Out of Control (16 page)

The simple need for food propelled them through a slice apiece, and partway into another, before they got distracted by another sort of primal hunger.

A long string of cheese dripped down toward her chest. Jen yelped as the warm cheese struck her skin. It wasn’t anywhere near hot enough to burn, but the sensation made her jump.

Not nearly as much as it did when Drake, his expression solemn but his eyes merry, captured that strand of mozzarella and wrapped it around her left nipple. Careful as a cat, he licked away the trail of sauce and oil the cheese had left on her breast, licked until she squirmed and spluttered and swallowed as quickly as she could. Jen sighed, threw her head back and gave herself over to the experience. Drake’s mouth worked down to her cheese-topped nipple, captured it. Lips and tongue worked in concert, pulling her nipple into his mouth, suckling, tormenting. He got his teeth into the act, nibbling gently, then biting down. “Savory,” he murmured, his voice reverberating around the sensitive flesh. “Nipple pizza could be a new taste sensation.”

He smeared a bit of sauce on the other nipple, shockingly warm but nowhere near as hot as the mouth that clamped over it. She writhed, moaned. Her legs spread, without any thought on her part. Drake started to kiss his way down her body, then paused. “My fingers are messy,” he said.

“As if I care.” Then she got the hint. With great care, she cleaned his fingers of sauce and olive oil. She took each long finger deep into her mouth, sucking and licking, teasing them as she would a cock. Drake seemed in no hurry for her to get done, as he offered all ten of his fingers for her treatment in turn. Some of them were perfectly clean, but she still took her time.

Only when his fingers were mess-free did he continue his path down her body. Each lick and kiss brightened the crimson swirling behind her eyelids and added to the tight coil of need that centered between her legs but threatened to grow until it filled her whole body. Drake’s hands pushed her thighs farther apart, and though she opened them more than willingly, she allowed herself a hint of resistance just to feel his strength.

Strength enough that he could harm her, but she knew he wouldn’t. He’d already shown he’d hurt her, in interesting and delightful ways. Just thinking about the ways he’d already given her sweet pain pushed her arousal hotter and brighter, blue-white flames of sheer need flickering among the scarlet, crimson and orange.

When Drake’s hot mouth covered her clit, Jen cried out with the simple bliss of the contact. Not an orgasm, but in its own way a release, one that she hadn’t realized how much she needed until she reached it. His hands were hard on her thighs, gripping her as if she might try to get away, and his mouth was firm on her slick flesh, devouring her as if she and not the abandoned pizza was the real food. His tongue swirled over her clit, sweet yet relentless, pushing her toward a brink she yearned to reach, but doing it with agonizing, slow care. His beard and mustache brushed against her, adding yet another sensation. Fire built inside her. Her muscles wound tight. The flames behind her eyelids reached a conflagration point. She mewled her need but couldn’t find the words to beg, not even a simple
please
. She bucked against his tongue, seeking that final stimulation that would let her come.

Drake pulled back, and Jen wanted to curse. She heard rustling, though, a distinctive cellophane sound, and she held back that curse for fear it would be counterproductive.

It was forever and at the same time no more than a breath before Drake sank his hard cock into her, one stroke sheathing him fully inside her. The conflagration inside her mind became a volcano, molten red erupting everywhere, and she shook and clenched and called Drake’s name as she wrapped her legs around his slim hips. Instinctively, she tried to wrap her arms around him as well, but the ropes that restrained her brought her up short. She hadn’t forgotten the ropes, but the stark reminder pushed her impossibly higher. “Oh my God,” she cried as another molten explosion claimed her. “Oh God, Drake. Yes. More.”

“Won’t last long,” he murmured. “Too hot.”

“Don’t care. Fuck me, sir. Please fuck me hard.” Jen wasn’t sure where the
sir
came from, but it felt right slipping from her lips, and she was rewarded by Drake pistoning into her. She watched his face, the effort to retain some vestige of control surrendering to sensation, fierce and intent and wild. The way she knew he was on the inside, no matter how he might try to hide it.

