Authors: Emily Ryan-Davis
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Erotica, #Romantic, #Romance, #Contemporary
Amy shifted her weight but didn’t turn. Her toes curled and she inched her feet closer together. He crouched beside her and stroked the back of her head, permitting himself a slight smile for the way the ends of her hair wound around his fingers. “No reaction?”
“Are you going to be there?”
“Yes. And he’ll defer to me in every decision that’s to be made about you.
Your comfort, the tightness of his ropes.
You’ll keep your eyes on me.”
She
exhaled,
the breath shaky and rough. “Are you…interested?”
“Baby, the more I think about it, the harder I get.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kissed the lobe. "You've been here long enough. Come talk with me."
He pressed one of his t-shirts into her hand. Amy straightened away from the wall. She glanced at the folded square of black cotton, but didn't put it on. "I'm not comfortable doing everything naked."
"I know. You’re not comfortable doing everything clothed, either. Your physical nudity is a symbol of being emotionally naked. Emotionally open."
"Being naked for you in any way is hard. There’s nothing to hide imperfections. I want you to see me, but at the same time, I’m afraid you’ll see something you can’t love."
He frowned. “I never wanted a perfect woman. I wanted you.”
“I wanted you to have a perfect woman.” She braced her hand against the wall for support and unfolded her legs. "My feet are asleep."
"I'll rub the needles away." Mac rose and held her elbow as she hobbled over to the sofa. She swung her feet up onto his lap without a second prompting. Red nail polish caught the light and made her small feet seem delicate.
He studied her toes while he talked. Working the soles of her feet with his thumbs provided a meditative peace he hadn't expected to find in an action so simple. "I realize in retrospect that I set a rule without giving you an opportunity to negotiate the terms. I didn’t really explain the purpose, either.
“Your nudity isn’t just a symbol of your own openness. It’s also a symbol of my attention. If your breasts sway when you bend over to pick something up, you’ll remember that I gave your body freedom to move. You’ll remember me. More importantly, you’ll remember you’re mine, and you’ll remember I’ve taken away all of your obligations to be perfect in any regard.”
“You don’t want an unequal marriage, though.” Her toes curled against his wrist. “I’m confused. I wanted you to want this, but I didn’t really expect that you’d change your mind. I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” Amy said. “I was trying to manipulate you. Not to make you jealous,” she clarified, “but to make you want me again. I’m sorry.”
He gently pinched her Achilles tendons and moved on to massage her ankles. His gaze strayed up the pale, shapely length of her legs. She held his t-shirt, still folded, over the apex of her thighs. Unsure what to make of her continued nudity, he refrained from comment on the shirt, and instead met her eyes. “I can’t remember a single day in the last twenty years that I haven’t wanted you.”
Her eyes widened. “But--”
“No buts, Amy.” He gave her a quick, sheepish grin. “You’ve been the object of every jerk-off fantasy since the day you picked up that Mets hat for me. Remember that?”
She flushed. “Mac, I was thirteen!”
“So? Not much younger than me. You expected a fifteen year old punk not to notice when a pretty blonde bent over and flashed her tits? You’re the one who wasn’t wearing a bra,” he pointed out.
Amy rolled her eyes. “I was practically flat ‘til I went to college. You were stroking it to a trick of the light.”
The crude phrase rolling off her lips nudged his now-aching dick into a third-wind hard on. It reminded him of serious business on the table. He shifted her feet off his thigh and onto the sofa. Best if he didn’t tempt his hands.
“I need to know exactly what you want from me,” he said. The smile that had been playing at the corners of her mouth vanished. “If it’s physical punishment, I can’t do it. What I did—I enjoyed it too much. I was too tempted to keep hitting you. I didn’t even know I’d pushed you to the point of tears until I decided enough was enough, and saw your face.
“Spanking for play…that’s something else. I think I could do that if you wanted. But I can’t be a physical disciplinarian.”
She averted her eyes.
Shades of pink spread over her cheeks, down her shoulders, and across the tops of her breasts.
He would’ve given anything to know what thoughts were running through her head and making her small nipples bead up into hard little buttons. He could order her to tell him, but he made himself give her time to share on her own.
She cleared her throat. “I have a fantasy,” she said, so low he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly.
She rocked up to her knees and cupped his erection. A current of shock-sensation charged into his balls. He caught her wrist and held her gaze. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“But I want you.”
“You want to distract me and I’m not letting you. Not until you set some boundaries. I refuse to hurt you out of ignorance.”
“You know what my limits are,” she said. “You know me.”
Mac inched away and stood, suddenly claustrophobic and nervous. “I don’t know this
aspect
of you.” He cringed at the edge in his words. Amy’s face fell. “I want to,” he clarified, “but I don’t yet, so you have to tell me.”
She settled back on her heels and tipped her head back, looking up at him. Her eyes, the anxious set of her mouth, pleaded with him. “I don’t want to be blindfolded.”
