by Chloe Cox
Maybe don’t lead with that possessive stuff, Reed. Apologies first.
Only Ava could make him feel stupid. Only Ava could make him feel dumb enough and angry enough that he pushed ahead and said and did things because he felt like it, even if his brain knew it was a terrible idea. It was the worst kind of boundary to cross, and the fact that he loved her didn’t excuse it. Of course she’d run away when he’d pushed her; he was probably frightening. He’d seen it coming. And he hadn’t been able to stop himself.
“Fuck!” he said out loud to no one in particular.
“Yup,” said a homeless guy huddled in the shadows next to Ava’s stoop, bundled up in the remains of several different coats and covered in a light dusting of snow. Jackson hadn’t even noticed he was there. He felt like a total asshole.
“Is there a shelter you can go to, man? Something nearby? It’s cold as shit out here tonight,” Jackson said, stomping his feet to feel his cold toes.
The guy shook his head, snow falling on his shoulders. “Don’t like those places. I got my heating grate. What’re you doing out here?”
Jackson looked at the flowers, now frozen solid. “Trying not to fuck up,” he said.
The man on the grate laughed. “Good luck.”
Jackson was thinking about how he’d already had more luck than he deserved in his short lifetime, and how Ava was by far the biggest part of it, when his phone rang.
It was her.
“Where are you?” She sounded stressed.
“Out buying ice cream,” he lied. “Are you ok? Where are you?”
“I’m at your apartment. I needed…” Her voice, tiny and fragile sounding, trailed off. “I need to see you. Ok? Right now. Please?”
“I’ll be right there, Ava. Don’t move. Don’t…don’t go anywhere.”
There was a pause, and the crackle of the snow-addled reception rang loud in his ear as he ran out onto Avenue B, intending to jump in front of the first cab he saw.
“I won’t,” she said.
Two cabs vied for Jackson’s fare. He dug out just enough money for the ride back to his apartment in the West Village out of his coat pockets, shed the coat, and threw it at the guy sitting on the grate. It was a tiny gesture, but it was all he could get away with right now.
“What’re you doing man?” the guy said. “This is a nice coat.”
“You wished me good luck,” Jackson said, ducking into the cab. “I got some.”
~ ~ ~
Clive, the doorman, tried to apologize for letting Ava up.
“I’ve seen her here before, Mr. Reed, and she looked up upset, and…” He spread his hands out, like it just couldn’t be helped. “It just seemed like the right thing.”
“Yeah, she has that effect on people,” Jackson said. “Upset?”
“Crying.”
Shit.
Which was why Jackson wasn’t prepared to see Ava pacing across the living room when he came in, biting her fingernails, then heading right for him and knocking him dead with a smoldering kiss.
Hell, not just smoldering. Like she really meant it.
She finally slid off his chest, arms unwrapping, breathing returning to normal. Now he could see that she really had been crying. Ava Barnett was one of those fortunate women who somehow looked good even when crying. It made her look vulnerable—one of the only times she allowed that to happen.
“What happened?” he said. She didn’t answer him, her eyes already focused on something far away. He wasn’t going to lose her again, not already. He took her arm and spun her around. “Ava! What happened?”
She pressed her lips together in that way that meant there was something she was trying not to say, and shook her head a tiny bit. “Not yet,” she said. She seemed sad about it.
“Then what?” He felt frustration start to rise in his throat, and to stave it off, he put his hand at the back of her neck, lifting her face to look at him. He needed to feel her skin or he was going to lose his mind. “Ava, what do you want?”
“The payoff,” she said, barely audible. “You said the payoff of trusting someone…was worth it.”
“It is.”
“Please show me,” she said.
She said it so simply, without any irony. She was begging. Jackson could see that she struggled in that way that was peculiar to Ava, struggling against herself and every instinct she had to run and hide. Her mind and her heart were never going to lead the way. Her mind was too quick, and her heart was too scarred. Her body needed to show her. She needed to be dominated.
He gripped her hair at the back of her head, getting her full attention. Then he very slowly felt his way down the entire front of her body until he pushed his hand between her legs and grabbed her there.
“You’re mine, Ava,” he said, and watched her begin to sink into him, watched her sink into submission with palpable relief. This was where she should be. This was right. He would show her. He knew just the thing, something he hadn’t wanted to do with anybody else.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
chapter 16
Ava’s hands shook as she fumbled with the buttons on her tailored oxford. She wasn’t nervous, exactly—it was like that time she’d gone rock climbing and her leg had started pumping uncontrollably. They’d told her it was adrenaline.
Whatever it was, it made her too slow. Jackson reached up and pulled the shirt open, sending a button flying.
“Faster,” he said.
She’d never seen him like this. It fit; it was what she needed. The intensity, the razor sharp focus. She felt like nothing else in the world mattered to him but her. Like he couldn’t even see anything else. His grey eyes were on fire.
“Faster,” he growled, and her fingers began to fly. That voice was not something to be disobeyed. It triggered something in her, something from prehistory, something primal.
