Timeless (15 page)

The inside is just as charming as the outside, with an open floorplan, warm wood floors, comfortable but classic furniture in creams and shades of turquoise, and a wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The kitchen is tidy and inviting with white cabinets and marbled countertops.

I find my way to the master bedroom, which is quintessentially Marcus—masculine, but comfortably warm and inviting. I go into his closet and pull a crisp, freshly-starched and pressed white dress shirt from its hanger. I strip off my clothes—every last stitch—and put on his shirt, buttoning it to just below my breasts. I resist the urge to just stay here all day, inhaling the scent of him on his clothes, but I don’t know how long it will be until he gets home and I want to be ready.

I go back into the living room and kneel on the soft, cream-colored rug facing the front door with my butt resting on my heels, my thighs slightly parted and my hands placed palm up on them. I’ve done my research. It’s the most traditional slave position and how a submissive presents herself to her master, and I’ve practiced it until I can do it effortlessly. I have a message for Marcus, and this is the best way I can think of to make sure he gets it. I want to be his. Wholly and completely. Forever.

I kneel there for what seems like forever, although it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes. Griffin had told me Marcus would be home promptly at four, and Marcus is always prompt. My foot is starting to cramp and I’ve memorized every inch of the room and am starting to count the seagulls I see swooping out the window when I hear a key turn in the lock.

My heart instantly starts hammering in my chest. Seconds later, Marcus steps through the door, looking imposing, larger-than-life, and more fucking gorgeous than ever. His eyes register surprise followed by unvarnished lust as he sees me kneeling in his living room, dressed only in his white, somewhat see-through dress shirt. Unfortunately, his expression quickly turns remote and impersonal, but not before I see the hunger and yearning in his eyes, and I cling to that to give me the courage to carry out the rest of my plan.

“What are you doing here, Ariana?” he asks evenly.

“Tori told me what happened at Five Pines...how Bridget stabbed me and you saved my life. I wanted to thank you.”

“I should be the one thanking you for solving my case and putting your life in danger in the process,” he says gruffly. When I don’t answer, he scrubs his hand over his face. “You flew to San Diego, broke into my house, and raided my closet just to say thank you?”

“Well, there’s more…” I admit. I take a deep breath. “According to the ancient Chinese, if someone saves your life, you’re forever in their debt. They own your life.”

He studies me for a long moment, and then his lips twitch. “So you want to give yourself to me and be my slave because I saved your life?”

I nod. At least that closed off look on his face is gone.

“And you’re offering to serve me tirelessly in every way to repay me for saving your life? You’ll do whatever I ask of you? For the rest of your life?”

I only hesitate for a fraction of a second before I nod again.

“Cleaning my house, cooking for me, serving my guests when I entertain for work…You’ll do all of these things?”

I swallow hard. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind…

“All while naked of course.”

My gaze flies up to meet his. His eyes are dancing.

“I’m kneeling in front of you practically naked offering myself to you and you’re making fun of me?” I snap, my eyes flashing.

Marcus closes the distance between us and squats down in front of me so we’re eye to eye. “For one thing, I don’t think that’s really an ancient Chinese proverb. More like something from Kung Fu or Star Wars.”

“Well, it’s in Harry Potter so it’s obviously a thing,” I grumble, looking down again.

His finger under my chin brings my gaze back to his. “You’re too strong of a woman to be anyone’s slave, Ariana,” he says softly. “Even mine.”

“Well, maybe not twenty-four seven,” I admit. “But the point is, I want to be yours Marcus. I want to give myself to you. Hell, I already have.” It comes out as a half-laugh, half-sob. “You’ve owned my heart for the last ten years. I’m never so alive as when I’m with you. You know me—you know my heart, my mind, what turns me on and what makes me tick—more than anyone. And I know you. Whether you want to admit it or not, we were made for each other. I fell in love with you in Italy, and when you left without a word, I did my best to forget you. I’ve spent the last ten years trying to find what we had again, trying to find someone who brings out in me what you do.

