3

When I woke up the next morning, the rain was falling in sheets outside the window. It rang merrily on the tin roof of the porch. The ceiling fan swung lazily above the bed. It was the kind of day made for staying in bed.

That’s exactly what we were doing.

Tom was between my legs, watching me as I shook off the daze of sleep. His hands were on my open thighs. His tongue was working wonders between my legs. Every now and then he would rise up to watch me, and that’s when he used his fingers. One at first, gentle and slow until I was good and awake, then two. Now he was up to three and I was arching off the bed every time he pushed deep and touched that oh-so-perfect spot.

‘You like being so open to me, don’t you?’ he almost hissed. ‘You like being a little slut for me, don’t you?’

Slut. The word tumbled through my head and ricocheted through my body and settled right between my thighs. I arched up to him and he pushed me back down. His hand was tight on my hip. I would have bruises there for days if he kept that up.

‘I like it when you call me names,’ I gasped.

Tom blinked at me once, seemingly surprised by my sudden admission.

‘Really.’

‘Yes.’ I knew I was blushing, but I stared right at him anyway. A slow grin played over Tom’s lips. I watched him as he weighed the options.

‘Slut,’ he said again, then paused. ‘Whore. Bitch. Which do you prefer, you little cocksucker?’

Every word was a direct stroke to my libido. I moaned with each caress of his voice. I grabbed for the headboard of the big four-poster bed. Tom pressed his fingers deep and flicked his tongue across my clit.

‘Answer me, damn it! Which do you prefer?’

‘Anything,’ I gasped out.

‘I think whore sounds mighty good,’ Tom said, finally getting into the idea of calling me names. ‘That’s what you are, isn’t it? You’re my whore and I can do whatever I want to you. Isn’t that right?’

Tom was leaning over me, putting more force behind the thrusts of his hand. I cried out loud as I came. My pussy throbbed hard around his hand, almost to the point of pain, and I gasped aloud as he twisted his fingers a little deeper.

He watched my face as he moved. He was searching out every inch of the hidden parts of me. His fingers explored, sometimes rough, sometimes gentle. Every now and then he hit that spot at the very core of me and I gasped involuntarily, as if there was a string tied from that point to the center of my chest, affecting my whole body with one small touch.

‘What is that?’ I finally whispered.

‘Your cervix. Do you like that?’

I shuddered as he did it again. ‘Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it feels really good. It is almost like a switch inside me that I can’t control.’

‘But I can.’

The muscles in his arm flexed as he pushed his hand deeper. The burn of it was delicious, licking at my aching thighs like a tempting fire.

‘How far do you want to go?’ he asked.

‘As far as we can.’

He bent to kiss one nipple, then the other. I raised my hands to his head and gently pulled on his hair. It was deep brown, and in the early morning light I could see the strands of gray that had begun to creep into the dark. He pushed harder against me and I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to relax against the invasion of it.

‘Maybe we should save this for later,’ he suggested after long moments of riding the line between pleasure and pain.

‘I want you to do that to me,’ I said. ‘Maybe not now. But soon.’

Tom lay beside me and kissed my shoulder. He brought his hand to my mouth and I sucked on it slowly, pulling my own juices from his fingertips. It tasted like me and somehow like him too, a wildness that reminded me of running streams and fallen leaves.

‘You even taste like the outdoors,’ I teased.

‘I should. I might as well live up a tree.’

‘How often do you hunt?’

He shrugged. ‘As often as possible, which actually isn’t that often. Most of my weekends are spent on the road somewhere. This one is an exception.’

‘I just wondered how busy you were going to keep me.’

Tom crawled over me and turned the light off. He reached down to the floor for an old pair of jeans and a discarded shirt. I watched as he shrugged it on, then grabbed another one and threw it at me. I slipped my arms into it and slowly rose from the bed. The antics of the night before made me sore, and I winced as I walked across the hardwood floors beside him.

‘It’s Sunday morning. Are you a churchgoer?’

‘Not since I was a kid.’

‘Southern Baptist?’

