Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) (14 page)

And now here they were, with his semen trickling to her ankles because he hadn’t even had the presence of mind to get a condom on first. All he could think about now was how long it would take him to rally, gather his breath, his strength, his fucking manhood, stroke his cock back to stiffness and get back inside her again. Her body was a cradle of heaven he never wanted to leave and yet, he knew nothing he had just done had changed anything. As curled as she was in his arms right now, the minute he stepped back to let her go, her wounded way of thinking would contrive to find another reason to erect more walls between them.

The clock was ticking. He could hear it as clearly as if there were one physically in this cabin with them. Today was racing toward tonight. Tomorrow would come and then so would the buses, and she would go. And it was going to hurt. Like nothing he had ever experienced in his life, it was going to hurt to let her go.

Beneath him, Sara gave another of those intoxicating little wiggles, her hot bottom grinding up against his belly. Her legs wrapped around his as much as they were able. Her hands cradled his right wrist while she did the most amazing, sinuous caress across the backs of his fingers with either her soft cheek or her even softer, sweetly kissing lips. Worshipping the hand that had corrected her. He loved it when she did that.

Suddenly, she startled. She snapped her head up so fast she almost knocked the top of her skull into the bottom of his chin. He only just managed to get out of the way.

“What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“You’re hurt!”

He angled his head, trying to see around her to his hand where clusters of nettle welts peppered him from his fingers to his wrist and somewhat beyond. “Oh. It’s nothing.”

If he weren’t so heavy on top of her, she’d likely have whipped all the way around to stare at him. By the look on her face, it wasn’t
“nothing” to her.

“Don’t,” he warned before she could do more than open her mouth. “Don’t make a big deal out of a few stings. That’s insulting. If I can’t handle getting nipped, I’ve got no business doing what I did to you.”

She closed her mouth and didn’t argue, but the look she gave his hand was filled with both guilt and regret.

“Enough.” He reared back off her and promptly laid his
“injured” hand across the curve of her bottom. As tender as she was from the nettles, he didn’t need to use much force to bring her bucking and howling back against him. She tried to get up off the table, but he didn’t allow it. One hand flat between her shoulders shoved her back down into place. She reached back instead, getting only one good rub in before he caught her arm.

“Don’t you dare,” he told her, but the proper note of disapproval never quite made it into his tone. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, particularly not when she gave him that entirely too-cute pout of a frown. “Rubbing is definitely not allowed.”

That brought a teasing spark to life in the backs of her eyes. “No?”

She pushed her hot little bottom up against him and
ground down in sensual circles that brought his cock to sitting up and taking notice just that much faster.

“Tell me again,
Master
Jackson,” she purred, angling her hips until his ready cock was standing high and proud between her buttocks. When she began her slow up and down strokes, all he could feel was her hot slick folds spreading honeyed arousal all over his shaft. “Just how much is rubbing not allowed?”

“I need to put you over my knee,” he said, content for the moment just to watch her work that beautiful little ass.

“You need to put me somewhere,” she agreed, and then she cast him a familiar sassy grin.

It was the old Sara, his first real glimpse of her in three very long years, and damn, it was a beautiful thing to see.

Jackson moved then, catching his cock and dipping down in search of the source of all that hot, sweet wetness. He loved the way her breath caught when he pushed slowly up inside her. He really loved how her muscles tightened all around him when he hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her in tight. She hugged his arm, keeping it in place around her.

“Hey, you,” he whispered, welcoming this glimpse of the woman she used to be.

He’d love it if she stuck around.

“This place does the best seafood alfredo,” Jackson said, as he caught the dining hall door, opening it first for the elderly
“royal” couple in the process of exiting and then a little wider for Sara to precede him. It wasn’t yet high noon, and already the tables were almost all packed. “Find us a quiet place to sit,” he told her, briefly resting his hand on the small of her back as his gaze swept first all the occupied chairs and then the sizeable line already building in front of the buffet. “I’ll get us something to eat.”

