“Safeword or settle, pet,” he repeated.
She struggled, but this time he sensed the familiar change, bucking her hips back, no longer trying to push away.
He kicked her feet apart and lined up his cock with her pussy, which was already wet. When he pushed into her, her hands clenched and she let out a howl of pleasure, muffled against the covers, which hardened him even more and threatened to shove him over the edge.
He folded his body over hers, pulling her hair away from the nape of her neck. “My pet,” he whispered before biting the top of her left shoulder.
Her needy moan was punctuated by the feel of her pussy squeezing his cock, her hips still trying to rock against him. As he reached up and folded his hands around hers, lacing fingers with her, he glanced at the bloody furrows on his left arm.
Worth. It.
Worth every bit, and more.
She squeezed his hands, hard, tightly holding on.
Not wanting him to let go.
“You got my arm good, pet,” he said. “I’m going to have to fuck the fight out of you, aren’t I?”
Now her struggles weren’t to throw his weight off her but to get him to start moving, start fucking her.
He nuzzled the left side of her neck again. “No, pet,” he said. “You will wait until I’m ready.” He bit his way up and down the left side of her neck, across her shoulder, back up again.
* * * *
There was a part of Lynn’s conscious brain trying to wrest control of the situation from the rest of her soul, that was trying to get her to say that one word, red, that she knew would stop everything in its tracks.
Everything.
No matter what, no matter how hard and heavy their play, Paul never violated a safeword.
Ever.
But…she couldn’t.
She didn’t want to.
How long had it been since she’d felt his teeth in her flesh, his familiar, comforting weight pressing her into the mattress, his belt on her ass?
Too.
Fucking.
Long.
And then when he shoved his cock into her, she’d almost come right then.
Her body couldn’t lie, and despite the fact that they’d had sex before, this was like a reunion all over again.
The way it should have been.
It felt like they hadn’t been apart two days, much less two years. This wasn’t like the time they’d already spent together, tentative, wary, tiptoeing around each other, fumbling, clumsy pseudo-attempts to reconnect.
This was real.
This was them.
The heat of his body washed through the fabric of his shirt pressed against her back, the denim of his jeans against her ass and thighs, the way their bodies seemed to magically lock together, made for each other, for this.
He transferred her wrists into his left hand and reached under her with his right. “This is just the start, pet,” he whispered into her left ear. “If I have to fight you like this every day, I will. You know what you have to do to make me stop.”
The pain-rotted part of her soul that wanted to torture him for every second they’d spent apart tried to speak up, and Lynn forced it into a mental closet and locked it away.
His fingers found her folds and slid between them, her juices slicking everything down there already before he located her swollen clit.
“I have a very wet pet,” he said. “Now you know what I need from you.” He pinched her clit, and this time she muffled her scream of pleasure against the bed, her back trying to arch as the muscles of her pussy clamped down on his cock. The orgasm slammed into her, making her sob with pain, with pleasure, with relief.
“Good girl,” he whispered, then kissed her behind the ear. “My very good girl. Such a very good pet.”
His fingers stroked, quickly working her up to a second orgasm. The whole time he whispered the old things to her, the familiar things, the magic things that would have had her eagerly following him into the depths of hell if he’d asked her to.
Sobbing, the fight went out of her body, now every effort concentrated in obeying Him, being his good girl, being his good pet, trying to get him to fuck her, the release sooo fucking good. Yes, the sex they’d already had had been good.
But…this.
This had been theirs. All theirs. The vicious, feral struggles that always led to him subduing her and then rewarding her with this. Making her come until she couldn’t stand it and only then fucking her, filling her, taking his own pleasure.
She closed her eyes and lost herself in the welcomed bliss of subspace. He forced several more orgasms out of her before he started moving, started fucking her, releasing her wrists and standing, holding on to her hips for leverage.
He slammed into her, hard, fast, fierce.
Possessively.
One more climax slipped out of her before he came, his cock buried deep inside her as he held still for a moment and savored it.
Then the feel of his fingers on her back, trailing down her spine, circling the tattoo right there, just above her tailbone.
Tracing it.
“My pet,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes and started crying again, sobbing. This time in relief.
When she felt him fold his body over hers, she reached for his hands, and once again he held on, letting her squeeze, pull his arms around and under her as she fell into the abyss of her grief and tried to find her way free.
He tried to roll her sideways, but they ended up sliding off the bed and onto the floor, Paul cushioning the impact, his arms crossed around her now, their fingers still laced together. He pressed his lips to the right side of her neck, over one of the places she knew tomorrow morning would be a satisfyingly deep shade of purple and shaped like a bite mark.
His teeth.
Slowly rocking back and forth with her, he leaned against the bed and let her cry, not speaking, waiting.
Patiently.
