The Boss (17 page)

I hurried to the living area, where I started
unpacking cartons from the plastic bags I'd carried it in. Neil was
down just a few moments later, barefoot, bare chested, clad only in
his black cotton sleep pants. He leaned over my shoulder, hair
still dripping from the shower.

"What is all this?" he asked, dropping a
quick, wet kiss on my neck. I squealed and tilted my head away to
avoid the now cold drops clinging to him.

"It's me, paying you back for the burgers the
other night. I hope you like greasy, bad Chinese." I popped one of
the containers open and inhaled the scent of syrupy orange
chicken.

"The worse, the better." He sat on the couch,
grinning up at me. "You look like you're feeling well again."

"I am." I gave him a little smile. "I'm sorry
about earlier, I was such a complete ass.”

"No, no, it was my fault, entirely." His
brows drew together. "I sometimes mistake your... enthusiasm for
experience. I know that you're game to try new things, and that
excites me. This time, to the point where I didn't exercise good
judgment."

"I'm not usually that emotional about sex.
I'm pretty good at shutting down that part of me entirely." Put
bluntly like that, it sounded sort of pathetic. "What I mean -”

"Don't be silly, Sophie. I don’t want you to
completely separate your emotions from sex." His tone softened. “In
my experience it doesn’t make for very good sex. Happiness, at the
very least, should be an emotional side effect of sex.”

He had me there. I'd never had anything close
to a great sex life, only just serviceable. I sighed. "Okay, you're
right. I was emotional. I was emotional about sex with
you
.
It's just... I feel like I've been sober for six years, and now
I've fallen off the wagon. I'm completely hooked on you. It's
terrifying."

"Agreed." He reached for my hand and pulled
me down to sit beside him. It felt strange to have all my clothes
on, pressed against his bare skin. I'd come over in some
tight-legged jeans and a striped blue sweater, totally casual, but
I still managed to somehow be overdressed.

"I feel the same way. It is a heady thing,
and confusing, when I'm trying to separate you from the Sophie
who's been on my mind for six years." He laced our fingers together
as he continued, "I had the two of you mixed-up this morning. I
sprang some very rough play on you, in an unusual setting, without
consulting you first. I'm very sorry, and if you do wish to
continue this relationship, you can trust me not to make the same
mistake in the future."

"If I wish to continue?" I sat up a bit,
alarmed, my elbow braced against the low back of the sofa.
"If?"

"I never want you to feel trapped with me,"
he admitted. "And I don’t want you to forge ahead as my submissive
despite misgivings. If at any time you find this arrangement isn't
working, I want you to be comfortable telling me, whether you want
to remove just the submission element or get out entirely. I'm not
going to do anything vindictive or extreme about it."

I kicked off my ballet flat and ran my
painted toes over his big, bare foot. “I read about that orgasm
denial thing, in
The Big Book of Kink
. I thought that was
what you were doing. But it’s supposed to be a punishment,
right?”

"It can be used as a punishment, but I prefer
it as a game all on its own." With his other hand, he reached up
and smoothed back a few errant strands of my hair that had escaped
my messy top knot. His fingers skated down my jaw as he lowered his
hand. "As a matter of fact, there are some rather interesting
things you can do with mental conditioning and orgasm training,
though the books I gave you didn't go in-depth. And I would never
initiate such an activity without your express consent."

"What kind of things can you do?" I noticed
suddenly how warm my face was, how my pulse was fluttering with
anticipation. I was totally turned-on, but I didn’t remember how I
got that way. I guess around him, I was in a constant state of
sexual readiness.

His answer was much more clinical than I
expected: "Training your body to respond to a certain pattern of
touches, or a verbal cue, so that you can climax on command."

The sound of his voice already made me clench
in anticipation, so I could easily imagine him being able to make
me come from a word alone. "That seems like it could be kind of
dangerous. What if you made me get off when we were out in public
or something?"

"I would only do that if you asked me to," he
said softly. "That sort of exercise takes an extreme amount of
trust. We can revisit the idea another time. Tonight, let's just
start with the basics. Only if you want to, of course."