‘Yeah. How did you figure that?’

Tom winked at me when we got to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Because Southern Baptist girls are really wild in bed, that’s how. All those years of fire and brimstone have to come out somewhere.’

I laughed as I sank to the kitchen chair. ‘Sounds like you’ve known a lot of us Southern Baptist women,’ I commented.

Tom slowly closed the refrigerator. He set the gallon of milk on the table. Every move he made was controlled, and he refused to meet my eyes. He pulled the cereal from the cabinet with such deliberate slowness I began to believe he wouldn’t answer.

‘Tom, I didn’t mean–’

‘I’ve known too many,’ he finally said.

The silence in the room was heavy. I was slowly realizing that I wasn’t the only one with baggage, and that Tom might even have more than I did. I sat quietly as he found bowls and spoons. He poured two tall glasses of orange juice. As he set mine down in front of me, I touched his arm. Tom flinched and started to pull away, but stopped himself with an effort.

I stood and wrapped my arms around him. I kissed his lips. He was unresponsive at first, but when he did kiss me back it was with a desperation that told me how badly he was hurting.

‘It doesn’t matter, Tom.’

‘Is that true?’ he asked, challenging me with flat brown eyes.

‘Yes.’

He sank down into the chair. I moved with him and crawled into his lap. Tom smiled despite the seriousness of the conversation. I played with his hair and laid my head on his shoulder while he poured a bowl of Rice Krispies. I kissed his neck.

‘My legs are probably as stubbly as your face is,’ I said.

‘I don’t care.’

‘Want to get a shower with me?’

‘Depends. Do I have to shave your legs for you?’

‘No.’

Tom swirled the dry cereal around in his bowl. ‘I wouldn’t be as kind as you are.’

‘What do you mean?’

Tom sighed and pushed his bowl away. ‘You remember that old saw about musicians, right? A woman in every zip code? It’s like that for their security guys, too. We’re just quieter about the whole thing.’

‘Tom –’

‘No. You know this already, but I need to say it. I’ve never said it before.’

‘OK.’

‘There have been more women than I can count,’ he said. ‘I’ve been with women and I haven’t known their names. I’ve been with more than one woman at a time. Frequently. It was always a good time and nothing more than that, but when it was over I really hoped they didn’t feel as empty as I did.’

I felt a sudden welling of jealousy, something that caught me completely off-guard. I rested my lips against his jaw and felt him speak, even as I heard the words.

‘At first all the women are exciting, and you think you are the king of all you survey, and so you have one or two a night. And then the nights turn into weeks and the weeks into months and pretty soon it is an assembly line of pussy that means nothing at all. And then you meet someone who does mean something, even if you don’t know quite what that something is, and not only do you have to look at yourself in the mirror again, but you have to look at her, too.’

I linked my hand with his, silently telling him it was all right to go on.

‘It’s a horrible double standard, Kelley. If you were the one telling me this, I would be showing you the door. But I know you aren’t that kind of woman, you never have been. Our first conversation, the way you talked about Michael – I knew then that you not only know the names of every man you have ever been with, you remember everything about them. You probably loved every single one of them. Didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

‘But here I sit, telling you about hundreds of women, maybe even thousands of them, and you aren’t getting up to leave. And I don’t think you will. Why is that?’

‘Because they really don’t matter. That was then. This is now.’

‘How can it not matter?’

I sat up and thought about that for a moment. ‘Do you still do that?’

Tom sighed and looked away. ‘Sometimes. Yes. Sometimes I get too lonely.’

What could I say? Tom and I had known each other less than 24 hours. Incredible sex didn’t make a relationship. Our time together had not been discussed beyond what we might do on that weight bench in his basement. We hadn’t talked about what would come later.

So I said the only thing I knew was true. ‘I guess we will cross that bridge if we get to it, Tom.’

‘We will get to it,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Do you think I’m going to go anywhere? Do you think you’re just one of those women out on the road?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I’m trying to be realistic.’

‘I can’t promise you much, little one,’ he said. ‘But I can promise you this: I can be the faithful kind. I just need a woman to make me want to be that way. And you might be that woman.’

