Holding the Cards

by Joey Hill

  Sensing that she was awake, Josh moved his lips against her temple. He stole a kiss over her eyebrow, nibbling a bit at it, sucking it into his mouth. Lauren sighed and nestled closer, pressing soft cotton and swollen breasts into his chest. His hand wandered down her hip to the flank and she shuddered as his fingers curled around one cheek. He ran his touch along the satin leg band of the French cut bikinis and then slid his long fingers under them, using his knuckles to push the fabric back, and into the cleft of her bottom, like a thong. He gripped the top edge of the bunched panties and tugged at the rolled fabric, increasing the pressure on her clitoris.

  Lauren lifted her eyes to his. He withdrew his touch, resting his hand on her hip. "It's your card still, Lauren," he murmured. His eyes promised her anything, a dangerous gift she could unleash or bridle at will, and the knowledge of it soaked her flimsy panties in a warm gush of response. She pushed the disturbing dream into her subconscious and took hold of the reins again.

  "I want you to grab the headboard," she commanded. "And don't let go of it."

  He obeyed, shifting to his back, the long muscular arms threading through the slats and then gripping the wrought iron spindles from behind. Lauren rose to her knees and pulled the covers back, exposing him to her gaze. His arms tensed as if he might move to cover himself, but he controlled the urge and merely flushed, a rush of blood to his cheeks. Lauren ignored his discomfort and took her time looking him over, the graceful hips and long thighs, the light dusting of hair, the thicker thatch at his groin, the sectioned abdomen and soft tufts of hair beneath his arms. The longer she looked, the more his limbs trembled, the more turgid his cock became, until it was all she could do to maintain her indifferent look and not drool.

  "God, you are beautiful," she said softly.

  He groaned, and the fire in his eyes became infused with something else, something that spoke of yearning, and regret. It was so similar a reflection of how she felt when she came out of the dream, shattered and aroused, it almost broke her now. It would have, if he had chosen that very moment to ignore her command, release the headboard and seize her to him. In the light of day, the game should probably be over anyway. He and Marcus should be going back to work on whatever they had to do. She would hobble around to see if there were the makings of a pimento cheese sandwich in Lisette's kitchen and savor a few of Josh's chocolate chip cookies while mulling over the events of the previous evening.

  But it wasn't over. Josh himself had set the parameters, reminding her the card was still hers. It occurred to her that, for some reason, he needed her to hold the cards, as if he was afraid to interact with her if she wasn't in charge.

  Not that she could possibly object. The male torso stretched out before her in mute, powerful submission was a perfect creation. He had no spare flesh. His thighs, arms and stomach were roped with wiry, lean muscle. The buttocks flexing with his slight, agitated shifts were tight as she could wish, and she had a sudden, amusing desire.

  "Roll to your side," she commanded. "Away from me."

  He obeyed, giving her a lingering look, a look of wild desire she recognized as the hungry stare she had fixed on the merman in her dreams. When it came from Josh, it made her want to suckle him at her breast, protect and care for him, and yet keep him at her mercy forever. It was an interesting thought, since he stood half a foot taller than she was and could probably bend steel between those luscious ass cheeks. She desired him. Lord, she wanted him like she'd never wanted anything in her whole life, but something held her back. This game, for lack of a better word, had to be played out. She did not know if experience or intuition was telling her that, or just her raging hormones, but for the first time since Jonathan, she was going to try to trust herself again.

  She reached out and scraped a fingernail down the curve of a buttock, watching it flex at the faint pain. Then she splayed her fingers out like a spider across his buttock, leaned down and bit him.

  Josh jumped, and the muscle quivered beneath her touch, but he did not pull away, even as she tightened her grip and the pressure of her bite. He kept his fists locked on the headboard; those glorious back muscles rippling with tension against the pain. When she lifted her head, she saw it had not diminished the impressive erection in the slightest. In fact, it was brushing his belly, so filled it was with blood.

