He followed the siren sway of her slender hips up the stairs. There were two bedrooms, one large, one small. He was surprised to see a sewing machine in the guest bedroom which, as evidenced by the bookcases, desk, and computer, she used as a home office. He wanted to get into her computer. What would he learn there?
“Your room,” he said, pushing her ahead of him. A pale blue comforter covered the bed, pillows in shams piled at the head of it. A bureau stood beneath the curtained window and a tallboy on the other wall. On the opposite side of the bed lay the mirrored closet doors.
He could watch everything he did to her in those mirrors.
“I was expecting stuffed animals on the bed.” To go with the needlepoints of kittens and puppies on the walls.
She laughed. It was the first time she’d laughed all evening. She didn’t like being invaded, and to her, he’d invaded her space with every cupboard and closet door he’d opened.
“They’re all on the top of the bookcase in the spare bedroom,” she told him.
He padded down the short hall, past the bathroom in the middle, and entered the other bedroom again. Sure enough, cats, bunnies, teddy bears, fish, and puppies covered the top of the bookcase with bright colors and soft fur. The book titles ranged from horror to mystery to romance to classics. But what did it all tell him about her?
Not much except that she was real. With hobbies and reading tastes and a softer side that she’d never shown him.
She’d actually been nothing more than a sex object to him, everything between them based solely on sex. She came to his house; they did nasty things; she went home. She never stayed the night. Occasionally he’d taken her out for a meal, but mostly to show her off in a sexy outfit. They’d never watched TV together; he didn’t know what kind of movies she liked.
He knew only that she needed to be directed, that she wanted to feel forced to do what he asked, yet while sometimes she cried and begged him to stop, she loved it when he punished her. That continued to make him wonder about her past relationships. There had to be something there to explain it. Nevertheless, he would gladly give her what she needed.
Then he would give her more than she’d ever asked for.
“You’ve been withholding things from me, Bree.”
“What do you mean?” She’d followed him halfway down the hall, but as he turned from the spare room and advanced on her, she backed up. She’d tugged her shirt back over her small perfect breasts, but her nipples were still diamond-tipped beneath the Lycra.
“You’ve never cooked for me.”
She gaped. “You want me to make you dinner
now
?”
“Not now. Instead, I’m going to punish you for never offering. A good submissive must tend to all her master’s needs, including food, and you haven’t done so.”
“But I’ve—”
He was close enough to put his fingers to her lips and cut her off. “A master requires more than sexual sustenance, and you have denied me your full range of skills.”
Her eyes were wide and brilliantly blue. A pulse beat fast at her throat. Her breath puffed over his fingers.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Take off your leggings and panties.”
Without a word, she stripped down, and threw the leggings to the hall carpet. Her pussy was trimmed, the musky scent of her arousal rising to him, wrapping around his mind. His cock flexed in his jeans.
“Go into the bedroom, kneel on the floor at the end of the bed and face the wall.” Then he added, “Slut,” for good measure.
She didn’t hesitate, turning, the taut lines of her ass beckoning him.
This is what she loved, orders.
Do this, do that
. No thinking, no questions. His blood pumped faster imagining all that he would do to her tonight.
He entered the bedroom to find her on her knees, her body already prone across the bed, her arms outstretched, her ass in the air.
“You love a good spanking, don’t you, slut?”
“No, Master. It hurts.”
He went down beside her on the carpet. “You like the way it feels when it’s smarting.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie. I just told you the rule was for you to always answer my questions with the truth.”
“Yes, but—”
He slapped her ass with a cupped hand, cutting off her words as she yelped.
He stroked the reddened flesh, dipped down, and found her pussy wet against his palm. “If you don’t like it, tell me to stop.”
She didn’t say a thing. Which was the same as begging for more.
He wouldn’t let her get away with simple acquiescence. “Tell me what you want, Bree.”
“I want to take my punishment so that you’ll forgive me. I want you to call me the names I deserve to be called.”
He rubbed her bottom in rhythmic circles. “That’s not good enough, Bree.” He refused to use the words she wanted until she begged. “Tell me exactly how you want it.”
