by Opal Carew
“Don’t worry about that. It’s a big house and I need you to go through the whole thing.” He took another sip of beer. “I’ve been meaning to for a long time, but it’s tough to be motivated on your own.”
“So I’m your motivation?”
He chuckled. “Sure thing. A pretty girl can motivate a man to do most anything.”
My eyes widened and his expression grew serious.
“Jenna, hey, you know I didn’t mean anything by that, right? I just mean it’s hard to find the time. But with you here willing to manage it all and do all the heavy lifting…”
I laughed. “Actually, you’re the one who insists on doing the heavy lifting.”
“Well, once we get the den done, I’ll be leaving the rest up to you while I work.”
He’d taken a few days off work this week to get me going and be available for questions, putting the den as the first priority since that’s where he worked. I didn’t know what Cade did—some kind of consulting he’d said—but he did very well. This house was huge. And everything in it was high quality. Granite countertops in the kitchen, solid wood furniture, tasteful artwork.
“You just have to promise,” he continued, “that you’ll leave any heavy boxes by the door so I can carry them.”
“I can handle heavy boxes. I’m not a little girl, you know.”
His gaze drifted to my breasts briefly, but he dragged it away. “Yes, I know.”
* * *
I stepped from the shower and dried off. Oh, damn, I’d left my clothing out by the pool. I glanced at my bathing suit floating in the sink where I’d left it to rinse. I really didn’t want to pull on that wet thing again.
I sighed and wrapped the bath towel around myself. Cade had gone out to do some grocery shopping and had told me he probably wouldn’t be back until after I’d gone home. I opened the door and peered out, then hurried down the hallway to the kitchen, and out the patio doors. I picked up my clothes from the patio chair, but then glanced around, and decided to pull them on right here.
I leaned over and stepped into my shorts, then pulled them up. As I was fastening them, the towel slipped away and fell to the ground.
Damn. I leaned over and picked it up, then turned back to the chair.
“Jenna.”
I glanced up at Cade’s shocked voice, then my cheeks heated as his gaze glided over my naked breasts.
Oh, God, I was both mortified, and extremely turned on. His gaze locked onto my nipples as they peaked to hard nubs.
Then he spun around. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
I grabbed my top and pulled it on. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. I forgot my clothes out here and thought… well, it doesn’t matter. You can… uh… turn around.”
Slowly, he turned back to me and I noticed a huge bulge pushing against his jeans. And his gaze wavered over my breasts as he tried valiantly not to look at my hard nipples pushing against the thin cotton of my top.
“I…uh…should get going,” I said.
“Do you want a ride home?”
“No, I… well, I am in a bit of a hurry.” I was meeting a friend for a movie and I was already running late.
As he drove me home, neither of us talked. My breasts ached with need and my nipples stayed stiff and hard. But Cade pretended not to notice, even though I saw in the mirror that his gaze would shift to my top every now and then.
Finally, he stopped the car in front of my house.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Uh huh,” I said, then fled the vehicle.
* * *
That night, the mildly sexy dreams I’d been having about Cade turned into full erotic escapades. In my dreams, when he saw me standing there half naked, he stripped off his shirt and jeans revealing his big, stiff cock. He strode toward me, then dragged me into his arms and plundered my mouth, his thick cock pressed hard against my belly, my breasts crushed against his muscular chest.
Then he pulled down my shorts and buried his face in my completely bare pussy. I moaned at the feel of his tongue stroking my intimate flesh, then his fingers thrusting into me. Soon, his big cock pushed inside me and he drove deep and hard. Filling me again and again until I moaned in pleasure.
I woke up feeling so needy, I stroked myself to orgasm, then lay gasping in the bed.
When I got to Cade’s house that morning, as soon as I saw him, I couldn’t help my cheeks turning red.
When Cade saw me, he frowned. “Jenna, I’m sorry about yesterday. I really don’t want it to be weird between us.”
Weird? God, I wanted it to be intimate and sexy and… Damn it, I had a full-fledged crush on him. I realized I always had. But now, it was heightened by intense lust.
I wanted to strip off my clothes and beg him to take me right now.
But Cade wouldn’t do that.
“It’s okay. It’s all good,” I assured him.
I threw myself into working that day, sorting through his bookshelf, packing up the older books, sorting all the nick knacks he’d gathered over the years and setting them on a table for him to sort through. Finally, I turned to two boxes of printer paper he had on the floor in the corner with several color ink cartridges on top of them. The man liked to buy in bulk. I opened his storage cupboard and saw it was already full. I frowned. He wouldn’t want to truck down to the basement every time he ran out of paper, but there was nowhere here to keep these things.
I carried one of the boxes filled with books into the basement, then when I came back up, I stopped at the door next to his den. Maybe it was a walk in closet. My aunt had a big house with a walk-in closet on the second floor for general storage.
I tried to turn the knob, but the door was locked.
“What are you doing?”
I glanced around at Cade, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“I was looking for somewhere you could store supplies like boxes of printer paper.”
“Not there.”
