Branded Sanctuary (34 page)

“I love to watch your face when I do this.” Cupping her breasts, she grazed her nipples with her fingers, her heart rate increasing at the way his eyes latched onto the movement, his regard heating her fingers.

“The way you‟re looking at them, makes it feel like these are your fingers touching me. The way you press your lips together, it‟s as if you‟re already tasting them. You‟d taste the strawberry lingering on them from this morning, because your mouth was on them then too.”

“Do you like knowing I have to wait until you tell me I can do that, suckle your nipples?” His voice ran shivers up her spine.

“Yeah. I do.”

His hands closed on the grass, muscles bunching, power rippling over his shoulders as she purred her next words. “I love the way you work so hard to stay still when I‟m working your cock inside me this way, squeezing, pulling. Stroking.” She let her body move in those tiny increments, doing just that. “I‟m imagining how your balls are drawing up, wanting to come inside me. How long you‟ll keep waiting for that one single word from me. Waiting for yes.”

“I want to see you come,” he said, in a growl that tingled up her spine, because of the need in it, despite the fact he kept his hands where she‟d ordered.

The rising desire twined the physical and emotional together. Lust was gaining an intensity that made her want to give him honesty. She didn‟t want him to merely forgive her earlier ugliness. She wanted to ask for it, make amends. The honesty was as much a part of what she needed in this moment as the release, one necessary for the purity of the other.

“What you are, what you‟ve done, it‟s like going to a circus, Brendan.” She went completely still, holding him within her, fingers digging into his chest to bring his attention to her face, despite her breathless tone. “It fascinates and saddens me both, because it‟s not my world. I feel like an actor on a stage, pretending to be Guinevere, not really her, because I don‟t feel it the way you do.” His fingers flexed against the grass again. She knew she‟d want them on her soon, but she had to get this out, give him the truth, so he could have it to protect him from her next horrible spurt of anger. “That‟s what I should have said,” she whispered,

“rather than making that horrible remark. But I want you, Brendan. So much. I want to know that none of it matters, that you want me too. I know I‟m different from those other Mistresses. I need to know that‟s okay, but I‟m afraid it‟s not.” He lifted his hands then, shifted his upper body so that he could cup her face, let her feel the strength that was reflected in his expression. “I won‟t come until you believe it, Chloe. No matter what you do to me.” His eyes, all three colors, were vibrant.

“Not now, not later, not while I‟m by myself. Not until you believe it enough to say the two words you‟ll say to me then, and mean them with everything you are.” Keeping his gaze on hers, he lay back down, deliberately dropped his arms back to the sides as she‟d commanded.

The steel of his cock moved in her, aching for her to milk it to completion. She could override him, she thought, squeeze and taunt until biology defeated will, but looking at the resolve in his eyes, she wasn‟t sure she would in fact succeed. She might not know what made up those fortress walls she‟d run up against earlier, but now she had a sense of what lay behind the drawbridge. Whatever hung in the balance between them was essential to who and what he was, and she‟d uncovered it, touched it with her words and body.

More than a little overwhelmed, she curled her fingers into his shirt, his muscles flexing beneath her palms. “Would you, could you, in a park? Can you, will you, in the dark?”

Slowly, that intent resolve was replaced transformed by of humor as he picked up on her bastardized Dr. Seuss reference. “Only at your word, Sam. That‟s what I want.

Who I am.”

When she would have lifted off him, he disobeyed orders, settling his hands on her hips, holding her in place. “It doesn‟t mean you can‟t come. You want to, I can tell.” Even now, he‟d worked under the skirt, and before she could think to protest, she‟d arched up with a hiss as his thumb found her clit, pressed and began those highly skilled, intuitive circles.

“Brendan,” she gasped, her hand on his chest becoming a tighter clutch as she rocked involuntarily on him. “This…isn‟t…fair…to you.”

“It‟s not about fair. It‟s about giving you pleasure, letting you take it. This cock is yours, Chloe. Use it. It‟s yours.”

