CHAPTER 23
Valerie
The words sent ripples of heat and terror and that darker thing I refused to name radiating outward from my core, spreading through my belly, my thighs, the tight, clenching place between my cheeks that had betrayed me so thoroughly on the couch.
“No,” I breathed. “Chris… sir… please, I can’t… not… notthere… please…”
“You watched a video of another woman getting her ass taken by her husband.”
“No!” I cried, desperate for some way to counter his too-logical arguments. “I… I stopped before…”
Chris shook his head. I watched the silhouette of his chin move back and forth in the near darkness with my tummy in my throat.
“Because you climaxed just at the sight of the dildo in Stacy’s ass. Am I wrong, Valerie?”
“Oh, God,” I whispered. I felt a tear leak from my right eye and trickle onto my cheek. “No, sir.”
“You watched it and you came so hard you soaked your panties through. Your cunt has been telling me what you need, Val, even when your mouth won’t. And it’s my job to give it to you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears leaked from beneath my lashes, hot against my temples. He was right. He was right, and I hated that he was right, and the fact that he was right made my pussy clench with a need so fierce it felt like cruelty.
“That’s tomorrow,” Chris said. His hand lifted from my hip. “Tonight, we’re going to do something different.”
I opened my eyes, blinking in the dimness. Chris had shifted, settling himself more comfortably on the bed beside me. He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp—the soft one, the one that cast warm amber light across the quilt and the pillows and my tear-streaked face. I flinched from the sudden visibility, from the knowledge that he could see everything now: my swollen eyes, my blotchy cheeks, the damp trails my panties had left on my skin.
“Sit up,” he said.
I pushed myself upright, pulling the quilt with me instinctively, clutching it to my chest. Chris let me have that small comfort. He leaned back against the headboard and patted the space beside him.
“Come here.”
I scooted over until I was beside him, the quilt still gathered around me like armor. His arm came around my shoulders, pulling me against his chest. The gesture was so tender, so at odds with the devastating things he’d just promised to do to me tomorrow, that a fresh sob broke from my throat.
“Shh,” he murmured against my hair. “It’s okay. Breathe.”
I breathed. Ragged, hitching breaths that slowly—so slowly—began to even out against the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“Now,” Chris said, when my breathing had calmed enough that I could hear words over the racing beat of my own heart. “You’re going to tell me everything about that video. Every single thing you saw. Every single thing you felt while you watched it.”
My body went rigid against him. “Chris?—”
“Everything,” he repeated. “Start from the beginning. What was on the screen when you pressed play?”
I stared at the far wall of our bedroom—at the pretty curtains Chris had hung, at the flowers on the dresser, at all the evidence of a life he was building for us with his own callused hands. My throat felt like it was closing.
“It was… their bedroom,” I whispered. “Stacy and Kevin’s bedroom.”
“What did it look like?”
“Warm. Wood paneling. Lamplight.” I swallowed. “There was a—a bench. In the middle of the room. Like a—it was padded, with leather. Burgundy leather. It had a curve to it, and handles at one end, and little shelves at the other end for… for kneeling on.”
“A discipline bench,” Chris said. His voice was calm, curious, as if we were discussing furniture he might like to build. “What happened next?”
“Stacy came in. She was wearing a white nightgown.” My voice dropped to barely a whisper. “She looked scared.”
“Scared like you look right now?”
The question made my breath catch. “Yes,” I admitted. “Exactly like that.”
