Timeless (4 page)

The more he rubs, the more conscious I become of every sensation—the pressure of the clamps on my breasts, the seductive weight of the chain hanging between them, and the feel of his masterful hands on my skin.

Then he bends down and picks up the flogger with the wide falls. At first he just trails it lightly it over my ass. Then…smack. The leather strands flick across my butt, warming my aroused flesh. Despite the fact that I knew it was coming, it catches me off guard and I almost move my hands.

He uses the flogger steadily and skillfully, the speed and pressure of the blows increasing in direct proportion with my arousal. There’s an occasional sting from a few strategically placed harder hits, but somehow the tiny pain only makes my desire burn hotter.

He switches to the smaller flogger with the narrow falls and plastic beads and it starts to actually hurt, but I don’t care, because the pain immediately morphs into an equally potent pleasure. My skin grows warmer and more sensitive with each strike, and the sensations tangle together as the heat from my ass radiates all the way through to my core. Oh god. It’s sweet agony, bearable but only just so, and I feel a desperate yearning building deep inside of me. Pain and pleasure blur until I don’t know where one starts and the other stops. I give myself over to the sensation as the flogger rains down endlessly, driving me toward some sweet surrender.

He drops the flogger and his bare hand makes contact with my ass. Fuck! His hand is somehow even more intimate and painful, probably because my ass already feels like it’s on fire. He spanks me again, alternating cheeks with quick upward glancing blows, hitting the same spot over and over until I’m squirming to keep my hands in place. He tugs sharply on the chain between my breasts and my belly tightens as need coils deep in my loins. I move my legs, pressing my thighs together to ease the ache.

But he’s having none of that, and he kicks my legs apart without breaking the rhythm of his hand on my ass or the relentless tug of the chain. I’m going to fucking explode!

Abruptly, the blows stop and he rubs my ass with his hand, pressing into my heated skin. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. His fingers dance up my slit and probe me intimately. I open my mouth to protest, but a quick yank on the chain diverts my attention, and then he’s circling my clit and I forget everything else.

“Turn around,” he commands softly.

I slowly turn to face him. He pins my wrists above my head again, his face so close to mine that I can see the flecks of gold in his warm brown eyes. His full lips are inches from mine, and I close my eyes as I arch slightly toward him, eager to feel his mouth, to taste him again after all these years.

But he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, his hand is on my breast, loosening the clamp, and I gasp at the intense pain as the blood floods back into my nipple. I whimper.

“Shh,” he murmurs. “Taking them off is the worst. Breathe.”

I try to suck air into my lungs, but it’s hard when his hot mouth is closing over my throbbing nipple, his tongue licking it gently and sending little tremors vibrating through my sex.

“Deeper!”

It’s a command, and I obey, inhaling deeply as his fingers find the other clamp. He removes that one also, his mouth and tongue instantly soothing the pain and sending me hurtling toward that sharp precipice of desire again.

“See? You could do better.” His voice is gruff and confident.

I swear I’d do anything he told me to when he uses that low, authoritatively sexy tone.

With one hand still imprisoning my wrists, he slides his finger through my wet folds and plunges it deep inside of me. I arch my back, my breath coming in short pants now.

“Please!” I beg mindlessly.

He gives me what I want, his finger alternately dipping deep inside me and then slowly circling my clit over and over until I’m writhing beneath his grip. With his finger buried inside of me, he curls it toward my pelvis, touching some hidden bundle of nerves. At the same time, he presses against my clit with his thumb and I come undone.

My scream seems to come from somewhere else, and I convulse around him. I’m floating, lost in some alternate galaxy of bliss. I slowly come back down to Earth and the realization that I just let Marcus Dunn—the man I’ve hated for the last ten years for walking away from me without a word—give me the best orgasm I’ve had in…well, ten years. Damn him!

He seems almost as shocked as I am, and I see regret flare in his eyes. I thought I was over the humiliation and pain of his rejection, but it seems I’m doomed to relive it. He walked away from me, and from what we had, for a reason, and apparently nothing’s changed.

