“Maybe I’m just hitting my stride. Maybe I want to fuck you all night like this.”
He could, too. Operant conditioning was a heartless bitch. She’d inadvertently trained him so well that he could hold back hours if he tried hard enough.
And he had one Saturday, when he’d earned very special privileges and she’d let him tie her up and have his way with her for the day.
He’d fucked her in every way possible, playing with her like a dog with a chew toy.
Sure, she could trip several switches in him and flip him back, set his orgasm off in her time and not his, but what was the fun in that? He’d wanted this, needed it.
And sometimes, she needed it, too. Not that she needed him on top or as a Top, but she needed proof his spirit wasn’t broken. That he was under her by choice, by desire, not because he felt compelled to for her reasons and not his own.
A soft reset.
A sexual palate cleanser.
Reassurance that he really was happy with her and what they did.
He sat up and cupped her breasts in his hands, his fingers tugging on her nipples and his body grinding against her clit at the bottom of every stroke into her pussy.
It was more than enough. Her cunt clamped down on his cock when she exploded, and he grinned down at her. “Oh, yeah.”
When he’d sensed she’d finished, he pulled out, flipped her onto her hands and knees, and before she could even brace herself his cock slid into her cunt and bottomed out, making her and him moan in sweet harmony.
“That’s what I wanted, baby.”
She rested her head on the bed and held on for the ride. He didn’t disappoint, either. Grabbing her hips, he rode her hard, not just thrusting into her but pulling her onto his cock and all she could do was brace herself and let him. It didn’t take him long to finish. He’d started coming and kept fucking her all the way through it, his cum filling her and leaking out around where they were joined as he fucked and fucked and—
The gasp, and the way his hands clamped down on her hips as he buried himself deep inside her one final time. Primal and raw and dirty. A far tamer version of how he’d fucked her the night they’d found out she was pregnant with Kailey. During those days while trying to get pregnant, he’d wanted to make love to her face-to-face every time, watching her come on his cock, and she’d wanted to see him come, too.
But the celebrations were always this, animalistic and primal and coring through all the daily bullshit and masks they wore for civilization.
This was them, their nature.
Their love story had always been sweetest and hottest played out in the shadows, dark mansions with tall windows and endless moors outside, the two of them free to unleash their needs with each other, almost like a gothic love story except for that one little point—that she was always in charge.
And they both liked it like that.
He dropped onto her, fingers finding hers and lacing with them, his legs stretched out along hers, nearly a foot taller than her.
She squeezed his hands and waited for her pulse and his to slow and return to normal.
Then he pulled out and rolled off her, pulling her into his arms so he could kiss her again.
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
Her sweet barbarian, back in his mind.
She palmed his cheek. “Better?”
He nodded, nuzzling noses with her. “You always make it better, Ma’am.”
Chapter Three
Eliza hated that she was running late for her regular Wednesday morning brunch, but it couldn’t be helped. Kailey had called her, looking for advice about dealing with an idiot at the trap and skeet complex she usually practiced at. An older man who’d been a member there for decades, and who was starting to irritate Kailey with his unsolicited and usually erroneous advice.
“I’ve tried being polite, Mom, but he doesn’t take a hint.”
“Have you asked George or one of the other guys to tell him to back off?”
“No one wants to. They’re afraid of pissing him off.”
“Why?”
“Exactly. He’s like in his seventies and is one of the first members they had.”
“Ah, one of those kinds. Is he handsy?”
Kailey snorted. “Is he dead? No, he’s not handsy, but it seems he’s made it his mission to give unsolicited advice. He apparently does it to every woman, unless she’s his age and been shooting a while. Now, maybe if I was a noob just starting out, sure. The guy rarely shoots over twenty. Not like he’s an expert I’d ever ask for training tips. I don’t think I’ve shot twenty or under since I was like sixteen. And, hellooo, I teach private lessons.”
Kailey had a literal wall full of awards from shooting trap. In addition to her medals and trophies and awards for martial arts, archery, and other sports.
“Does he know that?”
“He apparently doesn’t believe it, not that I care what he thinks.”
“Has he actually seen you shoot a full round?”
“No. He usually shows up when we’re finishing and I try to get out of there as fast as possible when he does so I don’t get into it with him and end up getting myself thrown out of the club.”
“Then ask him to shoot a couple of rounds with you.”
“What?”
“Look, once you skunk him, act all friendly and proceed to tell him how he can improve his game, and offer him a free lesson if he needs it. Then inform him, oh, by the way, you made the USA ladies Olympic trap team a couple of months ago, and smile as you walk away.”
“Ugh. He’s obnoxious, though. I mean, not like feel-me-up obnoxious, just…old-fart obnoxious.”
“Even better. Guys like that don’t like being shown up. He’ll probably never bother you again once you dust him with a twenty-five.”
“I guess it can’t hurt.”
“That’s my girl.”
Cali, Leah, and Essie were already at the restaurant when Eliza arrived, but Loren wasn’t there yet.
“She’s on her way,” Cali told Eliza as she sat down, before she could even ask. “She blames Ross for getting an idea and losing track of time during its implementation.”
