My collar. A platinum band no thicker than my thumb, studded with round cut diamonds and perfectly sized for my throat. When closed, it formed a seamless, glittering circle worth three point six million dollars. But its most valuable part were the words engraved inside.
Property of Neil Elwood.
It wasn’t the collar he owned. It was me.
I knelt on the soft carpet and waited, my eyes downcast as Neil moved around our bedroom. I wanted to watch him. God, I wanted to watch him. But making me wait, giving me time to imagine what was to come heightened my anticipation.
Before Neil, I’d never thought that I would get turned on being totally dominated. I’d liked guys pulling my hair or pinning my hands, but Neil was the only guy I’d ever felt truly comfortable submitting to. Even before we’d been romantically involved, I’d trusted him enough to let go completely and explore desires I’d never thought I would get to fulfill. Our bond as Dom and sub enhanced our marriage and built that trust a little more every day. His stern commands and lust for my pain offered security, comfort, and love.
The collar hanging heavy at my neck was a reminder of that love.
“Sophie, look up.”
I lifted my eyes slowly. My Sir stood before me, barefoot and bare-chested, clad in his black slacks and a belt he slowly unbuckled.
My mouth fell obediently open, and he smiled. “Not yet.”
Instead of opening his fly, he pulled the belt free and folded it in half. He struck the wide leather strap across his palm. The noise jolted me.
“Bend over the bed.”
I rose and moved across the room. Other times, there might have been implements laid out—paddles or rope or restraints. Tonight, after a long, tiring day, Sir would only do the bare minimum. But it would be enough.
As I took my position, he stepped up behind me. “No marks tonight. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable tomorrow.”
I chewed my bottom lip and considered arguing that using a belt contradicted his statement, but Sir did not like bratty subs. Just because he didn’t want to leave marks didn’t mean he wouldn’t punish me, and denial could be far worse than physical pain.
The raw silk of the duvet cover was a gold-tinged green that I’d bought because it reminded me of Neil’s eyes. The fabric was embroidered with a pattern of gold swirls that seemed innocuous enough but rasped my nipples when I rested on it. The air on my naked skin caressed me in the absence of his hands, tickling shivers down my sides.
I jumped at the sudden touch of his palms on my bare ass. He smoothed over my flesh, kneading gently. I arched my back and practically purred as he deepened the pressure. Massage brought the blood to the surface of the skin and reduced the severity of bruising. I luxuriated under every sweep of his long fingers.
His hand ventured down, the side of his pinkie incidentally parting me. He grew rougher, dragging his fingertips up and down my slit. I buried my face in the duvet at the slick, wet sounds my body made as I opened to him. He rubbed me with the flat of his hand. Then, without warning, he lifted it and brought it down hard across my vulva.
I jumped, a squeak of pain pushing past my lips. Another strike made me squirm, and he held me in place with an arm across the small of my back. “Hold still.”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” I panted. I centered my feet on the carpet so I wouldn’t slip. But that wasn’t the problem. Something held me back from fully achieving the mindset necessary to turn all the pain he would inflict on me into the drug that my body craved.
“You’re tense,” he admonished. “What do you need?”
“Music,” I said without hesitation.
“Sophie?” he asked expectantly.
“Music, Sir,” I revised my answer. “I’m sorry, Sir.”
“You’re forgiven. Stay where you are.”
He stepped away to turn on some music, leaving me exposed and panting, desperate to grind against the edge of the mattress. He took a long time choosing the music, too long in my horny and impatient opinion. He settled on Lana Del Rey; “Freak” filled the room over the sound system.
Lana is the perfect soundtrack for getting spanked by a hot older man.
With a kid in the house, I’d had a difficult time getting into the mood in a silent room. I knew I was being silly, because there was no way Olivia would hear us from her nursery in the other wing. Plus, her nanny, Mariposa, almost always had a white noise machine running in her bedroom, so it wasn’t like she would randomly hear us, either. And the distance alone would provide us cover. But I still needed a sonic cloak of privacy before I could truly let myself go.
Neil returned to me and glided one palm over my ass.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whispered.
The belt landed across my ass with an ear-splitting crack. It sounded far worse than it felt, but god, did that noise ever heighten the experience.
“Polite girls say thank you when they’re given a present,” he reminded me.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“How many would you like?”
“All of them,” wasn’t the appropriate answer. “As many as you’d like me to have, Sir.”
“Good girl.”