Well, fuck him! There are plenty of other guys here who can give me what I need, now that I know what it is.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have taken it that far.”

“No problem,” I say breezily, turning my back to him as I quickly slip my dress back on. “Thanks for the lesson. It was…nice.”

I feel smug satisfaction at the way his mouth tightens at the insult.

“Go home, Ari,” he says wearily.

“I’m just getting started. Just because you don’t want to play any more doesn’t mean I don’t. I'm here to have fun, and I intend to have it. You don't have to babysit me anymore. I'm fine.”

I’m halfway to the bar where a group of Doms are teasing a poor girl who’s been laid out on the bar as the men alternate taking shots off her body when he catches up to me. He grabs my arm and whirls me around to face him. There’s no doubt about it; this time he’s mad.

“You think I don’t want to play anymore?” he demands.

“Yeah! That’s exactly what I think. I saw the regret in your eyes after... that.” I wave my hand toward the corner we came from, unsure what to call what just happened. “If I’d known you’d be here, I never would have come. But we’re both here, and I for one have no intention of leaving. You may not want me, Marcus Dunn, but that doesn’t mean no one else does.”

“That’s it,” he growls. He grabs my arm, dragging me away from the bar and toward the lobby. “There is clearly some unfinished business between us. We need to talk.”

We’re in the grand lobby now and the fire that was roaring earlier has burned down to glowing embers. “Here?” I ask. There’s no way I’m inviting him up to my room.

He glances over at one of the leather couches where a tough-looking man is cradling a woman wrapped in a blanket in his lap.

“No. At my cabin. Get your stuff.”

“No!” I say indignantly.

“Fine. You don’t need anything anyway. I’ll bring you back tomorrow.”

He half drags me over to the front desk, where a different man I haven’t seen before is working. “Tell Dominic that Ariana left with me. We’re going to my cabin for the night.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Marcus stops me with a warning glance. “Be quiet,” he says softly so that only I can hear, “unless you’d like to find out what a gag feels like.”

I clamp my lips together.

The man retrieves Marcus’ coat, and Marcus wraps it around my shoulders.

“I’m not going to your cabin with you,” I protest under my breath.

“There’s no way we can talk here,” he says flatly. “And I’m not going to have you spending the next ten years thinking I didn’t want you.” The hard planes of his face soften slightly. “I’ve spent more nights than you can imagine dreaming of the feel of your skin and the taste of your lips.”

“Then why…” I begin before I’m cut off by a giggling trio of girls racing through the lobby, a burly pirate in hot pursuit.

“Not here. My cabin’s just a few miles away and will give us some privacy so we can talk. Now you can come willingly, or I can tie you up, throw you over my shoulder, and drag you there. Your choice.” There’s a ghost of a smile on his sensuous lips. “Some women get off on the whole kidnap fantasy.”

I would literally run fifteen miles barefoot in the snow before I’d admit to him that the thought of that is more than a little appealing.

“On second thought, what’s pirate night without capturing the girl?” he says with a grin.

And with that he scoops me up and carries me out into the snowy night.

“Where’s my gun?”

Ariana McKnight is the last person I ever expected to see standing in the kitchen of my cabin. She looks delectably rumpled and utterly fuckable wearing nothing but my t-shirt and a tiny frown that makes me want to kiss her senseless. But I know better. Even last night after she goaded me into flogging her in the club, when her lips were inches from mine—so close that I could feel her breath—I knew better than to kiss her. I still have some small vestige of self-preservation left.

“I’ll hang on to your gun until I’m sure you’re not going to shoot me in the balls,” I say with a small smile. She’d fallen asleep in the car, waking up enough to groggily threaten my manhood when I undressed her, taking off the uncomfortable-looking shirtdress and replacing it with one of my old t-shirts. If she’d known the thoughts that went through my head at the sight of her in nothing but her sorry excuse for a thong, no doubt she would have followed through on her threats.

Instead she’d instantly fallen back asleep. Not surprisingly. A scene like the one we did would have made even an experienced sub exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I’d tucked her into my bed and then spent a restless night on the couch, my dreams filled with images of the woman in the next room under me.

