Chapter Forty Rae
CHAPTER FORTY
Rae
GRANT FOLDS HIS JACKET in half and drops it onto the hardwood floor.
“On your knees, right there.” After locking the door, he goes to my supply closet and grabs a ruler and the container of miniature wooden clothespins I use for hanging little signs around the office.
Never once did I picture they’d be remotely kinky. “What are you doing with those?” I ask.
He ignores the question. “Safe word?”
“I… I’m at green.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Yes, sir. One hundred percent.” Kelly green. Forest green. The greenest of greens.
He takes a handful of my hair, tilts my head back, and bends for a deep, wet kiss that feels so good I want to climb him like a tree and devour him.
“You’re dangerous,” he mutters against my lips before dragging our mouths apart and turning to line the supplies up on the edge of his uncluttered desk. “The things I could do to that mouth.” His gaze lands on my lips, and I swear something changes in its depths.
“I plan to pull this hair,” he says, giving my curls the barest tug.
“Oh god.”
“Is that a yes, Sunny? Or a no? Either is fine.”
“Yes. Yes.” Flashback to every single time I’ve wanted a partner to yank on my ponytail but felt too shy to ask. “Please do that.”
“I want to play with those sweet little nipples.” He watches me.
“Okay.”
His dark eyebrows lift.
“Yes, sir.”
“You ready?”
My nod is embarrassingly eager.
“Say it.”
“I’m ready, sir.”
“Good.” He plants himself in front of me. “Take me out.”
All the blood rushes to my bottom half. “Wh-what?”
“Take my cock out, Sunny. Now.” He yanks his shirt out and undoes a few buttons, obviously seeking an unobstructed view of what’s about to happen. If I agree to it, that is.
His hands fall loose at his sides as he waits for me to come to a decision.
This is the precise moment when I understand just what a master this man is. Every order is a request for consent. He’s not grabbing my hands and making me. He’s looking at me with that steady, dark gaze, and he’s daring me to unzip his pants.
“Do I have to?”
His eyes narrow. “Do you want to?”
Right now, there’s nothing in this world I’d rather do.
I inhale, letting the moment stretch so I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.
Finally, feeling oddly bolstered by the realization that I’m in charge here as much as Grant, I shuffle a couple of inches forward, reach up, and unzip him.
I’m shaking, eager, and so careful as I work my way slowly over the bulge in his pants.
“Now pull it out. Get it good and hard for what’s next.”
Every word out of Grant’s mouth makes me lightheaded.
“Or what?” I ask him, unsure if it’s a challenge—a brat moment, as he’d call it—or a real question.
Bless Grant Bowman for reading that hesitation exactly right because, rather than plowing ahead the way I’d expect some men would do, he takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger and says, “So we’re perfectly clear.
It’s no fun for me if you don’t want what we’re doing.
I need to be the boss—of you, of your pleasure—but I need you with me.
” His gaze devours my face. “Right now, what I want is to watch those pretty lips on my cock. Taking it deep, maybe a little hard. I want to hold your head in my hands and control the angle, the depth, see how hungry that sweet mouth is.” His breathing’s as shaky as mine, I notice in a far-off part of my brain.
I need to remember that, after. “But all of it is up to you.”
“I’ve got my safe word.”
“Of course. I need your consent, though.” His eyes drop to my chest. “I want to do other things too. A little light slapping.”
I blink over to where he’s set the items. “You’d be slapping with…”
His lips curve up into something close to a smile. “The ruler.”
I gasp.
“Anywhere you don’t want that?”
“On…” I look around. The floor? The desk?
“I meant on your body.”
In a flash, my brain gives me one scenario after another. My butt, my thighs, my boobs. All of them just this side of scary. None of them bad.
“Maybe not my toes.”
His sudden grin is a breath of fresh air, so open and happy that I imagine it’s exactly what he must have looked like as a kid.
“No face, fingers or toes, wrists or ankles,” he whispers with a quick kiss to my nose. “Promise. What about your nipples?”
“My…” I swallow.
“I want to play with them.”
Ooooooooh. Understanding hits me like a ton of bricks as I remember the office supplies he pulled from my cupboard. “Using those?” I point at the tiny clothespins. “Like, as… nipple clamps?”
He nods. “You like that idea?” His gaze is intent, hungry. “None of it’s happening if you’re not into it.”
“Yes. I like it.” I nod. “I want it.”
“Good. Clasp your hands behind your back.” A last peck on my lips, and he’s up, his focus on his buttons, on peeling his shirt off, on the items lined neatly on his desk. Everywhere but on me, where I’m kneeling here on the floor. Waiting. It’s uncomfortable. Long. Strangely lonely.
“We didn’t discuss choking.”
