Empowered

by Cynthia Dane

  “I’ve ripped off your mask. I’d apologize, except I can’t make a point with that thing around, now can I?” He let one finger trail down her cheek. “I love you. You know, right?”

  She knew. She didn’t know what to say, though.

  “Do you want to love me?”

  Her old headshake turned into a timid nod. Now she couldn’t look him in the eye again.

  “Sarah.”

  If she looked up, what would she see? The domineering countenance of a man who wanted to take control? The sweet, sad face of the man who loved her and worried for her well-being? The indifference of a European billionaire who saw her as another sexual plaything?

  What about all three?

  “Are you afraid of me, Sarah?”

  “No.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  She barely waited a second to respond. “Yes.”

  “Do you trust me with your body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  His finger hooked behind her ear, gently tugging on her cartilage. “How about your heart, my love?”

  Sarah didn’t want to answer that. She could barely answer with her soul. Wouldn’t it be better if she encircled her arms around his torso and inhaled his cologne? Nothing was more reassuring than that.

  “Take me, please,” she begged him. “I want to feel better.”

  “I’m not going to simply make you feel better, Angel.” He accepted her kiss with unrelenting desire. Between words of adoration, he said, “I’m going to liberate you.”

  ***

  She was bent over his bed, her boyfriend’s hand massaging the skin he intended to spank if she didn’t fess up to what bothered her so much.

  Had she asked for this? Hadn’t she? When she told Lucas she needed to be freed from the crushing weight on her heart, she knew something like this would happen. In fact, she welcomed it, even with the trepidation fluttering in her chest and rocking her stomach back and forth.

  She had been spanked before. Lots of men got off on lightly tapping her jiggling ass and sometimes getting a little rougher, if the moment called for it. However, this would be her first cathartic spanking, and she had no idea what to expect.

  But in Lucas’s expert hands? She should have known there was nothing to fear.

  “Name one thing that troubles you,” he growled.

  Sarah braced herself on her arms, hands clasped together in front of her face. “My heart hurts, sir.”

  He lightly spanked her left cheek. Sarah gasped, her thighs quivering from the impact.

  It had felt good, but it wasn’t hard enough. She needed to be smacked out of her mind. She needed to transcend the aching regrets in her heart and embrace a higher plane of pleasure and freedom.

  The people who went to her former boss’s club called it subspace. While Sarah never considered herself the submissive type in the bedroom – not like those other people referred to it – she knew it was the only way to restart her system.

  Angel would have embraced it. So should Sarah. All a part of becoming whole again.

  “Why does it hurt?”

  She winced. “Because someone hurt me first.”

  “Latch onto whatever ails you, my love, and let it go when you feel the pain. That’s the poison leaving your soul.”

  He spanked her hard enough to send her across his bed. Luckily, Lucas had his hands on her bra and wasn’t likely to let her get away from him.

  “Good.” His voice never wavered, unlike Sarah’s, which cracked beneath the sudden pain swarming around her midsection. “Who hurt you, Angel?”

  She clenched her hands together, biting her lip. “A cruel man.”

  His fingers dug into her malleable flesh. “How did he hurt you?”

  “He…” Sarah dithered between the ache in her skin and the ache in her heart. “He didn’t treat me like a human being. He used me. That wasn’t the worst thing he did.”

  Lucas gently yanked on her underwear. “Do you want to tell me the worst thing he did?”

  One tear fell down Sarah’s cheek, and it had nothing to do with how hard her boyfriend spanked her. “He took the only thing I cared about away from me. He took away my ability to decide my own fate.”

  Even though she knew it was coming, Sarah was still not prepared for the spank that forced a yelp out of her throat.

  He had smacked so hard that her mind completely blanked on her. All she could think about was the pleasure now manifesting in various parts of her body.

  Like between her thighs, and definitely beneath Lucas’s firm hand.

