by Poppy Flynn
A high, exasperated sound left her lips. "You know where!" she cried breathlessly as heat crept up her chest and into her face. She couldn't say it!
"Tell me!" Jake demanded, continuing his assault on every other part of her body while she writhed helplessly against him until he tightened his fist around her braid, immobilising her head against his shoulder and splayed his big palm across her stomach as he bit down hard under her ear where her neck met her shoulder.
Charlotte went rigid, crying out and flexing her toes as pinpricks of desire fired every nerve ending in her body all at once.
"Ah! What are you doing to me?" she panted. "Do that again!"
He complied, moving his mouth a little closer to her collar bone then sinking his teeth in a second time.
She cursed under her breath as pleasure engulfed her and her body demanded more.
"Tell me what you want, angel," Jake cajoled.
Desperately sucking air back into her lungs, she obeyed. "Touch my nipples," she pleaded "…my clit."
Jake expelled a breath as she bowed to his will, and immediately, both hands cupped her breasts and he plucked their stiff peaks between his finger and thumb, twisting mercilessly until Charlotte squealed and her pussy flooded.
She couldn't believe how much this hint of roughness was turning her on. It was an aspect of her sexuality she had never recognised before. How could Jake know, when she'd never known it herself?
Snaking a hand down between her sopping folds, Jake plunged two fingers inside her and did that magical thing where he turned her insides out while his thumb came to rest on her swollen clit and started to rub in excruciatingly slow circles.
For long minutes Charlotte's laboured breathing and the occasional euphoric sob that choked from her aching throat were the only sounds. She was stretched as tight as a bow string, desperate to let fly, but just as she raced to the edge of the precipice and prepared to fling herself into ecstasy, everything stopped.
"No!" she shrieked, but in the next second, Jake rolled her onto her stomach, his delicious weight covering her momentarily before he sat back on his haunches and pulled her hips up until her butt was in the air. Instinctively, Charlotte tried to raise onto her elbows but the weight of Jake's big hand between her shoulder blades prevented the move.
"Stay right there," he commanded as his other hand stroked across the taut skin of her backside, then rubbed a little harder.
She barely had time to acknowledge the slight sense of embarrassment she felt at being on display in such a way before a vague whooshing sound displaced the air around her and his palm landed sharply on her right buttock.
Charlotte yelped, but the last of the sound was forced from her lungs as another slap landed squarely on the other cheek. She scarcely managed to pull in enough air before a volley of blows rained down on her ass, each hitting a different spot. Then as suddenly as it started, he stopped, and before her passion-fogged mind had the chance to process the pain, the heat radiated outwards and the sting transformed into an unfathomable pleasure that scrambled her brain and left her confounded.
It made no sense, but the spanking had undoubtedly aroused her. Charlotte didn't have time to comprehend her responses before he lined up his cock and plunged into her from behind.
This time, he did urge her up on her elbows, winding her long braid around his wrist and using it to pull her against him, every sharp tug shooting prickles of delight from her scalp to her centre as he pounded hard and deep, each stroke bottoming out exquisitely against her cervix and dragging an involuntary cry from her throat.
Charlotte was wound as tightly as a coiled spring, desperately craving that ultimate release.
"Come for me, Charlotte!" Jake ordered, curling himself over her back as he reached around and pinched her nipple.
That fierce tweak was like someone punching a detonator switch and Charlotte exploded, screaming out her pleasure as wave after wave of contractions pulsed through her core, leaving her spent.
A few seconds later, Jake froze and groaned, gripping both her hips and pulling her pelvis flush against him as he found his own release.
When he freed her from his grasp, Charlotte collapsed in an undignified heap and Jake followed her down, panting against her back as they both tried to catch their breath.
Charlotte tried to pretend she was still asleep. She had drifted happily along on a drowsy wave of shattered contentment until the sharp pin pricks of reality began needling at her consciousness.
Eventually, she sighed and flung her arm across her face, emphatically wishing she could block out the inevitable awkwardness of the present but knowing she couldn't.
"What's the matter, Charlotte?" Jake's voice rumbled behind her.
"Nothing," she replied shortly. There was no point dredging up excuses or recriminations. The best she could hope was for Jake to take his leave without too much fuss and without her making a complete and utter fool of herself. Of course, the latter was something that hadn't exactly been going so well for her lately. Oh, well! Probably best just to grin and bear it and get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible. She pondered the plausibility of just casually popping out on the pretext of buying some milk and not coming back until he got tired of waiting and finally left. How long would that be? she wondered. She didn't know what the weather was like, but if she took her car…
"Charlotte!" The sharp demand broke through her musing and she realised Jake had been talking to her. Shit! She'd done that thing again where she lapsed into her mind and blanked everything around her. It had been a technique she had adopted to free her consciousness away from the hell of her time at the Disciples of Modesty. Not just the abyss of the sensory deprivation rooms but also the communal bathing and the endless sermons where being seen to as much as fidget or look away meant punishment. So, Charlotte would fix her unblinking gaze squarely on the Supreme Disciple, then free her mind to fly away to better things. It had been her sanctuary within herself, the device that kept her sane during those endless dark days. An established method of escapism for those things she didn't want to face. And right now, she didn't want to face the reality of Jake leaving her all over again.
