The Reward

by Jade A. Waters

  “Yes. Oh my God, I do...” The image was a million times better than porn because it was us. The rush I’d felt the last time he’d sent over one of the pictures he’d taken swept over me, but harder with how hot it was to see his fingers inside me like they were in the picture.

  “Good. Keep reading.”

  The press of his back on me was breaking my focus, but I scrolled down to read the texts he’d sent.

  Tonight, I want to please you more than I’ve ever pleased you before. Do this in public. Push you the furthest you’ve ever been.

  “You are such a—” My words halted at the second message with Dean’s tongue blazing a line down the side of my neck and his finger dipping deep inside. Knowing what it looked like, never mind feeling it, drew a groan from me. I arched back against him, riled by the bite he took of my neck and the grind of his palm on my folds when he tried to sink his finger deeper.

  Your assignment, Maya: Join me in public wearing your sexiest attire. Choose your favorite items to bring along, because I intend to redden that sweet ass of yours with an audience. And, because your desires are what turn me on the most, promise me you’ll tell me everything you feel, and everything you want from me all the way through.

  My breath grew windy, and his shove of another finger inside before he pushed me flat down on the washer wasn’t helping matters. He rolled up his hips to let me feel the thickness of his cock beneath his jeans against my ass, and then he drew his fingers almost out, pulsing them at my opening, enticing me when he asked, “Did you read them all?”

  I read the last.

  After you’ve earned your reward, my love, I’ve got a surprise for you.

  “A surprise?” I asked. I spun to face him, the hum of the washer starting once it was full and the cycle kicked in. My mind spun a million directions while I tried to figure out what sort of surprise could possibly follow something as mind-blowing and hot as what I understood would be a scene in public. I’d been craving that for so long, especially with it coming up between us not all that long ago, and he wanted to double down with a surprise, too? Dean’s eyes shimmered under the kitchen light shining bright behind him, the blue of his irises more noticeable and soft to match the sweetness captured on his face, and my curiosity ran wild. Dean didn’t touch my sensitive pussy yet, but he stood close and caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “What are you up to?” I whispered.

  Dean’s voice was low when he spoke, the gruff sound that sprayed goose bumps out over my limbs. “It’s a secret for now. But you’ll see.”

  “Meanie,” I grumbled. I jiggled the phone in our periphery. “I like the texting, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s like memory lane. Sentimental. Sweet.”

  “Then I’m glad you like it.” Dean leaned down to kiss me, his lips soft and full, contrasting the firm grasp he had on my chin. He worked his other hand between us, and I gasped at the slide of his fingertips on my clit, keeping me tense, aroused. “You know what I like?”

  “What?” I struggled to keep my eyes open when he swept his finger around and around, toying with me here amid a pile of laundry with the washer behind me in this moment of domestic bliss. He traced his fingers down, sinking them inside again before dragging them back up to my clit. I released a heavy breath as he massaged and sent shivers through me. It was insane how well this man knew to touch me, how he could spark the roll of fire that tripped through my veins. He pressed his mouth to mine again, rubbing my clit until pleasure edged closer, but when I closed my eyes and released a deep, raspy moan, he broke our kiss.

  “Driving you wild.”

  “You do it so well...” My shoulders tightened, my nipples peaked. Dean took a firmer rub, and I started to shudder. Then he yanked his hand away. “Hey!”

  “Didn’t you say you needed to shower?”

  My jaw fell open at the delighted look on his face. “You’re torturing me.”

  “I am. Till tonight...” Dean pecked my lips and stepped away, and my body drooped.

  I swayed my knee, flashing him the spread of my pussy lips, and he dove forward to smack the inside of my thigh. I jumped with a laugh before he backed off.

  “Go shower up. I’ve got bills to handle for work, and some other stuff, but I’ll sort out dinner.” He grinned wider and pointed at my pelvis. “You find a way to occupy yourself that doesn’t involve your hands on that clit. That’s not allowed today. Save it for me.”

