DEBT (25 page)

I barely remembered the ride home or getting into the house.

But by the time we crossed the threshold to his room and he moved into his closet, already unbuttoning his shirt, I was one-hundred percent present.

"Clothes off," he demanded as he came back out, a long instrument in his hand with a leather-wrapped pole handle and an assortment of leather straps. A flogger. I kicked out of my heels and reached behind me to unzip, then peel the impossibly tight material down. "All of them," he clarified when I stood there in my barely-there thong and strapless bra. I shimmied out of my panties and unfastened my bra until I was fully naked before him. "Get over here and suck my cock," he demanded, sending a shock of desire through my system. I had gone down on him twice before. Both had been times that I had initiated, wanting to make him feel as good as he made me feel. He had let me set the pace, the depth, the everything. I had a sneaking suspicion this would not be like that.

I lowered myself down in front of him, looking up at him, waiting for instructions like I knew he wanted. "Get my cock out," he demanded, moving the flogger around toward my back, letting the ends tickle across my back, my ass, the tops of my thighs. "Open," he demanded when I had accomplished the task, pulling out his heavy, straining cock. I opened my mouth, pressing my tongue down and he grabbed his cock and slid it slightly inside, just an inch or so, before releasing the base and grabbing the back of my head. His fingers sank in then, in one rough jerk, he buried his cock deeper than I had ever taken him, the head stabbing against the back of my throat. I gagged hard, almost painfully as he held me there, tears starting to streak down my cheeks from the action. His hold lessened on my neck and his voice was barely more than a growl when he said, "You're going to hold still and I am going to fuck your mouth. Understood?" I made some kind of garbled noise around his cock, making him curse before he started thrusting his cock into my mouth over and over, the pace and depth hard, brutal. My tears flowed and my gag reflex never fully disengaged, his cock buried so deep making it hard to breathe and when I did, fluid went up my nostrils, making me gag all the more.

During this, the flogger tickled over my back and bottom, impossibly delicate against the fierceness of what was happening. My hands moved to brace on his thighs, but I didn't move to pull away. It was uncommonly barbaric, but at the same time, a part of me that was buried deep reveled in it, liked the viciousness, enjoyed being used for his pleasure. My back lost the flogger entirely for a long second before I felt it slap down across one of my ass cheeks, a quick, widespread smarting sensation that was half-pain and half-pleasure, making me let out a weird moan around his cock. Spurred by my reaction, he landed a matching blow to my other ass cheek. There was a pause before the blows became hard, frequent. They landed slightly different each time, not letting any one spot bear the brunt and hurt the flesh enough to blister.

"Okay, babe," he said, his voice soft again as he stopped thrusting wildly into my throat. "Breathe," he commanded and I took the first deep breath I had been able to since before I got his cock. I coughed hard a couple times, my throat sore from the invasion, and I noticed the stinging in my ass for the first time. His hand moved out and snagged my chin, lifting my face to look at him. His fingers moved out to rub the tears from my cheeks. "Fucking amazing," he praised and the pride bloomed across my chest. "Now are you going to be a good girl and get on all fours for me?" he asked, dropping my chin and I immediately moved to comply, ass facing him as I knew he intended. "Pink already," he observed, hands rubbing over my bottom almost lovingly, admiring his handiwork. "Care to see if we can turn that pink red?" he asked, but before I could agree or not, the flogger landed hard, sideways. Before I could even relax my back from where it had arched with the blow, it landed again, harder each time, making me whimper, moan, beg. But I wasn't sure if I was begging for him to stop or keep going.

The flogging stopped as suddenly as it started and I felt him move in behind me. His hands went to grab the flogger at each end of the pole, pressing the hard length of it around my throat and pushing it there hard enough to make my air supply get cut by half. Then and only then, he slammed inside me. He fucked me as hard as he fucked my mouth, each trust violent, each curse savage. The pole dug into my throat as my ass tipped up for him, begging for more, pleading for the release that felt tightly coiled.

Then the pole pressed in harder, completely cutting off all my air, making my head start to feel light and my face tingly. His cock continued slamming, raking over my G-spot. And just like that, no way to scream or gasp for air, I had an orgasm that made my legs and arms go liquid, made me lose control of every inch of my body as it shook and bucked. His hands dropped the flogger and grabbed me, hauling me against his chest as he kept thrusting through the already impossibly intense orgasm, dragging it out as I finally found my voice and cried out his name over and over. He buried to the root, jerked in hard, and filled me with his come as he growled out my name, his arms so tight around me that it was almost painful.

"Fucking Christ," he said a minute later, sounding breathless, still holding me too-tight but it never occurred to me to complain. "You alright?" he asked a little tentatively. "I could feel how hard you came, squeezing my cock like a vice. Hey," he said as my body just kept shuddering through the aftershocks, making my own body feel foreign and out of control to me. "Okay," he said, even more softly as he slid out of me and I could already feel his come sliding down my thigh as he reached out and slung an arm under my shoulders and knees, pulling me to his chest and taking his feet, walking me over toward the bathroom where he sat me down on the small cutout bench in the shower. He turned from me, turning the water on, testing the temperature for a long minute before moving out of the way and reaching for me.

"I'm okay," I insisted, the shudders becoming less intense trembles as he pulled my chest to his.

"I know you are," he agreed, moving me under the spray. "That was just intense. Maybe too much at once," he allowed, shrugging a little because what was done couldn't be undone and he wasn't the kind of man to regret things.

"It wasn't," I said, leaning forward and resting my head on his shoulder, burying my face in his neck. He told me aftercare was important, that I could take whatever I needed from him. So I was going to. My arms folded across his back and tightened. His slid down my back and did the same. "I think it was just the ah..."

"Asphyxiation."

