In our daily lives, Neil and I were equals. In our roles as Dom and sub, I was his property, glad to fulfill his every command. The body under my hands was not mine. The pleasure I felt was his. The sensual torture he inflicted on me was an expression of our love and trust for each other.
I squirmed and gasped toward the next orgasm that wouldn’t happen. Disobeying him was not an option; it wasn’t my decision to make.
The walk to the den was painfully arousing. My clit throbbed, and every step I took threatened to tip me over the edge. I stopped once and braced myself against the wall, desperate to fulfill what seemed like an impossible command from my Sir.
When I entered the den, a fire burned in the natural stone fireplace, and a thick duvet covered the floor in front of the hearth. A few throw pillows were scattered about. Neil stood before the fire, staring down at the flames and toying with the diamond-studded collar in his hands.
“Sir?” I asked, and he pointed to the floor beside him.
I knelt obediently, my eyes cast down, as he closed the platinum circle around my neck. The latch clicked, and the heavy weight settled around my throat.
He pulled his sweater over his head and let it fall to the floor beside me. Then, he turned, the fly of his jeans at my eye-level, and reached for his zipper.
Neil is the largest guy I’ve ever been with. The largest I’ve ever seen, really. When he pulled himself free and pushed the broad head of his cock over my lips, I had to open wide to take it in. With a gentle hand, he pressed on the back of my head until he went so deep he triggered my gag reflex. I breathed through it and opened my throat, swaying obediently as he slowly entered and withdrew. Sucking when I could, I focused on my breathing and the feeling of his pulse fluttering against my tongue.
“Very good, Sophie.” The praise sent a new wave of lust through me. My thighs were coated with cool wetness, and every brush of my breasts against the hair on his thighs sent electric darts through my body.
He pulled free of my mouth and reached down to hook a finger under my chin and tilt my face up. “Would you like me to fuck you?”
I nodded, my breath frozen in my chest. “Yes. Oh, yes, please, Sir.”
“What do you say?”
“Please fuck me, Sir.”
“More.”
“Please fuck me, Sir. Please fill me up with your big cock and fuck me until I come.” I shifted on my knees, pressing my thighs together hard. “Please.”
He nodded. “Go lie down. Spread your legs and play with your clit. I want you to edge one final time.”
“No!” The cry burst from my lips before I could stop myself.
His crooked smile was one of dark, amused intent. “Did you just refuse a command?”
I froze, my hopes crashing to the ground. I would be punished now. I had been so close to coming, to having him inside me.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “And if I find you’ve moved a single muscle when I return, you won’t come tonight.”
He would do it, too. As our Dom/sub relationship had progressed, our limits had broadened. Neil felt more comfortable inflicting punishments on me, as I had proven I could take it.
Of course, all I had to do was use the safeword, and he wouldn’t be my Sir, but my fiancé. And my fiancé would be more than happy to get me off to ease my discomfort. But, more often than not, I found the consequences just tolerable enough that I would accept them to get the treat at the end. Denial was an easy enough torture to withstand when you knew how great it was going to feel when it was over.
So, I didn’t move. He left the room and returned with our wireless wand-style vibrator. My heart rate skyrocketed.
“Since you wanted to come so badly,” he began, parting my legs to settle between them. “I thought I’d let you come.”
He pulled a length of rope and a small set of bandage scissors from his back pocket. He placed the scissors on the edge of the hearth, within reach, and leaned over me to tie my wrists, my hands clasped together between my breasts.
He turned the vibrator on, and my clit jumped eagerly, despite my knowledge of what he would do. Neil wasn’t going to punish by withholding orgasms. The orgasms were going to be my punishment. Endless, oversensitive, muscle-cramping punishments.
“I won’t gag you this time.” He stroked his fingers down my cheek. The touch was at once tender and a mockery of tenderness. He got a sadistic kick out of tormenting me with pleasure.
