Xtraordinary (7 page)

She was spent.

“But you didn't….” she said.

He laughed again, but it sounded more like a threat. “Not yet. But surely you don't think we're finished here?”

Actually, she had…at least, she'd thought
she
was finished. Ricardo had already made her come several times in one evening, the first man ever to do so, but tonight had been something different. So many sensations, such a precipitous climb to her climax—how could she hope to come again?

She already knew that Ricardo would take his pleasure, however he wanted to have it, and she was more than ready to serve him. Just the thought, the word “serve” going through her mind, caused a little aftershock of pleasure to flit through her pussy.

“You have work to do,” Ricardo said. “But first, I find I'm a bit thirsty. I'm going to get a drink. While I am gone, start cleaning up this mess you made, dirty cum slut.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. Moments ago he'd been so focused on her pleasure, every expert stroke and gesture engineered to bring her over the top. Now he'd switched effortlessly to humiliation…and judging by the quickening of her blood, he'd timed it perfectly.

“
Now
.”

She couldn't help noticing that his cock strained harder than ever against his trousers as he left the room and she began picking up the clothespins where they'd fallen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Ricardo returned to the room moments later, Chelsea was smoothing the bedcovers back into place. She had gathered the clothespins back into the box and placed the lid on top. Now she was carefully making the bed like a devoted housewife. No one would ever guess what had taken place on it.

Except for the smell of sex, of
desire
, that pervaded the room. It smelled like she tasted—both earthy and feminine, like sin and like redemption, and as Ricardo inhaled deeply he felt his erection return to full, raging hardness.

He set the tray he was carrying on the dresser while Chelsea turned to him expectantly. He saw that she had tried, again, to adjust the silk bra and panties to cover her more demurely. He—and his tailor, to whom he had communicated his specific instructions—could have told her that it wasn't possible.

Perhaps Ricardo had been born with a gift for visually assessing a woman's precise measurements and proportions—but perhaps not. It was entirely likely that at the moment of his birth, Ricardo had been ordinary.

Spending his childhood at the feet of the finest tailor in Segovia, Italy, however, had ensured that he learned some things. Arturo de Santos, Ricardo's father, sewed clothing for the wealthy gentlemen who came from as far away as Palermo just to have their suits and shirts made by the master. Long after the business brought in enough money that Arturo could hire assistants for tasks like drafting patterns and cutting the bolts of fine wool and cotton, he insisted on doing all measuring and fitting himself. He traveled to the markets in Milan and Paris twice a year to see the new textile collections; he entertained artists and intellectuals and politicians in his own home. And for all of it, Ricardo was there.

His earliest task had been to hand his father pins as he made his way around a trouser leg or a cuff. Then he was allowed to remove the basting from finished work, carefully snipping the tiny stitches with a pair of embroidery scissors made especially for his small hands by a friend of his father. By the time he was eight, Arturo had encouraged him to guess at a patron's measurements; when he had come close to the right numbers, his father had rewarded him with a small, hard candy.

So it had been no great difficulty to give the tailor the numbers she needed to create Chelsea's one-of-a-kind garments. Especially since Ricardo had learned her body with his hands and his mouth in addition to his eyes.

That was how he knew that the bra cups would present her breasts to him like roses in full bloom, that the thong would dip low enough to cling to her cleft. The underpinnings were gifts for him as much as for her, and now that he had stoked and sated Chelsea's hunger temporarily, he was ready to enjoy them.

“You performed well, little
niñita
,” he said, handing her a chilled glass. “This limonata is similar to what my mother made. I trust you will find it refreshing.”

He sipped from his own glass while he watched her drink thirstily, her head tipped back and her throat rippling as she swallowed. She had a beautiful throat, and it would be more beautiful still before long when his engorged cock was filling it.

He picked up a folded cloth from the tray and handed it to her.

