“It’s about trust, right? I need it to be somebody I trust. And if I trust him, you know you can.”
He was straddling her, naked, virile, his cock still huge and rigid, his hand still clutching her leather cuffs. That they were having this negotiation now struck Tasha as beyond surreal. Then his free hand went to her torso, his sandpaper fingers lightly caressing the arch of her ribs and then moving down her belly. “Trust me, Tash. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never hurt you.”
She didn’t believe that at all. To love a man of the Night Horde was to know hurt.
Staring up into his eyes, she put her arms over her head and wrapped her hands around the bedpost.
He smiled—not a cocky grin, but something compassionate. Reassuring. “My girl,” he murmured. Then he leaned forward and loosened her hands from the post, setting the draperies out of the way. He wrapped one cuff around a wrist and closed it with the Velcro closure. As he worked, his chest loomed over her face, scant inches from her mouth. She lifted her head and kissed his firm, muscled flesh at the point where his pectorals met. He drew in a sharp breath at the touch of her lips, bringing his chest tighter to her mouth. She could feel his heartbeat.
Pulling her arms fully and firmly straight, he hooked the links of the cuffs around the post and then wrapped her other wrist and leaned back on his heels.
She was bound. To the bed. Trapped.
Her pulse was throbbing, making her ears pound, and she couldn’t moderate her breathing at all. She knew she was shaking, and she couldn’t control that, either.
“Take it easy, baby. Trust me.” Len leaned over again and stroked her arms, from her bound wrists down to her shoulders. Then he stroked her shoulders and chest, his hands light and loving. He moved over her breasts, still cupped in her lace bra, and he paused to tease her nipples to tautness with light swirls and pinches of his fingers, over the lace.
The combination of adrenaline and arousal was almost at the limit of what she could withstand, and she moaned, the sound coming out in a small, quavering voice. He lifted his eyes from her breasts to her face.
“You are beautiful. Do you know that? Do you see how beautiful you are? Is that why you don’t have mirrors? Because you know you don’t need them?”
She did have a mirror—a small, round, standing mirror that she used to put makeup on or to pluck her brows, or to check the lines of her hair when she coiled it up for work. She put it away when she was done with those tasks. She didn’t have mirrors hanging around the house because she hated her own vanity. She hated catching herself looking at herself like there was something worthwhile in a fucking reflection of her face. So she’d done away with mirrors.
All that was too much to say in this moment, while Len plucked at her breasts and her back arched in tempo with his fingers. She could tell that he liked that, the way she arched as he drew up on her sensitive skin. His eyes sparkled, and his smile had a little hint of smug. Tasha didn’t put much stock in looks, but she could certainly appreciate them, and the truth was that Len was gorgeous. His smile was…transformative. As if his shell of badass SAA, capable of killing a man barehanded and sleeping easy that night, opened when he smiled, and a loving, intelligent, goodhearted man shone through.
His fingers left her breasts, and she whimpered at the loss, but they traced over her belly, past her navel, under the lace of her thong, and then he was running lines and circles over the skin that made all of the muscles between her legs dance. She squirmed, trying to lift her hips, make herself open to him, but he was still straddling her, and she couldn’t move enough. Jerking in frustration, she pulled up hard against the restraints on her wrists, and she gasped. She’d forgotten that she was bound.
His smile grew wide, and she knew that he understood. He’d calmed her. She wasn’t afraid. No—not afraid. But definitely in need. “Len, enough play.”
“No, baby. I say when it’s enough.” He got up from the bed, and she had a tiny moment of fear that he would leave her after all. But he only went to the nightstand and brought out the box of condoms. His brand, now. No more color-coded cock. She’d found it pretty adorable how offended he’d been by those.
When he closed the drawer and turned back to the bed, though, he had more than a condom. He had a long strip of blue silk, too.
He came back onto the bed and straddled her as he had been. Holding up the silk, he said, “Trust me.”
After three deep, slow breaths to reclaim her calm, she nodded and let him blindfold her.
And then there was nothing left for her but to wait to find out what he would do with her trust.
