My God, I could barely think the word. An urge to run hit me hard and fast. What was I doing here? How would this work? How long before she started making demands on me that I couldn't meet? How long before I was in so deep with this woman that she could destroy me worse than Ryan did? Panicked fear surged through me, and I was a heartbeat from walking away when Derek's earlier words yanked me back from the ledge.
How long are you going to keep letting your ex-wife control how you live your life?
I didn't want that anymore. I didn't want to live with the ghost of my ex-wife tainting everything I did and the choices I made. I didn't want to live alone in fear anymore. I wanted to be happy again, and in Malory, I finally saw a chance to find that happiness, if I could just let go of the past and have the courage to try. Fuck you, Ryan. Fuck you and the claws you still have latched into me. I could do this damn it. I refused to let her dictate my future anymore.
"I'm...I'm clean too," I finally told her in a calm voice that belied the storm that had just raged inside my head. "It was from a week before we met, and I didn't sleep with anyone after that until you." Until Malory, sex wasn't something I had to have constantly, but this woman had changed everything. Derek was right about that too.
She smiled radiantly up at me, her eyes so sweet and trusting, and her face so damn beautiful. No woman had ever looked at me like that before. I wanted to be the man worthy of that look. I didn't want to be the man who took what he needed from her and gave nothing in return. If she trusted me, then didn't I owe her the same?
"The last woman I was bare with was my ex-wife eight years ago," I whispered, shocked by my unexpected confession. I met her eyes honestly for the first time, and let her see a measure of my pain and fear.
Her eyes widened in surprise, then empathy and understanding flowed across her face and softened her eyes. "I've never been bare with anyone," she whispered in reply. "I never wanted to before." She stared at me in bewilderment. "But I want it with you. I trust you."
A bone deep shudder ran through me at her words. I don't think any woman had ever once told me that before, not even my wife. Ryan never trusted me, and I'd spent the latter part of our marriage being accused of things I didn't even do. Derek was right yet again. Malory was not my ex-wife, not in any way, shape, or form. Her trust gave me hope, and turned me on like nothing ever had before.
I snarled wantonly and yanked her shirt up over her head, this time without her trying to stop me at all. Within moments, I had the rest of her clothes off and was pulling her bare luscious body back into my arms. Her soft breasts pressed against my fevered skin as I pushed her back up against the wall, growling and clutching at her like an animal as I ground my cock against her. She whimpered and moaned as she clawed at my bare shoulders and chest.
I pushed my athletic shorts down just enough to free my dick and lifted her into the air, sliding her body up the wall until my tip nudged at her soaking wet cunt. I slammed into her with one hard thrust, easily burying myself to the hilt inside her. Malory gasped and shuddered in my arms. Her soft wet heat clenched around me in a fluttering wave that made my breath catch and my heart stutter. Her body fit me like a glove, like this was where I belonged. I'd never felt anything like it. I instantly stilled, fearing that I'd unload inside her already if I didn't get control of myself.
"Gareth..." she moaned out needily. "Please...I need you..."
Her sweet pleading tone was too much for me to bear, and my tentative control just snapped. My hips seemed to act of their own accord, and began pumping in and out of her with hard vicious thrusts. I covered her mouth with mine, swallowing down her gasp of surprise as I crushed my lips to hers. I kissed her with brutal passion as our bodies crashed together again and again and again. I couldn't get close enough, couldn't get deep enough, as I thrust harder and harder into her, snarling and growling with each one.
Suddenly, she came apart, convulsing around me in a violent shudder as her nails clawed into my back and her insides clamping down savagely on my cock. I was done for, and my release closed in on me in a rush.
I gave Malory one more brutal thrust, and my release detonated in a blast of white-hot pleasure that simultaneously destroyed me and pieced me back together as I exploded inside her. Our gazes locked as we flew as one, and I knew in that moment, as I looked deep into her eyes and saw my passion mirrored back to me, that everything between us had just irrevocably changed, and it scared the living shit out of me.
