The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan (14 page)

“That’s what sex is to you?”

He smiled. “I’m a man, Nyxie. It doesn’t need to be more than that to me.”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “I’m annoyed that Emily knows. By the way, you are not sending her the pictures. But how can I be mad that I get to be your first. I kind of feel badly your first time won’t be with someone you’re deeply in love with, but that’s not going to nullify our bargain.”

“I haven’t been
saving
myself,” she said making air quotes over the word
saving
. “It just hasn’t happened yet. When Mama disappeared, I had no choice but take responsibility for Cody. I haven’t had time for boyfriends—not that I’ve had many offers—but I’ve never bothered flirting ‘cause I know it’s not going anywhere.”

After slipping her phone in his pocket, he took her hands in his and stepped close to her. “I’ll make it special for you, I promise. We’ll wait for something we want to celebrate, Cody’s first words after waking up, you getting your GED or license, me having forty-eight hours off, Tuesday. Anything.”

She nodded. “It might take months to get my GED or license. That would hardly be fair to short you in our arrangement. Maybe that should be our start date for our year.”

He smiled. “That really takes the pressure off us to hurry up and get fucking, doesn’t it?”

Her face reddened as a shy smile came to her lips. “Yeah.”

“But I don’t want to leave it open-ended like that—otherwise you might think you can put me off for six months. Two months. I’ll wait up to two months, but I want you in my bed every night I’m home and with me in the residents’ bed in the hospital, at least until Cody gets out of intensive care.”

“Just until then?” Her confusion showed on her face.

“Well, after that if you want, but I just want to make sure you’re not sleeping in a chair. The regular rooms—especially the pediatric rooms—have couches or recliners. I still want you to come home with me at night when I’m at home.”

“Okay.” Nyxie realized how little sleep he’d had the night before and checked the red display on the alarm clock. “It’s nearly one,” she said excitedly.

She scurried about the room putting clothes and her toiletries in a pair of grocery bags. She threw a pair of jeans
and a T-shirt on the bed.

Declan frowned at the worn out gray shirt. He went to the closet and pushed aside two pink uniforms identical to the one she’d been wearing and rifled through the remaining clothes. With a grin, he pulled out a white ribbed tank top and a crop top that looked like it belonged to Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. He held them up to her.

“Cody’s and Lotus’s,” she said pointing. “I already have mine.”

“Pick one; I want you to wear one with those jeans.”

“No. I bought those at a garage sale. They looked like they would fit, but when I got them home and tried them on, I realized they were low-rise—I mean,
really
low-rise—the kind that barely covers my crack and bush. I need to wear a long shirt with them.”

“Don’t talk back to me. I said pick one.”

In a flash, Declan was gone replaced by her Dom. As her brown eyes met his gray-green eyes, she realized there was no point in arguing. She looked between the two shirts and picked the one that covered more of her. “Cody’s tank.”

Declan pulled it off the hanger and put the other top and the empty hanger back in the closet.

“Strip.”

15

“Here? In front of you?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed next to her jeans. The worn-out mattress sagged under his weight as if he weighed twice as much. “Yeah, consider it a little thank you for all the things that are not included in our agreement, like the phones.”

The small smile she wore fell and was replaced by little lines between her eyes. “I would have done it without you cheapening it to sexual favors for gifts.”

Nyxie stepped on the heel of her sneakers one by one to step out of them. Her face remained expressionless as she untied the wraparound tunic. It still covered her small breasts untied and hanging open but she made no move to slip it from her shoulders. One tug was all it took to untie the bottoms. She pulled at the waist and they slid unencumbered to the ground. She stepped out, then shrugged out of the shirt.

“Body of a twelve-year-old,” she said sarcastically with a wan smile. “Socks and panties, too?”

“I wasn’t going to make you, but you’re giving me so much fucking snotty attitude right now, I do want you to take them off. Not one more word, Nyxie.”

She kept her eye
s defiantly on his as she stripped naked, but his attention wasn’t on her face to see her rebellious expression. His gaze was on her body, taking in every one of her delicate curves. She expected to see repulsion but she didn’t. His expression gave nothing away.

“Lace your hands behind your neck and come stand in front of me.”

He saw her shift her weight away from him ever so slightly, making him acutely aware of her reluctance. “Now.”

It only took another second before she had complied with his wishes. Her face was
now as emotionless as his. If not for his shallow breathing, she would not have known he was at all affected by her body.

“Move your legs apart.” He lightly tapped the inside of her foot with his.

“Are we celebrating Tuesday?” she asked as she sidestepped a few inches.

He reached around her and gave her a slap on the ass making her jump. “I told you to be quiet. I just want to touch it. I want to feel your hymen.”

His hand started at her mons, his middle finger breaching the folds as he reached further, sliding over her slick clit to her the opening of her vagina. With a slight pressure, his finger slowly eased forward until he touched the thin membrane. His smile started small, but grew across his handsome face. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“Hurting me? No. Embarrassing the hell out of me? Yes.” She dropped her hands letting them slap against her thighs.

Declan removed his finger and put it in his mouth, eyeing her silently until he removed it.

“If I weren’t in such good mood, you’d be over my knee right now
feeling
my displeasure. When I tell you to hold a position, I expect you to hold it until I tell you to move. If it happens again, I’ll tie you in place.”

