Kate
I stare at Reece. Can I? Dare I? It seems so…wrong. So…dirty. The first time I have sex in years, and it’s some kinky weirdness where I have to tie the guy up to feel safe.
I know Reece won’t hurt me. I trust him and think physically he’ll keep me safe, but it’s my internal mental demons that won’t give up. He’s big. When he was on top of me all I could see and smell was him. It was glorious, but it was terrifying at the same time, and the fear won out. I used to dream about a big guy like Reece to dominate me, sexually at least. Now, my stalker has rendered my dream in tatters.
My stalker has written about all the ways he’d like to tame me. Make me his. Hurt me. None of his letters ever involved me being in charge. Him being tied up and helpless. So maybe this way I can get to enjoy being with Reece and shut the fear off?
I glance at the ties, brightly hanging from the wood hanger and I wonder. Can I? Will he not mind? A quick flick of my gaze to his boxers and he’s hard as stone. The idea certainly doesn’t turn him off.
He makes the first move, and goes to the hanger, pulling off four ties. Four?
With a grin, he passes them to me. “You can tie both of my arms to the bed, and my legs too.”
“Are you sure?” My face heats. I feel like such a freak. I can’t even do sex normally. And what if I still get panicked?
“Hey,” he lifts my face to look at him. “Relax. This is meant to be fun. We can try this and if it doesn’t work for you, we stop. Anytime you want, we stop.”
He grows serious for a moment. “And make sure you can undo the knots in case we need me to be able to…ya know, move, just in case. Not that I want to mention Stalker Boy right now, but we ought to be sure you can let me out of whatever you tie me into quickly, in the worst case scenario of some sort of threat, right? Okay, do your worst.”
Not waiting for me to answer, he goes and lies on the bed, arms spread wide, legs too.
He’s absolutely glorious. The most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.
Acres of tan skin, muscle, tattoos, and arrogance. A perfect alpha male, and he’s all spread out for me, willing to be the submissive one right now. Willing to let me take control.
It’s a head rush.
I climb onto the bed and with a grin at him, take one big wrist, and fasten a blue tie around it, securing it to one of the rungs of the wooden headboard. Then I move to his other arm. Once I’m done, I can’t help but stand back for a moment and admire my handiwork. The way his arms are raised defines all the muscles in his massive upper body.
His triceps and biceps are huge. His forearms too. You see some guys with big muscles but skinny wrists and ankles—not Reece. He’s built. An already impressive frame with muscle upon muscle packed onto it.
I swallow and can’t believe I get to play with this beautiful man. I know it’s probably because he’s got a high sex drive and being stuck in here with me means he can’t be out there with the supermodel types I’m sure he normally dates, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Taking the last two ties, I go to his left ankle and secure that first, not making it too tight, but enough I feel sure he can’t pull his foot free easily. Then I do the same to his right leg. Now he’s all trussed up before me. The prettiest present I’ve ever been given, and I’m suddenly shy.
He’s so much man and I don’t know what to do with him.
It sounded like a great idea when he suggested it, but sexually, unlike in my life in general, I’ve always been kind of submissive. Dickface, Stalker Boy took that away from me. I’m not sure I know how to do it this way.
“Why don’t you start off by kissing me?” Reece asks me with a smirk.
Okay, good suggestion. I climb onto the bed and kneel astride him.
I bend down and kiss him, taste him, like I had before. I wait to see if the panic returns, but it doesn’t. There uncertainty, a general sense of unease, but it’s mixed with a delicious frisson of anticipation. My breasts brush over his chest as we kiss, my nipples so sensitive the sensation makes me gasp into his mouth.
“Shit,” he mutters. “This is actually fucking hot as hell. All I want to do is grab your tits and I can’t.”
“Haven’t you done this before?” It surprises me to think he hasn’t.
“No,” he answers. “I haven’t.”
The knowledge makes me bolder, more confident. It’s not as if I’m being measured against some other woman he did this with, he’s a newbie to this, too.
Purposefully, I lower my upper body, until my breasts more firmly touch his chest and then I rub my hard nipples across his wall of muscle.
