CHASTITY

My hand doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore.

Magnus has claimed it as his own.

My eyes drift from the angular, jutting brow, lower down to where the black of his beard starts, just under his cheekbone in front of his ear.  I like how it moves under his chin when he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, bites it then releases, over and over.  I shiver when I think of the hair I saw around the base of his cock earlier. 

He’s stunning.  I’m fascinated by his throat.  The way his Adam’s apple moves with every swallow.  I imagine how it must have looked when his mouth was fixed between my legs, moving against my secret folds.

Licking.

Swallowing.

Licking more.

Sucking and swallowing.

Gahhhhhh!  My inner thights are still warm from the burn of his beard.  My insides quiver and go taut as Magnus brings my hand to his lips.  He holds my fingers there, not kissing, just breathing with my hand there, his other hand resting on the worn, brown leather of the steering wheel.

His face is a mask of tension.  I feel it coming off of him and see it in the set of his head.  The tightening in his jaw muscle.

“Are you okay?”  My belly flips and flutters.  He’s been too quiet since we left the motel after picking up my stuff.

“Not really.”  The timbre in his voice tells me his answer is honest.

“Did I do something wrong?”  I have this new sensation of being utterly truthful with this giant hulk of a man who’s taken me into himself, bit by bit in microscopic increments, over the last few months.

He’s taken me, then he’s spilled it all out and shaken me up, spun all my desires into a beautiful package and given it back to me with sensations that make my head light.  My heart is filled with truth, connected now to someone else, a feeling like nothing I’ve ever known.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,”  he says reassuring me.  “I did.  I let you stay in a place like that.”  Even under the thick darkness of his beard I could see his jaw tense, and hear it pop.

After we went inside the motel room to get my duffel and the few clothes I hung up, Magnus said he would arrange to have the Corolla towed to a mechanic near the cabin tomorrow.  But I could tell as soon as we pulled up to the dump where I slept last night, as soon as he took a breath so deep his jacket tightened across his chest, that he wasn’t happy. 

Now, he’s driving but he’s still holding his breath.  He’s alternating holding the steering wheel and gripping his nose and mouth. I had to shake his shoulders to get him to draw in oxygen.

“You didn’t let me stay there.  It was all I could afford right now.  I told you that.  It’s not your fault.”

“I know what you told me, but it’s still on me.  I wasted too much of our time.  All the time from the day I met you, and during that time you lost your mother, your dog, your home.  Where the fuck was I while that was going on?”

Magnus smacks the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.  He then grips onto the circle, spinning us onto the interstate, heading north toward Lake Sherwood.  I should be nervous doing this, going to his house when no one else knows where I’ll be.  But like I said, I feel safe with him.  Safer than I have since Mom got sick.  In a way I feel safer than I ever have.

After a few minutes, I see his jaw muscles relax and an uneven breath leaves his lips. 

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, I lost my temper with myself, but I never will with you.  I don’t ever want you to be frightened of me.  Let’s stop and eat.  I know a great restaurant about another hour from here.  I want to eat with you baby.  How does that sound?”

“I could eat.”  I agree with an excited lip bite.  It’s been a while since I had a real meal and I’m surprised how great is sounds. 

For the net hour, he’d peppered me with questions.  Nothing too serious and by the time we pulled off to eat, he seems more relaxed.  He pulls the Charger in front of this bistro type place with linen on the tables and a wine selection that Magnus had said is one of the best in the country.

After the restaurant, he opened my door and buckled me in before closing the door.  We ride in silence for a few minutes until I can’t stand it.

A chuckle sneaks out. Then another, despite knowing he’s still a bit un-nerved from our conversation about the wine he’s been bringing me for months.  At the restaurant, after he opened the door and we stepped inside, a hostess had seated us, the sommelier had come over and Magnus started talking wine with him, finally ordering us a bottle.

When the tuxedoed man came back with Magnus’s selection, uncorked the bottle and poured some in my glass, my face went hot with embarrassment.  How was I going to tell Magnus that I had not tasted a single one of the hundred or so bottles that he’d given me?

Then, when the man held the bottle out over Magnus’s glass ready to pour, his huge hand came down to cover it, shaking his head.

It turns out neither of us drink.  That’s right, neither of us.  Not only had I never tasted any of the wine he’d sent me, but he hadn’t either.  Nor any before that.

He kissed me right there in the restaurant as the sommelier cleared my glass and snapped his fingers for the staff to bring us two ice waters in wine glasses.