“May I get dressed now?” she asked flatly as if bored by the whole thing.

He flew to his feet in an instant grabbing her braid and forcing her head back. “I was going to give you a little stress relief the way you like it, but now I’m thinking I’m going to give it to you my way to see if it helps you not be so disrespectful.”

He held her head at an
awkward angle, but she managed to meet his gaze. “If crying is part of it, you might as well save your energy. Whatever you do to me, no matter how much it hurts, I’m not going to cry.”

She didn’t know how she ended up across his lap. One second she stood on her feet, the next he was back on the edge of the bed with Nyxie on her stomach across his legs and her ass up in the air.

“Lace your fingers behind your neck.” He leaned down and spoke directly in her ear. “And. Leave. Them. There.”

“Maybe you should go ahead and fuck me. It hardly seems fair that I’m going to get licks when the clock isn’t running.”

Declan raised his hand to deliver the first blow when he looked down and saw faint bruises from the punishment he gave her in Emily’s exam room. His lips tugged down as he realized he had marked her unintentionally. Christ, she hadn’t even flinched. As he stared at the blue crisscross lines, he felt his annoyance build. He reached down and lightly caressed her small bottom. Those injuries had to hurt and she withheld her pain from him. How would he know if he pushed her too hard if she hid her pain?

God, the way she had him on an emotional rollercoaster was completely foreign to him. He was the cool, emotionally detached Dom in all his relationships and that was the way he wanted it. But Nyxie drove him nuts. He attributed much of it to her inexperience as a sub. She hadn’t gone in search of a BDSM relationship and with her natural tendency to veil her pain; she would not be easy to train. It still pissed him off that she withheld it from him. Not just because he could hurt her, but because she would deny him the emotional connection he felt when a woman was at that raw
sensitive state afterwards. It had never been about hurting women to Declan, but punishing them was a means to an end. He needed to feel that connection when a woman was at her most vulnerable and he could be her strength, her world; when her trust was a living, palpable thing.

His hand came down with a resounding slap of flesh on flesh. She’d never been spanked hand on bare ass before and it surprised her to find how much protection a thin layer of fabric afforded. The sting of the hard slap made her skin explode with fire. It wasn’t the kind of pain she felt if the muscle was bruised but it smarted nevertheless. Her hands fell away as she instinctually wanted to cover her bottom.

“Put your fucki
ng hands behind your neck. You agreed to this. Are you going to live up to your part or not?”

Her hands reached behind her neck and locked in place. “One, sir.” Her voice called out in a clear strong tone and she vowed she’d not let her tone waiver. She waited and waited for the next blow. Suddenly, it landed. H
e held nothing back as his blow landed on the same cheek, but higher up.

“Two, sir. Uh, if you go any higher up, I’ll have to wear the T-shirt I picked out; otherwise everyone will see the welts. Perfect large handprints to show what Dr. Declan likes to do to his new girlfriend.”

“You are my submissive not my girlfriend. The quicker you figured that out, the better.”

He landed two more in quick succession. “Three, four, shut the door, sir,” she said in a singsong voice.

“Shut the fuck up, Onyx. I don’t know why you’re intentionally provoking me, but you are only making this harder on yourself.”

The hand rained down on her other side for the first time, landing a bright pink handprint over the light purple bruises from the previous punishment. She didn’t a make sound.

“The count, Nyxie.”

“You told me to shut-the-fuck-up. Five, sir,” she said. “Have you ever thought that rhyme might be about this? Three, four, shut the door. Fiv
e, six, pick-up sticks. Seven, eight, lay them straight. Do you think they’re talking about the marks you’re leaving with the sticks?”

Smack.

“Was that six, sir, or was that seven? I guess I lost count. You can start over again if you want. It makes no difference to me.”

“I’m seriously rethinking my opinion of ball gags.”

He brought his hand down on her again.

“One, sir.”

“Get up. I swear to God, I never wanted to hurt someone, the way I want to hurt you right now.”

She scrambled to her feet quickly before he could change his mind.

“May I go to the bathroom, sir?” He pierced her with a hard stare wondering if she intended to go cry but quickly realized she would never, as she saw it, give him the satisfaction of crying.

“Get out of my sight,” he said.

Nyxie clos
ed and locked the bathroom door then strained to see her ass in the bathroom mirror. The pink raised handprints laying over the faint blue bruises from his other punishment, fascinated her. It had been years since she stood in this mirror looking at her bruises. These were not the same. The color in her cheeks darkened as she thought about how amazing it felt to have his finger
there
. God, she’d almost moaned out loud when his finger slid along her sex. How embarrassing would that have been if she had let the sound slip? And then he used that same large hand on her bare naked ass. It was so confusing and yet the most erotic thing she’d ever experience.

She stood up straight and looked at her naked body in the mirror. Too thin, too pale. Her nipples and areolas looked too large for her small breasts.

She licked the tips of her thumbs and first fingers and teased both nipples into arousal. Her sex clenched in silent longing. Knowing he was only feet away, she eyed the locked door. Fuck him. She wanted to touch herself knowing he’d forbidden it and he was in the next room.

Nyxie moved to lean against the door. She pressed her stinging rump against the cool wood and closed her eyes. As she pinched one nipple, she eased her other hand between her legs and beg
an rubbing the slippery wet nub – feeling the sweet throb as
it
began building.