Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (47 page)

His arms wound around her, and he held her just as tightly in answer, putting his face against her hair. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

She eased back only when his grip slackened. She was pleased when he took her hand, shouldering the pack he’d had at his feet. He drew her across the parking lot, his destination apparently a trail marker. It was a good thing she’d worn sneakers, because as they hit the trail, his pace increased.

“Where are we headed?”

“It’s a surprise. Can you be away from the theater for a while?”

“All day if needed. I told Harris I had some personal things to handle. Thomas and Marcus are here a few more days. Lila freaked when she realized Thomas was painting some the sets.”

“Hmm.” He stepped off onto a side trail little more than a deer path, and took her down into a ravine, steep enough he spotted her as they slid down the incline. From there the growth grew even denser. He held branches away from her face as he directed her beneath and around them. Another few steps and the foliage opened into a small clearing with a trio of maple trees and a creek trickling through, a musical gurgle of sound. A frog startled by their appearance hopped back in the water with a small splash. There were moss-covered rocks clustered around the creek, and the area had a damp, green smell to it. Sunlight filtered through the interlaced tree branches enough to balance the coolness, but there was a hushed quietness here that reminded her of the church.

“So are you about to tell me you’re a serial killer, and this is where you bury your bodies?”

His lips curved. “You did say you always wanted to meet one, but no.” Closing his hand over her wrist he knelt, drawing her with him. “See here, where the grasses are pressed down? This is where a deer sleeps, maybe a couple of them. A mother and a fawn. Maybe even a male-female pairing, though they don’t really mate for life like other animals do. They can still dream together. Everyone likes having someone like that.”

“Yeah. But I like the mated pair idea. Let’s pretend they mate for life.”

“Okay.” He took the hem of her shirt in both hands. “Raise your arms, love.”

That telltale flutter in her stomach told her that her Dom was taking over. She obeyed and he stripped off her shirt, his gaze sliding over her breasts in the plain pink bra, the fabric thin enough to show the shape of her nipples. He ran a knuckle over her cleavage and then pushed her jeans off her hips. He took her pink underwear with it, removing her shoes and socks, then her bra. She was standing in the forest naked before his avid gaze.

“Turn toward the tree in the center of those three maples and put your arms over your head. Do it now.” His manner became crisp and decisive, brooking no conversation. A primitive part of her understood. After the overload of vulnerability, he was re-asserting control to bring him balance. Thinking of what she’d said to Marcus about safety and heat, it brought her balance as well. She could handle the times he might be vulnerable, where she would have to be the one that brought reassurance and comfort, but knowing he had this reservoir, and a natural instinct and desire to use it whenever he could, was all that mattered to her.

He bent and unzipped the front pockets of the tote. She wasn’t surprised he kept coils of rope in the pack, as well as things for his diabetes. He did a quick tie, wraps above and below her breasts, her wrists bound to a branch. A yoke around her throat ran down to the back wraps and secured there, holding her body up straight, her arms bound and her breasts thrust out. He put her face forward against the tree and ran ropes around her upper torso, then dropped to tie her ankles, holding them spread and bound against the tree.

She had enough slack for him to work his fingers in between the trunk and her body and play with her nipples, pinching them and rubbing the tips against the rough bark as she shuddered and her hips bucked against his pelvis, pressed against her bare ass cheeks.

“I’m thinking I should become one of those guys who lives in the woods, off the grid, and keeps his woman naked all the time,” he said gruffly in her ear. “I’m not feeling very civilized right now, Julie. I want to remind you I’m your Dom at a level I don’t usually go. Can you handle it? Can you handle everything I’m feeling right now, every fucked up, needy, want to fuck you and beat you feeling I have?”

“I want to feel all you’re feeling,” she responded, her voice unsteady. “Master.”

Master.
It was a whisper that went through her vitals, through her rapidly beating heart and suddenly constricted lungs as he bent and picked up a long stick, about an inch in diameter at the thickest end. He examined the rough, knotted length, the narrowing of it at the end that he tested by pulling on it. In the corner of her eye, she saw how it snapped back, giving it a whip like flexibility.

No further words, no explanations. He slapped her with the switch and she jumped at the sting, then made a tiny whimper as he followed it with a firm rub over her pale buttocks.

