Victorious (7 page)

I drive into her one more time, taking my own pleasure in the midst of hers. Releasing her hands, I cup her breasts, running my tongue gently over the tips, soothing and caressing as she goes soft under me, her body yielding to me.

“Flynn…”

“Hmm?” I’m very busy enjoying her gorgeous breasts.

“I want to do what you dreamed about.”

Her words stop me short. I raise my head to meet her gaze. “How much of it?”

“All of it. I want everything that you want. More than anything, I want to be everything you’ve ever dreamed of having in a wife and lover.”

I’m stunned and humbled to have somehow won the love of this amazing woman. “Christ, Nat, you already are.”

“Not quite yet, but I will be. Will you teach me how to be everything you want and need?”

I’m so overwhelmed by gratitude, I can barely speak. “Yes, sweetheart, I’ll teach you.”

Chapter 4

“So what happens now?” I ask much later as we consume our favorite dinner from the nearby Italian takeout place—chicken piccata and Caesar salad. Flynn opens a bottle of chardonnay and pours a glass for each of us. We slept for hours after our life-altering conversation earlier, and woke starving—for food and each other.
 

It’s dark now, and the wind is howling outside. The delivery guy told Flynn there’s more than eight inches of snow already on the ground and more coming overnight.

“Now,” Flynn says after taking a drink from his glass of wine, “we hammer out a contract.”

“Like a real contract?”

“Yep. Hold that thought.” He gets up and crosses the room to his office.

I watch him go, enjoying the view of him wearing only formfitting boxer briefs and nothing else. He’s magnificent and all mine. Though I’m still reeling from everything that happened earlier, I’m no longer agonizing over what will become of us. We’re in this together, and that’s all that matters.

Flynn returns, a packet of papers in hand. “The contract between you and me is not legal, but it’s a binding agreement for our relationship that outlines our hard and soft limits—in other words, things you absolutely won’t do as well as things that make you nervous but you’d be willing to try. It’s all negotiated in advance so there can be no misunderstandings during a scene.”

“Could I ask a question?”

“Always.”

This one requires some liquid courage, so I take a big sip of wine. “Will this… arrangement… involve other people?”

“No.”

“Just no? No discussion? Haven’t you done that before?”

“Yes,” he says tightly. “I’ve done it, but there’s no fucking way I’m sharing you with anyone. The thought of another man touching you… That’s a hard limit for me.”

“Okay…” I’m moved by his fiercely protective reaction, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in pushing his buttons a little. “What about another woman?”

His eyes widen, and he starts to say something that dies on his lips. “Sorry, I’m just a little startled that you asked that.”

I begin to laugh and can’t seem to stop. “After everything you said to me today,
that
shocks you?”

“Coming from you, yes.”

“I’m sorry. Have I shattered your illusions about your sweet, innocent wife?”

“I’m discovering my sweet, innocent wife may not be as innocent as I thought she was.”

“Oh, she is, trust me, but I’ve done my research.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. I’m wondering why all the secrecy surrounding this lifestyle. Why does it matter if people know?”

“Most people keep kinky preferences secret because society, as a whole, doesn’t understand them. Too many equate kinky with perverted, and it’s not perverted if two consenting adults are doing things that were agreed to in advance. The need for secrecy in my case and that of my partners is because that kind of judgment would hurt our careers.”

“That’s kind of sad when you think about it.”

“It’s reality,” he says with a shrug. “People fear what they don’t understand. It’s easier and cleaner to keep it private. Plus it’s none of anyone’s fucking business.”

“True.”

“Another thing that people don’t understand is it’s not all about sex. It’s much more about the emotion. When two people are fully invested in a scene, it can be the most intensely emotional experience you’ll ever have—and that’s before anyone has sex.” He cups my face and slides his thumb over my cheekbone. “That’s magnified a thousand times when you’re in a scene with someone you love.”

It’s hard to imagine our lovemaking more intense than it already is, but I take his word for the fact that there is more—much more. “What else is in that contract of yours?”

“A checklist of possibilities. But first, I want you to look at this and see what you think. Most of the time, these things are hammered out verbally. But because of who we are and what we have to lose, we do paper contracts at Quantum. Everything about this lifestyle and our agreement is based on three core beliefs—safe, sane and consensual. Everything we do will be all three of those things or it doesn’t happen.”

He hands me two pages that outline our Dominant/submissive relationship. The Club Quantum logo sits at the top of both pages.

“Who has access to the clubs?”

“The five principal partners as well as our staff and the members we’ve admitted over the years.”

“How do you keep something like this a secret in your business?”

