Unrestrained (15 page)

“It’s the type of thing that’s hard to talk about. It’s like . . .” He paused. “There was this day we were monitoring a river, and a group of targets started crossing. They were coming to join the insurgents, the guys trying to kill us. Well, the boat was an old rickety wooden thing. There they were, paddling across. We had kill orders to take them out, and the sniper team I was with could do that without breaking a sweat, but instead they did target practice on the boat, blowing holes in it until it was foundering. Then they picked off the guys when they jumped in the water. One guy made it to our side, tough bastard, but they put him down once he reached dry ground.”

He met her gaze. “I tell most people that story, they’d think we were bad guys, making a game of something as serious as taking another person’s life, but it’s different when you’re in it. When every day you’re dealing with people who want to kill you, who hate you without even knowing anything real about you. And sometimes even the people you’re trying to help turn on you, too. So you figure out ways within the boundaries to blow off steam. The rest you have to deal with later, when you wake up in your bed back home and think, ‘God, that was fucked up.’”

The stories were entirely different, but in essence, the same. An experience carried that couldn’t be shared, because of the difficulty of conveying what it meant, or why it was so important. She touched his face, sliding her knuckles down his jaw. She did it without thinking to ask this time, but he didn’t tell her not to touch him, so she kept doing it, fingers moving up to the soft hair at his temple. He’d been hard beneath her when they sat down. During their conversation, that had died back a bit, but now, when she slipped her hand down his neck, she let her nails dig into his flesh, just a bit, and shifted her buttocks against him in deliberate provocation.

“I’d like my punishment now,” she murmured. “So I can have my reward.”

“You might have some brat in you after all.” His eyes sparked with humor. “And I might just be glad about that. Go get me that spatula, and the clip magnet on the fridge. Keep it to a walk, but hurry. I want to see your tits bouncing when you come back.”

The crudity didn’t dismay her as she’d expect. Not the way he said it, with that voracious growl in his voice. She scrambled off his lap, with him helping her to her feet. She hurried out of the room, through the house, past the dining area where she saw the reflection of her pale body in the marbleized mirrors above the beadboard. In the kitchen, she plucked the spatula from the counter and the clip from the fridge, dumping the recipes it had been holding into the fruit bowl. As she returned, she had to remind herself to walk, since part of her wanted to fly. When she glimpsed herself in the mirrors again, she could tell her hair was loose and swirling around her face, her body flushed, nipples taut, clit still swollen from her climax. She looked wanton, sexual . . . appetizing. She glowed. She couldn’t wait for Dale to punish her. She wanted to take his cock in her mouth, to serve him . . .

“Athena.”

The bark of command catapulted her into motion again, and she was smiling, she couldn’t help it. When she hurried down the breezeway from the dining area, she was in his direct line of sight. She’d left the door to the reading nook open and her blood ran hot at the way his gaze coursed over the movement of her naked body, his eyes full of lust. He’d be hard again now, she was sure of it, and she moistened her lips, thinking of his salty taste against her tongue.

There were two steps at the doorway of her reading room, since it was on the same grade as the sunporch. She jumped down, rather than using the stairs. The decision gave her breasts a healthy bob of movement. As she straightened her knees she saw laughter in his eyes, as well as deliciously dangerous things.

“Careful. You keep doing things like that, I’ll make you jog in place. Come here, woman.”

He bade her stand at the arm of the chair and took the spatula and clip from her. “Spread your legs.”

When she did, he clasped the lips of her sex in firm, sure fingers, compressing them before he opened the three-inch-wide clip and slowly let the jaws come back together, holding on to her clit and labia. The compression was uncomfortable, but it also jammed all those aroused nerves together, making dense sensation arrow up through her core.

“Bend down, toward my lap.”

She did so, and he took hold of her hair, wrapping it around his fist and guiding her all the way down so her mouth was pressed, blissfully, on the straining denim over his erection. She could smell the heavy, musky scent of it, knew he’d likely spilled some milky precum against the fabric of his shorts. She wanted to taste him more than she’d ever wanted to taste anything. His hand tightened in her hair. “Fold your arms beneath your breasts. Press your knees against the side of the chair.”

It put more of her weight forward, so her forehead was pressed to his opposite thigh. Her fingers dug into the chair cushioning as she adjusted her knees so her thighs stayed open.

“Good girl. You learn fast. This will help you remember what happens if you come before your Master orders it.”

