When in Rio (25 page)

I tried to adjust my position a few times, to angle myself higher over his thigh, craving the pressure against my clit even though I knew it was a bad idea. But he kept me too firmly pinned down, as if he knew my motive and was actively thwarting it. The spanking itself was already more stimulation than I could take, with Jack’s occasional stray blows against my upturned pussy lighting every nerve ending on fire, keeping me too aware of my arousal to let it subside.

At last, when every inch of my ass felt like it was on fire and I was aching along the still-livid paddle stripe despite his avoiding any direct blows to it—he really was mostly a
spanko
at heart, I thought, as no sadist worth the name would have passed up
that
opportunity—he dropped his hand to my pussy and patted the tender flesh with a happy sigh. My throat was sore from sobbing, from begging him to stop, but not as sore as my sex, which seemed to be begging him for more, for
anything
.

When Jack grabbed one fiery-red cheek and squeezed hard, I could only whimper at the lingering pain.

“I could do that all night, little one. You are just so
spankable
. Really.”

“Thank you, Sir.” My voice sounded weak and shaky, just like my legs when Jack moved me off his lap and leaned over to pat the middle of the bed, indicating I should return there. With no energy left for grace. I flopped onto my stomach and clutched at the sheet spasmodically as if clinging to it for some sort of comfort.

“I don’t think that’s how you usually lie in bed when you’re playing with your bunny friend, little Katie. Is it?”

“
Nooooo
!” I cried. “Please, no, I can’t, Sir.
Please
!”

“Wow. You’re asking the wrong person, pet. Now get on your back and spread your legs for me like the good little slut I know you are.” He waited for me to comply before continuing. “Just for me, of course. My own personal little porn princess. Who is now going to demonstrate just what she likes to do with this. Her favorite toy.” And he pressed Bunny into my hand and turned on the vibrator.

With a feeling of impending doom, I raised the toy to one of my nipples, my back arching involuntarily when the soft, buzzing ears brushed the already rock-hard peak.

“You’re just aching, aren’t you, little one? Even thinking about those bunny ears touching your clit is painful right now, I’ll bet. Tell me what you want.”

A ray of hope. Jack was unbuttoning his shirt, shucking it off, slipping his trousers past his hips.

“I want to come,
please
, I
need
to, Sir! I can’t stand it anymore,
please
,
please
let me come,
please
…”

“It’s a long drive tomorrow, Katie. Might be entertaining to watch you squirm around for an hour and a half on that bumpy road. Sore butt, keyed up. Sort of how I like you, you know.”

“No,
please
,
no
! Sir,
please
,
please
!” The horror in my voice was evident, as was the humor on Jack’s face at my dilemma. He was naked now, and his cock jutted almost straight out from his hips, bobbing gently as he stalked to the side of the bed. “Please…”

My vocabulary seemed to have been reduced to a handful of goal-oriented words. They filled up the parts of my mind that could still handle language at all, the parts that didn’t feel ready to short-circuit from sensual overload. Yet my hands were still working, slipping the bunny ears around and over my nipples, trying to postpone the inevitable moment when Jack would decide I’d stalled long enough.

“Put the toy down,” he said instead. “Turn it off, put it down.”

I almost threw it away from me, I was so happy to just get to stop, even if it was only a short respite.

“And now don’t move. Not a muscle. I want to hear you, but I don’t want you moving, understand me, pet?
Stay
.”

“Yes Sir, I understand…” I followed his progress onto the bed with my eyes, keeping my hands in loose fists up by my shoulders, my legs splayed open like a bendy doll that somebody’s thirteen-year-old brother has gotten hold of. Jack dipped his head and took Bunny’s place at my breasts, nuzzling and licking from one to the other for some time. It was almost bearable. The near-pain of over-arousal was starting to subside to a dull roar in my crotch, an ache I could live with, although every so often a flick of Jack’s tongue would set off a twinge, a reminder that he wasn’t through with me yet. But still, I started to relax under his ministrations until my impulse was no longer to shrink away but to curl into him, curve my fingers into his hair to draw him closer.