First, he stretched out over her and kissed her, deeply but not roughly this time. When he had her panting and moaning again, he left her mouth and trailed kisses down her neck, pausing at the base of her throat to suck and bite, then over her shoulder and chest to take a lacy breast into his mouth. Her nipples were still stiff from his previous attentions, and he bit down, making her cry out in surprise and pleasure.
Everything—every touch, every sound, every movement of his body on hers—was heightened by her inability to predict or participate. Cocooned in black stillness, she could only feel him. Hear him. Need him. Every muscle in her body vibrated with the need for release and with the anticipation of his next touch.
His mouth moved from her breasts down her ribs and belly, and his hand grabbed her thong and pulled down, taking the fabric from her hips. She had room to move her lower body now, and she did so, lifting her hips to help him rid her of the lace. As her hips were up, she felt his mouth on her bare clit—just lightly, just a quick, tickling lick of his tongue over that nub of electric sensation. She cried out again, her body jerking in response to the intensity of that tiny, monumental touch.
Then he was gone, and then he was back, and she felt his arms sliding under her thighs, his hands lifting her legs over his shoulders, and oh, holy God, his mouth was back, and this time there was no light, tickling touch, this time he was all in, his tongue laving at her clit and through her folds as if she tasted of honey—no, whiskey—and his hands were on her belly, his fingers pressing into her flesh just above her pubic bone, and she couldn’t stand it. She needed to touch him. She desperately wanted to hold his head even more tightly to her to force him to stay, to never leave, to bring this pleasure forever.
“Len, oh, fuck! It’s good! It’s so good! I love you!”
Shocked, she shut her mouth. She did—she’d loved him for years, and he her—but now things were different, and things were already getting complicated enough between them without adding that dimension. She waited for him to react to what she’d exclaimed, but he didn’t. He stayed focused on his task, and after a few seconds, she regained the rhythm of her climax and headed back up.
Just as she was about to go over and become a squealing mass of orgasmic senselessness, he stopped and pulled away. She couldn’t see, but she could hear, and she knew he was rolling on the condom. When she whined and flexed in protest of his absence, she felt his hand on her, sliding over her wet core, giving her just enough to keep her panting and needing.
And then she could feel him looming over her. She could feel his breath on her face, could hear its straining grate. He pushed inside her, thrusting deep and hard.
Playtime was over—she’d been so close that all it took was his first thrust in, and on his rough slide back out, she wrapped her legs around his hips and came, her hips moving as if entirely out of her control, or anybody’s control, frantic and inelegant. He followed suit, slamming into her without any sense of pacing or control, each of his breaths a hoarse, pained grunt that sounded like it had come from his very soul.
She came until her body was spent, and so did he. When he dropped in a hot, sweaty heap onto her, she moved to hold him and strained against the cuffs once again. She’d forgotten again. She’d even forgotten that she was blindfolded.
“Babe,” she gasped. “I need you to let me go.”
His lips on her neck, he ra
sped, “Never gonna happen.”
That stilled her heart for second, and flashed the points of conflict that seemed to be constantly at war inside her since the first night Len had spent in her bed—the thrill of his words, and the fear that they were not true. And the fear that they were true. The fulfillment of mating, and the need to remember its limits.
But they weren’t talking about the same thing, and she was too exhausted now to pursue the scarier interpretation. “My arms. Release the cuffs.”
He raised onto his elbows. “Right.” As he stretched an arm up to do so, he asked, “How’d that go for you? M’I trustworthy?”
She heard the cuffs hit the floor. Her hands were loose. She pulled the blindfold off and tossed that away, too, then cupped his face in her hands. “Yes, you are.”
Bending down to brush her nose with his, he whispered, “Good. I love you, too.”
Too much, too much too much. And her fault. “Len, wait.”
“No, Doc. No analysis, no…diagnosis or whatever. Stop thinking. Fucking stop it. You, baby, think too fucking much. You ruin shit with your thinking. Seems to me you’re trying to arrange your whole fucking life all the way to the end. You say you’re open, but I don’t think you can try so hard to put everything in some kind of box and still be open to anything real.”
