Unrestrained (8 page)

When he eased back, she took a breath. He noticed that, too. He’d mesmerized her, as effectively as a snake charmer. She cleared her throat.

“Have you been involved with anyone since your wife?”

“Nothing serious.”

“Are you gun-shy?”

“On the contrary. I’m very comfortable with guns.”

She narrowed her gaze at him and his lips curved. “You’re the one who spooked about setting limits,” he pointed out. “Spouting off about paying me.”

“Spouting off?” She lifted a brow and the smile turned into a grin. It made him even more handsome. Then he sobered.

“I’ve already said I won’t agree to you turning this into a compartmentalized club session. You accepted that. Now you’re asking questions that are cycling back to that again. Will this be a relationship or simply about the Dom/sub stuff? The purpose of your question is to control the situation, define it. That’s not your job. You understand?”

The nebulous set of feelings she was letting out of a box that had always stayed closed seemed to understand. Yet he was correct; another part of her was uneasy and struggling with it, wanting to find some way to respond that put things on even ground between them, manageable, at her pace. Under her control.

Being at the mercy of the vacillation of her own mind was wearing on her nerves. She glanced at the carafe Lynn had left plugged in to keep the contents hot. “May I get you some coffee?”

She didn’t ask as a hostess. Perhaps she was testing his acuity, but if she was, he aced the test. “It’s ten minutes to five, Athena,” he said mildly. “Are you trying to move up the clock?”

She paused, then nodded. How would he react? Would he make her wait? “Please,” she said. Her voice had a tremor in it.

“No. Ten more minutes.”

A
s Athena pressed her lips together, looked toward the pond, Dale could see her mind working in ten different directions. Though every submissive was different, she was an exceptionally unique package. According to Jimmy, she was an accomplished Mistress. The irony was that skill came from being a down-to-the-bone submissive. Even so, actively performing as a submissive was going to be new to her.

While he might have barked at another sub for trying to rush the clock, galvanizing her into the right mind-set with an immediate show of discipline, he understood the level of conflict she was experiencing at this juncture. It wasn’t yet time for heavy-handedness. The pacing needed to be as precise as the way he knew she’d pour him a cup of coffee. That was part of the pleasure of this, yet he felt an anticipation to it that was new to him. Sharper, sweeter—a sense that the stakes were higher. He wasn’t gun-shy about relationships with women. Just very, very selective.

He shifted his chair so he could look out at the pond, study the view and the gardens. Ostensibly, he was ignoring her, treating her as part of the furniture, here for his use. Though he’d said they’d wait until five, it gave her enough of a taste of it to quiet if not calm her. Her fingers were in a knot in her lap. Without changing the direction of his gaze, he reached out, covered and untangled them, closing his hand around hers. He simply held it, rubbing his thumb over her cool fingers as the birds twittered and the clouds drifted across the sky.

His watch ticked to the appropriate hour. He waited a solid thirty seconds, then spoke.

“Bring me a cup of coffee.”

She jerked at the sound of his voice, probably pulling herself out of frenetic, internal-narrative ping-pong, but then she composed herself, rising in that serene way she had. He noticed that she waited until he withdrew his hand to do it. Her undiluted natural instinct for submission was absorbing to watch. It was also a serious test of his self-restraint.

Circling the table, she lifted the carafe. The faint tinge to her cheeks showed all that was going on beneath the surface. She poured the coffee, not spilling a drop, then brought it back to him, placing the cup and saucer before him. She’d remembered he took it black. Damn, she was going to kill him.

She waited as he lifted it, tasted. Then he nodded at her. “Very good. You can sit down now. At my feet.”

Just a brief hesitation, then she sank to her knees. His groin tightened, cock hardening so rapidly he’d have gotten dizzy if standing.
Jesus.
Yeah, a submissive like this could get him revved up, but even for that, his reaction to her was unexpectedly strong. If she could see how hot his blood was boiling, the things he wanted to do to her, she might run screaming. Or not. The thought of her embracing anything he threw at her only made things worse.

He put his hand on her hair, stroked a lock, twined it in his hand. She didn’t put a lot of goop on it that made it stiff. It was fine and silky, with a natural wave from her face. He liked the brown-bird color, the way it had gleamed in the sun when she’d walked out of the garden toward him. She had a sexy walk as well, wearing that pencil skirt and heels in a way that turned a man’s thoughts to fucking, no help for it. All the more so because it was unintentional. She was one hundred percent class.

“Seventeen hundred hours,” he said, reminding her. Then he waited.

