The Christmas Bet

by Alice Ward

  The unexpected penetration and the vibrations of pleasure it caused shocked me into silence, and I struggled to capture a soothing breath through flared nostrils. Owen mercifully broke the kiss as he hooked his fingers upward to greet my sweet spot.

  “Already so wet,” he purred. I could hear the approval in his voice, but he added almost tauntingly, “You’re in for a long, long night if you’re so close to climax so soon.”

  I groaned, and he nodded, appreciation shining in his eyes.

  “Already clenching my fingers like a lifeline,” he smirked. “Oh, sweetheart, this will be so much fun.”

  He slipped his thumb upward toward my mound as he continued to massage my G-spot, and I whimpered when he flipped back the canopy covering my clit to rub the tiny sphere hiding underneath. I was amazed how turned on I was with so little introductory stimulation. The gymnastics routine of tumbling and springing had already begun in my stomach, indicating I was on the verge of an orgasm, and all Owen had done was explain his fetish.

  Somehow, he knew I was racing toward the edge, and I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes he was excited by it. There was no doubt in my mind he’d meant every word he told me. He was going to make me come relentlessly, and I was going to be left a shell of a woman at his capable hands. I couldn’t think of anything else in the world more horrifying, more deranged, or more arousing.

  His thumb started sliding across the surface of the bead, dragging down as if to meet the fingers burrowed inside me, and the muscles in my legs hardened. I was so close, dangling over the cliff and looking down into the chasm below, only a light push away from falling to my imminent doom. And he knew. He wanted me to fall. He was hungry for my demise.

  “Don’t hold back on my account, kitten,” he growled. “I haven’t even gotten started yet.”

  He bent, and flicked his tongue across my nipple before taking it between his teeth.

  I shattered.

  My insides gripped each other with vicelike power. Pleasure rocketed through every nerve in my body. The nipple he’d licked rose to meet his mouth as my back arched and my hips retracted. I was flying.

  “Good girl,” he praised through my haze. I shuddered as the orgasm faded and looked down at him with foggy vision. His fingers had paused for the briefest of seconds to allow me to come down, for which I was grateful, but the smirk on his lips was a visual sign I was foolish to feel such gratitude. Without warning, he began stroking and caressing me both inside and out, and he commanded firmly, “Again.”

  So soon after my climax, I was overly sensitive, and I writhed on the bed to try and get away from him. He grabbed one of my hips with his free hand and held me in place with a smug shaking of his head. I wailed, my clit and my G-spot buzzing, but before the noise had even left my throat I was thrown headfirst into a second and infinitely more intense orgasm.

  My legs were pushed back, forcing my knees up to my shoulders, and I was emptied. Hot, slick saliva met my labia as he sucked the folds into his mouth. His tongue drove inside me where his fingers had just been, and the digits coated in my lubrication slipped over my clit in place of his thumb. The sensations were twice as overwhelming, and I had to slam my hands against the mattress to stop myself from yanking full clumps of hair out of his scalp. His tongue swirled around, meeting every inch of my walls, a movement he mirrored with the fingers tracing my clit. But what claimed me for the third time was when he growled against me with predatory demand.

  I had no idea how long it had been since he’d first started ravishing me, but if my body was any indication, I would have estimated hours. It wasn’t possible, though, because the natural light of nighttime hadn’t changed in the slightest. I realized in the midst of a fourth orgasm it had probably been less than ten minutes, and already my limbs were like jelly. The chances I would survive an entire night of climaxes were minimal.

  “Oh, don’t get tired on me now,” he chided when the fifth leap into oblivion left me gasping for breath and virtually limp. “You’re capable of so much more.”

  “I’m not,” I protested through trembling lips. I didn’t even have the energy to shake my head to emphasize the point.

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t speak so negatively about the woman who gets me this hard.” He leaned over, and a cloud of smoky relief billowed throughout me for the break. I heard him pulling the creaky drawer in my nightstand out and the clattering sounds of his shuffling within. When he sat back up, he was smugly displaying my only sex toy, a pink silicone bullet and its accompanying remote.

