Giving It Up: Pushing the Boundaries, Book 1 (5 page)

Chapter Five

Warren stared at his watch as the seconds hand ticked slowly by, crawling its way around the dial. He’d already been standing outside Beatrice’s apartment door for seven minutes, waiting for the hour to arrive so he could knock without feeling like some kind of pervert, too eager for something he shouldn’t want.

It hadn’t been too difficult to get in through the main doors. She lived in a busy part of town, people coming and going constantly. Another tenant in her building had walked out and held the door for Warren without a second thought. He could have been any creep off the street and still gotten easy access to Beatrice’s apartment door.

He’d have to talk to her about that. He didn’t want anything to happen to her.

Exactly what he was going to get from her tonight, he still wasn’t sure. Certainly
not
most of the things he’d fantasized about, since those primarily involved spreading her legs and getting deep inside of her. But still, he hadn’t been this excited about a woman in years.

An hour a week for five weeks. Five hours of excitement. So rigid. So controlled.

He sighed and checked his watch again. Six fifty-nine and twenty-two seconds. Twenty-three. Twenty-four—

Half a minute later, he raised his fist and knocked. Immediately, he heard footsteps approaching, then the heavy click of a bolt being thrown back. The door swung open and Warren blinked at the sight of Beatrice standing on the other side, wearing a long, fuzzy blue bathrobe.

Interesting.

“Hey.” She dipped her head and looked up at him shyly.

“Hey.”

They stood for a moment in silence, staring at one another, before Beatrice snapped to attention and gestured behind her. “Come in.”

He nodded and stepped over the threshold, watching her smooth her hands over her bathrobe as she moved to shut the door behind him. Nervous.

Well, fuck, so was he. He’d just had more practice at hiding it. Nerves were a liability when it came to his specialty on the SWAT team. Explosive devices didn’t respond well to jittery movements.

She threw the bolt closed and turned back toward him, leaning momentarily against the door, making the robe she was wearing part beneath her knees. The opening drew Warren’s eye downward, and his heart nearly stopped at what he saw there.

No wonder she’d seemed taller when he’d walked past her into the room. Platform-heeled leather boots laced up the front of her legs, the black laces criss-crossing through bronze grommets to end in a small bow right below the top of the boots. Dominatrix boots.

Holy fuck. She’d already exceeded his expectations. This was really happening.

Warren had to swallow hard to be able to croak out the words. “Nice shoes.”

“Thanks. I got them for you.”

Her feet shifted, and a glimpse of fishnet stockings above the boots had him gasping for air. Even if she covered herself with a sheet for the rest of the evening, it had already been worth it to see this normally properly dressed woman wearing boots like that. For him.

Someone was doing something
for him
.

He tried not to think about how he was paying her for it.

Her hands went to the robe’s sash, but she didn’t open it. Her fingers were shaking a bit, so his eyes shot back up to her face, his arousal lowering when he saw the apprehension there.
Shit.
She didn’t really want to do this. It wasn’t the fantasy he’d imagined. And now it was impossible not to think about the money.

He scowled, feeling like an idiot, and angry with himself for not having seen this possibility sooner. “Listen, if you’re scared, then tell me and I’ll leave. I’ll still pay you for this time. I don’t want you to feel like you’re selling yourself. It’s not—”

“I want to do this!” she blurted. “I’m nervous, nothing else.” She wouldn’t look at him.

What did she have to be nervous about? It was an act for her, a role to play for a short time. There was nothing at stake here except money, and he already said he’d pay her, anyway. Frustration made him aggressive, and he stepped forward, crowding her against the door. “Why are you nervous? I’m not going to pressure you into sex. I already told you I won’t do anything illegal.”

Her eyes went so wide, then, it was almost comical.
Almost.
Because being so close to her was doing things to his cock that made it hard to concentrate on anything except the soft pink of her lips, the delicate curve of her neck…

“I’ve never done something like this before and I’m worried—I’m worried you’re not going to be satisfied,” she whispered, and he could feel her breath against his skin.
Fuck, that feels so good.

And then her words sank in and it felt even better. She wanted to be satisfied.

Well, damn. She was already doing an excellent job. The best job. And she hadn’t even moved.

He was so close he could feel the warmth of her body beneath that teasing robe. If he leaned in another inch, they’d be touching, enough to let him feel the softness of her breasts against his chest, the sweet hollow between her legs—

“This is supposed to be a special thing for you, and I don’t want to mess it up. I take my work seriously, Warren.”

She may as well have dumped a bucket of ice water over his head with the effect that statement had on him. Work. He was
work
.

But he couldn’t make himself scowl or sneer at those words, even so. Not with the way she was looking at him, as though she earnestly wanted to do this right for no other reason than to please him. He almost believed she truly only cared about satisfying him.

He believed it enough to pretend for a little while, anyway. And it was a relief to realize that at least she wasn’t afraid of him.

He gave her a small smile. “Why don’t you do whatever you’d planned to do, and we’ll figure it out, okay?”

Beatrice swallowed. “Okay. Um, go have a seat on the couch?”

She said it as though she weren’t sure whether she was asking him or telling him, but Warren nodded and stepped away, taking it as a command. No doubt if he had hired Queen Dommes, those words would have come across as a clear order, but somehow, he preferred the tentative assertiveness in Beatrice’s voice to the bold directives he imagined the professionals would have used.

Although the realization had him wondering if maybe it would have been a better idea to go ahead with the service, despite the cost. Because he wanted Beatrice more than he wanted to give up control…

And that was dangerous.

He looked around at the apartment for the first time, saw the small loveseat with a low table in front on which sat an oversized book about some photographer, it looked like. The wall adjacent to the door was lined with bookshelves holding what had to be hundreds and hundreds of books. And in one corner, there was a drafting table with all kinds of photography equipment and artistic prints hanging above it. He thought of his room at home, its distinct lack of books or anything resembling fine art, the same blue walls he’d slept inside for more than two decades, and tried not to feel like a loser.