She turned her head to look at him, her eyes pleading. “I want what you want.”
“You think I like to hurt you?”
She rolled her lips together, smudging her lipstick slightly. “Well, not
like
but, you know, um, that I deserve to be punished. I deserve to be called a slut and a whore and a bitch.”
Deserve
. She wasn’t going to admit that she got off on it.
He smacked her again, harder, but still with a cupped hand that did no real damage. She closed her eyes, moaned.
“Did you like that?”
She gazed at him.
“If you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.”
She breathed deeply, then her lips tightened as if she were refusing to speak.
He didn’t slap her bottom again. Instead, he trailed the smooth line of her ass until his fingers slipped in the moisture between her legs. “You like it. You’re wet. You need more.”
She swallowed, but didn’t say a word.
His cock throbbed, and his jeans were suddenly too tight. “Say it,” he murmured. “You can only have what you want if you say it.” He leaned close to whisper against her silky hair. “I order you to say it.” Though he stroked up and down her cleft, he never entered, never touched her clit, yet she drenched him with her desire.
Christ, they both wanted it. Goddammit, she needed to say it. He wasn’t doing this alone. She was going to admit she wanted it.
Then finally, her lips moved, her words were soundless. “Please spank me. Please tell me I’m your dirty slut.”
4
SHE DIDN’T WANT TO BEG. SHE DIDN’T WANT TO
NEED
THIS WAY. She wanted him to just do it.
Bree wasn’t a true submissive. She was always in control, giving only enough to get what she wanted. But as Luke’s hand descended one more time on her ass, she couldn’t help giving in. “Please,” she whispered. “I need it.”
When he slipped down to her pussy, sliding against her, caressing, she felt herself go mindless with that need. The moan that slipped from her lips didn’t even sound like her. She never wanted to think about all the reasons she needed it this way, hot and hard and painful and dirty. It was just the
only
way.
“Your butt cheeks are warm, you dirty girl,” he murmured, caressing her. His fingers grazed her rear hole, then he swatted her once more.
It stung but in such a delicious way, the pain zipping to her clitoris and making it throb.
Do it again,
she wanted to beg.
Please, please, make me feel.
Her very skin seemed to quiver beneath his touch.
She clenched her fingers in the comforter as he punished and soothed, slid across her pussy, this time reaching down to glide deeper between her legs, over her clit. She ached. The punishment was all tied up with the pleasure. She couldn’t have one without the other.
“Do you want to come?”
“No.” Not yet. She preferred to ride the edge. And he wasn’t spanking hard enough; he hadn’t hurt her enough. With someone else making you come, there was all the guilt and the bad feelings associated with it. Unless there was the hurt first. She only deserved the pleasure if she took the pain. Derek had known what she needed; Derek had been a sadist. Luke was too good to her.
But tonight, he took her again and again with the slap of his hand until every nerve ending tingled and spasmed and the bedspread abraded her nipples with each move of her body. Still, her ass didn’t hurt enough yet.
“Look at us,” he said, putting his hand under her chin and turning her head to the closet mirror.
He was dark, and with her naked bottom and the white top, she was light in contrast, despite her black hair spread across the light blue spread. Her ass gleamed red. He buried his hand between her legs, and the woman in the mirror groaned. The sight was decadent, naughty, tantalizing.
He spanked her bottom again as she watched, sensation rippling through her flesh. “Come,” he demanded, delving deep between her legs to her clit. She shuddered for him.
She bucked and rode his hand, moaned, groaned, then cried out.
He swatted her. “Liar. You didn’t come.” Then he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Dirty little cunt.”
She quivered. He rarely used that word, but he wanted her to come. He wanted her climax to be real, unlike the other night. So many men had never cared if she faked her orgasms. But not Luke. Why did he have to care one way or the other?
“Harder, Master. I deserve a harder spanking.”
“I will spank you until you come. I won’t stop until you scream my name and mean it.”
He smacked harder, then caressed, a steady rhythm that was driving her mad. Abusing her ass, then sliding along her pussy to stroke her clit. She was wet and quaking, teetering on the edge, gasping, crying. God, it was so horribly good.
