Page 19 of After Dark
This was exactly why she’d come back—to prove toherself that shecouldsurrender the way she wanted to. That she could make herself seamless and hand herself over as a receptacle for Arlo’s whims, no matter what.
Even thinking about that made her clit throb.
“You can come if you like,” Frederick told her.
There was that sharp tug at her scalp even while she was also aware that he was loosening his trousers, because he, too, loved nothing more than remaining almost entirely fully clothed in the presence of naked submissives.
Josette could admit that she liked that too. What she didn’t like was what sounded like a gift coming from Frederick, because this was not a man who dispensed gifts.
“That’s what you like, isn’t it?” Frederick asked, his voice low and dark straight through. “I’m familiar with your type of submissive, Josette. Perfectly happy as long as she’s coming and coming her face off. Perfectly happy to take and take and take. But when it comes to giving, that’s a different story. If you haven’t heard, it’s called a power exchange. It’s supposed to be a two-way street. It’s supposed tomatch,but submissives like you always run before too much can be asked of them, don’t you?”
And, of course, Josette couldn’t speak. She couldn’t defend herself. She felt tears and temper and indignance—and possibly sham—prickle the back of her eyes, and she was sure that he could see them too.
Because fucking Frederick saw everything. Sometimes she thought that if she’d known she was getting him along with Arlo, if she’d really understood that he would take such pleasure in watching his friend play with her, she might have run in the opposite direction.
Though the moment she thought that, she knew it was a lie. She had a lot of time to think about this. All of this. Toreally examine this dynamic, what Arlo had given her, and what it had meant to her.
In case she needed an example, she had her own behavior of the past eighteen months as a guide.
Josette liked to fuck. She always had, though before she’d discovered BDSM, she’d tried a lot of questionable things to chase the feeling she liked. She’d found her best self in kinky spaces—but she’d never been a good bet for a possessive lover. Variety always whispered to her, and she’d learned the hard way that it was best to prepare her lovers for the reality that was probably going to answer that call, sooner or later.
The fact that the man she’d fallen so wildly in love with understood that, and also understood that sharing her—giving the variety she craved without making her pay for it—only made her want himmorehad… changed something in her. Healed her, maybe. Arlo made it safe, because he loved her more after these sessions. He’d showed it in a thousand ways.
He’d always known when she was getting restless.Fractious,he called it. That itchy thing inside of her that had always gotten her into trouble in the past. He’d sensed it before she did.
It looks like someone needs a different cock to fuck some manners back into,he’d say, and he’d always meant that literally.
And while it wasn’t always Frederick that he’d called upon to help out with that, Frederick was the one he returned to again and again.
Because Frederick was the one who scared Josette, and Arlo knew it. Frederick was the one who pushed her, and she needed that extreme. She would swear up and down she couldn’t stand the man, but his cock drove her wild.Everyone was happier when he’d used it to teach her a few lessons.
Frederick was ice cold and he didn’t give a single shit what Josette liked. The more she disliked something, in fact, the more he made her do it, because in the end, it gave her a great and pervasive joy to surrender like that.
And more, to do it for Arlo.
It had always been an explosive, seriously hot combination. Tonight was no different, though Josette could see that he liked her even less than he had before—and she couldn’t really say that he’d liked her then, either.
He looked down at her, that pitiless gaze of his moving all over her face.
“You can come as much as you like, because that’s what you are in the end,” he said in that quiet, condemning way that felt worse than a metal flogger. “A climax chasing pretender who leaves when it gets hard. I won’t prevent you from coming tonight. But I will tell you that there will be reparations for each and every time you choose climax over obedience.”
Another thing about fucking Frederick was how committed he was to the metaphor of these games they played. And unlike Arlo, he wasn’t the least bit in love with her.
Josette trembled. Frederick’s cold gaze gleaned.
Then he fit his cock to her lips, ordered her to open, and thrust in.
Her hands were still behind her back, and she was glad. She gripped her own wrist, and that felt anchoring. It was the only anchor she got.
Frederick did not let up on the angle. She had to kneel up high and he kept her there, still pulling on her hair withthat fist as he thrust deeper and deeper, then slid into her throat.
Ruthless, measured, and shatteringly disinterested in anything but her acquiescence.
He made her feel like an object—and not his first choice of an object—and while she could never have lived like this all the time, God knew it was so hot she thought her clit might light itself on fire.
But she didn’t want to come. Not when he’d told her she could, then described her in the most unflattering terms possible—terms she couldn’t dispute, no matter how much she might wish she could.
She didn’t think what he’d said was true. But she could see why he’d think it was.