But when he sank onto the cushions of the loveseat, he didn’t feel as out of place as he thought he would. With his back to Beatrice, he listened to her move behind him, stared at the vase of purple flowers on her kitchen table and felt a peace he hadn’t had in years.

Someone else was making the decisions for a while. No one was asking him to fix the blender or help with a science project or needed to borrow money for gas. For the next hour or so, someone was doing things just for him.

Someone who’s a real partner will help make things better for you, instead of adding to your responsibilities.

Donahue’s words from earlier that day floated through Warren’s mind as he sighed and sank deeper into the seat, a moment before small hands rested lightly on his temples. Warren jumped.

Beatrice was behind him now, holding his head in place so he couldn’t turn around to look at her. “I’m sorry I startled you.” She began to gently massage his head. “I thought I would start by getting you used to me. You know, to my t-touch.”

Her words sounded a bit rehearsed, but her voice was soft, and Warren quickly relaxed and let her fingers stroke slowly over him, sifting through his hair, pressing against his forehead, skimming behind his ears. It felt so good to be touched this way he was having a hard time not turning to nuzzle his face into her hands.

Behind him, he heard her take a deep breath. “But if there’s anything I do at any time, anything that makes you uncomfortable or you don’t want to do it, we should have a safeword. Something you can say—”

“I know what a safeword is.” Warren lifted his hands in an exaggerated shrug, so she could see them even from behind the couch. “But you decide. I can’t come up with anything.”

“Okay.” Beatrice was quiet for a moment after that, now running her hands over his cheeks, sliding them across his lips. It was all he could do not to bite the soft pads of her fingertips as they rolled across the seam of his mouth. “You have very soft lips,” she murmured, and blood surged to his dick, a violent reaction to such a sweet compliment. Warren had to clench his fists against the desire to unzip his jeans, haul her over the couch and pull her down onto his hard—

“How about ‘latte’?”

What? He was fantasizing about driving into her wet heat and she was offering him a drink?

No. Wait. What had they been talking about before his mind went wandering? “You want to use coffee as the safeword?”

Her fingernails scraped the stubble under his chin. Warren shivered.

“It actually means milk, in Italian,” she said softly, her hands pausing for a moment, nearly cupping his face in a gesture that shouldn’t have been erotic, for all that it reminded him of the way he used to hold Nathan’s face when his nephew was a younger child. But it was erotic when Beatrice did it to him. “We use it by itself here in America, but Italians say something different when they want the espresso drink.”

Damn it. He was a classless brute. All he could think of was her body, milking his, while she knew things about other cultures and maybe even spoke another language. He wondered if she’d ever been to Italy or any of the other places he had always dreamt of going, before everything had changed.

He tried to make civilized conversation, to make her think better of him even as his body roiled with a mix of rage at himself and hot
want
for her. “What made you come up with that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just say it if you need to,” she whispered, then pulled her hands away from him. He heard something swish to the floor, then something black appeared in his peripheral vision, coming around the couch next to him.

Holy. Mother. Fuck.

Thank God he had seen those boots and fishnets first, or he might have actually died now when he saw the rest of what she was wearing. The stockings ended somewhere underneath a pair of skin-tight leather hot pants that matched a strapless leather corset-type thing on top, one that pushed her breasts together and left her shoulders completely bare. High up on her arm, a leather cuff encircled her bicep, and laced leather gauntlets ran from her wrist to elbow.

The only thing soft about her look was her hair, which was gathered up in a messy bun, some strands falling down to caress her neck.

Beatrice finally stopped, directly in front of him, standing with her legs apart as though she were trying to balance on the deck of a rocking ship. Warren could only stare. And stare. His mouth went dry and his cock hurt from straining so hard against the metal teeth of his zipper, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

A flush crept up her body, turning her pink from the roots of her hair to the dip between those incredible breasts. “I—did a lot of online research. And there was a book I read that talked about setting the context. It said—well, I felt it was right too—that dressing like this would help to put both of us in the right mindset.”

Damn. She’d certainly put more thought into this than he would have expected. With that kind of desire to get things right, he could see why she was such an incredible photographer.

But mostly, he was thrilled she had gone to all this trouble to give him this experience. She was still nervous, and obviously new at this, but then again, so was he. And he kind of liked the idea of being able to take this journey with
her
, even if it was going to end all too soon.

He wondered if she had any idea how long he’d wanted her.

“Am I allowed to touch you?” He was surprised at the way his own voice sounded, like gravel over tar, rough and slow, even as his hand opened and closed on nothing. She did something to him. Something he’d never experienced before, but suddenly felt like he couldn’t get enough of.

He stared at her thighs, wondering if they felt as strong as they looked. Wondering how they would feel, wrapped around his hips.

She shook her head.

It made him crazy.

“That’s another rule during the hour we’re together. Don’t do
anything
unless I order you to do it.”

Now
that
was a command. Clear and forceful, and it made him even harder. And it made him smile. Two minutes in and she was already getting better at this.

So he didn’t touch her, even though he wanted to, and she gestured for him to stand up as she stepped back, giving him room to rise. Even so, there was only a foot of space between the couch and the coffee table, and her calves were backed up against it. When he stood, their bodies were nearly touching.

Her eyelids drooped. He didn’t miss the way her shoulders rolled back, pushing her breasts forward until they grazed his torso.

“Take off your shirt.”

He hesitated for a moment, but then grabbed the hem of his tee. This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To be told what to do and not to have to decide anything? The only awkward thing about this was that his mind was telling him that it
should
feel awkward.

But it didn’t. It felt good.

Go big or go home, Warren.