  “You like it, huh?” The purr returned. How many days had it been since she last heard this gorgeous tone to her boyfriend’s voice? “You like it when I spank you, don’t you, Angel?”

  Her legs wobbled. I can’t stand it. It feels so… Angel was used to a good spanking that got her wet enough for whoever she was with that night. Sarah, on the other hand, viewed spanking as that thing she saw at her former boss’s nightclub and tried to ignore.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you feel better after I spank you?”

  “Yes…”

  “Or maybe you simply like it when I touch you, Angel.” Lucas rubbed the breadth of her pussy through her underwear. Such a gentle touch compared to what she had experienced on her ass. “You’ve always been pretty easy, haven’t you?”

  She lowered her chest to the bed, arms reaching out for nothing in particular.

  “Remember when we first met?” His finger dipped inside of her. Didn’t think it would be that easy for him to do. Fuck, how wet am I? Apparently, she was wet enough to take his finger with no friction whatsoever. “You threw yourself at me. Demanded that I pay attention to you. So confident, so beautiful… how could I resist you?”

  Dare she say it? “You tried to resist me.”

  “You’re right. I did. I knew you were fucking trouble, Sarah. I knew giving in to my lust would doom me to more than pleasure for one night. I was right, too. I never once stopped thinking about you that weekend.” Lucas unzipped his trousers with his other hand. Meanwhile, his finger continued to slowly fuck her, making her wetter and opening her up for something bigger. Sarah gasped into the bedspread beneath her. He’s going to fuck me, and I won’t be able to stand it. Her neurons were already on fire from that hard spanking. Her brain wasn’t as purged as she wanted it to be, but would it ever be? “I tried to forget about you because you were nothing but a one-night stand. Yet there you were Monday morning, as captivating as you had been dressed as another persona.”

  He pulled her hair back into a single, manageable fistful. Sarah’s head went up the moment the head of Lucas’s cock touched her opening. She immediately shuddered.

  “Did you think about me too?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. “But I thought I would forget about you like all the others.”

  “But the universe didn’t let you forget about me. It made sure you knew that you and I were meant to be together, didn’t it?”

  “Yes…”

  “What was that? I can’t hear you, Angel.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He teased her with the promises of hard sex. Yes. Give it to me. Make me wild for you, Luke. Make me lose my mind and not care about who I am anymore! Just fucking take her!

  But Lucas didn’t enter her. He pulled away, also releasing his grip on her underwear.

  “If you could have anything right now, my love.” He could use that voice to drive her wild anyway. Sarah was quickly reaching the boiling point with her insatiable lust. Who knew I had this much desire in me when I was… like this? “What would it be?”

  “Use me.” She turned, sitting back on her legs, eyes glancing between his chiseled jaw and his half-erect cock hanging out of his trousers. “Make me feel like I did in that video.”

  He chuckled, the most lighthearted sound he made all night. “I’m only one man, Angel.”

  “Not to me you ar
en’t.” She pressed her hands against his chest. “Have your way with me. I need it. Go at me hard. Take me places you’ve only fantasized about.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Angel.”

  “You gave me a safe word before we began.” New York. Where they met. “You have to understand, Luke. It’s eating away at me in ways I can’t explain. I need to feel that. I need you to take me down to that level before I can build myself up again.”

  “I could never debase you.”

  “That’s the secret, isn’t it? You won’t be. It’s all role-playing.” She wouldn’t tell him that she would be far from playing a role to begin with. This was reality for her. A reality she was desperate to dismantle and rebuild anew. “Please, Luke. You don’t understand. Where my mind was back then… where it could be now… I have to know I can feel something like that and honest to God enjoy it. I’m fucked up, you know? The fantasies I have, the kind of things I used to go out and do… they’re so fucked up! How else will I get through them if I don’t have someone I trust helping me?”

  “Angel.” He smoothed back her hair and brushed away one of her stray tears. “You’re not fucked up. You’re not broken. You were handed a bad hand and you’re trying to make the best play possible.”

