Chapter 11 #4
The sensations wracking my body left no room for the familiar word that plagued me to penetrate my bliss.
He pushed his thumb into my cunt, two fingers in my ass, and sucked my clit, creating the ultimate trifecta of pleasure.
My mouth dropped open with a silent scream as my body exploded and imploded all at once.
The orgasm consumed every inch of me until I lost sense of time and space.
Nothing mattered—nothing existed—except the slow swirls of Lucian’s tongue tethering me to him.
I floated back to reality with a sore throat, tears sliding down my temples, and a final kiss to my swollen pussy.
He eased me down off the arch and back into his lap, wrapping me in his arms. He held me together as I sobbed, my body shaking against his shoulder, not understanding where the intense emotional swing came from.
“Shh. Shh. It’s okay, princess. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
“Lucian,” I whimpered his name, clinging to him like a lifeline to get me through this storm.
By the time my body finally gave out, my tears faded, and I’d buried myself in his chest. He stroked my hair and ran a hand up and down my back, still muttering that he was right there—that I wasn’t alone.
Remembering where I was, I stiffened and shifted my head just enough to peer toward the audience, finding it empty.
“They left as soon as we were done,” he explained, reading my thoughts.
“Did they…”
“No, baby. They didn’t see you cry. Not that it mattered if they did. Everyone here knows that sex can be an emotional release as well as a physical one. No one would have judged you for letting it all go.”
“D-do you?” I asked hesitantly.
He gripped my chin, tipping my head until I met his sincere gaze. “No. Never.” He took a deep breath. “In fact, I find it absolutely beautiful—I find you unbelievably beautiful. Thank you for this gift.”
I choked over a laugh. “The gift of crying on your shoulder?”
“The gift of trusting me—of giving in to your release so thoroughly, knowing I’m there to catch you. The gift of watching you be the stunning, powerful woman I know you are.”
Tears welled in my eyes all over again and fell down my cheeks. Just for him to catch them on his thumb and swipe them away.
Three words rose in my throat, raw and insistent, and I struggled to ignore them and force them back down. Pushing the feeling aside, I tucked my face into his chest, letting the moment speak for me while I savored it for as long as I could.
“Let’s go home,” he said after a bit.
My body floated on a cloud, buzzing with easy joy that carried me through the rest of the evening, believing that nothing could bring me down from this high.
But I’d believed wrong.
With my hand in his, I followed him down the hall, glancing inside the various rooms that contained everything from an orgy to a couple playing alone to a man suspended in ropes from the ceiling.
It wasn’t until the last room that I came to a screeching halt and felt the beginnings of my crashing descent.
I blinked, trying to make sense of what I saw. A full audience stared on at a woman bent over a pommel horse as a man struck her with a crop. It wasn’t the scene that left me frozen to the spot, my mouth hanging open, but the person performing.
Corbin prowled, sans shirt and clutching the thin switch, around a naked woman who wasn’t Rose.
“I-is that Corbin?” I asked, hoping Lucian might reveal some secret twin Corbin had, and this would all make sense.
“Yeah,” Lucian answered, unaffected.
I directed my wide-eyed stare to him, struggling to understand how he could be so calm. He watched on as if he didn’t have a care in the world—as if the scene was his favorite movie he’d seen a thousand times. His head tilted to the side, his face completely blank.
“I ju- I didn’t thi—” I couldn’t form words. I didn’t understand.
“Sometimes Corbin performs demonstrations for the club for education purposes.”
“And Rose…?”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t care. She usually asks him to do them.”
“B-but she’s naked, and it’s such an—” My throat closed around the words, struggling to process the situation.
“Such a what?” he asked.
Such an intimate act, I wanted to say, but something about his reaction told me not to.
When I didn’t finish, he faced me, his gaze openly curious, still glinting with the happiness we’d built earlier.
Happiness that continued to plummet. I’d thought his lack of concern over the situation was the end of the freefall, but then he took in my alarmed features.
The smile lingering in his eyes fell away, replaced by his own alarm, sending my airy joy to rock bottom.
The concern I’d been waiting for finally came in the form of constricted pupils, his hand flinching in mine. I swallowed, understanding dawning that he was more worried about how alarmed I was by Corbin spanking another woman, and what that meant to me, than about it actually happening.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, unwilling to delve into what caused our drastically different reactions. Not because I didn’t think I could figure it out, but because I had a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer when I did.
His eyes shuttered, turning as cold and aloof as when I first met him, sending a chill of warning down my spine. “It’s just a spanking, Aspen,” he scoffed, his face contorting with a frown, as if he found my concern offensive. “It’s not like there’s any connection in it.”
His words landed like a sucker punch. My heart plummeted, stealing my breath as it hit. The room tilted, and I struggled to keep my focus on Lucian—on the man who’d just spoken as if he were a stranger.
I blinked, trying to reconcile the man from thirty minutes ago—the one who cared for me like he loved me—with the one standing here now, who diminished one of the most intimate, meaningful parts of what we shared, cracking the foundation of my trust.
I grappled with believing it meant so little to him—that, through all of this, I was the only one falling deeper. My stomach twisted around the idea that maybe he didn’t care for me the way I did for him.
He glanced at me, his gaze tense but blank. His lack of emotion coated me in a layer of embarrassment and shame, delivering a reality check. While I’d been falling in love with him, Lucian was being a Dom and nothing more.
His warning from when we first started came roaring back.
When someone is new to the experience, they can confuse the trust between a Dom and a sub as love. It’s not. It never will be.
I dipped my head to hide the heat rushing to my cheeks and swallowed.
The smack of the crop against flesh faded.
The moans and whimpers from other patrons became lost under the dizzying hum in my head.
Darkness crowded the edge of my vision, and I pinched my eyes shut.
I could deal with the roaring wave of humiliation threatening to pull me under later.
I would not fall apart here—not in front of him.
He may not care for me as I do him, but I would be damned if I let him know it.
With a few deep breaths, I sucked in a cool composure, building my icy walls, and looked up, delivering my own blank stare and empty smile.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said, my voice hollow. “Anyways, let’s go home.”
He nodded, finding no flaws in my act of indifference, and led me out.
I kept my armor in place all the way home. I masked the chaotic, crumbling emotions inside and made an excuse to sleep in my old room, claiming I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to make him sick.
I held it all together until I shut the door behind me.
I collapsed onto the bed without undressing.
Tears slid down my temples, and I promised myself I’d only take tonight to get it all out. Tomorrow, I would be stronger. Tomorrow, I would act like this never happened. Tomorrow, I would pretend I remembered his warning and didn’t have any feelings growing that felt too much like love.
But tonight, I replayed everything—every touch, every moment—questioning it all.