The Drake Restrained Collection: Part 1 and 2 (The Drake Series Book 3) (28 page)

Ahh… She thought men were the ones to wear armor.

"Oh, very deep," I said, really getting it. "He can't really touch her even when they have sex because he wears armor to protect himself. It's symbolic of men's psychological armor. There she is, naked, open, and he can't really touch her even when he's fucking her." I examined her face, amazed that she was thinking that deeply about sex and gender for her age. "Did you study psychology?"

She avoided my eyes. "Yes," she said in a soft voice. "I took a course in my Freshman year."

"So you're implying that despite the fact that men want to have sex, they're not really touching the women they fuck. There's always that male armor keeping them from intimacy. Am I right?"

She forced a smile. "You're one of the few to get it."

"I have a degree in psychology. I was trained to look for underlying explanations for behavior."

I moved to the next painting, which was an abstract with different colors and lines. It wasn’t at all in the same vein as her drawing, and when I examined the signature, I saw it was someone else’s work.

Still, I couldn’t get my mind off her picture of the knight and lady. There was another dimension to her that wasn’t apparent on the surface. She thought deeply about things like relations between the sexes, even if she wasn’t very experienced and even if she was repressed. Did she really think that men kept emotional armor around themselves for protection? That sex was different for men than for women?

"Research suggests that men fall in love more easily than women," I said, keeping my voice light for I didn’t want to sound too critical. I wanted to keep the dialogue open so I could learn more about her, open her up a bit more. Well, make that all the way. "Do you really believe that men never let down their armor even during sex?"

"You tell me,” she said, her voice sounding slightly mocking. “You're the expert at keeping things compartmentalized."

"What could you possibly mean by that, Ms. Bennet?" I said in mock surprise, keeping with her tone. "Are you suggesting that I use D/s as a way to keep my distance from the women I fuck? I assure you, it's quite the opposite. I get right into their minds."

"But you don't love them. You're not really intimate with them, despite controlling them sexually."

"I'm exceedingly intimate with them." I smiled, but her assessment of me was irritating. "It all depends on how you define intimacy. Back to you and your difficulty sleeping with men on the first date." I stepped closer to her, forcing her back against the wall. She was getting a bit combative – for her – and I wanted to shut that down right away. Physical proximity usually helped. "You can't open your thighs without being intimate with a man and it bothers you that men can fuck women without being intimate, without actually caring about her the way you
think
they should. Am I right?"

She nodded without meeting my eyes. "My body is private,” she said and I could tell that she was upset that I couldn’t understand. But I did understand. “How can I get naked with someone I don't care about?"

"My
heart
is private,” I countered. “How can I care about someone who won't get naked with me?"

I stepped even closer. I could smell her perfume and her hair from where I stood. It was intoxicating. I lifted a strand of it and ran it under my nose, breathing it in. I wanted to rub my face in her hair, between her thighs and it was getting increasingly difficult to focus on the issue we were discussing with my raging hard on starting to raise its head.

"What if I was to tell you that your inability to have casual sex was because of your father's and society's influence on you, not because of anything inherent in male-female sex differences? We're both animals with drives, Kate. Society has just controlled women's drives more, redirected them, couched the control in moral platitudes."

"I forgot you wanted to be a psychoanalyst. I never did like Freud and his focus on fathers."

"He was right, but in the wrong way. Your father – the generalized father of patriarchal authority – made you believe that if you were purely sexual, if you
needed
to be fucked, you were bad. Isn't that right?” I said and watched her face closely for her response. She blinked rapidly at that, so I knew I’d hit home. I pressed on. “He and the Church made you believe you were a bad girl to just want a hard cock inside of you. So you always held back, using this idea of intimacy as a shield – as
armor
against just feeling pleasure for its own sake. You use the demand for intimacy as an excuse so you can maintain the façade of being a good girl when really you're just an animal like me."

She stood in front of me, her face turned away as if what I said was too hard to face – I was too hard to face. I knew she had probably reached her limit so I turned and went to the small living room filled with shabby furniture and worn parquet floors. I removed my jacket and tie and sat on the couch.

Right in the middle.

She’d have to decide where to sit – beside me, or across from me. Where she sat would tell me if I was going to get her naked tonight or if we would continue to talk with me going home with blue balls. I leaned back, and stretched my arms out on the back of the couch, my stocking feet up on the rickety old coffee table.

I caught her eye. "Am I right?"

"Maybe," she said, staring at the couch beside me, then glancing at the chair across from me. Oh, she was torn. Where to sit? What would it say about her? "But whose approach is more satisfying in the end?"

"I've tried your approach,” I said and shrugged, thinking back to my disastrous marriage. I thought when I met my future-wife that I needed a woman as strong as me so we were ‘equal’. I’d quashed my tendencies towards dominance sexually in order to be a sensitive lover. What it did was ensure I never really enjoyed sex as much as I could, with women who were never really satisfied with me. Performance wise, I was fine but there as a lack of spark. When I tried to push things with my wife, she couldn’t handle it and thought I was too controlling.

It didn’t end well.

“I was married for five years,” I said, not wanting to dwell too much longer on it. “You haven't tried mine.
Yet
. Why don't you give it a chance? Then you'll know."

She looked doubtful. "I can't imagine that meaningless sex can be rewarding in the long run."

I sighed. Meaningless sex was a relief from sex that was wrapped up in anger and frustration and misunderstanding. "It's not. But it's good enough for now."

She stood and stared at me, and I could tell from the expression on her face that I was forcing her to confront issues that were difficult. "I only want to fuck someone who loves me. Is that so wrong?"

"Someone
will
love you, Kate,” I said, for someone would. Kate was not the kind of woman to remain single for very long. I was surprised she’d been single for as long as she had, but there were several traumas in her life to recover from. "Do you really want to wait until he does? Is masturbating all alone in your room at night, for what – a year? Is that really good enough for you?"

