His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (25 page)

We get into the elevator and Colin pushes the “P” at the very top of the thirty-button panel.

“Sorry about that,” Colin says as the elevator doors close. “They get all riled up around this time of year because it’s CMA season. And I own the building, along with a few of my friends, so they know there’s going to be at least a few celebs coming in and out of here.”

My eyes widen. Colin owns this building? Well, that would explain him getting the penthouse. Though, why did I have a feeling that “a few of his friends” probably included some other well-known singers who could also be found on a Top 40 country chart?

It’s a real quiet elevator ride to the top floor.

The doors slide open on a long shiny hallway, black on one side and red on the other, with a set of floor-to-ceiling white double doors at the end of it.

Colin punches a few numbers into a discreet keypad, and then opens one of the white doors for me like a regular gentleman. However, I don’t feel any gentility in his eyes as he watches me walk in pass him. Just coyote heat.

I tense when the door clicks shut behind us, but he doesn’t make a move toward me, just puts my bag down on the front room’s white wraparound couch.

“Take a look around while I put this in the fridge,” he says, as he walks past me into the kitchen. I only get a brief glimpse of the kitchen when the door opens and swings shut behind him, but it’s enough to let me see all the glimmering appliances, with space leftover for my grandma to put out two Sunday Dinners if she wanted.

With Colin out of sight, I take in the outer room, which I guess is supposed to be a living room if the large couch is to be believed. But it feels more like a spaceship. And not like a Star Trek spaceship for regular people—but a spaceship for rich folks. Everything’s either white, red, or black. And everything but the white couch and red chairs shines. I can’t even tell what the red and black walls are made of. Plastic maybe, but when I touch the one closest to me, it’s cool and reserved beneath my fingertips, like marble, or some other material I’ve never come in contact with before.

Curiosity drives me toward the hallway. I open doors. Find a shiny office, a few shiny guest bedrooms, a shiny screening room. I finally roll up on some non-manmade materials when I open the door to a music room. It has wood walls, cork floors, one entire wall covered in electric guitars, and another one in acoustic.

I linger in the doorway, wanting to stay, wanting to take one of the guitars off the wall. But I decide to keep on going to the set of red double doors at the end of the hallway. They’re not as tall as the one’s on the outside of the penthouse, but they’re even more imposing because of their color. And what might be lurking behind them.

I throw them open with a deep breath… that I let out when I see it’s not a sex room filled with whips and chains, like I’d heard about.

It’s a bedroom. An extremely large and shiny bedroom. More like a huge studio apartment than a bedroom. There’s one area filled with a California King covered in black-and-red satin sheets and another area with a whole suite of furniture, including a couch, coffee table, and shiny black chairs—basically another living room. On the other side of the bed is a small gym. There’s a treadmill and a bunch of weights, so big and bulky, I get a crick in my back just looking at them. The fourth area is set up for entertainment. Colin’s entertainment alone, I’m guessing. With several video game consoles, one of those round back video game chairs, and a screen so huge, it probably makes you feel like you’re actually inside the game when you play first person shooters.

“Not what you were expecting, huh, Blue?”

I turn. Colin’s in the doorway now. Watching me take in his bedroom.

“No, not at all,” I answer truthfully. “I figured there’d be a dungeon. Maybe some whips and chains.”

“Whips and chains,” Colin repeats, walking further into the room. “I’ll have to tell Ginny to put that on the next shopping list.”

He comes to a stop in front of me. Looks me up and down. But he doesn’t touch me. Just stands there, taking me in with a lazy blue stare.

“Are you trying to make me nervous?” I ask him straight up. Because if he is, it’s working. I can barely breathe for wondering what’s going to happen next.

Colin seems to consider my question. “I can’t say I don’t like seeing you nervous. Especially after the two weeks you just put me through. Let me tell you, Blue, you did a real good job of forcing my hand.”

He still hasn’t touched me, but I can feel it coming. Talking to Colin in this moment is like talking to a cobra. Doesn’t matter if it hasn’t struck you, you know sooner or later you’re going to feel its fangs.