  “So what does that make you? The dealer?”

  “Let’s hope not. I’m terrible at poker.”

  They shared a soft kiss that would usually make Sarah smile. Now, all she could do was sigh against his lips.

  “Please,” she said again. “Give me what I need. I know my limits. You know me.”

  “I’m still getting to know you little by little.”

  “Now’s your chance to find out a lot about me.”

  He kissed her again, this time with more power behind his mouth. Oh, he wanted her. He must be dying beneath his skin to fuck her like a beast would in the wild. Yes, yes, oh my God, yes! Sarah held onto him as she attempted to draw him down onto the bed.

  That wasn’t good enough for Lucas, who soon gave her what she wanted.

  “Not yet,” he snapped. Sarah fell forward toward the edge of the bed. “You earn something like that, Angel. Now, who are you tonight?”

  She held her hands behind her back. Where had this sudden vulnerability come from on her part? “I’m yours, sir.”

  “Yes. You’re my dirty princess who throws herself at strange men to get what she wants. Tell me, what’s stopping me from using you as if you were born to be my slave in the bedroom?”

  The snap in his words kept her on her knees. Please, for the love of God, tell me to get you off. She yearned to feel that power inside of him. For him to share it with her. Please. I need it. I’m so weak on my own.

  “Absolutely nothing, sir.” Nothing but her safe word, and she had no reason to use it yet. “Take from me whatever you want. Make me feel like you’re five men in one.” May the universe have mercy on her and make him feel like the last man she would ever need.

  Chapter 27

  Even Sarah was amazed that they could both easily fall into their respective roles.

  How much had Lucas been holding back whenever they made love? How often had he looked at her and fantasized about doing what he did to her that night?

  Telling her to suck his cock, to get him hard, and then proceeding to fuck her throat until she happily gagged.

  Ripping off her bra, tearing apart her tights, and slamming his thick cock inside her, his thrusts so damn hard that Sarah lurched forward with every motion.

  Spanking her ass every time she wiggled, as if he could control her movements with a firm hand.

  Calling her every dirty, filthy name in the book and listening to her get off on them.

  Making her come from how he manhandled her, fucked her, sucked her skin and teased her with more orgasms he never delivered.

  Binding her wrists together with his tie and shoving her down onto her back, rendering her completely unable to fend him off as he fucked her until she moaned herself into a stupor.

  The scariest thing wasn’t that she yearned for him to be even rougher with her. What scared her was how close she was to crying from how good it made her feel.

  One man could do this to her. He could open her up, physically and emotionally. He could feed her his stamina, his desires, his lust for life and the power that surged within him. Sarah greedily drank his aura. She refused to let him go every time he tried to pull away from her. Most of all, she screamed his name and whatever dirty shit he told her to say, because it meant he fucked her harder and also lost himself in their games.

  But they weren’t games, were they? This was reality. This was what Sarah needed to be whole again, as fucked up as it was.

  I don’t care what you say, Luke. I’m fucked up. That’s a fact.

  He didn’t treat her like she was fucked up, though. This rough form of lovemaking may have been exactly what she wanted, but he did everything with the tacit understanding that it could stop whenever they needed it to.

  But not before he peeled his soaking wet shirt off his body and pulled down his pants. His sweaty skin glistened in the burning candlelight. His cock was so rigid and gleaming from wherever he had last stuck it. Sarah could barely stand it. Why wasn’t it inside of her again? When would he come and give her what she wanted?

  “On your knees.” He was breathless.

  So was she, once some cool lube hit her skin and her boyfriend insisted on taking her ass for the first time.

  Sarah was no stranger to anal sex at this point in her depravity. Rather amazing how many men loved it and got so giddy that they found a random woman who didn’t mind giving it up – or getting off on it. Except it was her first time with Lucas. Never before had he insinuated that he wanted to do such a thing with her.

  But she had begged him to fuck every single hole and make sure she knew that she belonged to him. So here they were.

