Page 57 of The Souls We Claim
We aren’t doing this again.
Even though it would be so easy to fall into her being mine to take care of. To teach. To see how far I could push the woman I just made come.
“Tell me how you and Patrick used to have sex.”
Her mouth opens for a second. “What?”
“Don’t make me repeat the question, Arianne.”
She covers her face. “What if I don’t want to?”
I lift onto my elbows and rethink my decision to rely on my own judgement of what is working for her. “We need some rules. One thing you should know about being in my bed, Arianne: You do as I say. Whether that is answering questions or lying in any position I tell you. Trust me to know what you need, evenif you don’t know yourself. Your safe word is there for if I get it wrong because that could happen. Or you get a cramp. Whatever reason you need it to stop. You remember what yours is, kitten?”
Arianne nods. “Glass.”
“You didn’t have one with Patrick?”
She touches her cheek. “No. Patrick would never stop.”
“I want you to tell me what his routine was so I don’t do any of those things tonight. At a guess, you’ve come to associate them with numbness or, worse, pain. Tell me, Arianne.”
Arianne moves her hand and looks up at me. Her hair lies in a mess on my pillow. Cutest just-orgasmed face I’ve seen in a long time.
“If he wasn’t being mean, he’d fumble around using his fingers for about a minute and a half. Then he’d tug me to the end of the bed, make me kneel while he stood behind me on the floor. Then he’d…” She takes a breath. “Then we’d have sex like that for about four to seven minutes depending on how drunk he was. I’d fake an orgasm most of the time.”
I run my knuckles over her cheeks. “I’ve got two more rules for you. Never fake an orgasm when you’re with me. You do, and I’ll take you over my knee and…”
I let the words drift. While much of her face has healed, there is still a trace of bruising by her eye.
“You’d what?”
I debate lying to her, but it’s hard to encourage her to be truthful if I do the opposite. “I was going to say I’ll spank you hard until you cry real tears, and then I’ll force you to come over and over until you know the difference between a real and a fake orgasm.”
“What stopped you?”
I’m not used to sex getting interwoven with emotional narrative. Strangely, it doesn’t kill the connection I feel with her. Instead, I run my knuckle gently down the side of her face.“Because I think you’ve had enough hands laid on you and cried enough tears, even if spanking is a fun way of letting go of tension.”
She purses her lips for a minute. “I enjoyed…what you did earlier. What if you started spanking gently, and I said ‘glass’ if I didn’t like it?”
Goddamn little girls who don’t know what they’re asking for. “The fact you’d trust me to do that is a fucking honor. I’ll come up with something else for now though. So just don’t lie about orgasms, and we’ll be okay.”
She nods, her face all serious, like she’s reviewing a legal contract. I kiss her and pull on her nipple clamps a little.
The smile returns.
“Oh, and one last rule. When we’re done fucking, we’re going to review it.”
She sits up quickly at that. “You’re filming this?”
Playfully, I shove her back down to the bed and crowd over her. “No, but that’s a really hot idea. I meant while we come down, pun intended, you tell me what you liked, and more importantly if there was anything you didn’t.”
“Oh. Okay. Good. Will this be graded? Like, ‘Jax, I had fun, but I think it was only a solid B-.’” She bites down on her lip as her nose scrunches up.
“Did I just find a brat in my bed?” Brats are my catnip. I love their sass and confidence. And I love fucking the attitude right out of them. Maybe who she really is has been buried under years of Patrick’s expectations.
Playfully, I twist her nipple clamp.
She gasps and then laughs at that, and I think it’s the first time I’ve heard her laughter. No matter what happens after tonight, I’m gonna try to make sure she keeps laughing. I want Lola to have a happy home. Fuck, I want Arianne to have a happy home.
