I WANT HIM TO SPANK me. I want to feel his hand on my backside. I want that sting and shock that leaves no room for anything else. No worry. No loss. No death. No guilt. And no room for the way Nick makes me feel too much. The way Nick sees too much. The way he seems to peel back layers I don’t want peeled back. The way he exposes me emotionally. I just want him to fuck me. I just want this to be what it was supposed to be. Nameless, empty sex.
I move to bend over his lap, but he catches my hips, his gaze probing mine, penetrating, and I want to look away, but I have learned that will only make him look harder, dig deeper. So I meet his stare, and I mask my emotions that I can’t even name. His eyes narrow on me, a flicker of something I also cannot name in their depths. His hands fall away from me, a silent offer of freedom and that free will he vowed to pull from me. And he has it. I want this and him. Of that, I cannot even begin to deny, nor did I intend to when I invited him here.
And so, I take that free will and settle my knees on the couch facing his legs. But nothing with Nick is just fucking, which is what I know, what I understand. He wraps his arm around my waist, tangling fingers in my hair, leading my mouth to his, and then kissing me until I think I might shatter. “I’ll warn you before I spank you,” he says. “Understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and just hearing him say “spank you” has my sex aching, and my nipples tingling. As if he realizes this, as if he can read my mind, or perhaps just my body, he leans over and licks one of the stiff peaks, swirling it with his tongue, and then sucking it deep, teeth scraping ever so slightly, the pull on my nipple like a pull on my sex.
His hands moves to my hips, mouth trailing lower, and lower, and suddenly, I don’t want that spanking as much as I want his mouth on the most intimate part of me. But he stops short, pressing his mouth to my belly and lingering there, his tongue flicking, licking, before he looks at me, and says, “Not yet, Faith. I want you across my lap, on your elbows, backside up.” There is a command to his voice that I have always resisted from others, resented even, but for reasons I cannot explain with this man, I’m aroused, vulnerable in just how much he affects me. But most striking is the moment I dare to submit, to spread my body across his, his hand on my belly and lower back. There are nerves tingling and fluttering through me, but no dread, no fear. Things I know as preludes to pain that lead to oblivion, things that perhaps, I wanted tonight, because I feel like I deserve them. But just aren’t here now and I do not why. I don’t know this man. I can’t trust this man, but my body appears to disagree.
“Ah, Faith,” he murmurs, running a hand up my spine. “How did you manage to go untouched for two years? You are too beautiful to be left untouched.” His voice is low, gravelly.
I was too damaged to be touched, I think. I needed a break. I needed something that I couldn’t have. I need something that felt as right as this man’s hands on my body. His teeth scrape my hip, his tongue following, and I’m really starting to like that combination. That tongue that I know is wicked magic, but always denies me the reward of that magic. He caresses a path to my backside, and at the same time, his other hand finds my sex, cupping it. And then he is stroking my bottom at the same time as he is stroking my clit, teasing me, touching me until I am so wet and aroused that the ache in my sex is as fierce as the ache I know will come from his palm.
“Faith,” he breathes out, and I don’t know why, but it feels like a question. Am I ready? Am I okay? Am I sure?
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. And yes.”
His reply is not in words. He begins to pat my backside, just above my sex, while deft fingers slide through the wet heat of my body, an attack on my senses from all directions. And we are never going to get to the spanking because I’m going to come. Or maybe that’s the idea. He wants me to come. He wants the sting to be lost in the pleasure. But I don’t want that. I want the sting. I want—“Nick,” I pant out again, so close, I am about to tumble over.
His hands still, and he replies with, “That’s what I wanted, sweetheart,” seeming to understand exactly what I was telling him. “You on the edge, but not there yet. I’m going to spank you now, Faith. Seven times. The first two will be the hardest, but they will get softer from there. Count them out. Repeat that.”
“Count,” I say, adrenaline setting my heart into a gallop. “Harder then softer.”
“And then I’m going to fuck you, Faith. I’m going to turn you around, and you’re going to ride me. Understand?”
“Yes. Please stop talking or my heart is going to explode from my chest.”
“Deep breath, sweetheart. This isn’t new to you, but I am. And I’m not going to hurt you.”
I have no flippant remark this time. His hand is caressing my cheeks, warming them, as it should be, but too often, I have known a hard palm with no preparation. But he doesn’t rush. One second. Two. Three. Four. “Nick,” I plead.
“Now, sweetheart,” he says, and I barely have time to realize the impact of that endearment before his palm is on my backside, a hard sting that arches my back and oh God. It’s back. “Count,” he orders.
“Two,” I breathe out.
And another. “Three.” I can’t breathe, and fingers are stroking my sex. I forget to count but he does it for me. “Four,” he says, and then another palm, softer now, just as he promised.
“Five,” I breathe out.
“Six,” he says, that gravelly tone to his voice is back now, the force of his palm on my skin following.
