Passion's Hope (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 3) (32 page)

“You like that, don’t you, little one?” he asked, the words bursting from his mouth with each slam of his body into hers.

“Yes, Daddy!” It was a shout.

“You like my cock in your cunt, fucking you,”

“Yes, Daddy, yes!”

“Are you ready to come?”

“Oh, God, yes! Please let me come!”

He dropped her leg and dropped down onto his forearms on either side of her head. Gripping her hair, he tilted her head back and stared into her half-lidded eyes, his own dark with lust.

“Then come,
malinkaya.
Come for your Daddy.”

His mouth closed over hers, swallowing her scream as her body exploded in a second massive orgasm, convulsing around Nik as she had around Jay, the powerful pull of her contracting muscles milking the cum out of him and sending it jetting against the mouth of her womb. He continued pumping for several more moments until finally his cock deflated and he pulled out, spilling the combined juices of the three of them out onto the sheet. With a groan, he released her mouth.

“No,” Charlie whimpered, not yet ready to let him go.

Hair dripping with sweat, Nik grinned down at her and placed a quick kiss on her nose before flopping down beside her, rolling over onto his back and pulling her up and over to lie on top of him, He gestured to Jay, who snuggled up against Nik’s side as the big Russian curled his arm around him.

Exhausted, they lay in a heap, limbs tangled, bodies glued together with sweat, panting with exertion as their racing heartbeats gradually returned to normal.

Finally Charlie lifted her head to look down at the devastatingly handsome man lying beneath her. A man who had become dearer to her than she was able to admit. “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered.

“Entirely my pleasure,
myshka
.”

Turning her head, she caught Jay grinning up at her. She grinned back. “Thank you, too.”

“No problem, sweet thing. I love making love to you. You’re so goddamned responsive, it’s not even funny. You just wait here. I’ll be right back.” He bounced out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom, returning quickly with a couple of wet washcloths and a large towel. He cleaned both Nik and Charlie with the cloths, then handed the towel to Nik, so he could dry the sweat off of his and Charlie’s bodies. He scrubbed a bit at the wet spot on the sheets, then gave it up, saying, “Never mind. We’ll just change these in the morning.” Handing the towel to Jay, he lay on his back and held his arms out to them. “Come, my darlings. Let us sleep.”

They curled up together, with Nik in the middle, his arms around both Jay and Charlie, their heads resting on his biceps, their hands clasped on top of his broad chest.

Charlie woke several times during the night, restless and fearful. And each time they made love to her, slow and sweet, hard and fast, and everything in between, finally falling into a deep sleep just before dawn.

* * * *

“Good news, boys and girls.”

All three of them looked up as Lucas McKay entered his office, looking dapper and very physician-like in his white lab coat, stethoscope draped around his neck. He had just finished examining Charlie and had sent her in to join her men. “Charlie, your cuts have all healed. Most of the scars will fade in time, but some of the deeper ones on your breasts and your buttocks might require plastic surgery. Your bite mark is nearly healed.”

“Why is that one taking so much longer than all the others?” Charlie asked.

“Because the human mouth is full of germs. That’s why it was so badly infected. But you have definitely turned the corner and it shouldn’t give you any more problems. As for your anal fissures, they have healed nicely. You can discontinue use of the nitroglycerine cream.”

“We used the last of it this morning,” Nik informed him.

“Good. You don’t need to get it refilled.”

“Can we start using plugs?” Nik asked.

“Go slow,” Luc cautioned. “We don’t want a recurrence of the fissures.”

Nik turned his head to look directly at her. “We’ll treat her like she’s the most precious thing in our lives,” he said, his voice low and throbbing with some unnamed emotion.

“But only because she is,” Jay added softly, reaching out and grabbing one of the hands she was twisting in her lap.

Lucas just smiled. “And, of course I don’t have to tell you to use plenty of lube and stretch her gradually, over time.”

Charlie looked up at him. “Will it hurt?”

Lucas inclined his head. “It might, just a little, but only for a moment. And it will feel so good afterward,” he assured her. “I promise.”

How can pain be good,
she wondered, but didn’t ask.

Since the Grand Jury hearing had been set for Friday, they had moved Charlie’s appointment with Luc to Thursday. They spent the rest of the morning strolling up and down Passion Lake’s five-block business district, going into whatever stores grabbed Charlie’s attention. After lunch at Katie’s barbecue, they went back to the Lodge to get ready for their appointment with Dr. Art Portman.

Nik had called him the previous night after Charlie had woken up screaming from a particularly disturbing nightmare. She’d been having them off and on since the night they’d found her and brought her home with them. But they had become more frequent and more vicious since the session with Alex. The psychiatrist had agreed to come to Passion Lake and talk to Charlie. Nik had suggested coming for a long week-end and staying at the Lodge. That way he could be there if she needed to talk to him when they got back from testifying before the Grand Jury. And he could be in the audience for Charlie’s singing debut with the band on Saturday night. He might even get in a little fishing.

Art Portman was a handsome, very distinguished-looking older man, late fifties, possibly early sixties, but still trim and fit with an almost regal bearing that made even the humble jeans and polo shirt he was wearing seem sophisticated. Charlie could just imagine him in a suit. He would have been devastating. His hair, mustache, and neat little goatee were a perfect silver gray, as were his eyes. When he smiled his eyes crinkled at the corners, making him completely approachable.