“Do you always carry?” I ask with a hint of amusement.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” I admit. “Even though I’m not a SEAL anymore.”

“You’re not?” she says, shocked. “But you loved your job.”

“Sometimes you have to let go of the things you love, even when you don’t want to,” I say softly. “I got a medical discharge. I’m an attorney now.”

Her eyes widen more, and then she cocks her head to the side with a faint smile. “Criminal?”

I laugh. Even after all these years, she still knows me well. Criminal law has always appealed to my uncompromising sense of justice and my innate need to protect and save people. “I started out doing criminal, yes, and I still do a good bit of it. But my practice is full service. We do criminal, business, civil, and more recently, a lot of intellectual property work, as well as some insurance work. In fact, I flew here yesterday to talk to a witness in one of my insurance cases.”

She raises her perfectly arched eyebrows. “Your practice? Like, you own it?”

“Dunn & Wallace in San Diego. Give us a call if you ever need representation.” I wink and she smiles as her lashes lower flirtatiously.

When she looks back up, her hazel eyes are dancing. “I need representation now. I’d like to press charges for kidnapping.”

I laugh, and in that moment, it’s as easy and uncomplicated as when we’d met that unforgettable summer in Italy ten years ago. I was there on a rare vacation from my SEAL team. I’d come for my grandmother’s funeral and stayed, ostensibly to help clear out her house and put it on the market, but the truth was, I needed the break. I’d seen enough violence and senseless death during my last three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan to last a lifetime, and losing one of the men under my command during a risky mission to take out one of the main decision makers of Al Qaeda had taken its toll. Italy, with its beautiful color-saturated scenery—its golden yellow hills, lush green vineyards, and sparkling, brilliant blue Adriatic Sea—had been just the balm I needed to begin healing my soul. The beautiful, hazel-eyed woman who’d walked into my life at an Italian market had done the rest.

I’d planned to spend the evening we met the same way I’d spent the past five nights—sipping gin and tonics on the veranda of my grandmother’s villa while the unfamiliar but blessed quiet of the bucolic countryside enveloped me. But I’d run out of tonic water and had stopped at the market, asking an old woman working there where I could purchase some. She’d looked at me like I was crazy, chastised me soundly in Italian while gesturing wildly, and then flung her hands up in disgust and left me standing there wondering what had just happened.

The girl standing next to me had tried not to laugh but she couldn’t help it, and the sound of her giggle had seeped through the cracks in my heart and settled there. She was stunning, with long, dark blond hair and sultry almond-shaped eyes the color of summer leaves tinged with autumn’s golden touch, and for the first time in years, I was interested in a woman for more than just a quick fuck to let off some steam and assure me I was still alive before I deployed again.

She told me her name was Ariana and explained I had been asking for toilet water instead of tonic water. “Quite vigorously, in fact,” she’d added with that intoxicating low-pitched laugh. “And when she told you that you were a disgusting American, you agreed with her wholeheartedly.”

That set her off again, and when she finally stopped, she charmingly apologized for laughing. I suggested she make it up to me by having dinner with me, and to my surprise she agreed. We’d stayed at the sidewalk café talking and drinking Chianti until the
proprietario
told us we had to leave. She was bold and confident and charming and funny and I’d walked her back to the flat where she was staying and asked if I could see her again, even though I knew it was a mistake. I was a good bit older than her, and infinitely more jaded. She had her whole life ahead of her. She deserved better than a battle-scarred, world-weary soldier like me.

But I had been powerless to resist her, and we spent every minute together for the next three months. Unlike me, she spoke flawless Italian, and we spent the days exploring Italy and the nights exploring each other. In between, we talked. I learned she adored her father, whom she was very close to, was an only child who dreamed of having a big family of her own someday, hated mushrooms, loved alternative music, and would shiver when I kissed the little birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon above her hip bone. I told her about growing up with a single mom in a gang-ridden, poor neighborhood east of Los Angeles, how I’d had to learn to be tough, and how I’d joined the military when I was eighteen so I could go to college and make a better future for myself and my mom and had fallen in love with the discipline and purpose of my job.