Never Have I Ever (12 page)

He smiled. His fingers were against my stomach again, tracing idle lines around my belly button and up to my ribs.

I was about to fall asleep right there with my head at the wrong end of the mattress but, after turning off the bedroom light, he managed to coax me under the blankets. I clung to him immediately, cuddling up with my head on his chest.

“Thank you for indulging me tonight, my sweet,” he said. “You placed your trust in me with no resistance whatsoever and that courage is commendable.”

“Welcome to the new Piper,” I said with a tired chuckle.
“Willing to try anything twice.”

Noah pulled me to him like he couldn’t bring himself close enough to me despite how hard he tried. “You did so well. I’ll let you sleep. We can talk in the morning.”

Between his gentle fingers caressing my skin, the darkness and the sounds of his breathing and heartbeat, I fell fast asleep in minutes.

I
awoke with the strangest and most magnificent sensations flowing through me. Something soft and wet pressed against my clit. I released a half moan through slightly parted lips as I stirred from the unconsciousness of deep sleep into the waking world. My legs had been spread. I felt soft fingers gripping my outer thighs. My eyes opened to see Noah between them. I moved my hand to his head and I threaded my fingers through his dark hair as his tongue flicked over the aroused nub at the top of my pussy.

Both in part to stretch out my tired body and in part to encourage his oral ministrations, I writhed a little beneath him. His hands ran up my hips and to my belly while he kissed and licked between the folds of my sex. His hot, moist breath washed across my thighs. The soreness of my ass crashed into me a bit more thanks to the belt beating it raw the night prior, but it just helped the glory of the lust now.

At that point
I didn’t care how sore I was. I lifted my hips to meet his mouth, giving a short gasp as he rolled my clit between his teeth and then replaced them with his tongue. It darted between my lips and into the folds there as he worked me up with his skill. He alternated between gentle licks, kisses and nips with his teeth, then sucked the wetness out of me. It truly had been forever since I felt a mouth on me, and I was still so on edge from last night that it didn’t take me long at all to reach the peak of pleasure.

“Y
ou’re going to make me come,” I warned him.

He moaned against me and said, “Please do.”

My eyes closed and I held his hair tight, my breath short as the orgasm hit me. I wasn’t as vocal as the previous night, having just woken up, but I held him fast to me as he licked and kissed
the cum
from inside.

I relaxed then, limp against the bed. He kissed my nether lips once more, then began a trail of kisses from my clit up my stomach, between the valley of my breasts, to my collarbone and finally to my neck. He stayed there for a moment, nibbling at the soft, exposed skin.

“Good morning, sweetness,” he said delicately.

“Good morning indeed,” I agreed.

I just wanted to lie like that forever and a day. Noah pulled away from my neck and kissed me on the mouth. I could taste my sweet self on him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. He positioned himself beside me while he traced his fingers over my shoulder.

“Better now that I know last night wasn’t a dream,” I told him. Then I remembered myself.
“Sir.”

He chuckled and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “You don’t have to call me that anymore if you don’t want to, you know. The agreement was just for last night.”

I felt the slightest hint of heat on my cheeks. “I know, but I think I rather like it.”

Noah turned his head to look at me then and, with a yearning sigh, said, “That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. Can I keep you?”

I was smiling again. Somehow I just couldn’t stop doing that.

He lifted up and rolled on top of me, maintaining his weight above me with his forearms on either side of my shoulders. “Let me rephrase,” he continued. He took a second to brush my hair out of my eyes. His face was all at once warm and harsh. “I’m keeping you.”

Though my heart, admittedly, was a bit aflutter, I raised an eyebrow at him. “Wouldn’t that break a rule or two of yours?”

He shook his head. “Don’t care. I want you.”

I laughed, so glad that he voiced my own thoughts so willingly. “I don’t have a choice, huh?”

A sly smirk lit up his features.
“Nope.
And I can’t imagine you want one.”

“Okay. Sir,” I whispered. I brushed my nose against his playfully.

“Okay,” he replied.

We sealed the agreement with a firm kiss. The whole experience had been a whirlwind of all things terrifying and new. It was nothing like what getting to know a person should be like. Not in the usual sense of the idea, anyhow. Not in the way I was used to. Ordinarily when I got to know someone, I felt that rush; I felt that desire to find out more about them, and to spend time with them, even sleep with them. But never had I ever experienced the pull that I felt from Noah. I knew him now for a week, officially, and in a way I felt that this was where I was supposed to be all this time.

His smirk never faded as he said, “Now, I know you normally survive on a steady diet of complicated for breakfast, but I’m fresh out. How do you feel about French toast instead?”

“I don’t know. It sounds a little too adventurous for me,” I teased.

“Take a chance,” he countered.

“French toast is perfect.”

“Fantastic. Shower first, I think. And I won’t even make you crawl this time.”

He moved off of me and helped me to my feet. My legs were still shaky from the ordeal he put me through, but I managed to steady myself and followed him into the bathroom. In the mirror, I saw the extent of the damage. Purple and blue began peeking out from behind the pale skin of my hind quarters and the tops of my legs. The flesh grew tender. Even brushing my hand across it increased the pain a little. It was bearable and, all in all, worth it; though I was unsure about whether or not I’d be able to sit down for the remainder of the day.

We showered together in companionable silence. I sighed in longing of a garden tub like his. I always wanted one, but could never quite afford the apartments in town that boasted them. Warm water washed away the aches from my muscles. Noah even took the time to tend to my bruises with a soft washcloth. I silently wondered why he had yet to ask me to reciprocate his wake-up call. I wanted to. And he was still so close to me that every piece of me just wanted to fall to my knees and beg to experience more of last night.