"Um, yeah. I pretty much wanted to fuck you
when you were in the shower,” I said, shocking my own ears with my
bluntness. “But first, let's eat."

It seemed counter intuitive to stuff my face
with cheap takeout if I wanted to feel sexy, but I was starving,
and the sound of my empty stomach would probably not make a good
soundtrack to an erotic interlude.

We sat on the couch, happily digging through
cartons with our chopsticks, when suddenly a thought occurred to
me. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. You said at the office that you don't
eat stuff full of sodium."

"Rules are made to be broken. Occasionally,"
he amended with a guilty pause.

The quiet reservation in his answer pricked
at me. "You ate a burger the other night, too, after you said no
red meat."

"I try to be conscientious of my health most
of the time," he said wearily. "But it's damned depressing when I'm
sitting next to someone who was born the same year my metabolism
deserted me. My father died in his fifties, and I’m aware that the
clock is ticking for me, too. So I try to stay healthy and avoid
things I shouldn’t have. Bad foods, stress, the lot of it. But the
odd indulgence won't kill me."

I felt like an asshole for bringing up a
subject that was clearly touchy to him. I plucked a chunk of
broccoli from the container of beef stir-fry and held it out to
him. “Hey! I found Neil food."

He gave me a very stern look, but couldn't
keep it up for long, and we laughed as I fed him a bite.

"Ugh, I'm stuffed." I patted my stomach,
which was slightly rounder after my scarfed down meal. "I hope you
like a woman with a potbelly."

"I like you," he said, quite serious as he
sipped from his glass of water. "Any way I might have you."

"Well, we have that in common." I grinned at
him. “Oh! I got my paperwork in the mail today!" I hopped up from
the couch, figuring I could explain away his puzzled expression
easier with the documentation in hand. I retrieved the torn Planned
Parenthood envelope from my purse and brought it to him.

"Certified disease free." I handed over the
print out. "Well, the diseases they tested for. I could still have
Tuberculosis or something."

His gaze flicked up to me before he briefly
scanned the page. "Just a moment, I have mine, as well."

He set his food aside and wiped his mouth
with one of the chintzy paper napkins from the bag. Then he rose
and retrieved his iPad from the counter by the wet bar. When he
handed it to me, I whistled, impressed. "Your doctor emails
you?"

"It's an online chart, it will tell you
everything you need to know." He paused. "And then some, so
don't..."

"Dig around in your fascinating medical
history? I'll try to restrain myself." I looked over the pertinent
information, noting with interest that his height was listed at 6'
2", his weight one-hundred seventy-eight pounds. "Okay. So... now
that that's out of the way, and we covered the whole sub drop
issue..."

He smiled as my gaze drifted up to the loft.
Chuckling softly, he said, "I've picked up on your subtle
hint."

I walked ahead of him up the stairs, grateful
that my butt always looks so good in jeans. "I hope the bedroom
isn't too 'vanilla' for you," I said, making air quotes as I gained
the top step.

"Anything we do here will be fairly vanilla,"
he assured me. "You're not ready for extreme. Besides, I don't have
rope or a paddle, I don’t exactly travel with them.”

He was going to paddle me eventually? A
sudden rush of heat made me reflexively press my thighs together.
"Well... you have your hand. And a belt."

His closed-lip smile sent a wave of pure lust
through me, so powerful my mouth dropped open and my breaths became
more pronounced, my chest rising and falling visibly as he slowly
walked toward me. The tight skin of his bare shoulders gleamed, so
did his eyes as he looked down at me. It was so strange, how
different he could be from one minute to the next. I'd read about
that, too, the mindsets involved in Domination and submission. I
wondered if I seemed different to him, too.

The fact that I was too timid to ask kind of
clued me in that I probably did.

With one finger, he traced the long tendril
of a fallen lock of hair down my neck, to my collarbone. "If I used
a belt on you, you wouldn't sit down for a week."

My eyes fluttered closed as a shiver of
anticipation raced down my arms. I had to get myself under some
kind of control. Didn't I? Or could he just do it for me?

