Hardline (3 page)

  
I swallowed hard, fighting the instinct to rile at his order.
Submit.
My throat tightened, as if the word had lodged itself there and wouldn’t pass until I accepted it. That word meant so much. Submitting was easier when I was coaxing him into taking what he needed from me. Now he was taking what he wanted. He wasn’t asking and we weren’t negotiating.
 

  
I closed my eyes, straining to hear the voice in my head telling me to relax, to let go. “You’re not making it easy.” I wanted him to understand my resistance, maybe even let it slide. Even when he went all Dom on me, sometimes he’d give me room to push back.
 

  
“I’ve been putting out fires all day. I want to come home to you, and I don’t want to have to break you every time. If I have to, I will, but I won’t always be asking nicely and making it easy for you. So you should get used to submitting. You’re naked, tied to the table, and one stroke away from coming. Do you want to come?”

  
“Yes, badly.”

  
“Then
beg
.”
 

  
“Please...” The plea was weak as it left my lips.
 

  
“I’m listening, Erica. Please what?”

  
“Please, make me come. I want your hands on me. I’ll do anything...I swear.”

  
“Will you be home, naked, when I ask you next time?”
 

  
“Yes.”
 

  
His fingertips grazed my throbbing clit. I sucked in a sharp breath and lifted my hips to meet his touch, but he evaded me as quickly as he’d arrived.
 

  
“Promise?”

  
“I promise. Jesus, I’ll do anything.”

  
“And I won’t have to give you directions about how to submit again, will I?”

  
“No,” I promised, shaking my head emphatically.
 

  
The heat of his hand radiated where I badly needed him. I resisted the urge to coax my body centimeters closer.
Fucking hell, this is torture.

  
Every cell in my body strained toward his touch, and yet I had no control.
 

  
This was the reality I fought to accept. Somehow I had to trust that he’d get us there. With that realization, something inside me released. I weakened against the table, no longer fighting the restraints. My muscles let go but my mind spun, no more in control than my body was over how badly I wanted him.
 

  
Then he touched me. Covering my pussy with the palm of his hand, he gripped me firmly.
 

  
“This is mine. You don’t come unless I want you to. Do you understand?”

  
I gazed at him, bleary eyed with my own need. I was seconds from crying for how on edge I was, as if somehow his own frustrations from the day had passed right through me.
 

  
“I’ll be whatever you need, Blake.”

  
His eyes softened a fraction at my concession. Then he entered me with two fingers. My jaw fell, releasing a gasp of relief. He twisted inside me, exploring my wet depths. Trembling, I tightened around him, wishing I had more of him there but grateful I had anything at all. He pumped gently and thumbed my clit with quick circles.
 

  
I released a small cry at the potency of that one motion, relieved and coiled up again all at once. My nerves came back to life, my flesh hot and ready for him all over again. God, the man had a gift for making me painfully aware of how much my body thrived with his touch. I caught myself when my hips lifted a fraction on their own accord.
 

  
Beg.
His demand echoed in my head, both sultry and unforgiving. My core pulsed. Blood thrummed through my veins, humming in my ears. The beginnings of an unstoppable orgasm crept up on me, and I wasn’t about to let it go. Not for pride, not for anything.
 

  
“Don’t stop. I’m begging you, please don’t stop.”
 

  
“That’s what I want to hear, baby. You want all of me in there?”

  
“God, yes.”
 

  
“Want me to let you come first?”
 

  
Colors swirled behind my eyes and every muscle tensed now with anticipation. My eyes flashed open when I realized he hadn’t yet given me explicit permission to come. I met his dark gaze, his eyelids hooded with the same brand of desire that was rushing through me at this very moment.
 

  
“Please let me. Blake, please...”

  
He lowered and caught my mouth in a rough kiss. Our lips rushed over each other, our tongues clashed and sucked. All the while his fingers continued their ministrations, gently fucking me, coaxing me to the edge. The searing pleasure of it overtook me, as if the only sense in the world came from the places where our bodies met, the pleasure he was gifting to me. And I was as grateful as I was desperate to have it. An all-consuming heat swept over me. I began to shake with the effort not to orgasm.
 

  
“Oh God,” I whimpered, losing my hold on reality, on anything. “Please, please, please.”
 

  
“Come, Erica. Right now,” he rasped into my mouth, his intimate touch deepening.
 

  
I gasped for air, arching off the table. Bound by the rope, I could hasten nothing, control nothing. The words, the order, had stripped me down. I was owned.
His.
At his mercy and command, I crashed over the edge with a wail. I clenched my fists, tight and tautly held as the climax ripped through me.
 

  
The world went silent in that perfect moment. I was still trembling when he left me. His fingers went to work loosening the rope around my ankles. Somewhere in the delirious aftermath of the orgasm, I registered relief at this new freedom. Seconds later he was fully naked, covering my body with his. He hooked my legs around his waist and with the thick head of cock against my entrance, he pressed into me a bare inch.
 

  
“I’m so fucking hard it hurts. I’m going to fuck you deep, so deep that next time you won’t forget who owns you, baby. I’ll have you coming again and again, until you trust me to give us what we both want.”
 

  
My voice was lost in my delirium. I was reeling, barely prepared for what he’d give me next. The muscles of his torso were hard and taut as he wrapped an arm around my waist. His green eyes were dark and dilated, and they locked with mine. I saw him then—the man, but also the animal that lived below the surface.
 

  
He needed this. He needed me this way.
 

  
“Blake.” I licked my lips, now dry from my ragged breathing. “Kiss me...please.”

