chapter 37
Liv lay on her side on the mattress, showered, fed, and…depleted. Josh had kept her talking through the night, prompting her to share memories of Mom and preventing her from crawling inside herself. Eyes itchy and sore, she’d cried more than she had in seven years. If she didn’t stop, she would find herself ass-up in the prison of her own self-pity.
Mom had survived her death. She could survive Mom’s. And she would. With Josh’s hand in hers.
He’d run their dirty soup bowls downstairs two minutes earlier. Her fingers were clenched so tightly in the sheets, one would’ve thought he’d been gone for hours. Her lungs didn’t seem to suck enough air, her focus blurring on the door, awaiting his return. When had she become so f*cking needy?
The angel in the photo she’d tacked to the wall smiled down at her with eyes and hair as dark as hers. So much better than a video. She had a snapshot of her daughter’s face, forever looking back at her. Perhaps Mr. E gave it to her to cushion the murder of Mom. Or to lessen his own regret. But she knew that was bullshit.
She’d failed to nail the deal with Traquero, which earned her Mom’s death. But he’d still given the referral, which earned her Mattie’s photo. His motivation for not sending a video had to do with the fact he didn’t trust her with a tablet and access to e-mail without Van present.
That thought awoke an unwelcome feeling about Van’s departure. It wasn’t odd for him to hunt immediately upon receipt of a buyer’s specifications. But given his enraged reaction to the meeting with Traquero, why hadn’t he waited for her return and the opportunity to punish her?
What if Van had left to kill Mom himself? Was he cruel enough to not only let it happen but make it happen? Despite his violent nature, she struggled to believe he was the hand that brought down Mom’s plane, but how well did she really know him?
She and Josh had discussed going to the FBI to request an investigation into the plane crash. Hell, they wanted to divulge everything. How closely was Mr. E monitoring them? How easy was his access to Mattie? Could the authorities hunt down a masked man before that man hurt her daughter? It was too much risk.
The door clicked open, and Josh’s broad frame brimmed her horizon. Relief whooshed from her lungs. He tilted his head to the side, and his alert eyes narrowed on her fists. She uncurled her fingers.
A muscle jumped in his bare chest. “You still think I’m going to leave you?” She shook her head swiftly. No, the stubborn bastard wasn’t going anywhere. “I think I’m just feeling a little raw.” And exposed. Definitely not a feeling she was used to.
The sharp lines in his face softened. He closed the door and strode toward her, the towel around his waist hung low beneath crowded bricks of abdominal muscles.
He bent over her and planted his fists beside her hip, the mattress depressing beneath the weight of his vascular arms and upper body. Jesus, his proximity was distracting to a fault. It wasn’t just the cuts of his body, crystalline green eyes, and strong lips that demanded attention. His pursuit to please her was a perceptible aura that charged the space around him.
Looking up into the face of a man who would damn himself to protect her, she knew she’d found her sanctuary, her deliverance, her future.
He swooped in to kiss her, and she got a lungful of his nourishing scent. Clean, pure, Josh. She kissed him back, licking his mouth, tasting the familiar intimacy, and clinging to his love.
His tongue trailed fire around hers, leaving no part of her mouth untouched. It was impossible to be afraid when he was so close, so intense, that the barriers between them burned away. He moaned against her lips and kissed her with a pressing necessity, stoking a flame in her belly and coaxing a curl of something she hadn’t felt in years. Joy.
Guilt breathed through her, a foul-smelling intruder, whispering her failings. Seven years of slavery, chained by a threat, and she still lost Mom.
Her lips stretched back. Their teeth tapped. She turned her chin away, but he caught it. Then he caught her eyes.
Fingers pinching her jaw, his expression swam in contemplation. He stared at her, panting from the kiss. “What would your mom say to you right now?”
A quiver interrupted the rigid set of her chin, her lungs pumping to hold in a thousand clogged tears. She closed her eyes and saw Mom laughing, jumping into the wind, her hair whipping around her smiling face. “She’d say, use a condom.”
He huffed. “I think your mom was much more profound than that. Try again.” She opened her eyes, diving straight into his. “She used to say, what defines us is not how we fall but how we land.”
He leaned in and stroked his nose along her scar. “You’ve survived the hardest landings. You’ll survive this one.”
Was that what she’d been doing all these years? Landing? “Feels more like plummeting out of control.” Every harrowing moment was chained to the next one. What if the cycle was finally broken?