The dark frightened her. He knew that. He didn’t realize it extended itself to a controlled blindfold situation, though. “What else?”
“Nothing…dirty.”
She squirmed. “No golden
showers,
or anything like that.”
“What about handcuffs?”
“I’d like those.”
“Anal sex?”
He’d never penetrated her there, but asked for safety’s sake. Amy’s flush surprised him.
“Not yet,” she whispered. She lowered her eyes.
Mac raised his eyebrows at her response. He’d only asked for sake of thoroughness, and hadn’t expected a midway response. It drove home how little he really knew his wife. Would he be taking advantage of her wishes if he used her submissive desires to quiz her about all the things he never knew, but wondered? The prospect of being let in on her fantasy made him eager as a kid. Every conversation with her could be like Christmas morning.
A huge adventure in unwrapping Amy.
The thrill of a sneak peek prompted him to continue questioning. He racked his memory for situations he thought of as kinky and asked, “Do you want me to gag you?”
She hesitated. “I don’t think so. Not yet. I need to be able to talk to you.”
Her words, small and vulnerable, hit him hard.
Again.
The phantom pain sobered him somewhat, gave him a line to climb up from the quicksand pit of want.
“Do you think you’re going feel unsafe?” He watched for any truth that might hide behind her lips. She shook her head. He didn’t see any hesitation in her eyes.
“Do you?” she asked.
Did he? The question surprised him.
Mac glanced away, disentangling himself from the power her face held over him. He rubbed his hand over his chest but couldn’t placate the anxious thud of his heart. Did she make him feel unsafe?
He’d asked the question with the intention of determining whether she felt threatened. It took on a different meaning redirected toward
himself
. Was he a threat?
An unsafe, dangerous element in her life?
The earlier thrill of spanking her was not a thrill he’d wanted to experience. He doubted his self-control. In that sense, yeah, he felt unsafe. He was the predator. She, with her fragile wrists and big unsuspecting eyes, would crumple beneath him if he attacked.
He had to touch her.
Careful to touch, not attack, he went to his knees on the floor and pulled her from the sofa. Taking her by the thighs, he guided her over to sit astride his lap. The position opened her up to him; the fragrance of her arousal was a drug. “Tell me your fantasy,” he commanded, shifting to brace the small of her back against the edge of the seat behind her.
She flushed and averted her eyes. She still held onto his shirt. He caught her hand and pulled the cotton from her grasp, discarding it on the floor.
“Look at me when I’m asking for your attention, Amy.” Her stomach flattened as she exhaled a long breath. Her eyelashes fluttered reluctantly, but eventually she met his eyes.
He kissed the corner of her mouth and murmured, “Good.”
“I don’t know how to start,” she whispered.
“Start with yesterday. I lost you somewhere in the studio. I want to know where you went.” He nosed behind her ear, seeking the fragrance of shampoo and skin, the heat of her pulse. Her hands moved restlessly against his chest and eventually found their way to his shoulders.
“Amy,” he persisted after several minutes passed. She shifted her weight.
“I’m uncomfortable.”
“I know. It’ll get easier.” To ease the physical strain of her position, he cupped her hips and drew her higher onto his lap, giving her room to move her legs and brace her feet on the floor. She made use of the new arrangement by pressing up against his belt buckle. Mac smiled and kissed her ear. “Tell me.”
Amy buried her face against his chest.
Hiding behind him, not from him.
He slid his arms around her waist, squeezed her close, and bit her shoulder.
She shivered and confessed, “When I was in the photo shoot, I pretended you were behind me with all those toys, and that camera.”
“You wanted me to pose and photograph you?”
“Yes. No.” Her breath caught and turned the words choppy.
“Then what?”
“I wanted you to expose me,” she whispered.
The admission drew him up, startling in its similarity to his own desire to get past her mask. Amy had given him her heart and body, but never such free, uninhibited
access
to her body. He’d never experienced this rush of complete, unlimited license to explore and provoke reaction from her.
“I’m going to.”
“This weekend,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
But that wasn’t going to be soon enough, not now that he had the idea in his head. Mac pushed her fingers against his fly. “Unzip me.”
Amy complied without a moment’s hesitation. She lowered his zipper, laid the folds of denim aside, and stopped. The slick, swollen head of his cock poked through his underwear and nuzzled her wrist.
“Mac?”
That brought his gaze back to hers. Wide, dark eyes welcomed him. The invitation was so tangible it robbed him of coherent thought for a moment, and it delayed his response. Eventually, he asked, “Yes?”
“I’m having trouble breathing.”
How had he missed the shortness of her breath? The rapid rise and fall of her chest tightened his throat. “I’ll get your inhaler,” he said, alarmed, and moved to shift her off his lap.
She forestalled him. “It’s not that. It’s—I’ve never been this hot before.”
He grinned and kissed her right breast, but rose to his feet nonetheless. Amy squeaked breathlessly as he swung her up into his arms and carried her across the room. “Point me to the camera,” he whispered against her ear.