I shook my head in amazement. ‘It’s been less than twenty-four hours.’

‘It’s been long enough to know you’re different,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you feel it?’

That was the problem. I did feel it. And, given the emotional turmoil Michael had kept me in for months and months, I didn’t trust the way I felt. I knew that I wanted Tom – there was no denying that, no way – but I knew little beyond that.

‘I know I’m willing to see where this goes,’ I said.

‘Is that the truth?’

‘Cross my heart and pinky swear.’

He uncapped the milk and poured it into his cereal. It made the familiar sounds: Snap. Crackle. Pop.

‘You’re wonderful,’ he said.

‘Please.’

The paddle came down hard on my ass. I knew that was only the least of what I was going to get. I had seen the floggers, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the riding crop and the cane. The cane had given me a sharp moment of fear when it caressed my heated face, a gentle warning of what was to come.

‘Breathe deep,’ Tom said. ‘Even breaths. Focus on the sensation. And don’t panic. Panic is the absence of trust. You know the words to stop me, and you trust me.’

‘Yes.’

Those words came back to me now, and I took slow and even breaths. I could stop him in an instant. How I trusted him so much in such a short period of time might always be a mystery, but the underlying reasons didn’t matter much. The trust did.

The tingle spread through my thighs.

‘Please.’

The paddle came down again, this time whistling through the air before it hit. I bit my lip hard to hold in a startled cry. It wasn’t hurting, not yet, but I knew it would soon enough. I wasn’t sure how much I could handle, but I had told Tom to make sure we found out.

I was shackled to that weight bench, right where I had wanted him to put me. In this physical position, there was nothing in the world I could do to prevent the blows. If I told him no, he would spank me harder. If I moved too much or tried to get away, he would spank me even harder than that. I was at his mercy, tied down with my legs spread on the lower bar and my arms on the upper bar.

‘Please.’

This time the blow came from the other side. I was startled by it and moved slightly. That was a mistake. The paddle whistled through the air and this time the smack was much harder. It echoed through the basement.

I gasped in surprise. Tom didn’t speak.

‘Please.’

This time he braced himself; I could see him out of the corner of my eye. Then I didn’t have to ask again, because each blow came down in rapid succession, a carefully orchestrated dance. With only a few seconds between each paddling, he worked my ass from top to bottom, grazing my thighs and my lower back with the paddle, and a few times hitting almost dead-center, making my pussy jump only inches below the punishing leather.

By the time he was finished, we were both breathing hard.

‘Please,’ I whispered.

Tom stood behind me in shocked silence. I could almost hear his mind working, weighing what to do, wondering how serious I really was, and if I was doing it for his benefit or for mine. I watched as he deliberately reached over my line of vision and picked up the cat-o’-nine-tails.

I opened my mouth to speak, but thought better of it. I had asked for this. And, from the look on Tom’s face and the rock-hard arousal he wasn’t trying to hide, I knew he wanted it even more than I did.

So, instead of doing what my fears told me to do, I did the exact opposite.

‘Please,’ I said again.

He didn’t give me an opportunity for second thoughts. The cat-o’-nine-tails came down on my ass, and this time I cried out. Each little leather strap stung like a bee.

‘Did you know,’ Tom asked conversationally, ‘the cat-o’-nine-tails was originally a form of punishment on naval vessels?’

I closed my eyes. Naval vessels were the farthest thing from my mind.

The whip came down again, harder this time.

‘A man was flogged by the quartermaster. The whole vessel voted on whether or not a man was to be flogged for some crime. It was necessary sometimes to keep honor among thieves.’

Tom hit me three times in rapid succession. I cried out with each blow. Tom yanked my head back by the hair. He whispered into my ear, even as he brought the whip down again.

‘Then they poured salt water over the wounds. Should I do that to you? Should I punish you for being such a naughty little comeslut?’

I was shaking in the restraints, frozen in place even if they hadn’t been there to hold me down. Panic threatened to rise up within me and I pushed it down with the mantra in my head: panic is the absence of trust. I trust him.