“God, I love your ass. Just as full and gorgeous as the moon. Going to fuck it and your cunt. After this.”

She jumped again at the next slap, cried out. He fished in the tote again, and produced a rubber ball. It was too big to swallow, but not too big to get past her teeth as he worked it into her mouth.

“Don’t want a hiker to hear you screaming and call the police. Now you can beg for mercy all you want.”

No safe words, none given or needed. She trusted him, knew he’d know if she couldn’t take anymore. The times he’d hinted at giving her more pain, this was the real deal, that side of his nature fully unleashed. She screamed against the ball as he worked up the intensity, crisscrossing the strikes, using different rhythms, patterns, force.

Her body writhed against the tree, further roughness. He alternated his blows with strokes of her flanks by his strong hands. He pinched and caressed her between her legs, taking the slippery honey there on his fingers and painting it on her rim.

“Des.” She shrieked against the ball as he hit her several times more. It was exquisitely painful now, her whole body shaking, nipples hard and abraded against the bark, her pussy dripping, her buttocks clenching at the blows, which just seemed to inflame him further.

Tossing the switch away, he dropped to one knee, parting her buttocks to lick her rim, stab his tongue into it. She came apart, crying out, flinching against the tight hold of his hands over the welts he’d left on her ass. When he stood and opened his jeans, the metal tick of the zipper had her shuddering with another wave of sensation.

“Beg me to fuck you. To hurt you some more.”

“Please…anything for you. Anything. It…God, it feels too good…and awful.”

Her words were muffled against the ball, but he understood the pleading note, because his dark, pleased chuckle ran tingles up her spine and deep into her ass and cunt. He removed the ball, collecting the saliva from the corners of her mouth with his fingertips.

“You’ll just have to bite back those screams yourself, love, because I want to hear every word that spills from your lips as I fuck you.”

He pressed his cock into her pussy, working his way into the tight angle, the head of his organ sliding along the front wall of the channel. When his body was flat against hers, he thrust his cock in her in small movements, his other hand sliding around her throat.

“Your life in my hand, love. Is it mine to have? To take?”

She understood his savagery to the root. He needed to hurt her, to hurt them both, to torment them both. “To have and to hold…” she whispered.

He paused, then thrust deep into her, as she whimpered and his grip tightened further. “Please…Master,” she begged. “Please.”

Let me have all of you. Please trust me, love me. Fight for me. Fight for your life. Know I can’t find this anywhere else, with anyone else. I’ve just found you.

His fingers slid over her clit as he pushed in deep, withdrew, slow, sliding movements that took her even higher. She begged him for mercy, and received none. He kept taking her higher and higher, teasing her with his fingers but not letting her have the friction she needed to go over. Then he withdrew and slid his cunt-slickened cock into her rear passage, slowly stretching her, invading deep as he let his fingers replace his cock inside her pussy, a thrust and retreat that had her crying like a bird, her head tipped back on his shoulder, her whole body swept with a need so strong she thought she could die from it.

He buried his fingers in her again and kept them still as he began to rub her clit with more diabolical intent. At the same time, he pumped more fiercely into her ass, increasing the discomfort with the pleasure.

“My sub. Her gorgeous ass is all mine, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, Master. All of it. Oh God…I can’t…please.”

“Come for me now.”

She did, her response gushing over his fingers, her muscles clamping over his cock, making the climax all the more intense, particularly as her squeezing hold brought him over the same edge. They cried out, grunted, and moaned together, two people clawing and straining to be as close to one being as possible. Their bodies were joined, but it felt as if their hearts and souls had come together too, crashing and pounding, clinging to one another in a storm.

She’d thought of the many ways their paths could have intersected before this, and hadn’t come up with anything she could have done differently to make it happen sooner, or work as well as it would work today. They’d been meant to meet in the here and now, after they’d each experienced the lessons they’d needed to make this work with one another.

So that was that. This was the time they’d been given. Whatever might happen to Des, that was the unknown. Their relationship, on the other hand, was meant to be.

There’d be no more turning back, for either of them.