In the end, the lava flow of her final orgasm hid Drake’s climax face, but she thought, once her eyes focused again, that he looked relaxed, at peace in a way she’d rarely seen him.

He untied her, rubbed her wrists tenderly. “You have rope marks.” He pressed his lips to them, first right, then left.

“Lucky me. Hope they last.”

“They’ll be gone by morning, but we can try sometime for marks that will last, in a place where no one but us will see.”

Jen had thought she was spent, but the sultry promise in his voice brought on an answering clench and a sudden, urgent need to experience how he’d make those marks. As she reached out to him, though, he turned and grabbed himself a piece of by-now cold pizza. “Want some?” he asked before taking a bite.

“I’ll wait for breakfast. Something else I’d rather eat at the moment.” His cock was relaxed, but she knew she could get it hard again if he’d just let her take it in her mouth. She moved in that direction, but Drake caught her with a restraining hand.

“Greedy. I like the idea, but let a guy catch his breath and finish his dinner.”

Jen tried for a seductive smile. The effect was spoiled by a yawn that even the thought of Drake’s cock in her mouth or his toys marking her skin couldn’t suppress.

Drake set the pizza down. “I’ll take a rain check on that blowjob until you’re awake. Let me tuck you into your own bed.” He reached out a hand. “I’m not sure we’ll let each other sleep otherwise. And it’s still early for me to go to bed, but you need to catch up after your crazy schedule the last few days.”

She considered pulling him down onto the bed with her—not that she thought she could budge that tall, hard body unless he cooperated, but since his cock was twitching despite his good intentions, she might succeed. Considered being insulted that he didn’t want to share a bed with her.

Considered how hard Drake’s futon was, and how familiar and comfy her own bed was, and how pretty it was when the morning sun burst through the stained glass. He might have a point that she’d sleep better there. Then again, Drake was hard in all the right ways… Hard and gorgeous enough to make her say sleep was for the weak and feeble.

Except she’d been saying that for several days, and now she was one of the weak and feeble. She was exhausted, and working with hot glass when she was asleep on her feet was stupid. At best, she’d mess up the glass. At worst, well, she couldn’t afford a hospital bill.

Jen sighed, took Drake’s hand and let him pull her to her feet. His arms closed around her, and he kissed the top of her head. Desire shot through her fatigue and the haze of sleep. She pressed her hips forward, trying to make more contact. Instead, he let her go, one arm around slipping down to her waist, and urged her toward the connecting door. With his free hand, he grabbed one of the pizza boxes.

Chapter Thirteen

Jen protested and kept half trying to seduce him even after he got her back to her part of the house. But once she snuggled into her own bed, between blue sheets almost the color of the lake in the stained glass window, her multicolored hair tangled on a pillowcase striped in white and that same deep blue, her eyes closed and her whole body slumped with relaxation.

Drake backed up a few steps and watched her silently until her breathing slowed to sleep. God, she was beautiful. She even slept sexily, her body sprawled in abandon, one perfect breast exposed.

Drake forced himself to walk away and shut the door behind him. He put the pizza into her fridge. Then he returned to his own side of the house, slumped onto his own bed and heaved a sigh that mixed regret and relief. The sheets were rumpled with sex and smelled of Jen, of Jen and him together, and that hint of rut was enough to make him hard again. Even the lingering pizza scent and the crumbs in the bed were erotic under the circumstances.

Which meant he’d done the right thing to send her back to her own solitary bed. He needed to be out the door not much after dawn if he was going to have time to run and hit the dojo before his nine a.m. class, and Jen, by her own admission, had done nothing more than catch a catnap in the past thirty-six hours. They’d never actually
sleep
if they tried to sleep together, and fun as that would be, it wouldn’t be good for either of them. Wouldn’t be responsible, and he needed to be responsible for Jen.

Even if all his instincts didn’t want him to be.