I slowly opened my fingers. I had dug my nails into my palms. My hands throbbed. So did my body. I was throbbing everywhere, and I could no longer find the line between pleasure and pain. They were one and the same.

‘Please,’ I murmured through the tears.

Tom didn’t make a sound, but he abruptly dropped the cat-o’-nine-tails. It clattered on the floor. It looked so benign, so unlikely to inflict this kind of pain. It looked just as benign as Tom usually did.

He stood beside me. His cock was so hard, I could see every vein throbbing with his heartbeat. His breathing was just as ragged as mine was.

‘Fuck me,’ I begged in a whisper.

Tom didn’t pause. He didn’t say a single word. He straddled the weight bench behind me, wrapped his hands around my hips and plunged into me with a single thrust. I screamed at the sudden invasion, at the burn of his hands on my tender skin, at the new things I had learned. It was a howl somewhere between joy and rage.

‘Accept it,’ he demanded. ‘Don’t anticipate it. Don’t fight me.’

I pushed back into him, deliberately offered more of what he was already taking. He fucked me hard, rising off the bench with every thrust, pushing me forwards so roughly that I had to concentrate to keep my head from slamming into the bar. The weight bench was groaning with every thrust, straining against the bolts on the floor. The pleasure was turning into pain and still I couldn’t stop it.

I wouldn’t stop it.

Tom’s cock was hard and solid inside me, like a steel bar pushed deep into my belly. He yanked my hair and slapped my ass with his free hand. The pumping of his hips was relentless. The welts on my ass burned from the sweat. The shackles were hard on my hands and my ankles, leaving red marks I could already feel.

It was a medley of thrill and agony.

‘Please,’ I cried out. Tom pushed hard enough to make the bench rock against its mooring, hard enough to send a jolt of pain straight through my spine. When he came it was with a shout ripped from deep inside him, primitive and vicious. His semen actually burned, and no sooner had that registered in some deep part of my brain than the whole slate was wiped clean.

I hadn’t expected to orgasm, but I did. The warmth of his come spurting inside me was the final push over the edge. I screamed with the unleashing of both pain and pleasure. Every part of me collapsed with the intensity of it. I slumped on the bench, no longer able to hold myself up.

Tom’s strong arms were around me in an instant. He unsnapped the shackles on my wrists, then pulled me back so he could reach my ankles. I had imagined being left in the shackles until I was able to come back to myself, but Tom’s actions told me he was just as deeply affected by what we had done as I was.

He cradled me back against his chest. My ass burned when it touched the leather of the seat. Sweat dripped from his forehead and landed on my shoulder. It rolled a tickling trail down my breast.

‘I’m taking you upstairs to bed,’ Tom said.

‘No, I’m OK –’

‘You’re not. Neither one of us is, Kelley. Let’s go lie down, OK?’

Anger flashed through me. ‘I can handle myself,’ I said. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’

‘Bullshit,’ he shot right back. ‘If you can let me fuck the fear of God into you, you can also humor me while I try to take care of you.’

I stood up from the bench and turned to him. He didn’t wipe the look of concern off his face quite fast enough.

‘You’re red as a Coke can,’ he said. ‘We should go upstairs.’

‘I want to see.’

There was a mirror on the far side of the gym. I walked to it and gasped at what I saw when I turned around. My ass was red as fire, from the waistline to the top of my thighs. There were welts across each cheek, and a few of those were an angry red. My ankles and wrists were chafed. There was a bruise in the perfect shape of Tom’s teeth, right there on my neck. My hair was hopelessly tangled, my face was flushed, my eyes were red, and my lips were swollen from biting them.

I looked like a woman who had been thoroughly fucked.

I smiled at my reflection. When I began to laugh, Tom moved up behind me. My breasts were the perfect size to fill his broad hands. His shoulders were much wider than mine, and he towered over me by a good six inches of height. His hair was damp with sweat, and so was his chest. Every muscle was primed and ready. His face was as flushed with passion as mine was. We faced the mirror and looked at ourselves together for the first time.