“I wasn’t trying to put you through anything. And I know you’re not going to believe this, but I wasn’t trying to force your hand on the girlfriend-boyfriend thing either,” I tell him. “I was just…” I trail off, not knowing how to explain. I look down.

“You were scared.”

The words are so dead on I almost believe I said them. But it’s Colin’s voice, deep and husky in my ears. Not my own.

I peep up at him and nod.

“You’re scared of me.”

I nod again. But then I admit, “Also of myself. You’ve been at this awhile, but I didn’t know—I didn’t know I had that in me.”

Colin doesn’t answer this time. Just stands there looming over me, so long, I begin to wonder if he’s ever going to talk again.

But then he eventually says, “I’ve been trying to decide about some things…”

That’s when he finally touches me. He slides his fingers into my blue curls, and I can feel his hand settle around the side of my face.

“What to forgive. What to punish…”

My heart stops beating, as his hand slides around the back of my neck, his thumb coming to a rest underneath my bottom lip. He’s not hurting me, but his hold is strong. Binding like a rope, tying me to him.

“How to punish…” Colin’s voice seems almost whimsical, but there’s nothing lazy about the way he’s looking at me now. Intent, like a cobra ready to strike. “Feels like I spent near every minute of these last few weeks thinking about how I was going to make you pay...”

My entire body tenses and I can feel myself pulling away from him, even if I can’t physically do so with his hand around the back of my neck, keeping me there.

“So what exactly did you decide to forgive then?” I ask him. “Because it sounds to me like you’re only about the punishment.”

His grip tightens around the back of my neck for a second, before going completely slack.

“I decided to forgive you for being scared, and I’m close to forgiving you for running—which, trust me, Blue, for a guy with a dad who abandoned him and his mother is a big deal. But no, I’m not going to punish you for trying to call things off with me.”

“Why not?” I ask, honestly curious. As much time as we’d spent on the phone, sometimes I still didn’t think I was anywhere close to understanding how Colin’s mind worked.

“For a few reasons. One being that I’m not all bastard. The world of doms and subs can be… formal. The focus is on communicating boundaries and needs, and if you get deep enough into a relationship, there’re contracts to sign, rituals, and whatnot. ”

A dark jealousy shadows over me as I wonder if he’s ever gotten into a relationship that deep.

He reads my mind. “I’ve never let it get that far. Never been satisfied enough to commit to anybody like that. Most of my relationships ended with my subs getting frustrated because I refused to talk about us in future tense. They left. I let them. It never even occurred to me to try to stop them. But you…” he tilts his head to study me through narrowed blue eyes. “With you it’s different.”

“I didn’t want to be formal with you,” he tells me. “So I didn’t lay down enough ground rules. Didn’t communicate the way I would have if we’d been in a normal dom/sub relationship.”

I feel compelled to remind him, “I’m not a sub. I’ll never be your sub.”

The shadow of a smile steals over Colin’s lips. “I know that, Blue, and I meant what I said before about not really wanting one.”

I remember our last conversation on this subject out loud. “You want me to fight you.”

Colin nods like I’m a good student who’s given him the right answer. “I want you to fight me. But here’s what you’ve got to understand from now on, Blue. It’s okay to fight me. It’s all right to be scared. It’s even all right to run—especially if we’re in the bedroom. But shutting me out? Not talking to me? That I won’t abide. And that’s why I’ll be punishing you for at least the next twenty-four hours.”

Despite the menace in his voice, a sharp thrill of anticipation runs down my back. For the first time since our reunion, I feel the awkwardness sliding off of me, replaced by a dark desire.

A dark desire that literally moves me. Without any warning whatsoever, I spin away from his hand and run. Run faster than I’ve ever run before.

I’ll never know if I truly got past Colin, or if he was just toying with me like predators sometimes do with their prey, but I make it all the way back to the front room before he grabs me from behind, his arms coming around me like steel bands as he drags me back down the hallway into his bedroom.

He throws me on the bed, ignoring my writhing and my hands shoving at his immovable body as he sets to removing my clothes. This morning I hadn’t known I’d be reunited with Colin and I’ve inadvertently made it ridiculously easy for him. The snaps on my cowgirl shirt come apart with little more than a jerk of his hands, and there’s even a front clasp on my bra.