Remaining still got truly difficult when Jack started wending his way downward, as slowly as only a man who had already had one explosive orgasm that evening could go. By the time he reached my navel, I was breathing hard again. When he started pressing kisses across my pubic bone, the breathy whining started. I was just aware enough to know what was coming, where his mouth was headed, but too overwhelmed to brace myself for it in any meaningful way. Just a quivering, moaning piece of putty in Jack’s hands.

But once again he defeated my expectation, this time by sliding forward again, pressing his lips to mine in a lazy, tender kiss, and slipping inside me in a slow, halting progression. He was taking his weight on his elbows, taking care not to grind against me, in this seemingly simple act of sex that was more excruciating than any beating he might have cared to give.

Excruciating but exquisite, and I think if he’d asked me my own name just then I wouldn’t have been able to reply with anything but, “Yours.”

He pushed my legs a little higher—more penetration for him, less stimulation for me—and gave me one more lingering, sweet kiss, soft lips and a gentle tongue playing with mine. Pulling back a bit, he looked at me in the half-light of the room. He was there, totally absorbed in the moment, totally absorbed in
me
—and it was breathtaking. Everything he did, everything he was, took my breath away, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to breathe again unless he told me I could.

I was barely aware when he picked up his pace, pumped harder and faster for just a few beats before crying out softly at his climax. I’d gotten lost in the world of what he wanted, which was for me to
not
come and to be still and to let him do what he would. And he did. And even if I knew the feeling wouldn’t last, at that moment all that mattered in the world to me was that Jack had been able to do what he wanted, because I had done as he told me to.

Simple. As simple as brainwashing, as simple as the place where psychology and philosophy meet…as simple as love.

Chapter Twenty-One

Among the various opportunities that Rio and environs offer the casual visitor, one of the few I do not recommend—other than the beach, that is—is bouncing around on increasingly rough roads, going up and down mountains in a vintage Mercedes with stiff suspension while trying to coddle a bruised ass and an unsatisfied libido at the same time.

There was absolutely no comfortable way to sit. And Jack knew it. He made small talk with his friend Mario and pointed out sights as if there wasn’t this simultaneous, unspoken conversation going on between us the whole time. Knowing that he knew, and having to smile and try to be charming and make a good first impression on Jack’s best friend, and seem suitably appreciative of each successive natural wonder in its turn, was all nearly unbearable.

But I bore it, of course. Although there was a certain point, going down the very long and barely paved asphalt road to Mario’s house, that I thought if I sat
just right
the vibration of the car might be enough…

“Kate,” said Jack, leaning over the back of the seat to where I sat in the front, next to his friend. “Can you reach that camera bag for me? I left it right down by your feet.” And after leaning down to get the bag, which hadn’t made an appearance before this afternoon but had evidently been stowed in Jack’s large suitcase, I sat back up but had lost my momentum entirely. We arrived at Mario’s house just a few minutes later, and I don’t think anybody ever felt more eager to stretch their legs than I did upon getting out of that car.

We had seen some extraordinary views though. Higher and farther into the mountains, away from the shoreline, the forest grew thicker and wilder and was teeming with wildlife that our eager eyes catalogued during the drive. Once off the major roads, Mario had been able to point out creatures and trees, elements of the rainforest landscape that I had only dreamed of seeing up close in the wild. A pair of golden lion
tamarins
, for instance, squabbling or playing back and forth along the branch of a type of tree I didn’t know. And the silence was astonishing in itself. We stopped to take a longer look at a particularly scenic drop-off where the shoulder of the road was just wide enough to park the car, and there was only the soft hum of the jungle behind and below us. Not the city, not the ocean, not anything that might make a sound louder than the wind in the trees and the occasional distant call of a bird or beast.

“In a way, it’s loud at night,” Jack assured me.

Mario, who was indeed too chubby for safe rock-climbing but an utterly delightful person nevertheless, kept up a lively stream of conversation that didn’t end when we crunched to a halt in the wide gravel drive that circled in front of his house.

