Out of Control (12 page)

And God, did she ever enjoy. The red syrup was more like red lava, filling not just her brain but her entire body. She needed…needed… And she was going to get what she needed. Drake ground against her clit as he thrust. Drake’s body, his scent overwhelmed her. He was whispering in her ear. She couldn’t make sense of what he said. Maybe it didn’t make much sense to begin with, maybe he was as drunk on sensation as she was and muttering equations as endearments because in his distracted yet ultrafocused state it made sense, but the voice drove her higher.

His crisp chest hair grazed her nipples, a friction that added another level of sensation. Her breasts were swollen, sensitive from the rope, and that light caress was almost too much. Almost, not quite. No, it was just enough, enough to drive her even more crazy.

Drake sped up, moving faster inside her, snapping his hips. She wanted to touch him, to wrap one leg around him, use the other for leverage and rise to meet his wild movements. But at the same time, she liked feeling the ropes and the cuffs when she tried to move, liked that pressure, that tension. That extra embrace, as if Drake touched her in places his hands couldn’t reach.

She longed to see his face, to see him grimace or flush as he pushed toward his own release. To see if his eyes warmed and softened as he peaked and fell over the edge, or if he retreated deeper into his own head, driven by the pleasure.

But at the same time, she liked the way the blindfold made her focus on sensation, on the way Drake felt, not the way he looked. Because of the blindfold, Jen was aware of the sweat glazing his skin, of his breathing, of his heat.

Then she lost her awareness as the lava-red waves of orgasm broke over her, thick and hot. She clenched down on Drake’s cock. Unable to thrash or move as her body wanted to do, she cried out something that started as his name and ended as a guttural scream in which all words were erased by ecstasy.

Drake speeded up his movements, slamming into her. Then, abruptly, he stilled. His muscles clenched, tightened. He felt like living marble on top of her. He bit into the meat of her shoulder. It was hard enough to hurt, but the small pain triggered another wave of convulsive pleasure for Jen. A ragged noise escaped through his clenched teeth.

For just a second, his weight slumped onto her, and for that second, she welcomed it. She would have welcomed it longer, but he raised himself, rolled to her side.

A kiss, surprisingly gentle and sweet after that storm of sex; then he drew the blindfold off her eyes.

Jen blinked, welcoming the return of vision, and almost startled by how mundane everything appeared. The colors in her head had been so vivid, the images so surreally erotic that the simplicity of white walls, dark blue sheets, an uncluttered, dimly lit room seemed cartoonish by contrast. But Drake was all the vividness, all the beauty, she needed.

His expression was softer now, his eyes just as gray, but the gray of a fluffy kitten, not a storm cloud—not that she’d use that comparison out loud. “God, you’re gorgeous,” she managed to say, knowing it was inadequate, clichéd, but at the same time urgent.

“Funny, I was thinking the same thing.” He leaned over, kissed her again, his beard slightly scratchy, his lips soft but with a hint of demand behind them, as if he wasn’t through claiming her yet but didn’t need to make an issue of it right now. She lifted her head and upper body to meet him, feeling the strain in her shoulders and the rope moving against her skin, reveling in the sensation. He ran his hands down her torso, caressing her bound breasts until she shuddered and sighed, then tracing her belly down to the drenched curls between her legs. “One more orgasm, and then I’ll have to let you go. Can you give me one more, Jen?” He circled her clit as he spoke, looking at her with intense eyes as he did.

This time the orgasm wasn’t waves of lava threatening to obliterate her. This time it shimmered, golden and light and sweet, drawn out deliciously. She was still floating on the sparkly aftermath when Drake unfastened the cuffs at her ankles. She kicked her feet experimentally, both reveling in her restored freedom and missing the confinement. Her hips and thighs felt pleasantly used, as if she’d done some vigorous, interesting workout. As she moved, Drake untied her closer wrist.

