Breathe [Running to Love 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (8 page)

“Do you know why you are being punished?” Jace forced his tone to be calm, almost indifferent, and it had the desired effect.

Rowan’s voice trembled, and Jace recognized both fear and arousal. “Because I walked out without talking to you about why I felt I had to leave.”

Jace’s heart leapt. She got it. He might have made the mistake, but she had compounded it after agreeing to try things his way.

“You have your safe word.”

“Yes.”

Jace contemplated his belt, curled up on the bedside table, right within Rowan’s line of sight, should she open her eyes. It had served its purpose to judge by how she had quaked when he’d ordered her to free it and place it there. He made a decision and stooped to pull two pieces of black velvet rope from under the mattress. It was unreasonable to expect Rowan to withstand her first spanking without trying to move or use her hands to protect herself. He pulled her hands loose from their grip on the bedding and efficiently tied them together, wordlessly wrapping her fingers around the long end before securing the rope to the piece he attached to the slatted headboard. She didn’t resist and made a quiet sound, muffled by her hair. Jace smoothed the dark, silky stuff back so he could see her face and then laid his hand on her buttocks. She clenched in response.

“I’ll add a spank every time you clench, Rowan. And if that doesn’t teach you, I’ll insert something here.” Jace pressed a finger suggestively against her anus and Rowan flinched and whimpered. “It will be a deterrent, I promise.”

“I understand.” Rowan’s voice was faint, and for a moment Jace wondered if he had pushed her too hard, but her color was still good and the scent of arousal wafted up to him. He smiled and began. “You’ll take fifteen.”

The first blow from his palm clearly startled her, but the beginning of a clench was immediately arrested, and she breathed through it. He carefully adjusted the weight of the next spank and placed it next to the first. By the fourth, Rowan’s skin was pinking nicely, and she wasn’t clenching at all, although the sting of each impact was obviously still prevalent. He ensured that he heated every inch of her delectable ass, pausing to rub and spread the heat and allow her to process and move past the pain into that euphoric state. He didn’t care to bruise her delicate skin, but wanted her to feel the tenderness tomorrow as a reminder. She was relaxed and boneless at number twelve and Jace laid the final three as hard, powerful smacks, as fast as he could deliver them, just beneath the curve of her ass, close to her pussy. Rowan lifted into them and moaned. Jace pressed his knee down on the mattress beside her to balance himself and slipped his hand between her soaking thighs to find her engorged clit. He rubbed it firmly and she clamped her thighs hard around his wrists and came. A cry exploded from her lips, and she sobbed immediately afterwards.

Jace sat on the bed, ignoring his aching erection, and freed her hands. He gathered her to him, holding her against his chest and up on one hip to spare her sore ass. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her lashes spiked with the moisture, and her breath continued to hitch in her throat. He murmured his approval and praise. “There, there, sweetness. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Rowan began to settle and come back to herself. When she opened her eyes to stare at him, Jace spoke more loudly and clearly. “You did good, baby. You earned your orgasm for taking your correction so well.”

He eased her off of his lap and onto her stomach, reaching into the drawer of the little table to pull out some cooling lotion. She hissed at the initial cold dribble on her hot butt cheeks and then relaxed as he gently smoothed it over the offended flesh until it was all absorbed. He then stretched out beside her, almost nose to nose. Her hair was a wild tangle, and her eyes still looked drugged. She watched him watching her, and her face flushed, entrancing him all over again. He pressed a kiss on her forehead and asked, “What have you learned?”

She immediately said, “I need to tell you what I’m feeling or if I have a concern, or have a question.”

“And?”

She hesitated this time and then made a tiny shrug. Jace felt a spurt of annoyance but pushed it down. She was new at this.

“You need to ask me for what you need, and I’ll decide if you do,” he reminded her.

Rowan’s forehead creased.

“What?”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “You as much as told me that you would decide what I needed, push me, decide what I could take. That I wouldn’t have any say.”

Jace wanted to shake her. She was so bright, so intelligent. How could she miss the point? Or had
he
done so? It was getting hard to stay with the program. Program. That seemed such a sterile term for what he felt about this woman. Jace pushed that feeling away. He couldn’t afford to feel anything more than a dominant connection to a submissive woman. He forged ahead. “If I fuck up, Rowan, and I will from time to time, and miss something, then you will ask, or tell, are we clear? You can trust me to act in your best interests, but we don’t know one another well yet. This is a process, one that requires good, two-way communication.”

“I’ll try.”

Jace decided to be content with that answer and asked another, more pertinent question. It was one he desperately wanted to know the answer to, yet feared it. “Why did you walk out that night?”

Rowan tried to squirm away, but he dropped an arm over her waist and held her tightly while he waited. Finally, she answered, almost in a whisper, her eyes now drifting from his.

“I think it was because I anticipated something different, something more. You led me to believe, I mean, you asked about things, boundaries and things and then we just had sex. I guess I was disappointed.”

Jace managed to hide his wince at the low blow. Well, he had asked. Rowan had just cut him off at the knees, if not a tad higher.
Just
had sex. Fuck, he still remembered every damn second of their first coupling. If it hadn’t meant anything more to her than a casual fuck, or at the very least in the top ten of fucks, then maybe he had made a mistake with her. Maybe he was getting into something that was going to freaking well hurt when she kicked him to the curb or he released her. Just like the old man had warned him.

As if she had ordained his thoughts, although more likely had picked up on his body language, Rowan added, “The sex was wonderful. Truly it was. You gave me an orgasm, Jace. But I didn’t feel connected to you, or not enough. I felt like you had picked me up for a one-night stand, used me….”

