Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AND HOW LONG UNTIL IT ALL COMES CRUMBLING DOWN?
GREER
No.
No, I absolutely was not ready.
That didn’t stop my treacherous body from forcing a response from my mouth. “Yes, Sir.”
The two words came out shaky. It wasn’t helped much by the fact a leather strap was digging into my ribs as I hung on my belly, suspended by the medieval-looking sex swing.
But it really wasn’t helped by the fact that my body was as stiff as a slab of marble as I waited for the onslaught of pain to begin.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Because all I got were more soft touches. Skims. Grazes.
I never thought it would happen, but I was on the verge of asking to be hurt.
No.
I was on the verge of begging for it.
Anything was better than the erotic limbo I was hanging in—literally.
Crack!
The first blow took me by surprise. I cursed Tripp, my impatience, and my agreement to be in that damn room in the first place.
My hands moved automatically, unconcerned about the possibility of them getting hit as I tried to cover my ass.
It didn’t work, of course. I was securely bound in place, and there was no escaping the pain.
A thousand tiny sparks lit across my ass cheek, each of them igniting into a thousand more, and then those did, too.
I cried out, expecting him to wait. To give me time to adjust.
To give me even a second.
He didn’t.
The second hit connected just after, and the third landed on the exact same spot. Those thousands of sparks grew into one widespread fire.
Say stop.
Say the word.
It’s one word.
Say it.
Despite the smart demands being made by the logical part of my brain, I didn’t say anything.
Okay, that wasn’t true. I said a lot. Most of it was unintelligible nonsense alongside curses and threats that were intermixed with moans and pleading and desperate whimpers when the vibration intensity was cranked higher and higher.
But I never said stop. I never even started to say it.
Because as the pain spread, so did something else.
Peace.
It was like the inner calm I got from the most grueling workout, only multiplied by a billion. My overactive thoughts weren’t racing. I had no thoughts. It was clear and quiet. Pain and pleasure. Everything and nothing.
The soft leather connected with my tender sex as bundles of raw nerves flayed wide open.
Once.
Twice.
I shattered.
Carnal bliss tore through my body as I came, asking for mercy. Begging for more.
Tears racked my body. Not gentle tears that I choked back and shoved into mental boxes. There was no hiding from them as Tripp and his flogger forced them to the surface. It was guttural, angry sobs that ripped from my chest.
Anxious ones.
Guilty ones.
Heartrending ones that weighed on me until I was one drop away from drowning.
Even when his blows softened and my orgasm ebbed, the tears kept streaming. I couldn’t turn them off.
My pussy tightened in protest as the vibrator was pulled from my body, but it was replaced with something so much better.
Tripp.
Filling me completely.
He used the swing and his tight grip on my burning ass to easily rock me back and forth along his length.
One of his hands moved to my face as he swiped away the tears. I did my best to look at him, my apology for the messy emotions already on my tongue.
That’s where it died.
Because he wasn’t looking at me with pity or disgust or annoyance. He wasn’t squeezing his eyes shut to ignore the pathetic tears.
It was pure lust on his face as he watched them fall.
I tried to sit up to look at him—to see more of that heady desire—but he flattened his palm on my cheek to hold my head down.
Not cruelly, but also not gently. His thumb continued its trek across my wet cheek, like he was determined to gather each droplet.
All the while, he surged in and out of me with shallow, maddening thrusts.
“Sir,” I panted, not even sure what I was asking for.
He slowed further. “Who am I?”
“Tripp.”
Like I could ever forget.
He ground himself into me roughly. “Whose pussy is this?”
“Yours.”
“That’s fucking right.”
“Faster. Please. Please, please, please.”
He shifted his hand just long enough that I could see the smear of my makeup across his skin before he pressed my cheek down again.
“Look at you. Dressed up so pretty while you beg for my cock. What a beautiful mess you are.” He squeezed my ass and lifted me onto my tiptoes as he used the swing to slam me harder against him.
“I wish you could see how fucking perfect you are.”
The pain. The pleasure. The sensation of being so surrounded and overwhelmed and filled to the point of bursting. And his praise. It all worked to launch me off the cliff.
The thousands of fiery sparks became thousands of bursts of painful euphoria until it was all a jumbled disarray that was impossible to separate.
“Fuck, Greer. Such perfection.” Tripp’s own low grunts and harsh exhales mixed with mine as he came, filling me with warmth.
The chains rattled and the swing rocked as he planted himself deep before lowering his body to mine. His lips skimmed the back of my neck, his stubble tickling as we caught our breath.
Or maybe he just caught his. I didn’t have to breathe.
I was back to being a bubble. The bubbliest bubble that ever bubbled.
Floating high.
Literally.
I was barely aware of him unlatching my wrists except for the tingling of blood flow. He didn’t lift me from the swing. He simply let gravity and my weak knees help lower me onto his lap where he sat on the floor.
I wasn’t a very good bubble since I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to sink, but that didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered right then.