“Seven,” I breathe out, and it’s done. He smacks my backside and then to my shock, his mouth is on it, kissing it, a strange tenderness to that act that I swear has me as breathless as the spanking. And then he is turning me to face him, cradling my body against his, his mouth coming down on mine, and it too is tender, a slide of tongue, but I can feel his passion, his need that he controls, as he has me.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he demands.
“I am,” I say, shocked that he’s asked, that I believe he cares.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I promise, my hand on his face. “I liked it. I like it so much that it’s…”
He is kissing me again then, and this kiss is different. This kiss is hungry, greedy even, and fierce. Addictive. Seductive. And it unlocks those things in me. I am kissing him back, and kissing him and kissing him. And he is touching me and I am touching him, hard, sinewy muscle beneath my palms. And I can’t get enough and that is what I feel from him. It’s not enough but we try to find that place where it is, where it will be. And some part of me knows that he’s given me what I want. There is nothing but this man, and yet, this experience is nothing as I expected. It’s good now.
I am so lost in Nick that I barely remember him pulling me around to straddle him or how his pants got down. But they are, and his thick shaft is between us. I reach down and stroke it, and I revel in the low groan that slides from his lips. “I feel like I’ve needed this since before I ever fucking met you.” His hands go to my waist and he lifts me while I guide his cock to my sex, and press him inside me. He’s so hard, so big, stretching me, filling me, and it’s been so long, and I can barely catch my breath. I breathe out as I take all of him, and finally, we’ve reached the place where we are here, wherever here really is.
But we don’t move. We’re staring at each other, and there is this magnetic pull between us that has nothing to do with sex. Or maybe it does. I just don’t know. But I feel this man inside and out. I feel him and see him as he does me and it’s not what I wanted, and yet, I am hypnotized by this moment, by him. A charge seems to spark suddenly between us, and we snap. He moves first, or maybe we move together, but he’s cupping my head, and my breast, and as our lips collide, I reach around him to the band at his hair and pull it free, sinking fingers in the long strands that surely must touch his shoulders. I tug on them, using them as an outlet for all the crazy sensations pulsing through my body.
Nick deepens the kiss, and then we are moving, swaying, fucking. Slow. Fast. Slow again. Our mouths lingering a breath apart before we erupt into wildness again. And I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to go back to reality. I want to stay lost in this man. And I fight to make that happen, to stay right here with him, but the build of pleasure is fierce, the passion on his tongue, in his touch, consumes me, and I have been so on edge for so long. And when he pulls me hard against him, thrusting into me as he does, I am there, in that sweet place that tenses my body.
The next moment, I’m tumbling over, my body spasming around him, my head buried in his shoulder. He wraps his arm around my waist, and thrusts again, a guttural sound sliding from his lips as he shudders beneath me. Time spirals and sways until we collapse into each other, and for long moments, neither of us move. We just lay there, breathing together, heavy, then slower and softer. And still we linger. It’s Nick that breaks this silence. “Faith, sweetheart,” he says softly, cupping my face. “As much as I want to hold you like this the rest of the night, and I will again, I had better take care of this condom before we make baby Tigers.”
We won’t, I think. We can’t, but I don’t say that to him. “Yes. Of course.” I start to move away, but he shifts us and rolls me to my back, pulling out before he says, “Always trying to run.”
My brown furrows. “How was that running?”
“It was in your eyes.”
“It wasn’t in my eyes.”
“No?”
“No.”
I wrap his hair in my hand. “Why does an attorney of your stature get away long hair?”
“I am nothing anyone expects. And that works for me. Does it work for you, Faith?”
I release his hair, and my fingers curl on what I now know to be perpetual stubble on his jaw. “It pisses me off,” I say, honestly, because I still don’t want to want this man, and I am so far from fucking him out of my system, as he’d suggested, that it’s almost laughable.
His eyes darken. “I’ll take that for now.” He covers my hand with his and brings it to his mouth, kissing it. “Where’s the bathroom, sweetheart?”
“My bedroom is the closest one,” I say. “The door right behind you.” He kisses me and grabs a blanket from the back of the couch, to cover me. “I’ll keep you warm when I get back.” He stands and adjusts his pants.
I sit up. “You didn’t even get undressed.”
“The night is young,” he says, giving me a wink that sets that flutter in my belly to life again, before he heads to the bedroom.
I watch him cross the room, the muscles of his back flexing, confidence in his every step. He’s gorgeous and unexpected in every way. I’m unexpected with him. I’ve been tied up, flogged, paddled, displayed, clamped and more, and as time went on, to extremes that didn’t arouse me or make me cower. They made me angry. They made me withdraw, but not out of fear. Out of self-respect, something the past few months made me lose, I realize now. And so I went with Nick, telling myself he would take me back to that punishing place, but he was right. On some level, I knew that wasn’t true.
He is the unexpected.
