by Lea Griffith
His cock ached to be sheathed inside her tight channel. Copeland flattened his tongue against her entrance, curled it inside, and she seemed to seize, thigh muscles contracting and abdomen flexing. He’d forced orgasm after orgasm on her with his mouth and he was nowhere near finished with her.
He stilled, glancing over her flushed body, hips canted at an angle so he could reach her flesh. Her pussy was pink and swollen, the insides of her thighs wet with her release and his saliva. He licked his lips, desperate for more but knowing he had to get inside her before he exploded.
He placed her ass back on the pillows. He’d been holding her in his hands as he feasted. Her chest rose and fell in sharp exhalations.
“I’m going to fuck you soon, Daly,” he said harshly.
His chest was raw from emotion. He didn’t deserve her. Every part of Daly Edwards was everything he’d always wanted, but he damn sure didn’t deserve to have any of those parts.
Yet they were his. She was his, and he’d be damned if he’d let her forget it.
She remained silent, dropping her gaze finally before she drew in a shuddering breath. He wanted to thank her for that but couldn’t speak. Splayed before him like a well-sated goddess, Daly wouldn’t appreciate his thanks. Her body was even now demanding more.
Copeland backed away from her, standing up from his perch on her coffee table. “Sit up.”
Daly moved slowly. Too slowly.
Copeland reached for her hair, winding the tresses in his hands and pulling her head close to his cock. He knew the bite of pain on her scalp would serve two purposes. It would piss her off, but it would also heighten their play. She loved to skirt the razor’s edge of pain. It added to the pleasure, she’d told him once, and he agreed.
“Free my cock,” he said, and it was a guttural command.
She reached for him immediately, pushing down his briefs and waiting.
“Look at me.”
Daly did, and Copeland almost lost his mind. The fire threw dancing light and shadows across her body. She owned him. He couldn’t look in her eyes and not want to come.
“Reach beside you and give me the blindfold.”
She did.
“I look in your eyes and want to seat myself so deep inside you neither of us can find our way back. You deserve everything I’m going to give you, sub. Everything.”
She shivered and lowered her gaze. Copeland wrapped the blindfold around her head, shielding her gaze.
“Take me deep, Daly. Make me remember what it feels like to have you taking me … owning me.”
Her hands rubbed along his calves, slowly venturing up over his thighs, then around his hips to cup and mold his buttocks. She nipped at his hip and his cock flexed, bumping against her cheek. She smiled, and he hissed in a breath.
She circled his girth and pumped up and down torturously slowly before she kissed the head of his shaft and then licked.
Ecstasy shot through him, and his knees almost buckled. Then her lips parted and she took him all the way in, hot mouth and quicksilver tongue wreaking havoc on his sanity.
He watched her work him, hands and mouth a chorus of movements that had his toes curling on the hardwood floors. “Take it all,” he whispered.
She did. She took every inch and before he could blink, his cock bumped against her throat. Stars burst behind his eyes and a groan was torn from his chest. He may have yelled her name and wondered if his mind was truly lost. His release went on and on, and she licked every drop from him. It had happened too fast, but it was just what he needed.
When his vision cleared, her forehead rested on his hip, a smile on her face and her shoulders rising up and down as if she’d run a race. His cock had gone half-mast, but at the sight of her puckered nipples and gasping breaths it filled out once again, demanding to find purchase in her body some way.
He released her hair. “Turn around and get on your knees on the couch.” She didn’t move. “Now!”
She was still blindfolded and so he steadied her as she stood and turned, going to her knees on the black leather.
Her hips curved so beautifully. He ran his hands down her sides, over those hips and around to the front of her thighs. In her ear he whispered, “Now, we get to the fucking, sub. Now we both find our way back home.”
Her breath hitched and he chuckled. The power running through his body at that moment was enough to get high on.
He stood back, admiring the way her muscles tightened and released in anticipation. “Bend over and grab the back of the couch.”
