Colby, one of The Ranch’s trainers, stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and Foster pulled the earbuds out. Colby nodded at Foster. “She’s ready for you and has been informed of the safe words.”
“Thanks,” he said, rolling his shoulders, trying to push the unease from his system.
“Gotcha a pretty one in there, Foster,” Colby said, his Houston twang filling up the quiet hallway. “But nervous.”
Foster tucked his iPod into the outside pocket of his toy bag. “Nervous good or nervous freaked out?”
“A little of both,” he said, giving a pleased smile that only a fellow dominant could appreciate.
“Beautiful. Thanks, man.”
Colby headed back down the hallway, leaving Foster standing in front of the thick soundproof door. There were discreet cameras inside that would allow the staff to monitor things for safety, but he knew that the sub in there would feel totally isolated and alone nonetheless. He took a deep breath, channeling his dominance, bringing everything into focus. A submissive deserved nothing less than his full attention. She didn’t deserve a dominant who was thinking of someone else.
After one more cleansing breath, he turned the knob and opened the door. It was warmer inside than in the hallway, candles throwing flickering light around the lush space. He’d chosen the playroom that most resembled a high-end hotel suite over one of the dungeons or themed rooms. Most women who wanted the stranger fantasy usually liked the idea of meeting said stranger in a real-life type of setting.
He shut the door behind him slowly, giving his eyes time to adjust to the change in lighting, and enjoyed the sharp little breath he heard from across the room when the door clicked shut. Yes, she was nervous all right. He could almost smell her anticipation mixing with the soft vanilla scent of the candles. Vanilla. He always thought it amusing that Grant only stocked The Ranch with that particular scent. The guy had a sense of humor. Foster blinked, waiting for his vision to sharpen, and then drew in his own sharp breath.
At the base of a large, four-poster bed was the outline of a woman on her knees, back exposed. Her arms were stretched up and out, cuffed to the bed’s posts, and her dark hair was loose down her back, the ends brushing the top of a gorgeous, heart-shaped ass. A hard, trembling ache went through him. Of all the women he could’ve played with tonight, the universe was going to torture him with one who looked like the very one he couldn’t have. He set his toy bag on nearby table, his hand shaking more than he liked.
“I’m here,” he said, the words harsh in the thick silence.
Her arms sagged in the chains, her head dipping forward—in relief or surrender, he wasn’t sure. “Thank you, I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
The softness of her voice, the way her consonants rolled over each other, went straight to his cock and nudged at something in his brain. He wet his lips, a weird electric feeling crackling over his skin. He stepped closer, letting her hear his heavy footsteps, feel his presence. “Tell me why you’re here.”
Her fingers twisted around the chains, her body rocking with that edge of nerves. “Because I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
The response hit him like a swift blow to his sternum, her voice morphing in his ears into Cela’s. He rubbed his forehead, a sick feeling knotting his insides. Now he was going to turn every woman into a version of her?
He let out a long, frustrated breath. “Stand up and turn around.”
Her body went still for a moment, obviously surprised by the command. But after the beat of hesitation, she rose to her feet and turned, crossing her hands above her head to accommodate the bindings. She kept her head down, her hair curtaining her blindfolded face.
Her breasts sat high in her lacy black bra, and the warm glow of her golden skin could inspire prayers of worship, but Foster couldn’t bring himself to take advantage. He could play the jerk when needed, but he couldn’t use a sub while thinking of another woman.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I can’t do this.” He reached out to lift her chin and pull her blindfold off. But when the swath of black silk fell away, everything inside him seemed to short circuit.
Cela’s dark eyes blinked back at him, her teeth tugging at her bottom lip. “Hi.”
He stared back at her, wondering for a moment if he really had lost his mind and was having visions. The two worlds he lived in smashed into each other like cars going the wrong direction on the highway. The sight of Cela here, in this place, was almost too much for his brain to compute. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She winced, and he immediately regretted the coarse words. But his filter had shut down along with everything else.
“I forced my brother to get me in,” she said, a tiny tremor weaving through her voice.
“You what? Why?” Blood rushed through his ears in a deafening roar. Even with the confusion, his body was reacting to her presence, seeing her like this in front of him. His cock pressed against his leathers, and he had to fist his hands at his sides so he wouldn’t touch her—or demand she touch him.
“I wanted to see you. Needed to see you . . .” Her gaze traveled down the length of him, her cheeks darkening in a way that made his skin feel too hot.
He raked a hand through his hair, his libido and good sense waging a battle inside him. “Cela, angel, you’re killing me. We agreed to no more.”
“You don’t want me here?”
“Want you?” He scoffed. The universe really did want to fuck with him tonight. “That’s an understatement. You standing here like this is like waving the most tempting of fantasies in front of me. But you know why we can’t.”
“Because I’m leaving.”
“Yes,” he said, frustration building, making his back teeth clamp together. Why did she have to come here and make it worse—extend the torture? Maybe she was the sadist.
“So ask me to stay,” she said, her voice as unsteady as the candlelight flickering wildly in his peripheral vision.