Eliza laughed. “I can only imagine what kind of idea that sadist had.” Eliza gave her drink order to the waitress and waited until she left to ask her next question. “Any news from Chelbie?”
“Baby news, or Mal news?” Essie asked.
“Either. Or both.”
“Doctor said baby seems healthy,” Essie said. “She’s out in California with Rich right now, while he’s recording with Mevi’s band.”
“Yeah, I have some Mal news,” Cali quietly said.
Leah scowled. “What’s wrong? Is she okay?”
Eliza had already heard this because she’d been at the club Saturday when Kel stopped by.
“Kel stopped by the club Saturday night,” Cali told the other two women. “This isn’t for general consumption, either. She’s in-patient again.”
Essie sighed. “Dammit. I really hoped she’d pulled through the worst of it.”
“He said she had a setback and lost some of the weight she’d regained. And…there was some other behavioral stuff. They’re working on adjusting her meds.”
“Damn,” Leah softly said, staring at her place setting. “She was a fucking skeleton when we visited her a couple of months ago. That can’t be healthy.”
“Hence why she’s in-patient again.” Cali looked…bereft. “Kel offered to give us his share of the club since we’ve been volunteering.”
“What?” Leah and Essie exclaimed in unison.
Eliza stayed quiet since she’d already heard this, too.
Cali held her hands up. “We told him no, we don’t want a share of the club. Besides, what I didn’t tell him is we wouldn’t feel right taking a share. And, frankly, the three of us were worried even if we did take his share, they’d drop out of the lifestyle altogether and we’d never see them again. I want them to feel like they still ha
ve a home here, you know? I also don’t want Mal thinking it’s some sort of failure, or her fault, or something.”
The other three women nodded.
“On top of that, we don’t have time for another business. A weekend a month, or a night here or there? Sure. That we can do. But we have the website, the guys have evil day jobs, and frankly, that’s more than enough to keep us busy. Actually, it’s too much, right now. I need to get us ready for the fetish convention up in Tampa. I still have a bunch of product I want to get made to take with us. I can always strong-arm enough volunteers to fill in where we need them at the club, but I really hope Kel and Mal make it back.”
Loren walked in, spied them, and hurried over to join them. “Sorry.”
They all looked at her expectantly.
“What?” she finally asked.
Eliza grinned. “Spill it. What’d he do?”
Loren rolled her eyes. “I’m about to order that damn Dom to go back to working at the office full time. He’s got way too much time on his hands being part-time retired.” She glanced around and leaned in, dropping her voice. “He was looking for alternate uses for Christmas lights. ’Nuff said.”
“Not nearly ’nuff,” Eliza snarked. “Come on, you have to give us more than that.”
Loren glared at her. “You’re a sadist.”
“Duh.”
“You’ll just try it on poor Rusty.”
“Again, duh.”
“No.” Loren gave her drink order to the waitress and got herself settled in her seat. “Now, where were we?”
They filled her in on the latest about Mal, Loren’s expression growing sad. “Yeah, I don’t want to see Kel sell out. Hell, Ross and I will step up and take a weekend, if we need to.”
“We’ll help,” Leah said. “Me and Seth both.”
“You and I already talked about this,” Eliza said. “Whatever you need, Rusty and I will help.”
“I appreciate it. I’ll sit down with the schedule and let you guys know. I need to get through this damn convention first. We need it for the business exposure, but now I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t signed us up for it.”
“When’s the R&D party, anyway?” Eliza asked. “Or is that still on?”
“Something else I was going to talk to you guys about today. This Friday evening. From about seven—or whenever you can arrive—until we finish. We’ll supply pizza. I already e-mailed Tony and Landry. Abbey and John are in, too.”
Leah rubbed her hands together. “I love your R&D parties. I feel like I’m special.”
Cali chuckled. “You are special.”
“No, like really special. We get to see and try the goodies before they debut. It’s cool!”
“We’ll see how special you feel when Seth’s trying one of my new whips on you.”
“You say that like it’s a threat instead of a promise of good things to come.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not real confident in my whipmaking skills yet.”
Once they finished their meal and were heading up front to pay their tabs at the counter, Cali tugged Eliza’s arm to hold her back. “Can you hang for a minute after?”
“Sure.” Eliza didn’t need to be hit over the head with a clue-by-four and wouldn’t pester Cali with questions in front of the others.
After they’d said their final good-byes in the parking lot, and it was just Eliza and Cali, she got right to her point. “Are you and Rusty available next month during the third weekend?”
“That’s the weekend of the con, right?”
“Yeah. Specifically, if we pay your entry fees and hotel room, could we sucker you two into helping us with our booth? We’ll pay you.”
“First of all, yes we’ll help, and no, you won’t pay us for helping. But we will accept the room and entry fees. What’s going on?”
“I trust you guys, you know the implements, you know us, and I don’t want the guys married to the booth all weekend.”
“Afraid of bad Lydia memories for Sean?”
“Oh, my god, yes!” She hugged Eliza. “How’d you guess?”