Jace had initially started to feel somewhat placated, but her last statement erased it. He skimmed over the raw, telling part about her need to feel connected. He didn’t do connected. He was livid at the thought of Rowan feeling used by him. If he had ever used a woman it certainly hadn’t been her, and he gave as much as he took. Always. He rolled her with him onto their feet, eliciting a gasp, and glowered down at her.

“Kneel!”

To give her credit, Rowan folded at his feet, almost instantaneously. Jace sternly instructed her in proper posture, having her thrust her breasts out further and spread her legs a little more to better display her labia, although the changes she had to make were minute. It was more important that she not feel even a hint of complacency. He impatiently stripped off his boxers and threaded his fingers through the weight of her hair, dragging her head back. His cock throbbed at her little hiss of pain. He ordered her to open her mouth, and she did so, giving him a startled look. He shoved his cock inside that warm, soft cavern and just managed to hold onto his indignation and denial. “Close your lips around me tightly and don’t move.”

He held her head still against his invasion, fucking her mouth in short, hard strokes, being careful not to choke her, although knowing that her jaw would ache a little and her lips would probably puff. Her eyes never left his, and he could see her processing the experience so he took great care not to let her see how she affected him. He made it as clinical as possible. He didn’t give her a chance to use her tongue or hardly suck him at all, not feel connected in any way, and wondered how long it would take her to connect the dots. His climax overtook him and he pulled out to come on her chest and neck, marking her with every last drop of his seed, then turned and left her while he stalked into the bathroom. Her mouth had been amazing, despite his efforts to stay aloof and uninvolved and the sight of his cum glistening on her beautiful skin had ramped up his possessiveness, and ate away at his denial.

He didn’t close the door or even turn the water in the sink on full, keeping his senses tuned to the other room, but he heard nothing, no noises of flight. He washed up quickly, and then grabbed another cloth he dampened with warm water, finally returning to her. Rowan was still in much the same position as he had left her, although there were fresh tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t look at him. Jace was overcome with shame and crossed to kneel in front of her, using the warm cloth to tenderly wipe his cum from her body, swiping at the tears with his thumb. He tossed the cloth and stood to pull the bed linens down. Rowan came up at his urging like a feather, and he slid her onto the bed, lying down beside her to pull her back against him. He hooked the sheet with his foot and yanked it up far enough to grab it with his free hand, and covered them both. He lay there quietly, listening to her breathe. They would need to talk, but he needed a few minutes and suspected she did as well.

* * * *

Rowan lay, in skin-to-skin contact with a man who had, within the space of an hour, taught her more about herself than she thought possible. She accepted that she had longed for him to find her, had waited for him to find her, waited without realizing it, unless maybe deep down where she could ignore it, and welcomed his high-handed behavior once he had tracked her down. He was her knight in black armor, and if that made her sick and twisted, so be it. She had both accepted and understood her punishment, in itself as much the reward as the subsequent orgasm, and she had resolved to be open with him, to embrace that expected communication. She had understood his cold, distant oral fucking as well, recognized it as an expression of his hurt and displeasure at the implication that he had used her that first night. She acknowledged it as the lesson he intended, the totally different implication between the two acts. It was a different form of punishment that, while it hadn’t harmed her physically, had hurt her far more deeply because it was for his sake, teaching her the ultimate lesson. Jace did not use women. She had insulted who he truly was and she was coming to understand him.

Rowan was saddened and not a little afraid. This then was what she could expect in such a relationship, her humble submission, her obedience and her total surrender to Jace. She now knew, intuitively, that he would never have to teach her that lesson again and that they could move forward, if only she hadn’t realized something. It wouldn’t have mattered, not really, if she had stayed to tell him her feelings that night. She had only prolonged things. He would have responded in much the same manner. He wanted to teach her, train her, and have her fully explore this side of her and how it related to her sexuality. And then he would move onto the next woman, and she would be left, bereft, because she couldn’t do this thing without his heart. If she had had that sense of abandonment their first night together, then how would she cope at the end of what they were now embarking on? It was the connection she also needed, and she would feel far, far worse than simply feeling used.

Love at first sight? Her heart knew what it knew and wanted to chance it, but at what cost to her very soul? Rowan couldn’t do it. She would get up and go into the bathroom and shore up her defenses away from his touch, and then be honest with him. He would understand and release her before things progressed further, and she might survive. She just knew he wouldn’t hurt her deliberately. She sat up and declared her need for the bathroom, and Jace released her without comment. The silence itself seemed eloquent.

She used the toilet, and then moved to the sink. Her eyes seemed huge in her face yet shuttered somehow, her olive skin paler than usual, her lips bruised. She splashed cool water on her tear-scalded cheeks and watched it run down her neck and drip onto her breasts. She had to do it, tell him she couldn’t do this, and the sooner the better. Rowan grabbed the tumbler and held it under the tap, thinking that the cold water might lubricate her tongue and let the necessary words flow. It clunked against the faucet and shattered in her grasp, one of the sharp shards slicing down the length of her palm to the base of her wrist. The crimson flow of her blood swirled in a counterclockwise motion down the drain as the water diluted the thicker fluid. Rowan numbly released her grip and just stood there and watched herself bleed.

“Rowan!” Jace was in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the carnage in the sink. He seemed to hesitate and then reached her in one long stride and lifted her hand high, grabbing a hand towel. She winced when he put pressure on the gash, and he pulled the fabric away, looking closely, probably to see if there was any glass in her skin. He grunted and reapplied the pressure. Rowan’s knees felt weak and he assessed her faintness, pushing her to sit on the toilet seat and shove her head between her knees, keeping a tight hold on her injured hand.

“I don’t think that you’ll need stitches, honey, but I’ll take you to a clinic to be sure.”

Rowan mumbled, through the snarls of her hair, “Just wrap it. I’m not going to see a doctor. It’s just a scratch.”