True North (Compass series Book 4) (21 page)

And she’s wearing it now? After I’d told her to dress in something she didn’t mind destroyed? My insides feel as if they’re a dripping wet kitchen towel being wrung out. Does she not remember? I’d been so fucking proud of myself, and I’d thought she had been proud of me too. Maybe I was wrong.

It’s only when she lays a hand on my arm that I realize I haven’t said anything. That I’ve been standing frozen in the doorway, staring stupidly at a twelve-year-old trench coat.

“Not the coat,” she says as she squeezes her fingers above my elbow. When I drag my gaze up to her eyes, they’re wide and intent, that ever-shifting blue practically swirling with every blink. “You can do whatever you want to anything else I’m wearing, but please let me take off the coat first.”

“Sure. Come on in.” Her words have shaken out my dishrag stomach, but my insides still feel wrinkled. I hope my voice doesn’t betray that.

She walks into the room, her hips swaying gently as she strides across the carpet. There’s something about a woman who can walk in heels.

She doesn’t turn around when I close the door, the lock clicking in a decisive and final way. But I see her pause, her shoulders stiffen. We’re really going to do this. In a real way. With no supervision, no one between us. It’s her and me and the minimal luggage we’ve brought. She drops a shoulder bag onto the desk and then turns, her hands at the belt around her waist that she’s managed to tie into a careless knot that still looks like she’s been styled for a catalogue.

She works at it, not taking her eyes off me, but when it doesn’t come undone, pink rises in her cheeks and she looks down, lashes fluttering. She fiddles with it, and I can’t deny the hope that maybe she’d been so nervous getting ready that she’d accidentally tied the sash too tight.

I step toward her, hand out, and rest my fingers at her waist. First tentatively and then harder. Because light touch doesn’t inspire confidence. There’s a time for it, sure, but this isn’t it.

“May I?”

She shakes her head and covers her eyes, her nails a soft pink, her blush growing deeper. “I’m so silly.”

That soft, Southern lilt makes me crazy, and I have to blow a breath out my nose and close my eyes. It makes me think of pickle jars, of all things. How she used to walk into my home office and hand me a jar, saying, “
Pretty please?
”

Ridiculously, it had made me feel like a big man, being able to twist the cap off easily and hand it back to my pretty, adoring wife. She’d smile before fishing out a spear from the jar and taking a big bite, making exaggerated noises of enjoyment. Once she’d finished, she’d suck the brine from her fingers, lean over, and press her lips to mine. I’d pull away and wrinkle my nose.

“I fulfill my marital duties and all I get for my trouble is a pickle kiss?”

She’d giggle and drape herself over my lap, setting the jar and the lid on my desk before wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me again, teasing me with lips and tongue until the taste of vinegar and salt was gone. Half the time we’d end up in the bedroom, rolling around in the sheets. The other half, we wouldn’t make it that far. On the couch, in my office chair, once on the stairs.

No wonder I have some Pavlovian response to dills. They make my mouth water, but only for the faint taste of them I’d suck off Pressly’s tongue. I fucking hate pickles.

I wrap my hands around her delicate wrists and gently pry her hands away from her face. “You’re not silly. Maybe a little nervous, but not silly.”

She plays that game, uses it to her advantage, but woe betide anyone who underestimates my wife.

She smiles at me, a small, nervy thing. I want to kiss it off her face, and I wonder, if I did, whether I’d hallucinate a vague tang of pickles. Insane. Instead I lean forward until my lips almost graze the pearl earring in her lobe. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m nervous too.”

Then I do kiss her, a firm, closed-mouth press of my lips to the faint birthmark I know is behind her ear as I stroke the insides of her wrists with my thumbs.

I kiss her again, intending to make a trail down her slender neck, to feel the gentle throb of her pulse through her skin. I steer her hands to my shoulders, and she rests her palms there, her fingers tightening when I murmur, “Keep them there.”

She does as she’s been bid, and I reach for the troublesome knot as I work at her neck. And then promptly feel ridiculous when I can’t make the damn thing budge either. After a few moments of frustration, during which I’m not doing anything well, I pull back.

“What the hell did you do to this thing?”

“I know!” she wails in a playful, helpless way, and the weight on my shoulders lessens.