Her rock.
Her lighthouse.
Her anchor.
Was she an idiot? Was she delusional?
Was she just so fucking desperate that she would simply roll over and trust?
She wanted to. That, and more. She wanted them back. The perfection they’d had. The seamless, silent way of communicating, knowing each other’s thoughts.
Eventually, she tipped her head back against his shoulder as her sniffles finally eased. She was a mess, a snot monster, and now sweaty from their struggle snuggle.
Her juices and his mixing, merging, all over both of them.
Not daring to speak, she kept her eyes closed and waited.
Finally, he broke the silence. “I’m still here, pet. You want me gone you have to walk away from me. I will do everything I can to get us back to what we had and better, I swear.”
“You picked her before.”
“Because I was trying to help her. She’s gone. She’s past. I can and will make you promises that I will not break unless you order me to. And the first of those promises is that you are first in my life. You are mine. If you want me.”
She finally opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Terrie’s still pissed. Really pissed. I talked to her today. You fuck this up, I might lose her as a friend, and I can’t afford to lose her friendship. She’s the only reason I didn’t give up living in the first place.”
“I know, baby.” He nuzzled the side of her neck. “I know. I made the best decision I could with the facts that I had. But if I had chosen you and Sarah had killed herself, I never would have been able to live with that guilt.”
“What if she does now?”
“That’s on her. She made me promises, once everything came out, that she refused to keep. She did exactly what everyone said. She made great progress at first, and I thought for sure I’d made the right call. She seemed to be getting better. But then…she didn’t. It was gradual. Like once she knew she had me, she stopped trying. I didn’t want to admit that at first. I gave her plenty of
chances. She’d guilt-trip me, and I’d point her back to the promises she’d made me about her recovery. That’s when I finally realized that she wasn’t going to keep her promises. That I was no longer helping her by being there. That it would slowly kill both our souls.”
“What’d she want today?”
“How much did you hear?”
“Not much after she showed up and I walked out of the room.”
“She hinted around that she had been testing me and never thought I’d leave. She promised to get back into therapy and go to meetings. She also hinted that she’d considered trying to kill herself, and still might if I didn’t come back.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told her I was sorry she felt that way, and that she needed to go talk to her therapist, or go to the hospital and have herself admitted. But that it wasn’t my problem any longer.”
“Is that when she started screaming?”
“Yeah.”
She turned her head and tipped it back enough she could look into his sweet hazel eyes. Right now, they looked more green. “I can’t promise you I won’t get pissed off and scream at you sometimes.”
“I know. It’s okay. I’m ready for it.”
“I won’t repair your relationships with our friends for you, either. You have to rebuild those bridges.”
“I know.”
“Is there anything tying you to Sarah now?”
“Just the income taxes next year. Derrick and Ed can handle that for me.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“In the living room.”
“Go get it, please.”
He untangled himself from her, pulled up his briefs and jeans, and went to go get it. She remained where she was but drew her legs up to her chest and leaned against the bed.
He returned, sat next to her on the floor, and handed over the phone.
“How do I unlock it?”
He smiled. “Same code.”
She thumbed it in, one she had been using on her own phone, a little piece of him.
“I’m blocking her numbers. And her sisters’ numbers.”
“Okay.”
She found Sarah’s contact numbers, home and work, and blocked them, as well as her two sisters’ numbers, then handed the phone back to him.
“You will give me access to your phone records. I want to see them for a few months.”
“Anything you want.”
She stared at him. “If she texts or calls you from a different number, you tell me immediately before blocking it. If she calls you at work, and you can’t block the call there, you’ll hang up immediately and tell me about it. If anyone tries to contact you directly for her, except her attorney, you will not engage and will hang up immediately. You won’t have any contact with her.”
“Absolutely.”
“You will tell Ed I have permission to know anything about the divorce and stuff. And Monday, you’ll ask him to send her attorney a letter to warn her if she tries to contact you again, except via attorney, or she tries to contact me, or has anyone else do it, friend or family, on her behalf, you’ll have a restraining order issued against her.”
“I can call him right now and ask him to do all that.”
She stared into his eyes.
“No,” she said. “Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s late in the day, and I don’t want any more distractions.”
“Okay. First thing Monday morning. Anything else?”
She took his left hand in hers and looked at the scratches on his arm. Then she kissed them before clasping his hand in both of hers. “I’m sorry I scratched you, Sir.”
He smiled. “’Tis merely a flesh wound.” His smile faded. “I’ll take that and more. Whatever I have to.”
She hooked her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, hard and deep, the kind of kiss they’d used to share.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I missed you so much, pet,” he whispered. “There wasn’t a day I didn’t think about you and miss you. I’d catch myself wanting to text you to tell you something I knew you’d think was funny or share something with you, and it killed me every time when I couldn’t.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “You gained weight.”