D
es wiped
the sweat off his forehead and dropped to a squat on the roofline. This job, roofing multiple houses in the same subdivision, had taken him several hours out of Charlotte. He’d been away for four days. It would be the last time he took a job like this. He missed being with Julie. He also couldn’t work at this pace anymore. If he hadn’t committed to the job a couple months ago, a favor for a development manager who’d given him and his guys work when times were far leaner, he wouldn’t have done it. He’d limited himself mostly to supervision on this job, more so than he’d ever done before, but this last day he’d pitched in, determined to be done with it and get home tonight.

He’d started the dialysis a couple weeks ago, and Betty wasn’t seeing the results she’d hoped. They’d gone with the peritoneal dialysis, which he could do at night in his sleep and had equipment that could be easily transported, a nice rolling case he’d brought with him here. However, she was thinking he might respond better to the hemodialysis, though the data was inconclusive that one was any damn better than the other. Hemodialysis would require the surgical insertion of a fistula in his arm. They’d put in a catheter for the peritoneal dialysis already. He was starting to feel like a cyborg.

She wanted to push the damn kidney transplant thing again, he could tell. He knew she and Julie had been talking, because one night Julie had oh-so-casually mentioned some articles she’d been reading. He’d tried not to let his normal defensiveness assert itself, but he hadn’t been altogether successful, and she hadn’t been altogether successful in not being pushy. He’d told her he’d be working out of town the next few days, so he’d call her again when he got back. And that was the last time they’d spoken.

He was an official dumbass. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to curl around her in bed, bury his face in her hair, and keep at bay everything that seemed to be closing in on him, way too fast. Fuck, he’d had this under control for a long time, with a fuck-it, whatever happens, happens, mentality. But it was frayed at the edges. He should tell the guys they had to finish without him, and head for home. He felt like he needed to be home, with a sudden urgency he couldn’t explain. He needed to be in his bed, with her. God, he felt like shit.

“You roofing this whole thing by yourself?”

The familiar voice surprised him. He rose so he could see the front lawn, where Marcus Stanton stood looking like a Michelangelo sculpture in Armani, the silver of his Rolex and his ebony black wings of hair catching the sunlight.

“We just finished this one. The other guys went for a dinner break. I was taking a breather, doing some thinking.”

“It’s a good place to think.” Marcus’s gaze coursed over the expanse of new shingles, the sunset sky building in rose and gold color behind Des.

“So why are you here?” Des asked. “Found some talent to recruit?”

“There’s talent to be recruited everywhere, but no. You’re about thirty minutes away from our North Carolina house. Julie told me you were at this job site. I need to talk to you. Well, we do.” He gestured to his car, a gleaming Mercedes, where Thomas was sitting in the passenger seat. He lifted his hand in greeting as Des noticed him. “But Thomas and I agreed I’d talk to you first.’

Surely Julie hadn’t worried so much about his phone silence he’d sent her friends after him? He’d been texting her, for Christ’s sake.

His irritation must have shown, because Marcus’s expression hardened slightly. “If you don’t want to come down, I can come up.”

His tone raised Des’s hackles. “I didn’t ask for company.”

“Coming up it is, then.” Marcus disappeared beneath the roofline.

“Climb up on this roof in those fancy shoes, you'll break your neck,” Des called down.

“Yeah, and that one will be on you.”

When Marcus’s head emerged over the roofline, Des sat down on the peak, eying him. “Did Julie send you?”

Marcus gave him a puzzled look. “Why would she?” At Des’s surprised expression, his eyes narrowed. “Did you two have a fight?”

“None of your business, and not exactly.”

“When was the last time you talked to her?”

“A few days ago. I’ve been busy.”

“Hmm. I would kick your ass off this roof if it wouldn’t scuff my very expensive shoes.” Marcus settled his hip on the top rung of the ladder, a half seated position. “I asked her where you were, she told me how close you were and I casually mentioned we might stop by to take you out for dinner.”

Des studied his expression. The man could play poker in Vegas, because he wasn’t giving anything away, but Des relied on his gut rather than physical cues. “Why didn’t you tell her the real reason?”

“I’ll let you answer that, after I tell you why I’m here. Julie told me you have this thing about not wanting to take a kidney that could go to someone else.”

