Branded Sanctuary (29 page)

She had a brief second to wonder about neighbors, knowing there would be no doubt that what they heard was pleasure, not torment, though it could be the knife edge of both. Brendan knew that even better than she did.

His hot seed jetted into her, keeping her going. His cock was still slamming into her so she did feel the slap of testicles against her, an additional impact to her still spasming clit. The clutch of his powerful arm around her waist, hearing his guttural, primal sound of release, it was all beautiful. His climax kept her crying out through her own aftershocks, clinging to that supporting arm, gloriously aware it never slipped, capable of holding her up even through his own overwhelming response.

Capable of holding her through anything.

* * * * *

It seemed a long time before they came down. Her vision seemed fuzzy. Easing her to her side, he spooned behind her, like the photo downstairs, and she didn‟t mind thinking of them as black and white, tranquil shades of gray against the blue. The light from the parking lot thrown through the window illuminated the bedroom furnishings in soft relief.

Brendan left her briefly, with a kiss on her shoulder, to light two tapered candles he removed from a drawer and set up in a pair of pewter holders on the nightstand. As he went to turn off the hallway light, her gaze drifted over them. The bases were a pair of coiled dragons.

When he brought his warmth back behind her, she was gratified by how he fit his body to hers again, resting his arm over her waist. “You like dragons?” she asked.

“Dungeons and Dragons geek. Never quite shaken it.” When she glanced up from the pillow, she saw he had his head propped on a fist as he studied her profile.

Completely absorbed in her, in a way that made the kittens somersaulting in her lower belly purr. She turned away from him, toward the candles, and curled her toes when that clever mouth, the tip of the tongue, traced the valley of her spine. She was amazed to discover arousal was still simmering in her blood. He was so attentive, so attuned to her needs…

“I wish we could just stay like this.” Reaching out, she passed her fingers through the flame, felt the brief kiss of heat. “That was…something. It made me feel humble.

Content. And wanting to do it all again, as soon as I find the energy.” In answer, he closed his hand on her shoulder, eased her toward him again, down onto her back. First he took her fingers, the ones she‟d passed through the flame, and studied them. She realized he was making sure she hadn‟t singed herself. Then he let her slide the hand free as he curved over her and put his mouth on the upper rise of her breast. His hair brushed her skin. His fingers gripped her waist as he shifted over to her nipple, closed his mouth there with a deep suckling pull, easy and quiet. Instead of kittens, now the desire in her belly was a lazy cat in a heated window sill, burrowing deeper in the joy of sunshine and complete, mindless lassitude. Everything in the universe was revolving where it should be.

She loved how he communicated so much without words, the way the most important things always were. “Oh.
Oh.
” She drew a trembling breath, the hand nearest him curving around his shoulder, finding his hair and threading into it.

It was astonishing how he could find what she wanted, and then give it to her. Not for a mere blink, not until his own desire kicked in, impatient to take them somewhere else, but as long as
she
wanted it. All his senses seemed tuned in to her breath, the tiniest movements of her body, every infinitesimal increase in her arousal. If he were watching a calm pond, he would be the first one to notice the tiny ripples from the movements of water bugs, or sense a fish coming close, but not quite breaking the water‟s surface.

Knowing that, it wasn‟t absurd at all to believe that suckling her nipples was the most important—the only thing—in Brendan‟s existence at this moment. Because it was what she wanted.

Trusting, she laid her other hand limply over her head, feeling like some kind of decadent princess again, lounging on her bed like a raft on an ocean, watching her servant pleasure her.

She‟d thought of submission from the angle of whips, chains and contracts, vaguely disturbing internet sites and tonight‟s auction. But for the first time, she thought she was glimpsing the true essence of it, the elusive understanding of why he was like this.

Why Marguerite had said it was hard to explain. It was better grasped when all things were stripped down to this, a sacred act of devotion.

As she shifted, her fingertips brushed one of the candleholders. Following it up past the guard, she caressed the candle‟s sleek column, liking the silken feel of hard wax.