  His ass now bore the imprint of her teeth. She bent back down to it, running her tongue over the marks, soothing the pain like a wolf's mate. He made a noise, somewhere between groan and growl, and his hands flexed on the board like he might let go, roll to his back and seize her up, thrust her onto his shaft and then pump his seed into her while she clung helpless to his powerful forearms.

  But he did not. He closed his eyes and swallowed, controlling his need. Watching him do so flooded her vitals with the sweet sensation of power, power made even more potent by the fact he was submitting to it by his own choice, if not entirely of his own volition.

  She knew he was damaged, and eventually, they would have to get to the bottom of that. Her glance strayed over the marks she had left on him. No pun intended.

  "Roll on your back again," she said. "But keep holding the headboard."

  He obeyed and stared at her, his gray eyes steel that heated her skin with a flush of prickling desire. Lauren slid forward, rose up onto her knees again and straddled his neck, putting her thighs along either side of his tense jaw. His nostrils flared, taking in her scent, and she nodded.

  "Would you like some of that for breakfast, Josh?" she murmured. "Unh uh," she moved back as his mouth opened. "You have to ask for it. What do you want?"

  "I want you," he rasped.

  She shook her head. "More specific, Josh. And you have to ask. You can't demand it. Or maybe I'll go sit in that chair way over there in the corner and take care of it myself." She passed her finger lightly over the damp impression of her panties, which revealed the arousal beneath.

  "No," he jerked his head off the pillow and fastened his mouth over her swollen clit, plunging his tongue into her, through the soaked silk. Lauren jerked back with a gasp as her body vibrated in the clutch of a near orgasm. For a moment, she fought her own will, which screamed at her to put herself back in proximity of that clever tongue and finish it.

  Then she looked at Josh's face, the way he glared up at her, smug satisfaction in his eyes. She was making him feel vulnerable, and he was reacting as a new or damaged sub sometimes did, shielding himself. He didn't want to feel vulnerable. She had to make him understand that he was required to be open and exposed to her in all ways. She wasn't going to permit him to withdraw from her and make this into nothing more than a kinky fuck between two strangers.

  Lauren grasped his hair in her hand and jerked his head back, wrapping her fingers into the thick mane and tightening her grasp, intending to cause him pain.

  "You do that again, and I will go over to that chair, lick my fingers and fuck myself with them while you watch." She did not permit any kindness in her voice now, nothing but cruel denial. "I'll spread open my thighs over the chair arms, so you can see everything, and when I come, you'll see the way it sucks at my hand, instead of your tongue. I won't rub my scent over your face and make you mine. Now," she eased forward again, her throbbing center only a breath away from his panting mouth. "Ask for it, and be specific. And you look at me when you ask."

  You won't hide from me, Josh.

  "Please let me eat…" it was fascinating to watch his thoughts chase each other, look for the words he thought she might like best. She revealed nothing, keeping her expression aloof and stern, though her tissues quivered from his rasping breaths, less than an inch away.

  "Please let me lick your pussy," he said, stumbling over the awkward word, his eyes pleading. "Please. I want to make you come."

  "You don't make me do anything, Josh, but you will eat me until I come, because I won't let you stop until you do."

  His body jerked as it trembled, and she recognized the nerves overtaking passion. The unc
ontrollable shaking came when a sub felt his true vulnerability to a Mistress's will for the first time, an anxiety that came with relinquishing control to someone by some compulsion that defied issues of logic, strength or bindings. It puzzled her, because she knew he knew the game. But overriding the confusion was a more unsettling emotion.

  His quivering brought tears to her eyes. Lauren bent, pressed the softest of kisses to his damp forehead, swept back his hair with gentle fingers. Then she straightened, took the head board in both hands, and slid over his mouth.

  He did not lick. He devoured. With the noise of an animal, he plunged his face into her musky wetness, tongue stabbing into her flooded passage, lips and teeth pulling her aching labia and clit into the hot cavern of his mouth, the soft growls bringing extra vibration to the sensitive nerve endings.