When the head of the wand touched my clit, my hips lifted off the duvet. I had gotten so close so many times, my body was eager to complete the journey. He brought me back the way I’d already been until my hips bucked and I writhed, moaning. Just when I thought that the idea of coming too many times wasn’t so bad, he flicked the switch off.
Damn it! He’d tricked me!
I wailed my frustration, my nails digging into the rope that bound my wrists. “I’m sorry, Sir! I’m sorry!”
“I’m sure you are.” He brought the wand back to my clit, teasing me to the first flutters of release again, then pulling it away.
“You said I could come, Sir!” I babbled through my tears, desperately moving my hips against the vibrator until he could only keep it pressed against me for a heartbeat, I was so close.
“Should you have disobeyed me?” he asked, clicking the switch again, killing the vibration and my orgasm in one fell swoop.
“No, Sir!” I shook my head. My mouth was dry from panting. My thighs ached from constant tension. The fire warmed my skin, but I still shivered, caught up in desperation and agony.
“You’ve been disobedient,” he continued, reaching up to catch a tear at the corner of my eye with his thumb. He brought it to his lips and sucked the salty drop from it. “Disobedient girls get what’s coming to them.”
Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
“Do you know why I didn’t gag you?” He pushed the head of the vibrator against me once more, parting my labia around it, reaching above the slick black silicone ball to hold the hood of my clit back. “Because I love the way you scream.”
He clicked the switch again, and the vibrations buzzed over the exposed, raw tip of my clitoris. There was an unpleasant, sharp point to the sensation, and I rose, straining, and broke with a shout. My entire body bucked, and the noises that wrenched from my throat were half scream, half animalistic groan. He circled the head of the vibrator, and I twisted, but his hand clutching at my thigh reminded me that I wasn’t allowed to move away. His command was the only restraint I truly needed. The rope merely intensified my desire.
After that, orgasms came in an endless circle, until one bled into the other. No matter how much I screamed and begged, I never used the safeword. Not when I was sobbing and too limp to move. Not when it seemed like the pleasure would never end, that I would be trapped in this state of need and dread forever. I reached another searing peak and swore through my sobs, and he pulled the vibrator mercifully away.
“If my count is correct,” he said, tossing the wand aside, “that was sixteen. If you disobey me again tonight, it will be twenty.
He reached for the rope that bound my hands and deftly untied the knot. “Do you need anything before we continue?”
“Drink,” I managed through parched lips and a throat sore from shouting. I motioned toward the wine bottle and glasses on the coffee table. He poured me some, and I sipped it gratefully.
When I was finished and the glass put carefully aside, he slid his jeans and boxer briefs down. “I have been waiting for this all day,” he said, settling between my legs as I lay back.
My heart pounded. This was the moment that would make me complete. When he was inside me, when I could return some of the pleasure and peace he’d just given me. I spread my legs wider as he found my cunt and thrust forward, stretching my swollen tissue and raking along my painfully sensitive g-spot.
His breath tickled my ear, and he moaned a long “mmm” of satisfaction as he filled me. The sound reverberated right to my core. H
e stroked in and out of me slowly while I wept and clung to him, whimpering, “I love you, I love you,” over and over.
“Come, Sophie,” he ordered me, and I slipped my hand between our bodies. It wasn’t torture now, but pure pleasure. I strove for my climax, wanting it, wanting him, becoming someone other than myself, someone who existed solely for my Sir. My orgasm wasn’t a pain now. It was like coming home. I cried out, lost in the beauty of it.
His steady, easy pace slowed. He breathed hard above me, and I watched, fascinated, as struggle twisted his face into a rictus of concentration. He lost the battle, pumping into me furiously, and came with a groan, his cock buried so deep in me that its twitches and jerks made shocks of pain against my cervix.
Breathing heavily, he pressed his forehead against mine to recover. I smoothed my palms down his back, danced my fingertips over his shoulder blades and down the flexed muscles of his arms. He slipped from me and rolled to his side. “Do you need anything?”
I shook my head with a lazy smile.
“Would you like to take your collar off?”