  I shot him a playful scowl, but he left me standing with my phone in hand just inside our laundry room, taking several breaths to calm the fuck down.

  And more ready than ever to know what he’d planned.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Under the parking garage lamp, Dean stood in front of me, adjusting my long coat before we’d head down the cold city block and inside the club.

  “I think we’re going to have fun,” he said.

  My cheeks felt warm, but then all of me had, my body screaming for touch since Dean’s tease in the laundry room. Then there was the swelling of my heart at his romantic, casual sweetness throughout dinner.

  “I know we will,” I said. “Somehow, you make everything perfect.”

  “I try. For you, always, Maya.”

  Dean kissed me there, the moment a tender preface to what I expected would be more intense than anything we’d tried before. I’d felt the roll of my blood when I’d started packing a bag of toys for our night out, and it’d churned harder once I’d emerged from the spare room wearing the “sexiest attire” I’d hoped would please Dean: heels and a pleather lace-up halter mini-dress we’d picked on an excursion to the local toy store months ago. The getup had seen action that very night before it’d been buried in my closet, thanks to our steadily growing collection of play things, but after the move, my rearrangement of the closets in our house had uncovered it again. The look of it had been too good not to get a wear soon.

  As Dean smoothed his hands over my coat sleeves, he rubbed my arms, and my anticipation ratcheted up to an unbearably hot simmer. It didn’t hurt that he’d dabbed himself with a touch of the cologne that drove me wild, or that he hadn’t shaved away the five o’clock shadow I loved. Over his black long-sleeved button-down and my favorite pair of his tailored gray slacks that cupped his ass just right, the scruff made him appear sexier, extra rugged, darker and more seductive. The gray in his eyes tumbled like waves that set my heart afire while he fought to keep that controlled look on his face, and I smiled knowing that I could rattle him as much as he did me.

  This thought whipped me up when he took my hand, and then we were off and headed down the street. My belly quivered with how long it’d been since we’d last played in public. We’d settled into such an alluring rhythm on our own, playing with our dynamic in the confines of our house, that the return to something that had revved me up back when we’d started made it difficult to keep my breath in check, or for the pace of my heart to be anything but frenzied. My skin tingled as we checked our IDs with the bouncer and walked through the door to pay our entry fee, and the appearance of the place had me grasping Dean’s hand tight.

  “This is okay?” he asked.

  “More than okay,” I said. This club Dean had chosen was vastly different from the one we’d gone to in the past; it wasn’t just for public sex, but for people to play in the same roles we shared between us. If him asking me to pack a bag of toys hadn’t alerted me to this, I would’ve caught on fast. Framed photographs and paintings of men and women bound, chained and subject to some form of discipline decorated the entire lobby, and beside the main entranceway stood an antique bench encased in glass. With a low hum of sultry music piping through the speakers around us, we paused beside the bench, and I read the inscription on its front placard.

  Spanking Bench. Circa 1852.

  Knowing there was a w
hole world, a rich history of people who got off on this like we did, had me sucking in a heavy breath. I tucked myself under Dean’s arm, and he rubbed my side. We paused so he could show the contents of our bag to the security guard, who then directed us to both a coat check and a locker room, because apparently, many people opted to change at the venue itself. That intrigued me. Coming here to change clothes and roles, as if dismissing the outside world to embrace this one? The recognition had my heart skipping faster, and if I’d thought our spare bedroom had become a play room, I realized as we headed farther inside that it had nothing on this place.

  We dropped our coats off and exited the check-in area before entering a small room with an antechamber feel. The walls had been painted black, but neon paints and lighting brightened it so there was no question what might be going on here. And what was happening, though minimal at this hour of the evening, had Dean drawing me tighter into him, his fingers teasing the pleather that lined my side. To the right stood a lone spanking bench, unoccupied, and a couple of tables, chairs and couches. A half-clothed man and woman played on one of the couches, his mouth on her breast and her hands deep in his pants. On the left, a pair of shackles dangled from the ceiling, wrapped around the wrists of a naked woman who’d been strung up there. A man paced in front of her, taking a pinch of her nipple or a teasing stroke of her thigh amid gruff-sounding words I couldn’t make out, and though she had her eyes closed, she wore a faint smile on her brightly lipsticked lips.