16
MALORY
"Are you going to look at your menu or just keep staring off into space?" Willa asked me wryly from across the table of the quaint little Italian restaurant that we were eating dinner at. We'd all been having a tough week at work, and we decided to go out and unwind together with some good food and lots of wine.
"She's too busy thinking about what she'd really like to be eating right now," Dean chimed in from my left with a lecherous grin.
I slapped my menu down on the table in front of me. "I am not," I snapped back vehemently, even though I was indeed thinking about Gareth. It was Wednesday, and I hadn't seen him in three days, and our frequent texts and nightly phone calls just weren't enough. I missed him, and I was pining for him as well as his body and what it could do to me.
Our relationship shifted on Sunday into something more real and more intimate. He opened up to me in that stairwell when he told me about his ex-wife, and let me see the pain he obviously still carried from his failed marriage. Seeing that side of Gareth made him seem more human to me, instead of just the wickedly intense sex god that commanded my pleasure with precision and skill. That moment changed things between us, and when his bare cock sank inside me, it felt like coming home and made me realize that I was falling for this man. Fear fluttered through me at that thought. Please don't let me be wrong about a man yet again.
"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much," Dean said in the worst English accent I'd ever heard.
"Me thinks your English accent sucks," I quipped with a smile.
"Me thinks you need to start spilling about last weekend," Willa said pointedly. "We let you slide on the BFF forty-eight-hour rule. We've patiently waited long enough, and now it's time to share all the dirty kinky sex details."
"Well, he has a sex bed," I confessed quietly, ignoring my embarrassed blush and deciding to throw them a bone.
"Sex bed?" Willa blurted out with a scandalized expression that was belied by the glittering excitement in her cornflower blue eyes.
"Keep it down." I glanced around sheepishly. "It's a canopy bed with eye bolts all over it," I leaned in closer to my friends and lowered my voice to a whisper, " for kinky bondage stuff."
"Oooo," Dean said. "I think I saw one like that at Désir Dangereux."
"At where?" Willa asked with a perplexed expression. I didn't know what he was talking about either.
"That exclusive sex club I told you guys about," he replied with waggling eyebrows. "They have all kinds of different rooms with kinky furniture and toys. One room has a bed just like that in it." His eyes widened, and he gasped. "What if your kinky man is a member? Maybe he'll take you there."
I blushed what I was sure was pure crimson, if the heat in my face was any indication. "Gareth doesn't go to sex clubs," I denied indignantly.
"Okay, whatever you say," Dean said in an unconvinced tone. "But he had to learn that kinky stuff somewhere, didn't he?"
Before I could come up with a reply, my eyes were drawn to the front of the restaurant as two African-American boys stumbled through the door shoving each roughly back and forth. They were identical twins, appeared to be maybe eight or nine-years-old, and looked strangely familiar. For the life of me, I couldn't remember where I'd seen them before. The boys were followed by a tall stunningly beautiful woman with the same deep hazelnut skin tone they had, and she began scolding them with a stern expression until they settled down sheepishly. She was obviously their mother, and had long wavy black hair and large warm brown eyes. I'd
never seen her before. I stared at the three in bewilderment, until a familiar man walked in behind them and put a possessive arm around the woman's waist. It was Gareth's best friend, Derek West. Ah, this must be his wife and twin boys he mentioned on Sunday. No wonder the boys looked familiar. They looked just like their father.
Derek glanced around the room, and his eyes widened in sudden recognition when he spotted me. He smiled broadly then turned to say something to his wife, who turned and smiled in my direction as well. I grinned happily and waved at them. I really liked Derek and was excited to meet the family he'd gushed so much about.
"Do you know that guy?" Dean asked in a strange tone. I glanced at my friend to see him staring intently with a frown at Derek and his wife as they led their boys over to our table.
"That's Gareth's best friend," I explained, but before I could ask him why he was asking or wonder about his odd reaction, Derek and his family had walked up to our table.
