“Chelsea, it’s another delivery,” Cindy called out from the living room.
Chelsea hugged her pillow. She’d been crying again, hating herself for it. “Tell him where the dumpster is,” she replied.
He could stand in line behind all the other delivery men who’d been streaming in nonstop for the past two weeks.
“This one has a big teddy bear, Chel, it’s really cute!”
Chelsea threw the pillow through the open doorway. “So keep it, what do I care?”
Ten dozen roses, six boxes of chocolate hearts and an odd assortment of plush animals and balloons. One messenger had come to sing out, “I’m sorry, Chelsea, I made the biggest mistake of my life…please see me again.” She had cut him off halfway. That one even had Cindy in tears.
“He must love you, Chel,” she said. “I looked him up on the Internet and he seems to be a decent guy, even if he is rich.”
Like she hadn’t looked up everything she could find, pouring over the details of the life of Gordon Christopher Dewitt, heir to a banking fortune, never married, mysteriously shy of the limelight. Talking to him at lunch she had almost forgotten how many boards he sat on. He liked jazz, feeding ducks in the park and was fascinated by Chinese numerology, just like her.
He made her feel like a queen, like her life was as important as the real queens he must have known. And he was the best lover, just like the references said. So why had he dropped her in the most brusque, cruel way possible?
Not that she hadn’t said harsh things too. But he should have known she needed more time with him, a chance to process.
You’re such a fool, Chelsea, heart on your sleeve. When will you learn? Men aren’t like women, they fuck and they go on…like eating peanuts.
Cindy brought the bear into her. It was white, half as tall as her. “Isn’t it adorable?”
“Stick it in the corner. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see any of it. Just tell me, have all the roses died yet?”
“Nope, they’re all blooming.”
“The whole place stinks of them,” Chelsea complained.
Cindy set the bear down by the door. “Okay,” she put her hands on her hips, “enough is enough.”
“What?”
“This pouting—it needs to stop.”
Chelsea glared through puffy eyes. “I am not pouting.”
“Sure you are. The man’s apologized. You need to talk to him.”
“You don’t know what he did…”
Actually they had talked it to death, in true best friend fashion.
“No, I wasn’t there, but it seems to me there’s chemistry there. Why are you fighting it?”
“Because I’m scared that a man can have that much power over me. It’s just too unstable. What do we really know about this BDSM stuff?”
“We know it turns you on,” said Cindy.
Chelsea flushed. “It’s no big deal.”
“Really?” She raised a brow. “Then how come I found handcuffs in the bathroom the other day?”
“They weren’t mine, I told you.”
“Right.” She rolled her eyes. “The super just goes around leaving them in tenants’ bathrooms to get his jollies.”
“Don’t you and your bear have someone else to harass?” Chelsea said.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Chelsea should have known by that look in her eyes that she was up to no good.
An hour later she knew so.
“Chel, package for you, more roses.”
“I said take them to the dumpster,” she fumed, not bothering to look away from the sappy movie on her TV.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to show me where that is,” said a familiar male voice.
She gasped. It was Gordon in her doorway in jeans and a silk shirt, the top few buttons undone. He looked good enough to eat. “Cindy,” she cried out. “You rat!”
“Can’t hear you,” Cindy said. “I got to go out for a while. I’ll lock the door behind me.”
Chelsea swallowed. She was trapped.
Gordon had never begged for anything in his life, but he was ready to now. The woman in front of him, hair tousled, in pink pajama bottoms and a tank top, was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen and he ached for her so badly he simply could not leave without touching, confessing, talking.
“Chelsea, I know I don’t deserve a second chance.”
“No.” Her sapphire eyes lit like lasers. “You don’t…you prick.”
He took a deep breath. He had learned a lesson. To be a truly strong man, you have to come clean. “Chelsea, I was scared. I saw how things could get serious and I didn’t want anyone hurt.”
“So by all means, kick me to the curb.”
“I was wrong. I’ll never forgive myself for that. There’s…there’s so much I have to learn about being with a woman. I would say it’s all because I’ve been hurt in the past, but that’s a cop-out. I have to grow. I have to…trust.”
Her lips trembled. Was she wavering?
“Well, you’ll have to grow with someone else, I’m sorry, I can’t go backward.”
“I don’t want that, either. I intend to go forward and I want you in my life.”
Her eyes moistened. Oh god, he wanted to seize her in his arms, to command her to their mutual pleasure. How was a man supposed to see a woman like Chelsea in bed and not have her?
Her own bed, surrounded by subtle ruffles and lovely swirls, in her feminine world of pink and white.
“I think,” she said, “that you need someone different. In your own class, rich, or maybe a more submissive woman. I’m…I’m just me. I won’t change. I won’t bow to you outside the bedroom and I won’t be something for your mantel.”
His heart swelled. “Chelsea, don’t you see, I want to build my life around you, as you are. I love your spunk, your independence, god, do you know what joy you’ve brought? I would give up the money, I would follow you anywhere.”
Chelsea’s eyes were watering. She reached for a tissue, wiping them. A smile came over her face, a sort of smirk. “The money’s not bad, though.”
