Unrestrained (29 page)

He didn’t, not until she came twice more. By that third time, she’d lost her grasp on everything but the car. When he came to her, he had to unhook her hands, massage the stiff fingers. She was making little gasping noises like sobs, only she wasn’t crying this time. When he opened his jeans, she adjusted her legs, lifting her hips automatically. He made another approving grunt as he slid into her from behind and pressed his big body down on hers, taking her right there against the car.

He was even thicker than usual, proving the effect her performance had on him. He came in less than a dozen thrusts. He had one hand tangled in her hair, the other sliding under her shirt to fondle her breasts in her silky bra. He lifted her off the car enough to spread one hand over both, grip the flesh to hold them together. One nipple was caught between his fingertips where they’d tunneled beneath the cup, the other pressed beneath the heel of his hand.

“There she is. That’s my good girl. Sweet, gorgeous woman.”

He slid out of her, adjusted his clothes, and then guided the clit stimulator off of her. When he lifted her upper body off the hood and turned her so her hips were propped against the bumper, she watched him slide her panties back onto her legs, then her skirt. He nudged her to her feet, guiding her hands to his shoulders to steady her as he restored her clothing to its proper place. He plucked open the buttons of her shirt, though, so he could continue to caress her breasts, tease her cleavage and trace the lace edges of the bra.

She swayed at the power of that simple sensation. In answer, he made another soothing murmur and drew her to him. As she leaned against his strength, he slid his arms around her, held her close, spoke in her ear.

“What woke you up in the middle of the night, Athena? What had you all wound up this morning?”

When he did this to her, it was easy. She gave him everything, no reservations. Which underscored what a leap of faith it would be when and if she could do it all the time, as he demanded.

“A dream.” She mumbled it against his chest. “We were at Release, and you had a collar and leash on me. It felt good, but then . . . Jimmy was pointing, and the female Dommes, they were pointing at me, being unkind. Like I was a fraud. You disappeared, and there were all these male Doms, closing in on me, like they could all have me, because I’d lost control, given it away. I was scared, and . . .” She didn’t know how to continue from there.

He sighed, held her closer. “Okay. We’ll deal with it, all right?”

“But not today.”

“No, not today.” He touched her face, guided her gaze up to him. “At some point, we
will
go to Release, and you will go there as my sub. Even if we only go once, and never go again, that’s going to happen. If you want me as part of your life, that means you let me into all of it. I don’t need it all today, but I want to start meeting your friends, becoming part of your day-to-day life, the way you’re integrating yourself into mine. Deal?”

She nodded. “I think I need to sit down.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m a bastard, not giving you any breakfast before putting you through all that.”

“Did you eat all of it?” Her words were slurred. Like being drunk, only much better. No hangover. Unless one counted how she kept crash-landing into her doubts and worries on the other side of such euphoria. She was going to work on that, though. That was one of her resolutions from this argument, wasn’t it? He’d almost made her forget they’d had an argument, and that wasn’t such a bad thing.

“I was tempted.” He chuckled. “But I managed to have some manners and save some for my girl. I’m going to put you in my lap and make you eat it from my hand, though. Teach you to trust me for everything, one step at a time.”

She had no problem with that at all. She’d be happy to stay in his lap forever. If only she never had to face anything beyond this blissful state of being he could give to her. However, if there was one thing she knew, it was that a love worth having required courage. She would find the courage to reach for what she wanted—as soon as she figured out once and for all what that was.

O
ver the next few weeks, she discovered what it was to have a man as a constant, regular part of her life again. Dale wasn’t living with her physically, but he was in the forefront of her mind even when he wasn’t with her. His words, his touch, his expressions, and all the things they were learning about one another.

They spent one afternoon gardening together. She’d had Hector transfer some azaleas from an area where larger shrubs were crowding them out, but she hadn’t yet done anything around the relocated azaleas to blend them into their new location. Hector knew she liked to do that part of things herself, unless she indicated otherwise.

When she mentioned it at breakfast one morning, teasing Dale with the mock accusation that he was making her neglect her gardens, he said he’d help her with it. They came up with a plan together, walking the gardens and thinning out plants to fill in the azalea area.

As they were finishing up with that, Dale leaned on a shovel and glanced down at her, a half smile on his handsome lips. She patted soil around the last edging plant and braced her hands on her thighs, squinting up at him with a warm smile of her own. “This works really well. I think you have a future as a landscape architect.”

“So do you, Mrs. Summers.” He nodded toward the area she maintained for Roy’s marker. “That freestanding wooden picket fence you have over there? I have some wildflower specimens that would make a great accent for it.”

The decorative piece of fencing was set at an angle to a rustic-looking bench, the place she sat when she was visiting Roy. Shedding her garden gloves, she tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Oh? What color?”

“Several. Yellow, white and purple. They bloom their heads off every time it gets warm, which, down here, is pretty much year-round. Want to run by my place and grab a few? We can get some lunch while we’re out.”