"Hi, Malory," Derek said with a warm smile. "Fancy meeting you here." He glanced at his beautiful wife. "This is my wife, Thea."
"It's so good to meet the woman who's finally tamed the moody beast," Thea said with a wicked smile. Her voice was a smooth pleasant alto.
"I don't know about the taming part, but he certainly is moody," I replied with a grin.
"And these two hellions are my boys, Declan and Devlin," Derek said with obvious pride in his voice as he smiled down at his kids.
"Hi," the boys said in an eerie unison.
"Are you Uncle G's girlfriend?" the twin on the left asked with a slow grin.
"I...I guess I am," I answered him with a soft smile. He and I hadn't labeled our budding relationship, but I didn't know what else to call it.
"Wow," the other twin said. "You're really pretty."
"Thanks," I said awkwardly, then turned to my friends to make their introductions. I never did know how to deal with random compliments. "These are my best friends, Willa and Dean."
Willa gave them her glorious megawatt smile and greeted them enthusiastically. Dean's greeting on the other hand, was subdued, and he gave them a strangely forced and uncomfortable smile. It was odd. Dean was rarely subdued or quiet and usually had a sarcastic comment for everything.
"Well, it's been great seeing you here, Malory," Derek said. "We'll let you guys get back to your dinner. If I don't feed these monsters soon they'll start gnawing on my leg." The boys were already elbowing each other and exchanging dirty looks. They looked like they were quite the handful.
"It was nice meeting you," Thea added with a warm expression. "I hope to see you again soon."
I watched them walk away with a smile. It was so good to see such an obviously happy long term couple. It made me feel hopeful that I could have that myself someday. Maybe with Gareth? I tamped that thought down. It was much too soon to think about those kinds of things with him.
I turned back to my friends and noticed that Dean was still staring after Derek and Thea with a startled expression. He turned and met my eyes with a worried frown.
"Dean?" I asked him worriedly. "What's wrong?"
"I've...I've seen them before," he answered softly.
"Okay," I said with a frown, wondering where he'd seen them and why he thought it was such a big deal.
He leaned forward with a furrowed brow. "At that sex club," he whispered pointedly.
"What?!" I blurted out loudly. A few patrons nearby glanced my way as I blushed furiously.
"That club, Désir Dangereux," Dean explained quietly. "I saw them the night I was there."
"What do you mean, you saw them?" I asked, afraid I knew what he meant.
"I mean I saw them...all of them," he answered meaningfully. "They put on quite a show. Apparently, Master D and his sub have been going to the club for years, and Derek is one frighteningly intense and very experienced Dom. Let's just say his wife is one lucky woman, and it's a shame he's not gay and single." Dean's eyes lit up evilly. "That man knows his way around a flogger and a woman, and he and his wife drew the biggest crowd that night."
"Crowd?" I whispered harshly. I glanced across the restaurant at Derek and Thea. They looked so normal sitting over there having dinner out as a family. I had a hard time imagining them sharing something so intimate in a room full of people.
"Makes you wonder if Gareth's into that kind of thing too, doesn't it?" Willa asked conspiratorially as she shared a wicked grin with Dean. "Like you said, he had to learn it somewhere."
"Next thing you know, our innocent little Malory will be out on the town getting spanked in public," Dean said with glittering eyes and a leering smirk.
I looked back and forth between my friends in horror. I couldn't imagine letting someone watch Gareth and me play together. More power to Derek and Thea for enjoying that kind of relationship, but what Gareth and I did was way too intimate and private to me for something like that. My God, what if that's what he wanted from me eventually? I wasn't comfortable with that at all. It was one thing to toy with the possibility of being caught in a storage room or an empty stairwell. Being watched by a crowd was something else entirely. My stomach roiled at that thought, and my appetite just suddenly died.
"I'm going home," I blurted out as I pushed my chair back from the table and stood.
"Oh honey," Dean said as sudden concern filled his eyes. "We were just joking around."
"Yeah," Willa added in a panicked tone. "Don't leave. You know we're full of shit."