“Christ, cupcake, I want to taste.”
I sit up and look at him, not sure what he means for a moment.
“Feed me your tit,” he says.
The coarse words make me flush, but they also turn me on. I shuffle farther up his body and take my right breast in my hand, lowering it to his mouth. He latches onto me like a man dying of hunger and sucks me in. Hot breath and then sharp teeth tease my sensitive nipple and I writhe on him, realizing with shock my panties are wet.
He sucks and bites, and then soothes and licks, and I want him to do the same to my other breast, so I pull out of his mouth and move slightly, offering him the left one this time. He repeats the same routine, laving his teeth over the turgid flesh, making me moan. God, he’s talented with his mouth. It makes me wonder what else he can do with it.
As if we’re linked psychically or something because he pulls his mouth from me and gives me a wicked, heated stare. “I want to taste the rest.”
His voice is low and full of sin and I know what he means. I need my panties off though, so I struggle to climb off him, and stand to pull them down, when he speaks again.
“Come on up here, cupcake, and pull them to one side.”
Oh, okay. That will work too. I do as he says and straddle his face, pulling my panties to one side. It feels so dirty, but I’m horny as hell, despite how wrong it seems to be doing this.
“Lower your body down for me,” Reece instructs and I do, as at the same time, I hold onto the wooden headboard. “Good girl,” he soothes.
Talk about topping from the bottom!
I don’t mind, though. In fact, I like it. It gives me everything I need. He’s totally in charge, but I’m the one physically in control. I can stop and move at any time and he can’t do anything to stop me.
His tongue finds me, warm and wet, and it makes me cry out. He uses it to part my folds, burrowing into my slit, finding my clit. He licks me right up my most sensitive flesh, once, twice, a third time, and then he makes his tongue pointed and flicks right over my clit. It makes my hips buck.
“Shit, wish I could hold you still. Keep yourself still for me, sweetheart.”
I try to do as he says, but it’s so hard with him lashing my clit with his tongue, making me gasp and moan and squirm.
He’s not gentle but he’s not too rough either. He doesn’t press too hard, but he doesn’t let up. I can feel my orgasm building, and it’s spiraling ever higher, when he wrenches his mouth away.
“What?” I’m panting as if I’ve run a race.
“I want you to come on my cock,” he tells me.
Oh. Yes. I like the idea a lot. Then it hits me, we don’t have any protection. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“No condom.”
“In my wallet.” He gestures to the table at the side of the bed with his head. “Top drawer.”
I lean over him, open it and rummage around, my fingers alighting on the black leather wallet. I open it and find the condoms easily. For some reason I don’t like the fact he carries condoms around. It means he’s safe, so I should be grateful, but it also means he gets plenty of action, and I don’t like that.
Scooting back down the bed, I reach his black boxers, and hit another problem. “Damn, I’ll have to untie your legs to take your underwear down,” I tell him.
“Just pull me out.” He nods to the boxers. “Take me out of the slit and glove me up.”
He’s rough, and ready, and I love it about him. Especially with all that raw power strained and ready below me. Tied up, helpless in a way, but not in others. I feel as if I’m about to climb on some wild horse, and have it tamed to my whims. It’s a heady experience.
As I pull him out of the slit of his boxers, I bite back a moan of appreciation at the size of him. He’s long and thick, and clear drops of fluid leak from his head. He’s as turned on by this as I am.
With a quick glance at him, I bend my head and lick up those drops, liking the salty taste of him exploding on my tongue. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted a man, and I’d forgotten how much I liked it. I used to love giving blow jobs. Girls used to moan about it, the taste and smell, but if I liked a man, found him attractive, then I enjoyed it. I didn’t get how they couldn’t.
With Reece like and attractive don’t fit the way I feel about him. I want to eat him up. I’m sure it’s my age or something making me this way. Don’t they say women in their forties are in their sexual prime, at least so far as their own desire goes? I’m shaking with want for him, and I’ve never been this way before. Not ready yet to finish this part of the fun, I bend more, and take him into my mouth.