  If I wasn’t so exhausted, I would’ve snatched it from him out of embarrassment. As I was, however, I couldn’t do anything more than ask in astonishment, “How did you know that was in there?”

  “Sweetheart, everyone knows the nightstand is where women keep their secrets.” He flicked his finger, and the sound of buzzing took the place of the sound of his voice.

  The bullet was pressed flat against my clit, and he maneuvered my legs over his shoulders, draping them down his back to allow him to fully bury his mouth in my mound. I gasped the second he wriggled his tongue through my cavern again. The brief break I’d received while he fetched the vibrator had somehow allowed the nerves that had grown numb from overstimulation to revive themselves, and I was much more sensitive now than I’d been. Lights popped behind my eyes. I moaned hoarsely, rocking my hips involuntarily against the shockwaves and meeting his lapping stroke for stroke.

  This euphoria gripped me more quickly than the others had. Within thirty seconds, I was screaming my pleasure to the ceiling, clutching my sheets with all I had and bucking mercilessly. Owen didn’t pause, didn’t miss a beat, didn’t even slow down. Deeper and deeper, he forced his tongue, raking it across my blessed spot repeatedly while pinching and rolling my clit between his fingers. My mind went black for a second, almost like that moment after taking one too many drinks of alcohol, and when I came back into reality I was paralyzed.

  “You’re not quitting on me already,” Owen hissed. He lifted the bullet just long enough for me to catch a breath, then replaced it.

  Something was happening to me I’d never thought possible. My body was sacrificing its need for a refractory period in order to remain coherent. Owen’s statement about pushing me past coherence swelled at the forefront of my mind, and I realized he hadn’t just told me all of that to educate me about his fetish. He’d said it for this very moment, the moment when I began losing my grasp on sanity and peeked behind the curtain into my primitive self. He knew I was going to remember it and that it would ring like bells between my ears as he took strand after strand of my control with each orgasm, and it would make my slip into incomprehension that much sweeter.

  I barely felt his tongue slip in again as the vibrator pulled me into ecstasy once more. Images flashed across the panorama of my consciousness. Dark, dangerous eyes. Black leather upholstery. Playing cards. Guttural noises poured from me as easily and constantly as the Mississippi current. My limbs bent and flailed and contorted in ways I wouldn’t have been able to manage in any other circumstance. The beast I saw in Owen when he was craving me had left his body to devour mine, and I could feel its teeth sinking into my being.

  “Yes,” he whispered. He drew the word out over several syllables, a white noise backdrop to my surrender. “Your eyes are fading, sweetheart. I’m taking you.”

  I sank deeper. What little color I could make out in the unlit room dimmed until I saw nothing but blackness, as if the fabric draped across the Club walls had been laid over my face. I didn’t notice Owen’s fingers gripping my chin until he jerked my face up toward the headboard. I was blind, but I could feel his breath on my cheeks.

  “Tell me I have you,” he growled.

  I had no idea if I opened my mouth. I didn’t know if I obliged him. It wasn’t until he jarred my chin again that I realized I hadn’t said anything at all.

  “Tell me,” he insisted. “I need to know you’re still here.”

  �
��You have me.” My words were nothing but air.

  He released my chin roughly, bit my shoulder with relish, and thrust his entire length inside me. “I do now,” he groaned. “Come.”

  I did. Hard, and on cue. He wasn’t even touching me aside from his dick buried deep and unmoving within my core. My body had officially become his.

  He began rocking his hips back and forth, stroking all the way in and pulling all the way back. My senses were fading, but my nerves were igniting, and I mentally collapsed. Whether he was making love to me or not, I didn’t have the slightest idea. The only thing of which I was aware was the total and absolute claiming of my existence by the gluttonous gods of pleasure and erotica. I wasn’t even human anymore. It wasn’t possible. Humans didn’t fly through space and glide across existential planes. There was no transcendence for the mortal, not of this kind where nothing and everything happened at once and the dead danced amongst the stars and there were no words.

