Dark Secret Love (24 page)

There were toys lined up neatly on the bedside table. Plugs in various sizes. A bottle of lube.

I didn’t say a word now, scared of betraying myself with my voice. I didn’t think I could take another scene like the one in the club. Jack bent me over on the bed, pillows under my hips to raise them, and then slicked the lube between the cheeks of my ass. I turned my head away, feeling raw and used already, as Jack slid the smallest plug inside me.

Shame floored me, as it always did when Jack played like this. Yes, I had begged Byron to fuck my ass, but it would have been completely different with him, something dirty we were engaging in together. With Jack, there was the sense of being willingly violated, the way his hands were rough on me, spreading me. The way he held me open and stared down at me, inspecting me.

When the first plug was in place, he flipped me over on the mattress and bent down between my legs. His tongue
on my clit was the last thing I expected. The reward of the experience confused my brain even more. He licked me forcefully, his tongue running up and down between my pussy lips, and then he made those dangerous circles around my clit, until I was breathless with yearning. And only then did he turn me back over, unceremoniously pull that plug out, and move on to the next size up.

I understood what he was doing. He was showing me that I was his. That he was in control of my pleasure, of my embarrassment, of my very sense of self. He needn’t have worried. I knew I was his. I had known from the start. It didn’t matter to me that someone else had just cropped me. As far as I was concerned, that man was a tool, like Jack said: a machine.

He had to work harder to slide the second plug inside of me, and I bit into my bottom lip and pressed my face against the rumpled white sheets. I didn’t whine or complain when his hands touched my welts, when white-hot pain flared through me, leaving me shaking. The pain stabilized me, as always, gave me something to hold on to.

Jack repositioned me onto my back once more, and for a moment I was extremely aware of the size of the plug in my ass. The feeling of being stretched was overwhelming. That is, at least, until Jack resumed his place between my forcefully spread thighs and lapped at my throbbing clit once more. I wished my hands were free so I could stroke his hair, touch his face. Jack pushed my thighs wide, and I shut my eyes and felt him licking from the base of my pussy up to my pubic bone. The pleasure that traveled through my body made me dizzy. But when he lifted up and spoke, the pleasure built rather than subsided at the words he said.

“I wanted to do that at the club,” he said. “I wanted to
go on my knees in front of you while he was whipping you and lick your sweet pussy.”

The image was almost too sexy to stand.

“Make you come while you were being cropped. That’s what I wanted to do … But I couldn’t stop watching you, watching your face, and then I understood somehow that you weren’t going to give your word. God, Sam, why?”

I shrugged. How could I explain it?

“You would have passed out before you spoke, wouldn’t you?”

I couldn’t meet his eyes now. What did he want from me? Saying the word would have been losing, failing.

Failing Jack and myself.

He was flipping me over once more, and my heart sank at the size of the last plug waiting on the nightstand. But when Jack slid out the second toy, he didn’t reach for the third. Instead, I felt warm skin on me, Jack’s body on mine, and then his cock inside my ass. He couldn’t wait. He talked to me as he fucked me, knees pushing my thighs wide apart, hands stroking over the welts on my skin.

“I wanted to film it,” he said, his cock thrusting so hard. “To film him whipping you, and then make you watch the movie later. Make you watch yourself while I whipped you. We’ll do that, Samantha. You and me.” In and out, his hands now spanking me, my thighs, my ass, as he fucked me, as if he couldn’t help himself. But as always when Jack took my ass, everything else faded away. I could hear the sounds of the smacks on my skin, but I could no longer feel them.

“Force you to watch,” he said, “while I took you further. He’d use the crop. I’d choose a cane.”

My pussy tightened, and when Jack spoke again, I heard the dark smile in his voice. Without saying a word,
I’d told him what I thought of that image. Even though the concept of being filmed was beyond frightening to me, the way Jack presented the scene turned me on.

“You lit up the place,” Jack whispered, and I could tell he was reaching his limits.

I was going to come. I could feel it.

“The way you took the pain,” Jack continued, almost sounding awed. “The way you absorbed each blow. You shone—” he gripped my thick hair, making me arch, making me look back at him. “There’s no other way to describe it.”

Pounding into me, slamming into me.

“And I didn’t want him to stop.” It was like Jack was confessing now, telling me secrets. “I didn’t want the whipping to end.” His words coming as fast as his thrusts. “But he had to stop.” I was coming, those tremors of pure pleasure shaking me, shaking Jack. “You wouldn’t tell him. You wouldn’t give your word.”

I saw Jack in my head, blocking me, shielding me, and I felt his body collapse on mine as he came inside me.

“You shone,” he murmured, gripping me up in his strong embrace, sealing me to him, even bound as I was.

It’s a sad song, you know.

It always makes me cry.

We flew to Los Angeles together, like a real couple, and when Jack drove us back to his place on Sunset, it felt like a real home.

But a truly sterile home.

Jack didn’t have anything personal on display. There were no framed photos of his friends, his family, his dog. No postcards pinned to the bulletin board in the office. No silly cartoons taped to his fridge. Jack’s style went beyond minimalist to spartan, which I’ll admit is the opposite of my magpie-like tendency to collect and display treasures.

I had bowed to Byron’s style, as I had no money to change the miserable surroundings. We’d ended up with places designed by his mother, who fancied herself a self-taught interior decorator. And so the rooms all had a Nagel-esque eighties feel, with gray carpets, pink accents, and oddly shaped stuffed dolls sitting lazily in ceramic chairs atop all the shelves. Neither of our living quarters (the triplex near Fairfax, the townhouse in Santa Monica)
ever felt truly like home to me, or even like a place I’d choose to live.

