I wondered what Noah's family lineage looked like but was afraid to ask. He'd probably take it wrong and as a sign that we shouldn't be together. God only knew what was cycling through his mind right now as he looked at the gold-tinted silverware and the fancy plates. But tonight was bound to be a circus, and hopefully that would put to rest any thoughts of inferiority he had.
As the evening wore on, though, Lana’s earlier advice to be more assertive took root. Maybe I could make Noah feel more secure, but not in the way Lana had thought. I’d be assertive in my own way.
Noah
THIS HOUSE LOOKED LIKE A friggin’ palace. I knew I was going to hate this place just from the exterior. Having only seen about a quarter of the house, if you could call it a house and not a mini hotel, everything had confirmed my initial feelings that this was a bad place. Every big house I'd ever been in—which was all of two, Bo’s and Grace’s—was filled with nice shit and unhappy people.
Grace's mom looked half dead. She'd warned me, but I don't think I was fully prepared. She wore some long, filmy thing that Grace swore was not a nightgown, but I wasn't really convinced. Grace's aunt, Sarah, spent the whole dinner criticizing Lana. Heck, if I stepped wrong it was somehow Lana's fault.
"I see that you are still taking those psychology courses," Sarah said. "Has it done anything to help your own psychosis?"
Nothing like having your momma call you crazy at the dinner table to make the meal taste like sawdust. Lana picked at her meal, and that brought about another wave of criticism. "Do you need to go back to the clinic and learn how to eat?"
No one mentioned Grace or even looked at her. She might as well have been invisible. Her uncle Louis talked to me, and that was about it.
"Josh tells us that you'll be on a pay per view match this New Year's Eve."
"Yes, sir," I said, holding back the urge to salute. "My second."
"Who's your opponent?"
"It's Fred 'Granite' Marquita."
"And why's he 'Granite’?” Uncle Louis asked. Bo would've said it's because Fred is dumber than a caveman and just as unwieldy. Privately, we call him Flintstone.
"He's a hard hitter. His jaw is like granite."
Grace made a worried sound beside me. I knew that she was afraid I’d get hurt. MMA was a bloody sport, and everyone, even the winner, walked away with injuries. I’d told her that few people got seriously injured and then joked that if I did break something that it’d put me out of the game. She didn’t think that was very funny.
The fighting was just a means to an end. It was a way to make big money in a short time, legally, and then I’d pour those funds into buying and selling franchises and then leveraging those assets into something bigger. Something big enough that I could buy a house like this. Except we wouldn't eat in a room like this. I'd want a room with a ton of windows that overlooked the lake and the table would be round and filled with our kids and Grace's gorgeous face.
In my vision, Grace would be smiling too, instead of staring at her plate.
"You going to win, then?"
"Yes, sir." I had to win. Winning was the only option. What I didn't tell anyone but Bo was that I wasn't sure if I could win. Flintstone had years of experience on me. I had only one professional fight under my belt. I'd won dozens of gym matches, but I'd only fought on a pay per view card once. I just got signed a few months ago. My small rise had been called meteoric, and I knew that Flintstone was aching to take me down a notch or five. But I had to win. I had to. In a fight, the person who wants it most wins. The person who is the hungriest wins. It isn't always the one with the harder jaw or the most experience. And I knew that Flintstone would never want this win like I did.
We finished the meal in near silence, broken only by the clatter of the forks against the plates. I didn't even know what I was eating. I think it was fish, but it had a ton of sauce and was far too rich in flavor. I abstained from eating it, explaining to Louis that I had a strict dietary regimen to follow. This was a mistake.
"I wish you would have said something about your guest's eating habits," Sarah sniped to Lana.
Grace had had enough of this and interjected, "It's no big deal. Noah can get something from the kitchen later."