  “What do you think of that?” Dean tilted his head toward her, his hand hot on my side.

  “It’s sexy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s...helpless,” I admitted. The length of her body was accentuated by the stretch of her arms above, and she shook with every touch the man took of her, the shackles and chains they were attached to rattling each time.

  “You like that. The lack of control. The bind.”

  “Very much,” I breathed.

  Dean slid his hand to my hip and squeezed it to urge me forward in this warm, musky building. I caught a mix of vanilla and spice against the undeniable smells of sex, and it turned me on as we moved past the woman. I couldn’t resist looking back at her, knowing that at any time, Dean would take advantage of something I’d packed in the bag. At some point, I might well be strung up like she was and on display in here. My knees wobbled, and I met Dean’s eyes with a grin. “It’s sexy.”

  “I agree. Let’s see more, shall we?”

  I assented, my breath speeding faster when he led me along the path to the next room. The neon lights above cast a spray of shapes that guided our way, and I took note of the people we passed, some wandering, others already at play. On the wall, two men clad in leather straps and buckles kissed so deeply that it turned me on, and in a loveseat in the hallway, both a man and woman lapped at another woman they’d secured with rope to the hooks in the wall above them. She thrashed about as they touched and licked her, and her moans tickled my ears before Dean kissed the side of my head.

  “I want to do that with you, here,” he said.

  “Lick me?”

  “Yes. Kiss you. Lick you.” He faced me, stroking his fingers along my cheek. Even with the bass-heavy music cranking through the speakers at a low volume and people moving around us, all I could focus on was the smile touching his mouth when he brought his finger down and across my lips. “I want to bind you and flog you—and fuck you here, too.”

  I gasped, the mere words driving me out of my head while he gave a slow swing of his.

  “I remember how excited you got in public in the past, and I want to overwhelm you with that sensation. To make you mine, here, in front of everyone.”

  My heart drummed on, a loud, thumping beat. “Yes, please.”

  The heated swirl of my blood didn’t cease when we continued on. If anything, it morphed into a more tormented dance, my body alert, my mind entranced by everything we saw checking out each room. Some were meant for pure fucking—couches, chairs and bean bags covering the floor, many of them occupied by naked and half-clothed people, alike—but most were designed for bondage play. We passed walls with chains and varying hookups: shackles, eyelets and cuffs built in to decorative wall structures, as well as freestanding bondage equipment from spanking benches, scaffolds, crosses and stands, to cages in multiple rooms. This early in the evening, many items remained unused, but those that were gave Dean and I pause every time we passed them.

  For several minutes, we watched a man clothed head to toe in black leather spanking a naked woman strapped over a kneeling bench, her ass a brilliant red as she tossed her long brown hair about, and her high-pitched cries amplifying the rush of my pulse. In the next room, we spotted a man in a black jockstrap-like device, cuffed to a post while a fully clothed woman struck him with a paddle. The swipe of it came hard and loud on bare flesh, each time revving me in a reverse of the roles I was used to. The scene was sexy to watch, though foreign to me. Dean seemed to enjoy watching it with me for a while before tugging me along, and when we came to a woman strung up on a cross by various lengths of chain, he circled behind me for us both to watch another woman strike her with a riding crop. She alternated between berating the younger, strapped-in woman and telling her how beautiful she looked, periodically stopping to caress her back or arms. Crisscrossing red lines broke the stretch of the bound woman’s smooth, pale skin along her upper thighs and ass, and although the strike of the crop itself made me flinch both in its whisk through the air and the sharp snap of it on the woman’s body, the view let me sink into Dean’s arms, his body a hot temptation at my back. The bag of our things he’d carried over his shoulder during this time wasn’t lost on me, and as he squeezed me tighter, his fingers taunting me over the pleather that lined my stomach, the bag nudged my side in a reminder of what had yet to come.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Well, the crop looks awful,” I said honestly. I angled my head to kiss his cheek, since he’d pressed his face beside mine to rest his chin on my shoulder, allowing me to smell the trace of his amber cologne on his delicious skin. “But otherwise, it’s...wow.”

