Xtraordinary (5 page)

She didn't know what he meant by things between them changing, but she also knew intuitively that despite the extreme nature of the sexual acts in which they had so far taken part, they were merely dancing around the edge of a cliff over which each had their own reasons not to fall. She had done things willingly with Ricardo that she'd never dreamed she would do with any man—and her lack of hesitation, her eagerness for more, almost frightened her.

Whatever magic he held over her, it was more powerful than her own will. And now he was putting that connection into words, more masterfully than she could ever have done. Chelsea understood art: the paint on a canvas, the curve of a bronze or marble statue, these communicated emotion to her better than any other medium. Through her father's work, she was certain she understood a man who had died when she was only a child.

But Ricardo, despite working—or at least claiming to work—in the art world, had the gift of language. The ability to ignite her passion with a word, to bring her over the edge with a phrase.

He sat down on the couch next to the love seat, his knees not quite touching hers. He picked up his wine and sipped again. Chelsea put a self-conscious hand to her face, tracing the path of his hand.

“I'm sure you know that sometimes sex means almost nothing,” Ricardo continued, gazing intently into her eyes. “A man and woman fuck—they join their bodies in heat and desire. When they are done, they are satisfied. The act is like the scratching of an itch, the slaking of a thirst. Would you agree?”

“I…yes…Sir,” Chelsea whispered.

“You have had many lovers,” Ricardo said, even though she had never told him so. Somehow he just knew. “As have I. But often, even when your body has had its pleasure, your mind, it is still restless. Your heart is full of longing. Maybe you feel a little sadness, a little anger, and you don't know why.”

That was it, exactly. After a night with Caleb or Benedict—or the men who had come before, enough of them that their memories were hazy, the details of their encounters blurred—Chelsea felt nothing so much as the urge to flee.

“Some people aren't meant to feel more,” she said, surprising herself with the note of bitterness in her voice. “Some people are…broken.”

“You think you are broken?” At least she'd provoked a reaction from Ricardo. He leaned forward, his black eyebrows lowered. “You think God has turned away from you? That the sadness in your life has robbed you of your vitality?”

“I just…it's just that I have been on my own for a very long time. I didn't—I didn't have a childhood, really.” Chelsea bit her lip, wondering if she'd already said too much.

The night that Ricardo had taken her to a party high above the glittering city, she'd been caught by paparazzi as they left; the flash of the bulbs had taken her straight back to the horrors of her stepfather's abuse. Ray Huber had photographed her in sexually explicit poses from the age of seven until she finally ran away at fourteen, and while he had never touched her, the abuse had left its indelible mark on her psyche.

She had fought her way to a life, aided by the kindness of her fairy godfathers, educated by the streets and, later, the libraries and galleries of the city. She supported herself, she had dreams and plans for her gallery. But she had accepted that she would never have marriage, a family, the kind of everyday love that others took for granted.

She had contented herself with the bitter, broken shards for years. Until Ricardo had taken her past everything she thought she knew, turning her experiences and expectations upside down.

“Ah, I see. But Chelsea, when we are together, you feel alive, no?”

“I do.” She forced herself to hold his gaze though every fiber of her being wanted to look away, to hide. Fear made her want to retreat; hope—and the pure strength of Ricardo's convictions—made her push herself harder. Further.

“I never doubted what is between us. I left you because I want to protect you. I would do anything to keep you safe, Chelsea. Do you believe me?”

“I…think so.”

“But I cannot do it by staying away from you, as I had intended. The events of this evening make that clear. Now I have no choice but to come back into your life. To be close enough to you always that others will not be able to force themselves into your world, much less harm you. But you must still agree. I cannot care for you properly, I cannot keep you safe, unless you want me there.”

He took her hand, gently, threading her fingers through his.

“This is much more serious than the safe word I gave you for use during our time together. This is as important as the blood that runs in your veins, the air that you breathe. If you allow me, we will be bonded. Indelibly. I am not saying that I will force myself on you. You can always cast me out. But we will mark each other in ways that cannot be undone.”