The spatula strike made her jerk. He’d said there was a difference between discipline and a punishment for pleasure, but he didn’t seem to hold back on either. Her capacity to absorb the pain seemed greater now, though, her ass lifting toward it, wanting more, even as every strike made her cringe and think,
Ow ow ow . . .

He didn’t tell her how many he was going to do this time, and by the time she was trying hard not to writhe, her ass singing with pain, she was about to beg. Her clit was pulsing beneath the hold of that clamp, her pussy tingling. When he dropped the spatula and pulled the clip off, she cried out at the painful rush of blood back to the area. It was mitigated by his touch, the clamp of his fingers over her clit, worrying it, making her hips lift up to him again.
Please . . . oh God . . . It feels so good.

He pushed her up, shifted her so she was down on her knees between his feet. She watched with eager desire as he opened his jeans, adjusted them and the boxers beneath enough that he freed his cock, levering it out to stand tall and thick before her gaze. Roy had been a good size, more than capable of filling a woman, and Dale was the same. Her gaze coursed over the thick vein along the base of the shaft, the hint of the heavy ball sac still nested in his shorts.

“Hands behind your back, Athena. You’ll suck me off with your mouth alone.”

She desperately wanted to touch him, learn him with her fingers, but she was starting to understand his diabolical strategy. The tighter he held the reins, the more powerful the wanting became. The more she wanted, the more it turned him on, a closely intertwined strand that drove them both.

Clasping the base of his cock in one hand, he brought her down on him.

Steel and velvet, musk, salt. Lust and heat. She savored that first contact between the cushion of her lip and the broad head, the dampness of his slit. He kept total control of her movements, pushing her down deep on him. He did it slow, so she had time to adjust, but he still went all the way up against her gag reflex, making her fight not to choke.

“Relax your throat. Take all of me. There you go. That’s my sweet girl.”

She sucked that salty-musky taste, reveling in it, and when he let her slide up, she worried his slit with the tip of her tongue, sucked on the ridges of the corona, and then she was pushed down again. She worked within what his grip would allow her, flicking her tongue along his length, sucking on him so hard she hollowed her cheeks as she did it.

“Fuck, you’re good at this. I might keep you on your knees all the time.”

How crazy was it that she loved hearing that? She redoubled her efforts. She wanted him to come in her mouth, wanted to swallow his seed. She was wet and throbbing yet again, ready for another climax. It was exhilarating, terrifying, the way her body responded to this, to him. But would he allow her that? Or would he leave her hot and wanting, because he was immersing her in what it was to be a submissive? His kind of submissive, commanded by the inexorable will of her Master.

His thigh muscles were starting to flex and twitch in that way that told her the climax was close. His grip showed that as well, as if men lost an awareness of their own strength as they reached that crest. Or perhaps they realized getting rougher was something a woman craved, feeling his loss of control in that aggressive power. She sucked and licked even more ardently. She wished her hand was where his was, wrapped around the base of his cock, so she could feel that vein pump when the seed started to come through.

With a groan, he thrust up hard into her mouth. His ejaculation flooded her throat, several long, strong spurts that kept her swallowing frantically, trying to make sure none of it escaped her lips. Her chest heaved with the effort, her throat fighting against that gag reflex.

His animal noises of release kept her working to please him. When his touch finally eased, her scalp was stinging from his grip and her eyes were watering from the effort, but all she wanted to do was keep at it. Instead, she did the next best thing. She started to clean him, licking more gently, absorbing with pleasure the postclimactic shudders of his body, the way his fingers stroked her hair, yet also paused to do short, quick pulls, a pleasurable discomfort to her scalp. Then he had her under the arms, dragging her into his lap to grip her neck and hold her to him for a hard, deep kiss. The zipper of his open jeans bit into her sore ass, his damp cock mashed against her pussy, and she loved it, the visceral, sticky perfection of it all.

Pulling back, he stared into her face, caressing her lips with a knuckle. He caught the edge of his T-shirt, dabbed at her eyes and wiped her nose with it. During the tender gesture, her hand naturally fell on his abdomen, the ridges of muscle. When she stroked him, taking advantage to slide her palm up to his chest and curl her fingers in his chest hair, doing her own tugging, he gave her a mildly reproving look, but the indulgent light in his gaze said he wasn’t going to tell her to stop.

He’d said they’d be more than a club session. What he was doing now, giving her free rein with a natural intimacy, confirmed it. This was a different emotion from what they’d shared a few moments ago. Softer, a lot of need behind it. Overwhelmed by it, she lowered her gaze.

He put his hand on the side of her head, guided her to settle back down in his lap, her temple pressed to his shoulder as she continued to stroke his chest.