Another shake of my head. “I want to wear it just a little longer, Sir.”
He drew me into his arms, curving his body protectively around mine. I flattened my palms against his chest and looked up for a kiss.
“So,” he said when he lifted his mouth from mine, “tell me about your day.”
* * * *
Having a morning off is all well and good, if you don’t have a suddenly fitness obsessed, recently retired fiancé who longs for togetherness at inconvenient hours.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” Neil called cheerfully as he flicked on the lights. I hated, hated that I had ever used that phrase in front of him. Although, it wasn’t as poor a choice as telling him about the “rise and shine and give God your glory, glory!” bible camp song. Having a tone-deaf Englishman sing that at you before dawn is probably what actual hell is like.
“Why?” I let the word draw out in a long, frustrated groan into my pillow. “I was going to sleep in.”
“I thought you might like to run with me. You never run with me anymore.” If the observation had sounded petulant, I would have been miffed, but he was right; at the beginning of our relationship, a brisk Saturday morning run through Central Park had been part of our routine.
But it wasn’t the season for outdoor running, and since Central Park was two hours away, I doubted it was in the cards for today. “I hate the treadmill. And you’re so competitive.”
“I promise, I won’t look at your settings,” he vowed. “It’s going to be a lovely, snowy day. Why not get up, have a jog, then I’ll make us breakfast, and we can spend all day by the fire, just the two of us.”
The bed was so warm. And so lovely. But so was Neil. I had been working a lot lately, and he hadn’t complained one bit, even when I’d spent nights in the city. He’d bought me this sprawling, ocean-view mansion because I hadn’t wanted to be trapped in Manhattan, and I kept abandoning him—and it—to run back to our old apartment. If all he demanded in return was the occasional workout companionship, I supposed I couldn’t begrudge him that.
“Okay.” I stretched and forced myself to sit up. “I’m in. Give me ten to brush my teeth and get dressed.”
I stumbled to the dressing room. I was nearly at the door when the phone rang, and I paused. “Who would be calling us this early?”
“I’ll answer it. You should get changed,” he advised with a smirk as he reached for the cordless handset. “Tight yoga pants, maybe. And that pink sports bra you’re always complaining doesn’t have enough support.”
“Perv.” I laughed and left him to deal with whoever was calling at—I checked the time on one of Neil’s dinner-plate-sized watches and groaned—seven in the freaking morning.
When Neil and I had first started dating, my closet situation had involved a pipe my landlord had expressly warned us not to hang stuff on. I’d had a lot less space back then, and a lot less clothing. One of the perks of being engaged to a billionaire—and there were, well, billions of perks—was the ridiculous amount of clothing a fashion-obsessed girl could buy, and the lavish space to hang it in. The dressing room in the master bedroom was bigger than some Manhattan boutiques I’d been in, with similar features. The overhead lighting was bright, but soft, and twin trifold mirrors on either side of the room cut back on our “getting ready” arguments.
I loved my fiancé, but he was vain as hell and a total mirror hog. And there was only room for one of those per closet.
Down the center of the room were two huge, glass-topped consoles to hold his watches and cufflinks and my jewelry, except for my diamond collar, which stayed locked in a safe. Our shoes were lined up neatly on a wall of custom shelves, and I plucked my sneakers from the bottom row. I grabbed the yoga pants Neil had suggested—my ass is pretty fantastic, and giving him a treat wouldn’t hurt—but passed up the weak sports bra for something with a little less jiggle. I don’t have the biggest rack in the world, but unsecured boobs are no fun on a treadmill.
I dressed, tied my shoes, pulled my hair up in a ponytail and headed back out to the bedroom. Since he wasn’t talking anymore, I figured he was off the phone.
“Who was it?” I asked.
Neil was on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his hands over his face. It wasn’t until he sat up and I saw how red and wet his eyes were that I realized he was crying. He hiccupped back a breath, and his face crumpled as he said, “My mum’s died.”