"If you think that the staff works at your pleasure, Grace, you are sorely mistaken. We eat together, even if we aren't all family, isn't that right, Deborah?” Sarah was amazing in her ability to hit more than one target with her insults. “Grace, you aren't a true member of this family, and your mother is a wastrel.” Grace nibbled on the corner of her lip and opened her mouth to say something more but Lana, shook her head from across the table, and Grace sat back.
"I'm fine," I said and shoveled a big piece of glazed, sauced fish into my mouth. I washed it down with a big gulp of water and then wiped my mouth.
"You are a big boy," Sarah said, eying me. It sounded vaguely like a come on, and if we were anywhere but here at the table, I would've pegged that as an invitation, but surely not. I looked uncertainly to Uncle Louis who had checked out by checking his cellphone.
I was afraid to look at Grace and Lana. We finished the dinner in awkward silence, and then the three of us escaped to the rec room in the basement. The basement of the house had actual rooms; it wasn’t just a dirt hole people hid in from twisters. This basement had a wine cellar, a movie theater, a pool table and a couple of pinball machines.
Neither Lana nor Grace played with any of the toys, so they must be for Josh. We ended up watching a movie, and then Grace took me up to her bedroom. It was pink and white, just like I thought it would be.
The bed was high off the ground and there was a painted white desk with a mirror on top of it and a white dresser. A long mirror sat in the corner, also white. The carpet, however, was a deep, shocking pink.
I blinked a couple of times, and Grace laughed sheepishly. “I liked pink when I was twelve, what can I say?”
“It suits you,” I replied. The dresser table held a picture of me when I was deployed. Bo must’ve taken it. I was seated on my ass with my shitty-ass squad automatic—that got jammed up with the dust-like sand that was over in Iraq and had to be disassembled in the middle of a firefight to clean out—slung across my lap. I’m not sure what Grace saw, but I looked tired.
“You look bad ass,” Grace said, stroking her hand up and down my back in a way that might’ve been comforting but instead, like anything she did, just made my dick hard.
“Yeah? I was probably half asleep,” I joked.
“You always look deliciously edible. Even Aunt Sarah thought so,” Grace teased. She left me to pat the wide expanse of her bed in invitation.
"So that wasn't just me?" I wandered around Grace's room. I felt like Pigpen, dragging in a bunch of dirt with me. I finished my circuit and sat down on the edge of Grace's bed. It was soft. Kicking off my shoes I laid back on it and looked up at the ceiling. There was some plaster trim around her light fixture. A chandelier. Who had chandeliers in their bedrooms? This was crazy.
“No, Lana and I both thought it was creepy and weird.”
The light was blocked, and I turned to see Grace standing by the side of the bed. “You shouldn’t sleep alone tonight.” Her look was mischievous. While I didn’t think Aunt Sarah would make me a midnight visit, I was willing to use any excuse that would allow me to be with Grace. “Let’s go to your room.” She held out her hand.
I got up, picked up my shoes, and allowed her to lead me across the way from the family wing to the guest wing. There were wings in this house. Chandeliers in the bedrooms. I liked none of this. I felt like my world was spinning completely out of control.
Inside the bedroom suite, Grace locked the door and walked to the middle of the room and dropped to her knees, splaying her hands palm up on her thighs and her head down.
"What are you doing?" I asked. Was she praying? Was this a yoga pose? Did she want me to do yoga with her? Man I remember the last time I saw her do yoga. After about twenty minutes of the yoga ses
sion Grace had talked me into attending, I had to get up and leave. When Grace came out, I left the intramural basketball players I’d been shooting the shit with and came over and laid a deep, wet one on her.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked.
I had snorted. “I kept watching you do those different positions, like the down doggy one.”
“Downward-facing dog,” she’d corrected.
“Yeah, whatever. I couldn’t stop thinking of the other day when I was taking you from behind, and my wood got so hard that I thought I was going to drill a hole in the mat. So I left before I embarrassed myself and you.”
She had blushed and laughed a little self-consciously as we walked out of the rec center. “I think those two soccer players play on the other team,” I’d mused.
“Why’s that?”