Before Des could react to that, Marcus waved a hand. “I get it, but only because if Thomas needed a kidney, he'd probably feel the same way you do. I'm a stubborn, selfish bastard, myself. I'd want the chance to live. But since you're just a stubborn bastard, let's look at it this way. You believe in fate, destiny, powers bigger than yourself, magic, Harry Potter?"

Des arched a brow. "Religion?"

"What the hell does religion have to do with God?" Marcus snorted. "Let's just say for a minute you answered yes, which I'm sure you would, because you sit up on rooftops on your break to commune with something. And you love our girl, and you can't truly love someone without some kind of belief in a power bigger than yourself."

"My girl. Not yours."

Marcus showed his teeth in a Dom-eating feral grin. "She's yours when I decide you're not going to be a dumbass. Stop changing the subject. I need to run something by you. Give me your opinion on the odds of this hypothetical situation ever happening.” He settled on the ladder as if it was a comfortable chair. Des gave him points for the deception, because he knew the aluminum rung had to be cutting into the guy’s perfect ass.

“You meet a girl from New York, who came down here because Madison happens to be friends with her and happens to need help with her community theater. You fall in love with her, and she introduces you to her two best friends. All around the time your kidneys are about to give up the ghost.”

“Sounds like a Murphy’s Law kick in the teeth.”

“I haven’t reached the Twilight Zone punch line yet. Since Thomas met you, you’ve felt familiar to him. He’s not the New Age type, so he’s not talking past lives. It wasn’t until we came home here and showed his mother that picture he took of you and Julie that we figured it out. You look like his aunt, Elaine’s sister, Christine.”

Des felt an odd lurch inside of him, which he immediately ignored. He had no idea where this was going, but it couldn’t be going where it sounded like it was.

Marcus tossed him a look. “Still sitting? Good. Well, here we are at dinner, talking about the chances of two people looking like they’re related who aren’t, when Elaine tells us one of the dark Wilder family secrets. Christine was a prescription drug addict, who basically drifted through life until she died of an overdose. But one of the things she confided to her sister on one of her rare visits home was that she’d given up a baby and never told anyone about it.”

That lurch became a precipitous dip in his chest, but Des set his jaw. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No. That in itself doesn’t. But Thomas contacted Betty, who has your blood work on file. He had her do a DNA test, and your markers, or whatever they call them, line up. He’s your cousin, Des. Your mother was his Aunt Christine.”

The roofline wavered, the sun suddenly much brighter and hotter. Des curled his fingers around the roof’s spine, for the first time in his life feeling like he was up way too high. He closed his eyes.

“Des?” Marcus’s voice was sharp. “You okay? Shit, I knew I should have told you to come down.”

“I said no. Not your fault. Yeah. I’m fine.” Des opened his eyes, willing it to be a true statement. “This is bullshit. It’s bullshit.” His voice sounded hollow, like through a megaphone.

“Yeah, that would be my reaction. But let’s trace our steps back to the Fate crap. What are the chances one of Julie’s best friends ends up being your cousin? And it just so happens that cousin is probably going to be a great match for the kidney you need, and he wants to give it to you. Hell, he’d cut it out and hand it to you right now if I let him. That is a lot of ‘just so happens’. You turn your back on that, I wouldn't blame the Powers-That-Be for skewering your ass with a lightning bolt right here, right now."

Des struggled past the unlikeliness of it all and focused on what he could handle thinking about. “You can’t be fine with the person you love giving up an organ.”

“It’s not my choice, it’s his. No matter my feelings, I’d be just as clueless as you if I ignored a coincidence so close to a divine miracle that for a moment I almost believed there was something greater than my own awesomeness.”

Des clasped his arms around his knees, his jaw set. It was too soon, too…abrupt. Yet how else could something like that seem? The real problem was he’d fought this idea for so long, denied himself the option. True, he’d started giving it some more thought, though he hadn’t revealed that to Julie. She and Betty had been wearing him down. Well, his desire to be around as long as he could for Julie, to make her happy…that was what had worn him down.

Marcus shot him a look. "You may not want to take up a spot on a donor list, but Thomas has a kidney he's willing to give to you and only you. Unlike you, he accepts this big cosmic mash-up.”