After exchanging greetings and other pleasantries, Nik directed their guest to the leather armchair. He and Jay sat side-by-side on the couch, while Charlie served coffee and some delicious finger sandwiches Nik had ordered that morning from Granny Grace’s Tea Shoppe. Then she took her place between them on the couch. For a while they just chatted about their backgrounds, some of their experiences, mostly inconsequential things, discovering in the process that they liked a lot of the same things and had a lot in common.

Art Portman was really easy to talk to and that’s why, after he sent Nik and Jay upstairs, Charlie found herself telling him all of the horrible things Perry had done to her, how helpless she’d felt. How stupid she now felt for letting herself be so easily beguiled by his good looks and elegant manners.

“You blame yourself,” Dr. Portman said.

Charlie nodded.

“And how is that workin’ for you?”

She shrugged. “It’s not.”

“Would it help you to know that you did something most women in the same situation would never have done?”

“But, that’s just it!” she wailed. “I
didn’t
do
anything!”

“You did,” he insisted, leaning forward in the chair and resting his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs. “You survived. And, more importantly, you escaped. Do you realize how incredibly strong that makes you?”

She shook her head. She certainly didn’t
feel
strong.

“He had you for three weeks. Most women by the end of that time would have been broken, both in body and spirit. You’re not broken.” He smiled, that eye-crinkling smile she found so attractive. “Maybe a little dented, but definitely not broken. Through it all you kept a firm grip on your essential self. And the very first chance you got, you formed a cogent, workable plan, and you extricated yourself from the situation with all due haste. That shows incredible presence of mind.

“What happened to you was not your fault,” he reassured her. “Perry Bradford is a sexual predator. That makes you and other women like you, in a word, prey. And you were perfect prey. Single, living alone, no family or close friends, low-paying job. He studied you. He stalked you like a lion stalks a gazelle. He singled you out. He separated you from the herd. And when the moment was right, he struck. And, like the gazelle, you never saw it coming. He targeted you. You did nothing wrong.”

She shook her head. “Oh, yes, I did. I didn’t listen to that niggling little voice in my head that kept telling me that something about him wasn’t quite right. Believe me, next time I hear it talking to me, I’ll pay a lot more attention to it.”

He just looked at her for a moment. “Do you hear it with Nik and Jay? When they discuss the things they want to do to you?”

“No.” She didn’t even have to think about that answer.

“What does that tell you?”

“That I can trust them?”

“Do you doubt it?”

“I’m still working on that part.” Her mouth twisted in what she hoped was a reasonable facsimile of a smile.

“Do you feel they’re rushing you?”

“Sometimes,” she said truthfully.

“Do you tell them when you’re feeling that?”

“No.”

“They’ve given you a safe word, haven’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Then use it. That’s what it’s for. So they don’t rush you into something you truly don’t want.”

“But even when I tell them I don’t want it, somehow I always end up…actually…wanting it,” she forced herself to admit.

Dr. Portman just chuckled. “That’s because they’re Doms and you’re a submissive. It’s their job to push you beyond your boundaries, which I imagine at this point, are very restrictive.”

She nodded.

“They only want to help you experience heights of pleasure you never would have discovered on your own. That’s what gives
them
the most pleasure.” He studied her bent head. “Have they done anything to suggest that they might have ulterior motives?”

“No.” She shook her head. “They are very honest and honorable men.”

“They are, indeed. Have they done anything that’s made you uncomfortable?”

She gnawed on her lip. “Well, when they first began putting the nitroglycerine cream inside my…my anus, it made me very uncomfortable. It was just so…intimate. I barely knew them.”

“Did they talk you through it? Reassure you?”

“Yes” She gave him a tiny smile. “They’re very good at reassuring me. And I seem to need a lot of it.”

“They care a great deal about you.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Dr. Portman reassured her. “A man doesn’t call me at two o’clock in the morning, desperate to help someone he cares nothing about.”

Her eyes widened. “Daddy did that?”

If he noticed her slip in referring to Nik as ‘Daddy’, he didn’t show it. “He did indeed. You had just been forced to participate in a horrific ordeal and were having a nightmare about it. He feared it had traumatized you so much, it had set you back in your recovery.” He tilted his head. “It does happen, you know. Something triggers a bad memory and you regress back to an earlier stage of recovery.”

“Is that what I did last night?” she asked. “By begging them to make love to me, was I regressing back to an earlier stage of recovery?”

“Not necessarily. You were merely seeking comfort and reassurance from the only two people you trust. And they gave it to you.”

Her smile was wicked. “They certainly did do that,” she murmured.

He laughed. “You’re doing all the right things, Charlie. You’re talking about what happened to you. By keeping it out in the open, and not bottled up inside of you, you are diminishing its power over you. By pressing charges and testifying in court, you’re challenging your fears. Bit by bit you are taking back control of your life. Even as traumatizing as last night’s photo shoot may have been initially, you instinctively sought out a meaningful remedy that reassured you that you are valued.

“Recovery from something this traumatic is a long process. And there will be set-backs, especially in the early stages. But you have people around you who care for you and are eager to help you. My advice? Let them.”

Charlie just stared at him, feeling the weight of the huge boulder sitting on her shoulders gradually getting lighter, as if it were being lifted off.

“And one last thing. Get outdoors and get more exercise.” He stood. “Take advantage of all the beautiful hiking trails this place has to offer. Swim laps in the pool. Learn the Texas Two-Step. I hear there’s a really great country band around here with a dynamite new female singer.” He grinned.

She stood too, grinning back at him, holding out her hand for him to shake. “Thank you, Doctor Portman. I’m going to take you up on all those things. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“Well, I’ll be here all week-end. Why don’t we meet tomorrow night after you get back from Richmond?”