If she could find Mattie, then what? She’d never considered a future outside of the attic walls. Until Josh.
He stood and adjusted the towel at his hip, watching her. “You’re hurting, Liv. I want you to give it to me. All of your hurt.”
Her eyebrows snapped together, her chest pinching. “What?”
He studied her, rubbing his jaw, gears spinning behind his eyes. Then he turned and paced to the cabinet. The round brawn of his ass flexed beneath the towel. The muscles in his back compressed and expanded as he worked the combo lock. Clearly, he’d figured out all her lock codes were the same. He opened the door. What the hell was he doing?
With a length of chain and a flogger in hand, he returned to the mattress. “You feel like you’re plummeting? Like you don’t have any control? Then control me.” He grabbed her wrist and put the implements in her hand. “Do this on our terms. Not Traquero’s or Mr. E’s or anyone else’s.” She glanced at the flogger and chain then searched his hopeful eyes for a long moment. He wasn’t just new to sexual submission. He was new to sex. He might not have consciously known what he was asking, but it was a request voiced from a sequestered part of his identity, one she’d seen rise to the surface with the first cut of her cane. Of course, he wanted her to f*ck him. But he also wanted her to hurt him. His hard powerful body seemed to crave the rough handling, being pushed to its limits.
Letting the chain spill into her lap, she slapped the leather tips of the flogger against her palm.
He didn’t flinch, his eyes hooded and penetrating as he crouched before her. The towel separated at his thigh, the downward angle of his legs hiding what was beneath.
“You want to explore your naughty side, Josh?”
His chin tilting slightly, his cheeks sucking in with a steady inhale, he traced a knuckle over her nipple where it tightened against her t-shirt. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, a luminescent glow beneath the determined mantle of his dark eyebrows. “I want to explore everything with you.” The idea sent a tremor through her, fanning a needy blaze between her legs.
It was around three in the morning, but they were both too restless to sleep. They had nothing but time on their hands until Van returned. She could either spend the days wallowing in misery or…
She let her gaze take a leisurely stroll over the messy spikes of black hair raking away from his forehead, the stubble roughing his jaw, the vein pulsing in his thick neck, and the taut skin stretching over bulges of shoulders and biceps. His cock jerked beneath the towel as he watched her devour every gorgeous detail.
F*ck, he was a lot of man. Chiseled, powerful, perceptive, and his attention remained resolutely fixed on her. She gathered the chain and rose to stand beside him. He’d said she needed control, but he’d initiated this, and he held the power to end it. The moment he said No she would stop.
There were a few things she could regulate, however, and she would use her mastery of dominance to help him find his boundaries. Her ratty, thigh-length t-shirt didn’t exactly exude an authoritative air, but she didn’t need a costume or mask. Not with him. “You want me to have control? I’m taking it. Now.” A stillness swept over her, measuring her breaths, loosening her shoulders. “I decide the how, the intensity, the purpose, all for my pleasure.” The depressions outlining his shoulder blades twitched. His hands flattened on the mattress.
“Yes, Mistress.”
The appellation was shockingly arousing, fluttering through her belly with nipping tingles. The title had never stirred a response in her. But now, it was given willingly, on his terms. For her and no one else.
At the center of the room, she connected the chain to the latch in the ceiling. “Stand here with your back to me.”
She didn’t wait for him to obey. She returned the flogger to the cabinet and gathered a pair of cuffs and three things he would’ve never chosen.
He stood where she’d directed, arms crossed above his head. The vertical indentation down the length of his back led erotically to the rise of his firm ass peeking above the towel. His torso, wide on top, narrowed to a slim waist, its appeal punctuated with two dimples where his back met his hips. The sight alone rolled the heat between her legs into a pulsating clench.
She wanted to just stand there, relish the burgeoning rise of desire, and stare at him. So she did, taking in the carved angles of his body. The backs of his ears twitched, probably from a flexing jaw.
Oh, she knew he was squirming with impatience, but he remained where she’d told him with his back to her. Still and silent, awaiting her next order.
After another long, taunting moment, she crossed the distance and stood behind him. Not touching but close enough to let him feel the heat of her body. “Are you hard?”
“Yes, Mistress.” A rasp.
Her heart thumped. It didn’t matter how rare his innocence was, how fast he ran a football, or how respectable he behaved among his parishioners. It was the sexy, honest pain slut under it all that enthralled her now.
