The Dom Project (26 page)

He spun her around and seated her on the cold chair with the brutal skill she’d never get tired of worshipping, tugged off the condom and pulled her face forward onto his cock.

Thank you
. The heavy weight of his shaft, the way he rubbed against her lips, the musky smell invading her senses—God, she’d forgotten who was taking and giving in this moment, but she was so, so grateful.

She choked and gasped when the hot streams of come flooded her mouth.

He pushed in harder, and groaned, and finished his claim.

She swallowed, still grateful to the core. Fulfilled.

“Robin. Robin.”

“Was—was I good for you?”

He fell to his knees and laid his head on her lap. “Always. Love you.
Always
.”

She folded herself across his back and soaked in his warmth, his strength, his wild pounding heartbeat. The projector still hummed behind them, casting light against the wall, light that was pure and unfiltered through the past.

Everything and always
.

Epilogue

“How was your visit with your brother?” Robin asked after she put down her hair dryer.

The John in the mirror over her shoulder spat out a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and gave her a look that said he’d rather talk about anything else, but he answered just the same. “About as good as could be expected. Mom wants us to bury the hatchet, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget yet. Maybe once he’s sober he’ll apologize to you—us—and really mean it. But until that happens, I’m not interested in being buddy-buddy, and I don’t care what kind of shrieking she wants to do about family and his illness and all the rest of it. If she wants to enable him and excuse his behavior, that’s her deal, not mine.”

“Do you think he will? Get sober?” She didn’t have any anger left at Jim. Life was too short to hold grudges, especially since the blog fallout, other than shutting the thing down and starting afresh at a new URL, had amounted to nil. Not that she was planning on inviting Jim over for dinner parties either.

“Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure if he’s really ready to yet, but we’ll see. I’d say the guilt of knowing how much Mom and Dad are spending on rehab might help him think twice about relapsing, but guilt hasn’t really factored into his decision-making before, so I don’t know why he’d magically start now.” John rinsed his mouth and started spreading shaving cream on his cheeks. She admired the rolling muscles of his shoulders, how the chrysanthemum petals broadened subtly on his skin with certain movements.

“So...Christmas with my family, then?” She laughed, but she meant it. She hadn’t been back to Saskatchewan in a few years, and her parents had never met John in the boyfriend context, or even one-on-one, so the fact that she and Jim weren’t to be in the same room as one another seemed like the perfect excuse.

John did a mock shiver, rubbing his arms like the temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. “Can’t we meet in the middle somewhere? Christmas in Hawaii? No?”

“Let me.” She took the razor from his fingers. “Oh, you hardly need it.”

“I shave once a week whether I need it or not,” he said. “I’m terrified of growing those damn corner wisps.”

He sat on the edge of the bathtub, pulling his face taut and smileless for the blade, and let her go to work. It felt good to do this for him, almost shiveringly good. When she’d gently wiped his face clean with a warm, damp towel and applied aftershave lotion, he finally broke into a smile, beautiful and crooked and radiating regal satisfaction. “Let’s make that a regular thing.” He rose to his feet and pulled her close, stroking her hips through her bathrobe.

She didn’t say
yes
,
sir
. She hadn’t put on his collar yet. That was for later tonight.

The house in Los Feliz. No masks, this time, but she didn’t need one anymore.

“All right,” she said, laughing, and kissed his chest before pushing herself away. “But I need the bathroom now. Out.”

“I’ll be waiting in the living room, looking up erotic shaving videos.” John winked at her as he closed the door.

She looked at herself in his mirror. No, her mirror as well, now. Moving in together hadn’t been too difficult. They’d already done it once before, after all—shared a kitchen and a bathroom before, if not a bed.

The bed was the best part.

She practiced a flirty smile that fell apart into a giggle at the end. And it didn’t even bother her how girlish she looked right then, not in the slightest. That was just one side of her. She turned to one side, then looked at the mirror while resting her chin on one hand, lowered her eyelids, licked her lips, hot and cold like Irina Mareau.
Yes
. She’d try that one on John tonight.

It didn’t take long to finish her hair and makeup. She went to the living room, then sat down next to John, who, true to his word, was watching erotic shaving videos. “These are mostly gross,” he informed her. “Do you need to check your work email?”

She nodded and nestled in next to him as he passed her the laptop. Work was the one thing that came between them in the early days of living together. For John, work stopped the second he left university grounds, and his real life, colorful and project-filled and above all
complicated
, was elsewhere. Her work was more a part of who she was. They’d come to understand that fundamental difference, and had made peace with it.