  
The tension in his gaze, the dominant determination, gave way to something else.
 

  
And I felt it when our lips met, with more care now than before, but no less passionate. Love. I recognized it. With all his kinks and maddening control issues, I loved this man. As much as he needed this, I needed to be this for him.

  
“I love you.” The words rushed out when I broke our kiss.
 

  
Those intense eyes burned into me once more. The need that vibrated through his body seemed to still for a moment. Then he lowered again. His lips brushed over mine gently.
 

  
“I can’t breathe without you, baby. You undo me and then put me back together whole again. You take it all, and you still love me for it.”

  
The questioning in his eyes and the doubt in those last few words broke my heart a little.
 

  
“Blake...I’m yours. I want this. I want every part of you.” My throat tightened, for reasons altogether different now. Desire and a soul-wrenching love worked its way through me, radiating between us.
 

  
Our lips met again and he pushed into me, dipping his tongue into my mouth as he did. My sex gripped around him, stretching around his thick cock. Then he was deep inside me. We were so close, our souls joining as our bodies did. He withdrew and thrust again, hitting me deeper. I gasped. His body was hard above me, rippling with strain as he held back. I felt it too, that need to burst, to be engulfed in this wild desire.

  
Heat blazed in his eyes as he cupped a hand at my nape, leveraging his weight on his elbow. I locked my ankles around his waist as his bicep flexed into the flesh of my waist. Then he drove hard, just the way I wanted him to. The friction of his entry hurled me to the sharp edge of an orgasm. My jaw dropped with a soundless cry that found its voice as he pounded into me.
 

  
Hard. Fast. Merciless and rough. One of the many ways I loved having him.

  
The relentless pace had me coming again quickly. My pussy tightened around him, as I clung to his hips with my thighs. One climax crashed right into the next until he began to come with me. He ground his hips into me, pinning us to the table in a rabid race for relief, for release...my name on his lips.

I straddled Blake’s hips, massaging my thumbs over the protruding muscles of his shoulders. His muscles barely gave, and I wondered if I was having any effect on him at all. Then he breathed out a soft moan. I smiled and lowered so my front covered his back. I kissed his skin, breathing in the fragrance of the lotion mingled with his scent. By some magic of nature, my own muscles let go. His musk, the sweat from our lovemaking, nearly overwhelmed me. I could lie like this and smell the man all damn day.
 

  
“You smell amazing.” I pressed my lips against him, kissing him, inhaling him.

  
He released a soft chuckle.
 

  
I darted my tongue out to taste him, like the smell of him wasn’t enough. As if getting screwed to oblivion on a dining room table, bound like the bad little submissive I was, wasn’t enough. Blake Landon was my drug, my obsession—a habit I had no intentions of ever quitting.
 

  
I worshipped him with my lips and my teeth. I massaged him, my fingers trailing over him with the same kind of obsession.
 

  
In a flash, he bucked me off and I was on my back, his gorgeous naked body between my legs.

  
“Are you trying to get fucked again? Because if you are, you’re doing a damn good job of it.”
 

  
I giggled. He smiled broadly, capturing my wrists on either side of my head. He rubbed the tender spots where the rope had bitten into me.
 

  
Recognizing a whisper of familiar worry in his features, I slipped out of his grasp. I cupped his cheeks, holding his focus on me. “I’m fine. Don’t start with the guilt, okay?”
 

  
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  
“Trust me, I didn’t feel a thing. In the heat of the moment, all I can feel are your hands on me, you inside me. It’s all consuming. Something that might hurt normally just adds an edge to whatever pleasure you’re giving me. And you know damn well I like it, so don’t start acting like I’m some wounded kitten.”

  
“But it hurts you now. What if you bruise?”

  
“Who cares? I won’t fight so hard next time. You wanted to teach me a lesson, didn’t you?” I shifted my hips beneath him, teasing him as his erection throbbed hot against my belly. I twisted my lips into a crooked grin. I wanted playful Blake, and I wasn’t about to let him fall back into shaming his needs—needs that were quickly becoming mine too.
 

  
After what I’d been through with the man who’d raped me four years ago, I never thought I’d be able to give someone the kind of control I’d given Blake. But he’d shown me how to enjoy letting go. He’d opened my eyes to the craving, to something deeper and infinitely more intense than anything I’d ever experienced.
 

  
I fought for control only to have him strip me of it in that masterful way that he always did. He broke me down until I was mindless with desire, and I didn’t want it any other way now. I couldn’t imagine it.
 

  
I ran two fingers over the frown that curved his brow. “What’s eating you, anyway? You seemed upset earlier.”

  
He rolled off of me and onto his back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. Before I could press him, a door slammed and I heard muffled voices. I hopped up quickly, shut the bedroom door, and locked it. I joined Blake back on the bed, snuggling into the nook of his arm. I tossed my leg lazily over his strong thigh.
 

  
A loud thud from the hallway in the apartment echoed through the room. The sound was followed by a woman’s giggle and then a moan. I smirked. Alli and Heath were at it again, but who was I to talk?
 

  
Thank God they hadn’t walked in on Blake’s little stunt in the dining room. I couldn’t imagine explaining any of that to Alli. She was still mercifully in the dark about all of Blake’s kinks and quirks in the bedroom, and at least for now, I’d rather it stay that way.
 

  
“We should take a trip,” Blake said suddenly.
 

  
I sighed. “I’m sure they’ll get a place soon.”
 

  
“Not soon enough. Plus, we haven’t been away together since...well, since Vegas. We could use a long weekend. I want to spend some time with you. Just us. No distractions.”