“Have you told Julie any of this?” Des demanded.

“No. This was your decision, and we didn’t want to get her hopes up if we were wrong about Thomas’s match or your interest in it.”

“If I decide not to do it?”

“Then she’ll never hear it from us. I won’t hurt her needlessly.” Marcus gave him that hard look again. “But I hope you won’t, either.”

"What if something goes wrong with his other kidney? How're you going to feel about this conversation then?"

Marcus shook his head. "Is that what this is really all about? You'd prefer to die than to feel obligated to anyone? Refusing to be the receiver, ever, is a form of selfishness. It's called self-imposed martyrdom, and there's nothing more annoying. But, hey, if you decide to go that route, you'll be the proudest, most selfless guy in the whole cemetery. Julie's heart will still be broken."

Des clenched his fists and stared off at the sky, the drift of clouds, a sunset so deep in colors it made his eyes and chest hurt. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. Not usually from straight guys, though.”

Des shifted his glance at the creak of the ladder. Marcus had removed his shoes and stepped onto the roof. He made his way up the slope to Des. “Hell, those shingles are hot.”

“Not as hot as they’ll be in August.” Des was impressed by Marcus’s balance and confidence, the way he didn’t overbalance or seem nervous, like so many people did when they first walked a roofline. He settled down next to Des, shoulder to shoulder.

“Nice view up here.”

“How’d you learn to walk a roof?”

“I engineered some creative escape routes in my youth.”

Des sighed. “It’s not that I’m not appreciative. I know I’m coming off like a shit—”

Marcus waved a hand, stopping him. “I get it. Really, I do. But see, people like Thomas and Julie, they don’t. They've always had people telling them what to do because those people love them. Not because they're trying to assert power over them, control their lives or make them helpless. Though with a strong personality, it can seem that way sometimes. You need to meet my mother-in-law,” he added with a twist of his lips.

Despite the humor, when Marcus met his gaze, Des saw a dark history behind the green eyes, much darker than he would have assigned to the well-dressed, wealthy and confident male. He detected something feral and predatory there, a creature who would kill to survive. Then Marcus blinked and his expression was casual once more, though Des was sure the reveal had been intentional.

“I lived on the streets in my teens. I should have been dead a hundred times over. I lost people out there I loved and, until I met Thomas, I genuinely thought my heart had died with them. But it didn’t. And I almost didn’t realize that until it was too late.”

Marcus shifted to lie back on his elbows, tipping his head to look at the clouds as Des had done. “This is where people like you and me end up being the village idiots,” Marcus mused. “We're so focused on no one controlling our destiny, no one telling us what to do. That’s because we've been helpless, we've been controlled by fate. But as a result, we miss that the person who loves us is trying to give us a gift of themselves. She or he is trying to say, ‘you matter so much, there's nothing I won't do to keep you safe, well and happy.’ Yeah, we can differ on methods, but letting someone help you keep on living, that one's clear cut. Right?”

Des swallowed. Marcus gave him a piercing look. “Let me put it another way. Are you her Master or not?”

Des stiffened. “That’s private.”

“Doesn’t look all that private. To another Dom, it’s as obvious as your ridiculously low body fat ratio. So if the answer to the question is yes, then you do what you have to do to be around to take care of her. Right?”

Marcus straightened, getting to his feet so he could begin working his way down the roof. “You don’t owe me any answers, Des. I’m giving you information. What you do with it is up to you. But I’m hoping you’re as smart as she thinks you are.”

He’d reached the ladder again, and started down it, holding his shoes and socks, but stopped when his upper body was still visible. “Well, let me correct that. Most of us aren’t as smart as the people who love us think we are. But if we love them back, we do our best to try and fake it.”

“Yeah.” Des couldn’t argue that. His brow creased. “Julie’s family…they didn’t sound like they were really there for her much. Emotionally, I mean.”

“Yes and no. They’re like a bunch of toddlers, everything periphery to their perpetual self-absorption. Yet, her mom still flew home from Europe when Julie had to have an emergency appendectomy. And her dad insists on paying for her upkeep, though there are homeless people with more fixed costs than that girl.” Marcus shrugged. “Families all care, in their own warped way.”