CHAPTER TWO
We flew to London that evening.
Emma and Michael joined us in our private jet, despite Neil’s protest that his daughter was far too pregnant to travel.
“Daddy, I’m going. Besides the second trimester is the perfect time to travel, it says so on all the websites,” she’d pleaded. “Please, I can’t miss Gran’s funeral. I’ll never feel right about it.”
Michael had even dared to challenge his father-in-law, something he’d rarely done in the past. “Sorry, Mr. Elwood, but I’m afraid I have to overrule you on this one. We can either come with you, or I can get us on a commercial flight, where the pilot isn’t from the charter company you’ve carefully selected based on safety rating.”
Neil might have been tough in the boardroom, but he was nothing when up against the only man who loved Emma as much as he did.
“How are you doing, Daddy?” she asked as she returned to her seat across the aisle from him. She’d been drinking ginger ale on the flight to battle nausea, and she swirled the ice in her glass. Her nose was stuffy from the occasional cry she’d been having. Between motion sickness and grief, she looked thoroughly miserable.
“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.” Neil tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “As well as the Valium tells me I am.”
I took his hand and squeezed it.
We landed at Heathrow at seven A.M. local time, where the car service picked us up to drive us to our house in Belgravia. We hadn’t been to London in a long time, over a year for me. Neil had flown back for business once, but I wondered if the house would feel weird to me now.
When we arrived, though, it was just like coming home. Neil staggered through the door—I wasn’t sure how much Valium he’d taken, but he’d been pretty out of it since we’d landed—and I had to practically hold him up.
“Whoa,” Michael said, catching Neil as I slumped under his weight.
“Yeah, um, Daddy doesn’t take grief well,” Emma said, loud enough to be heard over our struggle to keep Neil from weaving into the wall. “Let’s get him upstairs.”
The three of us steered him into the elevator and miraculously got him into the bedroom. Michael helped him to the bed, where Neil sprawled across the duvet.
“Make sure he sleeps on his side,” Michael advised grimly.
“You guys go ahead. I’ve got him from here,” I assured them, though Emma still looked worried. Her gaze darted to her father one last time before she closed
the door.
When they’d left the room, I sat beside Neil on the bed and stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You’re not just on Valium.”
His eyebrows rose, but his eyes didn’t open, and he slurred from the corner of his mouth, “No, I’m not.”
A feeling of foreboding prickled over my skin. When he’d been going through chemotherapy, Neil had struggled with suicidal thoughts. The PTSD that lingered after his agonizing stay in isolation in the intensive care unit was always a threat in the back of my mind; I wondered if I should call an ambulance. “Neil, what did you take?”
“Holli gave me some special candy.”
Holli! I would so kick her ass when I saw her next. Not that it was her fault. We hadn’t seen her since before his mother passed, so she would have given him the weed candy during a happier time. I just wanted to direct my anger somewhere. “How much Valium did you take?”
“Four milligrams,” he mumbled into the duvet.
“Not more than that?” When he didn’t answer, I snapped, “Neil! Did you take anything else?”
He shook his head then let out an exhausted sigh. “I had some scotch on the plane.”
Because Neil had gone through chemo in London, I still had his general practitioner’s emergency number in my phone. I sighed and hit “call” on the screen.
Dr. Hearn was a physician I’d only spoken to twice during Neil’s treatment, but he seemed warm and affable. He also made bank with Neil as a private patient, so I wasn’t worried about calling too early.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Dr. Hearn, this is Sophie Scaife, calling about Neil Elwood.”
“Oh dear, he isn’t having trouble again, is he?” The man’s voice—I imagined him as a kind, older gentleman with sympathetic eyes, since I’d never seen him in person—was tinged with alarm.
“Not the leukemia, no.” I chewed my thumbnail. “His mom died—”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Dr. Hearn interjected into my slight pause.
“Thank you. Um, he…took some…drugs. And now I’m concerned.” Was Neil going to get arrested? Would he get in trouble?
The Ex Page 2