"Sophie, come back to me," he said gently,
firmly, and I opened my eyes. "Nothing is going to happen tonight
that you don't want. But I do have an obligation to protect you
from yourself at this point. No belts. Would you like to pick a
safe word, or shall we use the traffic light again?"

"Red, yellow, green?" I ticked them off on my
fingers. "That sounds good to me. Easier to remember."

"Very good. And I trust you to use them. If
there is anything you don't want to do, you need only use the safe
word." He stepped back. "Undress, please."

I didn't hesitate. I whipped my sweater off,
revealing my pink bra with dainty black polka dots on it, and black
lace edging the cups. I wiggled out of my jeans, revealing the
matching thong.

"Very pretty," he said, his lids heavy as he
regarded me. "Now, take your hair down."

As I reached up and began pulling out bobby
pins, he walked in a slow circle around me. His voice was low and
dark as he asked, "You enjoy spanking then, Sophie?"

"I do." More than enjoyed it. My pussy
clenched at the memory of that sweet anticipation, the moment
before his hand fell.

"'I do, Sir,'" he corrected me softly. "While
we're playing, you will call me Sir."

"I do enjoy spanking, Sir," I amended.

"Did you like it the first time I spanked
you?" He stopped behind me and sank his fingers into my loosened
hair, gently shaking the rest free. Pins fell to the carpeted floor
and I
heard
them, that was how heightened my senses became
when he was near me.

Concentrating was difficult, with his fingers
moving languorously over my scalp. I bit my lip to stifle a moan
before I answered. "Yes, Sir."

"What did you like about it? Take your time,"
he advised me. His chest brushed my shoulder blades, and this time
I couldn't suppress my whimper.

He leaned down, so his lips were beside my
ear. "What was that?"

My clit throbbed in time to the slow circles
he stroked through the roots of my hair. My hands strayed across
the fronts of my thighs, tentatively covering my mound.

He stilled. "Don't touch." It took a
surprising force of willpower to drop my arms to my sides. "Answer
my question, Sophie." His breath was hot across my earlobe.

"Tell me what you liked about me spanking
you."

"I liked..." I licked my lips. I shifted my
feet on the carpet, but it didn't ease the heaviness, the ache to
be touched. I had a moment of fear; it had taken me only minutes to
reach this intense state of longing. How would I make it through
the rest of the night?

Focusing on my answer helped. "I liked
waiting for it. The anticipation. And the way it felt."

"What did it feel like?" He withdrew his
fingers from my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders in a
silky curtain. He moved away from me, only for a moment, to turn
off the lamp. We stood in the near dark, with just the warm light
from the lower level filtering up to us.

"It hurt. In a good way. And it felt naughty,
like I had done something I wasn’t supposed to." It was easier to
speak when he wasn't touching me. "I wouldn't mind not being able
to sit down. It's like a fun souvenir."

I hadn't been so pleased with it while I'd
been flying to New York six years ago, but I
had
just been
left money on a nightstand after sex. My pride had been more
bruised than my ass.

His hands skimmed down my arms. "So, you view
the spanking as a reward, rather than a punishment?"

Goosebumps rose on my arms in the wake of his
palms. "It wouldn't be a very effective punishment for me, Sir. I'd
do bad things just to get attention."

He laughed softly. “I'll have to think of
something else, then." Coming around to face me, he said, "Take off
your bra."

My fingers trembled as I reached for the
clasp. He watched me, his expression unreadable in the dim light. I
unhooked the band and let the straps slide down my arms.

He waited until I'd dropped the bra on the
floor to reach for me. With one hand, he stroked a lazy circle
around the pink tip of my breast. It must have taken him an amazing
amount of self-control to stand there, unaffected, and I don't say
that to flatter myself. I knew he wanted me as much as I wanted
him; he was just somehow able to cover up his desire. To be
patient, to take his time. When all I wanted was to have him inside
me.

Brushing back a lock of my hair from the top
of my breast, he leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth. I
thought I might topple to the floor under the onslaught of
sensation that battered me. He looked up, amused, and released
me.