Daly did as he asked, but her movements were sluggish. He swatted her ass, going in hard with a cupped hand and holding it there to ease the sting. She hissed in a breath and he smiled again.
“If I didn’t know how well I’d loved that pussy earlier, I’d think you were trying to force me to punish you, sub. Is that what you’re trying to do?”
Daly didn’t answer.
He pulled her head backward by her hair and bit out between clenched teeth, “Is that what you’re trying to do? Force my hand?”
He leaned over her, his body curving against her back as he licked across her lips. Hers parted and he pulled away. She moaned.
He tapped her twice more but this time the strikes were softer, more a caress than a hard spank. “Be still. Do. Not. Move.” He kept his words hard and determined. There would be punishment for her infractions. The extent would be determined by her effort to accede to his commands.
His Daly loved to be spanked. To be denied in such a way was a punishment all its own. His lighter strikes ratcheted up her need instead of abating it. Copeland lightly tapped her twice more and her hips swayed from side to side.
Copeland grabbed her hips, stilling her movements, and then he lined his cock up with her entrance.
“Tell me what you want,” he bit out.
She remained silent and he laughed.
“I tell you not to make sound and you do. I tell you to speak and you remain silent. Daly, Daly, Daly—what am I going to do with you? I think next time, I’ll gag you.”
Copeland heard it then—the hitch of her breath and a near silent moan that spoke of her need. She liked the thought of being gagged. Desired it. She wanted him in her body, stroking in and out. She wanted his hand or his paddle on her ass, sending strikes of lightning through her as she squirmed beneath him. She wanted orgasm and she wanted it never to end.
Nearly everything he wanted. Nearly.
He wrapped a single hand in her hair again and pulled until her neck was arched delicately. Enough so even in the height of her need she knew who controlled whom.
Slowly, Copeland pressed forward until the head of his cock breached her inner walls and then he just stayed there. Her hips shifted, and with his free hand he held her still.
“Your ass is mine when we finish this. You’ll be punished. I have no choice now. You’ve disobeyed me time after time and I’ve tried, Daly, so hard to be lenient. You’ve earned what you’ll get, but right now, I’m going sink inside you and find paradise.”
He waited for her body’s answer. And it didn’t disappoint him, relaxing, muscles releasing, upper body falling to rest against the back of the couch, opening her around him.
He pushed forward and she gasped. He filled her full and then pulled back to sink in again and repeat. She was so wet and he was so hard. Like a hot knife to butter, he parted her folds slowly before surging deep and then pulling out. The feel of her hair in his hands was a soft benediction on his heated skin. Her tiny mewling cries, ones he would never punish her for, had him spiraling higher than he’d ever been.
The clench of her flesh around his was an erotic caress. It was building, this heat that never failed to consume him, and he released her hair, bending over her back and wrapping his arms around her shoulders to hold her in place.
Then he released himself on her. The slap of their bodies together had his eyes closing; the feel of her locking on his cock had him groaning.
“Ever
ything,” she said around a moan as her body clenched tightly in her release.
And that one single word had him exploding inside her, hot spurts of release that felt pulled from the bottom of his soul. He yelled her name, heard the echo of it in the silence of the room.
“Always,” he whispered at her ear when his heart began to settle.
His arms held her anchored to him, but he felt her body’s fatigue. His cock twitched inside her, desperate for another round, but his precious sub was weary and she always came first. Copeland disengaged from her body carefully, groaning as his cock rubbed against her fluttering walls.
So. Much. Heat.
It never failed to amaze him how much they connected physically and how that translated into a bone-deep knowledge that she belonged to him. Only ever him. Copeland pulled her up with him, settling her in his arms as he made his way to her master bath.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
She nodded and he placed her gently on her feet, holding her until the heat from his body stilled her trembling. He’d stay there all damn night if she needed it, but with their sweat cooling rapidly on her skin, he needed to clean her and get her wrapped in blankets.