Half against his will, he pictured waking up with Jen in his arms, and from there to the long rope that he’d use to tie her to the bed by her ankle before they settled down to sleep together in the first place. He’d make it long enough that she could reach the bathroom, but short enough that she’d know she was bound to the bed. Bound to him.

Some long-suppressed primal part of him prompted that Jen was his and he should claim her. It didn’t add up. It wasn’t logical. They’d known each other only briefly, and he’d never felt anything like this for playmates he’d known far longer.

He wasn’t in the habit of trusting his instincts. Mathematics was all about reason and logic, thinking things through step by step to the correct conclusion. And he’d seen enough of his father screwing up other people’s lives as a result of trusting his gut. Drake was not about to follow in those footsteps.

Makoto always said how important it was to be open to flow. Drake could do that during a bout— move on instinct and somehow know what his opponent was going to do without consciously thinking about it. But Makoto meant the advice about flow to apply to all of life, not just to kendo, and Drake had always sucked at that. Maybe what he felt for Jen, this urgent, deep-seated sense she was
his
, was him finally sensing flow when he didn’t have a shinai in his hands.

Which was pretty awesome, once he got past the heart-pounding panic that trusting his intuition brought on.

Or maybe he was deluding himself like his father had so many times, seeing a connection that wasn’t there.

Which meant, gut instinct or not, he had to be cautious. Jen was having a good time with him in bed, but sometimes that didn’t mean anything more than you had great sexual chemistry that might peter out if there was no other connection.

Even if he was correct in his sense they were meant to be together, it was way too soon to think about a future that included Jen as a permanent part of his life, whether girlfriend, slave or something in between those extremes.

Through all the meandering thoughts, though, Drake clung to one consolation. If Jen was his in some sense, that would include caring for her and protecting her, even if it meant protecting her from his own dumber impulses and hers. Sending her to her own bed for a night of good sleep had been the right thing to do.

But it would have been sweet to slip into her as dawn broke, maybe pushing them both to a quick climax, maybe just enjoying the feel of her hot, gripping cunt for a few moments before they both started their days, a sweet promise for later.

Damn it. Just when he’d started to relax. Taking a deep breath, he headed to his cool, spare front room that didn’t smell of Jen. There he sat cross-legged on the bare wood floor and began to meditate.

It was a long time before images of Jen cleared his head.

But they finally did, long enough to let him get a bit of prep done for the summer class he was teaching. Long enough that he was able to settle down in a bed that still smelled like a cross between a pizzeria and a bordello and drift off to sleep with a smile on his lips.

He woke still smiling, with a morning wood that had Jen’s name on it. Tempting as it was to wake her in the best way possible, he resisted. It was just past sunrise, and Jen needed her rest.

Jen woke with a start. She hadn’t consciously heard Drake’s door shut, but she knew she was alone in the house.

Multicolored light was streaming through the stained glass window, but instead of basking in the rainbowed rays, she jumped from bed and peered out the window that faced the street.

Drake was running up the hill, his long legs devouring the sidewalk. The sun was still rising, and its rosy light silhouetted him. He’d gotten a good distance already, but there was no mistaking the lean lines of his body, the set of his shoulders.

It was a beautiful early summer morning, all soft blue sky, bright green grass, deeper, dappling green of leaves, punctuated by the violets and yellows and roses and deep reds of flower gardens. Somehow Drake’s running form changed it from a generic pretty scene to a picture, giving it focus and meaning.

Yeah, she had it bad. He was just a guy jogging. Another woman might notice Drake’s great legs and broad shoulders as he ran by, but while she might think,
Hot man
, it wouldn’t change the way she saw the rest of the scene around him.

Finally, Drake was out of sight, and Jen flung herself back down onto the bed for a few precious seconds. She wasn’t working at any of her damn day jobs today, which gave her some flexibility, but she still had a lot to do. Finish unpacking or at least place some artwork around the apartment. Make grab-and-go food so she wouldn’t end up starving in the studio. Research god and goddess imagery for the paired pieces she had in mind. Pack up a couple of small pieces she’d sold on Etsy and get them into the mail. And of course, head back to the studio.