Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (5 page)

But maybe it wasn’t okay.

Price flicked through the conversation. It had been short. I hadn’t been much in the mood for chatter and Andrew had just wanted to say good night. He slid the phone back to me. It was his phone, on his plan where he could check who I called and how long we talked. He’d taken away my own phone when I moved in.

Was all of this okay? I didn’t know. I touched the truffle beside my plate and decided to eat it first. Milk chocolate, my favorite. I bit into the sphere of ecstasy, brushing away the cocoa shavings that fell onto the table.

“Where do you find these?” I asked. “They’re orgasmic.”

“They’re from Switzerland. That’s all I’m saying, because I don’t want you running off to buy them for yourself.”

“You think I’ll get too fat?”

“No. I think they’re for special occasions, like the morning after a hard punishment, to celebrate the fact that you’re still here and didn’t run away from me in the middle of the night.”

He smiled at me, his hair so blond in the morning sun, his eyes light and shining. He looked different at the breakfast table than he looked in the dungeon, or in his dark bedroom.

“I’m still here,” I said, feeling some of my tension ebb away. “Where was I going to run in that chastity belt? It only comes off with your key.”

His smile widened. We both knew I could take a pair of scissors to the leather straps and have it off within a heartbeat. But I didn’t, and I guessed that was why he smiled at me that way, and wrote me poems that made everything inside me glow.

“When I talked about coming here, about giving myself to you, Andrew tried to talk me out of it,” I said, licking chocolate from my fingers. “I mean, not really talk me out of it, but to think about what I might have to give up. He asked what I’d do if you never let me have chocolate, or only let me have it every once in a while, as a reward for servicing your friends.”

“Servicing my friends?” His smile faded.

“It was a joke,” I said quickly. “Because he sees you as this scary, heartless Dom.”

“Well, it’s a shitty joke. I’d never share you with anyone, not for chocolate or anything else.”

His hand moved on the table, toward mine, but didn’t quite reach me. The serenity of moments before was gone. He seemed agitated and upset.

“Andrew’s a pervert,” I said, trying to diffuse the situation. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Does he think I would do that? Loan you to people? Does Craig whore him out to his buddies?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Fuck.”

He turned back to his tablet. I took that
Fuck
as the end of our conversation and started to eat. It made me happy that he got angry at the idea of sharing me, even if he wouldn’t quite take my hand. Price almost never said he loved me, but there were moments like these when the depth of his love revealed itself to me like the sun from behind a gray, dark cloud.

Price got a call on his phone and muted it, then looked up at me.

“Are you excited to go to Paris?” he asked.

I swallowed a mouthful of omelet. “I’ve been there before.”

I could have kicked myself for saying that, because the one time I’d gone to Paris I’d been with Simon, and my abusive ex-boyfriend was Price’s least favorite person in the world.

“I’m excited to go again,” I said, staring at my plate. “I’m older now. I’ll be seeing it through different eyes.”

“There are a world of things for a designer to enjoy in Paris.”

There was the nudge. Paris was going to be a working holiday for us both. He’d be attending meetings at the International Symposium of Architects, and I’d be expected to go out and enrich myself.

“I wish I spoke French like you,” I said.

He shrugged. “Most people there will understand English if you get in a bind. I’ll give you a list of places to visit, and hire you a driver for the week.”

Life was so simple when you had jillions of dollars. He was so rich, so capable. So demanding. So controlling. I touched his poem and slid him a look. He was staring back with his pale blue eyes that seemed to capture everything.

It’s okay
, I told myself.
Don’t worry. Everything’s perfectly okay.

*

The long trip
over the ocean seemed shorter with Chere along for the ride. She sat beside me in first class, sipping wine, crossing her legs every so often just to drive me insane.

We were alone this time, unlike our previous trip across the ocean to Oslo. No associates to entertain, no lustful glances to disguise as simple attention. As soon as we arrived, I took her to the downtown hotel where the conference was being held. The plane ride was foreplay. I wanted to fuck and I wanted to fuck hard. It took all my self-control to endure the obsequious welcome from the ritzy hotel’s staff.

Chere, on the other hand, had stars in her eyes, so I put up with it for her, when I might otherwise have cut the welcome short. I’d grown up in a life of privilege. Chere had grown up under much grimmer circumstances, and I tried to remember that at times like these. She took my hand in the elevator and squeezed it. So much glass, so much sparkle, so much rich color and plush Turkish carpets and ornate, glistening chandeliers.

“Okay?” I asked.

“This is beautiful,” she whispered. “Wow. It’s amazing.”

I’d been with so many women who put on an act, who pretended to be swept away, but were, in reality, avaricious bitches. Chere wasn’t an avaricious bitch. She was heart and soul and everything, and she was mine as long as I managed to hold on to her. I had her collar in my luggage, but our thing was about more than collars and protocols.

When we were finally alone in the room, I didn’t wait to unpack her collar. I shoved her up against the wall and swallowed her shocked little
unh
with a violent kiss.

“You like it here?” I whispered.

I’d barely given her time to look around the room, but it was a classic luxury hotel room, corner, upper floor. I undressed her, being too careless and too rough. I felt something rip, but she didn’t stop me or complain. We’d have it repaired later. I needed to be inside her. She tugged at my buttons, helping me take off my shirt. I yanked down my pants and pressed her to the wall with my aching, erect cock trapped between us.

She made excited little sounds, struggling against me. I reached for her neck and gripped it hard, and almost,
almost
choked her out, but this wasn’t the place to do it, where she might fall and hurt herself. With a frustrated growl, I released her neck and dragged her toward the bed.

She fought in earnest now. I mean, anyone would fight in her position, with some brute trying to take away her air, especially when that brute was responsible for the lingering bruises on her ass and legs. She pulled away from me and tried to crawl across the bed. I fell on top of her and wrestled her onto her back.