“How about lunch on Wednesday?” he said at long last. “And it won’t be a fancy French restaurant or a diner. We’ll picnic in one of the parks. Wear sneakers. I plan to push you on the swings and make you hang from monkey bars.”

The man really wasn’t going to work on those segues, but then she remembered how often she and Roy hadn’t needed them, following the track of one another’s thoughts like they were on the same meandering garden path together.

“I’d like that. Just don’t put me on the merry-go-round. I get nauseous.”

“Roger that. No hurling from the merry-go-round.”

She closed her eyes, content to be held. Even so, an uncertain thought managed to creep in, the idyllic moment ironically summoning it. This wasn’t in a club, but she was still pursuing the fantasy in the dark of night, in isolated scenarios. Was that because she knew it wouldn’t survive the light of day, the daily demands of her life, the expectations of others?

She’d held on to control too long to believe that she could leave it all in Dale’s hands from beginning to end. At some point, she’d have to make some decisions and choices. But not tonight.

Tonight, this was enough.

D
ale had stayed with her until near dawn. He’d carried her to a couch in the living room, kept her coiled and dozing in his arms as he surfed cable, pressed light kisses to her head. Eventually, he stretched her out on her stomach and kneaded her shoulders, her back, hips and legs, giving her the massage and liniment he’d promised earlier. It served the purpose of putting her in a deep, blissful sleep, probably the best she’d had since Roy had passed.

Her cell phone alarm woke her. She found herself in a guest bedroom, the one with a yellow coverlet and pale butter-colored sheers at the windows, tied back with blue ribbon. He’d respected her desires and hadn’t entered her bedroom. As she fumbled for her cell and shut off the alarm, she saw it was seven a.m. While they were on the couch and he was massaging her thighs, his fingers sliding intimately against her damp core, he’d asked her when her housekeeping staff arrived. “Eight,” she mumbled sleepily.

He’d lived up to everything he’d promised. He’d cared for her, shielded her privacy, respected the few boundaries she’d set, even when he could have overridden them with her full consent. At certain times last night, she would have unwisely cracked herself open to her very soul, and he’d protected her from making that rash jump.

She ran her hands through her tousled hair. He’d held control in every way, and she’d pretty much given up all of it. Probably the first time in her life, so as wonderful as last night had been, she felt like she was waking up to a massive sugar crash. Why did there have to be a morning after, with all its doubts and worries? And what exactly
was
she worried about?

She sat up in the bed, and dropped her hands into her lap. A little puff of air came out from under the pillowy comforter he’d pulled over her. She remembered what he’d told her about the insurgents and the boat. That led her mind to another part of the evening; when she’d been concerned that she should walk, rather than be carried, to spare his leg. It was the only time she’d seen a crack in that armor, a sense of the man behind the Dom.

With all of it so new and amazing to her, she’d been happy to be within those boundaries. But had she been like a kid playing in the maze at McDonald’s, lost in oblivious fantasy while the parent sipped coffee, thinking about the less than three hours of sleep last night and whether the mortgage would get paid this month?

She was being silly. Dale had obviously been fully engaged and enjoyed their interlude last night. She’d wondered what his own unique preferences were, and he’d given her some of them. His desire to keep her to himself, for one thing.

She wanted to know more about him, though. While she never again expected to find the level of intimacy with a man she’d enjoyed as a married woman, it didn’t mean she didn’t hope for it, grasp at it like a naïve child snatching candy when a semblance of it was offered. He was right. She was ruined for casual dating, probably even for the idea of having limited “sessions” with a Dom. She wanted more.

So maybe that was the source of her vague unease. She was afraid of rejection, of risking her heart on a man who, despite saying they could give this free rein, see where this led, might himself only see it going a certain way down the road, when she might want it to go further. She could easily distort the relationship in her mind, amped up on the new experience or hormones or what have you.

She rubbed her brow. Often, when something was worrying her, she’d put the shoe on the other foot to clarify things, balance her concerns. Dale Rousseau was a divorced, middle-aged man, a retired SEAL who’d taken lives, who’d had to accept losing his leg. He loved dogs. He was very comfortable holding control over any situation. Did he have no reservations about meeting outside a club setting because he could impose an equally structured setting in any venue? Yet he’d implied he rarely conducted sessions outside the club.

He was an incredibly skilled Master and he’d given her an incomparable fantasy. What would it be like, if it were balanced and intertwined with the reality? Every time she came back to that thought, the yearning she felt intensified, as if her heart were seeking something she’d glimpsed last night, but hadn’t quite grasped. Something she’d have to cross a mine field to obtain, and things were good enough on this side of the field she couldn’t really justify risking her life, could she?