He smiled back, a deep, lopsided grin. “It has its perks.”
“I can’t jump into anything.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to wake up one morning and find myself in a marriage I wasn’t ready for.”
Gordon had something more immediate in mind. “How would you feel about waking up and finding yourself in chains instead?”
He could see her nipples under the tank top. “That might be arranged.”
“I think we might need a new safe word, though,” he teased.
Chelsea pinkened. “I owe you for the carpet.”
“I can handle it, though,” he winked, “I do think it calls for some punishment.”
“It was kind of bratty,” she agreed.
“Indeed it was.” His cock swelled in his pants. He closed her bedroom door. “Should we deal with it now?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “Master.”
He ordered her onto her hands and knees, facing the headboard. Her luscious, tight ass pointed at him enticingly. He slowly stripped naked, savoring the moment when he would pull down her pajama bottoms and bare her flesh.
“I was a bad girl, Master…” Her voice was thick with need.
“You need discipline.” He fed the mutual fantasy.
“What will you do?”
“Do you have a hairbrush?”
She sucked in a breath. “On my dresser. You wouldn’t though…”
“I would.” He retrieved it. “I am going to beat your ass and fuck you. You may thank me in advance.”
“Thank you, Master,” she moaned as he exposed her, teasing the pajamas down to her thighs. Her ass quivered as he slapped it with his palm. “For…beating my ass…and f-fucking me.”
“You like to be fucked, don’t you?”
“Yes, Master…”
“This is mine.” He caressed her pussy.
“Yours…only yours.”
It was a seminal moment. He could feel the slipping back and forth, between play and a deep reality. They did want each other—exclusively—but it had to be more than BDSM role play, it had to be soul to soul.
“No one else sees this pussy again, or touches it.”
“No, Master.”
“You’ll behave for me, won’t you?”
“I’m yours,” she reiterated.
He smiled at the subtle response. She probably wouldn’t behave, but that would be half the fun.
Gordon pushed the handle of the brush up inside her. The pearl handle fit neatly between her swollen sex lips, eagerly accepted. “Move,” he ordered.
She masturbated herself brazenly. He slid the handle in and out, letting her clutch at the rigid instrument, letting her give and take and give and take.
“Come,” he ordered.
Chelsea moaned her release, instantaneous, animalistic. He soothed her briefly with kisses to her back. “I own you in bed.” He laid out the terms of what was looking to be an honest-to-goodness for-keeps relationship. “I own your sex. You need, you come to me. You want, you look for me—only me. You don’t touch yourself, you don’t stray. You’re claimed.”
“Yes, Master.” She turned her head. He kissed her.
“This cock,” removing the hairbrush, he entered her, “is yours. It goes nowhere else. It takes your submission, only yours.”
“Oh, Master, I love your cock.”
He fucked her with steady, long thrusts, measuring her, gauging and building her back to fever pitch. He waited until she was clutching at her cotton sheets.
“No more until you’re punished.”
He removed his cock. She lowered her head to the bed, cheek down, arms instinctively crossed over her head. “I submit to my discipline,” she said, her voice sweet and true.
He rubbed the brush across her bottom. He’d apply light strokes. Over time, they would build on the foundation. In the years to come.
Years to come… Was he really thinking like that?
How could he not? With Chelsea so close, so…his. He tapped the fleshy part of her behind with the brush and then delivered a harder slap. The skin turned pink. She moaned.
He repeated the action on her other cheek.
Back and forth he went, enough to stimulate, to create general heat.
When he was done, he rubbed her bottom, inducing squirms and soft squeals. “Because I can,” he said. “Because…I love you.”
“Master,” she sighed, pushing her ass back for his attention, his will. “I love you too.”
Gordon dropped the brush. Grasping her waist, he plunged his cock deeply into her opening—to the hilt. Suddenly things felt right again. This whole time in her absence the only thing sustaining him had been the routine of work and the compulsive sending of gifts.
An embarrassment of riches. But it had worked, hadn’t it?
This time Gordon took her with full command. He bit down lightly on the flesh of her neck, submerging himself once more to the depths of her sex. “Submit,” he rasped, knowing what it would do to her to hear the word.
Chelsea orgasmed, even as he reared back to thrust again. Once, twice, three times he pounded at her. Her spasming sex grabbed at him, constricting his blood-filled shaft.
“Yes,” he growled, rearing back his head. “Yes!”
He released the air in his lungs, he released the semen in his balls, and he released his soul. Hard pumping, blast after blast, until there was nothing left of either of them. Lion and lioness in the jungle, beasts entwined in the give and take of power. Corded muscle rippling, soft flesh yielding, yin and yang…heaven and hell.
The razor’s edge of sex play.
Gordon collapsed upon her. His woman. His Chelsea. He rolled to the side, kissing her shoulder blade. She spooned back into him and he turned into her, a possessive arm wrapping about her slender waist.
“Mine.” He tasted her earlobe, and yet they both knew the truth. Slavery worked both ways and while he might put the chains of steel on her fair limbs, the chains of steel were on his heart as well, binding him to her…forever.