“I thought maybe if I explored BDSM or if I just found the right Dom…But it’s been impossible. You know why?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. I’m on a roll now, and there’s no stopping me. “Because I wasn’t looking for some dominant/submissive dynamic or a Dom. I need someone who makes me want to submit to him because of the kind of man he is, who makes me yearn to give him my power because in doing so, he completes me. I need you, Marcus! You make me wild and vulnerable…and…me like no one else can. When I’m with you, nothing else matters. I don’t care about all the reasons we shouldn’t be together. Our love is timeless. I’m yours, Marcus, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“You’re killing me, gattina,” he sighs. “You deserve so much more than what I can give you.”

“Why? Because you can’t have children?” His eyes widen with shock. “Griffin told me about your injury. But don’t you see? I don’t care about that.”

“Ari, you’ve wanted to have children and a big family since you were little. I love you too much to take that dream from you. You may think you don’t care, but you will. And I couldn’t bear to watch you grow to resent me. You deserve a man who can give you a family.”

I scramble to my feet, tugging the shirt down over my ass as I head toward the door, grabbing the rental car keys off the table as I go. I don’t know why I even bothered to come. “I don’t want a man who can give me a family,” I retort. “I want you, you idiot! Besides, we could always adopt children. Families aren’t made by blood; they’re made by love. You of all people should know that. All you have to do is look at Griffin and his brothers! But if you can’t see that by now, I’m done.”

His hand firmly pushes the front door closed just as I turn the knob, his thickly corded forearm so close to my face that I can see each individual dark hair sprouting from his tanned skin.

“Not so fast.”

I turn to face him, my pulse racing, as he places his other hand on the other side of my face, caging me with my back against the door. My veins have turned to liquid heat and my stomach flutters as his eyes narrow.

“Did you just call me an idiot?”

I nod as my pulse dances erratically. His eyes have darkened. Maybe there’s a chance for us after all.

“There are consequences for that kind of disrespect toward the man who owns you.”

I feel a flicker of hope at his words. My heart catches in my throat as he runs a finger down the center of my chest to just below my breasts, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. He unbuttons one button. “And you’re wearing my shirt. I want it back.”

He unbuttons another button.

“I’m holding it ransom,” I say. It comes out breathlessly, because the way he’s touching me is doing crazy things to my ability to do the most basic things such as inhale and exhale. “Your shirt for my thong. I never found it at your cabin.”

He laughs, a low, deep chuckle that warms me all the way to my core. “It’s mine now, gattina. Just like you are.”

He takes the keys from my hand and tosses them onto the sofa.

“I am?”

“Oh, yes,” he says in my ear. He sucks the lobe into his mouth and then lets it go, nibbling his way down the line of my jaw until he reaches my lips. He kisses me—slow, deep and passionately, with the longing of ten years and the certainty of finally finding your way home.

“Your body, your heart, your soul, your mind, your thong. All mine. You’re not getting them back.”

“I don’t want them,” I whisper. “They’re yours.”

“Yes, they are.
You’re
mine!” he adds definitively. His kisses me again, the kind of kiss that sears your lips and curls your toes and makes you hungry for more.

“And I’m yours,” he adds softly. He unbuttons the last button and pulls back slightly to look at me, his hands warm and reassuring against the bare skin of my waist. “All of me, Ari. I’ve never stopped loving you. It almost killed me to walk away from you ten years ago, so much so that when I was in Afghanistan I decided that despite what your father thought was best for you, I was coming back for you because I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you. Then I got shot and found out I couldn’t give you the children I knew you wanted so badly, so I tried to forget you, knowing I was doing the best thing for you by letting you go.

“Then there you were at Five Pines, setting my heart on fire again with the essence of everything you are and everything I love about you, but with the added dimension of your inherent submissiveness, at least with me, and I knew it was going to be like a knife in my heart to let you go again. But I simply couldn’t stay away...”

With one hand still pinning my hip to the door, he rubs his brow with his thumb and forefinger at the memory. His voice is anguished as he continues.

