Closer and Closer

  At the sound of his deep chuckle, I relaxed, and sank further against my bent knees.

  “Sub drop. I wondered about that,” he said. “So, are you going to tell me what you need or are we going to bed?”

  “You want me to say it, don’t you?”

  “No. I need you to say it.” He lifted my chin again, turning my eyes to his. “And you need to ask for it. Exactly what you need.”

  I glanced past my shoulder at the dimmed hallway. The old needlepoint runner had moved again, wrinkling in front of the bathroom door.

  Should tape that down or something before we hurt ourselves.

  “Erin?”

  “Sir?” I jerked my head back to him.

  “Let’s do this in the morning. You’re too tired to—”

  “Sir, please. I need a spanking.” I pulled at the old polar bear print pajama pants I’d put on, tugging them over my knees as I stood. “Please?”

  He watched, silent. The current between us was there, but spinier and somehow darker too. This wasn’t teasing and playing with bodies and sweet, delirious emotion. This was something harder.

  “Sir, it hurts when I can’t feel your hands on me,” I said. I could barely hear my own voice. I waited, though, and listened to my own pulse in my ears.

  Finally, he spoke. “Panties, too.”

  I pulled them away, fumbling the loop of cotton in my tired fingers, and staggered into him a little. He caught my hips, steadying me in front of him. His fingers went into the soft flesh there, clenching as he dragged me closer. He lowered his head and pressed me into his face, inhaling.

  Gasping, I wrenched at his hold on my hips. He was inhaling me, taking my scent in. No one had ever stood sentinel over me like he did, and no one had ever wanted me like he did. Liking it, the sensation of him filling his senses with something elementally feminine and intimate from me, turned my body limp in his hands. But as I stood threading my fingers through the dark curls at the base of his neck, aching and wanting his mouth closer to me, the distant, frosty judge in me screamed louder. Words like travel and sitting and smell. He cupped my backside in his hands, his forehead resting against my mons, and he inhaled again.

  “Sir, I’ve been on a plane all…Oh God, Sir.”

  He looked up at me, jaw ground tight. “Quiet.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir.”

  One hand left, connecting again with my backside in a hard, cracking slap. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Be quiet.”

  And then I understood. I gave over to my need for him and admitted it, but I had to submit to him needing me too. The want and ache for him I’d managed all week turned physical. I put my hands on his shoulders for balance, waiting for his bidding.

  Finally, after releasing me, he sat back and lifted his arms.

  “Lay down.”

  Don’t talk, just do.

  I did, wobbling as I climbed to the bed beside him and stretched across his legs.

  “I’m going to give you twenty-five. Count them out. Nothing but numbers.” He threaded a hand through my hair.

  Before I could nod in understanding or prepare myself, it started. There was no warm-up, no sensual build like the first time he’d spanked me. He wasn’t provocative, didn’t rouse me with his voice in my ear. He didn’t linger over me, dipping and teasing between my legs.

  It came fast and with no pattern, popping between each side. The sound echoed along with my own sniffling, hoarse cries through my room, as hard on my ears as his hands on my ass.

  Twenty-two burned and lifted my hips from his. Twenty-three drove me against his thigh again. Orgasm hovered so close, mocking me but best ignored.

  “Twenty-four,” I gasped against his leg. The coarse hair there curled into my mouth and nose and as I winced away from it, I felt something wet and warm where my cheek had rested. His hand descended again before I could process it. “Twenty-five, Sir.”

  He bunched my hair in his hand and lowered me to the floor between his legs. My shoulders rose and fell, and the sounds still came—wheezy, heavy-breathed sobs.

  They were from me. I’d cried through the entire spanking.

  “Good girl,” he said quietly, his hand stroking my hair away from my face. He settled my head against his knee and let me soak it with tears and snot and the remnants of my mascara. His hand never left my head.

