by Hill, Joey W
“Not a problem.” Noah’s voice was muffled as his mouth brushed her inner thigh, a gentle reassurance. His fingers slid down her calf, more calming caresses.
Unless this was a hard limit for her, it was obvious Ben was going to proceed with it, but he was giving her time. Plus an unexpected reassurance. “I wouldn’t allow anyone to touch you whom I didn’t trust,” he said, his fingers tightening on the back of her neck.
“I know.” It was just so much, so fast. But she could handle it. She leaned her face into his hand, wished he would keep touching her. But Ben was a ruthless Master, she knew that. As soon as he could tell she was ready, he settled back in his chair, picking up his wine. Ready for the show he’d orchestrated.
“Proceed, Noah. Three minutes.”
It took everything she had not to whip her legs out from behind the chair legs and close them, but Noah helped. He settled his grip on her quivering thighs, steadying and holding them open at once, and then he went right to the heart of the matter. She sucked in a breath, biting down on her lip. Holy God…the tongue stud vibrated. He played over her pussy lips with it, letting her get used to the feel of it, tickling her a little so she had to work hard not to squirm, and then he brought it right to her clit.
She sucked in a breath. He knew his business, working it against her in tiny movements that had her already aroused body rocketing up a ramp, set to take off and explode. She saw Ben’s attention on her exposed breasts, the way they were vibrating with that compressed movement. She couldn’t move, couldn’t move, but oh God, she wanted to rise up, grind her pussy in Noah’s face, throw her head back against the chair. But her Master didn’t tell her she could come. Three minutes, three minutes.
Three minutes was an eternity when she couldn’t count the seconds. Ben had a watch but it was under the cuff of his sleeve. She had no doubt he was counting it down in his head like a freaking NASA computer.
I serve my Master, I serve him, I serve you…
She didn’t realize she was whispering it until she saw Ben’s eyes darken, his mouth tighten. She was fighting with all she had against the orgasm. Noah was incredibly insistent. It was a battle of mind over matter. She imagined her clit encased in stone, all those sensations ricocheting against the inside, unable to be released, so she was imprisoned in this frenzy of need. Her fingernails cut into the chair, her thighs shaking under Noah’s hands so that the chair made staccato noises on the metal balcony floor.
“I serve you…please, Master…let me come for you…”
Ben set down his wine, picked up his fork, took a bite of the salad, chewed. He necessarily took his eyes from her for the moment he had to do that, but then he studied her with a detachment that was anything but. His whole focus was on her, a heated intensity coming from him that vibrated against her body like that tongue stud. He continued to eat the salad, obviously considering the taste and texture as he monitored her reactions. The Knights were the only men in the world she knew who could multi-task, and they did it as if Lucifer himself had given them the ability.
She was whimpering, her whole body making tiny little jerks. Her nipples were so hard she could feel the way they stabbed the inside of her bra, constricting the barbell piercings so they added to the sensation.
Noah got creative, doing swirls and flicks, kneading the inside of her thighs, his thumbs tracing the crease of her buttocks beneath her pussy. It was too much…she couldn’t hold on, yes she could. She would. She fiercely concentrated on all those masturbating fantasies, where she’d made herself wait longer and longer, until Ben’s imagined command to release.
Ben slid the fork from his lips. His mouth was glistening from the oil of the salad, and she wanted to suck on that. Instead, he shifted forward. Plucking the blouse away from her body, he eased the fork into the bra cup, brought it over the nipple and pressed down, caging it behind those tines. She couldn’t hold on any more. Fuck…
“Come for me, Marcie. Come now.”
She would have screamed to raise the dead throughout New Orleans, she trusted him that much, wanted to surrender to him that much, but as she opened her mouth to do so, Ben covered it with his. He dropped the fork, cupped her head in one hand, his tight hold making her keep her position, bound by his will. She screamed into his mouth, shuddering, convulsing as Noah kept working her, holding her open with those surprisingly strong hands. Involuntary reaction took over and she struggled against their combined hold like a wild animal.
