“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged and felt prickles of adrenaline under my skin. He was letting me get away with a lot. The urge to push at him until he was so furious he would do something that hurt me, really might break me, breathed life into me and filled my belly with excitement that tingled over my entire body. Could I even do that? Was I capable of making Jayce hurt me? For some reason I didn’t think I could, but again, we barely knew each other.
“You know,” he said quietly as he dropped to a knee beside me, “you really are quite stunning when you shut the hell up.” He slipped the middle of the long silky cloth around my eyes, and I don’t know why that struck me as so funny, but a nervous laugh slipped free. I felt almost drunk as I tried to rein my pinwheeling emotions in and shove them down.
“You know a good way to make me stop talking,” I reminded him, my voice gone husky. My dick had me gasping as it swelled for him when he brought the ends of the blindfold around the back of my head and then tugged it, crisscrossing the cloth over my mouth. He looped it back around, over my ears, and behind my head. The force he used put enough pressure on the cloth that I was forced to open my mouth. The silk wasn’t terrible as far as gags went and was smooth against my tongue. There was the slightest taste of something sweet in the fabric, and I really wasn’t sure what it could be. Honey dust, maybe? I wasn’t hurt, but I couldn’t talk.
“Now, that’s better.” His tone carried a smile, and he let out a contented sigh as he tied the cloth off firmly. I grunted in surprise and whined as my dick rushed to show him exactly how much I liked his simple—and oddly elegant—surprise. I actually hadn’t thought he would do something like this. I’d really thought he would go for cuffs and a fast fuck.
“Don’t move,” he said softly. There was steel in those words—he knew how to speak like he should be listened to. I groaned. He was a fucking cop, of course he did. I fidgeted and figuredfuck it. I reached up to skate my fingers along the edge of the blindfold-turned-gag and a sharp pain sizzled on my ass as a crack echoed around the room. The pain had my dick jerking. Pleasure rushed through my shaft and swirled around my gut and down my thighs.
“Do not deliberately disobey again, or this willonlybe punishment.”
I whimpered and tried to say “Yes, Sir,” but it came out all garbled because I couldn’t move my tongue much.
“Hands to your thighs. I expect you to sit that way if I don’t tell you otherwise.” I put my hands down, cupping my knees. My fingers wouldn’t stay still, and I realized I was trembling.
“Now, this is a right sight,” he said quietly, and I sucked in a deep breath when he batted at my hard dick and it smacked off my belly. I wanted so much to chase the touch, but the part of me that really did like being a good sub, really did want to hear what a good job I was doing, reared its stupid, ugly, needy, greedy head. I tried to put my hands just so in the middle of my thighs and sit up a little straighter. I hated that. This wasn’t ever going to be anything real. I was chasing fantasies, just like before. I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do this ever again. I let my shoulders slump and turned my head away from where I thought he was in the room.
“River?”
It doesn’t matter what he thinks. He’s not a Dom. It doesn’t matter what he does, he won’t want to keep me. Not really. Not long-term. He’s been out fucking anything that moves since his husband died, and yeah, he didn’t say that he did that exactly, but he wasn’t a fucking saint, either. So I will let him put his dick in me, and if I’m lucky we’ll both have a nice splooge, and when we finally find Xander and his boss, Sir will find another nice guy to replace his dead one. They’ll adopt twelve kids, and this house will be a nightmare, and I’ll never see Jayce again. The. Fucking. End.
I was having trouble breathing as my thoughts spun out of control.
“River?”
I shook my head hard.
A stinging grip in my hair brought me roaring into the here and now and out of my thoughts, as he tugged until it really hurt. “Do you need me to let you loose?”
I shook my head, and he let go. The relief was almost worse than the pain. I didn’t want it to end.
“Don’t move.”
I listened to him bustling around the room and sank into my role. What did it matter if he was gone tomorrow? I didn’t care anymore. I was only doing one-night stands these days. I wasn’t prepared for anything beyond this moment, and neither was he.
“You know, I don’t like some things about BDSM.” Jayce spoke quietly, but that steel was still in his tone, and guilt ate at me for thinking his name, which was absurd. Absolutely idiotic. “I don’t like all the posturing in some of the porns. It’s fun, but really, someone should justknowthey need to respect you,” he whispered into my ear, catching me by surprise. He shoved me forward. I gasped because I wasn’t expecting the rough blow to the back, but he had a hand on my shoulder, too, I guessed if I’d taken a header, he could have stopped me.
Growling as much as I could around the gag, I went where he placed me, dipping my body forward.
“Lower.”
Shrugging, I let him push me down until I was almost curled into the fetal position. My dick ached and my overheated forehead pressed against the cool floorboards.
“I saw this in one of those videos, where a Dom was screaming at a pretty, weeping little sub. You don’t cry, do you, River? You wouldn’t obey someone just because they were screaming at you.”
His soft words lulled me into a gentle place inside myself, like a hypnotic trance. I almost liked the even tempo he spoke in, the same as listening to recordings that were supposed to give me better dreams. I shook my head. No, I didn’t respond very well to being bellowed at.
“If you can’t take this, I want you to tap the floor three times with your right hand. Tap it like you’re doing Morse code.”
I snorted.
He cracked a hand on my ass, but the touch was so light it was barely anything. This wasn’t going to work out if he couldn’t hit me. With a deep sigh, I tapped the floor with exaggerated movements to show him I understood.
“Good,” he said quietly.
I wriggled when he gently drew my balls back through my legs. It felt good as he caressed and lightly rubbed the skin. “You’re used to running your mouth and standing tall, but you were fucking beyond everything I’ve ever seen restrained. You listened when you were tied down and hard and waiting for me to let you come. I think that’s the only time you’ve ever eagerly followed an order from me. What would I have to do to ingrain that in you? Make you remember that you’re supposed to listen to me?”
I laughed around the gag and tried to say that there wasn’t any way someone with that silky soft tone, no matter how much of an edge it had, could get me to doshitlong-term. I was just like every other stupid sub out there. I wanted someone who could make me submit if I couldn’t find it in myself to choose to submit. I shook my head.