  The last thing I remembered was a brilliant streak of ice-white light. The next thing I knew, I was on my side, sheets pulled up to my shoulders and firm warmth against my cheek. Something slow and gentle caressed my hair from scalp to ends. A faint scent of cologne feathered my nose each time I inhaled.

  “Are you back, sweetheart?”

  Warm and low, the voice was sugar in my ears. I blinked twice, unsure how to move my jaw to reply. It was then I realized I was lying with my head on Owen’s chest. We were curled up in my bed, naked and sweaty. He was running his fingers through my hair in perhaps the most soothing gesture he could’ve performed, and his other hand was resting lightly across my hip.

  “I think so.” My voice was croaky, either because I’d injured it with excessive moaning and screaming or because I’d basically forgotten how my entire body functioned. Bits and pieces of what had happened since he’d shown up at my door were starting to fall into place, though a large portion was missing completely from my memory. A horrible thought occurred to me. “Oh my god, did I pass out in the middle of sex?”

  He chuckled and turned my head very slightly, pointing to the window. “Look at the sky, kitten.”

  Sunrise. I was missing a solid eight hours from my brain, and how much of that eight hours was sex versus sleep, I didn’t know.

  “God!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!”

  I tried to push myself upright, but my limbs failed me. I couldn’t even shift my body off him, not that he intended to let me. His arms tightened around me, and he shook his head firmly.

  “Absolutely not, sweetheart. You need to go back to sleep. Trust me.”

  “But what about you? You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?” He nodded. “You must be exhausted. Sleep. I’ll fix something for breakfast.”

  “When you figure out how you’re going to fix breakfast when you can’t even roll over on your own, I’ll let you up,” he said. “Until then, you’re staying right here.”

  I wanted to protest, but to be honest, I was too exhausted. My energy had been sapped, and I was barely left with enough to speak — and that was after hours of recuperating slumber. I sighed and surrendered. He was right, anyway. There was no way I was going to be able to stand up, let alone cook.

  “Sleep,” he urged, placing a delicate kiss on my forehead and resuming the stroking of my hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Neither was I.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Owen

  “Can you hand me that binder, please?”

  I gulped down the mouthful of tea and reached for a black portfolio on the coffee table. Tabby held out her hand expectantly, her eyes pinned to her laptop screen.

  “Thanks,” she said idly as I turned it over to her. “And the purple folder?”

  I snatched the indicated folder as well, slipping it into her hand on top of the binder.

  “And a pen,” she added.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, is the striped accordion file over there?” When I didn’t answer or give her the item, she glanced up to find me grinning at her. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

  I laughed. “Always,” I said, kissing the fingers she’d wrapped around the binder and folder before fetching the aforementioned pen and accordion file. She smiled, and I delighted in the way her face glowed in the midst of our good-natured exchange.

  My impromptu trip to Chicago had lasted nearly a week. The suitcase of belongings I’d brought with me had taken up residence in a corner of Tabby’s apartment beside her bureau, and the clothes I’d bought throughout my time there had been given an entire drawer — a wonderful compliment, considering she had very limited storage space as it was. Without the necessity of phone calls or Skype chats, we’d adopted a new bedtime routine that consistently ended with her body molded to mine and the best sleep of my life. All the years I’d spent convincing myself monogamy was boring and commitment unnatural were basically wasted as I woke up each morning feeling better than the last. I couldn’t imagine a day without Tabby anymore.

  If anyone I knew back in New Orleans saw me now, I would’ve been pummeled with questions and assaulted by judgments. My circle of friends and associates operated under the assumption that I, like others of equal financial and social standing, refused to live less than a five-star lifestyle at any given time. I was expected to dine at the finest restaurants, wear suits that cost the equivalent of college tuition, and demand the best seat on any plane I took. Being wealthy offered a host of freedoms unavailable to the less fortunate, but it also came with a host of unspoken rules. To stay in a studio apartment and live out of a suitcase and a drawer would have been completely unacceptable for any reason other than a charitable cause, and even that was bordering the line of decency.