  He was the thing that righted me, even as I cried messy tears that racked my chest and turned his skin wet under my cheek. As off-kilter as I know I looked, inside I felt like a nearly capsized boat coming back over its keel again.

  “It’s okay,” he said finally, like he’d been repeating it over and over as I cried. “Your feet are on the ground now. You’re home.”

  I was. Calm. Soothed by the stinging, hot skin on my backside. At Sir’s feet.

  Somewhere between that first spanking and this one, I’d fallen in love with him. And how it felt was incongruous to what I thought love would be. Loving him wasn’t just about the heady things between us, but about a place for them to happen. With him, I was finding a place where I belonged. I was finding my home.

  I raised my head, looking at him with sleepy eyes. “Thank you, Sir.”

  “You’re welcome.” Standing, he tugged me to my feet beside him. I bent again, reaching for my panties, but he caught my arm. “Nope. Leave those there. Now, get in bed.”

  I crawled over my quilt and pulled it past my knees so I could slide between the sheets. “Mmmmm,” I sighed, wiggling at the feeling of cool cotton on my aroused and scalded skin.

  He climbed in beside me, turned out the lamp and gathered me to his chest. His lips brushed over my forehead. “G’night, sweetheart.”

  Oh.

  No sex. No feel of Sir inside me. No coming under him and for him.

  I didn’t ask for it.

  Pressed to his warm, solid body, heavy with need for him and denied—very purposefully—was one of the most erotic and baffling things I’d ever experienced.

  I fell asleep against his shoulder, his hand resting across the curve of my hip.

  The next morning we slept in. Or dozed in, really, our legs tangled together as we woke each other with trailing hands and nuzzling, half-awake kisses until we slept again. Eventually the sun rose over the trees in my front yard, sending slanting fingers of light across my bed.

  My bed. My house. Walt’s arms around me. I tugged at his hair, bringing him to me.

  “Missed you,” I said and kissed him, taking my time with it, tasting the curve of his lip with my tongue. And he waited, still and quiet, letting me stroke and lick and nibble at every part of him I found under my hands.

  This was different. Without sharp-edged, insistent power crackling between us, the causeway still opened, the light soft-focus, filmy.

  We touched each other, but simply to please each other with the feel of our hands rather than a studied means of drawing reactions and stoking a flame to incandescent. We were gentle with each other. And when Walt brought his body over mine, he entered me slowly, his eyes on mine and smiling down as he rocked into me. Making love.

  “Missed you, too,” he said and settled his forearms on either side of my head. Dipping to me, he paused for another long, lazy kiss, his hips still moving against mine, and on to the little hollow under my ear that always stole my breath when he passed his tongue over it.

  I smoothed a dark curl from his temple and whispered his name against his lips. Needed more. Opening wider for him, my knees swishing over his hips, I rocked with him. Sighs and moans echoed around us. Without words he questioned, nodding with raised eyebrows, and he knew, as soon as I gasped, craning forward to see where our bodies met and moved together. Walt tipped his body to one thigh, nudging with his knee, opening me, getting closer to me. He slid a fraction deeper, and I tumbled into a long, undulating orgasm that didn’t race, but rolled, a steady, deliberate path toward its end. He met me there, squeezing his eyes hard as he came into me and said my name in a hush against my temple.

&n
bsp; I wanted to tell him then, but love was another word I didn’t know how to say.

  We dressed and went to the kitchen for food, making ridiculous jokes about the world’s latest brunch and world’s earliest linner as we kissed and puttered around the kitchen.

  “You dropped pretty hard. More than I expected,” he said as we sat at the table for the meal that could not be named.

  I nodded. “I didn’t realize until last night that it was connected. Or I was disconnected? That’s what it felt like—being disconnected. But it was a stressful week as well.”

  “Hmmm. That’ll make you drop worse, too.” He brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “You talk to your mom again after you saw them last Sunday?”

  “Phone tag. Just like you. I should call her today.” Dani would require a cooling off period.