My chuckle draws his attention.  He looks at me with a question in his dark eyes.  “You still laughing about the wine?”  He asks with his own crooked smile.  When he does that, his left eye closes slightly and the scar just underneath almost disappears.

“Yes.”  I smile as he finally brings my hand down, resting it along with his on my leg, sending a shiver down to my toes.  Every touch ripples over my skin, and I wonder for a moment if it will always be that way, or if those kinds of things pass.

I can’t image it not being like that with him.  I feel like we’ve been together so long.  Like there is some other part of us that knew each other before.  Another life, maybe, or just two souls that share things about themselves without words.  A high-speed conduit that communicated differently than most people.  It has to be something, because I barely blinked when he said we were going to his place on the lake.

Our place.  He says it’s going to be ours.  That thought makes me realize we are moving at warp speed but for some reason, I am happy to be here for the fast ride.

“The wine thing was funny.  But don’t lie to me.  From now on, complete honesty, okay?  I can’t take anything less than all of you, and when you lie you keep parts of yourself from me.  I can’t have that.  I want it all.  I need it.”

“And what if I do?  Lie I mean.” 

He lifts and pats our combined hands onto my knee, then rubs them up and down my leg.

A little chuckle escapes his lips.  “Then, Angel, your ass will be upturned and as red as a good Bordeaux.”

Magnus looks behind us, thumps on the accelerator and the Charger lurches forward so fast my head bounces on the headrest.

“In a hurry?”

“That pussy’s not going to fuck itself.”  His words pool heat between my legs as he breaks into a smile that melts me into a puddle.

After a moment, I realize I can’t stop thinking about being put over his knee.  That image making my nipples draw tight and tenses the muscles inside my girl parts.  “So, what other transgressions might beget me a spot over your knee?”

“Not doing as you’re told.”  He glances over, then back at the road, his smile fading a bit but not disappearing.  “If I tell you to do something, I’ve thought it through.  Whatever it is, it will be what’s best for you.  You are from this day forward my primary responsibility, and I take that seriously.  Test me as you wish, you will never see me angry.  I will be your greatest hero, and sometimes that might get you what you think you want, but I assure you, babygirl, Daddy will always give you what you need.”

My stomach feels like it just took a ride on a tilt-a-whirl.  Whenever he says that word my legs press together and muscles I didn’t know I had tighten up. 

The Charger is pristine, like he just drove it straight off the lot.  The dashboard gleams as the sun comes through my window and onto the black vinyl.  The car is as pressed and clean as Magnus himself, and that’s a bigger turn on that I ever expected.

I am lulled into an odd sense of connection and security at the sound of his gruff, smooth voice.  His choice of words.  The meaning behind them.  My girl parts are still tingling, and yet I’m more peaceful than I’ve been in months.  Maybe even years.

“I don’t know what to say.”  That’s complete honesty. I want everything he said, and for once, I’m not over thinking it.  I’m following this feeling he’s bringing out inside me.  I have no questions. 

More than anything, I want to be curled into his lap, his hands in my hair, his lips wherever he wishes to put them.  A shiver courses down my back at that thought.  The way he attacked me with his mouth was unlike anything I could imagine.

“Then say nothing right now.  But I want you to know, your voice matters to me.  More than anything, so when you do have something to say, I want to hear it.  But...”  He pauses, turning and tipping his chin lower so he can look at me from under his brow.  “Sassy little girls are punished.”  He turns back to the road.  “So, keep that in mind.”

My heart leaps as he takes the exit ramp toward Denning just outside of Lake Sherwood, the resort area where my mom and I used to go sometimes. 

Magnus said we were going to his family’s cabin out here.  The idea of sleeping with a view of the lake is wonderful, and I’m hoping that a nap is in my near future, because my eyelids seem to be weighted.

By the time we pull into the gravel driveway, I’m close to dozing off, but even through my tiredness I can’t help but take in how magnificent it all is.  This was not what I expected at all.  I guess it is technically a cabin because it’s all timber-framed and log built.  But, wow, it’s not a little family cabin on a lake.  It’s as big as the apartment building where I used to live with my mom.  The front entry arch is up so high I have to turn my head to the side and look out the front windshield, straining to see the peak.

Then, as Magnus pulls the car to a stop at the entrance, I get a little taste of magic.  Taking a deep breath, I let out a little moan.  The sun is dipping down, and I can see the glass surface of the lake reflecting the tangerine orb as it hits the horizon and ignites in pink and orange.

