Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) (22 page)

“Sexy,” Sara said and even laughed a little, just before he ignited her and brushed the flames away.

“Courage” went down the back of her right leg, each letter linked so that all he had to do was tap the flaming wand to the back of her thigh and whoosh it went, amber fire burning the alcohol and wicking along her skin all the way down past her knee. “Beautiful” went up the back of her left leg, and he caressed that back into blackness almost from the moment he set her leg aflame. He brought his hand up her bare skin, dropping into the valley of her buttocks and descending into the moisture hiding between her thighs. Smooth, silken drops of new-budding arousal.

“Good girl,” he said, bending to drop a kiss upon the nape of her neck. “Let’s do another. Tell me what this says.”

Sara lay still, arching just a little as she felt the cool tip of the alcohol-soaked wand leave its trail in bold letters all across her back. “Mine?” she whispered.

“Damn right,” he agreed, as he brushed the flames promptly away. Clamping his hand back between her legs, he found her clit and gripped it in a way that made her jump. She gasped, twisting her face blindly toward him, her bottom humping up and down, her thighs gripping at his hand. He let go, swatted her, and picked up both wands to write his last word.

In scrawling cursive, Jackson wrote his name from her shoulders to her blushing buttocks. Without waiting for her to guess, he lit the alcohol and Sara gave a shivering cry. It was not a frightened sound. She seemed to know what he’d written, that he was marking his territory in ways they both could see even after he rubbed the fire out.

He bent, kissing the small of her trembling back, smelling the alcohol on her skin and feeling the heat with his mouth as he nipped her hip. He smoothed his hand down her scarred side, then stroked it with the wand and set that on fire, too. She jumped, but when he smothered out the flames, she arched to find his touch again. Her feet came up off the table as she writhed, her toes curled in tight. He drew a three-ring bulls-eye on her ass next and set each of those on fire
, too.

“On your back,” he told her. She tried to take her blindfold off first, but a sharp slap to her bottom put an abrupt end to that. “On your back, Sara.”

Feeling her way along the edge, Sara carefully rolled over and lay back down, centering herself between the two edges before she gripped them.

“Spread your legs,” he commanded. “Put your hands above your head and keep them there.”

She obeyed, her hands faltering only once before grabbing onto the top of the table. Her chest rose and fell in swift, shallow breaths.

He set the peaks of both nipples on fire and as soon as they were extinguished, bent to capture first one and then the other in the heat of his mouth. He suckled her, then withdrew, only to draw a line of alcohol down between her breasts to her belly. He lit it up, rubbed it out, and then he bent to kiss her navel, laving a path of nipping kisses all the way down to the soft mound of her bare sex. She quivered, her mouth open as she breathed. Her toes curled once more. Her muscles were tight, but if there was fear anywhere in her right now, it was overshadowed by the sheer enjoyment she had in his touch.

He rubbed between her legs, loving how she bucked up into his hand and how wet she was. He knew he could get her even wetter, though. Her legs began to shake. She tipped her hips, rocking up into each stroke and widening her legs to give him even greater access.

The flame on his lit wand was running out of alcohol. It was about to wink out. He had just enough time to light one more line. He did it on a whim, running his fuel saturated wand over her mound and down her labia, and then he set her alight.

Sara shouted at the touch. Her hips bucked wildly up into his hand, but he was already rubbing it out. And not just rubbing now, but well after the flames were gone, he opened her up and bent to bury his face in the fragrant temptation of her pussy. He kissed her, suckled her, latched onto her pretty little clit and worked it until her hips were rolling and lifting, offering herself up to his attentive mouth. He got his fingers into her. He felt the uncontrollable shaking of her legs echoed in the clenching motions of her sex, milking hungrily at his fingers and trying so eagerly to draw him all the way in.

He had no clear memory of just when he put the wands down, but the next thing he knew, he was circling around to the bottom of the table. Grabbing her hips, he pulled her down to meet him before catching her hands and heaving her up to sit. Blindfolded and gasping, she arched, but he still threw her up over his shoulder.

He didn’t wipe the equipment down—a major no-no in dungeon etiquette. One he was sure to hear about later on, but at the moment, he just didn’t care. He took her out of the crowd. The vulnerability she was about to gift to him with was for his eyes alone and he had no interest in being anything but the most selfish of bastards. He would not share this, not with anyone.

He should have taken her back upstairs to his apartment.

He couldn’t bring himself to wait that long.

Instead, he carried her into one of the empty private rooms there—faux dungeons, set up like torture chambers, dark cells of stone that were decorated with every implement designed to make a submissive groan in pain and writhe in joy. They weren’t soundproof. Even as he lay her down, his ears were filled not just with her gasps but with the muted whispers of those writhing and groaning, suffering and coming in the rooms all around theirs.

Jackson made love to her on the unyielding floor. His knees would thank him for that for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the week, but he didn’t care about that, either. It didn’t matter where they were, so long as she held him like this, wrapped in the hungry embrace of her arms and legs. So long as he was buried like this inside her, slammed to the hilt in all her soft, wet heat, pumping hard just to hear her cry out and fighting his own pleasure back for as long as he could. He luxuriated in the way she came, when she came, those hot, raw guttural sounds she made as she arched up under him and her whole body trembled all around him.

In that moment, he’d have died to stay with her like that—just like that—forever joined in the way lovers ached to be.

It was their last day together. And like last days always do, it came to an end.