She agreed. He didn’t let her clean up beyond washing her hands. Instead, he lifted her into the seat of his old junk truck, both of them sweaty and dirty, and took them through a fast food drive-thru. He found them a spot at one of New Orleans’s many parks so they could eat the greasy food while watching ducks and toss a few fries out the window to them. He wiped a touch of mustard off her mouth, then kissed it away before putting the truck in gear and trundling onward to his place.

She helped him dig up the wildflowers and check on the dogs. While she was there, she made another couple of suggestions for his own plantings out by the front gate, and then they were back at her house. After a quick stop at the Dairy Queen, that is, because he wanted dessert. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed a chocolate-dipped cone, and Dale gave her the cherries off his banana split.

Back at her house, Dale laid out a couple of towels and drew her down against his side on the grass next to the bench and freestanding picket fence. They enjoyed a short siesta, the newly turned earth nearby a pleasant perfume among the garden’s many smells. He tangled his fingers with hers on his chest and she answered his questions about Roy’s marker, the golfing statue. It was surprising how comfortable it felt to her, being in that area with Dale. It was almost as if Roy was giving them his blessing. The sense of peace and quiet companionship they shared working side by side seemed as natural as the flow of water from one of her fountains.

By the end of the afternoon, she had a new design for the fence and bench area to enjoy when she came there on pretty days to read and talk to Roy. Later that week, Dale brought her a family of concrete pigs. They placed them amid the waving stems of the wildflowers, a perfect addition.

During their times together—watching a movie at night, going to the French Market, playing with the dogs, Dale meeting her for lunch at the office—he also told her more about his experiences with the SEALs. He couldn’t talk about mission specifics, but even still she received a harrowing picture of the cold, the danger, the hardships, though he treated those things with the matter-of-factness she applied to preparing a memo with Ellen. It was when he spoke of the men with whom he’d shared those experiences his strongest emotions came through. The sharing of such things had forged a bond he valued highly, a vital extension of the principles that had driven him to commit his life to the SEALs.

He also shared his impressions of the countries he’d visited. In return, she told him about her visits to temples in Vietnam and gardens in Japan, the churches in Barcelona. “When you look up at the ceilings, it’s like looking inside a beautiful, scrolled teacup,” she said, and he smiled at her.

He did that a lot. She would turn around, find him simply looking at her, and when she noticed, he would smile in that way that made things flip-flop in her stomach. They spent an afternoon in Audubon Park together and went to the zoo. She found out he liked the flamingos. When she suggested it was because of their propensity for standing on one leg, he laughed.

The Master-sub thing was also unfolding in an interesting way between them. She supposed every sub first explored it as a surface thing, a purely sexual expression, but as time went on, she recognized that as symptomatic of deeper cravings inside her, ones met by the fact his Master side ran just as deep. When they were working in the garden, things might be casual, but still, if he told her to bring him a spade, or to take a break, she’d detect that tone in his voice that she locked onto instantly and obeyed.

Of course, the sexual was still a delightful component of it. They might be cooking something in her kitchen¸ after the staff had left for the day, and he’d press up behind her, take over slicing the tomato. He’d order her to stand there inside the span of his arms as he wiped the knife, then ran the blade along her throat, down her side, up beneath her skirt. He’d give her thigh a tiny prick with the tip before he set the blade aside and replaced its cool touch with his far more heated one. She’d forever associate the smell of tomatoes with sex, since he’d taken her right there, thrusting into her as her fingers curled helplessly against the cutting board, getting the sticky juice of the tomato and its seeds on them. He’d licked all of it off.

Getting used to having him in her daily life, being under his command, put some of her demons to rest. It was the morning that he was reading the paper and he absently told her to get him his coffee that it finally clicked, what he’d told her about not being his maid or nurse.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t get his own coffee. He was underlining what lay between the two of them, as if between their more heated, sexual interactions, he was tugging on an invisible leash, reminding her that he was her Master, and she was his willing sub. It was provocative, distracting, and because he did it randomly, she was always eager for hints of it.

Testing it, she’d brought him the coffee. He put his hand on her arm, holding her in place until he took a sip and nodded his approval, telling her it was to his liking. Then he let her go. She let out a pleased sigh, quietly delighted that it was starting to make sense.

Even better, the more he recognized that she was grasping the concept, the more he allowed her to serve him. Her understanding expanded even further then. The act of her bringing the coffee to him reinforced both sides of the coin they each needed. Master and sub.

One roadblock remained. Well, two, if she counted the club, but she still shied away from that topic. They’d not yet slept in the master bedroom. They always ended up being somewhere else. Several nights it was in the living room, where he’d take her on the couch and they’d fall asleep there. Another night, he chose the west guest bedroom. He put her on her elbows and knees and tied her wrists to the iron railings of the headboard. Sitting behind her, he lifted her knees to his shoulders, holding her with strong, sure hands as he brought her to climax with his mouth, her balanced only on her elbows.

That night he introduced her to another first, something she’d never suspected could be as wildly pleasurable as it turned out to be . . .