She placed the toys on the floor and strapped the cuffs on his wrists. Once his arms were restrained to the dangling chains, she grabbed the blindfold from the pile. “I’m going to open your eyes.” She tied it around his head and smiled, certain his imagination was running rampant. What kind of dirty thoughts were spinning through his mind?
A tremble skated down his back. She chased it with a fingertip, sliding through beads of sweat, memorizing each dip and peak of muscle. “You won’t come without permission.” He tensed, relaxed. “Yes, Mistress.”
Feeling his skin creep beneath her touch and controlling him with just her voice and the pad of her finger was intoxicating. She ran her hands down his sides, caught the towel, and dropped it to the floor. Circling him, she trailed her fingers over his warm flesh, touching him everywhere.
Everywhere except the very swollen erection jutting from between his legs. She caressed his thighs, the indentions in his hips and abs, savoring his shallow gasps.
She returned to the items on the floor and raised the rattan cane, the most advanced tool in her cabinet. It took her years to learn how to use it without splitting the skin and leaving a scar.
It whistled through the air as she swung it back.
Thwack.
The single strike of the cane’s rigid width formed two side-by-side welts on his ass with a narrow depression of skin in between. The nerve endings in that depression would be stinging like a son-of-a-bitch.
He drew gulps of air, his fingers curling around the chain above him. He was likely feeling a fire of pain spreading outward from the impact site, blazing through his legs and back.
She whacked him again, an inch above the first marks. He breathed, clutched the chain tighter.
Three more thwacks. Ten red lines striped his ass. His head dropped forward, his body shivering.
Shit, did he not know he could end this at anytime? What was the protocol for consensual beatings? “Tell me No, and we’re done.” She rubbed her eyes, nauseous with guilt. She should’ve talked this out with him before they started.
He stood taller, raised his chin. “Don’t stop.” His voice was thick with arousal.
She walked around him to see his face. The blindfold hid his eyes, but his lips were parted, his jaw slack. Between his legs was the hardest, longest cock she’d ever seen. She squeezed her thighs together and returned to his backside.
Pacing back and forth, she varied the cane strokes between hard and soft so that he wouldn’t know what to expect. “What does a future with you look like, Joshua Carter?” Thwack.
“A lot of prayers.” His ass flexed.
Thwack.
“Bible study three times a day.”
Thwack.
He lifted up on his toes, his voice hoarse. “No smoking and cussing.” Very funny. Thwack.
“Missionary position only.”
A laugh burst from her throat, and she stumbled, her swing missing him completely.
“But no sex until we’re married.”
Oh my God. Did he really just mimic her practiced deadpanned tone? She moved to stand in front of him, so she could watch his mouth. “You’re going to hell.” His lips twitched then erupted into a full-faced smile. “Oh, good. I was worried you’d be there without me.”
Her heart swelled, tightening her chest. F*ck her, but she loved this man.
Dropping to her knees, she set the cane on the floor and lowered her lips to the tip of his erection.
A gentle kiss pulled a moan from his lungs and a bead of pre-cum from his cock. She grinned. “No coming without permission.”
His head fell back on his shoulders, his thighs quivering. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Over and over again.” Gripping the root of his cock, she drew him into her mouth, the velvety skin burning against her tongue. She sucked him greedily, drinking in the flavor of salt and man. She ran a hand over his contracting muscles, squeezing the back of his thigh, careful to avoid the welts.
The throb in her p-ssy intensified, releasing moisture along her inner thighs.
When his hips started rocking, she didn’t scold him. His movements were confident, needy, stubborn in his desire to please her. Exactly how she wanted him. She ran her teeth along his cock and twisted her fist in time with the long consistent pulls of her mouth.
His breathing strangled, and his thrusts ceased. He was holding back his release. She was mesmerized. And trembling with desire.
She tormented him with a few more dragging suckles along his length and breathed around him,
“Come.”
Taking him over with a one word command was the ultimate high, exceeded only by his willingness to give her this. He groaned as he came, filling her throat, the steel of his cock jerking against her tongue, his body shaking violently. She licked him clean, humming, smiling, so damned pleased.
She rose and stepped behind him as he slumped in his restraints, catching his breath. She didn’t give him time to catch it for long. Shedding the t-shirt, she grabbed the last item on the floor, stepped into it, and cinched the straps around her waist and thighs. Next came the lube, on her fingers and the attached dildo.