“Don’t you dare.”

She blinks and settles her hands as I devote all my attention to the tangle. It takes me a minute, but then the ends of the belt come loose in my hands. As soon as they do, I part the trench, finding a black, clingy dress underneath that hugs her curves. My knuckles graze the lining of her coat and get caught on a rip in the silk.

“You need a new coat,” I say gruffly, although it’s not any of my business. The vague annoyance that what Pressly needs, what she wants, isn’t my concern anymore has swelled into irritation.

Her lips purse and her eyes dart to the side, away from mine. “I know.”

I don’t want to think about why she hasn’t gotten a new coat, so I tell her to take her hands off my shoulders. I strip it off her, maybe a little less gently than I should, and take it to the closet, hang it next to mine. My hands don’t shake, not at all, when they leave the hanger.

The clingy dress is…clingy. It hides absolutely nothing, and the caveman part of me makes a satisfied grunt that no one else got to see her this way, only me. She looks damn sexy, and I almost regret what I’m about to do to this dress. Almost.

I can’t have her look at me anymore. I need to get some space.

“Go to the window. Put your palms against the glass.”

She does and my heart kicks. If this is what happens when she follows the simplest command, I don’t know how I’m going to survive what else I’ve got planned for this evening, but hell if I’m not going to try.

Leaving her there, hopefully thinking about what I might be up to, I stroll as well as I can, probably looking more like an unhinged crab, to the bag and unzip it, digging out Stage One.

When she feels the blade pressed against the back of her thigh, she gasps in this really satisfying way, but her hands don’t leave the glass. I anchor my hand on her hip and cut slowly through the fabric, purposefully dragging it out, gliding the harmless blade of the EMT scissors against her flesh. Careful not to cut the thong I find when I arrive at her hip, I draw the edge over the rise of her ass, steering in to dip the blade into the hollow of her spine. From there it’s a straight shot, the fabric parting slightly where it’s been cut to reveal tantalizing peeks of her nearly translucent skin.

That’ll mark nicely.

My thought is like something Rey Walter would say. He’s gotten into my head and he won’t leave. But I wanted him there, right? Invited him in like I was having him to a cocktail party. The thought seizes me, though, and I can’t quite escape it, loops of nausea tightening around my throat.

Mark Pressly? Hit her? Hurt her?

And there he is again, like an angel on my shoulder:
“You like this. You like that she likes this. You want to do this with her. Why are you torturing yourself over it? And you’re right, she marks up like a dream.”

Okay, maybe a devil. Whatever he is, he’s not human, I’m almost sure of it. No one is that unflappable.

“Slade?” Pressly’s voice is just above a whisper, and it makes me glad I didn’t ask her to call me “sir.” I get called that enough at work. I don’t need her to do it too. I relish the soft way she says my name, how it slips off her tongue. I could’ve had her call me Hale, but unlike with the other people I’ve met, this is personal. I want it to be personal.

In my distraction, I’d stopped cutting, the scissors inert in my hand just inside her shoulder blade. I tighten my grip at her flank and finish the job, slicing through the cheap fabric until the back of the dress parts.

To cut it off entirely or to leave her there, feeling the canned air of the hotel room at her back? But who am I kidding? I want to see her.

So I urge her to turn, press her bare back against the glass. I tuck the EMT shears into my pocket, wanting her to imagine threatening, sharp scissors instead of the dull, harmless things I’ve actually got. Maybe I should get a prop.

Or maybe I don’t need to. She’s gazing at me, her eyes wide and her lips parted, the pretty pink flush not gone entirely. In fact, it’s spread some to her chest, drifting into a pearly white where her breasts are pushed up by a baby pink bra with black polka dots and lace that I can see from where her dress is slouching off.

It’s cheap-looking, like she got it at one of those stores teenage girls shop at to piss off their parents, and the idea that she put this and the matching thong on for me, skipped her normally high-end wardrobe so we could play this game, gets me so fucking hot for her I could toss her on the floor. But that would so be in violation of rule number two.

The first thing a Dominant needs to be in control of is themselves.