  Usually, her orgasms began as a lazy spiral that built with the rhythmic rocking of her body. His mouth was on her three shuddering breaths, and her spine snapped back, her head falling onto her shoulders, as a climax harder and more intense than the peak of the best orgasm she had ever experienced seized her body. She rocketed over a crest that she had never imagined could be so high. It occurred to her, a flash of a thought, that she might not survive the fall. She could have cared less.

  He released the headboard and held her fast by the forearms when she would have toppled. His desire to protect made her forgive his disobedience, even though he took advantage of the moment to shove her harder against his mouth, his teeth scraping her shuddering, slick skin.

  She screamed, too overcome to be self-conscious. She didn't even remember who Marcus was as she ground herself against Josh's face and felt each spasm jerk through her.

  There was no finesse to it, just raw, fast response. She came down like an ejected pilot of an exploded plane, adrenaline still roiling through her veins, her heart pounding, fingers clenching and unclenching against her palms. She made soft, keening noises, her reaction to his mouth, tongue still busy with gentle lavings, soothing and stimulating all at once.

  It was quite awhile before Lauren had the strength, or will, to slide back. She collapsed into his embrace, and her gaze fell on the imprints his fingers had left on her forearms. She noticed with puzzlement that her limbs were shaking, though she felt only muzzy languor.

  The earth was shaking, not her. She tried to clear her hazy mind and realized that Lisette's house was rumbling on its foundations in sporadic bursts. Each tremor was preceded by a thud that sounded as if it were directly beneath them.

  Passion cleared from Josh's eyes and he swore, amusing her by giving her a hard squeeze on the ass and an apologetic, desperate look before he rolled away. He snatched up his jeans and leaped out of the room, not a bad view all the way around. Lauren turned over, snagged her robe and followed him, more slowly, since the room was still tilting in a pleasant way. She was pleased to discover she could walk better this morning, though her slight limp and wobbling progress were no match for Josh's athletic strides.

  The orchestrator of the morning's events, in an indirect way, was standing out on the deck, staring down. Lauren approached the living area just as Josh stepped out of the open sliding glass door, zipping up his jeans and buttoning them.

  "She won't listen to me," Marcus informed him.

  Marcus's gaze passed to Lauren as she came out. "You've got healthy lungs," he commented.

  "Leave her be," Josh said, leaning over the rail. "Isabel? I'm right here. Look…look up - Isabel!"

  Lauren blinked as an earsplitting trumpet sound vibrated along the boards beneath her feet. It sounded like an elephant. It couldn't be an elephant. She approached the edge of the deck. Marcus smiled at her, easing her discomfiture, and curled an arm about her waist to draw her forward.

  She blinked. She was looking down at an elephant. A small, white elephant, but most definitely an elephant.

  The elephant's crinkled dark eyes shifted to her and the creature made a curious crooning noise. Apparently she was much happier now that she could see Josh. With some alarm, Lauren realized the earthquake had been caused by his devotee pushing her head and considerable weight against the pilings of the house.

  The bright sun and the reminder that he had other responsibilities, albeit in a form she would not have expected, returned her to reality. She needed to push off the effects of the mind-boggling orgasm and not make too much of it. She wouldn't push him. It had been a night of fun, was all, and now they all had things to do. His words this morning about continuing the game were probably just a case of male morning horniness.

  "So," she propped her elbows on the wood and ignored the peculiar sinking feeling the idea gave her, "Are white elephants native to this island?"

  Josh chuckled. "Here," he said, "You shouldn't be standing."

  Lauren caught hold of his shoulders as he lifted her up to sit her on the wide railing. He kept his hand braced against her back, his fingers splayed over the curve of her hip, an automatic gesture to keep her safe that made her stomach flutter in emotional reaction. So much for casual. His posture put his body close to hers, so close she could still smell the scent of herself on his mouth.

  "Isabel was in a movie," Josh said, looking down at the elephant, now stripping a six-foot sapling of leaves. "They injected dye into her skin to turn her white."