Her words took a moment to translate in his twisted-up mind. Then it hit him—what she was really suggesting. “What?”
She smoothed her lip gloss, her nerves palpable. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the other night. Or any of the nights with you, really. I don’t—I don’t understand this. And I’m scared. I’m not going to pretend I’m not. I don’t know if I can even be . . . submissive. But ever since I graduated, anytime I think of moving home, I can’t even picture it—leaving my place, leaving a chance at a job I know I would love, and now, leaving you.”
He closed his eyes, the words everything he wanted to hear but nothing he could accept. “Angel, I can’t ask you to stay. You have a whole life waiting for you. What if you walk away from all of that and this doesn’t work out? You’ve only seen a sliver of who I am. You may hate being submissive. It may make you hate me.”
The thought terrified him down to his marrow—the idea of her submitting to him, then realizing she wanted something else, someone else, and walking away after he was already half in love with her.
She smiled. “This isn’t a marriage proposal, Foster. I understand that this could blow up in my face at any moment. But what if I leave and realize this was real, that this feeling I only get with you is more than initial attraction? I wouldn’t be staying for you. I’d be staying for me. I’m tired of following some script someone else wrote for me. I want to live in a place I choose. I want a job that excites and challenges me.” She looked directly at him, her eyes fierce. “I want to try this—with you.”
“Cela . . .” Desire wrestled with the cold fear curling around his gut. He knew what she was saying. This wasn’t I want to be your submissive. This was I’m curious and want you to show me why this excites me. What they’d done together had stirred up things inside her that she didn’t understand. Home for her meant the status quo, the life she’d always had. He represe
nted the unknown, the wild, the rebellion. And right now, with all the outside pressures on her, she wanted to rebel.
She held his gaze, her eyes shiny in the ambient light. “I can’t promise you that everything is going to work out. This is a gamble. For both of us. I’m asking you to take it with me.”
He reached out, fingering a lock of her hair, her bold bravery wrenching something inside him. Even realizing this was probably a passing whim for her, he couldn’t help but recognize that she was laying way more on the line than he could ever have asked her to. Putting her job back home and plans on hold. Not to mention being willing to try a lifestyle she had no experience with.
Like everything else with her, he found it hard to say no to that kind of leap of faith. “What will happen if you tell your dad you’re not coming home to help him?”
Her gaze shifted away. “It won’t be good.”
He frowned. “Angel, I don’t want you to mess up things with—”
“You were supposed to help me finish my list, right?” she said, cutting him off. “So here’s the rest: Never have I ever . . . been in a real relationship. I know we’re not there yet. And it scares the crap out of me to even say that word out loud. But I feel something different with you. And I know I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’ve never felt that before. I don’t want to walk away without knowing if this is real.” She glanced up at her chained hands, then back to him. “So, if you’ll have me, I want to be with you, Ian Foster. I want to feel what it’s like to submit to you, sir.”
He was supposed to respond, to say something romantic and brilliant, but her words had knocked him right on his ass. She wanted to stay. She wanted to see what it was like to be his. And she was throwing serious words out there like real and relationship. His heart thumped against his ribs. The risk of starting something with someone who could affect him this quickly, this thoroughly, was downright dangerous. He’d fallen in love—or thought he had—once before and had been blindsided when she’d ended it. But standing there, watching Cela, breathing her in, hearing her take hold of what she wanted, had temptation trampling over all the warning signs that were popping up in his path.
Cela was willing to take a risk on him. Shouldn’t he be brave enough to do the same? If he didn’t have the balls to try something with her, then what kind of coward was he?
He brushed his knuckles along the butter-soft skin of her cheek, allowing himself for the first time to believe that this could work, that maybe the bottom wouldn’t always fall out from under him. It was a scary thing to even consider that hope.
“What do you say?” she questioned, her words holding caution.
He ran his thumb over her plump bottom lip. “You’re so green to all of this, angel. It won’t be easy. If you really want to do this, I would need to train you on how to submit. Would need to show you what this truly entails.”
She tilted her chin upward. “I’m a quick study.”
He smiled, warmth spreading through his body like a fast-growing vine as the notion took hold. “Then I can’t imagine anything I could want more than having you stay.”
Her lashes fell against her cheeks, everything in her stature giving way—natural breathtaking submissiveness. “I’m all yours, sir.”
The statement struck him on an elemental level, echoed something he desperately craved. But he wasn’t going to let himself believe it yet. The idea of submission was quite different from the reality. He would need to train her without kid gloves. Not show her just the pleasant parts like he’d done with Darcy. If she could survive that without running away, then maybe . . . just maybe, he could start to hope.
“Thank you, angel.” He kissed her forehead, breathing in her scent.
Then he unhooked her cuffs and lifted her onto the bed.
Lessons could start later.
Right now he just needed to be inside her.