“Because they didn’t sport wood the entire time.”
“Not getting an erection is a sign of sexual preference?”
“No way a straight guy makes it through yoga without springing at least one hard on. I watched them for ten minutes and it was totally dead downstairs for them.”
“Why, Noah Jackson. So interested in someone else’s package.” She’d swung my hand a little.
“It was for science. And I was trying to get my own junk to stand down.”
Later, I’d suggested we do some naked yoga.
“I thought you didn’t like it,” Grace had replied.
“Hell no, I loved it. I just can’t do it in public. And I don’t like that there are men in there that can stare at your ass in those different positions.” I’d thrown her on the bed.
“Try to put it out of your mind.” Grace had run a hand down over my hair.
“Why don’t you convince me?” I’d pushed my head into her hand like a dog wanting more petting.
“What position did you like?” she’d said throatily.
“More like what position didn’t I like.”
I shook myself from the reverie when Grace spoke again from her position on the floor.
"I thought that since you felt like you were out of control out there, that in here, you could be in charge."
I was pretty sure that I was either dreaming or that Grace had lost her mind. I stood dumbly by the door as she waited patiently, still kneeling, still with her head bowed. The image of her so quiet, so, um, submissive, was turning me on. We’d played before, but it had never been so overt. I wanted to be clear about what Grace was offering.
"Grace, I don't know what you're talking about."
Exasperation was clear in her voice. "Yes, you do, Noah, but if I have to explain this to you, there's no point in me being down here."
My throat got very thick, and I found myself having a difficult time breathing. "You want me to be in control?" I choked out.
"Yes, and I think you want to be in control," she said, head still down, her position unchanged. How could she remain like this for so long without moving? I marveled at her discipline. And then the thought of me behind her, bending her over, shot through my mind like a lightning bolt, and I almost fell to my knees.
"Like you—" I was afraid to say it.
"I won't move until you tell me to. I won't do anything that you don't tell me to do inside this room."
God, my mind was reeling with the gift that Grace was offering me. I didn't even know that this was something I wanted, but seeing her in this position was making me harder than I'd ever been my entire life. And I was a little ashamed, but whether I was ashamed that I'd just discovered I was a perverse deviant or whether it was because Grace, of all people, guessed I would like this more than anything, I just didn't know.
I walked over to her and looked down at her bowed neck. The delicate skin was particularly pale there, and I ran my fingers across it. She shivered in response. I stroked down the side of her neck, feeling for her pulse. It was throbbing wildly.
Why Grace was doing this was partially answered. It turned her on. Hell, it turned us both on.
"Do you like it when I tell you what to do?" I asked hoarsely. She nodded, but when she didn’t respond verbally, I commanded, "Tell me."
"Yes, Noah, in the bedroom."
The addition of "in the bedroom" made it clear that if I were to be in control, it would be here only—and because she allowed it. I got it.
"Since when?" I asked. I'd been Grace's first. Her only. It was a gift that I'd never thought I'd have the privilege of receiving, and in truth, I didn't deserve it. I'd left her alone for two years while I tried to find myself. It was a miracle that I'd come back to her and found her not only untouched but still in love with me.
"Since always." I thought back to our previous encounters. They were exciting and full of physical rawness and yeah, I might have told her a few times to bite me or to take off her shirt or to ride me harder, but I'd never in a million years extrapolated that I might like to be in control at all times. I’d spanked her lightly the other night, but liking a few swats on the ass didn’t mean a girl liked being dominated in the bedroom.
"Undress," I said, testing her, not sure what either of us would like. When she started to stand, I said, "Wait." She returned to her knees. I went over to turn on the lamp next to the bed, and I switched off the overhead light. I sat down in the chair in front of the fireplace, the same one we had sat in that afternoon. I turned it so it faced the bed and not the fireplace. "Okay, now."
She stood in one easy movement in front of me. I could tell she was nervous by the way she shifted her balance slightly and hesitated when removing her clothes. I wondered what I could do to make it easier for her, and then I remembered. My being in control turned her on.