He sat on the edge of her claw-foot tub and ran the water warm. Once it was halfway full, he placed her gently in the water, kissing her forehead.
“I’ll be back in a second,” he said at her lips before he suckled her bottom one.
She moaned and raised her head to follow him when he lifted away. His heart tugged. It was a painful pull that enforced everything she was to him.
He moved to the kitchen, grabbed a cold water bottle from the fridge, checked the fire to see it was dying down, and returned to her. Her head lolled to the side and he sank to his knees, opening the water and holding it to her lips.
Day’s heart-stopping eyes opened and focused on him. His breath locked in his lungs. Blood thrummed through his veins and a demand to take her again followed suit. His cock hardened, and her eyes widened as she stared at him.
“Drink,” he ordered in a gruff voice.
She drank but never took her gaze from his.
“More,” he said as she made to pull away.
Daly rolled her eyes, another infraction he added to his mental tally, but she drank every bit of the water.
“Good little sub,” he said with a slow grin. “Do you want me to bathe you?”
It was her smiling then, and Copeland couldn’t contain the growl that erupted from his chest.
“I’ll take you again, Day. Tell me, baby—open your mouth and tell me if your body can handle more.”
“I could never have enough of you, Jeremiah,” she returned softly and he picked her up, stepped into the enormous tub, and settled her back against his chest.
He chuckled. “That was the right answer, Day.”
He pulled a rag and soap from a shelf she’d had installed in the tile wall beside the tub. He began to lather her neck and shoulders, moving slowly down the front of her body to her pussy. Copeland kept it clinical, because while he believed what she said, her body was tired and he wouldn’t hurt her. Three years without a man, and now she’d had him three nights in a row. She had to be sore.
Copeland toed the faucet on, adding more hot water, and then he rinsed her off. Her hair floated around them and her skin was pink was from the heated water and his cleansing efforts.
Playtime was over. A sense of anticipation hung in the air but it wasn’t sexually charged. Maybe it was his own pain that flavored that anticipation, but it bit deep into his skin and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder, turning her face up to his. “I missed you, Jeremiah.”
He nodded. There weren’t words to describe what he’d felt the last years without her. Lost, abandoned, rage-filled, hopeful? It was a combination of them all, yet words had never been able to adequately depict the emotions between him and Daly. Had he missed her? Fuck yes. Had he hated her? Yes, again.
But through it all, he’d never stopped loving her. And that was what hurt the most. He had grown up in the worst section of Atlanta. Abandoned at age twelve with a ten-year-old brother and a blind seven-year-old sister, Copeland had been forced to do things no child should ever have to do to survive.
His parents had walked out of their apartment one day and just left them. Jeremiah had waited until Ruthie had begun to cry that her stomach hurt because she was hungry. He’d known they weren’t coming back and all he could feel was a queer sense of relief that the beatings would stop, that he wouldn’t have to stay awake all night in case their dad decided to switch to hitting David.
He’d resorted to running drugs and money for a local dope dealer. He’d earned enough money to get a new apartment for him, David, and Ruthie. Twelve years old and he was already more of a man than his father had ever been. He’d done what he had to, all the while avoiding cops and DFCS. It had been worth it—the crime. He’d been able to care for his family and keep them together. As he’d gotten older and bigger and the dope dealer he’d sold for had been taken over by a bigger dealer, Copeland had begun working for him.
He’d met Toby in middle school and though it had taken a while, Toby’s persistence had worn Copeland down. He didn’t need friends, but Toby wouldn’t take no for an answer. At that time Copeland had still been acting as a go-between for the dealer and the leader of the Dixie Mafia. Toby had found out but never judged him.
Copeland had moved up in the DM organization. Their crime syndicate was based in the southeast and ran the gambling, drugs, and weapons distribution through their territory. Copeland was trustworthy and capable. It had led him to the job of enforcer and bodyguard for the DM leader.