She opened up a fresh tab and logged in. “Al Henderson’s daughter emailed me. I met her at the hospice yesterday.”

“That didn’t go too well, did it?” John had been there himself, separately. He’d warned her how hard it was, but in the end, she hadn’t gotten depressed or cried. The place was a way station, as bright as it could be, filled with pain but also love.

“Well, he couldn’t talk. At all. But his daughter was there, and a few friends. Saylor owns the footage now, but I still felt obligated to ask about it. They told me not to worry about what he would have wanted for the footage...just keep it away from private collectors and use my best judgment.” She sighed. “She’s saying it’s probably going to be less than a week now.”

Robin tapped the side of the keyboard for a while before she finally came up with the right reply, couched in words that didn’t seem too sad and awkward. Then she snapped the laptop closed and took a deep, cleansing breath.

John put an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him, her rock. “About Christmas...”

“My parents can’t afford to go somewhere like Hawaii.”

“What if we paid half the fare? I mean, we’re saving a lot of money living together. It’s not like I get a bonus at my job, but I could sell some of my rarer photo books. You’re always saying I should thin out my collection.”

“Ooh, I could get you a good price for them,” Robin said, the art of the deal already stirring her blood.

“Fuck, you’re hot when you talk pricing.”

“Mmm, well if that’s so, I’ve got a very nice erotic photo book with a young woman imitating pinup poses in a more explicitly eroticized context...” She walked two fingers up his chest, flipping up one leg and draping it over his lap until her foot slipped between his knees. “The photographer and the model are both unknown, but the images are one-of-a-kind and absolutely
filthy
.”

“Oh, are they now? You know, I think I heard of that series? I hear the photographer did something really interesting by juxtaposing the coy, forced nature of the posing with the model’s grimaces of pain and pleasure...” He casually circled her thigh with his hands.

She faked a scandalized expression, clutching at imaginary pearls around her throat. “
Grimaces?
That poor model.”

“You’ve got to suffer for art, baby.” His mouth nudged right up against her ear, close enough to lick and bite and—

“Oh shit, look at the time!” Robin leaped out of his grasp, shrugging out of her robe as she rushed down the hall to their room. When she’d gotten into her bra and panties, John finally arrived behind her, carrying her robe draped over his shoulder and not looking even remotely concerned about how late they were running.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” He cocked his eyebrow toward the locked lacquer jewelry box that sat atop her dresser.

As if in a trance, she took the key from the chain John wore around his neck and drifted over to the box. Unlocked it. Opened it, revealing the gleaming polished plug and glittering nipple clamps, and last but not least, the gray pearl choker, not nearly as bright as the other two items but still the most compelling.

All the pieces of their ritual, kept in a place of honor like the precious things they were.

As if he had all the time in the world, John leaned against the doorway, smiling lazily as he watched her put them on.

I’m sorry for the brevity, dear readers, but there’s a party in Wonderland, and I simply can’t be late. Whether you’ve gone down the rabbit hole with me or not... be well tonight.

Love,

The Happy Submissive

* * * * *

About the Author

Heloise Belleau was born and raised in small-town New Brunswick, Canada. She now lives in the rugged oil-patch frontier of northern British Columbia with her husband, an Irish ex-pat whose long work hours in the trades leave her plenty of quiet time to write. She has a degree in history from Simon Fraser University with a concentration in British and Irish studies. Much of her work centered on popular culture, oral folklore and sexuality, but she was known to perplex her professors with papers on the historical roots of modern romance novel tropes. (Ask her about Highlanders!)

Heloise’s writing reflects everything she loves: diverse casts of characters, a sense of history and place, equal parts witty and filthy dialogue, the occasional mythological twist, and, most of all, love—in all its weird and wonderful forms. This is her first novel as Heloise, but writing as Heidi Belleau she is the author of the M/M urban fantasy
The Druid Stone
(Carina Press) and contemporary comedy series Rear Entrance Video (Riptide Publishing).

* * *

Solace Ames is a Japanese-American woman with roots in the southeast U.S., although her heart lives somewhere along the Pacific coast of Mexico. She’s worked in restaurants, strip clubs, academia and the corporate world and studied everything from the philosophy of science to queer theory to medieval Spanish literature. Rejecting neat categories, her writing sprawls across genres and genders and swings from high art to low art, marching with the erotic avant-garde, tongue sometimes in cheek and at other times...well. Along with writing, education and political activism are her passions. Family and community service take up most of her time, but she loves to keep learning.

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ISBN-13: 9781426897672

THE DOM PROJECT

Copyright © 2013 by Heloise Belleau and Solace Ames

Edited by Alissa Davis

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.