She scrunched up her eyes, but Jake refused to let her hide.
"Look at me," he demanded, rolling her onto her back and tipping her chin up.
Charlotte took a deep breath and finally looked at him. There was nothing left to do but tackle things head on.
"I'm sorry, Jake," she sighed. "I've never been very good at this 'morning after' stuff. It's probably best if you just get your things together and leave. I'll deal with it. There's nothing for you to worry about," she finished softly, cursing the slight hitch in her voice.
Unable to look at him any longer, Charlotte dropped her eyes from his face and stared at the strong column of his neck as he leaned over her, but her eyes couldn't help but wander down to that spectacular tanned chest with its light dusting of hair that her fingers suddenly itched to play in.
Charlotte bit her lip as an unexpected wave of desire throbbed through her. Jeez, she was sad. Here she was, fantasising about a man even as she tried her best to extract herself from the mortifying position of having had yet another one-night stand…or was that a two-night stand? Or maybe that just made her an easy lay and was an easy lay a step up or a step down from a one-night stand? she wondered…she was doing it again.
Jake soothed his fingers over the frown lines that had appeared between her brows and drew her gaze once again.
She felt her pale skin redden. Damn, she was a sucker where this man was concerned.
"Ah, Charlotte," Jake sighed, shaking his head, and the next thing she knew, her vision was blotted out as his head descended and his mouth covered hers in a gentle kiss.
Charlotte melted. God, she was easy! Yep, looked like she definitely fell into the 'easy lay' category because she didn't think there was any hope that she could manage to turn this man away, even when she knew it might be far less hazardous
to her mental wellbeing for her to do so.
Tears prickled the back of her eyes as a spiral of shame and self-loathing hit her. She had promised herself that she'd never let anyone have this kind of control over her ever again, yet she seemed powerless to stop it. Well, if nothing else, at least she was honest with herself.
Jake deepened the kiss, his palm smoothing across her cheek as his fingers curled around the back of her head, his tongue drawing across her bottom lip as he demanded an access that she surrendered to with an unhappy mewl that pierced his conscience.
Jake had so many years of reading submissives behind him that reading vanilla was child's play. He really wasn't being fair to Charlotte, treating her this way. But what else was there for the two of them?
He broke the kiss and studied the woman beneath him. Her lip trembled, and her eyes had a tell-tale glaze that turned them green. Jake read the shame that shadowed their depths and dropped his forehead to Charlotte's and closed his eyes. Damn it all, he'd known she wasn't one-night stand material, but he'd taken her there not once, but twice now. The shame should be his to bear, not hers.
Sucking in air, he lifted his head and pierced her with a fierce glare. "Stop thinking that this doesn't mean anything, Charlotte," he gritted out. "Because it does. I just don't know how to make it work."
Jake collapsed back onto the bed and wrapped his arm around Charlotte's shoulder, drawing her head onto his chest. "There are just so many roadblocks in our path that I'm not sure we can get around them all."
Charlotte was quiet, not sure if she agreed. Surely, if two people both felt a relationship had enough potential that it was worth pursuing, then they'd find a way to work things out? Or at least try. Discuss it, make compromises, sacrifices. Jake wasn't doing any of those things. He just seemed to have written them off before they even started. She didn't know what these supposed 'road-blocks' were. Hell, maybe he was just talking a good talk to try to make her feel better and to justify his actions to himself.
When she didn't say anything, Jake filled the silence, "There's the distance for a start. I live over a thousand miles away and I don't exactly work a nine to five job…"
Charlotte blinked back a fresh wave of tears. He sounded like he was making excuses. She wrote a travel blog. She worked from home. She could live anywhere. She only moved here so that she could stay close to Desi, since she didn't have anyone else in the world.
"Then there's the not insignificant matter of my kink…" He paused as if considering exactly what to say, then heaved a breath. "I'm a Dom with a whip, Charlotte. I'm not sure I'm able to be anything else."
And Charlotte didn't even know exactly what that entailed, since he had never bothered to discuss it with her, but clearly, her prior evaluation must have been pretty accurate. Whatever they had between them obviously couldn't compete with the world of BDSM that he lived in. She felt a shudder of inadequacy ripple through her. Well, hell, she was familiar with that.
In the Disciples of Modesty, that had been how everybody had been made to feel, how they were expected to feel. No one was ever good enough, everyone was a sinner, everyone needed correction.
But she'd promised herself that she'd never allow those negative vibes to colour her life again. She'd struggled a lot of years and had a ton of counselling to rid herself of that particular ideology. And she wasn't travelling down that road again. It was that thought which allowed her to regain the strength in her backbone.
She deserved better than this. Jake wasn't even asking her to experience his kink, to see if it was something they could explore together or whether they could find a mutual compatibility. Oh, no, he'd just glibly made those decisions for her without so much as a conversation, and now, he was giving her his conclusion. Well, he was about to find out that no one made decisions about her life except her. Disappointment washed through her. She had thought better of Jake than this…just highlighted how very little she knew the man.