When he leaned over her to get the second one, she licked his nipple and was rewarded with a quick, light slap on her breast. Still half in the clouds, she floated back into space on the strength of that blissful pain and didn’t come down until Drake helped her sit up. “I thought of leaving the rope harness on,” he said, “but I bet you don’t want to wear a sweatshirt when you’re baking, even on a cool night, and it would be pretty obvious under a T-shirt.”

She thought about wearing the ropes under her clothes all night, her breasts bound, her torso wrapped like a kinky all-night hug from Drake. Unless it was below zero outside, though, the bakery was somewhere between warm and downright hot. “I don’t care too much about obvious,” she admitted. “People who work the night shift at a hippie bakery aren’t going to judge. Tease, sure, judge, no. But anything that might make me sweat more isn’t my friend.”

Drake grinned. It was positively roguish, a contrast with the serious, intense expression that seemed to be his default state. “I have an idea.”

First he untied her, unwrapping the rope slowly, sensually, tracing the marks it left behind with his fingers.

Then he took a piece of much thinner black rope from the box under the bed, cut it into sections, and wrapped a cuff on her left ankle, where it would be mostly hidden by her pants. “A reminder,” he said.

She looked down at it with approval. At a quick glance, it would look like jewelry, an ornament, nothing more. And smart of him to put it on her ankle, not on her wrist where it would end up covered with flour. “That’s perfect!” she exclaimed, just avoiding turning it into a girlish squeal. Okay, maybe she didn’t avoid it completely, but Drake didn’t seem to care.

Not when she wound up in his arms again, for a quick thank-you kiss that turned out to be not exactly quick.

Despite Drake’s best efforts to violate the laws of physics as well as the local speed limit, she ended up a little late for work. “That’s not good,” Drake said as he headed across town, dealing with the one-way streets of Ithaca, so deadpan that in her tired, dreamy state, Jen couldn’t tell how much of it was an act. “I like to be prompt.”

“I do too, but things happen. We both got distracted.” She shrugged. If Drake wasn’t kidding, he was taking this far too seriously. “Besides, it’s not like showing up late for teaching a class, or even for one of the shifts when there are customers. Overnight at the hippie bakery, remember? The only thing we time closely is the bread. I’ll get the hairy eyeball of death from Andrea, then she’ll remember I was moving today and figure I have a good excuse. And if anyone has a problem, I’ll work awhile on the opening shift. Someone’s always late then.”

“If I can’t keep track of time when you’re around, how can I help you to be on time?”

She grinned. Despite his solemn tone, he was definitely teasing. Wasn’t he? “I guess you can’t. But that’s all right. I’m a grown-up.”

They reached the bakery at that point. Drake stopped the car and put one big hand around Jen’s wrist, making her shiver. “Of course you’re a grown-up. But I like taking care of you.”

“Really, I don’t need a keeper. Not most of the time, anyway.”

He shrugged. “Taking care of a sub is a fetish I just realized I have. Humor me while I figure out how to make it work for both of us. If I can’t even get you to work on time because you’ve distracted me, I can’t do a good job of taking care of you.” His face remained solemn, but Jen caught the glint in his eyes as he added, “Obviously this is all your fault. There will be consequences.” The way he said it made it clear that the consequences would be fun, sexy ones.

She figured that while
thinking
“Oh, good!” was the proper response, saying it out loud wasn’t. But she didn’t argue either, just nodded, smiling slightly.

Drake kissed her on the forehead and muttered, “Go. Before I do something irresponsible like keep you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She blew him a kiss as she headed in the bakery’s back door.

Chapter Ten

Drake didn’t expect to see her in the morning. After working overnight on top of a long day, she’d want to go right to her part of the house and sleep, he figured. Maybe if he was up when she came in, she’d pop down and cadge coffee and a kiss before he tucked her into bed—alone. But he’d had his typical six hours of sleep—sounder than usual, thanks to finally expending some pent-up energy—so he was up and having coffee by seven.

Since her home was his home, or at least attached to it, he did expect to hear her come in. Hear the back door open, hear footsteps on the stairs, even if she decided that sleep beat out flirting with the new lover.

