Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
ev
“Thank you.”
Santos spooned me against his chest, his nose buried into my hair. I’d quickly stopped teasing him for it. “What for?”
“You helped. Today.”
It went beyond the plug, and his hand on my body, and him redirecting conversations and taking most of the heat, even when I knew he didn’t want the spotlight, either.
“Of course.”
“You just…” I sighed. I wanted to keep the words in—I’d been on the business of blurting out everything to him since we arrived, and I didn’t like it—but everything spilled regardless as I turned around to face him. “You took over. I mean, you always do, but… Thanks.”
Santos tucked my hair behind my ear. It was dark in the room, only a red lamp providing any lighting, but it was enough to see him staring at me. To see a softness that I didn’t know I was worthy of.
“You wanted to say I took over like a Dom, didn’t you?”
“Uh…” Did red light hide furious blushing? I sure hoped it did. “I mean…”
I was human, and my brain was in the gutter more often than not. I hadn’t planned on saying it, though. Things were flimsy, and he had said he wasn’t a Dom, and I’d said I didn’t think I could be in a D/s dynamic, so it made sense not to take the conversation there.
Unless it was Santos who took it there? He had better ideas than I did most of the time.
Following his lead had always come naturally, so it made sense that it did tonight, right?
Even if I still remembered that he might be avoiding some darker stuff, and it shouldn’t take away from everything I’d told Sir Ismael and Erika and everyone else at Plumas.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
I gulped. “You have?”
“Remember how I told you I’m not a Dom?”
“Yeah?”
Obviously. I used it every time I felt like punishing myself.
“I mean, I still don’t…” He licked his lips before continuing, as if the move didn’t make it that much harder to concentrate on the actual words coming out of his mouth.
“I don’t want the whole yes, Sir, no, Sir stuff.
But I was thinking, it really got me off when we were fucking for your Dom, and I called you names, and I went rougher on you, and all that, you know? ”
“Yeah?”
My throat was dry. It was both the topic and the fact that I’d been beating myself, convincing myself that he had pushed himself to do all that for me. That he didn’t actually like it beyond being with me and wanting to make me feel good.
“Yeah.” He chuckled in that way some people did when they were embarrassed, but not so embarrassed that it stopped them in their tracks. “I liked today, too, coming up with the idea, and sticking that plug up your ass, and knowing that you had it in you the entire time.”
Fuck.
I wanted to behave. I wanted to not turn into the wanton slut I became where kink was concerned. He was saying all the right things, though. All the things I’d been secretly dying to hear.
“I think maybe that makes me a service top? Or something like that, I don’t care.
” Santos kept talking, and he kept touching me, and pulling me closer.
I’d just hold on for another minute, and then it would be okay when I returned to default, kinky settings, right?
“But maybe we could try? A no-pressure thing, with none of the protocol and titles and things, but where I’m… taking over?”
I didn’t know if I reached a minute, but a whimper spilled out regardless.
“You want that?”
“No pressure,” he reiterated.
I stifled another sound that belonged in a porn studio and not in a room where I was supposed to have a talk about expectations and boundaries and a bunch of other big words I couldn’t quite think of right now.
“I mean, yeah, but, uh, why?”
Shit.
My heart raced. Santos stilled where he’d been beginning to trail his hand down my side. Someone smarter than me wouldn’t be fighting him when he was offering me my dream on a silver platter.
I knew better, though. It was important to put everything out in the open, to make sure this wouldn’t be something else I’d beat myself up over because I made a mountain out of a grain of sand.
“What do you mean, why?” Santos frowned. “You’re my person.”
He said it, just like that.
“You are, too, I just mean…” I glanced down.
It made me a coward, but I couldn’t talk when he was looking at me like that.
He didn’t hide anything. He never really had, not in the ways that mattered.
It shouldn’t take me by surprise, but it still did, my stomach fluttering with so many nerves.
I couldn’t say the wrong thing. I couldn’t not say the right thing because the words got trapped somewhere at the back of my throat. “What’s changed?”
“You mean between us being in school, and then me being in the Air Force, and now?”
“So, it was just a matter of time?”
Santos propped himself up on his elbow. I gulped as his figure hovered over me. “I think so, yeah.”
I nibbled on my lip. Was that what I wanted to hear, that he and I had always been a done deal, and it was only a matter of timing, and living near each other?
“So we’re going to…date?”
It couldn’t be this simple, could it? It had never been.
Maybe it said more about my lack of experience with actual relationships, but this felt almost too easy.
Too anticlimactic. It also had an undercurrent of feeling right attached to it.
A simple levity, a joy that sparked at the idea, that had me wanting to curl up impossibly close to him and hand him the reins. Hand him everything.
But those were dangerous thoughts to have.
“Does that mean I have to treat you right?”
I snorted. Some might have called it a giggle, but today was already turning into a rollercoaster of emotions. I wasn’t going to add more questioning to it right this minute.
“You already do.”
“You think so?” He hummed. “What if I flipped you on your stomach right now?”
There was humor in his voice. Humor, while he asked the kind of question that would have me flushed and whimpering in front of anyone else.
“Go ahead,” I challenged.
I held no doubts that he would do it. I just wanted to keep this lightness, this spell that he had placed on us that meant I could look at this without overthinking every single motion.
“I hadn’t finished.” Santos huffed. I laughed.
