Chapter 4 #2
“I’m talking about this,” Zachary told her, like he knew. Like he knew exactly what reaction her body was having. “This thing between us. This electricity. It’s different.”
“I married the last person who told me that,” she said, feeling dizzy and something like sick, and yet she still didn’t pull away from him. “And it was different, all right. He started being an asshole on our wedding night and only got worse from there.”
“Sounds like a douchebag,” Zachary growled. “I’m not a douchebag, Romily. What I’m talking about is fucking. With a power dynamic.”
“I don’t like power games,” she whispered, even though her body was telling her something else, trembling and shaking, making her wonder if she even knew what she was talking about.
“I’m going to guess that what you don’t like is a power-hungry asshole who likes to make women feel like shit.” Zachary moved his thumb, rubbing it over her lip in a way that was blatantly sexual, and yet not a caress. Or not only a caress. “I can’t blame you. Who would?”
She was afraid this was about to become terribly disappointing. That she was about to disappoint him, and she wasn’t sure she was going to recover from that.
Not to mention the fantasies she’d been having of him that had gotten her through these last six months.
Romily sighed. “I get it, you want me to be servile. Cry and beg and do whatever you tell me, though I’ll never be good enough. So you can tear me into little pieces.” She shook her head. “Been there, done that.”
She expected his temper, then. She expected him to explode, but he didn’t.
He only watched her.
“I’m not into humiliation,” he told her in that gruff voice, laced through with certainty.
She had the wild thought that this was what integrity sounded like.
“Not being good enough isn’t on the table.
You’re already good enough or why would I want to fuck you this badly?
The only thing you need to do is what I tell you to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Romily heard a ragged sound. It only distantly occurred to her that she’d made it.
“Can you do that?” Zachary asked. He let his thumb dip into her mouth and grunted when she dared to suck on the tip of it. “Because I have a feeling that if you can, you and me are going to burn this place to the ground.”
That part of her brain that was warning her off was loud, but her body was louder. And it wanted him in ways that she couldn’t begin to understand.
It wanted him in ways that made her feel bold. Bright.
“What happens if I change my mind?”
“You say stop. And we stop.” He shook his head. “He did a number on you, didn’t he?”
She tried to smile, but didn’t get there. “He did a lot of things.”
Zachary leaned in then, and she couldn’t have begun to describe that look on his face. So intent. So sure. He cupped her face in his hands, his blue eyes so intense they felt like they were inside her, too.
Like he was already deep, deep inside her.
“I like control,” he told her. “And I think that you like giving it up. But there is not one part of me that wants to take advantage of that part of you. The point is to exchange it. So you get to surrender, and I get that control, and we both get off so good and so hard that we’re never quite the same afterward.
And neither one of us is diminished. Sound good? ”
“That sounds improbable,” Romily said, because she might as well confess to this man. She might as well tell him everything, because he already seemed to know things he shouldn’t. Somehow that felt safe to her. “Impossible, actually.”
“Oh little bird, you have no idea,” he said then, “how very, very long I’ve wanted to get my teeth into you.”
All she could do was shake her head. “I can’t tell what part is real and what part you’re just saying.”
His forbidding mouth curved. “Just remember, all you have to do is what I tell you. When I tell you. Deal?”
Romily wanted to say yes more than she had ever wanted anything else, but she shook. She shook and shook. And she stared up at him, his hands still on her face and a whole world in his gaze that she wanted so badly to understand.
To feel.
“I saw the way you watched me.” His voice was a low, dark thread of sound that seemed to tie her up where she stood, longing and afraid and filled with need.
“I know exactly how much you want my cock in that greedy little pussy of yours. You want me so much that just the idea of it made you come. Twice.” He leaned a little closer. Just a little. “Let me fuck you, baby.”
And that, too, came out an order.
Romily found herself nodding, her gaze glued to his.
Zachary shook his head, those blue eyes lighting her up from the inside out. “You’re going to have to say it.”
She couldn’t possibly. She really would die.
But he wanted her to say it. So she did. Because he suddenly seemed crucial to her staying alive and better yet— feeling like this, like every cell in her body was amped and ready and fully present in this.
“I want you,” she whispered. “To fuck me. Please.”
“Good girl,” he murmured, and it was shocking, how everything inside of her seemed to shiver into joy. Into sheer delight that she could please him.
That she did.
He tipped forward, and bit her lower lip, just enough to make her breath catch. Then he licked it, which was better and worse, at once. Then he leaned back, settling himself against the door and crossing his arms in that way she’d seen him do in the office.
And the look he turned on her then was nothing but stern.
Everything inside of her went bright and hot and red.
“Take off your clothes,” he told her.
And she felt as if her heart stuttered. Romily could feel her clit pulsing, so she pressed her thighs together, because she thought —
“Don’t you dare,” he growled. “Remember, little bird. All your orgasms are mine. I’ll let you know when you can have one. If you can.”