She’d never enjoyed the strap-on with the boys she’d trained, which was why she’d chosen to do it now. This was Josh, and it was on their terms.
Her body thrummed as she pressed against his back and prodded his crack with the dildo.
“What are you doing?” There was no hint of alarm in his voice, only curiosity. Evidently, the butt plug had chased away his fears.
“I’m going to f*ck your ass.” She kissed his shoulder, her p-ssy slick and pulsing. “Tell me No.” He pushed against the strap-on. “I’m yours, Liv. Inside and out.” She didn’t have to see his eyes to know what was behind them. He was once a captive in her attic. Now she was the one held captive, enraptured by his unwavering trust.
She took great care stretching his tight ring with her lubricated fingers, stroking and circling the opening. She nipped at his back, and finger by finger, he loosened around her intrusion, his feet stepping farther apart, his body settling into complete submission.
Pressing the tip of the dildo against his rectum, she reached around his hips and gripped the stone-hard girth of his cock. She smiled against his back. “You’re an incredible man.”
“I’m a lucky man.” He panted and rocked against her, helping her work in the first inch. His voice choked. “When you’re done having your way with me, I get to return the pleasure.” He bucked backward. “Now quit talking and work those hips.”
She half-gasped, half-laughed, and smacked his thigh. With a few strokes up and down his erection, she teased him into a trembling frenzy. Then she thrust and held still, her pelvis flat against his ass, allowing him to adjust to the pressure.
His sigh filled the room. That was her cue. She did work those hips, driving into him, her fist jerking his cock, her other hand roaming his chest, his abs, his balls. The leather strap behind the dildo ground against her *, building her into a panting mess.
Maybe she hadn’t reached his limit, but she’d reached hers. She pulled out, untied his blindfold, and released the chain on his wrist cuffs. As she washed her hands in the sink and stepped out of the strap-on belt, she felt his eyes searing every inch of her skin. But he remained where she’d left him, waiting, watching.
“Where did this obedience come from?” She dried her hands and turned to face him.
He tapped his fingers on his chest, directly over his heart, a fire flickering in his eyes.
She nodded, her throat swelling. “I relinquish control.” Not that she’d ever fully had it.
In four swift strides, he was on her, lifting her, and slamming her back against the nearest wall.
His hand pushed between their hips, gripping his cock, and aligning their bodies.
He drove hard and true in one long stroke. They groaned in unison. She hooked her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and let him pound her into the wall. He moved in urgent thrusts, his lips finding hers. She felt the joining in every part of her body.
The wet slapping sounds of their lovemaking echoed around them, their bodies moving together as one. Guttural breaths. Heated moans. His muscles bunched around her, supporting her, his hips hammering to the tune of her heart.
The hands on her ass clenched, fingertips digging in. Their tongues swiped and slashed and curled together. Her release was climbing hard and fast. Her toes flexed. Her arms around his shoulders wobbled. Her desire knotted, double knotted, and tightened. “Josh,” she gasped into his mouth.
He released her lips, worked his hips, and cupped her jaw, staring into her eyes with an intensity that pushed her over.
The sensations lifted her up, up, up, and burst outward. The ecstasy of stimulation softened her bones, melted her body, and robbed her breathes. He continued to thrust, her p-ssy convulsing around him, her skin tingling.
Grinding his pelvis against her, his hands squeezed her ass and his smoldering gaze collided with hers. “That was so damned beautiful.”
Then he took her mouth again, gently, letting her feel his words. She kissed him with the same tender tempo, rotating her hips against him, ratcheting his already labored exhales.
A moment later, he dropped his head on the wall beside hers and thrust once, twice. A long groan vibrated his body. His arms coiled around her waist, tightening. His muscles quivered, and his cock jerked deep inside her.
The hum of contentment whispered through them. At last, she was exhausted enough to sleep, and it would be a restful sleep with him wrapped around her in a blanket of protection and love.
They showered, she treated his welts, and they lay between the sheets, chest to chest, sharing breaths. Their legs entwined, and his toes caressed her ankle. She felt him with her entire body, every nerve ending reaching for him.
Through the absence of light, she found his eyes. “You freed me.” His fingers stroked down her back and rested in the crack of her butt. “Then we’ll tackle the next few days knowing we’re already free.”
The strong beat of his heart against her breast filled her with hope, something she’d never depended on until that moment. “We need to find Mattie.”
“We will.”
She drifted to sleep with a heart full of trust in those two words.