She’d first shown up at his door just after eight, coming off a bakery shift.

So when eight came and went, Drake began to wonder where she was.

He wasn’t waiting for her. He wasn’t. Okay, he was, but just because he wanted to be sure she was all right. Was it possible to fall asleep riding a bike?

By nine, he checked the front porch and by the back door, looking for her bike. He’d have heard if she brought it into the foyer. No sign of her, though. Maybe someone on the opening shift had called in and she’d wound up covering. It seemed crazy after her long day yesterday, but work was like that sometimes, and no doubt she needed the money. They were called “starving artists” for a reason.

By ten, he was mildly concerned but figured the best thing he could do was go for a run to distract himself from worrying.

Still no bike when he got home. Still no sign of life from upstairs. Possibly the bike was inside her stairwell—there was just enough room to tuck it away under the stairs—and she was sacked out. Yeah, that was what happened. They’d catch up later. And if later wasn’t until tomorrow afternoon, when he was done with his classes and office hours, so be it. He wasn’t even sure what her normal schedule was, when she wasn’t busy moving.

One more thing to find out so he could find ways to make his mark on it, infiltrate bits of sexy control.

No point, though, in fussing about something he couldn’t do anything about right now. He settled in to his Sunday routine as best he could—some work and some reading between batches of laundry, followed up by watching a few cartoons on his computer, his reward for a job well done. He loved the old Disney and Warner Brothers shorts, their silliness and simplicity, even the fairy-tale violence without consequences that upset modern parents. But all the time he found himself listening for sounds from upstairs.

Okay, he was a bit infatuated. More than a bit. He and Jen had leapt into things too quickly for his common sense, and some part of him wanted to keep rushing. Call it his hormones—he suspected it might be his heart, but he
knew
that was silly this early in the game and sexual obsession with a new playmate seemed slightly less crazy. He wanted to take the time to tie her up more elaborately. Wanted to use the crop on her fine, round ass and watch the pattern of red rectangles emerge on her skin where he struck. Wanted to use her sweet mouth. Wanted to taste her pussy. Wanted to drive her to the brink of orgasm and hold her there, trembling and cursing him, hating his control and loving it at the same time until he decided it was time to let her tumble over that sweet, sharp edge. When she did, he would say,
Mine
until she believed it, believed she belonged to him, body and soul…his slave.

That pulled him up short.

What the hell was he thinking and how had his hands ended up where they were? Granted, it wasn’t the end of the world that he’d totally zoned out halfway through loading the dryer in favor of playing with himself. He was a single man with an active libido. And it didn’t surprise him he was putting Jen’s face and body into a starring role in his fantasies. They’d just had stellar sex, with some bondage thrown in. Only natural to contemplate further options, and if he was contemplating them in a hands-down-his-pants way, stroking his own cock idly, nothing wrong with that.

But he was going to leave the “S” word out of those fantasies. It was one thing to dream that one day he might find the right woman to be his slave, controlled and cherished in equal measure, a life partner who was also the best damn toy in the world. Someone to hurt and love, play with and nurture—someone to help grow and become her best self, like he did his students, but in a much more erotic way. It was another thing to put Jen’s face onto that dream. They clicked sexually, but they were just getting to know each other. Trying to make this into something it wasn’t and might never be would just lead to trouble.

Might be fun trouble while it lasted, his dick suggested.

Yeah, and listening to his dick was such a good idea. His dad had spent his life listening to his dick, and it hadn’t quite landed him in jail, but it probably should have.

Only right now, Drake’s dick demanded attention, and even the thought of his father didn’t have its usual buzzkill effect.

Right. He’d deal with it, a rote mechanical solution to a physiological need. And he would do his best not to think about Jen Kessler while he did.

Then he’d get on to Rajeev’s project. If Drake aspired to take full responsibility for someone’s life one day, he’d better damn well make sure he lived up to the responsibilities to the people already under his care in a more limited way: his students.