I jolt. A little blast of excitement and fear, so closely entwined I couldn’t honestly say if I’m for it or not. “I-I’m not sure.”
“Fair enough,” he says easily, his lack of disappointment or judgment the most freeing thing I’ve ever experienced. “Can I touch your throat?”
“Yes.” Even in my current state, the irony of finding freedom in rules and bindings isn’t lost on me. My mind floats to my book nooks and how creating those tiny little worlds paradoxically feels like it opens mine up. “I like the idea. I’d just prefer it to be gentle.”
“Understood.” His eyes are steady on mine. “And penetration?”
I scramble through a whole series of shoulds and should nots and ask, “You’ve been tested for STDs?”
“Yes. Regularly. We all are. For the club.”
Oh, right. I remember the lab had to send my results directly to the club.
“You have other partners?” I ask him.
“Not currently.” A pause. “It’s been several weeks.” He grabs a cell phone, taps on it a few times, and shows me a recent set of test results, scrolling slowly to the last page.
“Thanks.”
“I have condoms with me, but as with everything, I’ll get your consent. And you can safe word as needed.”
“Right. Yes.”
“Let’s see where this takes us. Yeah?”
Where it takes us. Like it’s a road trip, a thing we’re doing together. The two of us. Going places.
At my nod, he shuts off the overhead light, leaving us with just the glow from his desk lamp and the streetlights. He sighs, stretches, and then picks up my trench coat belt, which he twists around the knuckles of one hand and pulls taut with the other. Will he tie me up with it? Do I want that?
His back’s still to me when he says, “Hold your hair up.”
“What?”
“You like wearing your hair up. You’ll have to hold it.”
“I have rubber bands in my desk. I could…”
He looks up, his face ice hard. I stop talking and quickly bunch all my hair into a mass on the crown of my head.
“Hold it up with both hands.”
I comply, nerves making every part of me shake.
“That’s better.” He eyes me like something he’d select at the market. Gone is the warmth, the laughter. This man brooks no refusal.
It’s hot and it’s scary, and it’s made my body feel separate from me. I know it’s there. I’m aware of it. It just doesn’t seem like mine.
I’ve never felt so on display as I do with my hands planted on the top of my head, folded at the elbows in this sit-up position. My back’s arched, my chest up.
“You look good like that, Sunny. So damn pretty.”
My cheeks heat from the compliment.
“Open your mouth.” He comes close, and I have to roll my eyes back to watch him, and even that is somehow sexual. “Go on. Open.”
I let my jaw drop, so hyperaware of his crotch, right there at eye level, that I could swear my mouth starts to water.
“These lips…” He brushes a thumb over my mouth and cradles my face with the fingers of that same hand. “They’re gonna feel so good, aren’t they?”
Should I nod? Respond? I don’t know. But then he slips his thumb inside, and I don’t have to, and that loosens something up inside my rib cage. No choices. No decisions. Nothing to do. Nothing to think. Just… be.
“There you go.” His thumb presses in, exploring my inner cheek, my teeth and tongue, and the roof of my mouth, and then, instead of letting me suck like I thought he’d do, he tilts my head slightly back. “That’s it. That’s the angle.”
Liquid warmth flows straight to my pussy.
And yeah, part of it is that the man looks good.
I mean, he’s unbelievably gorgeous with his shirt off, and I’ve barely had the wherewithal to look.
He’s all thick, broad shoulders, lightly furred chest, and sharply carved abs, but that’s not what turns my insides to slush.
At least not all of it. The way he’s playing with me?
Wow, does that hit buttons I didn’t know I had.
The narration, too, is its own torture. The way he’s telling me what he’ll do, every step of the way.
It has the added benefit of giving me time to adjust or protest. Time to say no. Or to open wider.
Time to wait in agony while he plans his next move. Although knowing this man as I now do, I’ll bet he’s got it all mapped out in his head from start to finish. The General wouldn’t leave anything to chance.
It occurs to me that I’m the chance card here, the unexpected piece of this puzzle.
The wild roll of the dice is me. For some unfathomable reason, that is what sends the shiver down my spine.
Makes me swipe a lick at that thumb and rake my gaze over every inch of his chest with a lascivious pleasure I’d hardly known I contained.
“There she is.” His eyes crease at the corners, and I love the tiny thread of warmth that shines through. “Stay like that.”
I don’t dare move as he reaches for the waistband of his boxer briefs, just visible where his pants are open, and lowers it, exposing his erection with the sort of slow ceremony usually reserved for religious occasions.
He’s watching first himself and then me with the utmost concentration, and it is heady how solid that attention feels, holding me up as surely as the wood beneath my knees. In this moment, there is nothing in the world but the two of us.
And his monster cock.
“Um, Grant?”
He lifts his eyebrows.
“You’re… huge.”
“Then you’d better open wide, sweetheart.”