"What?"

"Asphyxiation. Breath play. Makes you come harder than you knew was possible."

I felt a strange laugh build and bubble out of me. "That about covers it," I agreed, my legs still feeling weak.

He squeezed me slightly then released me, reaching up for the shower head and pulling it down, running the stream down my back then, pushing me back, my front, over my breasts, between my legs, then back up again to wet my hair. My eyes went up to his, wanting to see if I could read his face. Because everything about the way he was handling me suggested something more than what he had shown me before.

His eyes went down to find mine as well, holding my gaze for a long time and, try as I might, I couldn't interpret the depth I found there. But then he bent forward and planted a sweet, chaste, three second kiss on my mouth before putting the shower head back and pulling me close.

And it was right then that I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, I was starting to matter to him. Maybe not in the same way, the same caliber as I cared for him, but more than I had expected from him, more than he probably even thought capable.

It was that night, wrapped up in his sheets with him, that I didn't fall to sleep with a swirling of misery coursing through me.

What I felt instead was hope.

But, well, you know what they say about hope.

SIXTEEN

Prue

I expected things to change. Not overnight. Not fantastically. I wasn't naive. People didn't change. Men like Byron St. James certainly didn't change. But I had figured he might soften toward me maybe or show me a bit of the softer side I had started to realize was underneath all the cocky, bossy, douchecanoe-ishness.

Hope, the begger. A-freaking-gain.

Apparently I would never learn.

See, I was basing all of my hope on the idea that Byron embraced or even acknowledged the fact that he had softened toward me. And, well, that was apparently asking for too much.

I woke up the next morning to him already long gone. So I changed the sheets and I did the laundry. Then I brought his coffee and barely got a chin jerk. I was able to (mostly) convince myself that he was just busy. He was on the phone after all. So when two more refills were met with similar chin jerks and he hadn't even been on the phone, yeah, I started to feel the hope slowly bleed away.

But that was simply the way it was. During work hours, Byron St. James was Byron St. James and I was some lowly servant or whatever the hell I was. But when dinner was done and most of the house staff was gone, he was mine. Maybe only for a few hours. Maybe just in my imagination in some ways, but he was mine. And I was his. Fully. Completely. Down to my bones. He leeched into my skin. He sank into my marrow. He was a part of me. His name was branded on every inch of me in a way that no one had ever done before.

It was another week and a half later when I was startled awake from a early evening nap I had taken because Byron left for work in the afternoon and I knew he usually came back late and in a mood. Meaning, an experimental mood. So far, he had shown me being bound, the flogger, the paddle, hot wax, and butt plugs. And so far, I hadn't found one thing that I didn't like. So when I heard raised voices from far off, I jolted up in bed, my heart slamming hard in my chest.

Byron's house, almost as a rule, was quiet. Strangely so. You very rarely walked around to find a stray, abandoned TV set playing or a stereo blaring. The staff generally kept their voices relegated to very 'indoor' ones, even the men outside. So to hear raised voices a floor below me was not only odd, but a little freaky. I tip-toed out of bed and inched into the hallway. The voices were still muffled, like from behind a door.

I knew at that point that I really should have gone back to bed.

Whatever was going on, if it was behind a closed door, was obviously none of my business.

But curiosity had me silently going down the stairs, stopping at the bottom one to hear Byron's voice boom out, "I've had e-fucking-nough of this shit," as he ripped the door to his office open.

Now, I'd known Byron for the better part of a month. I knew his moods. I knew his highs and lows. I knew his condescension and his ego. I knew his annoyed and his grumpy. But up until that moment, I had never actually seen (or heard) him angry. And he
was
angry. It was in the set to his shoulders, the ticking in his jaw, the eyes shooting fire, his voice loud and mean. I actually felt myself shrink away from the sound as his eyes finally landed on me and he stopped dead.

"I heard..." I started, feeling the need to explain my presence.

But then someone walked out behind Byron that had my mouth effectively clamping shut. Tall. Blond. Leggy. Perfect in every stretch of the word.

Lyla.

He was having an argument... with Lyla?

My shock and hurt must have been all over my face because Byron's voice softened when he addressed me. "Prue..."

"It's her, isn't it?" Lyla shrieked as she moved out from behind Byron and I noticed for the first time that she was in a trench coat. Meaning, that was it. The sash had loosened and I could see a line down the center of her body, showing off her creamy, flawless kin from neck to just above navel.

"Lyla, I swear to fucking Christ if you don't..."

But I lost whatever he was about to say because, one minute, Lyla was across the room from me. The next, she was right in front of me, her arm cocked back. Then she swung forward and I was vaguely aware of Byron yelling out "no" before I felt the sting of her palm across my cheek, the power behind it enough to actually send my unsuspecting body flying. The center of me crashed against the jut of a stair, making my air hiss out of me as my hands slapped down instinctively.

"Matt!" Byron's voice roared as I looked up to see Byron drag the flailing Lyla back a step by her upper arms as she tried to lash out at him.

My hand rose to my face as the front door whipped open and Matt came flying in, eyes scanning the room, taking in the half-naked Lyla in Byron's hands and then me on the steps, my hand to my stinging cheek. Then Byron was shoving Lyla at Matt who grabbed her without question. "See Lyla to her car and off my property," he demanded and Matt nodded. Byron turned his anger to Lyla then. "If you ever so much as
pass by
my fucking house again, you will fucking regret it. Am I clear?" the cold, lethal edge to his voice was unmistakable and Lyla had little choice but to nod as Matt led her away.

The door clicked closed as I pushed myself up to sit off the edge of the stair. Byron had barely taken a step toward me when I shook my head. "I always thought women were being such babies about getting slapped. But this hurts a lot more than I thought it would."