"Start with your shirt. Go slow." It was the right thing to say. She pulled the hem of her blouse up and over her head. Underneath, she wore a baby-blue, lace-and-satin bra. I decided she would keep it on for now. "The skirt now."
She'd shucked her tights earlier, when we were in her room, and wore only a forest-green mini skirt. It was scratchy when I touched it earlier. One little zip release, and it fell to the ground. She stood in front of me in her panties and bra, and there was hardly a more beautiful sight.
"Come here," I gestured toward my lap. When she sat down, I positioned her away from my aching dick. I wasn't ready for a touch of her hand yet. "Spread your legs."
I slid one hand up her thigh and felt the wetness soaking through her panties. "How long have you been wet?" I asked, rubbing the cloth against her center.
"Since I knelt on the ground."
I slipped a finger underneath the cotton and felt the tender flesh of her folds, the stiff nub of her clit, and the wetness of her pussy. It took an enormous amount of self-control to not flip her onto the ground and press my face between her legs until I'd lapped up all of her arousal.
Instead, I dug the fingers of one hand into the side of the chair while I allowed myself to pleasure her with my hand. I slid two fingers inside her and was rewarded by the hot sleeve of her squeezing me tight. I couldn't wait until I was seated fully between her legs. But she'd started this game, and I wanted to see how long I could spool it out.
While my long fingers thrust inside her in a slow and lazy rhythm, my thumb strummed across her clit. I brought my other hand up to turn her face to mine. "Kiss me," I demanded.
Her open mouth met mine. The wet, sweet suck of her mouth on my tongue matched the pull of her cunt. I allowed this for a few seconds and then I thrust my tongue into her mouth, licking her teeth and lips. We ate at each other as if we hadn't been fed in a month. Or as if we hadn't had sex for an age, when in truth, we'd fucked each other blind just the night before.
Sex turned virginal Grace into an animal, and sometimes I wondered if all the exercise, training, and workouts I did were just so that I could keep up and pleasure her in bed.
Her hips rose to meet the thrusts of my hands. "You have to tell me I can come," she panted out. I almost quit moving. I owned her orgasms? She wasn't allowed to come unless I told he
r she could? This made me nearly want to cry with the pleasure of it. And it made me want to see how long she could hold it in.
"Then you can't come," I told her. "Not until I tell you to."
I didn't want her to come on my hand, but in my mouth or around my cock. I hadn't decided yet. "We've just begun," I whispered against her mouth. I felt her lips curve up and her pussy tighten hard around my fingers.
"Just a little one?" she begged prettily. I didn't know much about this game, but I guessed I shouldn't be giving in. Anything worth having took work, and anticipation was only going to make this better.
"No." I pulled my fingers from the wet grip of her body. Wiping my fingers on my t-shirt, I unhooked the front clasp of her pretty bra. "I wouldn't want to rip this," I lied. I actually loved ripping Grace's underwear off, but I realized after about the fourth time that it wasn't very frugal of me.
Grace struggled with the satin straps, her arms behind her, pushing her breasts out in lush invitation. “Turn around,” I ordered. Grace did as I bid without hesitation. The satin dangling off her shoulders gave me another idea. I grabbed the satin and wound it around her hands, tying her wrists together at the small of her back. She’d easily be able to escape the tie if she wanted to, but the way she held her arms back told me she wouldn’t.
Hands on her hips, I moved her to face me again. She looked amazing standing there, completely unashamed of her body in the lamplight. And she shouldn’t be ashamed, because her body was gorgeous. I loved every curve, every valley. Her plump breasts dangled in front of me, the heavy weight of them unimpeded by any straps or wires.
Sliding a hand between her legs, I tested her arousal. Wet, very wet. My fingers were coated with her honey, and I brought them to my mouth and licked off every drop. The action brought forth a whimper, and Grace swayed toward me. I kept one hand tight on her hip to stay her motion.
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