Next come my pants, black pleather shaped like jogging pants. The elastic waist means Colin has no trouble getting them off me, despite my bucking hips. The only thing that might have been a little difficult for him are my panties.

But those he leaves on. An ominous sign for sure of the torture to come. And I can already feel the crotch of them clinging to my swollen pussy lips, already wet with heat.

Colin’s hand settles there, a knowing smile playing over his lips. “I see my pussy missed me.”

A shadow crosses over his face. “Tell me you didn’t share my pussy with anybody else while we were apart. Tell me you stuck to our agreement and didn’t touch yourself.”

My face heats with embarrassment. Not because I didn’t stick to our agreement, but because I did. I don’t want to confess to him how I didn’t touch myself or anyone else, even though I was sure we were over.

“My job keeps me busy,” I say to him. “I didn’t have time for… any of that.”

A smug smile spreads across Colin’s too-handsome face. “Good,” he says. “I stuck to our agreement, too.”

I don’t know whether to be touched or stunned that he was that sure I’d come back to his bed, just like he commanded.

I don’t have too much time to ponder, though, because a second later, I feel the now familiar pressure of his knee in my chest as he ties ropes around both of my wrists. These ropes are different than the ones at the cabin. Silkier, not as rough, and I find myself thinking back to what he said before about more formal dom/sub agreements.

As if flipping to the same mental page, Colin says, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to revisit our agreement, Blue.”

He climbs off the bed and I watch from my bound position as he strips off his black Western jacket, letting it fall to the floor, before he begins unsnapping his own shirt.

“Before these last few weeks, I might have been satisfied with owning your pussy. But now…”

He finishes with his shirt and strips out of the rest of his clothes with an impressive efficiency that doesn’t match his slow drawl.

Then he’s on top of me. One hand automatically manacling my wrists together above my head, as if he doesn’t trust the ropes to do their job. Or like he just really, really wants to hold me down.

“But now,” he finishes, “I’m going to need everything from you. Your entire body belongs to me now.”

He pushes into me, hard and thick.

And I groan, forgetting to fight for a little bit, unable to act like I hadn’t missed this. The weight of him on top of me and between my legs, filling me up so I can’t possibly think about anything but him.

Colin lets out a groan of his own, like being back inside of me is hurting him somehow.

“Fuck, you feel good, Blue. I keep on waiting for you not to be this wet when I put myself inside of you, but that day hasn’t happened yet.”

His words make me feel overly desperate, like an addict too high on lust to fight what he’s doing to me. I rally, bucking under his body, making him work to keep me beneath him.

He uses his superior weight to keep my struggling body pinned to the bed, and it doesn’t even sound like he’s breaking a sweat when he says, “This pussy belongs to me. These legs. This stomach. And these especially…” He brings one large hand up to caress my right breast, pinching it’s distended nipple between his thumb and index finger so hard, it causes an arc of pain to shoot through me… straight down to my core.

He ignores my whimpers and keeps on taking his lazy inventory.

“This neck, these arms, this blue hair. These beautiful brown eyes of yours, and this smart mouth…”

His blue eyes darken with lust as he raises his hand from my breast and runs a thumb over my lips. “It definitely belongs to me now. I reserve the right to close it however and whenever I want. That’s the new agreement. Let me hear you agree.”

Is he out of his mind? My whole body!? There’s no telling what he’d make me do.

“No,” I tell him, flat out. “I’m not going to agree to that.”

His expression doesn’t change, but somehow his body becomes heavier on top of mine. “It’s been awhile, Blue, and I can feel how hot you are for my dick. You really going to turn this into an argument?”

My body, which is on fire and begging for release after so many pent up weeks, is asking the same question. But I shake my head mutinously, refusing to give in.

“Fine,” Colin says, his voice turning mean. “We’re done here then.”

In one abrupt move, he pulls out of me, then raises up on his knees, fisting his manhood above me. Before I can even work up the mental words to wonder what he’s doing, he comes with a harsh yell, spraying across the bottom of my stomach and the top of my core. Effectively ending both the conversation and the sex.