He curses, and his hips jack up. I smile around him and go to sucking him for real. Because I like this, I’ve been told by more than one guy that I’m good at it. I hope so. I want Reece to remember this. Remember me.
“Shit, cupcake. You need to stop that or I’m not going to make it to the main event.” His voice is strained and I feel a pride at making him lose it to this extent.
Not wanting to ruin ‘the main event’, as he says, though, I do as he suggests and sit back on my haunches as I take the condom out and roll it down his thick cock.
I don’t take my panties off, I’m enjoying the dirty vibe of this encounter, so I keep them pulled to one side as I hold him up, and then slide myself slowly down him. I take it easy because it’s been a long while for me and he’s a big boy. It twinges slightly, but mostly it’s amazing. He’s filling me in all the places I’ve been empty for so long.
“Oh, God.” My head drops back as I seat myself all the way down on him.
He’s breathing hard, too, his flat belly rising and falling in a rapid rhythm.
“Fuck me, cupcake.” He hitches his hips once with a wicked smile.
“Ah, ah, ah,” I tell him. “You’re my prisoner and we do this when and where I say.”
I’m teasing but for a moment something dark flashes across his face. Shit. I don’t want to kill this, so I lean down and whisper in his ear. “But your wish is my command.”
I file the reaction to me saying he was my prisoner away, to examine later when my head is clearer.
Then I begin to move. I lift off him and move back down onto him. I soon have a rhythm going and he’s helping, hitching his hips to meet me on each downward move. It’s a good job too, because I’d forgotten how tiring this can be, and he can’t hold me or help me as his arms are tied up.
The burn in my thighs somehow only adds to the thrill of it all. I’m dripping wet and I wish he could feel how turned on he’s made me without the barrier of the condom. I push that crazy thought away though and focus on moving up and down. Chasing my pleasure. Giving him his.
“Touch yourself,” he orders, his eyes on fire.
I do as he says and reach a hand down to rub my clit. I have one hand on his stomach helping me balance and keep going, the other is strumming my clit and his eyes don’t move from where my fingers rub at my secret places.
“Make yourself come. I want to feel you come all over me.”
Oh, shit. He’s a dirty talker and I’ve never been with one before and it’s as hot as hell. If he’d been doing this and been in any way embarrassed by it then it wouldn’t work, but Reece puts what he wants out there and doesn’t care.
My orgasm is building once more, and this time I don’t want anything to stop it. I rub myself faster, keeping it light, but moving my fingers in quick circles over my bud, the way I like it.
When it comes, it blindsides me. I implode into nothing but stars in front of my eyes, and wave after wave of pleasure. His thick cock inside makes it all the more powerful as my muscles grip at him.
“Fuck, yes.” He lets his head fall back as he fills the condom in powerful spurts.
“Oh. My. God.” I laugh and let myself drape forward over him.
“Yeah. You can say that again,” he agrees.
I get a little glow from it being good for him. Then it fades. He probably says the same thing to all the women he screws. I can’t let myself get any feelings for him. This has been a momentous moment for me. The first time I’ve had sex in years. The first time, if I’m being honest, I’ve had such a close connection with anyone in the same length of time. I need to keep it physical and not let myself make it more than it is.
“I’ll just untie you.” I do his feet first and then his hands.
I expect him to get up, go and wash up or something, but he ties the condom off, then reaches for me and pulls me into him, spooning me and wrapping me in a wonderful safe cocoon, with his big arms around me and a heavy thigh draped over me.
“Is this okay?” He mumbles into my hair.
I nod, and within a couple of minutes his breathing deepens and evens out. Oh God, he’s fallen asleep holding me in his arms.
I can’t find such peace because my mind is whirring.
What the hell does all of this mean?
Does he always sleep and cuddle with the women he screws? Or do I mean more?
After what seems like hours, but according to the clock on Reece’s nightstand is only twenty minutes, Reece stirs, mumbling against my hair. He’s so warm. Like a furnace, and his warmth is wonderful as it seeps into my bones, heating the cold, empty spaces within me that have been barren and lifeless for far too long.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “I fell asleep.”
