Dark Secret Love (16 page)

Jack began undoing the bindings on my ankles while leaving the cuffs in place, and I was frightened I’d said the wrong thing, that I’d somehow scared him off. That he was setting me free. I shouldn’t have worried.

“Then we are a perfect match,” he whispered, kissing my cheek as he repositioned me on the bed.

Jack consumed me.

He had known, he said, the first time he saw me. He had known what it would be like to bind me down to his bed. To take control of me. I hadn’t been in the same mental place: my head in the clouds, my thoughts a jumble. The headiness of being single and free had been so new, so dizzying. I hadn’t been paying proper attention.

Jack was patient. That was his strongest trait. A lawyer at one of L.A.’s top firms, he rarely showed his emotions. Honestly, I couldn’t believe I was dating a lawyer. He worked in the same firm as Jody’s boyfriend. I thought all lawyers were cast from the same mold. Wore the same types of clothes. Drove the same sort of cars. Got off on the same type of pixie-ish legal secretaries.

Not Jack. He didn’t date secretaries. He didn’t like pixies. He wanted me.

It can’t all be about pain, you know. There is the desire. The power of desire. The want to possess ran through
Jack’s veins. He bound me back on the bed, face down, and yes, he used a crop on me. And yes, he made me cry.

But afterwards, he fucked me like nobody ever had. He let me loose except for the steel cuffs on my wrists. He moved me into all sorts of positions: bent over his bed. Up against the wall. Straddling his strong body. He carried me back out onto the balcony, held me in his arms, and drove his cock inside me. My hands were bound, but I slipped my wrists over his head, and he could feel the metal of the chain against the back of his neck as he fucked me. I know it must have hurt, must have dug into his skin, but he didn’t say a word. Didn’t tell me to stop.

There is decadence in pain. There is a raw sharp edge to pleasure that comes in conjunction with it. For Doms and subs alike.

He bit into my shoulder when he came, leaving marks, making me squirm and grip even tighter to his body with my slender legs around his waist. And then he carried me back to his bedroom, set me back in the center of his bed, and climbed in between my legs.

I didn’t know what he was going to do. I couldn’t fathom.

His tongue flicked out to touch my clit, and I groaned. He used his fingers to spread my lips, to hold them wide apart.

“Oh, god, Jack.”

He tricked his tongue in soothing circles, and then slid the tip inside of me. I arched my body. I begged without words. Jack took his time, knowing how to touch me, how long to make me wait, before letting me come fiercely, sweetly.

He licked his lips slowly, then moved up my body, settling me into his arms, into his safe embrace. He was
gentle now, because he could be. He kissed my mouth, let me taste myself. He brought my arms over my head and ran his fingertips all the way down from my wrists to my ribs, smiling at how I shook his whole bed with my tremulous shudders.

Then he turned me back over and inspected me while I buried my face in his pillow.

“You’re going to have marks,” he said. I didn’t respond. It wasn’t a question. “And you’re seeing someone. I wonder what he will think about all of this.”

My body stiffened immediately, going instantly from relaxed postorgasmic bliss to the awareness of a frightened animal face to face with a predator.

“I didn’t mean—” I started, remembering drinks, a million years before. Recalling what I’d told him while Jody had left us alone. “It’s not official, or anything.”

“You said—” and now his fingertips were tripping over the welts he’d left. I could visualize what my ass must look like. The cherry hue. The stripes. “You said you weren’t ready for me. You said you were seeing someone.”

“I was scared.”

I couldn’t see his face, and that bothered me the most. What did his eyes look like? Cold and hard, or with that subtle humor to them? He was stroking me in the most easygoing manner, the palm of his hand now running over the curves of my cheeks. Petting me. Lulling me. But I would not be fooled.

“I understand,” he said, “but that doesn’t change one simple fact.”

Could he hear my heartbeat? The throbbing rhythm of it? Could he see my muscles, coiled tight? Could he tell that I was holding my breath?

“Does it, Samantha?”

Slowly, he parted the cheeks of my ass. Slowly, his fingertips started to make lazy circles around my rear hole. I knew what he wanted me to say. I understood my role.

“No, Sir.”

“What fact is that?”

“I lied to you … Sir.”

“Look at me.”

I turned my head to face him, watching as he removed his hand, as he brought his thumb to my mouth, set it on my lower lip. Without needing to be told, I sucked it in, wetting it. He gazed at me, his face so serious, then pulled his hand away. As he continued to talk, he slowly slid his thumb inside me, pushing into my ass.

“I can’t allow you to get away with that. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You can tell me anything. You can confess any desire. I won’t ever reject you for what you want.”

I nodded, my body still tense, feeling him fucking me with his thumb.

“But, baby, don’t ever lie to me.”

Now, I shook my head, trying to show him with my eyes as well as my words that I understood. “No, Sir,” I said, my voice a rush, a whisper. “No.”

He regarded me carefully before shifting positions so that his hand still had access to my ass, but his cock was now directly in front of me. “Suck it,” he said. “Suck it hard. Get it nice and wet for me. You know where it’s going to go.”

I didn’t think we would sleep that night. In my poetic world, I imagined we’d be awake to greet the first golden lights of dawn (or, since this was L.A., the first gray light of smog), the way I had watched the sunset over Sunset. So I was surprised to actually wake up, to realize that I had slept, and not only slept, but slept late, long, and hard.