Jackson hated sunrise. He never used to. Frankly, he’d never been awake three mornings in a row at an hour when he could actually see it, but this was his third morning of holding Sara while his fingers played lightly upon her skin. She was slumbering, softly snoring—he’d never tell her that—with her legs tangled in his, her small hands braced against his chest and her head pillowed on an arm that had gone to sleep so long ago that it was so far beyond pins and needles
, it was numb.

His arm didn’t matter. The point was, for the third morning in a row, he watched the sun come up and he hated it because there was nothing he could do to stop it. Three hours from now, the buses would come for her. And there was nothing he could do to stop them either.

That sucked.

Leaving was really a very quiet event. Sara waited at the very rear of the line, waiting to put off boarding the bus for as long as she could.

“You’ve got my email,” Jackson said for the umpteenth time.

“Yes.” The slip of paper he’d written it on was folded neatly in her back pocket.

Sara clung to Jackson’s hand, watching as the other clients drank in their last looks of the Castle before climbing onto the bus destined to take them back to town, where a very modern strip-mall had been converted into a receiving depot, complete with a Starbucks coffee shop, a short-term parking lot for those who drove in and shuttles that ran back and forth from the airport for those who flew.

“You’ve got my cell number,” Jackson continued. The luggage was almost completely loaded into the outer compartments. Gradually, those still waiting to embark dwindled down to the last few stragglers and Sara. “I’m serious. If I don’t get a call at least once a week, I am coming after you. Are you flying out?”

“No, we drove.” Unbidden, her gaze went to the bus windows were Robert was sitting, watching them in turn and, no doubt, holding her a seat near the rear of the vehicle.

“With Dickwad?”

“Please don’t call him that.” She said it flatly, not censuring, not really even upset. She wasn’t looking forward to the long ride home. Judging by what she could see of Robert, the ordeal promised to be neither pleasant nor quiet.

“Sorry,” Jackson said without remorse. “You know, if you live close enough to drive in, I could drive you home.”

Sara tried hard not to be tempted by that. She took a deep breath, looking away from both him and the bus. “Jackson…”

“Unless, of course, you’re looking forward to reconciling with your boyfriend.” Now it was Jackson’s turn to look away. He didn’t seem at all happy about that possibility.

“No.” Sara shook her head. “That ship has sailed, I think. For both of us.”

“Good.” He wasn’t remorseful about that, either. “You can do better.”

“Let me guess: you?”

“Excellent suggestion.”

She tried not to laugh and failed. “Jackson…how is this even supposed to work?”

“It starts with us rescuing your bag and me taking you home.”

“It’s a six-hour drive.”

“That’ll give us plenty of time to talk about your new living arrangements.”

“I can’t,” Sara said, but the prospect was too tempting for her to protest very hard.

“Sure you can,” Jackson said as she followed him to the rear of the bus. They were just in time to rescue her bags before it was buried behind the last few suitcases.

“I have a job.”

“Do you like it?”

She was quiet too long. “It’s a job.”

Jackson shrugged, first with his eyebrows, then with his shoulders. “The Castle’s always hiring.”

“I have a life,” Sara protested. “I have friends, neighbors…”

“You can email old friends and make new ones, you’ll always have neighbors in this place, and the funny thing about life is it pretty much follows you wherever you go. Come on, baby, if you really want to put the brakes on this, give me an excuse that means something.” Picking up her bags, Jackson looked at her, waiting patiently for her to say something. Anything. “Can’t think of one, can you?”

Unfortunately, she could. She could think of half a dozen, at least. But all of them sounded hollow and none of them felt real. “We barely know one another.” It was all she could think of to say, but even that wasn’t exactly true. They probably knew more about one another than most people did after months of dating.

Jackson managed to keep his smile, but an ominous sobriety had crept into the back of his dark eyes. “Is this where you try telling me what I feel isn’t real again?”

“No. I am definitely not going to say that.”

“Good. Because I don’t think you’re going to like having to bounce around on the front seat of my truck for six hours with a hot, sore butt.” Jackson tipped his head and held up her luggage. He stretched out one leg, making a point of taking that first step away from the bus as slow and as drawn out as possible. “Tell me to stop, Sara. Give me an excuse. I’m going to count to three and then you’re stuck with me.”

That was a lousy threat. She could already imagine spending the rest of her life “stuck” with Jackson. It didn’t look anywhere near as awful or as impossible as it should.

“One,” he drawled.

She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Admittedly she wasn’t trying very hard.

He waited, a slow grin tugging at his mouth. “Two, three,” he said without pause and turned around. He looked back along the bus windows until he found Robert glaring back out at him. “You, sir,” he pointed and then thumbed his nose, “have a great ride home.”

“Be nice,” Sara said as he came stalking back to throw a possessive arm around her shoulders.

“Hell no.” He drew her in to plant the kind of kiss that could curl an unsuspecting woman’s toes, enflame a rival’s jealousy and sear permanent marks upon the intertwined souls of two lovers until the end of time.

“Oh my God,” Sara moaned when their lips came apart. “This is so crazy. What are we doing?”

“We’re taking it one day at a time, baby.” With his arm around her neck, he led her toward the rear of the Castle, where the employees
’ hidden parking lot and his truck were waiting for them. Jackson’s grin grew with every step. “We’re taking it one day at a time.”

The End

“Hi, I'm Maren. I'm 30, married to a wonderful, dominant man, and have five four–legged children: two dogs and three cats. I love strong, authoritative men–men who are both ready and willing to leave the lady of their choosing red–bottomed and weeping for her own good. Writing has given me the wonderful freedom to explore my spanking side without feeling “weird.”Even better, with the invention of the Internet, I can write what I love and know it will be appreciated by people with the same interest
s
.”