Mutual Release (34 page)

She leaned back as he leaned forward and touched the hand she had resting on the table. “Okay, Mr. Mysterious, what’s up with you?” But he sensed she was nervous; he could smell it on her, and it nearly made him insane. Wondering just how he would manage being so in tune with a woman who had the potential to make his life a living hell while showing him the brightest parts of heaven, he took a deep breath.

“I have spent the last nearly fifteen years frequenting clubs which support my sexual preferences, my… lifestyle. As a Dom. While it does involve physical urges and requirements, it’s more than that. My personality demands I… be in control.”

She stared at him, blinked once. “Well, okay then.” She sipped, but her hand shook, rattling the glass when she set it on the table.

He leaned forward and put his entire hand over hers. She calmed, and closed her eyes. “I know you sense something about me. Like just now, when I touched you. And your heart stopped pounding so hard.” She opened her eyes, looked shocked for a half second, then frowned. He kept going, figuring he may as well lay the whole thing out for her now.

“So the things you need to know about me relative to this are,” he held up fingers as he counted, “one. I like it rough. Two. I’m in control in the bedroom. I set the stage, I call the shots. You will have an orgasm – several of them, but only when I tell you to. Three. I don’t share. You’re mine. And four. You have to trust me. Completely. And that is going to be hard for you, I can tell.” He narrowed his eyes, deciding to jump in with both feet, caution be damned. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to you that makes you cry out in your sleep?”

She tried to pull her hand out from under his but he gripped it harder, holding her in place. She bit her lip, blinked fast, and he felt her anxiety rise to a near fever pitch.

“Julie,” he whispered, leaning even further over the small table, “who hurt you?” Even as he heard the words come from his mouth he regretted them. It was too much too soon. She wasn’t ready to trust him and he’d fucking blown it by jumping right into her worst nightmare and demanding she share it with him.

He let go of her hand and sat back, trying to calm the wild thrumming of his own pulse. Her eyes were dark, her leg shook under the table, and he knew he’d lost her, at least for the next few hours.
Goddamn, Adams. What made you think that was the right approach? You know how skittish she is, and it’s obviously because someone has really hurt her physically, emotionally, something. And not her gay husband either.

He looked around. Time to break the moment. “So, there you go. You done? I’m sick of this place. Let’s go to that club you were telling me about.” He stood. She sat a moment, staring at him, her face unreadable. The way a slow, seductive smile spread across her face told him one thing – he was doomed, at least for tonight.

“Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. She had on the slinky, curve-hugging black Versace and the mile-high shoes which laced up her ankle. “Let’s go.” She stepped right up to him, eye-level thanks to the shoes, and put her hand to his face. The heat of her skin made him want to gasp. But he didn’t. He let her run her finger along his jaw, down his neck, and across his shoulder. And when his ever-vigilant cock sprang back to attention, he grabbed her ass and pressed her close.

“Yeah, you do this to me. It’s part of our… dynamic… if you will. I’m a walking boner whenever you’re around. Lucky for you,” he bit her earlobe hard and she squirmed against him as her arms went around his neck, “my control over this will have everything to do with your pleasure. But don’t fuck with me, Julie. I’ll know it when you do. We clear?”

She jerked away, glaring at him, and stomped out, leaving him standing alone. He grabbed the shawl she’d left behind and his coat and followed her out.

Chapter Three

From there, the night progressed pretty much as Evan expected – straight downhill. The twenty-block cab ride was tense at best until just before they arrived, when Julie put a hand on his thigh and gripped it. But she kept her eyes forward when she spoke, as if afraid to look at him – or too freaked out, one or the other.

“I… um… I’ve never met anyone like you, Evan. And while on one level I will grant you that something about you makes me calm in ways I don’t understand, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask me that question again.” She looked straight at him then and the message in her eyes was one of desperation tinged with something he only understood a few hours later. “What happened to me is in the past. I don’t dwell on it or worry about it or chat about it with guys who… who… just told me they have to tie me up and spank me to get off.”

He stayed still, aware that the cab driver was sitting quietly, letting the meter run at the curb. Her grip tightened and sent a clear signal up his spine. This night was going to be about what Julie had to prove. He squared his shoulders. That was fine. She could act out, act up, prove shit all she wanted. He knew what he wanted and was determined to have it.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he’d figured that out – whether it was sitting in the river with her, or in his bar while she told him part of the story about her fake marriage, or when he’d come within seconds of fucking her silly in her office before dragging her out on this trip. But he had, and looking back he would actually see this moment, sitting with her in the cab as her fury and frustration and fear pulsed between them like a living creature, as the moment he knew he wanted her and would do everything in his power to make it work. No matter how long it took.

Finally, he grazed the hand still gripping his leg, just a light touch of his fingertips. She released him and started to climb out, but he grabbed her arm, loving the perfect smoothness of her skin and the heat she radiated. “Fair enough,” he said, keeping his voice low. “But I don’t spank you to get off, Julie.” He tugged her back, expecting resistance and getting none. She leaned right into him, turned her face and tempting lips to his. “Open your eyes,” he demanded, getting pissed off at himself for slipping. “One day, when you’re ready and able to handle it, I will show you it’s about you… all of it. From start to finish. I just will be the one calling all the shots, and you,” he squeezed her arm for emphasis, not too tight, but enough to let her know he was serious, “you will reap the benefits. But,” he let go of her and caught her when she collapsed back into him, briefly, before hurling herself up and out of the cab so fast he was impressed, “I decide when you’re ready.”

She yanked money out of her purse and handed it to the cab driver, leaving Evan to follow her again. But he didn’t care. The view was great from his angle, and he was determined to enjoy her little show. He was willing to bet it would be a real doozy.