The things he was saying were beginning to go beyond the limits of Chelsea's comprehension: she didn't know if he was proposing protecting her, gangster style, or shadowing her as she went about her life or watching and controlling her every move. But her trust in him—stupidly, perhaps—didn't waver.

“I need…” She needed something, obviously. She could call the police, she could move away. Or she could put her trust in this near stranger, a man with more secrets than anyone she had ever known. A man who clearly moved in dangerous circles. But, perhaps, the only man who could really know her. “I need your help,” she finally admitted. “I need you.”

He squeezed her hand more tightly, then pressed it to his mouth, his lips grazing her knuckles. “Then it is decided. You are mine now, Chelsea—mine to protect. I will not take my obligation lightly.”

Then he pulled her toward him. Chelsea went to her knees on the rug in front of him, her wrists captured in his strong, large hands.

“And you are also mine to use.”

There was the faintest trace of a question in his eyes; he was seeking her acquiescence of a need they both knew to burn within her. She bent her head, closing her eyes, supplicating before him. “Yes, Sir, I am. Yours.”

“All right, then.” He bent and kissed her forehead, very gently. “Then we will not discuss it any further tonight. Now, please go to the bedroom and get the wooden box that you will find on a shelf in the closet. Bring it to me without opening it.”

Chelsea felt her heart pound with anticipation, and when she stood, she had to steady herself so that her legs wouldn't tremble. She walked through the candlelit room, following the light emanating from the end of the hallway. She had spent one previous night in the bedroom at the end of the hall, but she had woken alone, Ricardo having left in the night.

This time when she walked through the bedroom door, the room was somehow transformed. The linen spread on the bed, the deeply textured sand-colored walls, the handmade Navaho rug on the tiled floor were the same. The bathroom, with its rough-hewn stone and pewter fixtures, was the same as when she'd showered there. But the room seemed heavy with possibility as if it had secrets of its own, secrets that it would impart to her only over time.

The door to the walk-in closet stood open, lit by discreet recessed fixtures. Several fine cotton shirts and tailored jackets hung from wooden hangers, and a pair of leather shoes waited on a shelf.

There, in the center of the closet, was the box. A foot and a half square, it was simply constructed of dark wood that shone from polishing, with a brass handle on the lid. It was surprisingly light, and as Chelsea carried it to the living room she wondered what was inside. Perhaps the red silk scarves that Ricardo had used to bind her. Or the fringed suede flogger with which he had teased her pussy…or the specially made candles whose wax he had dripped over her breasts.

She knelt in front of him, presenting the box. He nodded approvingly and took it from her.

“Thank you, Chelsea. Now, please, if you would make yourself comfortable on the bed, I will join you in a moment. But first, take the lid off the box and look at what is inside.”

Breathlessly, she lifted the fitted lid, setting it aside on the couch. Inside, she glimpsed shimmering sea blue silk. Straps and bits of lace identified underwear of some sort; curiously, it rested on a pile of clothespins, the old-fashioned wooden kind, strung on a coiled length of clothesline.

She looked up at him sharply. The clothesline wasn't strong enough to restrain her; where were the ropes he'd used before? And as for the clothespins, what did he intend to do with them?

“I will gather a few more things. Make yourself ready. Remove your clothes, please, while you are waiting for me, and put on these.” He reached into the box and handed her the silk garments, the fabric slipping almost liquidly over his fingers.

Thus dismissed, Chelsea got to her feet a second time and was about to leave the room when Ricardo stopped her with a hand on her thigh, his fingers closing around the denim of her jeans.

“There is one more thing. I would like you to go on your hands and knees.”

Chelsea blinked, then looked incredulously at the hallway. Like the rest of the house, it was tiled in old, worn Saltillo tiles, the thick pottery creating a hard surface that would be punishing to her knees, not to mention humiliating.