“You’re mine,” I said, grabbing her neck again. “Submit.”

She shook her head, holding my gaze. She wasn’t disputing that she was mine; if she could have talked, she would have agreed with me. No, she just didn’t want me to choke her. Her fingers clawed at my chest. With my other hand, I yanked one of her legs up and positioned myself between her thighs. If she really didn’t want me to choke her, she should have laid still. Her squirming and panic inflamed my deepest lusts. I kissed her full lips and thrust into her wet, clenching pussy, never releasing my grip on her neck.

Her enveloping heat almost undid me. I jammed myself inside her to the hilt. “Look at me,” I said. “Who do you belong to?”

“You,” she rasped.

My hand tightened on her neck. She tried to pull my fingers away but I subdued her with a soft warning. “Don’t fight me.”

I can’t explain why I had to choke her out every once in a while. I was careful. I knew how to do it so she’d be safe, but I knew she didn’t like it, especially when I was actively fucking her. Maybe that was why I did it, to exert more control, the ultimate control.
I have your life. I have your breath.

I put a finger over her pulse, exerted the necessary pressure, and watched her eyes flutter closed. Her body went slack beneath mine, her hands falling away from their death grip on my wrist. My princess, my Sleeping Beauty, out for a few seconds rather than a hundred years. I gathered her close and thrust deep so I’d be all the way inside her when she came to. She awoke with a weak, keening sound.

I cradled her against me and gentled my thrusts. “There you are,” I said. “I have you. I’m inside you.”

“Don’t…again,” she pleaded.

I hushed her. I wouldn’t do it again, but she wasn’t allowed to give orders either. I kissed her and squeezed her ass, still sore from her punishment a few days earlier. So many cruelties. I’d warned her before she came to stay with me. Now I couldn’t let her go.

“Does that feel good, baby?” I asked as she moved her hips against mine. “You want it harder? Deeper?”

“I want you to hurt me.” She clung to my shoulders. “Please, take me there…”

There.
That mysterious place where both of us discarded self-preservation and inhibition and lost ourselves in the fuck. It was never hard for us to get there. Now that she seemed stronger and more lucid, I held her down and drove inside her, shuddering at the exquisite sensations in my cock, in my balls as they banged against her. She struggled against my control, reaching for her own pleasure.

I let her take it, whatever she could get. We fucked so hard we moved the bed. I could hear it scraping across the floor, but that only heightened the intensity of her surrender—and mine.

“Come now,” I gasped, unable to wait any longer. “Come with me. Do it.”

She always responded well to orders. I felt her clamp around my spasming organ, milking the cum out of me. Jesus, Jesus, God,
fuck.
Shudders raced up my spine. Pleasure swallowed me and spit me out on the other side of my orgasm. Or her orgasm. Our orgasm, our own creation, our “there.”

“Holy fuck,” I said, releasing her arms to grab her hair. I ground my cock inside her, still riding out aftershocks, and kissed her hard on the mouth. I stuck my tongue between her lips, wanting to taste her and devour her. She arched against me, squeezing her legs around my hips. We didn’t talk for long moments after that, just kissed and tried to extricate ourselves from the compulsion that drew us together. I never wanted to leave her. From the first time I’d fucked her, in a similarly luxurious hotel room, I hadn’t wanted to leave her.

But there were things we had to do. Unpack. Rest. Eat.

I rolled off her with a groan and lay beside her, one arm slung across my eyes. The afternoon light was fading. We’d been up early to get to the airport. Food. I wanted food.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, rolling back to pull her close.

“I’m starving.”

I groped for the phone and ordered mountains of food, and then we stumbled to the shower to wash off travel grit and sex juices, and sleepiness. We put on white, fleecy hotel robes and did some cursory unpacking while we waited for the food to arrive. Chere kept stopping to stare out at the lights of the darkening city, so I drew her over to the window. We looked down together at the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries Garden across from the hotel, and the Eiffel Tower in the distance. “The Louvre is nearby,” I said. “Maybe you can go there tomorrow.”

“Maybe. Yes. That would be fun.”

I tilted her head back to kiss the hollow at the base of her neck. “Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For being here with me.”

She gave a soft laugh. “It’s my pleasure to be with you. Whenever, wherever you want.”

I replaced my tongue with a firm press of fingers. “Really?”

She tensed, but didn’t resist. “Really,” she said. “I really like being with you. I love being with you.” She bit her lip, flushing, shy. Adorable. “I love you, Price.”

I looked at her, wondering what to say. I loved her, yes, but that wasn’t encompassing enough. She needed another poem. Maybe I could work on one tomorrow, during breaks in the symposium. A knock interrupted my awkward silence, and she started to pull away.

I yanked her back, held her neck, and pressed my forehead to hers. “I love you, starshine.”

The breath she’d been holding eased out. She needed me to avow my love, so I did, but I felt so much more for her—both good and bad.

We sat and ate together in a half-dark hotel room looking out at the Paris lights, and then fell into bed, sexually and gastronomically spent. We shed the robes and slid under the sheets, too exhausted to kiss or fuck or do anything but drift to oblivion in each other’s arms. Tomorrow, we’d conquer the city. Tonight, we needed sleep.

Paris

I
woke to
Price pressed against my back, his cock pushing inside me. I stretched and arched within his muscular grasp. His stubbled cheeks pricked me as he kissed my neck, then closed his teeth on my earlobe.

“Ow,” I said drowsily. “No biting.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said, but his bite gentled to a nibble. I looked back over my shoulder in the gray morning light, holding his gaze as he slid deeper inside me. His eyes were so blue, so intent even in the dim hotel room.