The Commitment (The Unrestrained #2) (5 page)

I went to him and slipped my arms around his waist, leaning my head against his chest. He inhaled and embraced me back and the feel of his arms around me ignited my desire. I snuggled against his body, which was so warm and firm under his coat.

"I
like
this Drake Morgan," I said, looking in his eyes. "I'm seeing him a bit more clearly now."

"Oh?" he said, his eyebrows raised. "And what have you seen?"

"You seem so self-contained."

He sighed and squeezed me more tightly. "My mother had me after my brother died, so I was an only child."

I pulled back. "I never knew you had a brother who died."

Drake nodded and ran his fingers through my hair. "We've never talked much about personal things."

"
Tell
me."

He exhaled. "He died before I was born from a very rare and aggressive form of leukemia. My mother never recovered, even after she had me. I
had
to be independent after she left. I think I was a little too independent for married life and that's one reason why Maureen and I split. I was also reluctant to have children because of the chance of passing on the mutation that caused my brother's leukemia, and that was a sore point between us. As soon as she left me, Maureen had a child with her new boyfriend."

"Oh, Drake, that’s so sad." I pulled him more tightly into my embrace, my heart swelling that he felt close enough to me to talk about his late brother and admit that he had been a bad husband. "What was your brother's name?"

"Liam, after my father."

"How old was he when he died?"

"Five."

We stood like that for a moment, his warmth penetrating through his jacket, comforting me.

He sighed and ran his hands over my hair. "I don’t want to think about the past," he said softly. "Right now, I only want to think of me inside of you."

"I thought you had a patient..."

"I'll go later," he said and picked me up once more, carrying me into the bedroom at the back of the apartment, flicking on the light switch as we entered. He let me slide back out of his arms to a standing position, and then he took off my coat, leaving me standing beside the bed in his room while he went to the closet in the entry.

The room was huge, the décor modern, the wood dark, the coverlet luxurious. Heavy drapes fell to the hardwood floor but a sliver of moonlight flooded in through a part in the drapes.

On a table by a huge double-door closet was a thick photo album. I opened the cover to a black and white photograph of a naked woman, gagged, blindfolded and tied up in thin black strips of leather, the strips tied in intricate patterns over her body, surrounding her breasts, between her thighs, framing her shaved labia.

Drake had a book of bondage.

My pulse increased as I flipped a few pages. The photos were of various angles on the same woman, her long blonde hair falling over the end of the bed, her wrists tied together and held over the edge.

In one, a naked man leaned over her, a hand squeezing one breast, his face just out of the image. Although it was almost impossible to tell who the man was, I could see it was Drake by his chin with its characteristic scruff and square jaw. His cock was inside her, her knees bent and spread wide, each of her ankles attached to leather straps that were fastened to the foot of the bed.

These were Drake's subs. These were photographs of his rope work and of him having sex with them. It surprised me that he'd have a book like this, given his desire to protect his identity, but if you didn’t know it, you couldn't tell it was Drake. His face never appeared in any picture.

I felt like I was snooping, but I also couldn't stop turning the pages. The photographs were artistic, the lighting careful, the angles intended to create interesting shadows and compositions on the page. It was really very beautiful, despite the explicit content.

Drake entered the room with two shot glasses of vodka and came to an abrupt halt just inside the door to the bedroom.

"
Oh
," he said, his voice a bit hesitant. "I see you've found my book."

CHAPTER FOUR

I nodded without saying anything, unable to stop turning page after page. In one taken from the side of the bed, a man –
Drake
– straddled a woman who was blindfolded and tied up hands and feet to the bed frame, his erection between her lips as he leaned against the wall, his hands spread wide. The muscular cheeks of his ass were clenched as if he were thrusting. My body responded to the blatant sexuality, my muscles tensing. Yet, my throat was choked with jealousy.

There were several different women captured in the images. One was dark haired, anther was blonde with short cropped hair and tattoos. Still another was very tall and had dark hair and long limbs like a model. All were blindfolded, and unless they were performing oral sex, they were gagged. They were all restrained in various poses, some on their backs, others on their knees before him, yet others from behind. In one I could see clearly that Drake was performing anal sex.

I closed the book, my face hot, my body numb.

Drake put the vodka down on the table and turned me to face him. He took my chin in his hand and forced me to look in his eyes.

"Are you OK?" he said, his voice soft. "That's quite…
personal
."

"They're beautiful," I said, my voice cracking a bit. "The pictures are gorgeous and erotic at the same time. I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have opened it. I feel like a voyeur."

He smiled a bit at that. "I wanted them beautiful rather than pornographic. To me, D/s is an art. Photographs should convey that."

"Do you use them to, you know," I said, not really certain how to frame my question. "Get off when you don't have a partner?"

"No," he said, and smiled. "I mean, I
have
before. I'm not going to lie. But they're meant more as a tribute to my former submissives. I don't want to have any photos out there that directly identify me. I gave them all copies of their photographs in a special book."

He handed me one of the shot glasses. I sniffed it – Anisovaya, of course.

"You've hardly done anything with me, have you?"

He shook his head. "Don't want to go too fast with you. Besides," he said and held up his glass to me, indicating I should drink. "All this messy love stuff got in the way."

I couldn't help but smile at that.
Messy love stuff
…

"Drink up," he said.

