Dare Me: A Dark Billionaire Romance (9 page)

All at once, it felt as if something tightly knotted deep between her hips unraveled, and Jasmine broke away from Dominic’s lips, gasping and crying out as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her. Her orgasm intensified as Dominic speeded up his thrusts, his hips smacking into hers, his fingers slipping down between their bodies to stroke and rub her pleasure center. Jasmine grabbed at the sheets, then at Dominic’s body, struggling to remain anchored to something as the sensations coursed through her, blotting out all thought. She heard Dominic’s low moan of pleasure and then felt the sticky-slick gush of his come flooding into her as the spasms finally began to abate.

She opened her eyes to the feeling of Dominic’s hands trailing over her body in gentle caresses, and the sound of his voice in her ears. “You did so well, Jasmine. You were beautiful to behold.” As she turned to look up at him, Dominic smiled. “In fact, I think you came in three minutes, not five.” Jasmine blushed, burying her face against his chest.

“I was determined,” she told him. She slipped free of his embrace and sat up, looking blearily around the room.

“It suits you,” Dominic said, sitting up with her. “You can stay the night, you know.” Jasmine shrugged; she thought ruefully of the gown she’d left on the floor. She would have to return it—and she didn’t want to take the infamous walk of shame in it the next morning. Better by far to go home now, tingling and sore but adrift on satisfied pleasure, and make sure it was clean enough to go back to the store.

“I’m okay,” she said, giving him a smile. “Busy day tomorrow.” She climbed out of the bed; as she searched out her underwear, a thought tugged at her. Jasmine slipped on her panties and turned to look at Dominic, watching her from the bed still. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” Dominic raised an eyebrow.

“The thing after. Where you tell me how good I was and how beautiful and all that.” Dominic smiled slowly.

“Think about it as after care,” he said. “Responsible practice for what we’ve done together. You need to feel safe and comforted after taking abuse like that.” Jasmine considered; certainly she had responded to the compliments—but it was less than flattering to think that he might say them to every girl he brought into the room. “Just because it’s responsible practice doesn’t mean it’s not true,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “You were beautiful. You did very, very well. Surprisingly so.” He smiled again.

Jasmine found the dress pooled on the floor and slithered into it, zipping it up and making sure the straps lay flat against her skin. “I appreciate the clarification,” she said, giving him another smile. Her heart beating quickly, she pressed her lips together, trying to decide if she was quite daring enough for the idea that flitted through her mind. “I believe we left the game at my turn—isn’t that right?” Dominic frowned for a moment before breaking into a smile, his bright eyes glowing with amusement.

“We did at that,” he agreed. Jasmine smoothed the dress against her body.

“Then I dare you to take me on a date this coming weekend. None of this open-ended shit anymore.” Dominic laughed.

“I accept the dare,” he said, inclining his head slightly towards her. “I have one condition: there’s a function I would like you to attend with me afterward. A ball. Are you willing?” Jasmine held his gaze for a long moment and took in the flicker of dark lust in his eyes and knew that it would not just be a standard ball.

“Sure,” she said, giving him another impish grin. Before she could say anything else, Jasmine turned on her heel and left the room, barely remembering to grab her purse on the way out.

Chapter Eight

Friday went by uncommonly fast. For once, even though she was exposed to just as much drudgery as ever, Jasmine was able to get through the day without any irritation. The lingering soreness where Dominic had used the crop and the flogger reminded her of their time together every time she shifted in her chair, or got up to walk to the restroom or to get coffee. She smiled to herself, bearing/breezing through the shouting from her boss when she told him that, deadline or no, she wasn’t going to stay late to finish the presentation for Larry.

As she worked, Jasmine wondered whether Dominic was in the building; while he was totally unaware of her being in the office, she was acutely aware of the fact that he was possibly only several floors away from her. Was he thinking of her? Was he wondering where she was, what she was doing? The possibility of it made her tingle all over. Jasmine knew that she had to return the dress; she couldn’t be seen wearing it twice—and on top of that, she couldn’t afford it. As she worked through the day, she considered whether it would make sense to exchange it; considering the date that she had planned with Dominic, along with the ball he had planned afterwards, it would make sense to have something else to wear. She did, after all, have to keep up the façade for as long as she could. She couldn’t be caught in something less than exquisite when she saw him again the next night.

When she had arrived home from her tryst with Dominic, Jasmine had checked over the dress carefully; there was no sign of stain or tear or anything to show what she had been up to while she had it on, or while she was taking it off. There shouldn’t be any problem returning it. And Jasmine rather thought that Nordstrom would rather she exchange the dress for another one than just return it outright.