That simple praise started the spiral. The slow spin out of my mind and into a place where the outside world disappeared. No responsibilities, no pressure, just me and my Sir and my bone-deep need to please him.
The belt cracked across my skin, again. My fingers dug into the duvet. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever inflicted on me—far from it. But it wasn’t the pain itself, so much as the action behind it. Knowing he did it not just to get me off, but because it got him off, too, made me feel…used. Dirty. Ashamed.
Worshipped.
Another slap of the leather brought a squeak of surprised pain from my lips.
“Too hard?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, Sir.”
“I’m serious, Sophie. I don’t intend to cause lasting pain, this time. I’ll be very disappointed with you if you’re not honest.”
I pressed my forehead against a patch of cool fabric. “Maybe a little too hard, Sir.”
His lips brushed my skin as he kissed along the length of the burning stripe across my ass. “I’ll be more careful.”
Another strike curled my toes in the carpet.
“I won’t be, next time,” he went on. “Perhaps, when we return, we should spend a night out.”
“Spend a night out” was our code phrase for spending the night in our secret hideaway, a lavish reproduction of the Pavillon Français at Versailles that the home’s former owners had nestled in an out-of-the-way corner of the compound. For a wedding present to the both of us, Neil had transformed it into a truly decadent palace of depravity.
“I have a mind to shackle you over the bench and cane you until you beg me to stop.” His voice rasped as he spoke; his threats turned him on as much as they did me.
“Please, Sir,” I moaned as another slap landed.
“Maybe I’ll gag you. You do look so pretty drooling around a gag, tears running down your face.” Another smack of the belt. “Trying to beg me, though you can’t speak.”
Chills raced over my back, and not just from the pain, but anticipation. He would make good on every promise.
“Then, I might tie you down on the Sybian. Let you struggle a bit.” He tossed the belt aside and gave my ass one last sharp smack with his hand. He dug his fingers into my flesh, his grip possessive.
The Sybian he’d threatened me with was the most powerful vibrator I’d ever experienced. It had to be straddled because of its shape, which gave him the ability to shackle my ankles, keeping me captive over it. Once, he’d left me on it, screaming and writhing, while he’d read a book.
Or pretended to. He was really good at feigning disinterest while he tortured me.
But not tonight. That was clear from the urgency in his touch when he dropped to his knees and jerked my hips back. His mouth sought out my sex to feast, not savor, his tongue going straight for my clit to swirl over it rapidly. I rocked against his face, but he pinned my hips to the edge of the bed and held them, giving me no wiggle room at all.
“Don’t move,” he warned, moving one hand to the small of my back while the other slipped between my legs. He slid one finger into me, and my eyelids fluttered closed. “Do you like that?”
“Mmhm,” I managed, struggling against the temptation to cant my hips and draw him deeper.
“Sophie, I asked you a question, and I expect a proper response.”
“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry, Sir.” My limbs trembled with the effort of staying still.
“I’m certain you are.” He plunged his finger deeper, hard. I gasped and squealed in surprise. “Speak when I ask you to. If I don’t, stay silent. These are easy enough rules to obey, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you won’t come without my permission, will you?”
“Yes, Sir.” I swallowed. “Do I have your permission to come, Sir?”
“No.”
He went back to gently stroking my clit with his tongue and pressing hard on my g-spot. Keep still, keep quiet; he might say that was easy, but he knew my body like he’d written a Ph.D. thesis on how to make me come. He tickled the fingers of his unoccupied hand up the back of my thigh, and I clenched my teeth, trying to ignore the sensation.
I willed myself to relax and not react by reminding myself that I’d done this before and I could do it, again. Because he asked. Because he wanted me to. That’s why I could lay there motionless while he tried everything he could to make me squirm. It was a test—to see if I would obey him instead of the demands of my body.
I forced my shaky breaths to slow. A spiral of pure need tightened around my cunt, my clit, and before I could anticipate the end, I was almost there. “I’m close, Sir!”
He immediately stopped. “How close?”
Close enough that I want to grind on your hand and come before you can stop me. I pushed that thought from my head. I’d been trying so hard lately to be good. “Very close, Sir. Maybe…don’t move your hand. At all.”
“Let me know when you’ve recovered.” His voice lowered to steely concern. “And you will not come. Do you understand?”
It was a command, so I had to obey. The sharp edge of my desire dulled considerably. I waited a few more breaths to be certain, then shakily said, “I’m all right, now, Sir.”
