Reconstructing Meredith (24 page)

I bent and kissed her neck. “I want you to do something for me.” I paused to nibble her earlobe while I slid two fingers inside her. “I don’t want you to make a sound.”

She squirmed against me. “That’s easier said than done with the things you do.”

I kissed below her ear. “But you can do it. I know you can.” Pushing myself up on to my arms, I looked down at her. “Just like we did that night at your grandmother’s.”

Meredith bit her lip. “Scott, when you—”

“I know,” I whispered, letting my lip brush hers. “It’s hard. But will you do it for me?”

She nodded. “I’ll try.”

“You’ll try?”

“Okay, I will.”

“That’s what I thought.” I grinned against her lips. “That was hot that night, wasn’t it?” I kissed her neck and started downward, whispering between kisses. “When we had to have each other…so fucking bad… couldn’t wait… couldn’t make a sound…” I flicked my tongue across her nipple. “And I almost made you scream anyway.”

Closing her eyes, she wriggled beneath me, struggling to breathe with any kind of regularity while I inched my way down.

“Remember that?” I kissed just above her navel. “How you almost lost it?”

She whimpered something like a “yes.”

“You won’t do that tonight, will you, Meredith?” I paused, lips pressed against her hipbone. “There’s no one to hear you but me, but you won’t make a sound, will you?”

“No,” she breathed.

“Good girl.”

She mostly succeeded. When I kissed the inside of her thigh, she sucked in a sharp breath. A finger sliding into her pussy made her force that breath back out of her lungs in a single, ragged whoosh. When I closed my lips around her clit, she moaned, but quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound as I teased her with my tongue.

The tanginess of her pussy did more to make my head spin than the glasses of wine I’d had earlier, and as I explored her with my lips and tongue, I couldn’t help the low groan that emerged from the back of my throat. She sucked in another sharp breath, her hips twitching and trembling beneath my arm. I did it again, on purpose this time, and she responded the same way. She inched closer to release, and each time she neared the brink, I slowed down enough to let her calm down. Once she had, I’d bring her right back to the edge again.

I was in no hurry at all tonight. It didn’t matter how hard I was, or how badly I wanted to be inside her, there was no way in hell I’d rush this. Just like that night when we couldn’t make a sound, when we were so desperate for each other we almost let it all out anyway. The need for stealth had only intensified things; that was the night I learned that an orgasm that
must
be contained in silence was the most difficult kind to restrain.

I slipped two fingers inside her. Deeper, a little deeper, beckoning just slightly until she gasped and shivered, signaling I’d found her G-spot. I kept my fingertips right there, making slow, gentle circles as my tongue did the same on her clit.

In a hoarse, unsteady whisper, she said, “Oh my God, Scott, don’t stop, please, don’t…” She shuddered, squeezing my fingers so hard I could
barely
move them. She held her breath, probably trying to keep from crying out, and forcing herself into silence only intensified her building orgasm. What I couldn’t hear I could feel in every tremor, every shiver, every time she pushed her clit against my tongue, and when she came, I swore her release rippled through the air and down my own spine.

I kept going until she begged me to stop, then pushed myself up on to my arms to come back up to her. Gasping and shaking, she gripped the back of my neck with both hands and kissed me, forcing my lips apart with her tongue in search of the taste of herself on mine. The hungry desperation in her kiss drove me wild, and I could barely stand it another moment. I had to be inside her.
Now
.

I broke the kiss and whispered, “Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “Please.”

“Same rule still applies.” I put my finger over her lips. “Not a sound.”

She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath through her nose, and when she shivered, I knew she’d caught the scent of herself on me.

“Not a sound,” I whispered again, then took my finger away and kissed her lips. “Promise?”

She nodded.

After one more kiss, I leaned away to get a condom. Once it was on, I settled on top of her again. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me as I guided my cock to her. I could have teased her just then, waiting until we were both on the brink of madness before giving her what she wanted, but… fuck it. I couldn’t wait.