Furious and threatened, Tasha put her hands on his shoulders and pushed hard, trying to scoot out from under him. He held on, mastering her, his body trapping hers. She balled up a fist and punched his shoulder. “You don’t get to tell me that I’m living my life wrong. You don’t get to say anything about my life at all—certainly not when you’re still inside me!”
He flexed his hips at that—he was still moderately hard. “Seems like the perfect time. We are connected, you and me. Just you and me. Tasha, I’m okay with the group thing. Whatever you call it—”
“Polyamory. It’s not the same as just random group hookups. I don’t do random hookups.”
“—Whatever. I’m okay with it. I’m into multiples, you know that. But you want to hide in it, Doc. Don’t. Don’t hide from me. I know this is different—fuck, it’s different for me, too. I’ve been playing around since you were a kid. But we’re not kids, just figuring out what love even is. We know. So why fuck around? Why not just be glad we found it? Go with it.”
Adding real panic to the cyclone of emotions in her head, she fought more, and this time, at least, he pulled out. But he wouldn’t release her; in fact, he tightened his hold on her with every struggling wrench of her body.
“Please, Len. Let me…up.” She’d almost said “go,” but didn’t want to open the door for that exchange again. “I need to make some space.”
“No.”
“Fuck! You’re freaking me out! Why are you insisting on this now? Things were good.”
“They are good, but you’re scared of it. I’ve been feeling you moving backwards. We just started, and you’re already moving backwards. But it’s not because you don’t want this, is it? It’s because you’re afraid. Doc, you know my life. Right?”
“Yes, I know your fucking life. I grew up in that life. As you fucking well know.”
“Why would you think a man who lives a life like mine would hold back? I know what’s important, baby. When I know what I want—what I need—I don’t fuck around.”
“And when you change your mind? When you want something else? Will you fuck around then?” Her heart was really racing, and she knew she was going to have to calm down or she’d end up having some kind of event. But he wasn’t letting her go, and she couldn’t find calm this way.
“Mother of Christ, woman. I am not Isaac. That’s somebody else’s twenty-fucking-year-old fuckery you’re laying on my shoulders. He wouldn’t pull that shit now. And I never would have pulled it. I got my own fuckery to live with. If we end, it’ll be straight up. And if you’re trying to live a life that doesn’t have any endings, then baby, I don’t know what to say. Except that’s some pussy bullshit, and I know you’re stronger than that.”
She hit his shoulder, but she was regaining control of her pulse. “Fuck you.”
“I’d love to oblige, again, but I got myself a corker of a headache.”
Shit! She’d forgotten about his head. Her frightened, confused lover self stepped back, taking its fretful panic with it, and her physician self came forward. She pushed on his shoulders again, and something in her aspect must have been different, because he let her go and sat up so that she could, too. “Are you feeling nauseated now? Any stiffness in your neck or shoulders? Blurred vision or any changes at all in your vision?”
He shook his head—and winced. “Neck hurts. Head hurts. Nothin’ I can’t deal with, but I’m not in the mood to keep this fight going.”
Wanting to check his bandage, she scooted around behind him, and rose up on her knees, her hands on his strong shoulders. No seepage. Good. “We’re done fighting. You should not have exerted yourself tonight. It was beyond negligent for me to let you.”
He turned and took her chin in his hand. “I’m not a patient, Doc. Don’t talk about negligence. And I wouldn’t trade watching you come like that, nothing but your pretty mouth showing on your face, for anything.”
She smiled, charmed at his words and charged at the memory they evoked. “Okay, Romeo. I’ve got Vicodin. You get into bed, and I’ll bring you something for the pain. Then, we rest. I’m going to wake you during the night and do a quick check, okay?”
When he nodded, she left, shedding her bra and dropping it into her hamper as she went. When she came back with two pills and a glass of ice water, Len was in bed, under the covers, sitting up. Tasha was struck again by his impressive physical presence. Maybe looks mattered a little.