“Good.” He slipped his hand away carefully. “Get on the bed. Hands and knees.”
I climbed up, grateful to be off my feet. I planted my palms shoulder-width apart and spread my knees just a little. There was no room for artistic interpretation, here. If he’d wanted me to arch my back, he would have told me. If I were supposed to lean on my elbows, he’d have said. As he hadn’t, I did only what he’d asked.
I heard his zipper open and the rustle of him removing his pants before the bed dipped behind me. I wanted to see him. I loved the way he looked holding his huge cock to guide it into me. I loved the hunger in his eyes the moment he entered me for the first time. He could never hide that, no matter how deeply into his role he’d fallen.
But he hadn’t given me permission to look at him.
I steeled myself at the first touch. Neil was so extremely well-endowed, I sometimes had a difficult time believing he actually fit inside me. There was always a possibility he would take me roughly right from the beginning, giving me no warning or time to prepare myself. Not that I needed a lot of preparation; I was so wet my thighs were slick. He pushed in, just past the head, and I moaned.
“Do you want this cock, Sophie?” he asked, pulling out and sliding in again, no farther than he had before.
“I do, Sir.” It took everything in me not to push back on him and take him as deep as I could.
“Then, beg for it.”
I took a shuddering breath, my pussy clenching involuntarily on him. He was so hard the fluttering contractions of my muscles around him almost bruised me. “Please, Sir. Please fuck me. Please let me have your cock.”
“How eager you are,” he teased. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No, Sir.”
“And why aren’t you?”
My mind flashed back to the first night we’d spent together, our all-too-brief rendezvous that had fueled my fantasies for the six years after that we’d been apart. “Because you told me not to be, Sir.”
“Never be timid about your own pleasure. Don’t be ashamed to come.”
He twisted his hand in my hair and pulled my head back as he slid into me, all the way. So deep that it hurt, but so slow and gentle I never wanted it to end. And when we were joined, he slipped one hand under my chest to urge me up. I looped an arm around his neck to keep myself stable, and he turned his head to kiss me, his tongue sweeping into my mouth to stroke against mine.
Then, without warning, he reached up and jerked my hand away. He pushed me hard against the mattress, crushing me with his body. “Tell me what I’m going to do to you, Sophie.”
“I-I don’t know, Sir.”
“You know,” he growled against my ear. “Tell me.”
I didn’t want to guess wrong—not because I was afraid of what he would do to me, but because I didn’t want to disappoint him. And it was difficult to figure out where my desires ended and his plans began. I didn’t want to engage in transparently wishful thinking. “You’re going to fuck me, Sir?”
“How am I going to fuck you, Sophie?”
“Hard,” I answered automatically, because it was the first word that sprang to my mind. I followed it up with a breathless, “Rough?”
“Very rough, indeed.” He withdrew almost entirely, poised tantalizingly at my opening. “Give me your wrists.”
He held them in one hand, firm against the small of my back—the way he sometimes would when he spanked me. I was completely immobilized by both his grip and his body pinning me.
Then, he did exactly as he’d promised.
The pain was intense, unrelenting, transcendent, as he fucked me. Some strokes were short, teasing my opening over and over before suddenly slamming as deep as he could. There was no pattern to his movements; I couldn’t brace myself from one thrust to the next. I wept aloud, perspiration gluing strands of hair across my eyes and into my mouth. I twisted and thrashed, but I was entirely at his mercy. The panic of being restrained that way, the clawing fear at not being able to move my arms or legs coupled with the agony as he used my body wound sinuously together into a rope that bound physiology and psychology tightly together.
Neil pulled out to dip his thumb into my cunt, coating it with my juices. His hand wrapped around my face, and he forced that thumb past my lips. “Taste yourself, Sophie.”
I moaned in appreciation and swirled my tongue around him, the same as I would have done if I were sucking his cock. He jerked his hand away then entered me in one quick, violent thrust. I screamed, this time; I couldn’t help it.
“Shout all you like,” he teased cruelly. Spreading me with one hand, he forced his thumb, lubricated with my own spit, into my ass.
I screamed, again, but this time, for a decidedly different reason. The humiliation I associated with anal shot my arousal to immeasurable heights, and my cries of pain melded into cries of bone-shaking, skin-prickling pleasure. I practically vibrated from the tension of my impending orgasm. He quickened his pace inside me, and I climbed higher, higher, nearly there—
With a shocked groan, he drove deeper and flooded into me.