She came down in fits and starts, pleading nonsense in Ben’s mouth, which he answered with unintelligible rumbles of response. Noah cleaned her up with strong licks of his now non-vibrating tongue, and then she felt the gentle pat of the wine towel he’d had. When he came back up, as graceful as he’d gone down, his hair was a tad rumpled and his face was flushed. He was also sporting a nice erection behind his slacks that didn’t seem to discomfit him in the slightest. He nodded to her, turned his attention to Ben. “I failed, sir. My apologies.”
Ben palmed some money from his coat, handed it over. “I wouldn’t call it a failure. My compliments on your perseverance. Tell the maître d’ others can be seated up here now.”
Marcie was too dazed to do more than watch Noah go, but when she looked toward Ben, she somehow found her voice. “How…did I do?”
“Six minutes, twelve seconds. You’re still a slut.”
“But I proved I’m your slut, didn’t I?” Her voice had a rasp from the strain to her vocal cords.
“Time to eat your salad,” he said in quiet reproof, but he didn’t deny it. Picking up his fork, he fed her. She needed that, because she was sure she wasn’t steady enough to coordinate eating utensils. Her swollen folds were pressed against the wood, sending aftershocks rippling through her.
She wished she could stay mindless. As rationality returned, she was thinking of the seamless choreography of that scene. He’d done this before. Brought another woman here, maybe had her perform the same way for him.
She stopped chewing, pulled her face away, ostensibly to get a drink of wine. He reached to steady the glass for her, but she shook her head. “I can do it.” She took it in about three swallows, but when she reached for the bottle to refill it, he moved it away.
“Enough,” he said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“How did I do against the others?”
Why did she say that aloud? She couldn’t be petulant and jealous. He wasn’t a monk. For heaven’s sake, she’d seen him fuck three women less than two weeks ago. It wasn’t that. It was that he’d done to her something he’d done before, like she was some kind of mimeograph.
“Never mind. Sorry. Mentor-sub thing, no commitment. Forgot.” She tried to keep the acid out of her tone, but of course she was unsuccessful. She was going to screw this up so badly if she couldn’t sit on her mouth. Hell, she’d held out six minutes against Noah’s tongue. It shouldn’t be harder to sit on her emotional reactions than her physical ones, right?
“Noah is a regular at Progeny. He has a couple Mistresses who favor him, but he doesn’t belong exclusively to any of them yet. Occasionally he’s assisted me with a session there. This is the first time I’ve asked him to help me outside those walls, in this particular way, though I have come here for dinner before.”
“Oh.” She nodded. Picking up the napkin, she tried a quick dab at her eyes, to take care of the stress tears from the climax. She probably looked a sight.
“Marcie, did I tell you that you could remove your hands from the chair?”
Fuck, he hadn’t. She’d been so dazed by the past few minutes, she’d just blanked on it. Setting aside the napkin, she returned her hands to the chair. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“I’ll let it pass, but only because you’re still disoriented. I like it. Flushed and dazed, nipples still hard, and I can smell your cunt. Just the way I want you.” He took his own napkin, dipped it in water as she’d done for his fingers. While she trembled from an entirely different reaction this time, he dabbe
d at her mascara. He stroked the cloth over her cheeks, the corners of her mouth. Even swiped at her nose, teasing her as she started to giggle and tried to squirm away from him. Then he lifted one of her hands from the chair, tucked the napkin into it so she could do that part for herself.
“Now that we’ve handled the appetizer course,” he said, “eat the rest of your salad. You can lift both hands.”
She had to get back on her game, but she remained unsettled, hyperaware that she was still exposed, open to him as he desired. In fact, as he was eating his salad, he settled his other hand on her thigh, stroking it up high. Her pussy was as attentive to him as if she hadn’t just come. He was going to have her ready again in no time.
“Why anal sex?” she asked, just as the maître d’ topped the stairs with another couple. Marcie bit her lip, but fortunately, it didn’t seem they’d been paying attention. So she decided not to be deterred, particularly when the maître d’ seated them at the other end of the balcony. “I’ve always wanted to ask. Will you tell me?”