  “I’m gonna run over to the cabin and pick up some clothes, take Lu’s car back to her. That should give you some time to yourself to settle in.”

  Like the surprise of the comfortable ride home, his understanding—without me forced to find words for why I needed time alone after being around so many people—made my eyes cloud. I turned my head, blinking at it.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” He grinned at me and took a sip of coffee. “Let me do this for you.”

  “I’m working on letting you do it.”

  We laughed quietly over a couple of meaningful glances.

  “All right, you work on it.” He clapped his hand against my thigh, breaking the stream of unvoiced thoughts between us. “You want to play a little tonight?”

  “Again? It’s like having two Christmases.” I giggled. “Really?”

  “Yeah, goofy, really. This lost, floating thing—I want to work on it.”

  “Um, okay? Work on it with what sort of…”

  “Mostly sensation, no toys. Don’t want you waiting in position or anything like that. But I’d like to pick up D/s with you again. You okay with that after last week and then last night?”

  “Mmmm, yes.” I leaned into him. “Yes, I am completely, very, very okay with that.”

  He shook his head, chuckling. “Damn, I’ve created a greedy little monster.”

  I pushed my plate aside and climbed into his lap so I could have him again.

  “Rawr.”

  I spent the afternoon in silence, doing laundry, dusting and vacuuming. Sorting the mail Walt had retrieved for me from my neighbors, the Jensens, before he left with Lucy’s SUV. With each purposeful, familiar task, I felt myself settling in again, more here than there. Home.

  In the early evening, Walt sent me a text. He was on his way. I was to wait for him, in my bathrobe, on the living room sofa.

  He let himself in with his own new key, pausing to kiss the top of my head before turning down the long hallway to my room, his overnight duffel in his hand. He came back with a bottle of water for each of us and sat beside me.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi. How was your afternoon?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Great. I cleaned.” I smiled, lazy and happy over it.

  “God, you and Lu and your chores.” He shook his head, laughing. “You still want to do this?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “All right.” He set his water aside, turning to me. “This time, we’re going to try something different.”

  I tried to nod, hoping it would mask how disappointed the word different sounded to me. It didn’t, of course. He caught the hesitation before I could cover it.

  “What’s going on?” His hand slid around mine—warm, strong. It connected me to him by more than flesh, and I forced myself not to cling to his fingers like I was lost, sitting on my own sofa, in my own home.

  “It sounds…I don’t know? Worrisome?”

  “Why, Erin?” He tugged at my arm, and did it again when I resisted looking up at him. When I finally complied, the familiar feeling of blooming, a deep and secret place in me spread out before him, returned. In such a place, I could only tell the truth.

  “I don’t know. It’s that word. Different. And try. Together they’re scary.”

  He didn’t shush over me or roll his eyes dismissively. “You can do it.” And there was the unspoken, always there, still echoing through me from our first time: Got you.

  This time the nod came easier, and there wasn’t anything attached to it but agreement. Ready. Yes. Yes, Sir. I squeezed his hand and stood, careful to keep our fingers linked.

  “Good,” he said, rising from the sofa.

  My will and body were already surrendered to him. Now, after three times settling into this mindframe, it felt like coming back to a favorite, secret island. To me, when we were like this, Walt changed, as apparent on his outside as I felt different inside. I wondered if it was the same for him internally—if he felt quieted inside, relaxed but so much more aware, too, as I did. But it wasn’t time for questions. He was waiting for me.

  “Come with me.”

  I followed him, still holding his hand in front of me as he navigated the dim hallway. I glanced toward my bedroom window as we passed and could see my back yard, beyond. Outside, fireflies climbed from the shadows around the big oak tree there. Crickets and frogs were warming up for their nighttime concert.

  Walt turned me into the bathroom first, tucking himself behind me. He reached across my shoulder to pull the shades taut, and I shivered at the sensation of his sturdy body behind mine. He gave me an indulgent, soft, neck-nuzzling chuckle in reply. Turning my head, I inhaled the scent of his shampoo and the sun from his hair, moving enough to let the brown curls dance across my cheek. My new contacts bunched a little and I blinked at them.