“It was worse than I ever imagined letting you go the second time. But I couldn’t give you what you wanted, and the thought of that, and of making you unhappy, killed me even more.”

I open my mouth to protest but he silences me with finger pressed to my lips.

“I know now that’s not how you feel,” he says with a small smile. “And while one part of me wants to argue with you about that, I know you well enough to know that if there was ever a woman who knows her own mind it’s you, and I won’t insult you again by pretending to think I know what you want better than you do. Besides,” he adds simply, “there’s no way I can ever let you walk away again.”

His voice lowers as he cups my cheek in his hand, his beautifully expressive brown eyes locked with mine. “I love you, Ari. You are my heart and my soul and everything in between. And I vow to spend the rest of my life making up for the years we have lost. I promise to love you with every ounce of my being. You are absolutely right about family being more than blood, and I should have seen that, not only from Griffin and his brothers but from how I feel about you. I couldn’t love anyone more than I love you,” he adds softly.

“I love you too.” My heart is so full it’s all I can manage.

He brushes his thumb tenderly under my eye, wiping away the tears of joy that have inadvertently spilled.

“Thank you for coming to me, Ariana.”

I give him a watery smile. “This is the last time I’m going to chase after you Marcus Dunn. I have no desire to be the dominant one in this relationship.”

He gives me a wickedly knowing smile. “Don’t worry, gattina. There’s no chance of that. As you pointed out, I was an idiot for ever thinking I could let you go, and you were completely right in calling me out on it. But, unfortunately for you, I can’t let such blatant disrespect go. If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, and I assure you we are as I have no intention of every letting you go again, you’re going to be damn sure who’s in charge.”

He slowly pulls off my shirt as his eyes flare with lust. “Now turn around and bend over.”

I watch the woman that I’ve loved for ten long years bend forward slightly and place her palms against the door, impishly wiggling her gorgeous little ass as she sticks it out provocatively. Then she flashes me the most seductive, fuck-me look I’ve ever seen in my life, and I know without a doubt I’m the luckiest bastard alive. She’s absolutely fucking perfect. And she’s all mine. Forever. And I’m going to spend every second of my life making damned sure she never regrets it. Starting right now.

“Keep your eyes straight ahead,” I order her sharply, but I can tell she’s not completely buying my Dom-like demeanor because she gives me a smile of pure feminine satisfaction before she swivels her gaze back to the door.

I rub her ass a few times and then stop, appreciating the way her buttocks tighten in anticipation of the spanking she thinks is coming. Instead, I drop to my knees behind her, my hands on her hips as I lightly kiss the tiny scar on her thigh where Bridget’s knife went in. A tiny star to match the moon on her other hip—the constellation that finally led me home. She shudders.

I frown slightly. “Does it hurt? The doctor said your recovery’s been excellent.”

Her gaze whips back to mine.

“No, it doesn’t hurt anymore. But how do you know about my recovery?”

I plant tiny little kisses around the puckered red skin. Like the crescent-shaped birthmark on her opposite hip, it’s another part of the woman I love that makes her unique, and every time I kiss it I will remember how close I came to losing her. “I’ve kept up with how you were doing from the moment I carried you into the ER. Just because I didn’t think we could be together doesn’t mean I didn’t care what happened to you. I just couldn’t trust myself to contact you.”

“You’re just a softie.” I can hear the smile in her voice.

“We’ll see if you still think so after I’m finished with you tonight.”

She just waggles her butt in response as she laughs. Her laugh quickly turns into a moan as I spread her butt cheeks wide and my tongue laps at her pussy. When her sweet juices are dripping, I make longer strokes with my tongue, grazing her tight little anal whorl. I’m as eager to give her the experience of stimulating all those amazing nerve endings in her most private of places as I am to make her acquiesce to this taboo and symbolically submissive act. My fingers find her clit. I massage it in small circles, keeping her mind focused on that onslaught of sensation as I transition to licking her ass with firm upward strokes. She gives a sexy groan, no doubt wondering if I’m really doing this and half wanting to make me stop, but I distract her by pinching her clit, making her gasp.