Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 3: His Submissive (5 page)

“Yes, Master,” I panted.

“I chose it because I knew you wanted me to. Because it’s my job to know what you want. What is your safe word?”

“Red,” I answered.

“Say it again.”

“Red.”

“Use it and I stop. Understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

He began to massage my backside. Anticipation burned inside me. I knew the first blow would come soon but not from which toy, and my sex clenched and ached. My nipples tightened. His hand left my body and I sensed him take a step back. I held my breath and waited to discover if the flogger or the crop would come first. The first light smack of flat leather sent a spike of adrenaline through me. A series of repeated smacks to my backside immediately followed. None of them hurt, but my skin heated and I became so wet and needy that my thighs clenched against the emptiness I needed filled.

Without warning the long leather tassels of the flogger splayed over my backside, heavier than the crop, sending waves of sensation through me. A motion of leather on skin repeated over and over, and the room faded, and all ability to think began to disappear. It was heaven, freedom from worry, from the outside world. From the need to control anything at all. I gave in to the sensations. I wanted my mind to become a blank canvas. I craved more of the prickling pain that morphed moments later to pleasure. And he gave me more, using the crop in short, gentle pats on my breasts, between my thighs, and on my legs.

I barely remember the moment he dropped the crop and the flogger and untied my wrists. I only know that I was suddenly weak, exhausted both physically and emotionally. I collapsed against him and he lifted me, carrying me from the room. I curled into him, his warm body my cocoon, and I didn’t even question where he was taking me. I’d given myself to him some time back under that archway.

Our destination turned out to be a bedroom off the main room, where dim lights cast a glow on the massive bed. I melted into the velvety-soft blanket beneath me and rolled to my side, off my sore back and backside. My Master slid into bed behind me, and began to kiss every single place he’d used the leather on. He was gentle, worshipping my body, kissing me, telling me how beautiful I was. How perfect I’d been under the archway. Amazingly, time had, once again, stood still, and the sting of the leather faded. I was lost in my Master, in the way he commanded my body. Yes. In that bed, I knew him as Master more than I ever had, and I understood the escape that came from giving him that control, and the pleasure he promised would come with it. At some point I faded off to sleep, into a blissful, sated state of wonder.

•   •   •

I
woke up this morning in his private chambers, with him wrapped around me, holding me. I remember so very clearly the moment I inhaled the luxurious male scent of him, absorbing the delicious weight of him pressed to me. And I remember blinking in surprise as the velvet box came into focus on the blanket in front of me, open to display the ring. My throat tightened at the sight and I sat up, the blanket falling to my waist, displaying my naked body.

My Master raised up on one arm and leaned in to lick my nipple, the intimate act sending ripples of pleasure through my aching, satisfied body. “Now or never,” he challenged me with a hot, intense stare. “Isn’t that what you said yesterday?”

I had, and there was no hesitation in my reply. Not after the way he’d made love to me the night before and known exactly what I needed, what I craved. “Now” I reached for the ring, sliding it onto my finger.

He leaned down and kissed it. “And now,” he said, possessiveness in his tone, “you belong to me.”

I belong to him. Despite his saying this to me before, the ring, the finality of our agreement, hit me with a bit of a shock. I belonged to someone else?

“Say it, Rebecca.”

I blinked at the order and realized that this was the real test—not last night. This was the moment I would give him my ultimate trust. It was terrifying. I’d only given that kind of complete trust to my mother, and she’d betrayed me in the end.

But I’d taken a leap of faith when I’d taken the job at the gallery, and it had paid off.

I was in too deep with him now not to take a leap with him. But I prayed then—and I pray now—that he deserves it.

I drew in a breath and breathed out the words that gave him all that power over me. “I belong to you.”

Click through for an exclusive sneak peek at Lisa Renee Jones’s sizzling next installment to the Inside Out trilogy

Being Me

Available June 2013 from Gallery Books

The idea that I’ve convinced myself he is less controlling than he is has my heels colliding heavily on the driveway. I charge toward his car, the same car I’ve let myself drive instead of holding on to my own identity. I don’t look his direction but damn him, I can feel him all over, everywhere, inside and out, and in intimate places I can’t convince my body he isn’t welcome. It’s beyond frustrating to know that anger this potent isn’t enough to stop the thrum of awareness that just being near him creates.

Not for the first time, I feel Rebecca’s words from that first journal entry I’d read deep in my soul.
He was lethal, a drug I feared.
I relate to her, and I understand the inescapable passion she felt and lost herself inside. I don’t want to be her. I’m not her. And for the first time since my initial first few encounters with this man, I wonder if I am drawn to him because I’m self-destructive, and he to me for the same reason.