Rey and his fucking rules. But despite my irritation about being drilled like a schoolboy over his seemingly endless guidelines, I’m actually thankful. If I can hold out, if I can make her wait, this is going to be so much better for both of us.

“Clasp your hands above your head and close your eyes.”

I drop to one knee and skim a hand from her ankle up to where the dress starts, and then I unpocket the shears, making sure she feels them on the delicate skin of her inner thigh. They do their work, slicing slowly, inexorably toward the top of her thigh and the motherfucking promised land.

I remember what she tastes like.

It’s been six years since I had my mouth on her, and I still remember the surprisingly earthy flavor. With her polish and class, it had been so easy to forget that underneath all that Southern perfection my Pressly was actually human. Nothing reminded me better than burying my head between her legs.

I can feel her breathing, fast and shallow, as it transmits through the blades, and I can’t help chasing the path of the scissors with kisses, pressing my lips to her hipbone, her stomach, her ribcage, right up to the rise of her breasts above the cheap polyester. When I’ve snipped the last of it, angling the shears so she feels the edge of them against her throat for that extra frisson of forbidden thrill, I tuck the scissors back in my pocket, taking the opportunity to pull the scraps of fabric off her, leaving her in the tacky lingerie.

Because I can, I thumb down the cups of her bra and sweet pleasure floods through me when her nipples gather into hard peaks after they’re exposed.

Threading my hands through the loops of her arms, I lean against the glass and let mocking seep into my tone. “Are you cold, Press?”

She shakes her head, her fine blonde hair dancing around her shoulders.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Her voice is all breathy and tentative, echoing the way her lashes are fluttering, but she doesn’t open her eyes.

“Then what’s with these?” I move my hands to the tips of her breasts, grab her nipples, and pinch them hard, loving how they yield under my insistence and the gasp that quickly turns into a sigh. “You like that, huh? Me pinching your nipples, you filthy little girl?”

Until now, she’s been the poised, glossy Pressly I fell in love with. A hint of vulnerability and a dash of excitement, but essentially the same woman I’ve known for fourteen years. But with those filthy words, she moans, an utterly lewd sound, and her hips rock off the glass in a totally indecent way. I want her to rock against me like that, feel her slick wet heat surround me as she rides on top of me.

I pinch again, harder this time, and twist for good measure. “Tell me, you slut. Tell me you like it when I pinch your nipples.”

She licks her lips, leaving them glistening, and then whimpers. I pinch harder still and twist again, farther this time. “Tell me or I’ll stop.”

“No,” she begs, pushing her breasts toward me. “Please don’t stop. I’ll tell you. I like it when you pinch my nipples.”

“And what does that make you?”

“A…a dirty little slut.”

“That’s right. How long should I keep this up? I could do this all day.” I roll her nipples between my fingers, and she rocks her hips again, like she’s begging with her whole body. “Would you like that? If I held you against this plate glass window where everyone can see your pretty ass on display in this slutty lingerie so I could torture your nipples for hours? Nothing else. I wouldn’t touch anything else. Just these.”

She makes a sound that’s half-fear and half-please-dear-god-yes and then sinks her teeth into her lower lip. I want it to be my teeth instead.

“Maybe I should get some clamps for your pretty little nipples. Screw them on so tight they’d make you squeal and have you wear them while you sucked me. I wouldn’t remove them until you got me off. Think about it. Your mouth stuffed full of cock while I pulled at the clamps. How wet would that make you, you little whore? Think I could get you to come from that?”

The word gets dragged out from between her teeth. “Yes.”

Holy Pete in heaven, that is motherfucking hot. “Not yet.”

A whine escapes her, and I take the opportunity to release one of her nipples and slap her breast. “No complaining, bad girl. You’ll take what I give you and not an ounce more, you understand? And if you’re well-behaved, I’ll see what I can do about satisfying that greedy cunt of yours. But I bet you’re never satisfied, are you? I could chain you to the bed and use you as my sex slave, fuck you half a dozen times a day, and you’d still beg me for more, you insatiable slut.”

She’s trembling, her cheeks red and her jaw working, but she hasn’t told me to stop, hasn’t said the word.
Daffodil
. I said it over and over in my head while I was packing the bag, hoping I wouldn’t hear it but drilling it into my brain in case I do.