“Well, can I look inside?” I asked. “Maybe I could shift things around—”
“No,” he said, cutting me off.
I frowned. “You said you wanted me to organize the whole house, so I assumed that meant the closets and cupboards, too.”
“Not there. It doesn’t need organizing.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Jenna. It’s just… private.”
Private? Damn it, now I was dying of curiosity to know what was in there.
* * *
Days went by and the dreams continued. Actually, they got hotter. I woke up every morning aching with the need to feel his big cock inside me. Driving into me. Making me come.
I also couldn’t help speculating about the room. He’d said it was private. Did he have old mementoes in there? Maybe of his ex-wife? But that didn’t make sense. They hadn’t parted amicably from what Molly had told me. Maybe baby pictures of Molly and school artwork she’d done for him over the years. But he would hardly keep those things locked away. And I couldn’t understand why he would keep them hidden from me.
I cleared out one of his spare bedrooms that morning, culling the accumulated collection of doodads to about half, then packed away the rest. I drove the boxes of things he’d cleared to be given away to the Goodwill store, then returned to find Cade cooking burgers on the grill. I sat down at the table on the patio and we enjoyed lunch together.
“I just found out my friend is coming to visit me next week,” he said “so I was wondering if you could work through the weekend helping me get the place ready.”
“The bedroom I was working on this morning is all ready for a guest.”
“That’s great, but I usually put my friend in the one on the main floor. It has its own bathroom and gives us more privacy from each other.”
That’s what I was afraid of. That particular room had accumulated a lot of clutter and would take a fair bit of work to clear up. It would probably take the better part of the weekend.
“Sure, I can do that.”
He smiled. “Great. I knew I could depend on you.”
* * *
Late Friday afternoon, as I taped up the box I’d just finished packing up, I realized part of me had hoped that Cade had invited me to work through the weekend with… uh…ulterior motives.
My attraction to him was growing, and the way he watched me when he thought I wasn’t looking sent heat thrumming through my body.
I gazed at the framed photo of Cade with another man, one of the few decorative items on the book shelf that Cade had chosen to keep in the room. He’d told me that the other man in the photo was the friend who would be visiting next week. Hot damn, his friend was just as attractive as Cade.
As I grabbed the dust cloth and started dusting the items, I found myself thinking about earlier that afternoon when I’d turned suddenly and accidentally bumped into Cade. He’d grabbed my elbows so I wouldn’t tumble and I’d found myself pressed against his solid body, wishing he would capture my mouth and drive his tongue into me. Hot, vibrant awareness had shot through me at the contact and I was sure I’d seen need in his deep blue eyes.
But he’d straightened me up and stepped back. Then he’d told me he had some work to do and gone to the den, but I was sure he was just fighting what we both wanted.
God, I longed to saunter in there right now, strip off my shirt and outright seduce him.
“Hey, you look lost in thought.”
I glanced up from the wooden box I was holding in my hand, dust cloth in the other. I finished dusting it and set it down on the shelf. He was so sexy filling the doorway with his tall, broad frame.
“No, just getting tired, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve been working all day. Why not take a breather?”
I turned to him and realized what I wanted to do right now would definitely make my breathing accelerate. His, too.
I dropped the cloth on the shelf and walked toward him, feeling bold. “Cade, you and I have known each other a long time.”
“That’s true. Since you were fifteen.”
I stepped closer and his gaze grew more solemn.
“But I’m not a teenager any more. In fact…” I gazed up at him, staring into his deep blue eyes. “I’m a grown woman.”
His lips compressed. “Jenna, don’t—”
“I’m just saying that relationships change and now that I’m an adult,”—I rested my hand flat on his chest, the feel of the solid muscle under my palm sending heat through me—“our relationship could change.”
He covered my hand with his and heat shimmered through me at his touch. For a second, I thought he would agree with me, but then he drew my hand away.
“This is not a good idea, Jenna.”
My chest constricted. “Don’t you find me attractive?”
His eyes darkened and I was intensely aware of his hand still around mine. “Oh, I find you very attractive. But… it’s just not a good idea.”
He found me attractive! Joy surged through me and despite his reluctant words, I pushed myself on my tiptoes and kissed him. His arms slid around my waist and he crushed me to him.
Oh, God, his lips on mine… his tongue gliding into my mouth… I felt faint with desire.
But as quickly as it started, he ended the kiss.
Then he stepped back, determination in his eyes.
“Is it because of our age difference? Because that doesn’t matter—”
“Just drop it, Jenna. It’s not going to happen.”
I frowned as he turned and strode away.
I followed him from the room. “I thought we were going to take a break.”
“You go ahead,” he said as he strode to the front door. “I’m going out to pick up some empty boxes. I’ll grab something for dinner, too. Be back in about an hour.”
I frowned as I stared at the door he closed behind him.
I turned and walked back to the hallway, deciding to get some more work done before he came back. But as I walked down the hall I realized I really could use the break. My gaze fell on the forbidden door and curiosity poked at me. I knew he had a stash of keys in his kitchen drawer and I bet one of them was for the lock on this door. I bit my lip, toying with the idea of grabbing those keys and looking inside.