The scent of coffee—my favorite AM aroma—woke me. Jack wandered in, a cup in his hand, and set the mug on the bedside table. I was confused for a moment as to why he didn’t simply hand the coffee to me, and then I remembered: my wrists were still cuffed. Gently, Jack unlocked the handcuffs, freeing me, and he rubbed the skin firmly, soothing the marks there, before handing me the coffee.

It was strong and black. I don’t know how he knew. I’m a java purist as well as a slut. I will drink almost any sort of coffee. I don’t care if it comes from some fancy
French press or out of a bottle of freeze-dried crystals. But I take my coffee hot and black. No flavored creamers. No sugar. I’m pathological about this.

Jack watched me savor the first sip, and he seemed to appreciate my pleasure. He was already dressed in faded Levis and a white button-up shirt, crisp but casual. He looked well rested, but he couldn’t have slept any more than I had.

“What time is it?” I asked. The clock was turned away.

“After ten.”

I started to move. I’d known it was late, but hadn’t thought it was that late.

“Sit back,” Jack said, “don’t worry.”

“I’m going to get fired,” I said, my mind scrambling. I’d have to wear yesterday’s clothes, which were somewhere in a heap on the living room floor, and I’d have to lie and say I’d gotten caught with a flat or run out of gas, or something. Oh, Jesus—

“I called in sick for you,” Jack said, clearly amused by my panic. “I know KC. Don’t worry. He’s an old friend. We go way back. And I called in sick for myself, too.”

I stared at him, surprised that he’d been so on top of things. I shouldn’t have been. Jack was always organized, precise. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching me. “You think we met when my dog knocked you down, don’t you?”

A spark of fear went through me. He wasn’t going to say that we were lost souls from previous lives, was he? That we met because of destiny? I stared warily at him, but nodded.

“Think back,” he said, “several years back. To a party at Jody’s. When he sold his first movie of the week.”

I remembered the party well. Byron had been flirting
with a lady in our office. The one who ultimately outed me and Connor to Byron. I’d watched the two of them together, head to head, gossiping, and I’d gotten drunk. There had been more than a hundred people at the party, toasting Jody. People were so excited for him.

But where had Jack been?

“Watching you,” he said. “You had on—”

This I could answer. Byron’s older sister often passed her old clothes on to me, and to her, “old” meant worn once or twice. This was a Sonia Rykiel three-piece cream-colored outfit. A short pleated skirt, low-cut halter, and cardigan-style jacket. The halter sagged on me—my chest didn’t begin to compete with his sister’s fake tits—but the outfit was hot. I loved it.

“And you kept snagging glasses of champagne as they went past.”

“I didn’t like how Byron was acting.”

“Understandably,” Jack said. “I asked Jody about you that night. I’ve been waiting for you, kid. I want you to know that. Last night was no one-night stand.”

I was paying attention, watching his blue eyes.

“I want you to move in, Samantha. To get your stuff from that sad little house up in Hollywood and bring it here. I’ve got two places in L.A. This and one in Malibu. That’s where the dog is, in case you’re wondering. I spend the weeks here, generally, and weekends at the beach.”

I was listening intently, trying to process the situation. Byron and I had known each other for months before I moved in with him. I thought people were supposed to date for a while first. But Jack didn’t want me to go back to Nate, to be anywhere near him. I understood this, even if he didn’t speak the words aloud.

“You have to accept certain stipulations”—lawyer
talk—“if you’re going to accept my offer,” he continued. “But I don’t think you’ll have a problem with them.”

Still, I waited, focused, the coffee working through me. “You’ve dabbled with this sort of lifestyle before. Clearly, you were introduced way back in school. And you’ve had some fun in the past few months. But with me, things will be different.”

He paused, and I took the opportunity to speak. “How?”

He gripped my hand and stood me up. I was naked and humbled. “I’ll dress you,” he said. “You can make suggestions, of course, and you can tell me your opinions, but I will have the final say.”

“Byron was like that, too,” I said, speaking without thinking. “He didn’t like my pants without pockets. He didn’t like my glasses.”

“I’m talking about when we’re home, and when we go out to certain types of clubs. I’m talking about collars,” he said. “And outfits. Special outfits. If I want you naked at home, you will be stripped down. If I want you in a schoolgirl outfit, that’s what you’ll wear. Do you accept that?”

“Yes, Sir.” Accept it? I loved it.

He led me down the hallway. “I’m giving you a little tour,” he said, taking me back to the living room. In each room, he revealed secrets to me: paddles kept in the top drawers of chests. A crop in the closet. Some implement of punishment in every single room, always at easy reach. My heart raced as he let me touch each one. I wondered if he could sense how turned on I was, and then I wondered about the women he’d dated before me, the other ladies he’d put over his lap. Had he been with someone at Jody’s party? I tried to remember.

“Yes,” Jack said when I got up the nerve to ask. “She was beautiful. Think back.” And he described her, half-German, half-African, a tall, slender lawyer from his office. They weren’t dating. They were friends, both with the same closeted appetite for young, submissive females. “She was the one who spotted you first,” he grinned. “But I got lucky.”

Jack led me through the whole apartment, and then sat down on the sofa and pulled me onto his lap. I felt awkward being naked while he was dressed. This was something I needed to get used to. My body was sore as well, from being used the night before. Being punished. Being fucked. I tried to remember everything we’d done. Some parts of the evening had become a blur.