He and Toby had graduated high school and entered Georgia State University, and still Copeland had maintained his job as enforcer. Crime paid well, and though he had to bust his ass to keep up with his studies, he’d needed the money from his job to support his siblings.
Then he’d seen Daly Edwards.
She’d turned his heart upside down. A single look at her big brown eyes and heart-shaped face and his priorities had changed. He’d waited for her to come of age, keeping his distance but maintaining his hope. The fire he’d felt for her had been mirrored in her eyes, and that had given him strength. Then she’d turned twenty-one and he’d made his play.
Daly had always demanded more of him. Copeland changed everything … for her. He’d fallen in love with a woman, turned his heart over to her, and she’d broken him apart when she left.
Her reasons hadn’t mattered. His sense of failure had been enormous. The man who’d done things to survive that he’d rather never think of again hadn’t been able to keep the one thing he’d cherished above everything else.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked softly.
“The past,” he answered truthfully. “What are you thinking about?”
“You.”
“I won’t apologize for this.” He let his voice rumble as his hands clenched on her hips. His cock was a heated brand between their bodies, and a sudden need to imprint himself on her all over again rose up to choke him.
Daly sighed and put her hands over his in the warm water. “I don’t recall asking for an apology.” She raised his hand and kissed the scarred knuckles. “Anyway, it should probably be me apologizing. After all, I’m the one who forced my way in to see you the other night.”
His chest hurt. “Accepted.”
She laughed, and the sound moved through Copeland like a slow, balmy tide. She took a deep breath. “I fell back into this with you so easily.”
“Some things you can’t deny, Daly.” He pulled her hand up to his mouth, and it was him kissing her knuckles then. He slid his tongue between her fingers, delighting in her taste and her indrawn breath.
“It’s wicked, this addiction my body has to you, Jeremiah. You take my mind. When I see you, all I can do is feel.”
“You don�
��t sound happy about that, Day. And that’s okay; it doesn’t feel like it’s all rainbows and unicorns to me, either. Sometimes I hate what you do to me,” he said as he dipped his head to lick the shell of her ear. “But more than the hate and pain, there is something that overwhelms me and draws me back to you. I want to hear your every sigh, to taste every moan and feel every breath. I want to look into your eyes as you come and hear you scream my name as you fall back down. And yet when it’s all said and done, a part of me still hates what I feel for you.”
She sat up then, back stiff, tension running through her body. “Hate, huh? I can’t expect much else, I would imagine. Tell me, Jeremiah, do you ever stop and wonder what I feel?”
“Every second of every minute of every hour of every day,” he ground out. Anger coiled in his gut, the emotion almost on par with the love he felt for her.
“Once I would have believed you. Now,” she said as she put a death grip on the side of the tub, “now it’s difficult.”
“We could try again, Day.” Where the words came from he didn’t know. Open himself back up to this woman? It was insanity.
But it had already happened. He’d denied her calls because he knew she was a stubborn wench and would seek him out. He’d prayed for it and she’d delivered. Yeah, he was wide open for her.
“You lied to me, Jeremiah,” she whispered.
“You gave me no choice,” he bit out desperately.
She was going to hurt him again. Goddamn it.
“I gave you every choice, I gave you my heart, and you lied. And now here we are again.”
He grunted. “We’re in an entirely different place than we were three years ago, Day.”
She shook her head and stood up. “No, Jeremiah. It’s the same emotional space, just a different venue. Tell me why your brother sent the ring.”
His body mourned the loss of hers next to it, but damn if he’d beg her. He let her get out and dry off and sat there, the water growing colder by the second. She was a beautiful woman. Petite, but with curves that made his hands itch to stroke over her skin and sink into her rounded spots. Her legs were long for a woman so short and her hair skimmed the top of her apple-shaped ass. He dwarfed her, and even that was erotic to Copeland. His physical power over her was obvious, but she’d always been the one to hold the control in their relationship.