He took the pills and the glass and washed the dose down with a long swallow of water. Then he set the glass on the nightstand. As she turned to get into bed on the other side, he grabbed her wrist—which was a little sore—and pulled her to the side of the bed, circling her waist with his arms.
“Tell me you love me again.”
That made her self-conscious. She hadn’t worked everything—anything—through yet. She decided that flippancy was called for. “Why? Did you forget? Experiencing some amnesia, perhaps?”
He smiled. “No, baby. I just want to see your eyes when you say it.”
His expression was open and full of love and trust, and there was no longer room for flippant ripostes. He was scaring the hell out of her. But how could she resist a look like that, coming from a man like Len, a look exclusively meant for her?
She traced his smile, warm and bright, with her index finger. “I love you.”
“My girl.”
~oOo~
Tasha leaned on the glass counter in the vintage consignment shop and absently lifted a ridiculous necklace from the ceramic hand on which it was hung—a gold-plated owl pendant, almost the size of her own hand, ostentatiously beaded with multicolored rhinestones.
“D’you see anything?” Greta called across the shop from the fitting room, and Tasha got more serious at the task to which she had been assigned.
“How big?”
“Obnoxiously big. Think Queen of the Desert big!”
She looked at the tray of earrings. “Pink plastic mums? Like two inches across?”
“Perfect! Gimme gimme!” Smiling at the disaffected shopgirl, Tasha scooped up the giant clip earrings and took them to Greta’s curtain. She pulled it aside and laughed.
“Oh, my God, that’s awesome!” Greta—a beautiful, Jayne Mansfield kind of woman—was wearing a vintage 50s dress, frantically floral, with crinolines about three feet deep. Sweetheart neckline, accentuating every possible millimeter of cleavage. “You’re right. You have to have these.” She handed her the mums. “You know, though, that’s not, strictly speaking, a prom dress.”
Every Tuesday night at Jewels—a strip club not far from Tasha’s loft, and the most upscale of that kind of establishment Springfield had to offer—was
Wild Card Night. Sometimes it was Ladies’ Night, with male strippers. Sometimes, it was burlesque. Sometimes drag. This coming Tuesday was the Rainbow Prom. Springfield might be a little burg in the Bible Belt, but it was also a college town, so it flew a teeny, tiny freak flag, too. A little bit of room for people like Tasha and her friends. If they were careful.
“If it’s a dress I wear it to a prom, then it’s a prom dress, I say.”
“Good point. Kerry, how’re you doing?” Tasha rose up on her tiptoes to see over the wall between Greta’s cubby and the one next to it. Kerry, trying on the shiniest, most radioactively green pair of capri pants Tasha had ever seen, was shimmying her hips awkwardly, pushing between her legs and pouting unhappily into the mirror.
“These make my bulge shiny. I look like a mutant. I can’t get everything where I want it.”
Kerry indicated her crotch, and Tasha gave it a critical eye. She didn’t need long to assess. “Yes. That’s…noticeable.”
“Girl, of course it is. It’s a really excellent cock, as you know. S’why I’m keeping it. But it ruins the lines of these pants.”
“Another pair of Spanx?”
“Are you trying to kill me?”
Tasha shrugged. This was not a problem she personally knew how to deal with. “So…then, no electric green capris?”
“But I want them!” She stomped her kitten-heeled foot, and then lifted the same foot and brandished it at Tasha. “Look! Patent kitten heels in a size thirteen! Right here in the shop! That’s like the One Ring and the Holy Grail and Excalibur and the Perfect-Fitting Jean all rolled into one. And they just cry out for bright capris!”
Tasha shrugged again, and Kerry sighed disconsolately. “Girl, you are too pretty to be so butch. Greta! Help!”
Greta had moved out into the store to avail herself of the giant, gilt three-way mirror. She turned with a flourish, lifting the full, stiff skirt of what was obviously going to be her prom dress, and pulled Kerry’s curtain to the side. “Oh, lord, Ker. No, honey. I’m sorry. Also, your ass looks wide. Just no.”
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