“I guess I gained what you lost.” He cupped her cheek. “We’ll get healthy together. In all ways. Inside, and out. We’ll work on it together.”
“I’m not going to lose you again and survive it.”
“I’m not going anywhere, I promise. And I’m going to marry you.”
“You once told me if you were ever not married to her you didn’t know if you’d get married again.”
“I was wrong. I’m not letting you get away from me.”
“I’m not the same person I was.”
“Neither am I. Let’s figure it out together who we are now.”
She took a deep breath and let it out again. “Yes, Sir.” She laid her head against his chest and listened to the familiar beat of his heart.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They didn’t go out to lifestyle functions very often over the next several weeks because a local newspaper had figured out Lynn was one of the winners of the lottery, put it together with her various pen names, and published a story about it.
Along with a current picture taken from her public Facebook profile.
The first time they’d gone to the club together after that, as soon as Paul had left Lynn alone to go to the bathroom, she’d found herself fending off people wanting to talk to her about a charity or investment or some other bullshit.
Derrick and Kel both immediately put their feet down and tossed anyone out of the club who bothered her like that, but she was sufficiently freaked out about the incident that she didn’t want to go for a while.
Instead, they sometimes went to dinner at Sigalo’s or to a private Suncoast Society house party, but Paul wasn’t going to force her to go to the club if she wasn’t comfortable there.
And weird calls had started coming in. He’d first thought maybe they were from Sarah, but then when some of them claimed to be long-lost relatives, he realized it was part of the lottery fallout. Lynn had already purchased a new cell phone, only giving the number out to close and trusted friends, but it was one more thing she didn’t want to deal with. Considering she still worked as hard as she ever did at home, only now throwing herself into different projects she’d let sit, it wasn’t like she could easily escape the situation.
Well, she could, but with her frugal nature, she wouldn’t. He loved her for it, even though he wished he could come up with a way she could get out of the house more often during the day.
They did go to dinner with Terrie and Mark, as well as Andrew and Rachel and a few other friends, so she was getting out in those ways.
Paul would admit he wasn’t looking forward to the first time he ran into Tilly. Fortunately, she was busy out in their California office, working on a movie they were producing, and wouldn’t be back in Florida full-time for another couple of months yet.
One good thing, at least, was that Sarah had apparently backed off. No more calls and no more visits. Paul hoped she had returned to therapy and had started taking her meds again, but it wasn’t his problem.
And he’d talked to the rental office at his apartment complex. As long as he left the apartment move-in ready, they would let him out of his lease early and refund his security deposit.
The plan was to move him out over the next couple of weeks so that, by the end of the month, they could turn the keys in. The bright smile that decision had put on Lynn’s face sealed the deal for him. He spent every night at her place anyway and every weekend. They were already living together. They hadn’t spent a night apart since he flew to Sioux Falls.
If he had it his way, they wouldn’t ever spend a night apart again.
He’d insisted that Lynn tell him if he needed to go home to give her space, but even
saying good-bye every morning when he left for work was growing more difficult for him.
The excitement Paul felt every evening as he pulled into her complex and parked in his spot next to her car was something he hadn’t felt in too damn long. Coming home to Sarah hadn’t felt like that in several years. He’d felt like an annoyance to her in many ways, getting hit by her complaints about whatever chore he hadn’t done—despite the dozens of things he had—as soon as he walked in the door every evening.
It didn’t feel like rushing to take that step with Lynn, either. But it didn’t escape his notice that, somehow, whenever he unpacked a bag at her place, if she’d been with him at his apartment when he’d packed it, there were always a few more things in it than he’d remembered putting there.
Whenever he’d look at her, she’d wear an innocent, playful smile.
Of course he couldn’t punish her for it. It made her happy, and he’d damn sure keep her that way.
He was sitting at his desk a little before eleven on a Monday morning and going over weekend status reports when one of the guys in his department stopped by his office.
“You’re needed up front. Now.”
Shit. “What is it?”
He held his hands up. “Dude, I am not getting in the middle of this.”
With a bad feeling congealing in the pit of his stomach, Paul headed toward the entry area. As he approached, he heard the shrill, shouting voice.
A woman’s voice.
A very familiar woman’s voice.
“No, no no… Fuck no,” he muttered as he quickened his pace.
Sure enough, Sarah stood there, engaged in a tearful shouting match with the security guard manning the front desk.
“What the hell is going on?” Paul asked.
“This guy won’t let me back to see you,” she said, crying. “I just want to talk to you without that bitch around! She poisoned you against me. I was being a perfect wife. It’s because of the money, isn’t it? I saw that article about her and—”
“Is she your wife?” the guard asked Paul, talking over Sarah.