sure as hell was one now.
In many ways, I’m a parasite, sucking the life and nourishments from my host until there was nothing left.
I’m a human who learned to survive on pain. There’s nothing inside of me. There’s nothing worth keeping. I know that, and every woman who’s ever had her hands on my body, knows that too. I’m an empty being who lives off pain. It’s the only time things makes sense.
I understand hurting.
I connect with people when I’m the one making them scream and cry, from both pleasure and pain.
I am no more connected with a person, than I am when they’re eager for my swat, desperate for my cold.
I knew the moment I saw Miya that she was too good for me. She’s innocent and good, wrapped in a package so damn irresistible it’s a wonder she doesn’t have a horde of horny losers running after her.
I don’t understand what she sees in me. Why does she want me? What about me makes her want to give me so much?
That doesn’t matter, of course. All of my inner reflection bullshit won’t change who I am or stop me from having what I want.
And I want Miya Reemond. In every conceivable way. The good, the bad, the dirty, the painful. I wanted to rip her soul open and taste it, swallow it down. Then maybe I’d finally have one.
She wants love. The submission and the pain she does for me. At the end of the day, she wants to wake up in love and smile at the sun. She just so happened to fall in love with a man who goes to sleep at night and frowns into the moon.
But that doesn’t stop my body from reacting to her. Every single time I lay eyes on her, my fucking heart grows three sizes. I hated it at first. When she was just my student. I wanted to bend her over my desk and fuck my emotions out of me. When we started emailing each other, and I found out it was her, I wanted to make her my submissive.
She starred in my fantasies.
And then I fell in love.
With a nineteen-year-old student. With an incredible body and love in her smile. There was a shred of dark in her gaze, however, and that’s the part I fell in love with first. That shred of dark in all her good.
I wanted that dark to be mine. To make it grow.
She fascinated me. Consumed me. I thought of her and nothing else. And soon, the dark in my mind began to calm. It became lust. Bitter damaging lust. I’d never felt anything so strong before. Not even when Vega had me on my hands and knees with her clit nestled between my lips.
I never felt anything like I did the day I finally
had Miya in my basement. I’d had every intention of making her my submissive. She’d had every intention of being one. That didn’t happen.
My love for her grew. My desire for pain increased. I ruined us so many times I felt like I’d punched her soul full of holes and yet I still tried to keep it. Tattered and bright in my pocket. I’d never let it go.
Her baby blue eyes stared back at me, wide and fearful. But so incredibly trusting I felt her trust all the way into the darkest parts of my heart. Her cheeks were flushed and her golden brown hair hung down her back, wavy from our shower that morning.
There were teeth marks on her neck, where her pulse pounded the hardest. The sight of my mark on her snowy pale flesh had blood rushing to my cock. I wanted to bury it inside of her tight pussy, but she was expecting that. I could see it all over her face. She still thought submission was about sex. Submission had so little to do with sex, it stunned me she could make that leap.
She knew how to submit, but she didn’t know why.
This new arrangement would teach her that. It would solve all my problems. At least for a month. I’d get to keep her without the hammer of reality hanging over my head for thirty more days, and then thirty more days after that if things went according to plan. I didn’t want to think about spending a month doing everything she wanted just yet. It would be hard enough getting through this month without completely breaking her.
I should be happy.
Instead, I was terrified.
There was a reason I never went that far. Never stripped her of her power and treated her like all my other submissives. I loved her. How could I treat her that way and still keep her the way I wanted?
I couldn’t.
Love and submission didn’t go together. I knew that. She may think I didn’t, but I did. I knew there’d come a day when she wanted a ring on her finger instead of a handprint on her ass. What kind of husband would I make? Spanking my wife before her vows?
Dark Submissive (Dark Masters Book 2) Page 2