As Friday drew to a close, Jasmine hurried out of the office, thinking—in a paranoid flash—that it would not do to accidentally run into Dominic leaving the building.
It’s not even that likely, but it would be just my kind of luck,
Jasmine thought. She bit her bottom lip, keeping to herself as she rode the elevator down to the lobby. Jasmine decided that she would go home, get her dress, and go out shopping immediately. That way, she would have plenty of time to compare and think about just what she wanted to wear.

Arriving home, Jasmine spared only enough time to change out of her work clothes before grabbing the dress and carrying it carefully out of the apartment. She tried to think of what she would say in order to smooth the exchange; hopefully, if the store’s reputation were anything to go by, it wouldn’t be needed; they would simply take it from her and someone would lead her to a new gown for the next occasion. She thought to herself about what she would need; it would have to be cocktail length, in order to fit in both during the date and during the ball after it. Crucially, it had to be something within the same price range as the dress she had bought already, so that her store credit would cover it.

It occurred to Jasmine as she stepped into the store that she didn’t actually know where Dominic planned to take her before the ball. Jasmine put the thought aside; he wouldn’t be taking her bowling, or anything of that nature, she knew. A man of Dominic Harper’s wealth would not take a girl on such a whimsical and inexpensive first date—he would save that for when he got to know her better, if it ever came up at all.

Although she felt anxious and even a little bit guilty returning the dress, Jasmine found that it was exactly as easy as she had been told it would be by popular rumor: they simply accepted the return and not a single eyebrow was raised when she said that she wanted to use the credit from the dress to buy something else.
I can’t make a habit out of this,
she told herself firmly as the woman running the returns desk called a clerk to help her pick something out.
Next time I come in here—after I return this dress, at least—I will come with money to spare and buy something I intend to actually keep. Shoes, makeup, or something.

Jasmine was grateful that the person helping her this time was not the same woman she had bought the previous dress from; she would have felt even guiltier about returning it if she had to work with the very nice clerk from before. Instead, a woman about her age led her towards the womenswear section, asking about the occasion and her style, questions that Jasmine found comforting—although she knew that was exactly the point. Into the dressing room she went with a handful of dresses, all the length that she had specified, based on what the clerk had thought would fit the occasion and her body type. “I’ll find you some other things to look at while you’re trying those on,” the woman suggested with a smile, and Jasmine nodded.

After an hour of going through various options, each time refining what Jasmine was looking for, Jasmine left the store with a complete outfit, suitable for the night she thought she had planned with Dominic: a beautiful dress, cream-colored with intricate green and gold embroidery, strapless with a hem that fell down to just above her knee, and heels that coordinated perfectly. Jasmine carried the dress and shoes home carefully and put them aside, smiling with contentment.
Maybe there’s some way I can cut my costs and expenses to make this doable.
Jasmine gave the garment bag and shoebox a lingering glance, sighing and thinking about Dominic’s likely reaction to her in the dress. She had seen herself in the mirror and knew that she looked absolutely delicious. Jasmine woke up on Saturday morning, restless and already thinking about how she should get ready for the date. Dominic had sent her a brief text message on Friday night, telling her to be ready at six—that they would go to happy hour and “maybe have a snack,”  before going to the ball he had mentioned the night before. Other than that, she had no message from him; but Jasmine thought, as she brewed a pot of coffee and prepared her breakfast, that it was more than enough for her to know that it was actually going to happen.

Jasmine decided to spend the entire day in preparation for the evening; she would take a long, hot bath and relax, and take her time on her makeup, carefully picking out her jewelry for the evening. She ate a leisurely breakfast, wondering to herself where Dominic was, and what he was doing. She wondered what he had for breakfast, if he ate breakfast at all.
He did offer to let you stay the night on Thursday,
she thought wryly.
You could have known the answers to these questions by now.
But if she had stayed the night, she would have had to hurry home, shower, and get ready for work. Of course, Dominic would have to get ready for work too, but she had the added need of making sure the least amount of harm possible came to the dress that she had intended to return. The longer she wore it the more likely it would get damaged in some way.

Jasmine figured that Dominic almost certainly was not experiencing the same level of excitement for the evening that she was. To the best of her knowledge, most guys didn’t experience the jitters in the same way that women generally did—though she’d had a few guys who were nervous first dates—and Dominic seemed even more in control of his emotions than any man she had met before. The welts from the flogging and the punishment with the riding crop had gone almost entirely away; her nipples were no longer sore, even. And yet, as she went into her bedroom, stripping off her pajamas, the memory of the evening was just as vivid in Jasmine’s mind as when she had stumbled into her bedroom at the end of the night, still stinging and tingling from the various punishments.