What would it hurt? He’d never have to know.
And I really wanted to know what was inside.
I turned and walked into the kitchen, then grabbed the keys and returned to the hallway. The third key fit in the lock.
I hesitated, knowing I shouldn’t really do this.
But curiosity won out and I turned the key. I pushed the door open and peered inside, but it was dark in the room. Were there no windows?
I reached along the wall, searching for a light switch. My fingers found it and I flicked on the light.
My eyes widened. The room was big and at first I couldn’t even comprehend what I was seeing. I stepped inside.
There was a black leather couch and a big black cupboard on one wall. There was strange furniture around the room that I didn’t really understand, but many had big steel rings fastened to them, some with leather straps attached, and others with chains.
There were chains on the wall, too, at just the right height for a person. In the corner, there was a tall, narrow cage.
I walked to the cabinet and opened one of the doors. Inside, I was shocked to find what looked like floggers, riding crops, and paddles in different shapes and sizes. I reached out and touched one of the suede floggers with one-inch wide strands. It was a beautiful shade of purple, and the suede was soft under my fingertips.
“I told you not to come in here.”
I twirled around at the sound of Cade’s voice. He stood in the doorway looking big and menacing.
“I’m… uh… sorry.”
There was no way to explain away what I’d done. I had blatantly defied his wishes, and now I’d been caught.
He frowned as he stepped into the room.
“Now you must think I’m some kind of freak. Or pervert,” he said.
“No, of course not. I would never think that about you.”
His eyebrow arched. “Then what do you think?” He raised his hand and gestured around the room. “About all of this?”
I turned back to the cupboard and touched the suede flogger again, loving the softness of it.
“I think that it shows you’re adventurous in the bedroom. That you like to try new, exciting things.”
He closed the door behind him and stepped toward me. “And what about you, Jenna? Do you like exciting, adventurous things in the bedroom?”
As he approached, like a panther stalking his prey, my heart raced.
“Well… uh…” I drew in a breath. “Sure, I guess so.”
As I glanced around the room at all the strange equipment, however, my stomach fluttered in uncertainty. But I knew deep inside that I totally trusted Cade.
“You don’t sound too certain.”
“Well, it totally depends on who I’m with.” Then I smiled seductively. “With you, for instance, I would be very adventurous.”
He stopped in front of me and placed his hands on my shoulders.
“You know, Jenna. I told you that you and I wouldn’t happen. Remember?”
Disappointment flooded through me and I nodded.
“And I told you not to come in this room. Right?”
I nodded again, feeling very sheepish.
“Say ‘yes, sir’ so I know you understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then his hand glided along my shoulders and down my arms, sending tremors of awareness through me.
“Since you chose to ignore what I told you, I think there have to be consequences.”
Consequences? Was he going to fire me?
But the heat in his eyes and the velvety tone of his voice assured me otherwise.
“Like what?” Then I added, “Sir.”
A slow smile spread across his face.
>
“I will have to punish you.”
“Punish?” I glanced at the riding crops and paddles in alarm.
He laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t start with those.” His hand moved to my waist and slid down my hips. “I think a good old fashioned spanking will do for starters.” Then he stepped back. “Take off your pants.”
I sucked in a breath. He watched intently as I unfastened the button on my jeans, then unzipped. My cheeks heating, I pushed them down my legs, then let them drop to the floor and stepped out of them. His gaze lingered on my long, bare legs, then rested on my red panties.
“Keep going.”
My knees felt weak, but I summoned my courage and hooked my thumbs under the elastic, then pushed my panties to the floor. I stood up slowly, a little embarrassed at the thought he’d be seeing me naked from the waist down, but my top was long enough to cover me to my thighs.
“Turn around.”
I turned and he lifted my top to reveal my naked ass. His hand stroked over my round flesh, making me tremble in anticipation of his first slap. But he just stroked..
“Beautiful.”
He grasped my shoulders and guided me across the room to a piece of wooden furniture that looked sort of like a padded, leather bench with a second, lower shelf, also padded.
“Kneel there”—he pointed to the lower surface—“and bend over.”
I knelt on the shelf, and leaned forward over the higher part of the surface. My stomach rested on the leather. He pushed up the hem of my top, exposing my naked ass. I felt him attach a strap around my knee and attach it to the bench. Then he did the same to the other one.
“I’m going to adjust the straps now,” he said.
I felt my legs pulled apart. A moment later, he stood in front of me and took my wrist. He drew it downward and attached a cuff, holding my arm outstretched. Once he cuffed my other wrist, he stood up.
I could only see him from the waist down in front of me, and I longed to reach out and stroke the growing bulge I saw in his pants, but my hands were bound.
Would he pull out that big cock and push it into my mouth? I longed to feel it glide between my lips. To squeeze it in my mouth and suck on it.
He moved behind me.
“Are you ready for your punishment, Jenna?”