  “Because?” When I thought, he encouraged me in a whisper, “Tell me what you want. Everything you crave tonight.”

  He came around, sliding his arms around my waist until he faced me and I felt the hard press of his cock. More than that, I felt the weight of his eyes, and the sweet rush of his breath against my cheeks as he urged me on.

  “Tell me how you want this to go.” He kissed my lips seductively, his fingers lacing up into my hair. “Where do you want it to happen? It’s been so long...and I want tonight to be yours. Anything, anywhere, Maya. It’s yours.”

  It was easy to follow his instructions, because I knew what I wanted. I’d seen it in an earlier room, a structure that had shot curiosity through me, and Dean’s face brightened as I slipped my hand into his and gave him a tug to guide him out into the hall. I loved his lead and command, but me taking him where I wanted to play had us both grinning before I stopped him in a doorway and pointed across the room at what’d intrigued me not ten minutes ago.

  “Mmm...” Dean wrapped his arms around me from behind, kissing my neck when he started to push me forward. The smooth transition back to his lead excited me almost as much as the throaty way he muttered my name. “Maya, Maya, Maya...” In the corner of my eyes, I saw other people playing in this room. There were two women tussling on the vinyl couch to the right, a man fingering a woman he’d cuffed and chained to a ladder along the wall and another man circling a woman he’d strapped down to the top of a rustic round table. The view of them prickled my nerves, but I remained focused on Dean. The feel of his body along mine, his fingers clawing up my belly, pinching my nipple while he mouthed my neck and inched us closer to the tall, inclined chair I’d pointed at. The structure was made of wood and leather paneling, with
a thick leather cushion to lean against and two arms propped out to the side. Multiple hooks ran the length of the chair as well as the arms, and my mind steamrolled through possibilities for Dean to not only hook me up and flog me there, but to fuck me after.

  We stopped beside it and I asked, “Will this work?”

  “Oh, yes.” Dean kissed the shell of my ear, and this close, my pulse picked up. The way this thing was built intrigued me; it looked rustic and designed to be on central view with its position high on a platform in the corner. I’d be visible to everyone in the room and bound like Dean wanted me.

  Ready for anything.

  Dean came around to face me and dropped our bag to the floor. He cupped my cheeks in his hands and caught me in a fervent, delicious kiss, and I surrendered against him, lost in him and the sounds behind us. A throbbing rhythm rolled in from the speakers at a low volume, but it was overrun by the cries of people being struck or fucked in the room, and the throaty growls from those encouraging them. What I concentrated on was the beat of my heart and the wet laps of Dean’s tongue with mine before he pulled away.

  “I can’t wait to show you off.” He slid his hands down, cupping my breasts and kissing my neck, then pinching my nipples through the pleather until I inhaled sharply. The cut of the dress had allowed me no bra or panties, so his provocative grip reached me that much easier. When Dean eased his hands around my waist, he kissed me once more—but this time, his tongue searched deeper, his fingertips curving over my ass to squeeze my cheeks before slipping below the hem of my dress. He stroked the crease of my ass along my thighs, and already, I was falling under his spell.

  “You’re going to take your time, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Would you have it any other way, my love?”

  I ticked my head back and forth, captivated by the strong press of Dean’s chest, the glide of his lips along my jaw and the nibble he took of my earlobe. He hooked his fingers under my skirt and lifted it up, the rush of air on my ass sending an instant quiver to my cunt. I’d been wet from the second we walked into this place, but knowing my ass was visible had my groin clenching in need. Dean kept kissing me while he lifted the skirt of my dress higher, revealing the full curve of my buttocks before taking a hard smack. I broke from his mouth with a gasp.