Closing my eyes, I let my head fall beside hers while I slid into her slowly. Just that first stroke damn near did me in; I wasn’t quick to come, but Jesus Christ, her pussy was so wet and tight, I was so,
so
fucking turned on, and we both struggled to stay quiet. It was probably the first time in my life I was thankful for a condom and all it did to keep me from truly feeling her, or this would have been over much too soon.

I withdrew slowly. Pushed back in just as slowly. Every place our skin made contact—her thighs and my hips, my cheek beside hers, my cock deep inside her—may as well have sizzled. Forget all the games of trying to stay quiet for the sake of being quiet. I couldn’t have made a sound if I wanted to.

Meredith, though, managed to find her voice. “I—” She paused, pulling in a ragged breath. “I want to see you.”

I rose up on my arms. Our eyes met, and we held each other’s gazes. We moved together, slowly and gently, and it was no less intense than if I’d been fucking her hard enough to knock the plaster off the walls.

She overwhelmed me. There were no two ways about it. Looking up at me with nothing but lust in her eyes, holding on to me, rolling her hips to draw me just a little deeper, her face still flushed from her orgasm, forcing herself to be near-silent as if we might wake someone in another room.

And somehow, I finally remembered how to speak.

Barely whispering, I said, “You are so fucking beautiful, Meredith.” I sank down to her and kissed her again.

I slid my hands under her and held on to her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around me and hooked her ankles together against the small of my back. Our bodies could barely move at all now, but we touched. Everywhere, we touched. Her breasts against my chest, her shoulders in my hands. Soft lips and hot breath against each other’s necks. Her thighs squeezing my hips, her pussy squeezing my cock.

And still I could move
just
enough to take slow, smooth strokes inside her, pushing myself a little deeper as I closed my eyes and breathed in the heady mix of sex, sweat, and her, her,
her
. Every sound she made—every near-silent, breathless sound—sent shivers down my spine. Every motion of our hips sent more shivers right back up.

A shudder rippled through her and she tried not to moan, but a soft whimper slipped past her lips, and it was different from all the other muted sounds she’d made. Not just a gasp or a blissful sigh, but the kind of choked, barely-contained sound that signaled an ascent into more, and so I gave her more. As much as I could with the way we held each other, I moved faster, thrust harder. The bed shifted beneath us, not
quite
squeaking, but nearly there.

Sharp, delicious pain seared itself into my consciousness, and I sucked in a breath when she raked her nails up my back. She shuddered again. Her nails dug deeper. I thrust harder. Shudder. Deeper. Harder.

“Oh God,” she whispered. With one last shallow gasp, she came, and in the next instant, so did I. Not a sound, not a breath, just the quiet intensity of a release too powerful for gasps or moans.

We didn’t move for a while, simply holding on to each other and letting every last shockwave crash through us before dissipating into nothingness. I pulled out and lifted myself up to look down at her. She brushed her fingertips across my cheekbone, her gentle touch making every hypersensitive nerve ending in my body tingle.

“That was,” I paused, wetting my lips, “intense.”

She grinned. “It always is with you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I came down to kiss her.

When I could finally pull myself away from her lazy, gentle kisses, I got up to get rid of the condom. Then we got under the covers, and within minutes, the post-orgasmic bliss and the shared bottle of wine caught up with us.

“I can’t even keep my eyes open,” she said.

“That makes two of us.” I kissed forehead. “Want to just call it a night?”

“I don’t think we have much choice.”

“No point in fighting it then.” I killed the light and we settled into bed. She rolled on to her side, her back to me, and I put my arm over her waist. She slipped her hand into mine, loosely lacing our fingers together just below her breasts.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night.” I nuzzled the side of her neck. Drowsiness took over. Her breathing slowed. So did mine.

Of all the things I’d missed when we went our separate ways, holding her like this was easily in the top ten. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes we’d lie in silence until one or both of us fell asleep. But it was always perfect. Just like this.

God, I missed you, Meredith
.