As soon as I said it, I knew it was a mistake. I could almost see her wince.

She left the living room and I heard her opening and closing drawers and cupboards with quite a lot of force. She was hurt. I followed her into the kitchen after a moment and stood behind her as she fiddled with a teapot.

"I'm sorry." I reached out and touched her, wanting to reconnect and mend things.

"You’re a
bastard
."

"No, I'm not. I'm just being honest.” I turned her around and tried to catch her eye but she avoided me. “Kate, you
deserve
to have pleasure when you need it. You're not a bad girl for wanting to feel it. I can give it to you. I
want
to give you the pleasure you need in the way that most appeals to you, deep down inside if you're brave enough to admit it to yourself."

She actually closed her eyes and turned her head away.

"Here," I said and pulled her into an embrace, needing to break the icy silence between us. She didn’t respond, her body stiff.

"I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by speaking the truth so plainly,” I said softly. “If this is going to work between us, you have to let me break down those protective walls you've built up around yourself. Otherwise, you won’t really experience submission the way you need to."

"So you're telling me you have to be mean to me in order for me to be able to submit?" she said, her green eyes wide.

"
No
, you have to be honest with me about what you need and want. You have to honest with
yourself
."

I watched her chest heaving. She was close to tears. I had to save the moment or the night would be over, and fast.

"Kate,
are
you sexually attracted to me?"

"You already know you're very handsome."

"I didn’t ask that. I asked you if you were sexually attracted to me." She didn’t answer so I spoke even more softly "Do you want to fuck me? Is there a part of you that just wishes you could right now and to hell with convention?"

Finally, she replied, but I could hear the emotion in her voice. "Yes. But I'm afraid."

"
What
are you afraid of? That you'll have a great orgasm or three?"

"I'm afraid that you'll hurt me."

"I
told
you and Lara told you that I'm not into pain. I don’t want to
hurt
you, Kate. I want to make you feel
pleasure
."

"Not that kind of hurt."

I shook my head and stared at her for a moment. I knew what she meant. I had to get it through to her that we would keep things from becoming too tangled emotionally.

"That won't happen. We'll only have sex. None of that relationship stuff. We won't have breakfast together or go to movies or on dates. We'll fuck. I'll tie you up and make you come until you scream. I'll come. Then I'll go home. You'll sleep like a baby. End of story."

She looked doubtful, her brow furrowed. "What if I fall in love with you?"

I smiled. "I won't let you."

"That's like saying you can control the weather. You can't."

I smiled even more widely. "I can control the weather, too."

She turned away slightly so I couldn’t see her, but I caught her grin nonetheless.

"I know this is all new to you. I know you're afraid." I embraced her once more, pressing my hips against her so she knew how hard I was. How much I wanted her. Then I let her go and went back into the living room and sat back in the center of the sofa. She’d have to follow me eventually, and I’d know by how she responded and where she sat whether I was going to make any progress with her or whether I had gone too far. My sense was that she was fighting with all her might not to want me, not to want this, but that she was failing. And more importantly, that she wanted to fail.

She wanted me to convince her.

She returned and stood in front of the coffee table, her cheeks pink.

"Just theoretical, but if I was really your sub-in-training, what would you normally do at this point?"

I looked her over, deciding how much to admit. In truth, most of the subs I trained already accepted they were submissive sexually and were eager to learn. They
wanted
me to take control and show them. Tell them what to do. It was a relief for them. It was exciting.

Most could hardly wait for me to tie them up the first time.

With Kate, I had to be careful for she wasn’t eager. She looked as if she was being led to her own slaughter.

"I'd suggest that you come and sit with me and we can talk some more."

She sat on the edge of the sofa, her back stiff, her hands folded in her lap.

"Did you go to a Catholic school as a child?"

"Yes,” she said. “Why do you ask?"

"You have very good posture,” I said, examining her. Your hands are folded."

She immediately unclasped her hands, smiling guiltily.

"Yes, they expected us to sit properly. The nuns gave us the cane if we were
slovenly
in our dress or behavior."

"A good Catholic school upbringing,” I said with a grin. “Making uptight women out of excited little girls full of life and promise. Only the really rebellious ones escaped with their libidos fully intact."

"Yeah, the nuns really did a number on us."

She visibly relaxed, and I decided to push things. I patted my knee. "If you were really my sub-in-training, I'd tell you to come closer. Sit on my lap. So why don't you?"

She frowned and for a moment, I thought I’d lost the battle. "Am I a child?"

"No, but I like to sit close together at first. Just touching for a while with all our clothes on.” I let that sit for a few seconds. “If you decide to stop at any time, you just have to get up. I won't prevent you."

She stood before me but seemed at a loss as to how she should sit on my lap. "How do I…"

I grabbed her arms and pulled her down, positioning her body so that she sat with her legs over to one side. It meant she had to put her arms around my shoulders. There was an awkward moment when she seemed as if she was going to try to sit with her arms around herself, but she relented, her arms threading around my neck, resting on my shoulders. Our faces were inches away from each other. I could smell the anise from dinner on her breath.

She finally met my eyes and
God
… blood rushed to my dick, which was already hard as rock against her soft thigh.

I adjusted her on my lap, for she was pressing hard against my now aching erection. "Sorry, you're pressing just a bit too hard on my…" I adjusted myself. "That's better."

Her cheeks actually flushed deep red at the suggestion I was erect. I breathed in her scent and it was a delicious mixture of her hair, her perfume and her female scent, which almost made me dizzy.

God
, she was delicious.

"You smell so good," I said and slid my hand along her thigh to her hip. I wanted to slip it between her thighs to feel how wet she was, but I held back. She’d make the first move or nothing would happen.