Finishing his salad, Ben leaned back, picked up his wine. She continued to eat, giving him time, but his silence was encouraging. Usually he said no right off if he had no intention of answering a question.
“Most women have had sex by the time they reach legal age,” he said at last, “at least in the usual ways. A lot still haven’t had anal sex. Or, if they have, the guy had no clue what he was doing, so it left the woman feeling pretty neutral or, worse, it hurt like hell. She’s nervous about that region for that or a variety of other reasons, unaware of what a pleasure zone it can be.”
“There’s also a lot of emotional reaction trapped in that area,” Marcie observed. When Ben gave her a look, she shrugged. “Penetration would unlock it. I’m guessing that’s a big draw for you.”
“Really? How so?”
She ignored the trace of sarcasm as he invited her to tell her about himself. Wiping her lips delicately, she raised her gaze to his. “Getting a submissive to trust you, make herself vulnerable that way, challenges your ability as a Dom, and you like a challenge.”
He flashed her that feral smile, a baring of teeth. “Actually, the main perk is not giving her a chance to claim I knocked her up.”
“Yes. Having a little Ben running around is a scary thought.” She considered him. “You want her to trust you, but you don’t trust her. Doing it face-to-face makes it more emotionally naked for both participants. With the anal, you’re stripping her down, taking her to a more vulnerable place, but you’re staying removed. Untouched.”
His expression flickered. “A fair point. But it’s a conscious decision. I’m not looking to be touched.”
She knew it was an attempt to tease, but the edge to his voice made his play on words a mockery, a warning to back off. She should leave it there, but she wasn’t one of his club subs, or some trainee groupie so overwhelmed by him she’d be driven away by that formidable exterior. Be who you are. Jon’s voice was in her ears, giving her enough courage to really fuck this up.
“When my brothers and sisters were little, you acted like a clown with them, wrestling, playing games. Matt and all of you took us to carnivals, ren faires, things like that. They loved it. But in your own life, you don’t really go for relaxed fun, do you? I mean, you go out with the K&A guys, drink, do the male-bonding thing, but have you ever gone to a carnival and held your girlfriend’s hand? You seem really focused on your career, the next goal, the next project. You play hard, but you don’t play fun.”
He raised a brow. “Is this based on your burgeoning career as my stalker?”
“You’re not denying it.”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend, Marcie.”
Noah returned then to top off their wine, give them the status on their dinners. His hair was smoothed once again, his lips no longer glistening with her juices, but it was impossible not to remember what he’d been doing to her during the appetizer course. He gave her a slow smile when their eyes met, but he deferred to Ben on whether they required anything else at the moment, not asking her preferences. He knew how this game was played as well, and it was as distracting as all the rest of it.
But she wouldn’t be distracted from this. No girlfriend. Thirty-two and he’d never sought a long-term relationship with anyone but the men with whom he worked. Even the women with whom the society column paired him for short durations were superficial, brief hook-ups with physical benefits for them both.
His mother had abandoned him in an alley outside a church when he was three, old enough to remember her. After that, he’d been in and out of foster-care situations, most of them bad, as if he’d been born with an unlucky star over his head. Before he hit puberty, he was on the street. It was then that star finally changed. He’d picked Jonas Kensington’s pocket and gotten caught in the act by Matt’s savvy father.
Even though things got better for him after that, his childhood hadn’t been the kind where he kissed the pretty girl in his third grade class by the monkey bars, or hoped someone would ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance in middle school.
She cocked her head, making sure her face didn’t reflect the compassion she felt toward that boy. The man before her didn’t need pity, not like that. He’d overcome, made something of himself, yet it had come at a cost. The cost was the wall she kept hitting, she knew that. She didn’t have a psychology degree, only her intuition and her determination that she could love him like no one else—if he would just let her.
“I’ll be your girlfriend then,” she said lightly. “You can take me to a carnival. We can share a broken coin necklace, pass notes during work. I’ll even take you to prom. If you promise to put out. Won’t be worth my time otherwise.”