The demand nearly melted her brain. Heedless of who might be watching now, she was lifting, plunging, feeling him thrust harder, matching the spiral of response churning up from where his fingers were. His gaze followed her breasts, the way each downward impact made them quiver, the flutter of the open shirt showing him the dark flush color of her nipples. She saw that press of lips, how he wanted to suckle them, and part of her wanted that too. But the other part was fascinated enough to go down a little harder on him, make the quiver become a definite wobble, a provocative jiggle where the nipples were making his mouth water to taste them. All male animal beneath her, between her thighs, all under her control. Yet holding the reins felt like such a delicate business, as if any moment he‟d break forth from the leash, even knowing he wouldn‟t.

“Brendan—” Realizing she was about to come hard, and there were people who were in hearing distance, she still couldn‟t make herself stop.

In a swift move, he drew her down against his chest, palm flattening under her shirt against her bare back. He held her close, her movements rubbing her clit against firm muscle and bone, his cock moving inside her still. He was iron all over, so she felt the powerful fight, the strain to hold onto his control as she went over, turning her mouth into his neck so her cries were muffled, her body twitching on his, the skirt ruffling over her ankles and his knees.

She wanted him to come. She really, really did, wanted to feel it, but she couldn‟t say that word. She wanted to test him, just as he‟d predicted. As she spiraled away on the tide of her own release, she wondered how someone she hadn‟t let all the way into her soul already seemed to understand and know every room, light and dark.

Her knight had gotten over her drawbridge and much further into her fortress than she‟d gotten into his.

She just hoped the dragon inside hers wouldn‟t end up tearing him to pieces.

How could a woman not fall for a male willing to bind himself to self-denial for her own pleasure? Or was that self-abstinence? She wasn‟t sure what term applied to a man willing to deny his own release, while she used him to fuck her brains out whenever she wished.

It was possible he got off on it, some equivalent type of psychological orgasm.

Maybe. However, she suspected the truth was far more complex and more than she wanted to explore right now.

They‟d spent a few more hours in the park, going on that canoe ride, walking the hiking paths in the hushed pine forests. At one point, they‟d helped a young girl corral her escaped pair of Jack Russell terriers. The dogs considered being chased a game, up until Brendan, thinking fast, stripped down to his boxers and plunged into the water with the leashes. They‟d followed him, yipping excitedly, and he‟d gotten hold of the collars and snapped the leashes back on. He‟d emerged with laughter and triumph in his face, as well as thin cotton plastered to his privates and backside in a way that had stirred her anew, as well as any other woman in the park with a pulse.

But while he might have masochistic tendencies, she tried to quell her unexpectedly sadistic ones. It was difficult, particularly when he didn‟t spare himself, being as physically affectionate as he‟d been all along, stopping to give her long, drugging kisses on those paths as her hands ran up his back and down over his ass. When she leaned into him, she registered the tremor in those muscles, the turgid state of his cock, her barest touch hardening him further, his cock jumping eagerly. However, it was his mind—and her word—that were the leashes that kept him in check. She had to admit, it was heady, powerful stuff.

It was also very convincing. Despite what he was, she thought back to the auction, all the beautiful women. Except for a respectful nod to Marguerite at Tyler‟s table, his attention had all been for her. Earlier, on the picnic blanket, it had been indescribable.

When he gazed up at her from the ground, his cock hard and demanding inside her, everything in him focused on what she wanted and needed, denying the ache and primal need of his own body through her orgasm…it had been mind blowing.

Perversely, such commitment made it hard for her to resist the compulsion to give him his release, give him those words that would do it. For some reason, it made her recall her readings, the term “topping from the bottom”, where a submissive controlled the direction. It had been discussed as a negative, where the submissive wasn‟t truly being pushed to where they needed to be, a true release of control. Which brought her back to Mistress Lyda‟s uncomfortably knowledgeable eyes.

Oh how the hell could she really know whether or not Brendan was doing something like that, and whether or not it was good or bad, for either one of them? She wasn‟t a Mistress, and Brendan had said she didn‟t need to worry about those kinds of things, anyway.