Lying with her now, it occurred to me that all evening long, it had been us. Only us. We’d spent most of dinner just talking, spent the whole time on the couch reminiscing, and for once the conversation wasn’t dominated by all the reasons we were back in each other’s lives. For just a couple of hours, we’d never gone our separate ways and her soulless bastard of an ex-husband didn’t exist. Nor did the physical scars, which were now hidden between us in the darkness.

It was simply… us. And whether or not I had any right to, I couldn’t help wondering if this was how it should be.

Something in my gut sank. Deep down, I knew we couldn’t go down that road again. Even if we didn’t have our own problems that had ultimately pushed us apart, there were still the reasons she was here in my arms to begin with.

I’d help her reclaim what was never Rich’s to own, and when we were done, then…

I didn’t know. Where
did
we go after this? Return to being platonic friends? Go our separate ways again? Flip a damned switch, draw a line in the sand, and decide that this neither could nor should continue?

No fucking clue.

I had no idea, and I was too tired to think anymore tonight anyway, so I gave up, surrendered to fatigue, and let the darkness carry my mind away.

As I drifted off, Meredith slurred, “Love you.”

“Love you too,” I murmured without thought or hesitation, and before I had a chance to wonder if we’d said it out of habit or because we meant it, I fell asleep.

In the harsh light of day, all the thoughts I’d been too tired to think about came crashing back to the surface. A vague throb in my temples reminded me of last night’s wine, but I didn’t need physical reminders of anything else. Long after Meredith left, long after the ache in my head had dissipated, long after I’d gone off to drown in a sea of specs and schematics, my mind still reeled.

We’d spent time on my couch, walking through our past, but in the bedroom, we’d lived that past again. We were
there
. But should we have gone there? Did we have any business going there? And where the hell did we go now?

Resting my elbows on my desk, I rubbed my forehead. I’d slept for once, and it was a blissfully dreamless sleep, but I was nowhere near rested. So many thoughts ricocheted off the insides of my skull—Meredith, our past, her past, everything I’d heard in Leslie’s office, Amy, Krissy—and I couldn’t shut them up. Any of them. I couldn’t get away. More than my body was after weeks of restless sleep, my mind was exhausted.

Exhausted. Buckling. Caving in.

And after a blissfully intimate, sensual night with the woman I’d lost and someone else had broken, it was worse.

I needed a break. An escape, temporary or not, and a chance to mentally regroup.

I considered breaking off my planned evening with Krissy tonight, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided she was exactly what I needed. Increasingly, she had become my anchor, and more than ever, I needed her.

I did want to make a small change to our plans, though, so on the way home, I called her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” I paused. “Listen, about tonight…”

“Need to cancel?” Preemptive disappointment laced her tone.

“No, no, definitely not. I just wondered if we could change things up a little.”

“How so?”

“In the mood for some flogging tonight?”

She laughed. “Scott, I am always in the mood for flogging. You know that.”

“No, I mean, are you in the mood to swing a flogger tonight?”

She didn’t respond right away. “For who?”

I swallowed. “Me.”

“Oh. I. Yeah, of course.” She paused. “Are you okay, Scott?”

Not even close
. “I’m fine. I just feel like switching for once.”

She was quiet for a moment. Though she probably saw right through me, when she did at last speak, she just said, “You remember the rules when I’m in charge, right?”

“Yes, I do.”

“See you at six.”

~ * ~

While I waited for her, I mentally dodged all the crap my brain tried to throw at me. Perhaps in a last ditch effort to drive me insane before I found some relief, my mind had gone into hyper drive, pulling up every dream, every worry, every unsettling conversation from the past several weeks.

I met my own eyes in the mirror while I rolled my sleeves. Taking a deep breath, I promised myself I’d find a better, perhaps more useful outlet later. Tonight, I just didn’t want to think anymore, so it was either drink myself into oblivion—something I didn’t do anymore—or this.

Shortly after six, my escape arrived with the ringing of the doorbell.

I opened the door and invited her in. Standing in my living room, we faced each other. The height difference between us was less pronounced now. I was, as ordered, barefoot. She wore three-inch heels. Another inch or two beneath her feet and we would have been eye to eye.