Well, it was better to find out now rather than later down the line. Thankfully, the disillusion had the cathartic effect of sweeping away those pesky desires she'd been struggling with. And with those feelings she'd been fighting now doused with ice-cold water, Charlotte felt remarkably composed and level headed. The awkwardness and embarrassment she'd been dreading all faded away and she felt a strength she never knew she possessed.
Rolling out of Jake's arms, she climbed out of the bed and calmly found a pretty satin robe out of her wardrobe. Shrugging into it nonchalantly and tying the belt, Charlotte looked over her shoulder. "You're right, Jake," she agreed, matter of factly. "I'll put the machine on, so you can have a cup of coffee before you leave." With that, she walked out of the room without a backward glance.
Jake blinked as he watched her graceful exit, her head held high. For all he'd been trying to make her understand why there was no future for them, he felt like he'd just been dismissed, and the feeling rankled.
Whatever transformation Charlotte had just undergone, it had been huge. The detached woman who had just walked dispassionately out of the room was not the same soft-hearted one he'd held in his arms just minutes before who had struggled to come to terms with the casual fling they had fallen into, and inexplicably, Jake felt the loss clear to his bones.
It was like some kind of switch had just been flipped, but for the life of him, Jake couldn't fathom what had triggered it.
Charlotte felt unexpectedly liberated. Ever since the morning after Joel and Desi's wedding, three weeks before, when she had stripped the blinkers off and seen Jake Blackwood in a completely different light, she had been buoyed by a freeing feeling of confidence in her own reasoning. It wasn't that she thought she made particularly bad choices. It was more that, for the first time in her life, she felt completely certain of herself and her own rationale, instead of always second guessing all of her words and deeds and wondering if she was doing the right thing, then dissecting every little decision against the list of qualities she felt were appropriate and that she should uphold while she shoehorned her life and her actions to try to make them fit—all while fighting with herself to justify everything that she did.
At eighteen, when she first fled the cult that had ruled her life, 'the list' had been a necessity to help her make sensible, enlightened decisions where she had never had the freedom to make any before. From what she wore or ate, to how she conducted herself, what role she would take on within the commune and even who she would share her life with, all were decisions that were made for her.
She had never handled money, never held any responsibility, never shopped for groceries, never even had to decide what time to go to bed.
She considered herself lucky. When she had approached the authorities about her life and treatment at the hands of the Disciples of Modesty, they had helped her immeasurably, since she had been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, though only by a few weeks. But since she was officially still a minor, they had set the ball rolling and dug up the astounding information that there was a small trust fund in her name, established upon the death of her father.
Charlotte had been surprised. All monies and possessions should have been forfeited to the cult, but her case worker had said that either her mother had kept it a secret or that the cult had been unable to touch the fund since it didn't mature until she was eighteen. As much as Charlotte wanted to believe that her mother had been trying to protect her by keeping the trust safe, the more likely scenario was that the elders were simply waiting for her to come of age so they could get their hands on it. Just like they had been waiting for her birthday so that they could legally marry her off to one of the Senior Disciples. With her mother gone, they had lost the chance to gain parental consent to marry her any earlier, something she knew her mother had been under pressure to do. Sometimes, Charlotte wondered if that had been the trigger for her mother's suicide. Either way, the arranged marriage had been the catalyst to spur Charlotte to find a way out before she was bound to a man she despised. Before she was f
orced to surrender her body to a husband she neither wanted nor chose and before she found herself tied to the cult in even worse ways than those she already lived with from day to day.
The support had been short lived once she had hit eighteen. While it had set her on the right path, and the existence of the trust fund had allowed her to live and gain an education, the only way Charlotte could be sure she was doing the right thing was by weighing her actions and decisions against her own hand-written list of credentials and judging how they measured up to her objectives.
Of course, those had all been things that were important to an eighteen-year-old girl who had just escaped communal living in a repressive cult. But although twelve years had passed, nothing on the list had changed.
Not only that, but the list endured. What had been a tool to help a naïve, inexperienced teenager without any life experience had turned into a crutch which curbed any spontaneity and inadvertently engendered a lack of self-confidence. It seemed so obvious now, but Charlotte had never seen it before.
She wasn't prone to making rash decisions; she never had been. She was just scared of allowing anyone to take advantage of her again in such a way that she lost control over her own life.
Thinking back, she wondered if she had fixated on Jake simply because she had known he was unattainable; because the control he desired was the one thing she would never give, so in its twisted little way, that made him safe.
Then she had proceeded to measure every man over the next twelve years against the ideal that was Jake Blackwood, and inevitably, they all fell short because she had been comparing them to a fantasy, not even the real man. And that had been fine until she came up against the man, himself, and realised that, actually, she barely knew him.
She had allowed him liberties that no other man had been permitted to take, all based on a fantasy. She had convinced herself that she would do anything for him until, finally, Jake, too, had failed to live up to the illusion that she had made him into. It had been impossible for him not to, because, in her mind, she had fabricated Jake Blackwood into the perfect man, when, in fact, he was only human…and not even someone whom she knew that well.