‘My God, Kelley,’ he breathed.

‘We’re beautiful.’

We were. My pale skin was the perfect contrast to his dark tan. My blue eyes were wild when seen beside his sedate brown ones. My red hair was rich and thick, and his too-long brown waves were the perfect complement. I looked small and vulnerable next to him.

‘Come to bed with me,’ he whispered as he kissed my ear, all the while never looking away from the mirror. ‘Let me take care of you.’

Tearing ourselves away from the mirror was difficult, but not nearly as hard as climbing the stairs. My body was tired. My mind was exhausted. Tom led me into the shower, where the water was far too hot for my skin, but I didn’t protest. I knew it would be good for the soreness. And if I was this sore now, I was going to need a lot of hot showers before the weekend was over.

Tom insisted on washing my hair, an endearing gesture that made me feel closer to him. He washed my body with soap that smelled deliciously like him. I reached for his razor and he gave me a strange look.

‘No woman ever uses my razor,’ he warned.

I gave him a sultry smile. ‘The next time you use this, don’t you want to think about this razor being against these legs I wrap around you? And think about this razor being between my legs, keeping me nice and smooth for you?’

Tom licked his lips. He was suddenly seeing things in a very different light. ‘I can see the advantages. Want me to do it for you?’

I let him watch instead. Every time I ran the razor over my skin, his hand was right behind it. He watched every move I made. Then his tongue followed the path his hand and his eyes had taken. By the time he delved between my legs, my knees were weak. His tongue played with my clit for long minutes. The water turned cooler and I finally had to make him stop before I fell to the floor of the shower.

‘I love the way you taste,’ he whispered against my lips, and I could taste myself when I kissed him.

By the time I crawled on top of the covers of that big four-poster bed, I was yawning. It was only mid-afternoon, but I was as exhausted as if it were midnight.

I lay there while Tom gently traced the welts on my ass. Soothing cream covered his fingertips, and he wielded his touch as lightly as a flock of butterflies landing on flowers. Stretched out across his mattress, I watched the world outside the window. The rain had stopped but the clouds were ominous, ready to open up and pour at any moment.

Tom hummed a low tune as his hands worked. Every now and then he dropped a kiss on my bare shoulder. I ran my fingers through my damp hair, casually working out one tangle after another. The silence between us was comfortable and easy. When his fingers trailed up and down my spine, I shivered, and heard him chuckle.

My thoughts turned again to Michael. I wondered if he would ever know what we had done down there on the weight bench. A part of me wanted to call him and tell him every detail, especially how the bench groaned and protested against those bolts in the floor. But the new part of me, the woman who had been awakened with the touch of leather and steel, simply wanted to keep the new knowledge to myself. There was nothing I needed to share with the world. All the things I needed were either inside me or right here with me.

I thought about the unlikely trust I had handed over to Tom. I hardly knew him, but already I had let him shackle me to a weight bench in a basement so far out in the wilderness that no one would ever hear me scream. I had let him do things to my body that I hadn’t trusted with anyone in my past. I was lying there on his bed, perfectly content to stay right where I was.

Michael was no longer the only one with a secret. He wasn’t the only one who had a memory that seemed untouchable. I knew that, no matter what happened in my future, I would remember Tom as the man who had opened up a whole new horizon for me, the person who had shown me another side of myself that was there all along.

Maybe that was what that woman meant to Michael. Maybe that was what held him so strongly to her, so much so that, when it came down to a question of her or me, there was never any contest.

Now I was finding myself in the same boat. It wasn’t love – not yet – but it was special.

After a weekend like this one, would I ever go back to Michael? If he asked?

The question popped into my head and I shook it away, unwilling to deal with it just yet.

Tom pushed a pillow under my head. I took it gratefully and smiled as he curled up beside me. His hands trailed up and down my back in constant soothing motion. He flipped on the television and turned to the Weather Channel. I listened for a while.

‘Going hunting?’ I asked.

‘In the morning. You can come with me, or you can stay here and clean up the house like a good woman should.’