TWENTY-TWO
Mmm. I shifted beneath the covers, my legs sliding languidly through the luxurious linens as my mind drifted in that haze between sleeping and wakefulness. Pitch-black darkness pressed against my eyelids, and I felt as if I were floating in a sun-heated ocean, the waves rocking me gently. My skin had gone warm all over, and some sound was drifting from my lips, but I couldn’t quite grab on to what I was trying to say.
“Time to wake up, angel.” The statement was quiet, as if coming from a place just out of my reach.
Wake up . . . wake up . . . But before my mind could grab on to the words or their meaning, something warm and wet moved between my thighs, stroking me. That vaulted me right to the surface of consciousness. My eyelids flew open in the darkness, and I automatically tried to reach out, but my arms jerked backward—bound to something behind me.
Teeth nibbled.
“Oh, God.”
Foster laughed softly, his puffs of breath coasting over my already damp skin. “There you are. I was starting to wonder if you were going to come in your sleep.”
He licked me again right along my cleft, and I tried to push my knees together. But, of course, my legs didn’t cooperate. “I can’t move.”
“Kind of the point.” His tongue circled my clit, teasing and tasting like he was exploring me for the first time even though he’d been deep inside me only a few hours ago. A languid rush of oh yes went through my nerve endings, my body responding as if I’d never come before, everything stirring to life and aching already.
I moaned and he tucked fingers inside me while laving at my sensitized skin. My back curved upward off the bed, and my gaze rolled toward the ceiling. Everything was so black, the windowless room providing no relief—an abyss of pleasure and feeling without the distraction of sight. But before my eyes shut again, a small red dot in the far corner of the room snagged my attention.
“Foster,” I whispered.
“Hmm” he said, obviously distracted with his strategic destruction of every bit of my self-control. Because even as anxiety was welling, my muscles were tightening and my hips were rocking toward him, urging him on.
“What’s that red light for?”
There was the sound of sheets rustling and then little sparks—the dark so absolute that I could see the static electricity firing. He kissed the inside of my knee, and I could sense he was looking at me now, his gaze holding weight even in the void. “It’s a camera, angel. A lot of the rooms here are monitored.”
My heart jumped in my throat and lodged there. “People are watching us.”
“Shh,” he said, kissing down my thigh again. “It’s not for public viewing—we could open the window by the door if we wanted that. It’s only dungeon monitors who keep an eye on things for safety reasons.”
“Can they see us in the dark?” I asked, my voice sounding tiny in the cavernous room.
“I imagine so. Grant doesn’t spare expense on equipment.” His hand gripped my thigh with gentle pressure. “But relax, Cela. You’re safe here with me. Your privacy is protected.”
“How can I know that for sure?” I suddenly felt beyond vulnerable—naked and tied down in the dark.
“Because you trust me,” he said simply. “That’s your only job with me—to trust. I would never put you at risk. And I promise you, that if you’re going to be mine, you’re going to need to get used to being exposed at times. Remember that laundry list of mine I told you about?”
“Yes.” His fingers were working inside me again, and I was having trouble holding on to my fear, the rhythmic, mind-melting motion drawing all of my energy toward the need for release.
“Being watched kind of turns me on, angel.”
I writhed as he curled his fingers to rub on that spot that made everything want to break open inside me. “Oh . . .”
“And I suspect, if you really let yourself think about it—let yourself imagine someone on the other side of that camera gett
ing hot because you’re so fucking sexy spread out like this for me, you might kinda like it, too.”
I whimpered.
“And even if you don’t, you’ll do it because it pleases me.”
His mouth settled over me again, and white light leaked into the dark behind my eyelids. I bowed up and the images drifted from my mind. All that was left was Foster, in the dark, his tongue and fingers bringing me past the point of shame. A stadium could’ve been watching at the moment, and I probably wouldn’t have cared.
He sucked on my clit and moved a third finger inside me. My control splintered, and I cried out, bucking against the bindings and rocketing into the arc of release. He held on to me, his mouth working me with expert precision as I turned into some mindless, begging thing.
Then, as if attuned to my body in a way even I wasn’t, he slowly backed off, easing me down from the orgasm with soft touches and words until I stopped writhing. Then he was unhooking an ankle and a wrist and rolling me onto my side. The sound of a foil wrapper being torn open registered in my buzzing brain. Hot naked skin pressed against my back, the coarse hair on his chest brushing me, and a hand gripped me below the knee. “Open for me, Cela. I need you.”
Foster guided my knee toward my chest. The arm and leg of the side I was lying on were still tethered, so I could do nothing but let him put me in position. Then he was sliding deep, his thick heat pushing over tender, needy tissues. I moaned again, not sure I could handle more stimulation. But as he banded an arm around me and stroked me with gentler fingers than before, I knew there was no fighting it. This man knew exactly how to wring every drop of pleasure out of me, whether I was exhausted or not. My body wanted to give it to him.
He was in no hurry, no sprint to his own finish line. Instead, he seemed to be savoring and drinking in the sensation with every long, lazy stroke. A dream lover sneaking into my dreams and slaying me with murmured words and sure hands.
And I knew it was because we were both tired.
And it was late.