“Okay.” She rose up on tiptoes to get a better look out over the crowded hall and then, flashing him a slight
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this” smile, she headed off in search of two empty chairs.

Heading for the thick of the buffet line, Jackson waded in far enough to grab a tray, one plate to share and a single set of silverware, and then promptly headed for the alfredo. Cook Connie—ten pounds of efficiency and attitude tied together and shoehorned into a five-pound sack—had just brought out fresh noodles.

“Hello, Jackson,” she greeted, pausing when he insinuated himself into the slowly progressing line. She cocked a hip, gave him a knowing smirk and the white seafood sauce a stir. “How were the fajitas last night?”

“Friday,” he replied, helping himself to a massive tong-f of perfectly cooked noodles.

Connie blinked twice, a corner of her mouth quirking in confusion. “Apple fritter. See, if we’re just blurting out random words, I can do that, too. Snaggle-frackle-puss. See, I just did it again. Munch-a-butt. Somebody stop me; I am on a roll.”

Smiling and shaking his head, Jackson helped himself to a ladle each of seafood and sauce. Sassy women
: they were a real weakness.

“Friday,” he said again. “You and me.” He finally looked at her. “Seven o’clock at the Supper and Show.”

“Oh. Crap.” Connie lost her smile.

He didn’t. Oh crap, indeed. “I’m going to bust your butt.”

She tried to stare him down. He could see her mentally casting about for her usual bluster. She was one of the best Dommes the castle employed, but occasionally, when she started to get peculiar, she became one of its most reluctant and notorious submissives. He could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t quite ready yet, but the ladle in her hand was shaking, so he knew she had to be much closer to that submissive line than she’d likely want to admit. Her eyes right now were so huge and the emotions inside of them were bouncing back and forth between trepidation and slow-budding outrage. She never quite landed on either one. In the end, she settled for sass and bluster again, pulling it in tight around her like a shield.

“Sorry, my man,” she tsked, shaking her head. “No can do. My kitchen’s chock-a-block full of lazy bitches as it is. There’s no way I could leave during the dinner hour. You’ll just have to do the Supper and Show all by yourself. If you can’t find another bottom by then, I hear monkey spanking can be a hot act.”

Someone eavesdropping a little further down the line laughed, instantly attracting the cook’s eagle-eyed attention.

“Hey,” she barked. “My girls may be lazy and they may be bitches, but they’re all mine! You show them proper respect or you can eat in town!”

“Connie.” As softly as Jackson said it, the cook still heard it. She snapped her brown eyes back to him. They were guarded now and harder to read. “I’m pretty sure he was laughing at me.” Jackson smiled and leaned a little closer as he said, soft and seductive for her ears alone, his smile growing when that hitch in the rise of her ample breasts betrayed the catch in her breath, “You and I. The Supper and Show at seven o’clock on Friday night. Don’t be late,” he warned. “You don’t want me to have to come and find you. And don’t you worry about your lazy bitches. I’ll make sure Master Marshall sends someone capable to cover for you. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Connie?”

He knew he was holding up the line, but those around him didn’t seem to mind. They stood silent and watching as twin spots of color rose to stain the testy cook’s cheeks. Her breath abandoned her only to catch in her throat again on the next shaky inhale. Oh yeah, she was very close.

Jackson’s smile softened with practiced ease. “Your dominant half gets all the attention these days, doesn’t it? Your poor, sweet little submissive hasn’t been allowed to come out and play for far too long. Well, don’t you worry, sweetheart. When I’m through with you, you won’t be able to sit down without sobbing for days. I promise it’ll be enough to keep your submissive in hiding for another year at least.”

Snagging two garlic rolls out of the nearly empty breadbasket, he licked the buttery taste off his thumb, cast the still staring Connie a wink, and then headed off into the crowd in search of Sara.

Behind him, Connie’s softly uttered, “Oh…oh crap….” followed him. It was little moans like that that could really put a bounce in a dominant man’s step.