To his intense approval, she pulled the blouse from her waistband, revealing a creamy band of skin as she reached up beneath the shirt. Her back arched, breasts thrusting outward in involuntary display as she unhooked her bra, worked the straps down through her sleeves and pulled the whole thing free. She folded and handed it to him. His thumb slid over the inside of one of the cups, feeling the warmth her breast had left there, and then he lifted the garment, inhaling the fragrance left by her skin.

She had to stand to accomplish part two of what he’d demanded, but as he gave her a nod to permit it and she rose, he caught her hand, stilling her. Her attention followed his, to where Lynn was walking out the side entrance, over to the garage. She was talking to another woman, perhaps the assistant Athena had mentioned, and they were carpooling. As they got into the car and pulled away, Dale returned his attention to Athena. It looked as if it had surprised her, his paying more attention to protecting her privacy than she herself had.

He tightened his grip. “Your job is to obey my will, follow my direction exactly and immediately. Mine is to make sure you don’t have to focus on anything other than that. Understand?”

She nodded. She wasn’t pulling away, and he decided to use that, shifting his grip to her wrist. “Take off the panties one-handed,” he ordered.

Watching a submissive struggle with a logistical difficulty was another way of putting them off balance, taking up more of their attention, getting them in the right headspace. Plus it was a pure pleasure to have her putting her weight against his hold, relying on him for balance as she worked the skirt up to hook the thong panties with one set of fingers. She couldn’t screen herself from his view as much this way, so he watched the skirt bunch up over her thighs and then higher until he saw the point of her sex, covered by a smooth silky fabric, a tiny swatch of lace across the crotch panel. She was quite ladylike, his Athena.

She worked the thong down, and he won another brief glimpse of her clean-shaven pussy before the skirt draped back over it, barely. Now that the requested garment was at her knees, she straightened as if to pull the skirt back in place, but he shook his head. “I asked for the panties. That’s your first priority.”

Her hand shook in his, just a tiny tremor. The stress in her expression was a combination of arousal and uncertainty. She was all right; merely getting used to the new feelings.

Stepping out of the thong, she bent to retrieve it. Her arm remained in his grasp as she handed it over, but then he shifted that hold. He placed both hands on her thighs, fingers sliding beneath the folds of skirt to grip firm, silken skin. His thumbs pressed on the seam of her thighs and she adjusted so they were open to him.

“Good girl.”

He sat back then, the underwear in his lap, and picked up his coffee. “You can adjust your skirt and sit at my feet now.”

She complied, her cheeks a fetching pink as she wiggled the amount needed to accomplish the task. When she knelt at his feet, he saw her notice his arousal beneath the jeans. When he casually adjusted himself, straightening his cock beneath the denim, she moistened her lips.

It would be so fucking tempting to have her suck him off right here. He had a feeling she would do so the moment he commanded it, but it would be too much. She was handling herself well, but if what she implied was true, he was the first man she’d ever trusted with this side of herself, and she’d been married—and monogamous—with the same guy for over twenty years. It showed her strength, that she was reaching out this way. The gift she was giving him was priceless, and it came with a lot of responsibility. He had to protect her every step of the way.

The power of taking time was that it could wrap around a submissive, cocoon her, intensify every feeling for the both of them, and create a lasting experience that both would want to repeat, no guilt or regrets. It wasn’t a race, but a journey, and one that worked best if they stayed together during it, progressing to the point that they wouldn’t know where one of them stopped and the other started, the power exchange intertwined.

He took one more sip of the coffee, then set it aside. “Give me a tour of the property. I want to know the resources I’ll have at my disposal.”

“We don’t have a playroom or dungeon. I know it seems odd, for as much space as we have, but . . .”

“That’s fine. I actually prefer to work with the environment the woman in question provides.”

“Oh.” Though she nodded, there was an expression on her face that had him reaching down to touch her cheek, draw up her bemused gaze.

“That’s a rare pleasure for me. Most of my time with subs is spent in a club.”

Her shoulders eased. It mattered to her, that this was a relatively unique experience for him. Even more intriguingly, it had mattered to him to set her straight on that. He was correct—this relationship was going to be more. Whenever she sensed that possibility, like now, he noticed she became more nervous, but it was the good kind of nervous, the kind that was an aphrodisiac to a Master.

He slid his fingertip down her jaw, to her throat. “Every time you touch a particular chair, or walk across a rug, or handle a spatula in your kitchen . . . I want you to be thinking of me.”