“You sure this is what you want tonight?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

Concern creased her brow, but she didn’t question me any further. She nodded down the hall. I led, she followed, and a moment later, nerves coiled in my gut when the dungeon door clicked shut behind us. I trusted her completely, and I wanted this, but playing the sub always made me nervous. Surrender didn’t come easily for me.

“Ready?” she asked.

I nodded.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Unroll your sleeves.”

Just as I’d done with her and all of my other subs, Kristen had developed a routine for putting me into submission. It was the opposite of my sleeve-rolling routine, the one that had the same effect on her.

I chewed the inside of my cheek and did as she ordered. By the time the first cuff hung loosely around my wrist, that familiar—if rarely visited—submissive mindset was closing in. Willing myself not to fight that mindset, I unrolled my other sleeve, then released my breath and let my hands fall to my sides.

“Pick a flogger.” She gestured at the rack.

I took down the stiffest, least forgiving cat o’ nine tails I owned. The rattle of the knotted tails against each other made me shiver. If this thing couldn’t make me forget at least for a little while, nothing could.

“Give it to me.” Her voice was sharp, stern, as unforgiving as the implement in my hand.

Taking a deep breath, I held it out to her. She took one end of the handle. I still held the other. Our eyes met. I wasn’t just giving her the cat o’ nine tails. Power, control, surrender,
me
.

Swallowing hard, I let go.

Kristen tucked the handle under her arm, regarding me silently for a moment. Then she nodded toward the Saint Andrew’s Cross. “On your knees. Facing it.”

I swept my tongue across my lips, if only to give myself something to do besides grit my teeth. I wanted this. I’d asked her to do this.

So I knelt, closing my eyes as my knees came down on the hard floor. The cacophony of my thoughts tried to distract me, but by this point, I was so attuned to the sound of her voice and the anticipation thereof, my own thoughts faded into dull, white background noise.

“Unbutton your shirt.”

Buttons always became more complicated when I knelt before my Saint Andrew’s Cross. I muttered a few frustrated curses and willed my fingers to get each button apart. Behind me, Kristen tapped her foot. The sharp, rhythmic sound fucked my concentration all to hell, just as it always did. It didn’t help that every tap sent a gentle vibration across the floor to my knees, and that vibration unraveled my nerves a little at a time.

The last button finally gave. I rested my hands on my knees and waited.

“Take it off.”

I put my arms back and shrugged, letting my shirt slide down. I brushed it off so it would fall behind me.

She stepped closer, her heels creating an even more unnerving vibration.

“Hands on your lower back.”

I did as she ordered. The first few times we’d done this, she’d been unsure of her aim and used my hands and shirt to protect my kidneys. These days, even though she didn’t play Domme very often with me or anyone else, she could probably extinguish a candle with a bullwhip if she wanted to, but she still had me put my hands across my lower back. And just as she’d done that first time, she bound my wrists together with my shirt.

I closed my eyes and tried not to hold my breath. This position was eerily similar to the night I put Meredith on her knees. The night when a soft flogger across the palm of my hand had conjured Rich out of her past and sent her into—

No. Not tonight. I need to forget that for tonight
.

Kristen moved, walking toward the rack of floggers, and her movements gave me something to cling to between now and when she gave me what I truly wanted. Every step took me closer to leather on flesh.

Then she was behind me again. As always, she started with a softer flogger. I barely felt the rhythmic thud of the tails on my skin. My nerve endings already sought the more brutal bite of the cat o’ nine tails, and only registered the absence of that pain I craved. With every stroke, my frustration grew. This was a necessary step, yes, but it was aggravating nonetheless. Each dull, toothless smack only made me clench my jaw harder.

Make it hurt, Krissy. I need it to hurt
.

The strokes stopped. Her footsteps vibrated against my nerve endings once more, and anticipation rippled up my spine. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know what she was doing. Something tapped, presumably the softer flogger on the table. Something else rustled. Stiff, knotted tails scratched against each other, and when Kristen’s high heels clicked on the hardwood floor, my heart slammed into the inside of my ribcage. My mind’s eye saw what my own eyes didn’t: the cat o’ nine tails in one hand, the tails draped over the other, her long legs in that short skirt taking slow, taunting steps in those porn star shoes. Every click was a little louder than the last. She was coming. So was the pain. So was the cloud of endorphins I desperately craved.