And it was moments like this—he stopped mid-step when he spotted Sara, standing at a freshly vacated table next to a man Ja
ckson at first didn’t recognize, but then did—that could suck that bounce right back out of him.

It was the dickwad, AKA Sara’s newly ex-boyfriend, AKA Robert. He was talking to Sara. He had his hand on her shoulder and seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she was hugging herself, trying to hide the scars her corset revealed. He’d taken her dress and her chemise away because she wouldn’t stop doing that. Now it was his turn to tsk, clicking his tongue against his teeth, every muscle in his body flexing as he started toward them. If he had to strip her naked to keep her from hiding herself, he would. Even if that meant showing her to every eye inclined to steal a peek. Although, considering how two of those eyes would belong to Dickwad, maybe he ought to find a full-bodied Eskimo parka to put her in.

He crossed the dining room, weaving his way through the crowd, never taking his eyes off Robert. The man seemed to be trying to convince Sara to do something. She looked reluctant. She looked miserable. That made him feel better. Of course, the fact that Dickwad was trying to do it with his hand on Sara’s shoulder made him feel damn near murderous.

And she wasn’t telling him no.

They were going to have a talk about that later. And if she wasn’t very, very careful, her part of that conversation was going to happen with her nose two inches from the castle floor and his hand painting a wild tattoo all over her bare, beautiful backside.

Jackson quickened his step, and he was really very proud of himself when he quite deliberately made his first order of business upon reaching them to put the food tray down on the table instead of down straight over the top of Robert the Dickwad’s head. No, a good Dom was a man accustomed to restraint, and Jackson showed some now. He didn’t take a swing. He didn’t even make a fist. All he did, once he got close enough, was look at the man. He must have done that extremely well, too. Robert not only stepped back, but he took his hand off Sara’s arm.

“I do believe I told you to be very careful not to let me see you again,” Jackson began.

Sara startled, snapping around to look up at him.

Robert backed up another step. “I was just talking to her.”

“Now you’re just leaving.”

Irritation pulled at the other man’s features. When it looked like he was about to argue, catching Sara by the arm, Jackson pulled her bodily out from between them. She tried to catch his wrist in turn, but he pulled free. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d ever been forced to hit a paying client—not wrestle them up against the wall or pin them down until the passion of the moment had passed and common sense reasserted itself, but really, truly hit them—and if he could get away with it, he wouldn’t hit this one either…although he suspected it might feel incredibly good to, oh say, feed the man one or two of his own teeth.

“What’s going on here?” The master of the Masters, Marshall came out of the crowd with a lunch tray in his hands and his courtly lady, Kaylee, trailing along in his wake.

Great. The one time he sort of, half-assed started a confrontation with a client and who should show up to watch the situation unfold but the big dog himself.

“Apparently, we’re just talking,” Jackson replied. He tried to keep his tone every bit as light as Marshall, but he knew that blue-eyed devil saw right through it. He saw everything. The submissives loved him for that.

Angel blue eyes slid from Jackson to Robert. “I see,” Marshall said and set his tray on the table. When he held out his hand, Kaylee took it and let herself be guided to the chair he pulled out for her. “It seems a very serious conversation.”

When those unnerving eyes slid back to him, it was all Jackson could do not to roll his. There was a warning lurking in those blue depths that was as easy to read as any book in the master library: Don’t make me have to give out a free vacation.

“I haven’t hit him yet,” Jackson said, squaring his shoulders in irritation.

“What’s going on here?”

It was a damn Master convention, spontaneously taking place right here in the middle of the dining hall. Both Jackson and Marshall turned to see Master Sam, meal tray held shoulder-high, weaving his way between the occupied tables and those guests standing up either to leave or head back to the buffet line. A true sadist, the one the pain sluts and scene hogs both loved and dreaded, Sam looked past Jackson, his dark gaze settling briefly on Sara before he walked around her and neatly insinuated himself between Jackson and Robert.