Page 11 of Hurts So Good

She was sitting on his leather couch like she’d done a hundred times before in the years they’d known each other. But this time the worn green leather seemed a lot more significant. And this time her pussy was pounding just from looking into his navy-blue eyes and imagining him actually doing some of the things they’d had the nerve to talk about from a safe distance.

Yet they were still talking about nothing. Or maybe about everything—classic cartoons, his work, favorite movies—but none of the things that mattered right at that moment.

Serena was trying desperately to come up with the proper segue. It was so much easier to talk about sex over the safety of IM than to look into a friend’s eyes and admit you wanted him to spank you. Not to mention tie you up, and maybe put clothespins on your nipples, and all kinds of fascinating, scary stuff like that.

Luckily for her nerves, Jack got there first. “I still want to take you to the animation festival at the university. But let’s talk about something more interesting now. How do you feel about erotic pain?”

Even though she was prepared for this turn in the conversation, even though she wanted it, she felt her face redden. Her eyes grew wide, and she said, a little breathily, “Please…I think. But we already talked about that…”

He smiled, and his smile was evil and delicious and everything she’d ever imagined it could be. “Over IM. In emails. But I wanted to see your face, to make sure you really want to feel my flogger or paddle or just my bare hand against your skin. Because I know I’d love to redden your ass before I bent you over and fucked you, but I need to see in your eyes that you want that too.”

The words touched Serena’s core like skilled fingers. She squirmed, the leather couch tantalizing on her ass, but she couldn’t form words to answer.

“That’s a yes?”

She made herself speak. “Oh, God, yes.” Then she took a deep breath, and tried to elaborate. “But I don’t know what my limits are—I’ve never really done this before, just thought about it a lot—so I’m afraid I might… let you down.” Suddenly, faced with the possible reality of all her longtime fantasies, she began to shake.

Jack, who had been standing in front of her looking hard and stern and glorious, sat down on the couch next to her and put his arm around her. “It’s all right, Serena. You’ll have a safeword. You will use the safeword if something is getting too much for you, either physically or emotionally, and I’ll either tone it down or stop if that’s what you need. And I won’t be disappointed if you do.”

Tension she hadn’t been aware of fled her body, leaving her boneless but filled with another sort of tension, the good, anticipatory, nervous-but-excited kind. She leaned against Jack, and the heat of his skin through his summer clothes seemed to burn her. She wanted the clothes out of their way, wanted his hands on her, wanted him to pose her like a mannequin, strip her defenses away, spank her until she cried, fuck her senseless.

But he didn’t. Instead, he seemed to wait for something.

She ventured a guess at what he was waiting to hear, based on her brief knowledge of him. “Calamari.”

“What?”

“That’ll be my safeword. In honor of what we had for dinner tonight—and because it sure as hell isn’t something I’d say by accident during sex.”

He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Now that that’s settled, let’s get on to the good stuff.” There was laughter in his voice at her safeword, but when he said, “Undress,” his tone changed. So did his posture, his bearing, the expression in those amazing blue eyes.

Serena had suspected he’d looked commanding before at times, a dominant in action. Now she realized she’d just gotten a taste of Jack. It wasn’t that her old friend, the affable guy with the quirky sense of humor, disappeared. This man contained the one she’d first met, but he was more, in ways she couldn’t quite describe yet.

All she knew was that she got her dress off in record time. The pretty little black lace bra she’d so carefully selected “just in case” disappeared under his stern gaze so quickly that she might as well have put on a white cotton basic. “Shoes?” she asked, the tremor in her voice surprising her.

“‘Shoes, Sir,’” he corrected. “Leave them on for now.”

She didn’t know what she expected him to do first. But it certainly wasn’t to stalk around her in a circle, looking at her body. She wasn’t sure if she felt more like something on display at a museum or a prey animal being toyed with by some large predator, but whichever it was, it felt good. She awaited a command, a touch, anything, but for what seemed like an unaccountably long time, he just circled, studying her.

When he reached out, she expected a caress, or maybe a slap. Instead he put two fingers under her chin and raised her head a little. “Some doms may like a bowed head, but I don’t. Look me in the eye when I speak to you. Your posture’s decent, but you hunch your shoulders forward more than I like to see in a pretty woman. Too much time at a computer, I bet. So, clasp your hands behind your back—hold your own elbows, if you can.”

She obeyed, aware of how it pulled her shoulders back and lifted her breasts.

“Better. Now open your legs a little. I don’t want to see your legs closed unless I specifically say so.”

She shifted, acutely aware of the slickness of her pussy. Moisture had gathered on the tops of her thighs. Was it visible? And would he like seeing how turned on she was, what a slut he made her feel like?

Yes, she decided, he probably would. You didn’t get into this sort of thing if you liked shy, uptight girls. That was a curiously reassuring thought. She’d had a few relationships with guys—good guys she’d had a great time talking with before they’d started dating—who’d been intimidated by her sexuality even without knowing about all her kinks. Jack wouldn’t be.

“Beautiful,” Jack breathed. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

He vanished into another room, leaving her alone with her racing heart and her throbbing sex. The room seemed to tilt toward the direction he was heading, or maybe it was just all her attention following him.

He returned a few moments later with a collar of soft red leather. “When this is on, you will be mine: mine to command, mine to use as I see fit, mine to give pleasure or pain within the limits you’ve set and the protection of your safeword. When it’s on, you call me Sir and I call you whatever I choose to call you”—here a bit of the humor she’d gotten fond of before she’d become interested in him as a potential lover flickered through the serious surface—“including late to dinner. And when it comes off, I’m Jack and you’re Serena, and we’re friends. Understood?”

She nodded, all the words she might want to say trapped in her throat.

And only when she nodded did he lift her hair, surprisingly gently, and fasten the collar around her throat.

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