She tore off her remaining clothes and stood naked, shuddering. He had this way of…looking at her.
“Ava, we’re going to have to go a little further,” he said. “You’re not going to have the option of keeping anything from me. Don’t try.”
His words passed over her bare skin, bringing it to life. Yes. That…that was what she needed. She couldn’t do it on her own. Running out into the snow, realizing that everyone else was somehow capable of this, of finding another human being and making a bond with them, of letting go and letting them in, everyone except her—Ava realized Jackson would have to make her do it.
He was her only shot.
And she was so grateful to see that he understood that.
“I’m going to do things to you that require you to trust me completely,” he said, stepping so close that she felt covered by his body. “You’re going to be scared, and I’m going to do it anyway, and then I’m going to fuck you.”
Almost casually, he reached between her legs, his favorite place, and then pulled back on her hair so she had to look up into his face. “You are going to have to surrender, Ava. Give it up completely. You understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” he said, slapping her bare ass. “But first, I have to get you warmed up.”
He walked away from her, sucking on his finger where it had been between her legs, and reached for the phone to the front desk downstairs. She was bereft without him, already feeling herself more grounded, more connected to the world around her when some part of him was inside her. “What do I do?” she asked, lost.
He let her hang on his silence, his hand resting on the phone. Then he said, “You get yourself off for me while I make arrangements.”
“While you’re on the phone?”
He picked it up, pressing the button. “I’d say you have a minute or two.”
Jackson didn’t say what would happen if she refused. He didn’t have to. Ava was already swimming in the peculiar kind of freedom that had one singular focus: where disappointing him in anything at all would be painful.
But she had never done th
is before. She’d never masturbated to orgasm in front of anyone else. She realized it sort of belatedly; wasn’t she kind of old to have never done something like this? But then again, this would be one person, watching her at her most vulnerable.
Of course she’d never done it before. The thought of it in the abstract was horrifying. The thought of it while looking at Jackson, under his orders…
Tentatively, she lifted one leg and positioned her foot on the rung of one of his kitchen bar stools. Her leg shook slightly. If she was going to be bare, she should be bare.
Jackson locked eyes with her. “Don’t look away,” he said.
Slowly, delicately at first, she began to touch herself. Instinctively, she wanted to close her eyes, to lose herself in the feeling, but there was Jackson’s command. His eyes never left hers.
“Clive?” he said into the phone. “Remember that deal we talked about? Yeah, unfettered access. About an hour or so. And I’d need the security cameras turned off. See if you can, I’ll hold.”
She was already wet, so wet, and suddenly she remembered she had only a minute or two—that’s what he’d said. She pressed down on her clit, biting her own lip to keep from moaning, and rubbed the wet hood against the bundle of nerves in tight little circles, faster and faster, staring at Jackson’s fiery eyes until she realized she was almost begging him, she didn’t know for what, but pleading with him. She blinked tears out of her eyes, the kinds of tears that came when you couldn’t think words, and a small orgasm ricocheted through her body in short little spurts that pushed her back against the counter while his eyes bored into hers.
She felt the first layers of sweat on her brow. She’d given him a part of herself, and she still stood there, naked, in offering. His.
Very much his.
“Thank you,” Jackson said, and replaced the receiver. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he crossed the kitchen and pulled her to him by her wrist. He let her feel the length of him against her for just a beat, and then he kissed her.
“Thank you,” she said when he let her go. She found she was still breathing heavily. She looked down to find her flat stomach twitching, her whole body still primed.
“Ava,” he said sharply, and she looked up. She’d broken eye contact. “You’re not done. Go to the chest and bring me the blue vibe, the smaller red vibe, and the riding crop.”
Ava did not hesitate, and that surprised her. Her constantly churning, questioning mind was finally starting to slow down, to ease itself. To just let her be. This was what she’d begun to find so addictive about these scenes with Jackson, with this part of…whatever they were. These moments when he seized all control and she could let go.
She opened the chest and swallowed. The blue vibe was curved, textured, and large. The red one was smaller, and flared, and…could only be for one thing.
And, of course, the riding crop.
Her overactive mind attempted to revolt. She quelled it and delivered the vibrators to Jackson. He took them and eyed them appreciatively.
“We have some time before everything is ready,” he said, almost to himself. “And goddamn, do you need to get fucked.”
Every muscle in her body tightened. He noticed, and a satisfied smile flickered across his face.
“Bend over the counter.”
Ava nodded and walked to the kitchen counter. It was a proper counter from the living room side, but it was at about waist height from the kitchen side, perfect for bending over. She didn’t realize she was dragging out her steps, walking slowly to savor how odd she was beginning to feel, until she felt Jackson behind her. He leaned forward and placed the vibes on the counter. Then he put his hand around the back of her neck, his other on her hip, and forcefully bent her over the counter. Her cheek pressed into the cold slate, and the vibes came in and out of focus, the only other things she could see.
Where was the riding crop?
“Spread,” he said.