It clearly took him by surprise. It took me by surprise, too—enough that my release never happened. He hardly ever came before I did, unless it was on purpose. But he hadn’t warned me that I would be denied, and I’d done everything he’d asked, hadn’t I? My heart raced, my mind flipping through every depraved act we’d engaged in, scrutinizing it all for some serious infraction.
He recovered quickly, pulling out of me when every last shudder had subsided. I was about to beg him to let me come, to promise that I would be better, that I would give him anything, that I would never defy him, again. I didn’t have to. He flipped me onto my back and slid two fingers into my still aching cunt, angling them upward to press hard against my g-spot. I rode his hand, arching my back as he worked his thumb over my clit. The wet sucking sounds as he pumped his fingers made my breath stall in my lungs—I didn’t want my gasps to drown anything out.
“You did an excellent job, Sophie,” he murmured. “You may come, now.”
After years of submission to him, those words were as sure as any touch. My body curled up from the bed, every muscle tensing, and I came, my thighs clamping shut to quiver around his hand. Relief and pleasure flooded through me, and proof of it flowed onto his hand. Every system in my brain went offline, my circuits overloaded with an onslaught of shocks to my nervous system. My mouth opened, but only a strained rasp escaped. Time hung suspended until I fell back to the duvet, writhing in the slow, sweet return to reality.
“Another one?” he asked, his fingers still inside me.
I shook my head weakly. “No, Sir.”
“And what if I told you that you’d have as many as I wished to give you?” he challenged me.
On any other night, my answer might have been different. But tonight, I said, “I would safeword, Sir.”
“Ah.” He withdrew his hand gently. “Shall we get you cleaned up?”
I nodded gratefully and let him help me up. When I got on my feet, his arm lingered around my waist, and I leaned against him, not trusting my shaky legs. Having sex like that was like running up and down a flight of stairs to the point of exhaustion.
“Shower or bath?” he asked as he helped me stagger to the bathroom.
Usually, my automatic answer would be my bathtub. I loved it so much, Neil had actually bought it from my old landlord and had a replica commissioned for our London townhouse. It was my favorite spot in our current residence, and though our love affair would inevitably lead to varicose veins, I treasured every moment of our illicit trysts.
But it wasn’t sized for two, and I wanted to be in my Sir’s arms more.
“Shower. And will you wash my hair, Sir?”
He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll do anything for you.”
And he really would.
****
The last time I took Neil to my hometown, it had been for Christmas. Calumet, Michigan in the dead of winter is a lot different than in June, and I was excited for Neil to see it. The lush green trees filled the fresh summer wind with the scent of pine, and usually, all of the snow had melted.
As long as we’d missed the first swarms of mosquitos, it would be a pleasant trip.
We flew into the nearest airport that could handle our private jet and took a rental car the rest of the way to the Keweenaw. Well, we took two rental cars, because my mother and Tony had come with us, and Neil could only travel so far with his mother-in-law.
“It isn’t that I don’t like her,” he repeated for at least the twelfth time since we’d left the airport. “She can just be…”
“A little much. I know.” I checked the review mirror and frowned at the pickup tailgating us. I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Ride my as—”
Neil cleared his throat.
“—teroid, why don’t you?” I corrected myself. “Isn’t she asleep back there, anyway?”
Neil twisted in his seat and looked back at Olivia. “Dozing.”
“You shouldn’t be talking about my mom like that in front of her, you know. You’re so worried about me swearing,” I grumbled.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Rebecca is a part of Olivia’s family, too. I should keep my criticism to myself.” He managed to go almost a full second before adding, “But did she really need to paint her toenails on the flight?”
“I get it from somewhere,” I singsonged.
The drive from Marquette to Calumet was an easy three hours of tree-lined highway, broken by the occasional small town. But Olivia had already spent most of her day in transit, so she hit her limit right around Baraga.
“Why don’t we stop at Grandma’s first, instead of going all the way out to the cabin?” I suggested. We’d rented a gorgeous property right on the lakeshore in Gay, but that would be another half hour of driving. “That’ll give Olivia some time out of the car.”
Neil looked uncomfortable at the thought. “We can’t just drop in on your family unannounced.”
“Sure we can. It’s not unannounced when you’re coming from out of state. And she knows we’re supposed to get here today. Besides, she’s expecting Mom and Tony.” And I kind of wanted to be there when Grandma met Tony. Mom was finally in a serious romantic relationship, something my family had kind of written off.