—

A
s she came down from that oral-induced climax, still gasping, heart pounding, he eased her knees back to the bed. It was obvious he wasn’t done with her yet. She knew enough about him now to know the man’s stamina and control were terrifying. There’d been nights he brought her to climax three different ways before he thrust inside her and gave in to his own orgasm. Seeing her get aroused and go over was apparently as vital a pleasure to him as his own release, and it built his own, to push her to that edge again and again. A woman’s fantasy for certain, though a little scary in reality. In the thrill-ride kind of way.

He dipped his fingers in her soaked cunt, collecting some of the slippery fluid before moving them between the seam of her buttocks. He painted that slick wetness over her rim. He’d played around that area several times, arousing her, but back when he’d asked her point-blank if she’d been fucked there, her flushed cheeks and uncertain look had answered the question. Roy hadn’t been into that, and she’d never used a strap-on with him, either. He preferred to have her straddle him when he was tied up, ride his cock to climax, making him hold back until she commanded him to come. Now she tensed a little as Dale probed.

“Easy, girl. This all belongs to me, right?”

She nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Any pain I give you is a good kind of pain. The kind that makes you hot and begging, right?”

She couldn’t argue with that. So far tonight he’d used a flogger, a belt and a switch on her, and though the switch in particular had stung like crazy, he had a way of working her up before, during and after that had her remembering the pain with as much longing as the pleasure. He could be fierce and mean, but in a way that was controlled and exciting, a way that carried them both to an intense sexual experience.

“We’re going to use the condom for this, because it’s lubricated. I’ll move slow, girl. You push out against me, releasing those muscles. I want to be all the way in, so my balls are against your pussy, and you’ll feel them slap against your clit every time I thrust into that sweet ass of yours. Do you trust me?”

Her fingers curled in her bonds. Her pussy was still throbbing from the climax he’d given her, her body loose and willing. She was all his. Including every orifice.

He wouldn’t hurt her. It might sound crazy to the fly on the wall who’d seen him strapping her until she was pleading for mercy. Or watched him do breast bondage on her, keeping the ropes tight until her curves were aching and swollen. When he released the bonds, the tingling pressure was a sweet agony, blood rushing back into them. But he’d kiss those sore places with such tenderness, rub balm into her skin to keep it soft. On the rare nights he wasn’t staying with her or her with him, he’d call her and make sure she wasn’t overdoing, that she’d taken aspirin and followed all of his aftercare direction.

Still drifting along the course of his question, wanting to be sure she was giving him an utterly truthful answer, she remembered cutting herself on the pruning shears. He’d held her finger under the tap, the cold water running the wound clean, and carefully wrapped a Band-Aid on the cut. He’d kissed it, then given her ass a slap and told her to be more careful with what belonged to him.

But the telling day was when she’d caught a bad head cold. They’d planned to have dinner together, so she’d called him, stuffed up and feeling miserable, and told him she’d reschedule when she was feeling better. When she got off the phone, she tried to shrug off the melancholy. She hated getting sick like anyone else, but she’d particularly dreaded it since Roy was gone. For some reason, it could make her feel a bit blue and alone, even though she knew that was self-pitying drivel. She had plenty of friends and a caring staff.

An hour later Dale arrived bearing chicken soup, several boxes of extra-soft, aloe-infused tissue, and herbal teas infused with echinacea and zinc. He relocated her to the couch in the TV room with ample pillows and quilts. He’d watched a trio of her favorite movies with her while she probably snored like a lumberjack, since she couldn’t breathe. He plugged in a humidifier, added a eucalyptus oil to it that helped open her passages. Whenever she surfaced from her dozing, he was either under her, her upper body in his lap, or watching over her from an easy chair as he read or watched television.

“If you’re angling to get at my wealth, it’s really working,” she’d told him, blowing her nose. “At this point, you have the kept-man position in the bag.”

He grinned at her, and left the chair to come back to the sofa. He adjusted her pillows on his lap so she could put her head there, then leaned down to brush his lips over hers. “I’m the one keeping you,” he corrected her.

—

I
t was all those moments added together that decided her. “Yes, I trust you, Master.”

“Good girl.” He added additional oil to her rim and then eased a finger into her, letting her feel the way of it. He teased her with the sensations, then withdrew, his hands gripping her buttocks to knead and massage, readying her for something much bigger than his fingers.

When he pulled open his jeans and put the head of his cock there, she let out a breath, trying to relax every muscle and obey his direction, pushing against him. He went slow, as promised, cupping her breasts, fondling and teasing the nipples as he eased forward. His cock’s invasion stretched and burned a little, but it didn’t feel all bad. Especially as his clever manipulation on her nipples and breasts, the way he held them with such familiar possession, aroused her anew.

As he moved deeper, the burning increased, but then he stopped again, dropping one hand beneath her to stroke her pussy, play with her clit. He leaned down over her, kissed her nape, her hair pooled on the mattress. The rough hair on his chest and thighs was a welcome stimulation against her back and legs, and she pressed up against the hard body they covered. He sank deeper into her, and she let out a shuddering moan.

“That’s my girl. You want your Master deep inside you.”

She did. No matter how deep Dale had gotten into her, at moments like this she thought it would never be deep enough.