I snickered at the idea, but I secretly liked the thought of having breakfast ready for him when he came back to the house.

‘Hunting for what?’

‘Quail. It’s that time.’

‘Tell me more.’

Tom kissed the nape of my neck. ‘About what?’

‘Do you always kiss like that?’

He laughed. ‘Yes. I’m a very physical kind of person, if you hadn’t noticed yet.’

‘Tell me about your time in the military. Tell me about those guns you have hidden around here someplace. Tell me about your job. Tell me everything?’

Tom began to talk. His voice was low and soothing, even when it filled with excitement as he talked about a mission in some foreign land. He told me about hiding in a bombed-out building while he tried to determine where the snipers were. He told me about jumping out of a plane and realizing you were far out of your safe drop zone, you were in the middle of enemy territory, and the near-panic when that magazine emptied out and you realized it was just you and your knife.

‘Were you ever hurt?’ I asked.

Tom was quiet for a moment. ‘I got shot once.’

He lifted his leg over the covers to show me the scar. It marked both sides of his calf, as if a bullet had gone straight through.

‘What happened?’

There was a long pause before he answered. ‘Everything went wrong.’

Before I could say anything, Tom suddenly changed gears and told me about flushing a covey of quail, about bringing down one or two or, if you were lucky, three birds at a time. He had only done that once, he said, and it was a thrill. There were other things he had done over the years. He had hunted for almost everything you could possibly buy a license to hunt for and a few things, he admitted, that he never should have gone after in the first place. He had traveled all over the world to bring down big game.

I wanted to talk about his time in the military, but obviously he had changed the subject for a reason. So I went with the hunting instead.

‘Do you ever feel guilty about hunting?’ I asked.

‘No. There are a lot of reasons why not.’

‘Why.’

‘Hunting is perfectly legal. It helps keep the animal populations down to manageable numbers. The animals are killed very quickly, with very little pain. Of course there is the occasional mistake, and those are horrible, as anyone would suspect – but the majority of hunts are good and clean.’

‘Do you eat what you kill?’

‘Have you seen my freezer?’

‘I haven’t seen half of this house,’ I mumbled. ‘You’ve kept me in the sex rooms.’

He laughed, a deep and content sound. ‘We’ll remedy that situation soon.’

I listened as he talked. He described stalking a wild boar through the deep Florida woods. His story was so vivid I could almost see it, as if I were dreaming it.

Sometime much later I woke up, startled by the fact that I had fallen asleep. I immediately felt guilty. When exactly had I nodded off? Tom was right there beside me, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was running his hand through my hair and looking at me with wide brown eyes.

‘Tom?’

Tom climbed out of the bed and stood over me. He looked down at my face. His cock was hard, jutting out at an angle from his body. He was slowly stroking it with his right hand while his left hand pulled at my hair, urging me closer to the edge of the bed. When my head fell back over the edge, I realized exactly what he wanted from me.

I braced myself with my hands on his thighs. The muscles under my fingers were hard as steel. ‘Don’t fight me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to fuck your throat, and you’re going to take it, and you aren’t going to fight me, are you?’

I shook my head.

‘Have you ever deep-throated a cock?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

Tom’s hand tightened in my hair. He stroked himself a little faster as he pressed the tip of his cock to my soft lips. ‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever deep-throated a man who was bigger than me?’

I smiled. Why did men always think size mattered? ‘No.’

‘Good. I want you to gag on this cock. I want to feel you do that,’ he hissed. His hands slowly massaged my throat, and I fought hard to relax. He pushed the head of his cock into my mouth. He was already slick with arousal. I licked in circles as he stroked his shaft. I sucked at him gently and he rewarded me with another inch. Then another.

I took a deep breath as he touched the back of my throat. The gag reflex welled up in me, and my belly jerked. Tom saw it – and felt it – and his hands tightened on my neck.

‘Don’t fight it,’ he warned.