She phased out on him at little bit at that, her busy mind obviously caught up in the possibilities, but she recalled herself. She drew back. “I expect we should talk about rules and boundaries. Limits.”

An entirely different matter from her earlier erroneous attempt to define the relationship itself. What she meant now was the structure that would guide her submission to him. Of course the word “limits” sounded forced from her lips, but he understood that. Most new subs wanted to get completely lost in the fantasy of total surrender, which was another reason a Dom needed to keep a firm hand on the reins, to keep the sub safe. Athena might have that temptation, but she had the wits and maturity to take it back to that track herself. They were on the same wavelength. He’d been about to suggest the rule discussion as part of the tour.

“Want to do that while you show me around? You seem like a good multitasker to me.”

“Most women are.” Her eyes smiled, even though the rest of her looked a little wound up.

“Athena.” He set the coffee aside, leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “You know there’s nothing to be afraid of here, right?”

“I think I want to be afraid, a little bit.”

“Yeah. I’ll take care of that, I promise.” The dangerous surge he felt at her admission must have shown in his face, because her color went high again, the pulse jumping in her throat. A strong Dom had a predator’s instincts, such that he had to tamp down the desire to push that adrenaline reaction. Today wasn’t going to be about that, he reminded himself. Again. “Let’s get started on that tour.”

—

S
he’d planned to take the paved walkways, not wanting to make uneven terrain an issue for him, but he was the one to step off the path, drawn by the various sculptures and how her landscaping was designed around them. She’d helped with those plans, so she was pleased to see his interest. He came to a stop at the section where a gravel path of white stone spiraled around the focus piece, a large bronze statue of a griffin. Its wings were spread, head lifted to the sky in a defiant cry. Standing a few paces away was a life-sized man with a drawn sword. His posture said he’d intended to engage the griffin, but his expression suggested hesitation, as if the beauty and savage power of the creature had overwhelmed him, or some other conflict held him back. The man wore a suit, like a contemporary businessman.

Dale looked from one to the other. “When the sun goes down, do they come to life and fight each other until dawn?”

“If they do, they’re quiet about it. My bedroom window’s right there.” She nodded to the second level of the house. “The artist called it
The Choice
. He provided no other explanation than that, leaving it to the viewer’s interpretation.”

“As the best artists do. It’s also a good way for the lousy ones who create junk to cover their asses.”

After that dry comment, Dale reached up to touch the griffin’s wings, the curve of the head, the texture of the feathers sculpted on his convex chest. He pivoted to look at the view beyond the griffin. Past the swordsman, the garden path passed between two large crepe myrtles and continued along a winding view of more flowers and trees, inviting the viewer to come that way, get lost for the afternoon. She knew such a wanderer would find benches tucked into leafy arbors, more statuary to study. Her gardens were always on the New Orleans spring garden tour. She loved following the tour groups, seeing how people reacted to what she, Hector and a landscape architect had created here, the designs evolving from year to year.

She trailed behind Dale for the same reason now, and for some additional ones. She was letting him form his own impressions, but she was also sorting out all the feelings he’d raised in the gazebo. On one level, she needed him to leave so she could take time to digest the momentous changes that had happened to her in the course of one meal, the things he’d awoken in her. Another, far stronger part of her, didn’t want him to leave at all. She was very aware of the loose movement of her breasts beneath the blouse, the friction of her thighs against her bare sex.

He’d shifted direction, moving toward a rotunda with a copper roof. She thought about distracting him, leading him to another section, but she’d let him get too far ahead of her.

Inside the rotunda was a beautifully detailed, marble three-foot-tall sculpture of the goddess Athena. She had her shield and spear, a lion at her hip. Her owl rested on her wrist, wings spread. The statue was mounted on a platform, water glossing the disc and falling into a fountain pool below. Dale’s head dipped as he studied the plaque beneath it. She swallowed, knowing the words he read.

For my Athena,
who brought the strength and wisdom
of a goddess to my life.
Thank you for giving a mortal man your heart.
Love you forever. Roy

“He had the rotunda built while he was sick. Told me he’d commissioned a very special statue and fountain for it. It was delivered a month after he died, with the plaque.”

She turned away and moved toward the house, leaving Dale to explore the rest of this portion of the gardens on his own. When she reached the patio built in front of the sunroom that connected two wings of the house, she sat down on a bench there. Closing her eyes, she took a steadying breath. Then another. She was in the middle of the third when the bench shifted, telling her Dale had joined her. She tensed, but he didn’t touch her. Just sat there quietly until she collected herself.