Time to be an adult again, Athena.
Sighing, she picked up the silky robe he’d left her, slipped it on and headed for her bedroom. She had a full schedule for the next couple of days, so if a dose of reality was what she needed, she was going to get more than her share.

—

U
nfortunately, her anticipation of their lunch together on Wednesday was dashed Monday, by a text Dale sent to her while she was at her office.

Have an adoption on Wednesday. Let’s reschedule for later next week. Will call you. Be good until then. Or not. I’ll deal with either contingency.

“Problem?”

She looked up to see Ellen, her administrative assistant, giving her a questioning look. Athena shook her head. “No, just a cancelled lunch for Wednesday.”

“Oh.” Ellen lifted a brow. “The one you told me to block out but didn’t tell me who it was with. The one that’s had you glowing all morning.”

“And how do you know that’s the reason I’ve been glowing?”

“Because when you read that text, the light went out.” Ellen picked up the papers Athena had just signed. “Hope he doesn’t screw it up, doing the things that men typically do.”

She should give Ellen a pleasant but nonencouraging look, keeping their relationship on its usual friendly but professional footing, but Ellen was a hard worker and a good woman. She was also a widow, which had given her and Athena a bond. She’d hired Ellen the year before Roy got sick, yet she remembered Ellen during that time as a quiet, efficient source of help on so many levels, the one person who never said the things that were well-meaning in their intent but such a painful effort to answer.

Athena also remembered a visit by Nancy Allen, a woman who’d always flirted outrageously with Roy. Nancy had come by to see Athena on a business matter, and had asked about Roy’s illness. At that point it was advanced, Athena only in the office the bare minimum needed to keep things handled. When Athena necessarily explained that Roy’s illness was terminal, Nancy Allen had put a familiar hand on her wrist.

“Oh, Athena, don’t give up on him like that. You need to be positive for Roy. Who knows what will happen?”

Athena had nodded, detached herself, and returned to her office. But she’d come back to the door a moment later to find Ellen had stepped in front of Nancy. Neither woman noticed Athena.

“With all due respect, Ms. Allen, you don’t know a damn thing about their relationship or what she’s handling. She loves that man more than the sun and the moon—if he’s dying, she’d be the first to know it, and she’s doing her best to help him through it and not fall apart while he needs her. That’s
not
giving up on him. That’s loving him in every way she should, even while her heart is breaking every day. Your job, if you consider yourself her friend, is not to tell her what she should or shouldn’t be doing, but figuring out how to support her. You shooting your mouth off about things you’ve never experienced makes you no kind of friend at all.”

Athena had the unique experience of seeing Nancy Allen pale like a vampire under her airbrushed makeup and flee. Her assistant’s fists unclenched and she swore softly, an obvious self-admonishment for losing her cool. When she turned back toward her desk, she started, seeing Athena.

“Mrs. Summers . . . I’m so sorry, I . . .”

“No apologies necessary. If that woman never darkens my door again, it will be too soon.” She paused, studying Ellen’s flushed face. “Thank you, Ellen.” Then she’d returned to her desk. It was the last they’d ever spoken of it.

Now, remembering so many other times Ellen had done exactly the right thing from that place of shared understanding, she cocked her own brow at her assistant. “Of those oh-so-many-things men screw up, what are we referencing today? You could create a male-bashing day calendar, Ellen.”

Her assistant laughed. “True enough. This one would be the cold feet syndrome. They have an amazing time with you, then get spooked and decide not to call you for a few months, long after you’ve given up on them. I think it’s because they’ve been burned before, but it’s still aggravating.”

“Hmm.” If Dale was having cold feet, there’d only be one foot involved, wouldn’t there? The wry thought made her consider her earlier thoughts. She might have a desire to be treated as a submissive, but that was not all she wanted from a man in her life. And he’d said he was interested in more
.

“Go ahead and keep that two-hour lunch block for me on Wednesday,” she decided. “Since I’ll be working here until nine tonight on the details for the gallery benefit this weekend, I think I’ve earned it.”

Ellen snorted and moved toward the door. “With the hours you work, you could take two-hour lunches forever and never catch up. Good for you.”

With a woman’s practiced eye, Athena knew she and Ellen could be sisters, since they both had brown hair and green eyes, but the structure of their faces were different, and Ellen downplayed her looks significantly. The woman was too thin and pale, and today as always she wore demure, monochrome colors and little jewelry. She didn’t dye her short brown hair, so it had strands of gray that made it look mousy. She was as supremely competent—and utterly unremarkable—as the computer on her desk.