“That’s so beautiful.”  I let out the sleepy words, a little embarrassed that I’m nearly falling asleep on our first official date.  But I’m that comfortable.  More so than I can remember for so far back.

“No.”  He lifts the back of my hand to his lips.  “That’s a sunset.  You’re beautiful.”

Magnus is out of the car and at my door in what seems to be a single stride, swifter than a man of his size should be.  He takes my hand and gently pulls me out of the car.

“This is your family’s place?” 

“Yep.  See over there?”  He wraps an arm around my shoulders, turning me to face a small, dark-wood cottage, sitting closer to the lake.  “That’s the place my mom and dad bought.  We used to spend summers here, and holidays too.  Ice skated on the lake at Christmas and learned to sail in the summer.”

There is a wistful distance in his voice, a fondness tipped with sadness.

“Good memories.” 

“Very good.  I still miss my parents.  Dad died around twelve years ago and Mom five years later.  She just didn’t have the heart to go on without him.  They were...”  He trails off and hugs me tighter.  I press my face into his leather jacket.  His scent is there along with the leather, fresh but masculine, and I draw a deep breath as he continues.  “...great parents.  And they loved each other every day.  Dad always said he fell in love with my mom in one second.”

We start toward the front door of the huge cabin when Magnus stops dead, and my heart clenches.  Maybe thinking of his parents makes this seem trivial. 

“I don’t want you going back to that job.”

His voice takes on an authority that shifts parts inside my body. 

“There are these things called bills.”  My reply meets his authority with a bit more snot than I intended, but it’s true.  It must be nice to be all set up with family money, but most of us aren’t that lucky.  I have not had the same experience.  “Not everyone has a silver spoon to call on when they need it.”  I top off my snot with that snark, and I half expect Magnus to let me go from his embrace, but instead he pulls me closer.

“Baby,”  he says, turning to look down.  “You’re tired.  But when you’re ready, in the next few days, I want to know all about these ‘bills’ you have to pay.  I don’t think you quite grasp the idea yet.  Daddy wants everything from you.  That includes your bills.  But I get it, this is new to you; you will come to understand.  For now, as much as I’d like to get you inside and continue what we started in the car, you need rest.  And it’s my job to give you what you need.”

He has to bend far down to plant a kiss on the top of my head, and as much as I want to tell him I am perfectly capable of paying my own bills and that he should mind his own beeswax, a bigger part of me literally swoons. 

I think I should tell him that, but if I’m being honest, and it seems he’s bringing the honest out in me, it would be really nice to be so taken care of.  I don’t care about a lot of money, never have.  Mom taught me to live in the moment.  In the experiences of life, not in things.  But bills still had to be paid, so I learned to persevere with my reading.  I love my books because they let me have experiences I couldn’t have any other way.  I’ve traveled, I’ve been in love, I’ve witnessed murders and horrible family drama.  It may take me ten times longer than most to get though my books, but I love them just the same.

But right now, I want to experience this.  And this is real.

We blend together as we walk under the entryway. Magnus has a key ready and the deadbolt makes a thump that matches what my heart is doing inside my chest. 

It’s actually beating everywhere.  I can feel the thumps in my fingertips and my throat, inside my ears.  My blood has never felt so dang alive before.

He carefully unhinges our bodies, and I feel a little loss when the weight of his long arm leaves me.  But his hands come to my shoulders, turning me to face him.  He has to look down nearly as much as I have to look up, and I’m immediately lost in those seductive, dark eyes, wondering if he’s holding back something dangerous.  Half hoping.

“I’ve never brought anyone here.  I’ve never had a woman in my home anywhere.  Something always told me to wait.  That there would be someone special, and I should save things.” 

There is a softness in his voice that makes me shrink underneath his intense gaze.

“I know what you mean.  I’ve saved things too.”

He tilts his head and blinks, then as quickly as I see the question in his eyes it’s replaced by a twinkle and a knowing.

“You saved yourself for me, Angel.  And I will never tarnish that gift.  But first, let’s get you inside, draw you a bath and get you to bed.”

I purse my lips together at the sound of that and he shakes his head slightly.

“Sleep now, princess.  What did I tell you?  Daddy knows best, little girl.  And you need sleep.  Trust me.  Once I’m inside that sweet pussy, I’m moving in, so you’re going to need your rest.”

I sigh and nod.  Something tells me he’s right.