"I have to go. I'm sorry." I grabbed my coat and bag, and fled, ignoring their worried expressions and purposefully avoiding looking at Derek and Thea as I hurried out of the restaurant. If that was the kind of relationship Gareth wanted with me, then I couldn't do it. If that's what he truly wanted, then I was going to have to walk away, even if it broke the heart I now feared I'd already given him.
**********
Halfway home I decided that being alone right now maybe wasn't a very good idea, and started heading toward my sister's house. I needed to talk to someone sensible and level headed, and Lydia was both. My head was a mess, with continuous imagined scenarios where Gareth insisted that we play in that sex club if I wanted to be with him, and me refusing, then leaving him in tears. Would he be angry or disappointed? Would he think I was a pathetic prude? Maybe I was I overreacting.
I didn't even know if he went to that club at all. I knew the most sensible thing to do would be to talk to Gareth, but the very idea of trying to bring up the subject terrified me. How did you bring up your brand-new boyfriend's possible membership in an exclusive sex club without feeling completely mortified? I blushed at the very thought, even though I was all alone in my car.
I was still freaking out inside when I pulled to a stop in front my sister's house. I jumped out and hurried up to the front door to ring the doorbell. A few seconds later, Andy answered the door.
"Well, hello, sister of mine," he announced with a broad grin that faltered when he focused on my face. "What's wrong?" he stepped back to let me enter with a worried frown.
"Is Lydia here?" I asked in a wavering voice as I walked past him.
"No," he replied. "She took Alice over to my mom's house for some grandma time."
He followed me into his living room. A video game was paused on Andy's huge television, and a game controller, a bottle of beer, and several bags of chips littered the coffee table.
"Will she be back soon?" I asked in a desperate sounding voice.
He stepped closer and gently gripped my upper arms as he eyed me closely. "Mal, what's wrong? What happened?"
"I...I just really need to talk to my sister." I was not going to talk to Andy about this. No thank you, talk about mortifying.
He frowned thoughtfully then narrowed his eyes. "Is this about Gareth?" he asked harshly as sudden anger gleamed in his eyes. "What did he do to you?" he growled. "I told Lydia to let me warn you about him, but she told me to stay out of it," he added under his breath
"Warn me?" I asked in startled su
rprise. What the hell? "Warn me about what?"
"Well, he's divorced for one thing. He hasn't had a girlfriend since, so it's obvious he doesn't do relationships at all," Andy said vehemently as he let go of my arms and started pacing in front of me.
"How do you know that?" I asked accusingly, not wanting to believe him.
"I talked to Ford about it on Saturday," Andy answered. "I told him you were dating his stepbrother, and he looked at me like I'd sprouted a new head before telling me that." He stopped and eyed me with a serious expression as he crossed his arms. "He also told me that Gareth's into some crazy kinky stuff that a nice girl like you doesn't want to get involved in, Mal. You're not that kind of girl."
I blushed because Andy was clueless about what kind of girl I was. He seemed to think I was this innocent naive virgin, when I was anything but that. Especially since Gareth introduced me to his crazy kinky sex, and I took to it immediately and enthusiastically.
His face softened. "I don't want you to get hurt anymore than it looks like you already have."
"He hasn't hurt me at all, Andy," I replied, feeling defensive of Gareth because I'd seen the real man inside quite a few times, and particularly on Sunday when he let me see some of the pain and fear he still carried from his divorce. I knew there was something more between us besides the kinky sex, no matter what Andy said.
I realized now that I'd completely overreacted at the restaurant and panicked. I shouldn't have come here. I should have gone straight to Gareth and talked to him about what was worrying me. Just because his best friend went to sex clubs and liked to be watched, didn't mean he did. If we were going to have a relationship, I needed to be honest and talk to him about what was bothering me, instead of jumping to conclusions and freaking out. I owed him that, even if I didn't like the results. Better to find out now if we were incompatible, even if it hurt.
Dark Dominion: Dangerous Desire Book 1 Page 18