“The floors in this room are made of wood that was taken from an outbuilding on the grounds of the original mission at Santa Clara. It was torn down in the 1920s when the land was sold for development, an execrable and short-sighted loss. An example, too, of the greed of men with no cultural vision, but perhaps that is a topic for another time.”

She gazed up at him through her eyelashes, her head tucked demurely, her hands clasped in front of her as if trying to cover herself. God, she was such a natural-born submissive, and she didn't even know it. When he'd toyed with dominance in the past, he'd had to school his partners—even those who claimed to have ample experience—in the subtler aspects of the submission dance, and eventually given up when he realized that perhaps it couldn't be taught at all. Just because a woman was willing to kneel and beg, or because she asked to be spanked or tied, did not mean that she understood the currents of the ideal relationship. Memorably, one woman had nagged him mercilessly until he relented and took a paddle to her ass one night, only to have her demand to do the same to him half an hour later.

Of course there were switches in the Dom/sub world, those who were comfortable in both roles. And Ricardo's personal philosophy was never to question what willing partners did for pleasure. But in his mind, the dark beauty of the relationship he craved was not the sort of thing that could be turned off and on like a light. His craving, which for myriad reasons he had always kept suppressed, was for a woman who was unabashed in her needs, who was defined by them as one is defined by any spectacular gift. Like the artists whose work he traded in—like Paganini and his violin or Jordan and his basketball or Angelou and her storytelling—Chelsea was defined by her gift for submission, and though she may still not fully understand it, she would never be able to turn back from it. She was who she was, and he was aroused by the purity of it.

And by so much more.

His hand tightened on the cloth. “Have you drunk your fill?”

“Yes…” she took a breath, then stared at the floor as she handed him the empty glass. “…Sir.”

“Good.” He pretended that the single syllable hadn't caused his own breath to catch, his cock to strain for release. He set the glass carefully on the tray. “The wood I was telling you about. It was quartersawn, resulting in the magnificent grain, and hand finished. I only allow the housecleaner to use natural oils on it, never chemicals. But she was unable to come this week.” A lie, but one Ricardo justified to serve his greater need. And Chelsea's.

“Get down on your hands and knees and wipe the floor clean,” he said gravely. “Start in that corner. Make it shine. Work your way around the room. Do
not
miss any spots. I will be watching…paying strict attention.”

Chelsea's gaze flicked up at him in seeming disbelief. Her lips parted in alarm, and she glanced over to the corner of the room that he had indicated. The floor under the bed was covered by a thickly textured rug, leaving a space of perhaps three feet of uncovered wood on three sides. The room was furnished as simply as the rest of the house, so there were few objects in the way.

And, of course, the floor was already pristine.

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw, cover for his mounting excitement as much as anything. Then he pointed.

“
Now
,
putita
.”

#

For several minutes, Chelsea didn't dare look up. She began as he suggested, in the corner, rubbing the soft cloth on the old, scarred wood. It had been lovingly polished and it smelled faintly of citrus and of the forest from which it had come a century earlier. She checked the cloth for dust and saw none, and then returned her attention to the task, rubbing small circles, bending close to examine the wood.

Her ass was in the air, exposed for all the world to see. Or rather…for Ricardo to see. “Displayed” might be a better word, because she suspected seeing her bare skin covered only by that tiny strip of silk emerging from her ass crack to join the fabric-covered elastic band around her hips was part of his plan.

But…was the rest of it part of his plan, too? The sensation of the rough rug fibers on her knees, blending with the silk rubbing against her clit and her pussy lips and her asshole…and most of all the humiliation of working like a motel maid, moving slowly around the room with her rag? Because she couldn't deny that she was aroused again, that the sensation of being utterly spent was now only a memory, that her pussy dripped again with urgent need.

Without warning, Ricardo strode across the room, to stand towering over her. She'd cleaned only a few feet, the wood in front of her looking identical to what she'd already dusted.

“Can you see yourself in it?” He asked.