She did. Her breasts hurt a little, pressed into the cold stone, and she was getting wetter every time she tried to move under his hold and found she couldn’t.
Powerless.
He stepped back, but kept his hold on her neck, and placed his boot between her legs to keep them wide open. He slid an easy finger into her, and swirled it around, as though hollowing her out.
“Do you remember what I said about discipline, Ava?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “No. I don’t know.”
“I said you would obey my orders, and accept my discipline. Did you do that?”
Ava’s mind reeled, but it was, as always, difficult to think with his finger inside her. It was like there was only room for so much at once.
“Yes,” she said.
She felt the bulk of his body move away, though he kept his heavy hand on her neck. She was about to ask what she’d done wrong when she felt the sharp sting of the riding crop on her bare buttock.
“No,” he said.
The stiff leather of the crop began to trace the lines of her inner thighs.
“You disobeyed me, Ava. Don’t lie.” The sudden crack of the riding crop streaked across her thighs, her buttocks, even close to her exposed sex. She whimpered, but not because she hurt. She liked the hurt.
“Tell me how,” he said. The leather tip of the crop probed her wet slit, and she moaned.
“I ran away,” she said.
“You ran away from me,” he said, close to her ear now, and she suddenly saw that the blue vibe was gone. “And you’re mine.”
He buried the vibrator in her as far as it would go. She let out a short, convulsive breath that turned into a groan, the shock and slight pain of being so suddenly full quickly overwhelmed by the pleasure of the same. He fucked her leisurely with the vibe in long, slow strokes until she was reaching out across the countertop for something to grab hold of. And then…
He stopped.
“Oh, no,” she cried. She had been so close, a deep orgasm building on top of her first of the night, and now she was teetering, on the brink of falling back still tight and wound and hungry.
“You won’t come again until I tell you to, Ava,” he whispered in her ear. He jiggled the vibrator inside her just once, as if to tease her, and then pulled it out.
She moaned her frustration, slapped a palm on the countertop. She heard him laugh. Then she felt it: a cold, cool, lube-covered finger, gently circling her anus.
“Jackson—”
“Shh,” he said, and his grip on her neck tightened.
Ava closed her eyes and tried to relax. This wasn’t something she was used to. His finger felt good on the delicate skin, the nerves alive in a way that she hadn’t expected. He pushed against her with more and more pressure until he finally forced his finger in. Her eyes shot open; it felt intrusive, invasive, wrong, but in all the right ways. He began to fuck her ass with his finger, curling it around and circling it to stretch her out.
He added more lube, and then another finger, and she moaned helplessly.
“Don’t come, Ava,” he warned.
She whimpered, and nodded as best she could with her cheek pressed into the counter. It was just becoming manageable when, all at once, he removed his fingers and replaced them with the tip of something much larger.
The red vibe.
It hadn’t looked that big—it hadn’t looked big at all—but now, pressed against her tight sphincter, it felt impossibly huge. She tried to shake her head, to lift it off the counter; it was just too big, there was no…
“Oh, God!”
She cried out as he pushed it past the tight ring of muscle. She felt a slight pop, and then it was in. It felt…she didn’t have words. Every move rubbed it against some new bundle of nerves, some part of her body that had never known pleasure. It was a constant, invasive reminder of his dominance.
“Stay like that, Ava.”
And then he was gone.
She saw him walk past her line of sight, past the counter. Heard him walk through the living room
and into his bedroom. Heard him close the door. She was still bent flat over the counter, her bottom slightly tilted up, and now with a red vibe sticking out of her. She didn’t dare move. After a while, she found she didn’t even want to; the submissive humiliation of her position was only adding, bit by bit, to the explosive orgasm she’d been denied earlier.
It wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
By the time Jackson came back, she was so wet that she could feel the moisture dripping down her thighs.
“Get up,” he said from somewhere behind her.
Slowly Ava pushed herself off the counter, stiffer than she would have thought. The movement shifted the vibe inside her, and she clenched around it, sending another shudder rippling through her body. She turned to find him smiling, with a large duffel bag over his shoulder and leather gloves on his hands. He was wearing a thick fleece.
He picked up the receiver to speak to the front desk again. Clive. He’d made arrangements through Clive. Did Clive know about…?
“Everything ready?” Jackson said into the phone, his eyes resting hungrily on Ava’s naked breasts. “Good. Thank you. Much appreciated, believe me. Look for that envelope at the desk tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone, never once taking his eyes off her nakedness. His mouth tightened into a grim line, and he took a deep breath.
“Not yet, Reed,” he said to himself. “Ava, put your boots on.”
Ava gave him a perplexed expression. She was naked; she wasn’t—
“And only your boots.”
Slowly it began to dawn on her. His clothes. His gloves. Her boots.
“Now, Ava.”
chapter 17
Getting the boots on had been harder than Ava had expected with the red anal vibe still inside her. It didn’t seem like it was about to fall out of her, but the fear that it would kept her clenched tight. And Jackson had made sure to tell her to keep it in. He hadn’t helped. He’d just watched her, his eyes gleaming.