He slapped her hard. “Take that, you filthy slut.”
Her bottom burned. She wanted to cry out her need. “I’m a whore. I deserve it harder, Master, more.”
“Whore.” He swatted her again, slid between her legs, abused her clit, stuffed his fingers inside her. It was on the edge of brutal. And so perfect.
Oh God, oh God.
His hand on her, time after time, until she was screaming for him, until the pain shot down her legs. In a blinding flash, she simply imploded, her legs clamping around his hand, her breath puffing, her mind whirling. Then she was gone.
HAVING SEEN BREE IN THE MIRROR, LUKE DIDN’T BELIEVE SHE’D ever truly come for him before, or if she had, it was nothing to rival this. It was the way she said his name, almost on the backs of her tears, sobbing. He didn’t know how he could have missed it all those months. He was an idiot.
He closed his eyes remembering her in the throes of that orgasm. Christ, she was gorgeous. The spanking wasn’t his usual mild fare; his hand smarted and his heart was only just coming down off the high. Yet even as he wanted to be pissed that she’d withheld so much from him—that he hadn’t even
known
the extent of it—it was all too fucking good to let the anger seep in. He’d finally breached some sort of barrier. He was in her house; he’d made her come cataclysmically.
Now, propped beside her so he could see them both in the mirror, he stroked the hair back from her face. “You’ve done well,” he said. “You’ve taken your punishment and now you deserve your reward.”
She opened her eyes and met his gaze in the reflection. A normal woman would have said that the orgasm was the reward. But not Bree. “You want me to make you come?”
She was so quick to give him pleasure, so uncaring of her own. “No. You’re going to make me dinner.”
She rolled to face him. Without the mirror distancing them, he saw the gleam in the blue depths of her eyes. “I make a mean mu shu chicken.”
“And dessert.”
She smiled like a glowing child eager to please. “Hot chocolate pudding. My mother used to make it.”
Used to? He didn’t know whether her parents were living or dead. He didn’t know a damn thing about her, except that she was eager to suck him off, make him come, cook him dinner, prepare a favorite dessert. It was all about him.
He’d been fighting that all along. Now he understood how to use it to his advantage.
SHE WOKE IN THE DARK TO FIND HIM WRAPPED AROUND HER. SHE felt overheated, constrained, tied down. And not in the good way she liked when he handcuffed her to his bed. She hadn’t expected him to spend the night, but he’d insisted. He’d actually wanted to
cuddle
, for God’s sake.
“You will fall asleep in my arms. I want to feel it.”
Rather than melt the ice around her heart, it terrified her. She’d never spent the night with him in his bed. He’d never asked her to. She didn’t want to. He was mixing her up by stepping into places she hadn’t expected him to go.
Yet he’d loved her mu shu chicken. It was simple, easy, and she used tortillas instead of the thin Chinese pancakes, but the food was delicious. Hot chocolate pudding didn’t go with the mu shu at all, but he’d liked that, too.
She’d been breathless with his praise. She’d felt as if she’d performed some sort of miracle. Then he’d made her suck him to climax in the darkness of her bedroom. He said she was the best he’d ever had. Those words were what she lived for.
I’m the best. I’m special.
Now, lying in her bed, his chest to her back, he shifted, his arm tightening around her. She couldn’t move without waking him.
Men, they said whatever you wanted to hear. Until they were tired of you. Until you weren’t special anymore. Then they stopped complimenting, stopped saying you were the best. You spent all your time trying to figure out how to fix it, how to anticipate their needs, how to make sure they forgave whatever sin you’d committed that had alienated them. Of course, it didn’t work. After that, there was only the punishment with none of the pleasure. Because suddenly you were nothing to them. Nothing. The way Derek had made her feel in the end.
But not Luke. She’d never been with a man this long. They weren’t in a relationship, but still, she’d never had a man keep coming back for six months. Of course she knew the fact no one else ever stuck around meant there was something wrong with her; she just didn’t know how to fix that.