Suddenly he is there, at eye level, as he had been the first night we’d met, when I’d spilled my purse. My gaze lifts and meets his, and a blast of awareness shakes me to the core. My breasts are heavy, my thighs achy. My skin tingles. A fine line between love and hate, Alvarez had said, and I understand the words in this moment. I stare into his eyes and I wonder if he too is thinking about the night we met and the many ways we’ve made love. The many we have not and I want us to, when I should not. I should be seeking space, independence, and my own identity, which he is threatening by taking over my life. It makes no sense how I feel in these eternal moments. How can I be this furious with him and still powerfully, completely lost in him?

“We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he asks, breaking the spell. His tone is low, and the rasp of anger in his voice is impossible to miss. It jolts me back to reality. He showed up at my client’s house and
he’s
angry with
me
?

My temper overpowers all other emotions in me and I reach for the key. His hand closes over mine and heat races up my arm and over my chest. “Don’t do what you did tonight ever again, Sara.”

The sharp command in his voice hits a bull’s-eye on every physiological male dominance issue I own, of which there are many. I try to pull my hand back but I am captive to his grip, leaving me with words as my only weapon. “Ditto to you. And yeah. We have a lot to talk about—somewhere
other
than my client’s front yard.”

His eyes glint fire a moment before he releases my hand and helps me to my feet. There is a possessiveness to his touch that has me leaning into him when I should be shoving him away. He notices, too; I see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes, the gleam of satisfaction in their depths that I both hunger for and reject.

“I’ll follow you to my place,” he informs me.

“I have no doubt you will.” I click the key clicker to unlock the car. I’m about to open the door when his hand comes down on it, and he leans close, so close his breath is warm on my neck and ear. That woodsy scent of him, which I could luxuriate in for a lifetime, permeates my senses, tearing down my already weak defenses.

His hip nudges mine. “Don’t think for a minute that when we pull up to my apartment, you’re going to ask for your car and leave.”

It is all I can do to fight him when he touches me. Purposely, I do not look at him, certain all my resolve to distance myself from him will crumble. “If I decide to leave, you can’t stop me.”

“Try me, baby. You’re coming up to my apartment.”

I whirl on him.“I don’t want—”

“I do,” he vows, and before I know his intent, his fingers twine into my hair and he pulls me into his arms, against his hard, warm body.

“Let go,” I hiss, my hand flattening on his chest. I intend to push him away, but the heat of his body seeps through my palm, radiating up my arm. My elbow softens, and I am instantly closer but not close enough.

“Not a chance,” he promises, his mouth closing on mine, firm with demand. His tongue licks into my mouth with one brutal, commanding swipe followed by another, and I have no resistance left. I’m weak, so very weak, for this man. As always with him, he demands my response and I helplessly respond. I am instantly wet and wanting, my nipples tight points of aching need.

I try to resist the lure that is this man, but the taste of him, familiar and almost brutally male, mixes with his anger and mine, and the effect is explosively passionate. I want to shout at him, push him away, pull him close, strip away his clothes, and punish him for what he is doing to me, what he takes from me. What he makes me need.

When his lips part from mine, too soon and not soon enough, I barely fight the urge to pull him back. “Was that for the cameras?” I pant at him, furious at myself for such weakness.

“That was because you scared the shit out of me when you didn’t answer your phone. I don’t give a damn about the cameras.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and his hand slides under my jacket, over my backside, pulling me flush against his thick erection.

I whimper, impossibly aroused, and my hands slip beneath the thick leather of his jacket, wrapping his waist. His hand caresses up my back, molding me tighter to him, branding me with heat and fire and sizzling passion that threaten to steal all the reason I possess. No man has ever made me forget where I am, forget why I should care.

“That,” he says roughly, when he pulls back again, “was for the past twelve hours that I should have been thinking about business. Instead, I was incessantly thinking about pink paddles, butterfly nipple clamps, and all the places I’m going to lick, kiss, and now, you can bet, punish you when we get home.”

I almost moan again from his words and have no idea how I manage enough coherent thought to issue a warning, but somehow I do. “If you think sex is going to make this argument go away, you’re wrong.”

“You couldn’t be more right, but it’s a good place to start and end the enlightening conversation you can bet your sweet little ass we’re going to have.” He sets me back from him and away from the door enough to open it. “Let’s go home where I can fuck what you’ve made me feel out of my system and you can do the same.”

Staring up at him, a million things I might say or do are wiped out by the word
home
replaying in my head. He keeps using that word, and it affects me when he does; it affects me in a deep, painfully real way that leaves me raw and vulnerable.
He
leaves me raw and vulnerable.

When I don’t move, he pulls me close again, caresses my hair,and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Get in the car, Sara,” he orders softly, and as always—though I’m fairly certain he’d disagree—I do as he tells me.

Also by Lisa Renee Jones

If I Were You

Rebecca’s Lost Journals, Volume 1: The Seduction

Rebecca’s Lost Journals, Volume 2: The Contract

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