Different than what I’ve known. And I’m different with him. He didn’t spank me hard, he didn’t push me to uncomfortable places, and yet he pushed me. I felt exposed and vulnerable with him in ways that I have never felt before. I don’t want to be exposed, and I glance at the bedroom, and in light of these thoughts, I wonder why I’ve sent him to my most private space alone. I stand up, and the straps at my ankles cut into my skin, reminding me I still have my heels on. I sit back down and quickly unclip them and kick them off, then wrap the barely there throw around my shoulders, and hurry across the living area. Entering the bedroom, I hear Nick talking on the phone. “It’s nearly midnight, kid. I give you an A for dedication but an F for strategy. You still aren’t going at this the right way.”
Relief washes over me as I realize his delay isn’t about nosing around my room, like a man like Nick would care about my personal items. He’s talking to his associate again.
“Okay,” Nick says. “Let’s try this another way. How do you think he perceives himself? That’s what you need to find out in questioning him, then use that to finish the questioning.” He’s silent a moment before he says, “Because how he perceives himself reveals strength and weakness, and we need to know what both of those things are.”
My brow furrows with Nick’s comment. How do I perceive myself? I think about this. And I think some more and I don’t have an answer. I don’t know me anymore. Maybe that’s why I don’t know the woman who Nick just brought to her knees in so many ways. Who Nick seemed to know when I did not. My gaze catches on the card on the bed and I walk to it. I stare down at my father’s script, a knot in my belly. I pick it up and sit down, the low pedestal allowing my feet to easily touch the ground, and when the blanket begins to fall from my shoulders, I don’t even try to catch it. I just stare at the card, trying to convince myself to open it but what’s the point? It won’t surprise me the way Nick has. I know what it says. I know what he thinks of me and what he expects. Those thoughts and expectations have driven every moment of my life for two years. I just don’t want the reinforcement of him saying it again from his grave on this particular day.
“Faith.”
I look up to find Nick standing in front of me, and I never even heard him approach. He goes down on one knee, draping my pink silk robe around my shoulders. “I thought you might want this.”
There is a protective quality to his actions, again unexpected, and unfamiliar in every way. No one protects me, and I don’t know what to do, how to react. It scares me how good it feels to have someone actually care, what I feel or need, and I know that I cannot allow myself to want or need. But it’s a moment in time, one night, and I cannot wish it, or him, away, any more than I could the chance to experience that art display tonight.
I stuff an arm into the robe, and shift the card to my opposite hand, then do the same on the other side. Nick reaches down and grips the silk, his gaze raking over my breasts, a touch that is not a touch, my nipples and sex aching all over again. But he doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t turn this into sex. He pulls the robe closed and ties it for me, our eyes locking and holding as he does. And it is then that I see the shadows in the depths of his stare, and for the first time since meeting him, I see beyond the arrogance and sexuality of the man. I see his own torment. I see a man as damaged as me, and I think, maybe, just maybe that’s why our connection is so very intense. That something I felt when we were naked and lost in each other, moves between us again, a living, breathing thing that bands around us. “Is it from him?”
I don’t play naive. He means the card and he knows there was someone in my life. “No,” I say, and I shouldn’t say more, but yet, I do. “I don’t talk to him.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“For how long?”
“Most of that two years I mentioned.”
“But the card—”
“It’s from my father. He died two years ago, but apparently left it with Frank for me on my thirtieth birthday.”
Nick glances at his Rolex but I am looking at the craftsmanship of the black and orange tiger tattoo covering his entire right forearm. “You still have fifteen minutes to read it on your birthday.”
I give a humorless laugh and set the card on the bed. “If I read that, I might need you to spank me again but harder and longer this time.”
“Then you should read it before I have to go back to San Francisco Sunday night.”
I don’t miss the inference he’s going to stay with me until then, but any right or wrong I might feel from that is muted by the fact that he’ll be gone. This will be over.
He sits down next to me and as his hand settles on my knee, allowing me to catch another glimpse of his tattoo, the black and orange ink evident now. Curious, I reach for his arm and turn it over to study the detail of the beautifully detailed blue-eyed tiger etched into his skin. “It has your eyes,” I say, glancing up at him. “Tiger.”
“That was the artist’s idea.”
“Who did it?”
“I had it done six months ago by someone Chris knows in Paris, actually. A guy named Tristan.”
“He’s incredible. I’d be terrified to ink someone’s skin.”
“Your ink would be as incredible as your art, Faith.”
I look up at him. “You don’t have to keep complimenting me.”
“I’m no sweet talker, Faith. Surely you know that by now. You’re talented, and like my tattoo, your art is a part of you, Faith.”
Rejecting the many places those words could take me right now, I quickly grab his other arm and study the ink there. Just words that read: An eye for an eye.
“That one I got in college,” he says, but I barely hear him speak, the phrase replaying in my mind: An eye for an eye, clawing at me, to the point that I feel like I’m bleeding inside. I can feel the rise of emotions, when only yesterday I was afraid because I could feel nothing. I jump to my feet, and try to escape Nick, but he grabs my arm and turns me to face him.
“What just happened, Faith?”
“I don’t know if I should admire you or fear you, Nick Rogers. Tiger.”
His eyes narrow, his energy sharpening and he pulls me between his legs, hands on my hips. “Why would you fear me, Faith?”