Following her train of thought, relaxing into the moment, she closed her hand over the base, lifted it.

It was amazing how steady her hand was as she brought it to hover over his shoulder, angled over her abdomen because he‟d moved his attention to her other nipple now. His mouth intensified the coil of liquid lust spiraling through the curve of flesh, down through her lower belly and arrowing straight between her legs. She watched the movement of his head, his mouth, the way he cradled her breast, compressing it so the nerve endings all focused on his lips, teeth and tongue.

She tipped the taper, and hot wax pattered onto his shoulder. His skin shuddered like a horse‟s under the impact, but he didn‟t break his nursing rhythm.

At all.

It was one of the most erotic things she‟d ever seen. He hadn‟t flinched, as if she could do anything she wished, anything that gave her pleasure.

She did it again, a different spot, and it was the same, though she felt a sympathetic burning sensation through the back of her shoulder, imaging how it must feel, how it stimulated the nerve endings there.

“Brendan,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”

He lifted his face, bathed in candlelit shadows, and put his mouth on hers. She was still holding the candle, and when she fumbled, trying to find her way back to the dresser with it without breaking that pleasurable contact, his hand closed over her wrist, helped her safely take it back to the table. Then she brought both hands back to his shoulders, wrapped her arms tight around him, giving herself to that kiss. Her fingers found the wax, already hardening, but still soft with lingering heat. He slid his arm underneath her, keeping her close to his chest, so their hearts beat together, and she realized both organs were moving at a faster pace, almost synchronized, like that first night.

“I want to be back inside you now.” He looked at her through thick lashes, his gaze so intent. “Just to be inside you. May I do that?”

In answer, she curved her leg over his hip, welcoming him. Brendan shifted, bringing his weight onto her, watching every change in her face, the way she bit into her lip, the expression in her eyes as he brought his mostly erect cock back into her. As he eased in, she gave a small whimper at that brief giving sensation when he made it past the gateway, then she sighed over the slow, deep glide, all the way to the heart, that point of fullness, when things that were meant to come together did, a perfect fit in nature.

“You feel so good,” she said in a hushed tone. “Like everything I‟ve ever wanted. It scares me.”

“Me too.” The corner of his mouth turned up.

“Why does it scare you?”

“Because I know it‟s real.”

It made her breath catch funny, somewhere between a sob and surprise. Since she wasn‟t sure what to say in reply, she fingered the wax on his shoulder, broke a piece of it away. It got away from her, tumbling down his back, lost in the ocean of covers.

He smoothed a palm down her side, all the way to her hip and then to the thigh muscle, crooked over his buttock. While he took his time with the gliding touch, she realized with some amazement he was also making sure her muscles weren‟t tense or tiring.

“You‟re not real,” she whispered. “Brendan, don‟t you ever think of yourself?”

“I don‟t have to do that. I know what I am, what I want, Chloe. It‟s other people who need my focus. Like you.”

“But do you want anything for yourself?”

“Your pleasure, your happiness. Your joy.”

That brief ripple of fierce light in his eye should give her a burst of warmth, and it did. But still…

“A true slave can‟t want anything for himself.” She punctuated the words with a sound of pure want in the back of her throat as he moved, a slow stroke, his gaze latched on her face. “Can‟t have desires. Beyond serving a Master, that is.”

“Or Mistress.” He bent, touched that clever mouth to the corner of hers, not impeding her ability to talk, but certainly taking away her desire to do so. His ass flexed under her legs, his shoulder muscles constricting as he shifted his body lower, his chest a solid wall, her breasts compressed beneath. As their abdomens touched, his cock made another slight but significant movement inside her, telling her he was hardening further.

“You‟ve been reading,” he added, the trace of amusement not lessening the burning desire in his face, the restraint that kept his jaw and chest muscles tense in a very appealing way.

“I read a lot during this week…getting ready. But it didn‟t tell me…everything.