I laughed. Literally all the people I considered an OTP at Plumas talked about laughing during sex or during scenes.
I’d even witnessed it a few times. It had never happened to me.
I hadn’t thought it was possible. Couldn’t picture it ever being in the cards.
I was too strung up, too shy, too fidgety, too in my head for it.
His gaze softened as he watched me. My heart constricted as he cleared his throat, that humor still there, but now laced with something else.
Something that looked a lot like lust. “What if I flipped you on your stomach, right now, and I fucked your pussy while your clit is all trapped? No warning, not a lot of prep. Would I still be treating you right?”
I was nodding frantically before he’d finished talking. I also moved so I was on top of him, my hands on his chest.
“You have to promise that you’ll tell me, if…if I get too intense, or too anything, or if I’m pushing you, or…”
“Can I kiss you, Ever?”
Could we make it a rule that me whimpering meant a yes?
He must’ve caught on, because he crouched up—without using his hands, might I add.
It didn’t make me swoon or anything ridiculous like that—and ghosted his lips over mine.
He didn’t just assault my mouth or go for anything with tongue.
It was just a touch. A touch that had me shivering for more, following him when he leaned back down like it hadn’t been a feat to pull that move.
“I will tell you,” he promised. “You’ll also need to tell me if I’m not enough, or you need more that I’m not giving you.”
“But—”
“Nuh-uh,” he interrupted. His jaw clenched, and I froze. He was serious, and I’d misread the room. “I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to do, but communication is the pillar for all relationships, right? That’s what your friends would say, too.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. It was, and I knew it was, but I was too raw, and I didn’t want to end up being someone who hurt him. It was a new feeling. Something I’d never had to battle with before. “Okay. I promise.”
“Okay.” Santos nodded. He went back to playing with my hair.
I really couldn’t wait until his grew. Right now, hints of the soft curl pattern that had had everyone in love with him back when we were kids were starting to show, but I knew it was still too short for him to feel comfortable.
I just didn’t want to draw attention to it.
“And, for the record, I don’t care that we’re doing everything all out of order.
I love you, and you’re mine, and that’s going to be a thing from day one. ”
I snorted. “Aye, aye.”
He rolled his eyes. Right before keeping his word of getting me on my stomach.
Sex with him was…everything. He was everything.
I didn’t care that I was probably just waxing poetry because it felt like literal weeks since the last time I had anyone give me the kind of pounding I craved.
The kind that seemed to heighten the longer I kept the cage on.
It was more than the cage, or all the pent-up energy, though.
It had to be. When he sucked a hickey onto the back of my neck, it wasn’t simply lips and teeth on skin.
It was Santos, seeing all of me. Being my hero in a world that had drilled it into our heads that heroes weren’t something we should desire.
“You’re mine,” I blabbered.
Santos moved right away, his hand covering my mouth. Applying enough force that it had me close to screaming into it.
“Need to be quiet,” he gritted out.
Right.
The walls of this place were thick as fuck, but I could only take so many risks on a given day.
I still whimpered against his salty skin, though. Still tried to fight his hold so that I could see more than shadows in front of me.
I needed to see him, to get a better glimpse of…
“You’re so fucking good to me, princess.”
I forgot all about what I needed to do.
“Please.”
Santos didn’t ask. He didn’t push me to say what I was begging for. He hoisted my hips up and somehow made a bundle with the blankets so that there was a better angle when he lay me back down on the mattress.
I buried my face against my pillow. He was being as rough as he’d promised.
As rough as he’d said he liked to be. I was helpless beneath him.
Helpless as I clenched my fingers around fistfuls of sheets.
He had used plenty of lube, but it was the kind of rough fuck that would leave me feeling more than sore in the morning.
The kind that would have me clinging to him, seeking his care.
The reassurance that he might fuck me like he was chasing something he hated, but that didn’t change the golden retriever he was during the day.
The one who doted on me and worshipped the ground I walked on.
It had always been like that. The way we were showing it now was the only thing that was different.
“So. Close,” he grunted against my ear.
I struggled for air. Even more so when he moved to clamp a hand over my mouth again.
When he kept thrusting into me, keeping as much of a rhythm as he could.
When he kept mumbling shit about how pretty I was, and how I wasn’t going to get out of my cage, and he was the only one who got to come properly.
Air was a luxury I had to reacquaint myself with by the time he stilled, his cum coating my hole while he jerked on top of me.
My cock stayed trapped like he’d said, attempting to twitch against the hard silicone of the toy. Throbbing with a need that I knew wouldn’t be fulfilled. I didn’t want it to, even when it left me gasping, dizzy.
Eventually, he took his hand off me. My mouth parted, sucking in lungfuls of air while the rest of my body trembled with the orgasm I couldn’t fully reach.
He was right here, though, his weight a reminder. A lifeline. The thing I’d probably been missing all this time.
“Fuck.” I cried out when he pulled out of me. When I could feel my gaping hole, and trickles of cum and lube mixed in and dripping down my thighs. “Please don’t leave.”
Santos made a sort of pained noise I’d never wanted to be the cause of. I didn’t have time to apologize. He was grabbing me again, maneuvering until we were back to him spooning me, his leg draped over my waist. Trapping me completely.
“You and I, Ever. Always.”
I nodded.
It was all I could do, wasn’t it?