She shrugged. “Lydia was a bitch. We despised her. Best thing the boys did was to dump her ass. Seeing how torn up Sean was, dealing with her being murdered, it’s not hard to add those facts together. I mean, I know he hated her guts, but…yeah. I get it. They went through hell with her. Of course you can count us in. I’ll make sure Rebecca can babysit Boo for us.”
“You guys are awesome!” Cali hugged her again.
“And I’m usually free most days. If you want help making stuff, I’d be happy to come over. I’m used to handling tools. Rusty and I spent a lot of time making things like weapons for SCA and LARPing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to help out. Free,” Eliza added before Cali could say something. “It’ll get me out of the house more often, now that I’m not teaching all the time. I’ll work for gourmet coffee, how’s that sound?”
“Tomorrow morning at nine? I’ve got to run errands today.”
“Sounds good. It’s a date.”
Eliza headed home after saying good-bye to Cali. It would be fun doing something different. Helping out friends.
Something to get her out of the house, now that she wasn’t teaching at the dojo every day. Her body couldn’t take a pounding like it could when she was in her twenties, and Rusty had begged her to retire. When she’d first retired from teaching history for the county school system seven years ago, able to do that because of Rusty’s salary, she’d started teaching full-time at the dojo because it’d been fun.
It wasn’t fun anymore. Not five-days-a-week fun, at least.
More like once-a-week fun. Except for right now, she was taking a break from that, too, with Corey and Marcy’s health issues. Another reason Rusty wanted her home, in case they needed to leave at a moment’s notice to go to Atlanta.
Boo greeted her at the front door and Eliza danced around her to avoid the tongue slobber of doom from the bulldog before shutting off the alarm.
“Come on, sweetie. Walkies.” Eliza noticed the light blinking on the cordless phone’s base sitting on the kitchen counter, so she snagged the phone on her way past it to the rear sliders. They didn’t get many phone calls at the house, and she knew she should ditch the landline, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it yet. Especially since it’d been Rusty and Corey’s mom’s phone number before she died.
While Boo sniffed and shnurfled her way around the backyard, Eliza played the voice mail, which had been left just after she’d headed out for brunch with the girls.
The woman sounded practiced, official. Calm. “My name is Lisa Williamton, from Evers Martin Assisted Living Facility in Orlando, and I’m trying to reach Mr. Rusty McElroy. This is in regards to his uncle, Borden McElroy. My office number is (407) 555-3468.”
Eliza was trying to figure out how to delete the message when the phone rang with an incoming call. Instead of hanging up on that one, she accidentally hung up on the voice mail system and heard a woman speaking.
“Hello?”
Shit. “Um, hello?”
“Hi. My name is Lisa Williamton, from Evers Martin Assisted—”
“I’m Eliza McElroy, Rusty’s wife. I just got home and played your earlier message. How can I help you?” Tingling numbness was setting in, tight, centered around her chest.
“Is Mr. McElroy available?”
“No. He’s out of town for four weeks for work. In Europe. He’s not available by phone. Can I help you?” The numbness was spreading quickly and she made mental notes of what she said in case she needed to remember the lies later.
“Oh. Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but his uncle passed away last night. Mr. McElroy is listed as the next of kin.”
Eliza had clamped her lips together to keep from screaming, then managed to swallow that back before she tightly replied. “That’s too bad.” Yeah, that sounded normal enough.
“I understand tha
t they weren’t very close, but when he was admitted here last year, that was the only contact listed in his file…”
Twenty minutes later, Eliza stood in the kitchen and had taken a few notes, and a couple of ibuprofen. She suspected she was going to need something a lot stronger than that when Rus came home and she had to have this conversation with him.
Boo patiently sat in front of her with her left front paw raised, but she was starting to snort a little.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie.” She gave the bulldog two cookies for being so patient and waiting for her accustomed treat.
Eliza knelt and petted the bulldog, who rewarded her by sneezing spittle in her face. Eliza cringed, then laughed.
“Yeah, always know where we stand with you, sweetie, huh?”
The bulldog let out another snotty sneeze.
Right into Eliza’s face.
“Aaaand on that note, I think I need another shower.”
Chapter Four
The phone on Rusty’s desk buzzed Wednesday afternoon. Darby, his administrative assistant.
“Dr. McElroy? Your three o’clock appointment is here.”
He reached over and tapped the intercom button. “Thanks. Please show him back.”
He took a sip of cold coffee from the stainless steel travel tumbler on his desk before standing and grabbing his blazer off the back of his chair and sliding it on. By the time he’d gotten it buttoned, he heard the knock on his door.
“Come in.”
Darby opened the door and led the way for his visitor. Rusty rounded his desk. “Colin Greeson? Rusty McElroy.”
They shook hands as Darby left them alone, closing the door behind her while Rusty indicated the chairs in front of his desk. The man was in his late sixties, Rusty knew, and he had reddish hair, blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks in an otherwise pale complexion. He was dressed nicely, his suit likely custom-tailored and not off the rack, and he carried a leather satchel.
The man worked for an international financial company based in London. His firm had been a client of theirs for two years now, and they’d created several highly detailed and confidential reports for them ahead of and in the wake of the BREXIT vote.