She pants out a breath and does as I command, her palms flattening in front of her, and I notice her nails, a simple gloss, not manicured and fake. I don’t think she’s fake. Just guarded. I cup her face and lean around her. “Don’t move,” I murmur against her lips, kissing her, a slow lick of tongue against tongue before I release her, standing and removing a condom from my wallet. I tear it open, making sure she hears it, that she knows she doesn’t have to think. I’m protecting her. I shove the package back into my pocket and unzip my pants, rolling the condom over my painfully thick erection, but I leave my pants on, removing the ease of slipping inside her, that is tempting, but now is not that time.
I go down on a knee beside her, my hand on her lower back and slender belly. “Elbows on the stool,” I order, and the moment she complies, I lift her hips, placing her on all fours, my hand on her lower back, my lips pressing between her shoulder blades. She arches forward, and I reach under her, teasing one of her nipples, my hand sliding to her backside. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
“Spank me,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say, squeezing her backside. “I’m going to spank you, but I won’t hurt you.”
“What fun is that?”
There is that challenge again, and I caress her shoulder blades with one hand, while the other pinches her nipple, tugging it roughly. She arches forward while her backside lifts into the air just as I expect. I immediately give her nipple another tug, moving my other hand down to her backside and over it, stopping right above her sex. I give her a slight smack there, not meant to cause any pain, just pleasure. I earn a gasp and can hear her breathing now.
“What’s your tolerance level, Faith?”
“I don’t know.”
But she does know. No one plays in this world, and leaves it, without knowing her limits. She just doesn’t want to give them to me. That answer, the knife, the lack of sexual limits. They fit a pattern, that says hard limit. One night. I get nothing else, not even all of her tonight, but there is another layer to this. The layer that screams abuse. I lift her and move her to the stool, placing her hands on my knees.
“Tolerance level, Faith. I’m not—”
“I don’t know,” she hisses. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know, Nick. That’s an honest answer. I don’t know what worked for me. I don’t know what felt like too much because of who I was with and what was too much because it hit the wrong buttons for me. All I know is that I wanted this tonight. And I want you to put me back on my knees and finish what you started for once.”
There she goes. Pushing me. Challenging me, but I don’t let anyone push me. I study her, search her face, and she says, “That is as honest as I have been with anyone in a very long time, Nick. I need—”
I pull her to my lap, straddling me, my hand at her face. “I know what you need,” I say, kissing her, tasting that need, tasting what I’ve wanted to taste on her lips every time I’ve kissed her. Honesty. Hunger. Need. But it’s real now. She’s real, at least one part of her wall has crumbled. “And I’m going to give it to you.”
I stand up with her, carrying her to the couch where I sit down next to the arm, with her still on top of me, those gorgeous legs of hers spread across me. Her hands press to my shoulders, and I fill my hands with her breasts, my thumbs stroking her nipples, my head lowering, tongue lapping at one stiff peak and then another. “Please tell me why you still have clothes on,” she whispers, sounding desperate, breathless, and I like her breathless.
“I’d be inside you already otherwise,” I say.
“What’s wrong with you being inside me?”
My hands settle at her waist. “It’s not time,” I say, my gaze raking over her body, her long blonde hair draping her shoulders, touching the tops of her high, full breasts. Her plump, tight nipples are rosy red. “On your knees beside me and then lay across my lap, Faith.”
I WANT HIM TO SPANK me. I want to feel his hand on my backside. I want that sting and shock that leaves no room for anything else. No worry. No loss. No death. No guilt. And no room for the way Nick makes me feel too much. The way Nick sees too much. The way he seems to peel back layers I don’t want peeled back. The way he exposes me emotionally. I just want him to fuck me. I just want this to be what it was supposed to be. Nameless, empty sex.
I move to bend over his lap, but he catches my hips, his gaze probing mine, penetrating, and I want to look away, but I have learned that will only make him look harder, dig deeper. So I meet his stare, and I mask my emotions that I can’t even name. His eyes narrow on me, a flicker of something I also cannot name in their depths. His hands fall away from me, a silent offer of freedom and that free will he vowed to pull from me. And he has it. I want this and him. Of that, I cannot even begin to deny, nor did I intend to when I invited him here.
And so, I take that free will and settle my knees on the couch facing his legs. But nothing with Nick is just fucking, which is what I know, what I understand. He wraps his arm around my waist, tangling fingers in my hair, leading my mouth to his, and then kissing me until I think I might shatter. “I’ll warn you before I spank you,” he says. “Understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and just hearing him say “spank you” has my sex aching, and my nipples tingling. As if he realizes this, as if he can read my mind, or perhaps just my body, he leans over and licks one of the stiff peaks, swirling it with his tongue, and then sucking it deep, teeth scraping ever so slightly, the pull on my nipple like a pull on my sex.
His hands moves to my hips, mouth trailing lower, and lower, and suddenly, I don’t want that spanking as much as I want his mouth on the most intimate part of me. But he stops short, pressing his mouth to my belly and lingering there, his tongue flicking, licking, before he looks at me, and says, “Not yet, Faith. I want you across my lap, on your elbows, backside up.” There is a command to his voice that I have always resisted from others, resented even, but for reasons I cannot explain with this man, I’m aroused, vulnerable in just how much he affects me. But most striking is the moment I dare to submit, to spread my body across his, his hand on my belly and lower back. There are nerves tingling and fluttering through me, but no dread, no fear. Things I know as preludes to pain that lead to oblivion, things that perhaps, I wanted tonight, because I feel like I deserve them. But just aren’t here now and I do not why. I don’t know this man. I can’t trust this man, but my body appears to disagree.
“Ah, Faith,” he murmurs, running a hand up my spine. “How did you manage to go untouched for two years? You are too beautiful to be left untouched.” His voice is low, gravelly.
I was too damaged to be touched, I think. I needed a break. I needed something that I couldn’t have. I need something that felt as right as this man’s hands on my body. His teeth scrape my hip, his tongue following, and I’m really starting to like that combination. That tongue that I know is wicked magic, but always denies me the reward of that magic. He caresses a path to my backside, and at the same time, his other hand finds my sex, cupping it. And then he is stroking my bottom at the same time as he is stroking my clit, teasing me, touching me until I am so wet and aroused that the ache in my sex is as fierce as the ache I know will come from his palm.