  “Take your robe off,” he whispered against my skin.

  It puddled around our feet with a quiet swish, a streak of grayed white in the nearly dark bathroom. His T-shirt followed.

  Rounding the edges of my body, his hands rose from the shadows. Our reflections shone in the mirror in front of us, dim from the last, hazy light of the day. When his fingertips connected with my skin, I tensed and drew in my breath, hissing it across my teeth in time with the meandering descent he took as he traced over the outside curve of my breasts, waist, hips. He finished at the top of my thighs, slowly kneading the muscles there against the heels of his hands.

  I squirmed against his chest, still watching him watching me. His fingers splayed, nearly dipping through the tuft of hair between my legs. It was impossible not to move my hips along with his hands; they were guiding me to tilt and sway along, anyway. The crush and roll stopped, and he rested one wide palm in the curved cleft between my thigh and mons.

  “You stay right there, okay?” He stroked my hip as he leaned over my shoulder again, reaching. The same hands had made the fading bruises on my breasts and had stung me with a spanking so hard I’d cried against his thigh. His attention felt protective and affectionate, and I settled into it like a cocoon.

  A candle flickered to life beside us, and then he was behind me again. Our eyes met in the mirror, reflection to real, and his arms circled me, chasing away the bare-skin chill.

  “You all right?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Sir. Fine.”

  “I’ve been thinking about something you told me last night.” Behind me, he shifted a little, and my ear fell closer to his neck. Drawn closer by the salt and spice of his skin, I could hear the click of his jaw as he swallowed and sensed the faint drum of his pulse over my own. “You said you felt…” He paused and looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “Anchorless. When you—when we played the first time, I’d built it up so much mentally and then I had you…had so much of you? You make me feel rooted to the ground, like I have somewhere solid under me. When you weren’t there, I missed that feeling.”

  “What is it about me that makes you feel like the ground’s underneath you?”

  “Because you want me here, Sir.” The revelation was huge, but so easy with him behind me, his arms around me. Sturdy. Still there. “Not just sexu
ally—but I like that, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said, chuckling, as he mounded one of my breasts against his palm and gave it a soft tug. “Yeah, I like that part a lot, too. But is there anything else?”

  “Because you’ve seen so much of me. And you’re still here. Especially now, after…um, last night. When I needed you like that again, and you made me ask you for it.”

  “For?” He grinned with raised eyebrows, catching me hiding in my vagueries again.

  “For the spanking. And for knowing you had to give me enough to get me to cry. I never break, Sir. But I fell apart for you.” I felt his eyes on me, and glanced back to his refection in the mirror. “You are—”

  “—so beautiful,” he said, his voice mingling with mine. We smiled at each other, a little self-conscious, and he tipped his head toward mine. “You are.”

  “You are, Sir.”

  “You…” He inhaled, deep, from behind my ear. “God. You, you, you.”

  His palms rode over me again. I looked on, watching the image of him touching my body and the attentive, deliberate way he took in each part of me his hands skated over. When his eyes rose and found mine, the sharp, focused stare was there again.

  Sir.

  I fought hard at the rational voice telling me I was standing in front of a mirror, in my bathroom, dark except for the flame of a single candle, and without a single stitch of clothing. And even if I’d been covered in enough layers to ward off a deep-winter wind, I would have been completely naked to him. He saw it, too. Like the night we met, and every time since, the recognition was instant and mutual. As always, he nodded a little, enough to show me he acknowledged it too.

  With one hand seated on my hip, he reached toward my head and threaded his fingers through my hair. The pressure was steady, but not painful.

  “Erin, what do I have in my hand?”

  “My hair, Sir.”

  I knew this call and response. I’d been here before and could conjure the right words for him. The pull against my scalp intensified enough for me to notice the change. I flicked my eyes back to his.