He pulled back enough to allow me to recover, then he pushed in again. Relentless this time, he didn’t give me time to control the urge to gag. He pushed into my throat and, when I did gag, he pushed farther. Suddenly there was no air, and I was struggling against the panic. I pushed hard on his thighs until he pulled my hands away.

‘Relax into it,’ he ordered.

He pulled out of my mouth and I took great gasps of air. Tears, the result of the gag reflex, ran down my temples. Tom stood over me and watched while I got myself back under control.

‘Thought you said you had done this before,’ he said in an accusing tone.

‘I have!’

‘So why are you acting like a goddamn virgin?’

Anger sizzled through me. ‘I’ve never had a man of your size, OK? Does that make you happy? To know you’ve got a big cock I can’t fucking swallow?’

Tom chuckled. Then he laughed. Then he laughed even harder, and within seconds he was roaring with laughter, his hands on his hips, his penis bobbing in front of him like some puppet on a marionette’s string. It looked absolutely ridiculous. I was angry as hell but I had to smile at the way he looked. The man’s beautiful body was suddenly more like a caricature of something obscene.

His laughter eventually tapered off into breathless gasps. I reached up to stroke his cock. My hand circled around it and my fingertips almost touched. I jacked him slowly as I licked at his balls. Tom moaned in approval and spread his legs wider. I explored with my tongue, slowly licking down the inside of each thigh, then delving between his legs and finding the most sensitive places. Once I sucked his balls into my mouth, one at a time, and he groaned with the pleasure of it. All the while my hand moved slow and steady.

‘When you feel like you need to gag,’ he murmured, ‘Swallow. It won’t feel natural at first. But, once you do it a few times, you’ll get used to it. It works.’

I stopped what I was doing long enough to shoot off one smart-ass remark. ‘How would you know that, huh?’

He chuckled but said nothing.

Finally Tom pulled away from me. I opened my mouth and he slid into it, gliding back and forth, every now and then pushing deeper than before.

‘I like knowing I’m the biggest you’ve had,’ he murmured. ‘That makes me feel like more of a man than anything else we’ve done. It might be immature, but it’s one hell of an ego rush.’

I tilted my head back and swallowed. This time when he pushed forwards, I tried to swallow every time I felt the urge to gag. It didn’t work every time, but it worked enough. I took a deep breath while I still could.

Within three strokes he was buried completely in my throat, the base of his cock settled right against my lips. He slowly massaged my throat with his broad hands. When Tom pulled his cock back, I had a brief second to take another breath. Soon the gag reflex was gone and he was fucking into my throat with every thrust, carefully timing each motion to allow me to breathe. From the tension in his legs and the pressure on my throat, I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep that steady pace for very long.

I was right. Tom suddenly grabbed my hair, spread his legs wider for more leverage, and began to fuck my mouth in earnest. I could do nothing but hold onto his thighs as he did it, struggling for air when I had a chance to draw some in. His thighs trembled and his breathing was ragged. His cock throbbed against my tongue.

‘Oh, God – take that cock, every inch of it, take it –’

When Tom came, he pushed deep into my throat. My tongue pressed hard against his shaft. Each burst of come made his cock swell in my mouth. The warmth of it slithered down my throat and I tried my best to swallow. Only when Tom was finished emptying himself into me did he pull away and let me take a long tortured breath.

He collapsed onto the bed beside me. Tom’s hand settled on my neck. The possessive weight of it made me feel small and vulnerable beside him. The need for reassurance became impossible to ignore.

‘Was that good?’ I asked him timidly.

Tom pulled me close to him. He kissed me slowly, letting his tongue explore my mouth in the same way he had during our first kiss. That first time felt like years ago. I had learned so much, given so much of myself to this man, that I didn’t remember who I had been before he came along.

‘That was absolutely incredible,’ he praised.

I shocked myself when I burst into tears.

Tom didn’t say a word. He didn’t ask me what was wrong. He simply cradled me against him like a baby, letting me cry it out against his broad shoulder.

‘I feel safer than I have ever felt,’ I said through the tears.

‘You are safe, Kelley,’ Tom whispered against my forehead. ‘You are.’