Romily thought that if she actually did up and die right there, that would be fine, because this would be the hottest thing that had ever happened to her.
Just the way he spoke about these things, so frankly, so openly.
She felt as if he was touching her even when he wasn’t.
Even when she was standing and watching him, with actual space between them.
The truth was, she didn’t care where they were. They could be down the mats of his gym for all that mattered to her. Outside in that alley. In the floodlights that lit up the old Port Authority building like a show for half of Oakland.
She had never wanted anything this much. She hadn’t known it was possible.
Those stern, demanding blue eyes were on her and all she wanted to do was… Whatever he told her to.
She kicked off her sneakers. She pulled her hoodie up and over her head, then dropped that on the floor too. Underneath, she was wearing her favorite pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She pulled the T-shirt off first, scanning his expression for hints of… anything, but he only stared back, impassive.
Or she would have thought he was impassive, that was, but she could see the heat in his gaze.
She undid the button of her jeans, and had to shimmy them down over her hips because of the stretchy fabric. And then when she kicked them aside she was standing there in nothing but panties and a bra. She paused, and when she did, he lifted his eyebrow. Slightly.
But she felt that like a scolding. She flushed, and hurried to undo her bra, though her fingers felt thick and silly, and she couldn’t get the clasp undone. He made no move to help her, so she pulled it up, over her head, and threw it down.
Then, realizing that she was panting loud enough that the sound of it filled the room, she forced herself to pull her panties down and step out of them, too.
And then she was standing in front of him.
Naked.
As he’d commanded.
He stared at her. He kept staring. And after a while, his gaze moved, taking his time as he studied every inch of her. Every last inch.
Romily stood there, not knowing what to do with her hands. Not knowing where to look, or how to breathe.
After an eternity, as she bit on the inside of her lip and ordered herself not to fidget, he lifted one hand and twirled a finger, ordering her to turn.
So she did.
She realized that she could feel the way he looked at her, as if his gaze was a touch. Her own eyes were glassy, filled with a moisture that she understood had nothing to do with the urge to cry and everything to do with that same liquid heat that defined her, now.
Like wanting him was who she was.
“Turn back to face me,” he said.
So she did. Desperate to see him again.
That beautiful, stern face of his.
He moved off the wall and came closer to her, moving her clothes out of the way with his foot.
Then he walked around her, close enough that she was sure that she could feel his heat.
It poured off him, filling the room. And she could smell the scent of him.
It was clean, faintly woodsy, and something else that seemed like a tuning fork, deep inside.
She wanted to gulp him down whole.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” he told her, thrilling her. “Those big eyes of yours like frightened gold. All of that amber and all of that wariness turns me on. That mouth of yours, that I’ve never wanted to fuck more than I do right now. You’re beautiful, Romily. Do you know that?”
He was at her side when he said that, and she shook her head, feeling… something like helpless. “I don’t think…”
“I’m telling you that you’re beautiful,” he said in the stern, matter-of-fact way. “And what are the rules?”
“You tell me what to do,” she whispered, and she had that part down. The words came out of her as if she’d been saying things like that her whole life.
“Good,” he said, and she felt like she was gleaming.
“I’m telling you to start treating yourself like you’re beautiful.
Because beautiful is strong. And I’m going to need you to be strong, because the demands I intend to make on this body of yours?
They’re going to be a lot. Not necessarily tonight, but we’ll get there.
And you’re going to have to have a certain level of physical fitness to meet those demands. ”
That streak of that boldness flared in her again. “This is a very unorthodox way of advertising your gym services, Zachary.”
She shocked herself, but then he shocked her more, because he laughed.
It was the best music she’d ever heard.
“Cute. And if I was in a different mood, you’d pay for that. But not tonight.”
He came around to the front of her and smoothed a hand over her hair. “Kneel.”
The funny thing was, she didn’t have to think about it. It was as if his commands were wired directly to her body.
She just… knelt.
And couldn’t seem to drag her gaze away from that huge, impossible cock that she could see pressing there against the fly of his jeans.
“You have to earn the right to take my cock in your mouth,” he told her, in that same uncompromising manner. “And a broken little bird who spies through windows and comes twice without permission has definitely not earned it.”
His words were raw. The filthiest thing she’d ever heard, yet so… casual.
All while his hand moved its way through her hair, caressing her.
“But you can kiss it through my jeans,” he told her. “Let me see how much you want to taste me.”
She realized she was holding her breath. She dared to look up, and he was gazing down the length of his own beautiful body as he watched her. As he waited.
And suddenly she had never wanted anything more to show this man every single sensation that wracked through her. Every single sensation that he’d given her.
So she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and pressed it to the soft denim of his jeans.
And worshipped the enormous cock she could feel, heavy and hard, beneath.