“We are very selective about who we admit, and it costs a million dollars to join as a regular member. Everyone who’s admitted into the club would have something big to lose if they talked about us or our activities or the club. We have people locked in custody battles, people with huge, prominent jobs outside the entertainment business, people with families who have no idea they’re in the lifestyle.”

“Does your family know?”

“No.”

“Does Addie know?”

“Nope.”

“She must suspect something after working so closely with you for so long.”

“Not to be flippant about our recent troubles, but you married me, slept with me, made love with me, spent weeks with me and only me, and you didn’t know.”

“True, but then again, I didn’t even know such a thing existed until I found Hayden’s room.”

“I’m not sure that Addie knows it exists either.”

“Is this why Hayden doesn’t pursue his feelings for her?”

“Yes.”

“So many things make sense in this new context.”

“And yet I still feel I have to say again—Hayden’s business is his and his alone. Until you, I have never told another living soul about his involvement in the lifestyle, just as I’m confident he’s never told anyone about mine.”

“I’m honored to be trusted with all of this, Flynn. I swear to you again that I will never speak of it to anyone. You have my word on that.”

“Even if our marriage disintegrates into a Hollywood disaster?” he asks with a wry grin that doesn’t quite touch his eyes. I know he has no desire to discuss the possible demise of our marriage, but he’s wise to be concerned nonetheless.

“Even then.”

He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. “Thank you for that, for everything today, for giving me the chance to explain, to bring you all the way into my life. I’m so full of gratitude where you’re concerned.”

“It’s odd because I felt so close to you before this, but now… It’s even more so than it was before. Thank you for letting me the rest of the way into your world, even though you didn’t want to.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to. It was my misguided attempt to protect you, which backfired badly and undermined everything we’ve built together.”

I squeeze his hand, which is still wrapped around mine. “This isn’t something I would’ve thought I wanted, but listening to you describe it to me…” I fan my face, making him laugh. “I don’t know if I can do all of it, but I’m definitely curious and interested.”

“That’s an important first step. Now finish your dinner and read the contract.”

“Yes, Sir.”

My reply makes his eyes get very dark, and the connection between us in that moment is absolutely incendiary.
 

“
Read,
” he says in a low growl.

I smile at him before I return my attention to the documents.

The contract begins by outlining the timeframe for our agreement, which has been left blank. It goes on to cover a number of safety-related items, such as the hard and soft limits he’s already mentioned and the use of what’s referred to as a traffic-light system in which green means go, yellow means the sub is approaching his or her limits, and red means everything needs to stop right now. It covers the importance of open, honest communication between the Dom and the sub, and the proper form of address between a sub and the Dom.

Next is the availability of the sub, which is pretty much all the time, except for when the sub is at work or sleeping or otherwise engaged in his or her own activities. Then I read a line that says the terms of the agreement are enforceable by the Dom whether the couple is at home or in public.

I glance up at Flynn, who is watching me intently. “What?” he asks.

“At home or in public?”

He laughs, which softens his entire demeanor. “That’s where you get lucky. Because of who I am to the rest of the world, I won’t make you blow me in the men’s room at LaGuardia.”

“Thank goodness for small favors.”

“I believe you once said there’s nothing small about it.”

His comment cracks me up. I love that we’re laughing our way through what could’ve been a tense, uncomfortable conversation. It’s anything but that. With every clause and sentence I read in the agreement, I feel closer to him, to understanding the real him and what makes him tick. I want to know that. I want to know everything about him. “So define public for me, then. What does that mean for us?”

“Possibly, down the road, when you’re ready and I feel confident that you can handle it, we’d do a scene at the club.”

“In front of people we know.”

“Yes.” He eyes me with his head tipped in inquiry. “What do you think of that?”

“I-I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Just okay?”

“We’ll put public scenes on your soft limits list for now, and we can revisit it later. I have no intention of plunging you into this thing all at once, Nat. We’re going to ease you in and take it one step at a time. At first it will just be us, experimenting, playing, trying new things in private. A public scene at the club would only happen much later, if or when we both decide it’s time.”

“What if I never get there?”

“Then you never get there, and I’ll still love you with all my heart and be thankful every day that you’re my wife as well as my sexual submissive.”

“Could I… could we… maybe sometime… go to the club? Together?”

“That could be arranged.”

“I’d love to see it and to better understand what goes on there.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

His assurances help me relax some as I read about the exchange of respect between the parties as well as the expectations and rights of the Dom. These include the right to discipline his sub at any time but makes assurances that the Dom will never do anything that could be considered unsafe or that would leave permanent marks on the body of the submissive or create injuries that require medical intervention.