“You sure did.” I keep my tone light, determined not to ruin things by getting all ahead of myself. I know it’s only natural that I’m feeling this a bit more than most people would, making a deep connection from what we’ve shared, simply because I’ve been so damned lonely.
“I need to call some people,” he says, still sleep slurred.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I want my friends to get together and work on your stalker this weekend, if they are finished with the job they were on. Luka, his Missus is friends with a shrink, a woman called Mags, I want her to be involved, too. She might have some insight on this weirdo. And my guys are amazing. If there’s a way to use all the information we have, and the forensics that my friend in intel is going through, we have a chance to find him and end this. You can have your life back.”
I should feel elated, but instead, I think what life? It’s not much of a life. I don’t have many friends left. They fell away after I moved and began to cut contact and not visit. My family love me, but they’re busy with their own lives. I have no man. No kids. Not even a damn pet. Maybe I can start there? Get a dog. The thought brightens my mood.
“I could get a dog,” I say it out loud. Testing the idea out. Liking it.
“God, Kate.” He pulls me into him and kisses the back of my head as he squeezes me for a moment.
What did I say?
“You never had breakfast, or even a coffee. Do you want something to eat?” he asks, tone brighter.
I nod, but start to move out of his arms. “I’ll make it. You rest a while. I disturbed you last night.”
As I get out of the bed, I look at the ties still draped around the wooden bedposts and my cheeks heat. God, did I do that? Tie him up and have my wicked way with him. Reece follows my gaze and he grins, unrepentant.
“You’re a bad girl, cupcake. And I like it.” He laughs.
“Hey, you’re the one who directed this whole thing.”
He frowns at my words. “I hope I didn’t ruin it for you. I wanted to let you have the control and ended up taking it myself.”
“It was perfect.” I won’t lie. It was. Best sex I’ve ever had.
“Yeah.” He nods his head. “You blew my mind, Kate.”
He uses my name and looks directly at me as he says it. Lets me see he means it and his words warm me. Maybe it wasn’t simply another notch on his bedpost. Perhaps, it meant something a bit more for him, too. Not love or anything like that, but maybe more of a connection, something hotter than your average drunken shag.
I pull on my long skirt, and then my strappy top, and head downstairs. Entering the kitchen, I rummage around in the fridge and pull out bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and sausages. A can of beans from the cupboard join them. All the ingredients for a full English. With bacon on the grill, sausages in the oven, and eggs ready to go into the frying pan once the bacon and sausages are nearly ready, I heat the beans and pop some thick, white bread into the toaster. Not too healthy, but I fancy it this morning. Hangover food.
When it’s ready, I set out two plates and cutlery and call Reece down. I pour us both some orange juice.
When I dish up, Reece gives me a smile. “This looks great.”
As we sit and eat in silence, Reece takes out his phone and flicks to a reading app. We are acting as if we’re comfortable together, but there’s this simmering tension between us. I’m aching to touch him, to simply reach out and trail my finger down his muscular forearm. I can’t though, we aren’t a couple. We aren’t anything, not really. He’s my protector. Maybe I’m losing it and having a form of reverse Stockholm Syndrome, falling for my saviour. Then I wonder if such a thing exists, and decide I need to look it up. Every now and again, I can see him look at me, out of the corner of my eye. God, this is torture. I need to break the moment.
“What are you reading?” I ask him.
“About the Terror and the Erebus,” he says.
I blink at him. “No way. Me too!” The lust laden air between us is suddenly sharpened by something else. A strange awareness that we like the same things. Like one another.
He cocks his head at me, chewing a piece of bacon. “Seriously?”
I grab my bag from the stool next to me, and take out my iPad. Opening my kindle, I turn to the book I’m reading about the ill-fated voyage to find the Northwest passage and show him, grinning at the weird coincidence.
“I’ll be damned. It’s a riveting story, but there’s not many women find it interesting.” Reece dips some toast into his egg, the bright yellow yokes perfect, if I say so myself.
“I love anything to do with expeditions of discovery. I can’t stop myself thinking what it must be like to be one of the men who sets out on a journey of discovery like that, not knowing if you’ll come back. Then how it must have been for them when it went wrong.”