She sat down at the edge of her bed, shivering as she remembered the delicious vulnerability of being tied up, blindfolded, absolutely at Dominic’s mercy. She could have used the safe word at any time, she knew; and yet, no matter how intense it had gotten, she had never been able to quite bring herself to utter it.
He knew when I’d had enough,
she realized. He had originally specified that he was going to test her with five punishment objects—not four. Jasmine found herself lying back against the sheets of her bed, closing her eyes as her body heated up at the memory of the night. Her hands began to wander over her naked body, caressing and teasing, as she called up every detail.

Jasmine remembered the sound of Dominic’s voice in his ears—the tight control, the absolute confidence in his commands and in her total willingness to comply with them.
“I never said I would be fair,”
he had told her, when she had protested the fact that he’d made identifying the flogger too difficult. The amusement in his voice made Jasmine shiver again as her hand drifted down between her legs. She found herself already wet, her labia slick as her fingertips danced along them, attempting to mimic the feather-light touch that Dominic did so well. She realized too that Dominic had deliberately made the last test—the cane—easy for her, just as he had made the first object easy to identify.

Jasmine began to stroke her clit slowly, almost meditatively as she dared to imagine what it would be like to be Dominic’s submissive—not in the short term, on a few trysts, but in a more stable, long-term arrangement. Hadn’t he said that he wanted her to submit to him because she wanted to, and not because he dared her?
Assuming tonight goes well,
she thought, biting her bottom lip as her fingertips swirled around her pleasure center,
then good god do I ever want to.
Jasmine’s body twitched as she remembered the way the flogger had danced over her skin, flicking tongues of tingling heat across her breasts, her abdomen, her hips, her thighs. How long had Dominic been doing that particular punishment, to be so good at it?

Jasmine let her thoughts travel further back, to their first session together. She had had not anticipated that Dominic could possibly get the kind of reaction out of her that he had. She shivered and writhed on her bed, reaching one hand up to cup her breast, finding the nipple by touch and giving it a firm, rough tweak that made her gasp as sensation shot from her breast straight to her pussy. Jasmine’s fluids flowed more freely against her fingers as she slid them along her folds, rubbing her clit with her thumb as she slid two fingers deep inside of her pussy. She moaned, imagining that it was Dominic instead of her own touch, rubbing along her inner walls. It wasn’t the same—it wasn’t as deliciously sexy—but as Jasmine remembered both the way that Dominic had gotten her off with his hands, as well as the way he had paddled her afterward, it didn’t matter. She tingled all over with hot and cold flashes of sensation, her pleasure mounting more and more with every moment as she teased herself.

Jasmine reached orgasm with a shudder, moaning as the image of Dominic, looking down at her with his eyes full of lust, flickered through her mind. She gasped and shivered, hips moving automatically, sustaining her orgasm for as long as she could. After several long moments, as the spasms of pleasure began to abate, Jasmine fell limp against her mattress, withdrawing her fingers and panting to catch her breath. The climax had not been as good as what Dominic had given her—but it was enough, for the moment, to satisfy her.

As soon as her breath slowed and her pulse went back to normal, Jasmine forced herself to get out of bed. 
Let’s see just how thoroughly I can get myself ready for this evening,
she thought.

Jasmine drew a deep, hot bath and sank into it, closing her eyes and letting the heat seep in through her skin. She let her mind drift for a long time, floating in the blind, hazy pleasure of the orgasm she had given herself. She smiled, thinking that even if it wasn’t as good as what Dominic had given her, it didn’t matter. She could easily imagine the possibility of the night leading to something more than drinks and dancing at some event. The look in his eyes as he laid out the condition of taking her out on a date had told Jasmine clearly that he had more in mind. She wondered idly as she scrubbed and soaped her body, standing up out of the warm water to make sure she reached every inch of skin with the lather—just what kind of ball had he invited her to?

She spent the rest of the day preparing; by the time she was done, Jasmine’s skin was silky soft all over, her nails—both fingernails and toenails— carefully done to coordinate with her dress and shoes. She had not even a strand of hair on her body from the waist down, and as she padded around her apartment preparing lunch the robe she wore tickled her sensitive skin. Jasmine lounged around for a little while after lunch, making sure that the polish was dry on her hands and feet, idly watching something on TV as she forced herself not to fidget, not to give into the urge to walk around, to clean something, from the excess of nervous energy flowing through her body.

As the time to leave drew closer, Jasmine began her final preparations: she slipped into the creamy, nude-colored underwear set she had chosen to wear under her new dress, looking herself over in the mirror with a smile; when Dominic made her strip again, as she was almost certain he would—or when he stripped her clothes off, back at his hotel—she would look as though she was wearing next to nothing underneath her clothes. The lace of her bra was so fine, so delicate, that as her nipples hardened in the slight chill of the room, they strained at the fabric, and the dusky pink of her areolas was visible through the meshwork.