She froze. “I…I don't…”

“Look more closely.” He picked up the lamp from the dresser and held it overhead. Then—she felt the pressure of something pushing down on her back. Not hard, but…

His shoe. She realized he was using the sole of his hand-stitched shoe to drive her down so that her face was only inches from the floor. And yes…through the shocking pleasure of this new humiliation, she could make out her blurred, faint reflection in the polished floor.

“Yes,” she whispered. She was kneeling now like a penitent, like someone begging for mercy, forehead almost to the floor. Maybe that was what she was. Maybe only through her total humiliation could she let go of her own sins…her mistakes and her ugly past. “Oh, yes,” she moaned again.

The pressure of his shoe lifted.

“Then you may continue.”

By the time she made her slow and careful way around the bed, passing him where he stood on the rug without looking any higher than the crisp hem of his trousers, her knees hurt and her back ached from the strain. The rag was only slightly soiled and the floor gleamed. She finished at the edge of the adjoining bathroom, where the wood met the edge of the fine porcelain tile.

There she waited, biting her lip. She doubted she would have to wait for long.

“You've done well,” Ricardo said, approvingly. There was a sound like glass tinkling on the tray. “Stay where you are. I shall reward you with these, I think.”

He bent down to crouch before her and took the rag from her hand. Hanging from his other hand was a beautiful necklace of ebony glass beads. They were graduated, the one at the end the size of a bean, increasing to the dime-sized beads he held in his fist.

“You deserve beautiful things,
querida
,” he said, pressing them into her hands.

He straightened and walked back to the table…and understanding dawned as Chelsea examined the beads, which were not a necklace at all. The exquisite workmanship of the glass was matched by the careful crafting of the silicone strands on which they were strung, and the carved glass ring at the end which he had been holding. When he returned a moment later with a cut-crystal cruet filled with an amber-colored liquid, her ass was quivering with anticipation.

“Who do you serve,
cariñita
?” he demanded, as he knelt behind her.

“You,” she gasped. Of their own accord her hands went to the floor, her knees slid wider, exposing herself to him, making herself available. Pleading, with her body.

She glanced over her shoulder as he tipped the cruet inches above the small of her back. Warm oil dripped on her spine and began its slow, inexorable slide down her skin, between her ass cheeks, into her crack.

He allowed several tablespoons of oil to dribble onto her and then gently took the beads from her hand. He balled them in his fist and pressed the tangled mass against her back, into the oil. He rubbed the beads in the oil, using gentle pressure to knead and massage her ass cheeks, the base of her spine. It felt wonderful, and on another occasion, in some other place and time, it might have been deliciously relaxing.

But her asshole contracted with need. She knew that it was anal beads he was using the tease and massage her, toys that she had dismissed as gimmicky and a little weird in the past. The only lover to suggest their use had been met with her immediate and dismissive refusal, and she'd averted her eyes from the displays on the few occasions she'd passed the Good Vibrations store on Sanford Street.

Anal beads, like some of the other things he had used on her already, were for freaks. Kinky people enslaved to unhealthy needs. Novelties, at best, and dangerous instruments of humiliation at worse.

So she had thought.

And right now she was desperate for him to use them on her.

God, what would it feel like, to have the smooth, slick glass objects sliding through her tight hole, filling her? “Mmmm,” she murmured.

But he showed no sign of having heard her, continuing his ministrations, caressing her, sliding the beads over her skin like an afterthought. Occasionally his fingertips would slip down, almost as if he wasn't aware of it, and graze the tight puckered opening, sending tremors of need and anticipation through her. The third or fourth time she could contain herself no longer, and bucked against him. “Please,” she gasped.

His finger stilled at her tight opening, and he bent over her, pressing his mouth to her ear. “Yes,
querida
? What do you need? What do you want?”

“Y-you know,” Chelsea chattered between her teeth. God damn him, why was he playing with her this way when he had already laid bare her most secret longings, her desperate needs?