Athena thought about the effort it had taken her to even get dressed the first year after Roy’s death. Ellen’s husband had been gone far longer.

“Ellen, are you seeing anyone?”

Ellen turned, gave her a surprised look. “No, ma’am.”

Athena pursed her lips. “I don’t in any way want to commit the faux pas Nancy did, speaking of things she doesn’t understand, so let me simply ask this as a friend. How long will you mourn?”

Ellen shrugged uncomfortably. “I just can’t bring myself to date. All those games, and no man wants to feel like he’s being sized up for a life fit on the first meet.”

Ruined for casual dating. There it was again, a discomfiting reminder of herself in Dale’s words and Ellen’s mirror image.

The admin met Athena’s gaze. “I had a man who loved me, who knew me, who cared about me as much as I cared about him. You and I know what a miracle that is, but it’s a miracle that happened because of time and tears, years of being together. I’m not asking for all that in a first look. I’m looking for a sign, I guess, as silly as that sounds. If there’s a man out there for me, he’ll do or say something and I’ll recognize it. It will feel like . . . the chance is there. But if that never happens, it’s okay.”

Though her eyes had a suspicious brightness to them, Ellen pressed her lips together in an attempted smile. “We’re blessed if we get it even once. So don’t worry about me, Mrs. Summers. I hope you’ve been fortunate enough to find that second round of blessings. You’re a good person, and you deserve that kind of love again.”

“So do you,” Athena said sincerely.

Ellen gave her a nod of thanks and exited Athena’s office, returning to her desk just outside of Athena’s view. Athena turned her chair to consider the city, the document blinking on her computer temporarily forgotten. It did take time. Dale had been a surprise. The question was whether he was simply a jump-start to get her heart moving toward love again, or if he was in fact the type of man that would take a permanent hold on it. She had to be brave enough to find out, didn’t she?

—

S
he’d decided to take lunch to him on Wednesday. If she arrived before the dog’s new family did, she wouldn’t mind watching him handle an adoption, hanging around until he was free to share food with her. She made sandwiches, boiled eggs and a good pound cake. She also added in some raw veggies, dip and other appetizers he’d probably like. Lynn had given her an odd look when she insisted on baking the cake herself, but she remembered his approval when he’d asked her if she made the sandwich herself. Of course, if she’d proven herself a lousy cook, he might have changed that stipulation. Men were funny that way.

On the flip side, with all this largesse, he might accuse her of trying to make him fat, but from the muscled body she’d had too little opportunity to touch, she was sure he was in no immediate danger of that.

They hadn’t had sex that night. Dom/sub sessions often didn’t involve that, especially if the couple weren’t romantically involved otherwise, but he’d made it clear with the condom comment on the first night that he hadn’t ruled it out. She imagined what it would have been like, straddling him before his climax, sinking down on him . . .

Easy girl.
Her heart was tapping like a metronome on allegro, and she’d only driven up to the front gate. From here, she could see a big Caddy with no wheels under the shade of a sprawling oak inside the junkyard. During the massage that night, his voice had rumbled with soothing pillow talk of this and that. He’d mentioned on pretty nights he sometimes put a sleeping bag on the hood of that Caddy and slept there. Thinking of what they might do there, beneath the stars, she found her cheeks heating.

The gate was unlocked, but still closed, so she parked on the shoulder and decided to take the arbor gate that served as an entrance for foot traffic. Locking the car and slipping the picnic basket over her arm, she wandered under the arbor, pausing to reach up and touch the clematis vine he had winding through the wooden slats. The arbor looked hand built and recently repainted. The man certainly had a wealth of talents. Passing through the gate, she closed it securely after her and proceeded down the driveway toward the main office. He might be somewhere else in the junkyard, but she could certainly wait on the steps. Though the last group of dogs had met her, she hoped if there were any new ones loose, they wouldn’t decide she was an intruder. She had enough turkey sandwiches to ransom her life if necessary.

The drive was about a quarter mile, a nice walk on a breezy New Orleans day. When the curve in the road resolved itself to reveal the office area, she discovered she didn’t have to worry about Dale’s whereabouts. He was leaning against the railing of the stairs, playing with the dog she expected was waiting for his new family. A young tan-colored shepherd mix with one pointed ear and one that flopped over. He and Dale were engaged in a tug-of-war with a stuffed sock that had been knotted on both ends and once in the middle.