But…her body had responded to his shocking suggestion. Heat and blood rushed from her core, tingling along her nerve endings. Slowly, tentatively, she lowered herself to the ground until she was on all fours, the underwear grasped in one hand, looking over her shoulder at him.

He nodded. “Right. Good. Now, off you go.”

And so she crawled.

It wasn't a long distance; the house was compact and snug. The rug was soft and plush under her hands, but the tile was not. She could feel her face grow hot with mortification as she made her way down the hallway, her knees aching when they came in contact with the hard surface, one hand clutching the underwear carefully so that it didn't touch the floor. She rounded the corner into the bedroom and, finally out of his sight, collapsed into a child's pose, her forehead on the Navajo rug, her arms outstretched, her body tucked up small.

And yet she knew she wouldn't stop now. Whatever Ricardo asked of her next, she was ready for. The safe word he had given her—
magnolia
—flitted at the edges of her mind, and she knew she could call upon it if he pushed her too far.

But so far, everything he had ordered her to do only made her more desperate for him.

She pulled her shirt over her head and, remembering his predilection for order, folded it before laying it on an old caned missionary chair that sat next to the bed. Her jeans followed, then the plain black bra and panties. They were her best, but next to the silk pieces, they seemed unbearably dull and dowdy.

She looked at the garments he'd given her more carefully. A lace-trimmed thong with only the tiniest triangle of silk to cover her pussy, and a balconette bra whose cups dipped coquettishly low. She took a breath and slipped them on.

The thong cut tantalizingly into her ass and teased her pussy, and the bra cups barely covered her nipples. She tugged the straps this way and that experimentally but no matter what she did, the rosy edges of her areolae were still exposed, the stitching of the silk teasing maddeningly at her tender flesh.

She was trying to figure out how to arrange herself on the bed, turning her legs from one side to the other and shuddering at the sensations caused by the silk sliding between her legs, when Ricardo came into the room. He stood leaning in the doorway, the wooden box resting on one hand, and watched her.

She stilled, her legs awkwardly akimbo, and plucked at the bra, pointlessly. She wondered if she could get away with slipping under the covers.

“Sit at the edge of the bed, please.”

She did as she was instructed, feeling as exposed as she did at the doctor's office, waiting on the uncomfortable paper-lined bed in a scanty disposable gown. She'd always hated visiting the doctor, the sense of exposure; it was too close to the memories of her stepfather setting up tableaus in his photographic “studio,” really just a dank, dark room added on to the back of the bungalow, with cheap buckled paneling and stained carpet.

But she didn't feel anything like that now. As Ricardo watched her, it was as though his hunger for her was a palpable thing, as though his desire could actually change the atmosphere inside the room. He wanted her, as evidenced by the bulge of his erection that he made no move to disguise.

“Something I've noticed about you,” he said conversationally, finally coming to join her. He set the wooden box next to her on the bed and pulled over a wicker chair so that he was sitting in front of her, straddling her thighs with his own. “Like all women, you have areas of great sensitivity. But you, Chelsea, are a little more sensitive than most. Here, for instance—” He grazed the exposed top rim of her nipple, and she convulsed, a shudder wracking her body. “Yes, just as I thought. And here.” He dipped a hand down and traced a fingertip behind her knee, so lightly that his touch seemed almost ephemeral, but it caused a response from her nonetheless, a rocking of her hips, a grinding of her cunt against the bedspread, forcing the thong's strap more deeply into her cleft. She felt her dampness leak from her onto the bed, but there was nothing she could do to restrain herself. Which he knew…so very well.

“Yes, you are exceptional in many ways,” Ricardo went on, seeming almost amused. “And so we must try exceptional things to keep your attention. Mustn't we, my filthy, desperate, needy little
putita
?”

Chelsea wasn't sure if he expected a response, but she ducked her chin, her eyelashes fluttering with the excitement that never failed to imbue her when he called her crude names in both Spanish and English. She'd worked hard to protect her control of her own body, but in his hands she was more than ready to be his
putita
, his little whore.