I did, shooting back the vodka, its spice of anise seed a familiar taste that I had begun to associate with pleasure. It burned in a nice way going down my throat, warming my stomach. Before I'd barely recovered from the taste, he leaned down and kissed me, his tongue sucking mine into his mouth.  When he pulled back, he brushed a lock of hair from my cheek.

"What's going on in that mind of yours? You must feel something about those pictures."

I turned back to the images and considered.

"Why does bondage excite you?" I examined one in which the sub was suspended off the ground, bound, gagged, blindfolded.

"Bondage puts a sub in a certain headspace. Unable to move or escape, she's also unable to resist. It's liberating. She can't help but feel what I make her feel. She can respond even more than normal to what I do because she has no other choice. Her body is mine. Her
mind
is mine. She's no longer responsible and as a result, she can feel everything without guilt."

I nodded, having had brief moments of that sensation of helplessness and openness. When I was tied up, I felt free. It was a paradox. One I was slowly exploring with him.

He took this really seriously. This was more than just a kinky preference but a passion. He spent considerable time binding his submissives with his leather restraints. In his rope work, the knots were intricate and placed in specific locations for aesthetic purposes and I suspected, for erotic purposes as well. In some photos, the ropes threaded between the submissive's labia. Their breasts were bound, the flesh spilling over the sides of the rope, nipples erect and jutting out.

Would he eventually do that to me?

Drake took my empty shot glass and placed it on the table beside the photo album. He took the album in his hands and led me over to the bed, sitting on the edge and pulling me down onto his lap. Then, he opened the album to the first page.

"Tell me what you feel when you see these."

I inhaled and examined that first one. "They're very artistic. Did you set them up yourself or did you have a professional photographer do them?"

"A professional photographer who specializes in BDSM."

"Were the poses your ideas or his?"

"Mine." His chin rested on my shoulder as I sat on his lap. I turned a few more pages. They were taken in a loft with hardwoods and exposed brick, the bed a prop, the windows covered by gauze curtains, letting in ample light. Everything was tasteful.

"What do those make you
feel
?" he said once more.

I hesitated. "Jealous." I flipped the page. Those women were so lucky. He kept the images in his bedroom by his bed. He'd masturbated to them before.

"Envy." I said, my voice quiet. "Aroused."

He nodded, his chin resting on my shoulder. "What arouses you the most?"

I wasn't sure what image aroused me the most. I flipped through them, back and forth, and came to rest on one of the first blonde woman on her back, blindfolded, gagged, her hands bound, her feet bound. She wore nylons and a leather corset, her breasts spilling out over the top. Drake knelt between her knees, naked, splitting her labia with his erection. I pointed to it. "This."

He leaned closer and examined it. "Interesting…"

"Why do you say that?"

"It's the most submissive," he said. "She's the most helpless. Unable to move at all, unable to see, or speak. Trusting me completely. Totally under my control."

I considered the photograph for a moment before flipping the page.

"What else do you like?" he said, squeezing me, one hand slipping beneath my sweater to cup a breast.

I found one of a woman on her knees before a nearly-naked Drake in black leather pants. His well-muscled body was gorgeous, enhanced by the lighting. One hand was on her head, her long hair caught up in his fist. She had him in her mouth, her lips taut around the head of his cock.

 "This one."

"I like that one too. Why do you like it?"

"It reminds me of your letter. She's on her knees, her hands tied behind her back. Blindfolded. You're controlling her, guiding her by pulling her hair."

I flipped to another one that featured Drake performing anal sex. It upset me but it aroused me at the same time in a perverse way. Was I perverse?

"Do you like that one?"

"I'm ambivalent about it," I said. 

"Do you want to try these positions and acts?" Drake said, his voice soft, warm. A little husky as if he was as aroused as I was becoming.

"The other ones, yes. This one? Maybe some day. When I'm ready."

Then, Drake closed the book and put it on the bed beside us. He turned me to face him so that I was straddling his hips, my hands resting on his shoulders. I didn't want to reveal how jealous I was. I glanced down from his intense expression and fiddled with his tie, which had been loosened, the top button of his crisp white shirt undone. I tightened it and then loosened it again, as if undecided.

"What?" he said, tipping my chin so that I had to look in his eyes, which were, of course, way too blue. "What are you thinking?"

I shook my head, shrugged one shoulder, a bit embarrassed and uncertain of whether I wanted to admit it. Finally, I exhaled and leaned in close to him, my lips beside his ear.

"I want you to put your book away," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He pulled back, searching my face, his eyes meeting mine finally. My cheeks were hot.

"You don't need to be jealous. I didn't love them."

"I know," I said. "But they mattered to you."

"I only want to be with you."

"I don't want reminders of all the other submissives you've had. I don't want you looking at those photos."

He said nothing for a long moment, his gaze moved over my face. Finally, he reached up and touched my bottom lip. "Do you want us to make some photographs like those?"

I hesitated, my cheeks heating. "Yes."

"We will. Once we've explored more. I'm sorry that I've never done the whole thing with you. It seemed like I was always waiting for you at 8
^th
Avenue instead of the other way around. And then you always seemed to throw me off my game with your seductive ways…"

I couldn't keep a smile off my face. "What do you mean?"

"You have a way of disrupting my train of thought, Ms. Bennet. My plans all crumble when that happens. I
planned
on giving you exactly what you read about in my letters, but I failed."

"I know. I felt very cheated. Like false advertising…" I said, pouting. For a moment, he took me seriously but then he laughed.