  Sarah had reached the point of happily forgetting the bullshit that had plagued her mind for so long. Yet the moment he was inside of her, his guttural groans taking her ear the way his cock took her ass, Sarah wondered how blurred the lines between what they did for pleasure and what they did for this truly were.

  “Tell me you like it,” he growled into the crook of her neck. While Sarah embraced the pleasurable pain that came with this kind of sex – like she embraced a good spanking – she had yet to learn his cues. Was he about to come? Had he finally reached his limit, and Sarah better damn well get what she needed to get from him? Or was that simply the immense pressure claiming her body? “Tell me this is more than you could’ve ever wanted.”

  She shuddered beneath his body, her little moans of disbelief almost knocking her unconscious. “Fuck me.” It was all she could say.

  So he fucked her.

  Everything about it was so brash and invasive that Sarah was thrown from her pedestal of subconscious anxiety and forced to focus on nothing but the incredible sensations tearing through her every time Lucas gave her what she needed. His firm hands held her down, pulled her hair, and spanked the tender flesh desperately trying to accommodate the big man’s body. When Lucas wasn’t kissing her neck or shoulder, he muttered filthy epithets into her ear and kept her so far away from the toxicity infecting her brain that Sarah couldn’t even remember what had bothered her for so long.

  “You make me want to come so badly.” He made her cry out from the intensity of his slow-moving cock filling her, exiting her, filling her again. I must be easy. A man of his size taking care of me like this? Shit! “Do you have any idea how much I’m holding back from you?”

  A simple question. Or so Sarah thought.

  He pulled her up, grabbing her breasts and shoving his cock deeper into her. Sarah gasped from both pleasure and surprise. How was it possible for this man to keep taking her on these whirlwind sensations?

  “Do you know how much I’m always holding back from you?”

  Just like that, Sarah was dropped back onto the bed – and from her sexual high.


  Lucas pulled out, his naked body beckoning for Sarah to reach out and touch him. Yet he was so cold that Sarah didn’t dare move.

  Until he moved her for her.

  Men’s neckties were so versatile. They were especially handy for tying naked girlfriends to the bed so she didn’t have a chance in hell at touching herself – let alone leaving. Yet while Sarah expected him to have his final way with her, Lucas walked toward his bathroom, leaving her tied to his bed. “I need to take a break, Angel. I’m going to hop in the shower for a bit.”

  “What?”

  The water was already on. Sarah tugged on the ties. While she could most certainly break out of them if she wanted to, did she? Lucas had done this for a reason. He’s jacking off in the shower right now. So not fair. How was this supposed to help Sarah?

  Trust him.

  Sarah inhaled a deep breath and waited. She listened to the water spraying in the shower. She listened to the occasional sigh coming from the man she so desperately wanted to love. She felt her arms tire and her chest tighten.

  I want to love him, but…

  He had been so good to her. Good to her in ways she wasn’t used to. Sarah only knew men who used her, or made promises only to forget them the next day. Those were the “good” ones. The “kind” ones. The ones that didn’t traumatize her.

  How low was her barometer when doesn’t traumatize me was the marking of an okay guy?

  No wonder she didn’t know what to do with Lucas. He genuinely loved her, didn’t he? She had been so selfish! Putting him through so much… because of how messed up she was…

  While Sarah didn’t cry, she did berate herself for focusing so much on herself, when she should have focused on the darling man willing to go through so much for her. They had met while she was at her lowest, and he hadn’t been frightened away. If anything, he had pursued her until she finally reclaimed her senses that said dating him wasn’t such a terrible thing that would cost her some sanity.

  What had she done to make him feel better? Absolutely nothing. Because she was a mess.

  She was willing to tell him that when he came back, naked and freshly washed. His cock was still hard enough to imply that the water had been cold and that he had not touched himself. Whatever his reasons for showering, it had nothing to do with not wanting to share intimacy with the woman he proclaimed to love.