“Yep, it’s what gets me.” He nods. “I want to write a fictional story based on something along the lines of what these early adventurers went through.” Again, he gets that faint hint of color to his cheeks when he speaks. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“You should write it. You should. Your background is perfect, and if you research the history and the facts about the period you’re aiming for, it would be a fantastic subject.”
“Ah, I’m not sure I’ve got the grammar skills to pull it off.”
“No, don’t say that.” I lean forward, because this is my passion, my thing. I give a lot of money to both reading and writing charities. “You will learn as you go along, and you read, right? If you read a lot, you’re halfway there. You hire editors to polish the grammar side of things. I can always look at your first couple of chapters if you ever do get something down. I’ll be brutally honest, promise.”
“You’d do that?” He seems aghast, which surprises me.
“Yeah, of course. Why not?”
“You’re such a big name in the writing world. Your books are international bestsellers. I don’t know if I’d dare let you read my stuff.”
“Write it, and I’ll read it. And as for daring, it’s always scary at first. Hell, I still get an upset stomach for a week before a book comes out, dreading the reviews, and the reception it will get in case this time I write the one everyone will hate.”
“Really?”
“God, yes. It’s scary putting yourself out there. I doubt it’s as scary as walking into a war zone though.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re bearing your soul when you write. Revealing things about yourself all the time.”
I take a sip of my orange juice and think about that. “Not sure I totally agree with you there. You bear your soul in one way, as any artist does, and yes, of course, in your body of work you’ll reveal things about yourself. About your thought process, but also, you write made up people. I had a hero in one of my books who loved to have nameless, faceless sex with an endless supply of women. People thought I was a male writer then, before I got doxed, and the amount of people who assumed that my pen name was a total man-whore was hilarious. There were all these guys on twitter talking about what a stud David Tyler must be. When I am, or was, a celibate female. I write characters who do, say, and like things I never would all the time.”
He’s listening to me intently and there’s a light in his eyes I’ve not seen before as if he never gets to talk like this. “Of course, I get that,” he says. “I don’t mean in that sense, but in the deeper sense you alluded to. You can write a character with totally different political views to yourself, or a hobby you’d never do, but a writer’s words, like an artist’s paint strokes, they reveal things. Look at how an artist changes as he progresses in his or her life.” He shrugs then. “I don’t know….I think we reveal more of ourselves than we know when we do anything creative.”
I think I’ve fallen a little in love.
This man. This big, scary, gorgeous man, is also sensitive. Willing to give control over. And he’s a bit of an intellectual. A deep thinker certainly. Holy hell, I remember my first thoughts upon seeing him, the way I immediately pigeon holed him, and realize I’d never have guessed of the still waters running deep beneath his cheery, hot-sex-God façade.
Wanting to know more about him suddenly, I ask. “Who was your last serious relationship with?”
“What?” He seems startled.
I give a little raise of one shoulder. “I spilled all about my tragic, lonely spinsterhood,” I tell him. “Quid pro quo.”
He shifts in his seat and looks out the window, before turning back to me. “It was years ago. I haven’t been in a relationship for over ten years. Nothing serious beyond a week or two of fun, or if it lasts longer than that, then it’s a fuck buddy deal.”
And all my silly little dreams of us becoming an item fade away. Thank God, because I could make a fool of myself over this man, and something tells me I won’t be the first, or the last.
“Don’t you want anything serious?” I ask him.
He moves, getting out of his chair and starting to clear our plates. I think he’s not going to answer me as silence fills the space between us, but then he does, back to me, as he bends to start loading the dishwasher.
“Yeah. I do want a relationship, but I either fuck it up or end up with the wrong woman to start with.” He sighs. “I have a pattern and keep ending up falling into bed with the wrong women. Air hostesses who are too busy jetting off round the world to settle down. Models focused on their career. Actresses who want to make it big. I suppose a lot of the women I’ve met have made me a bit jaded.” He stops loading and turns to look at me. “They like sex with me enough but didn’t want anything more because I wasn’t wealthy or connected. I’ll be honest. It’s made me a bit bitter in some ways. I try not to be that way, but when I keep seeing women use me for sex but then hook up with some flabby guy in his late fifties, it’s hard not to think a lot of women aren’t in it for the money and power.”