Crossing his arms to lean on the table, he considered her at an intimate distance. The curve of those lips, the warmth that entered his gaze, eased some of her trepidation that she was treading dangerous waters. “What kind of notes would you pass me at work? Ones with Xs and Os, a lipstick mark pressed to the paper?”
She gave him an arch look. He hadn’t let her bring her wallet, but she’d balked at not bringing some toiletries. Fishing her lipstick out of her small bag, she freshened her lips, cognizant of the way he watched the soft give of her mouth against the color. Then she pressed it to one of the extra napkins Noah had left by the bread basket. Pulling out a pen, she put a couple Xs and Os around it with a flourish and pushed it over to him. “There. We’ll have to do the coin thing another time.” She paused. “Do you still have the collar you took off me?”
“Do you want it back?”
“Yes, but only if you’re putting it on me.” She raised her chin.
“Not our agreement.” His impassive expression returned and he sat back to sip his wine once more.
She pressed her moist lips together. She couldn’t make this dinner about that. So she looked over the potted plants to gaze at the mural painted on the building across the street. It was of a trio of black musicians, blue and white dogs dancing around them. As whimsical as it was, her eye was caught by something much closer, on the rail, screened by the fern. “Ben, look.”
He leaned forward. She started to rise to shift out of his view, but his firm touch on her elbow kept her sitting, reminding her of her exposed state from the waist down. Instead, he stood to look over her shoulder as she twisted around for a better view.
It was a pair of bright green salamanders. They’d been mating, or perhaps still were, because their lower bodies were connected. The much larger male was curled around the female in a tranquil, resting state, limbs and tails twined. Their tiny pulses rose and fell in their throats, and they seemed somnolent, relaxed.
“It’s like they’re spooning,” Marcie said, keeping her tone quiet, not wanting to startle them. “Aren’t they lovely?”
“Only you would notice that.”
“No. You would have too. I was just blocking your view of them.” She was aware of his chest pressed against her shoulder blade, his lips close t
o her ear. When she turned her head, they were close to her own mouth. She glanced up. “Kiss me, Ben. Please?”
Curling her hair around her ear, he studied her face. Then he bent, teasing her mouth with his own. When she sighed into his mouth, he turned it into a warm, lazy kiss that made everything settle, his tongue briefly caressing hers. When he sat back, though, she saw his face had that closed look once more.
“Adjust your skirt,” he said. “We’ll eat our dinner, then head for the house.”
Marcie: What do you do when it becomes too much?
Ben: You take a breath, and make yourself a promise. The bastards aren’t going to win.
Phone call between Ben and Marcie during final exam week
Chapter Eight
A Master stayed in control, particularly with a new sub, one experiencing that wild vacillation of emotional and physical reactions for the first time. He was entirely responsible for her well-being while under his dominance. Yet Marcie had a way of taking him off guard. He shouldn’t have given her that kiss. It was too intimate and personal, contradicting what he’d said only a few minutes earlier, that he was merely her mentor. Contradictions, inconsistencies. They would lead to real problems in an actual, intense session.
It wasn’t the first time he’d told himself that, but it didn’t seem to help much this time either. As they walked the few blocks to his place, she kept stopping to peer through the iron fences at the alley gardens, the hidden treasure trove of the Garden District. The gardens were as diverse as the people who lived there. One narrow space might look like a miniature English garden, right out of the pages of a home magazine; another was a chaotic design of homemade wire sculpture, English ivy and an old wooden chair painted to look like a cat’s grinning face. Marcie was a sensual creature who noticed things like that, took pleasure in them. Like she had the salamanders.
Her attention to detail would make her an excellent corporate investigator. Hell, no “would” about it. She apparently knew his life up one side and down the other. It was outrageous. He’d noted her decision not to follow up on his statement that he hadn’t ever had a girlfriend, which meant she knew why. She wasn’t the type to hesitate over asking a question if she didn’t know the answer, no matter how inappropriate the asking was. Yeah, he bet she was doing a bang-up job freelancing for Steve Pickard, impressing his veteran investigators.