I gathered that his family’s fortune had been made in shipping, and the house had a vaguely nautical feel, but that may just have been all the exposed wood beams and the breathtaking panoramic view of the ocean just past the treetops.

The house, which was built into the side of the hill, was like a cross between a tree house and an interior designer’s wet dream. Each stick of furniture, each gently curving paneled wall or cunningly crafted array of lighting, was utterly and absolutely perfect. And the whole thing had the desirable quality of being enormous overall yet cozy in its particulars, with the feeling one might ramble forever but never be at a loss for a little nook in which to have a chat or read a book. And from every space—for it was difficult to say just where rooms ended and began in much of that house—there was a view of the forest, or the treetops over which the house was perched, or a grotto created by the structural relationship between the house itself and the hill into which it was nestled.

Jack summed it up best. “It’s like every little kid’s dream house, if the little kid had all the money in the world and a team of internationally famous designers.”

“The little kid is also a fan of the fine arts,” I added, automatically scanning the spines of the books in one of the built-in shelves that seemed to grace every likely inch of wall. Shelves for books, but also pottery and oil paintings both large and small. Most were
jungly
abstractions of just the type I had been looking for from that street vendor I’d never been able to find again. I suspected I wouldn’t have been able to afford even signed prints of most of the pieces in Mario’s collection, however.

“I haven’t been here since Anne and I finished my place,” Jack said, frowning as he joined me in looking over the titles. “Now I’m going to go back home and my place will look like crap after this.”

I knew what he meant, but laughed anyway. “I like your place. It’s just more structured than this.” A few seconds later I wondered if that had been the right thing to say, but it was too late. My brain seemed to be short-circuiting at the oddest moments, despite the relief of being out of the car and off the bumpy road.

“You still haven’t invited me to your new home,” Mario pointed out to Jack, shaking his finger in accusation. “The children have never been to Texas. They want to go, they want to see Texas cowboys. I keep telling them that we have more cowboys here, and in Houston they’re more likely to see businessmen in suits, but…”

“Rodeo,” Jack laughed, clapping Mario on the shoulder. “You can come during the stock show and rodeo next February, Mario. The kids will love it. They’ll get to see honest-to-God cowboys riding bulls and horses. Marta may even like it too, she’s the horsy one anyway. Speaking of which, where is everyone?”

“On their way back from the ranch. They should be here soon. And Marta apologizes in advance, she won’t be cooking tonight, but she promises to make it up to us all tomorrow.” He was leading us as he talked and we wound up in the kitchen, a space that would have made most professional chefs drool with envy. Even though I wasn’t much of a cook, I was envious myself. There were acres of stainless steel and granite, blond wood and industrial-strength cooking and cooling capabilities. Considering that the house seemed fairly remote and must be relying on generators, propane and septic systems, the whole thing seemed even more impressive. It had long since crossed my mind that Mario’s family must do quite a bit more than just own “a few boats”, but until seeing his home I hadn’t quite grasped the extent to which there must be fabulous wealth involved. I had to approve of the way Mario had put his funds to use. The house was just so much
fun
.

“So,” Mario explained, pulling things from an enormous refrigerator tastefully concealed behind panels that matched the cabinetry. “We are fending for ourselves tonight, on sandwiches and beer. Like college!”

Maybe things had been different for Jack and Mario. In college,
I
never had paper-thin slices of rare roast beef and savory pork for my sandwiches, on fresh rolls, with horseradish sauce handmade by the cook-cum-factotum who was the only servant in evidence, though I sensed there were probably more about the place.

Mario seemed at home in the kitchen, slicing onions and tomatoes with an ease that suggested he often helped Marta with her legendary cooking. When I mentioned I wasn’t much of a beer drinker, Mario got a gleam in his eye and led me into what I thought was a butler’s pantry. It turned out to be a wine cellar, with several different zones of cooled and climate-controlled storage for everything from crisp, dry whites to heavy dessert wines, ancient bottles with flaking yellowed labels to the red he pulled out which was a very nice, young Beaujolais.