Which was shitty. While my relatives were loving and supportive, they seemed to think my mom had thrown away her entire romantic future by having me when she was a teenager. I remembered someone had called her an “old maid” when she was twenty-five. And it hadn’t helped that I’d successfully run off all the men she’d ever tried to date.
My stomach grumbled, and I went on, “And at least we can get something to eat at grandma’s.”
Neil looked like I’d just suggested I would pee on her rug. “You can’t just show up at someone’s home unannounced and expect them to feed you, Sophie, that’s rude!”
“It’s not rude! It’s Grandma’s house.” I lowered my voice so I wouldn’t wake Olivia. We only had a few more miles to Calumet, and I wasn’t going to spend them with a screaming toddler. “Besides, Mom and Tony are going to be staying there. Her hospitality has already been imposed upon.”
My grandma lived in the house I’d lived in after I was born, before she and my grandfather bought Mom the trailer I grew up in. The place looked pretty much the same as it had back then with the exception of the new slider door they’d installed when I was twelve and the bathtub surround that had finally been replaced to stop the wall from crumbling. My background and Neil’s couldn’t have been more different if we’d grown up on other sides of the solar system. This was something I was keenly aware of as we pulled into the driveway.
The door wasn’t locked—it never was—so I pushed it open and stepped inside. Neil followed hesitantly with a listless, sleep-bewildered Olivia on his hip. “Shouldn’t we ring the bell?”
“No. Take your shoes off,” I told him, kicking my Marc Jacobs espadrilles onto the plastic carpet protector by the door. I popped off Olivia’s pearlescent blue Mary Janes before setting her on her feet. I took her hand and led her toward the slider. “Grandma? We’re here!”
“You are?” a voice called from inside. I helped Olivia up the step into the dining room. The ancient floor shook as Grandma hurried out to us. She pulled me in for a tight hug. “I thought you would have stopped at the Ambassador with your mom and her fella.”
“No, Neil needed a little break,” I said, and heard him make an offended noise behind me.
“Oh, it’s okay, Neil,” Grandma said, moving on to hug him before he could react to stop her. “Becky can be a little much, sometimes. I’m her mother. I know that.”
“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat then leaned down to pick up Olivia, presumably because her feet had touched the ground for more than two minutes. “This is my granddaughter, Olivia.”
“Isn’t she a little doll?” Grandma smoothed Olivia’s downy white-blonde curls before adding, “I was so sorry to hear about your daughter. That’s a terrible thing, losing a child.”
“Yes.” Neil cleared his throat. “Thank you for the lovely plant you sent to the funeral home.”
“It was no trouble at all,” Grandma assured him.
I was impressed that Neil had remembered it. If the purple azalea hadn’t been blooming in our conservatory at the moment, I wouldn’t have.
“And you’re feeling better?” she asked. “Now that you’re out of the hospital?”
Neil’s inpatient treatment for his suicide attempt had happened a year ago, and we didn’t really talk about it much, anymore. It wasn’t that it was a taboo subject, but it was far more personal than he would have preferred to share with a relative stranger—or a stranger who was a relative.
Still, he handled the question with grace. “Yes. And again, I have to thank you for the lovely card.”
She’d sent him a card in the hospital? He’d never mentioned it, but it didn’t surprise me. It was such a grandma thing to have done.
Grandma’s eyes widened suddenly, indicating a mental gear shift. “Say, have you eaten, yet?”
“Nope.” I shot Neil a triumphant look. “Can we raid your refrigerator?”
“Well, heavens, yes.” She bustled into the kitchen, and we followed. “Are you gonna stop at Pat’s before you head out to the cabin?”
“Who’s Pat?” Neil asked for clarification. His voice had the same tight, bewildered note to it that I usually only heard when he was around my mother.
“The grocery store. We’ll need to grab food and stuff for the cabin.” I went to the cupboard and got down a sippy cup and a plate that had been through more than one grandkid, and some plates for Neil and me, while Grandma pulled things from the refrigerator.
She dropped a large Country Crock container on the counter and popped the top off. “There’s ground baloney in here, and I got chips. I think I’ve got some 7-Up on the porch. Let me go check.”
Neil peeked over the top of the container warily. There was no way he’d ever eaten a ground baloney sandwich in his life. “I assume the green is—”
“Pickles,” I informed him cheerfully.
It was kind of fun being on this side of the culture shock, now and then.