Stillness. Silence.

Come on, baby. Come on. I need this. Please
.

Tails hit flesh with a
crack
that echoed through my bones, but didn’t register on my skin. I closed my eyes tighter. Balled my fists inside my tied shirt. Held my breath.

Crack
. I clenched my jaw.

Crack
. Confused nerves.

Crack
. Frustrated mind.

Please, baby. Oh God, please
…

The first strike drove a grunt out of me. I gritted my teeth and released a breath as every bee sting on my back made itself known. I managed to draw half a breath before she hit me again, and that air left my lungs just as quickly. With blow after blow, she lit more nerve endings on fire until tears burned my eyes.

I gritted my teeth against the pain. My head spun. I thought I groaned, maybe swore, maybe even pleaded with her for more, more, more. Hell if I knew. I was aware of nothing but the stingers assaulting my back every couple of seconds, of the rhythmic impacts followed by pain. Pain that was farther and farther away every time. Endorphins clouded my mind, separated me from…everything. The pain, the cat o’ nine tails, the hard floor beneath my knees. It was all there, but distant. Blurry.

It stopped. The cessation was jarring, unsettling. My senses searched, but didn’t find. What was—

Click
. A footstep on the hardwood behind me.

Click
. Another, this time closer.

Click
. Close enough for the vibration to run from my knees and bare feet to every tingling nerve ending.

Something soft and gentle touched between my shoulder blades, and I gasped, my spine straightening. The contact didn’t end, and once I was still, it continued down my back.

Fingertips. That was it.

“You okay?”

I nodded, murmuring something that I hoped was “Yes, Mistress.”

“I can’t hear you, Scott.”

“Yes,” I said, my own voice penetrating the fog of delirium. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Do you want me to continue?”

“If that’s—” I struggled to form the words. “If that’s what you want, Mistress.”

~ * ~

After a brutal flogging and two hard-won orgasms, I was exhausted. Completely spent. Lying on my stomach, arms folded beneath the pillow, I closed my eyes while Kristen rubbed lotion on to my back.

The lotion and her skin burned in a few places. Probably wherever she’d drawn blood. She’d mastered the cat o’ nine tails and knew just how to hit me to raise welts, maybe break the skin a little, but not cause any real damage. She knew exactly where my limits were, and with time and confidence, she’d learned to push them. My pain threshold was high, but she could find that threshold. Find it, push it, and flood my system with endorphins. Subspace was never as good as it was when she put me there.

“Doing okay?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm.” I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders as much as I could in this position. “How does my back look?”

“Like lower Manhattan.”

I laughed. “Nicely done.”

She ran a finger along my shoulder. “Really broke the skin here,” she said softly. “Sorry about that.”

“How bad is it?”

“Not too bad.” She dabbed it gently with a tissue, and I sucked in a hiss of breath when it stung. “It won’t need stitches or anything.”

“Is it still bleeding?”

“Not really.” Another dab. “It’ll be fine, I just didn’t mean to get you quite that badly.”

“It happens.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I just don’t want to, you know, maim you or something.”

A flash of Meredith’s scars flickered through my mind. I shuddered. “I don’t think that’ll be an issue.”

She squeezed my shoulder gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I pushed myself on to my arms, then sat up slowly, giving the lightheadedness a chance to pass before I swung my legs over the side of the bed.

Kristen sat behind me and touched my shoulder again. “Are you sure?”

It all flooded back into my mind. Everything I’d hoped to escape by disappearing into subspace for a while. I’d succeeded, I’d escaped, but when I returned to reality, it was all right here waiting.

Right here waiting, and with reinforcements. The dreams. The flashbacks. Thoughts of Meredith enduring what I’d just enjoyed, being whipped against her will, praying it would stop with all the fervor with which I’d begged for more. The scars commemorating a beating so brutal I couldn’t even begin to imagine.