  Something those people in my upper-class circle didn’t know, however, was that I was infinitely more comfortable in Tabby’s one-room rental than I was in my enormous estate. I was raised in humble surroundings, and I found quaint lifestyles much more inclusive than grandeur. While I couldn’t say I didn’t like a lot of the perks wealth brought me, much of what I possessed was for the sake of appearances. Being in Chicago with Tabby allowed me to set aside that part of my life and just be myself.

  And be myself, I did.

  The night of my arrival had been a night sent straight from the heavens. I finally knew the definition of beauty… Tabby’s face as she dove into subspace and lost herself at my hand. And I knew what a joy it was to bring her back and see the light resurface in her eyes as I cuddled her against my chest and told her without words what she meant to me. We’d had several more nights like that one since, along with nights more akin to those we’d shared prior to my revealing the depths of my kinky nature. I still had a raging erection in her presence more often than not even though I was well beyond sexually fulfilled, but my constant state of arousal no longer felt like a burden or an annoyance. In fact, it was more like experiencing endless light foreplay — exciting, riddled with anticipation, and delicious to feel.

  Tabby smiled all the time, the glow brightening in her cheeks. I’d met her friend Heather, and the two of us had gotten along well, causing Tabby to practically float on air. But who wouldn’t like her best friend, who was about as outgoing a person as they made them and very opinionated, but with the kindest of hearts behind it. When we met up with the vocal best friend for drinks a couple days later, Heather and I had ended up in a good-natured but intense argument about the meaning behind a rather vague text she’d received from her latest man-friend. Again, Tabby had seemed over the moon. I eventually discovered I was the first boyfriend Heather actually liked, and Tabby had such a special place in her heart for her friend that to see me treating Heather well was as touching to her as when I treated her well.

  Christmas was only a week away, and I was helping Tabby decorate a small tree in the corner of her apartment when my phone rang. “Sorry, just a sec,” I apologized, snatching the device from my pocket. Howie’s name was lit on the screen.

>   “This is bad, Owen,” he said as soon as I answered. “You need to get down here.”

  “What happened?” I asked, wrinkling my brow. I couldn’t imagine what catastrophe could’ve happened in Howie’s world to make him sound so panicked.

  “There’s a story out about The Club. It’s all over the tabloids.”

  I had to have misheard him. It was impossible, completely impossible, for the tabloids to have so much as a blurb about The Club. Even putting the NDAs aside, everyone associated with The Club had too much to lose if its secrets got out. I tried to focus on my breathing, because, even though I could feel my lungs expanding and contracting in my chest, I couldn’t get any oxygen.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “What kind of a story?”

  He cleared his throat, then recited, “’Hooking for the Homeless: New Orleans’ Elite Covers Prostitution Ring with Charity.’ It’s out, Owen. All of it. Names and everything.”

  My mouth was as dry as the Sahara as I rasped, “How?”

  “The article cites an anonymous source, but…” I heard him swallow hard, “a lot of the members are assuming it was Tabby.”

  My eyebrows shot up so fast my forehead hurt. “That’s ridiculous!” I barked.

  “She’s the only person who’s been there in a long, long time that has never participated in an auction,” he explained. He almost sounded apologetic, but I could also hear a note of accusation embedded within his words. “She’s the only one who wouldn’t have anything to lose by going to the press.”

  “She signed the confidentiality agreement,” I hissed, gripping my phone so tightly I was in danger of crushing it into pieces.

  “You know as well as I do the papers and magazines and broadcast interviewers will pay her a hell of a lot more than a lawsuit would cost her,” Howie pointed out. “Like I said, she doesn’t have other cards on the table. She doesn’t have to worry about losing a career or a reputation for her inclusion in The Club like the rest of us.”