Tonight…those slaves and you… Do you know why you willingly…”
Submit? Need
that? Want that? Crave it?
She knew she was coming back to that locked closet, and her questions would reflect more on what she wanted and her confusion about that, rather than his. But maybe one would lead to another. Since she wasn‟t sure how to word it, she asked the way she felt it. With great difficulty, because she was having to push past how he was distracting her.

“Do you know why you can‟t do without it? Can you do without it?” His teeth closed on her carotid, making her body undulate, a slow roll attended by a keening note from her lips. “Do you know why you prefer a man‟s cock inside you,” he whispered, “instead of a woman‟s touch on your pussy?”

“No.” Her whimper became a short cry as he executed a far more deliberate movement inside her. Her nipples, so aroused by him earlier, tingled with the response that glittered through her body like a shower of silver sparkles. “I just…I experimented, here and there, but I like…men. A lot.”

His lips pulled into a smile against her throat. When he lifted his head, enough so their faces were close, his mouth was too inviting. She returned the favor, nibbling him back as he obligingly held still so she could taste and tease.

“Oh,” she breathed. “I like that. Stay still, just like that.” She moved over his mouth, the lips slightly parted, and discovered a new erotic pleasure as she dipped into it with tongue and lips. He didn‟t move, not even a twitch.

The only movement was his cock pulsing hard inside her, indicating how pleasurable and difficult at once it was for him to obey, stay motionless as her hands went down his back, traced the width of his shoulders, found the taper of his waist, and then dipped to grip his ass.

With an impish smile, she brought her hips up, taking him deeper, then let her hips sink back to the bed, a heated, moist stroke, all executed by her will. His thighs quivered, a shudder running through his shoulders.

“Brendan, why are you like this?” she repeated in a whisper. “What do you feel when a woman takes you over like this, pushes you to mindless obedience, makes her every wish your only desire, your only reason for living?” She saw all that in his eyes and face, in the tension and compliance at once in his body.

“Because…” She was intrigued to see his gaze sweep down, his focus on her throat, the flush of desire across her sternum. His voice vibrated through her. “I feel…whole, like I‟m doing what I‟m supposed to do. I‟m on the edge of being exactly what I‟m meant to be, and there‟s no need for anything but to be…yours. When I get completely lost under a woman‟s touch, her power and control, swept away, I know this is what I want most. I‟ll do anything for her. For you.”

It overwhelmed her, as so many things about him did. Despite the growing need in her thighs and pussy, the surging in that delicious part of her lower abdomen, reflecting the tiny spasms happening in her clit, she needed one more answer. Even so, her hips kept moving of their own volition to slide her increasing slickness up and down his cock.

“You‟ve been with men.”

“God, Chloe…” He bit back a groan as she clenched tight on him, so that the sucking sound of her now thoroughly wet cunt reached both their ears. “Yes, but never…”

He stopped, face constricting a brief minute, telling her she was testing his control, a quiet delight to her. “Never a Master,” he said, his expression strained. “Except for training, or charity auction…which is different. Never a Master. Just…male lovers.

Submissives. Like me.”

“I don‟t think there‟s anyone like you, Brendan.” She said it with fervent belief. Or maybe it was just that she‟d never met anyone like him…for her. “Do you want to come for me?”

“Yes. Fuck, yes.”

“But shouldn‟t I come first?”

She was teasing him, half serious, half sensual, and he caught both. He gave her a look of wry exasperation and something more tender before he gave a jerky, determined nod. Gripping him hard with those internal muscles, she slid back down like a slow, hot mouth.

“I don‟t think so,” she said softly, watching him nearly choke on an oath. “I want you to come for me first, Brendan. Show me how much you want me.” Tensing her stomach muscles, she slid up his length again then down. Then up, a carousel ride, like when the horses were slowing. He was shaking his head, but now he stiffened in the grasp of her legs and arms, his eyes going deep green and rich earth brown. All the muscles in his handsome face tightened to the point he became a statue.