I hate that he sees women that way, but I’m not naïve enough to think such women don’t exist, and maybe he’s come across more of his fair share. Maybe that’s because of the type of woman he goes for? Although I don’t want to start matching women’s looks to their dating habits…because way to be a bitch.
“You know men do that sort of thing, too,” I tell him, my inner feminist refusing to stay quiet. “There are whole parts of the world where young men have sex with older women they call their girlfriends for gifts and money. And lots of older female celebrities these days have hot, young things on their arms. Maybe you should become someone’s toyboy.”
I’m joking but as soon as the words are out, I want to shove them back in.
A horrible silence fills the room, not the companionable one from before but something loaded with embarrassment. Shit. I don’t want him to think I used him as some sex toy. And I don’t want to highlight our age difference or the fact I’m way down the rung from him when it comes to the looks department.
He seems pissed and I worry I’ve offended him. Moving slowly, but deliberately, he comes to the table and leans his fisted hands on it, his forearms bunching with muscle. “Are you talking about what happened between us?” There’s a danger to his tone, to this moment.
“No.” It’s a lie though. I had been, without even realizing it before the words were out.
“Good, because that’s not what this was. It’s not what you are. Fuck me, Kate. You’re only a few years older than me and you’re hot. You keep acting as if you’re some horrible, hideous old crone I’ve thrown a pity fuck at.”
His words hit me hard, stinging my cheeks as surely as if he’d slapped me. “Did you?” I ask, forcing the awful words out, because what if he did? Oh, God, what if he did? I would hate that. “Did you throw me a pity fuck?”
“Fuck no! I don’t do that. I’m not a whore, and more importantly, you are not the sort of woman a man would pity fuck.”
“Okay.” I hold my hands up because it’s getting heated. “I know I’m not some hideous old crone.” I laugh a little. “But I’m older than you, probably by a fair bit, and I’m attractive enough, but I know for a fact I’m not in your league.”
He shakes his head, frustration etched on his features. “You’re forty-two, correct?”
I nod.
“Well, I’m mid-thirties, not some shocking age difference. And you’re a lot more gorgeous than you give yourself credit for.” He reaches out and touches a lock of my hair, murmuring natural under his breath before carrying on. “I went to bed with a woman a few weeks ago, and the next morning she came into the room and I legit thought her roomie was coming to get in on the action or something. It was the same girl, but she’d taken her make-up off, the false lashes, hair extensions, leaving her with a nice brown bob. The night before, she’d had long hair that started out brown and ended blonde at the tips, which were past her rather large tits, which I learned were down to the padded gel bra laid by my face on the pillow.”
I start to smile as he talks, my lips turning up.
“She looked like a different person. It’s all cool, I didn’t care, but you’re…real. And not only how you look, but how you are. Just now, you talked to me as if I had a brain. Do you know how many people assume I’m stupid because I was in the forces, and double whammy, I look like this?”
I flush because there’s some real hurt behind his words, and I’d wanted to get rid of him because of how he looked, hadn’t I? Thought him too gorgeous or sexy to spend time with. Imagine some man thinking that about a woman? I cringe at myself. Ugh.
He pauses for breath, but he’s not done. “But because of how I look, and my ink, women, and even my fucking friends, make assumptions about me. I don’t even have an Instagram.” He shakes his head.
I’m not sure what this Instagram issue is, but it seems to have bugged him. Before I can ask, he carries on.
“You’re hot, Kate. You’re hot on the outside and don’t ever think you’re not, but you’re also hot because you’re interesting and you do interesting things. You go out hiking in the hills, write incredible crime stories, and read about long lost voyages. You’re…earthy, and I mean that in a good way.”
He’s finally finished, and I can tell this because he turns back to the sink and starts to rinse things again.
I ponder on what he’s said and decide I like him calling me earthy. I like it far too much.