* * * *

Things started well enough. He handed some barely-dressed waif of a woman a hundred dollar bill, and she guided them to a semi-private table and plunked down a bottle of bourbon and two glasses at his request. The place was so loud he could hardly hear himself think. The flashing lights and array of human perfection displayed on the dance floor combined to give him an instant headache. Clubs like this were not his scene, but Julie looked enthralled, taking it all in, sipping the bourbon.

After staring out into the mob for a few minutes, she stood and grabbed his hand. “C’mon, Country Club, show me what ya got.”

He knocked back the remaining liquor in his glass and joined her and the rest of Manhattan, it seemed, for about an hour, dancing, grinding, and generally getting so worked up watching Julie’s body move to the overtly sexual dance music that when she turned around and put her arms around his neck while she rubbed her ass against his crotch, he gave in to it.

The flashing lights only gave him half-shots of the people around him. He saw arms, legs, faces, lips, hands, and everybody doing the same thing he and Julie were – dry-humping or in some form of even more obvious sexual maneuvers.

The whole scene was too surreal. The alcohol he had churning through his system and his general overwrought state made him go way outside himself. He leaned into her sweaty neck, licked it, tasted her salt. She kept grinding back, wiggling her hips and ass. He reached around and cupped a full breast, and she arched back more, giving him all the access he wanted. The heavy curve felt perfect in his hand, and her nipple peaked when he ran his thumb over the fabric.

“You are enough to make every man in here mad with lust,” he said into her ear, pleased when her skin pebbled. He let his hand slide down further, find the hem of the thin dress. The music shifted gears, going from wild and heart-thumping to sensual and sinuous.

He slid his hand up her thigh, groaning inwardly, knowing he’d done worse than this in front of people, but somehow not wanting it this way. A possessive shaft of anger lit his brain on fire when he looked up from kissing and licking her neck and caught the eye of a tall, good-looking guy staring straight at them – no, at her, Julie, his woman. He stopped, turned her to face him, and laid the kind of kiss on her that made them both breathless and dizzy. She responded, keeping her body moving to the music, those glorious breasts mashed against his chest. She grabbed his ass, held on tight, then broke away, the flashing lights making her eyes glow, disappear, then glow again.

The fury spreading through him took hold and he pulled her off the dance floor, plunked her back in the chair at their table, and poured them each another too-healthy drink. She clinked his glass and knocked the entire thing back in one gulp, then stood, took his glass, and did the same with it. He watched, knowing he’d made this particular bed and would have to wallow in it. Not a bit surprised when she leaned down, giving him a full view of both breasts, dark-tipped nipples and all, before kissing him, shoving her tongue into his mouth, then breaking away with a bite to his lower lip.

“Nobody controls me, Evan Adams. The sooner you figure that out, the better off we’ll be.” She swayed to the gut-churning music, put her legs on either side of his and sat, slow and sexy, easing her very warm and very damp panty-covered sex over his familiar erection.

Hell, he’d never sustained this much near-constant wood since his freshman year of high school. But he laid his head back, kept his hands and arms off her while she gave him a very tempting lap dance. After counting backwards from fifty, he lifted her chin and made her look at him.

“I don’t want to control you, Julie. I don’t need to. I want you to trust me so I can be more to you than just… this.” He grabbed her hips and thrust upwards, miming the sexual act, once more making his eyes burn and his spine crackle with a need to fuck her. “I will control the parts of you that need it. And you’ll let me… someday.”

He relaxed under her, ran his hands up her bare arms, brushed them across her breasts once more then put both of her hands to his lips. “Go on, dance some more. I need a little break.” He winced. Her smile went from confused to wicked in a split second before she jumped up, kissed him lightly, and made her way back to the teeming mass of humanity in the middle of the room.

He tried to keep watch for her, the nearly apoplectic possessive Dom who had been tap-tapping against his brain for the last couple of months causing him to break out in a cold sweat. But it was too crowded. There were too many gorgeous blond women in little black dresses out there. When he realized it had been over an hour since he’d laid eyes on her, he stood, drank a glass of water, and made his way down from the tables to the floor.

He shouldered his way through, let a fair number of sexy girls dance around him, grab his ass, as he looked for her. Thinking he’d found her, he came up behind a tall woman in a black dress with long blond hair, but it wasn’t her. Waving away that girl’s invitation to stay and dance, he kept moving, his heart thudding in his chest, worry gnawing at his brain.

After three passes through the crowd from different directions, he started for the back hall where the restrooms were. Then he heard it – her distinct laugh, rough and loud and clear as a bell. He turned, his eyes finding her immediately. She sat at the bar, leaning on one elbow and batting her eyelashes at that tool of a boy who had been staring at them earlier. Fury blinded him as he made his way over, but it seemed as though the entire population of the teeming club chose that moment to walk between them in a steady line of drunk and drunker people. He lost sight of her at one point and had to take a huge breath to quell the rising panic.

Finally, he stood about three feet to her left and behind, watching, daring her to not notice him. She sat up straighter, flicked her hair back, and picked up the martini glass in front of her, tossing back whatever clear alcohol it contained. The tall, smarmy boy plucked out the olive from the bottom of it and put it to her lips. She leaned over and let him feed it to her, then let him run a finger down her face.

Evan clenched his fists, counted to twenty, and in that time knew he had to handle this as an adult, not the raging monster about to explode from his chest. He got about a foot closer, heard her giggle, hiccup, and say, “Oh, don’t be silly. You don’t want to dance with me. You just wanna fu – ”