But Jack’s was different. It was a bare canvas. He didn’t even have coffee table books out, or magazines, or reading material on his bedside table. Most pieces of furniture were black or white. All were clearly expensive. Solid. Well made. Nothing flimsy or delicate.

Jack picked up his routine immediately, and I continued my leave of absence from the salon while I prepared my Victorian outline for my new publisher. But my work habits are non-traditional, and I had plenty of time on my own. Time to shop for flowers. For candles. For delicate plates that didn’t match and wine glasses with colored stems. Jack didn’t say anything until he found me one evening reading in bed under a scarlet blanket. His sheets were white, the comforters white or black. I’d added a striking element to the room, one he couldn’t ignore.

He didn’t speak right away. He sat on the edge of the bed, then ran his fingers over the blanket’s hem. It was cozy, something to wrap up in on a crisp fall day. And it was blood red. I met his eyes and waited. Jack handled everything: paid for the restaurants, the gas for the cars, the food in the fridge. He was in control of nearly all aspects of our world, and now I’d brought color to his room. I wondered if he’d noticed the flowers on his dresser. They were as bright as the blanket, velvety roses that I’d arranged in a simple black-and-white vase. I wasn’t trying to remake Jack. I was only trying to colorize him.

“Pretty,” he said finally. He had a glass in his hand, as always after work. A single shot of scotch tonight.

I grinned. “Me or the blanket?”

“You.”

“But what do you think of the blanket?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really see my surroundings all that much,” he admitted. “I’ve always been more into the mental than the physical.” I understood what he meant. Sometimes I’d see him on the couch and think he was sleeping, but he’d be pondering some aspect of a case he was working on. Gone from the physical world. Lost to me until he pulled himself back. I’d learned by now not to disturb him at times like this; it would be like waking a bear from deep hibernation.

I pushed on. “But the flowers, the candles in the bathroom, the books on the coffee table.” I’d bought them at my favorite bookstore on Sunset, selecting black-and-white photography books. Not trying to crash Jack’s world to the ground, simply to enhance it. I’d been an art history major at school. I knew which books to choose.

“You’re all the color I need,” Jack said, coming closer, setting his drink down on the nightstand. “You seem to blend in at first, dark hair, pale skin, perfect for my black and white environment. But then you change.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your cheeks turn pink when I make you blush. Your lips become a dark berry color when you bite them, nervous, wondering what I’m going to do to you next. Your ass, after I spank you, takes on that wonderful shade of well-punished red.”

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I’d been hoping to get a rise out of him, and clearly I had. But the way he was talking, and moving, poetic and slow, had me off balance. Sometimes when Jack was on his way home from work, he’d call and give me a chore or an assignment, letting me know what was in store for me. “Get out the crop.” “Put on your collar.” Other times he’d burst through the door with electric energy and take me into the hallway or out
on the balcony. But this was different. He was moving slowly, like a panther stalking its prey, and I felt mesmerized, at his mercy.

“Look at me.”

I couldn’t disobey. I opened my eyes, wrapping my arms tight around my body under that blanket. It felt silly now to have bought the thing. So noticeable in this stark black and white world. What was I trying to prove?

“How did you think I’d respond to your changes? Did you think I’d be angry?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know.”

“Or pleased?”

I shrugged again. I’d known he would have a reaction, but I wasn’t sure what it would be.

“Did you think I’d kick you out for buying dishes that don’t match?” He was looking at me directly as he spoke, and he didn’t wait for my answer. “You’re testing your boundaries,” Jack grinned. “Like a child. You want to see if you push this far, what will happen. If you’re late to a meeting, will I break up with you, or merely spank your ass until you can’t sit down? You’re on a quest.” He was still smiling, and that made me breathe easier. “Which is understandable. This is a whole new world for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Jack.” I wondered if he was right. Was I testing my limits? Was that what I was doing?

“Truth?” he asked. “I don’t really care. I wouldn’t see it if you painted the floor blue, if you hung naked pictures on the wall, if you decorated the kitchen in cherry-print paper.” He took a breath, then clarified, “I mean, I’d see it, of course, but I wouldn’t. It wouldn’t matter. Yes, I like things orderly, but that’s because I’ve lived alone for so long, and it’s easier if there isn’t much stuff to fuck around
with. But if you want a red blanket, you can have a red blanket. If you want roses, you can have roses. I’m not trying to be callous. I don’t care. What’s important to me is that, at the end of the day, I get to do this.”

I’d been waiting. I knew there would be a moment when he would strike. But he’d lulled me, soothed me with his deep, sexy voice, and when the moment came, I was unprepared. Jack pulled the blanket away with an unexpected flourish, and then he paused. I’d had the blanket up to my neck as if I were cold. He didn’t know I was naked underneath.

“That makes things easier, doesn’t it?” he murmured, and I found myself hauled over his lap, his slacks rough on my naked skin, knee pressing up against my sex. He started to spank me, working slowly, methodically, slapping his open palm against my right cheek, then my left. He had a rhythm to his movements, building the intensity of the blows as they grew gradually faster, until he reached across me and snagged a paddle from the top drawer of the bedside table. It was shaped like a Ping-Pong paddle, smooth on one side and rough like sandpaper on the other, and that was the side he used, again and again, winning tears within moments as he punished me. Not for an infraction or for failing in any way. Punished me because he wanted to. Because he could. Because that’s what Jack did.

I had a feeling that his goal tonight was to make my ass as deeply scarlet as the blanket. I thought about how I’d felt when I’d bought the thing, wandering the stores on La Brea, choosing this one because of the softness and the hue. Reminding me of the line in the Stones song.

Jack smacked my ass until his arm must have started to ache, and then pushed me onto the bed on top of that
brand-new blanket and fucked me. Truly fucked me.