But I remembered the rules from before.

While my out and out lust for him screamed through my head, my body did need the reprieve. I decided against asking. We were supposed to talk this morning, anyway.

One step at a time, Piper.
Breakfast first. We can ravage one another later.

After toweling off, I set my mind on food. It’d been so long since I ate French toast that I actually forgot how to make it. A refresher course didn’t sound half bad.

As I finished wringing out my hair with the towel, I asked, “Mind if I help with breakfast? I haven’t made French Toast in ages.”

Noah smiled and, with his own towel wrapped around his hips, closed the gap between us and placed his hands on my waist. “Of course you
can,
sweetness. Though, if you’re going to be in the kitchen with me then go ahead and throw a robe on. The last thing I want is for you to get burned when I’m not the one doing the burning.”

I never would’ve thought of that.
How amazingly sensitive of him for my safety to be so high on his list of priorities.
He kissed my forehead and disappeared into the walk-in closet beside us for a moment, then reemerged with a blue and yellow silk robe. A Chinese dragon wound its way up the back in black and blue stitching. He set it around my shoulders for me to slip my arms through. The wide sleeves sort of made me feel like a child in an adult’s jacket.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

He pulled me to him with the belt of the robe and tied it around me. “You really aren’t used to men being so attentive are you?”

I shook my head. My last relationship entailed a guy who strutted around in the same clothes for three days in a row and whose idea of the epitome of romance consisted of making out in a movie theatre to the tune of Transformers like some damned high school kids. Not my finest moment, I admit.

Noah donned a pair of plaid pajama bottoms, not unlike my own pair back home, and we reconvened in the kitchen. A clock on the wall told me it was almost ten in the morning.

“You can start us a pot of coffee,” he said. He gestured to a cabinet beside the refrigerator above the countertop.

I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the sugar on the second shelf, but luckily the coffee itself was on the bottom. There were several varieties to choose from. They ranged from Folgers to Starbucks to off brands I never heard of and something labeled Kopi
Luwak
. The latter was in whole bean form in a linen bag with a print of what looked like a cross between a house cat and a rat etched into the bag. I took the bag and stared at it for a moment, trying to deduce what the hell it was.

“Okay, why is there a picture of a small rodent on this coffee bag?” I asked as I flashed the front of it to show Noah.

He was gathering ingredients from the fridge. “Ah. You won’t want that one, I promise.” I waved my hand as an indication to give me a good reason. He shut the fridge and set the milk and eggs beside the stove before continuing, “It’s one of those high-end brands which, if you knew the origin of, would turn you off of coffee for the remainder of your life. The critter on the bag is called a Civet. You’re smart. I’ll let you connect the dots.”

It didn’t take me long. When I realized the only possible way to connect coffee to an animal had to do with it running through its digestive tract, I couldn’t throw the bag back onto the shelf fast enough.
“Oh, dear God!
Why? Why would
anyone
want to drink that?! In what universe would someone think, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea; let’s use coffee beans that have passed through an animal’s system! It’ll sell like hotcakes!’ Good freaking Lord.”

Rich people.
Seriously.

Noah laughed. “I don’t drink it. It was a gift from a very eccentric friend. I’ve been trying to pawn it off on someone for the past year now.”

“Think I’ll stick with Folgers,” I said more to the cupboard than to him.

“I warned you.”

After finally figuring out how to work the coffee pot, it was bubbling away while the smell of eggs and milk sizzled into the air. I leaned against the counter beside him while we waited for the first round of bread to crisp on the skillet. The delay began to gnaw at me until I could no longer take it.

“So, could you tell me more about what it would mean to be your sub, Sir?”

He didn’t turn his head, only his eyes toward me for just an instant before he was watching the skillet again. The ghost of a smile returned to his face. “How far down the rabbit-hole do you want to go I believe is the question.”

“Well, I need to decide if this is right for me, don’t I?”

“Oh you’ve already decided, my pet. And so have I. However, I’ll humor you this once only because you do, in fact, need to know.” Noah flipped the bread in the pan, and then turned his full attention toward me. “First you need to know what I don’t expect. Perfection, at first anyway, is something I don’t expect. That will come with time. I don’t expect you to be a maid or a cook, either. I have a cleaning service for a reason and, as you can tell, I tend to enjoy cooking.

“My desires are purely sexual and emotional in nature. I have a rather healthy appetite for sex. What I will require of you is that you give your body wholly to me to command. Everything we talked about last night stands. You will obey my every direction, continue to call me Sir, and, with the exception of times like these where you’re so close to a hot surface, remain naked when with me in this apartment. Are you following me thus far?”

“For some reason I always thought Masters wanted their slaves to be just that, slaves.”

“You are only a slave to your sexual need to be dominated, my little slut. And that is something I can provide with the utmost joy.”

I looked at the off-white tiling on the floor in a bid to drive away the growing want for him to just take me right there. Holy fuck, he was right. Now that I’d experienced the feeling of it, I never wanted to
not
feel this way.

“You are your own person,” Noah continued, “I recognize that. I won’t pull you from your passions for science or from your friends because that is part of what makes you so marvelous.”

“I appreciate that, Sir. Besides, were you to try I would have to regrettably put an end to this before it began.”

“And we couldn’t have that.” The first batch of French toast was finished, so he moved on to the next. It crackled against the skillet as the red hot electric burner caught beneath it. “In return I will lead you to no danger; I will respect any hard limitations that you may have—which we will need to discuss up front here—and I will never hit you out of anger. The only time you will feel pain is for the pleasure of the pain or as a controlled punishment.”