She‟d dated everything from a rough and semi-violent biker to a computer analyst who had an addiction to X-Men comics. Her natural curiosity and acceptance, BVA—

Before Violent Attack—had let her get beneath the surface, find the polish of the roughest, uncut gems. She‟d always been satisfied with her journeys, sad but accepting when she knew it was over.

Brendan had fit none of that pattern so far. They‟d met a year before the first real date happened, and here they were, just a few days later, in deeper and faster than any relationship she‟d ever had. She couldn‟t imagine—and desperately didn‟t want—for it to end, but this was unmarked wilderness. Still, so far he hadn‟t let go of her hand once, never making her feel lost or alone in there. He was like meeting a mysterious and yet reassuring guide in a forest, one she wasn‟t sure she valued solely for being a guide, or being who he was.

“Steam is starting to come from your ears,” Brendan mentioned. They‟d left the park, agreeing to stop at his favorite coffee place to pick up a hot beverage, because the inlet temperature hadn‟t been as comfortable as the fall Florida weather. He put the vehicle in park and stretched his arm over her seat, teasing her hair with his fingers.

“I can‟t go swimming with you,” she said, reaching for earlier, safer topics. “You know, when you said I could go with you?”

He lifted a brow. “I didn‟t mean we were going today. The dip wasn‟t planned.” She chuckled, but shook her head. “I mean I can‟t swim.”

“Not at all?”

“No. My parents don‟t swim, and I was involved in a lot of things growing up. Art, nature classes, music, so that somehow got overlooked. We didn‟t live near any water, no friends with pools, so it never became an issue. We went to the mountains for hiking, but if there were streams we didn‟t go in unless it was for wading.”

“Do you own a swimsuit?” His attention wandered over her knit button down shirt. It showed decent cleavage, particularly highlighted with the wooden Tree-of-Life pendant she wore nestled there. “Preferably a bikini. It‟s much easier to learn to swim in a bikini.”

She pressed her lips together in a smile. “I‟m sure. You‟re going to teach me?”

“Everyone should know how to swim. And you‟d love it. At that park we went to today, there‟s a hike to a creek area that not a lot of people know about because it takes a while to get there. There‟s a cave, and you can swim into it, listen to the drip of the water off the rocks. You‟d love it,” he repeated. His fingers shifted, tracing the soft skin beneath her eyes. “But that‟s not why steam was coming from your ears.”

“No. But I need to keep thinking on it. Okay?”

“Okay.” She could tell it took him some effort not to push, suggesting that, whatever being a submissive meant, it didn‟t mean he would blithely accept everything she dictated to him. Coming around the Jeep, he opened her door for her, handed her out. As he did, she mercilessly let her body bump against his groin, a passing stroke of her hip. “I‟m glad those boxers were too wet to wear under your jeans.”

“I‟m glad you were willing to keep watch while I stripped them off in the bushes and put my jeans back on.” He gave her a wry look, not just about that, but also telling her he was well aware she was enjoying her power over him. “That group of teenage girls was making me pretty nervous.”

“A big, strong guy like you, afraid of a pack of naturally curious fourteen-year-olds?”

“„Pack‟ being the key word there,” he said, making her laugh again. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Hot chocolate for me, with whipped cream and marshmallows.”

“Does it come any other way?” When he slid his arm around her shoulders, she looped hers low on his waist, hooking her fingers in his waistband and feeling the movement of bare skin and hip bone under her touch.

“You know, Brendan, I‟m not going to hold you to what you said, in the park.” She grimaced over the surge of guilt. “You don‟t need to—”

“Yeah, I do.” He brushed a kiss over her brow. “Not until you say it, Chloe.”

“What if I order you to abandon that idea? Climax a hundred times?”

“I‟d say I‟ll need hydration, fast.”

She scowled at him and his evasion, but nature intervened before she could pursue it further. Their timing for departing the park had been propitious, because the sky had been darkening during their drive. Now a roll of thunder greeted them as they got out of the Jeep, sending them into the coffee shop, which was too crowded for the personal conversation to continue.