  "I remember that movie," Lauren recalled. "That fantasy thing, like a Conan type…what was the name of it?"

  Josh shrugged. "I don't see many movies. Regardless, when the movie was over, they didn't need her anymore." A shadow crossed his face. "The dye poisoned her blood."

  Lauren, dismayed, looked back down at the elephant. Even while eating, Isabel kept one eye on Josh. The eye, clear and bright, nevertheless possessed that ancient look of wisdom and mystery that pachyderms have, a reminder of their existence on the planet significantly earlier than humans.

  "They think she has a couple years before organs start shutting down and she'll be in pain. They were going to go ahead and put her down. I was in a position to take her, and so I brought her here, on a barge."

  He shrugged. "She likes to know where I am. I forgot to tell her I wouldn't be in the usual places. Of course," he smiled at Lauren in an open, affectionate way that erased some of her tensions, "I didn't know I was going to end up staying here at the command of a beautiful woman."

  Lauren looked over the edge, pleased to feel his grip on her tighten. "Seems to me," she observed, "That you're at the command of two women. And one of us just decided Lisette's banana plants are fair game."

  "Hey!" Josh called out sharply. "Isabel, no! Ah…son of a—" with another apologetic look, he scooped Lauren off her seat on the rail and set her down on the bench in a move so effortless it caught her breath. He took the rail himself, swung out to the tree she had used for her descent the day before, and shimmied down the trunk.

  Marcus chuckled and set down his coffee cup. "So, beautiful lady, what's your pleasure today? We can leave you to your own devices, to hobble around the house as best you may, or we can take you on our adventures."

  The idea of being stranded in Lisette's house held little appeal. Lauren overlooked the fact that she had intended to do just that, nurse her hurts and wallow in dejected solitude for the weekend. Of course, she had put a more positive spin on it than that when she got in the boat yesterday.

  Still, she hesitated to answer. Where did the events of the past half hour leave them? Did they just shrug it off, resume their separate schedules, or was there something happening other than a night of sex games?

  Stop being a moron. She had never been a woman to doubt her own appeal to the opposite sex. She knew when attraction was there and when it wasn't. A D/s relationship did not evolve this quickly unless strong desire was driving it. She put a hand on her fluttering stomach. Strong might be an understatement for what she was feeling for Josh. She was shielding herself precisely because she sensed there was far more than the physical involved. She was being a coward.

  "
I'd love to go with you," she admitted. "But you're not here to entertain me. I don't want to impose. After all, you took care of me all afternoon and evening." Her cheeks flushed at the double meaning of that remark.

  "True," Marcus quirked a brow at her expression, and laid his hand over where Josh's had been on her waist, increasing the heat that lingered there. "This morning Josh planned a swim for eight a.m. You've put him behind schedule already."

  Lauren chuckled. "I intended to take a nap on the beach about one o'clock," Marcus continued, "after we checked in to see how the Salerno's hot water heater is doing. We installed it earlier this week. After that, we usually go sit up on the Knoll, the highest part of the island. Josh brings a book and I do some wishful amateur sketches. We go through a six-pack of Heineken while we watch the sun go down over the waves. And that would be the end of one of our busier days. So you see," he ran his knuckles down the side of her face in an easy, affectionate gesture, "we asked because we like playing with you, and we don't want playtime to be over. I would have expected Josh to tell you that, first thing this morning," he lifted a brow, "but perhaps his mouth was otherwise occupied."

  Lauren punched his stomach. "Worm."

  "Regardless," he caught her fist, raised it to his lips, "We're three children on a deserted island, and we've designated you queen. Josh wants you to keep holding the High Card as long as you wish to play."

  "It doesn't feel like a game to me, Marcus," Lauren said, loosing her hand from his grasp and hooking her fingers under her legs. The rough wood of the bench rasped against her skin. "Sometimes it is just playing, and that's okay. But this doesn't feel that way." She drew a deep breath, let it out. "And I don't want it to be just a game. That sounds stupid, doesn't it? I just met him what, less than twenty-four hours ago."