Nothing but being in his arms.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that before the endorphins and adrenaline and whatever else seeped from me. As it did, I slowly became aware of my body again. I noticed Tripp’s hand toying between my legs, but it took me a long moment to realize what he was doing.
Gathering our mixed releases to paint across my marred ass. It stung, but not in a bad way.
It took me a while longer to realize I was still crying.
I wish I hadn’t realized it.
Because once I became aware of the stupid tears, everything pushed in. All the weight that’d been lifted for those freeing minutes was back.
Tenfold.
I tried to box them up.
I tried to choke them down.
But I couldn’t.
Devastation crashed over me, painful needle pricks to my bubble body until I felt like I was plummeting down, down, down.
I could hear the panic in Tripp’s voice. “Where does it hurt? What’s wrong? Dammit, Greer, why didn’t you say stop?”
It was so hard to speak, but I forced the words out. “Not. You. Not. That.”
My body trembled like Jell-O in an earthquake.
“Whoa, hey, okay,” Tripp said gently, cuddling me closer. “Stay with me.”
I wanted to. I didn’t want to be pulverized when I hit the ground. The wall. Whatever it was I was hurtling toward.
“Open your eyes, baby.”
I did.
“Open them, Greer. Now.”
Okay, I didn’t. But at his firm order, I did.
Grudgingly.
“Look at me,” he added. Once I had, he smiled. “Good. You’re safe. It’s okay. I’ve got you. Take a deep breath.”
I wanted to do that, too, but there was an elephant on my chest that was making it difficult.
“Slow. Inhale nice and slow.”
It was more of a strained squeak, but it worked to get oxygen into my tight lungs. That was better than drowning in my swimming head.
“Exhale now. Good job. Keep going.” He brushed my hair back from my face before gently turning me to look outward. “There’s the swing.”
I had no clue why he was pointing it out, but if he thought I was about to climb back into it, he was very, very wrong. I was too busy trying not to be crushed to death.
“Smell the leather?” he asked, continuing his bizarre tour.
I did smell it, though. It was rich and inviting.
“Look up. See the pattern on the ceiling?”
I tipped my head, expecting to see flimsy ceiling panels. Instead, flecks of gold twinkled across the dark gray.
Constellations in the night’s sky.
He kept going like that, pointing out inane details around us until it alleviated some of the pressure, but not the tears.
“Thank you for trying this, baby, but we don’t have to do it again. I promise.”
In all the rushing emotions charging forward to take me out, his words made panic take the lead. “No!”
There was no guilt-trip, forced acceptance, or resentment in his soft expression. He was fine with never doing it again.
I wasn’t.
“Greer—”
“It’s not the pain. I…” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but you were right.”
I must’ve looked worse than I felt—which was already pretty damn bad—because he didn’t tease me at my phrasing.
Still, I amended, “I did like the pain. A lot. I just wasn’t prepared for… There’s all this… I’m…”
My words were just as chaotically disheveled as the rest of me.
Tripp’s handsome face hardened. Not with anger, but with dominance. His voice held the same firm authority when he demanded, “Tell me what’s going on in your head. What happened at my father’s?”
That was something I did not want to do.
But the words spilled out almost as freely as my unwanted tears did.
“Both of my parents called. My dad left a million messages wanting to see me, and I had just decided that I would put aside my anger and allow it because… You know. He’s my dad.
But then I talked to my mom, and she drunkenly let it slip that he used our girls’ nights as an opportunity to cheat on her with the worst LA stereotype around.
I was just so mad and betrayed, yet I still feel guilty because of the whole it’s-my-dad thing.
I am usually so good at compartmentalizing everything, but it was a lot.
The pain helped. It cleared my head. I liked it.
I truly did. But once we were done, it all came back.
I felt too much at once. I wasn’t expecting it. ”
Finally, I pressed my lips closed before I released any of the other inner thoughts from Pandora’s box.
I added an eye scrunch to my pinched expression. “That made things weird, especially since we just…” I sighed. “You didn’t need to know any of that.”
“The hell I didn’t.” Roughly grabbing my chin, he tilted it so I had no choice but to look at him. “Greer, I asked you. And I appreciate you telling me because I want to know every-fucking-thing about you.”
I wanted to melt at that. To sink into him. Into the moment. Into the connection that was forming beyond fuck buddies.
And definitely well beyond boss and employee.
But I didn’t.
Maybe I was a coward. Maybe I was smart.
Likely I was both.
When Tripp looked like he was going to push me to share more—to expose my vulnerabilities as bare as my body—I let out a yawn that wasn’t the least bit forced. “Can we go home?”
He held the intense eye contact until I thought he would say no. But instead, he reached for my shoes and put them on me before shifting me off his lap so he could redress. Once he was done, he helped me to my feet.
And gravity did what it always did to popped bubbles and to sticky cum.
As the slickness dripped down my leg, I became acutely aware that I wasn’t wearing underwear.
“May I have my panties back, Sir?” I asked.
“No.”
It was worth a try.