Endgame (18 page)

“Good girl.” He tossed the toothbrush aside, leaned into her, grabbed her hips and began the rhythm she’d craved. His mouth found her neck, her shoulder, his tongue. “You have to give me three, baby. Get me in the books. You got another in you?”

She shook her head, moaning, eyes closed. All strength had left her muscles feeling like strips of rubber attached to gelatin bones. But his skin on hers, his scent filling her nostrils, spicy and salty with sweat, mingling with hers, it all felt too right. She wrapped her legs around his waist and arched upward, his thrusts quickening like his breathing. His muscles rippled, then tensed as he shuddered. He uttered a groan mixed with a whimper as he finally found release.

She wished he wasn’t wearing a condom, so he could claim her again. She wanted that, so badly, to be his.

He lowered himself on top of her, and they fit so perfectly, his curves settling into hers, his weight balanced so he was easy to bear. She wanted to hold him, to kiss him, but instead closed her eyes and enjoyed his arms around her shoulders.

“I need to untie you,” he said as if he’d read her mind. He reached up and undid the bindings, then rubbed each wrist, kissing where the rope had dug into her skin. The gag came next. He smoothed the damp hair from her face, the smile on his firm lips very tender. “Life affirming, baby. That’s what that was.”

She nodded, unable speak. But she wrapped her arms around his back, her hands splayed out over damp muscles. If he did this for her, before she met the motherfuckers, she’d die a happy woman. If she could have one wish, sort of like a last meal or a last cigarette, this would be hers.

He rested his head on her shoulder for what seemed an eternity before he said, “I think I have to take care of things, huh?”

She nodded.

He kissed her reluctantly, withdrew and dragged himself off of her, off the bed, and over to the trash can. “You okay? Feeling the need to kill me? Or am I safe?”

“Safe.” So safe.

He frowned, searching for something, muttering. He grabbed a towel off the floor and wiped up, then turned to the clean end and gently cleaned her. “I did okay?”

“Yes. You were amazing.”

“Amazing? I fell short on my orgasm goal, you know.”

“I’ve never had two orgasms during lovemaking before. So this makes six in twenty-four hours. I think you need to cut yourself some slack. Even romance heroines don’t get that many orgasms.”

He shot her the cocky grin. “I have goals for sex camp. If I get my way, I’ll have goals for spy camp, too.”

“I’m hungry,” she whispered, wanting to distract him from spy camp chatter. She didn’t need to teach him how to be immoral and heartless like her, not when he was so gentle and kind. “I want pizza. How much is left?”

“Six pieces?”

“You can have two.”

“So generous. Cold? Hot?” Aaron yanked on a pair of pajama bottoms and turned to her. “Milk? Beer?”

“Heat it. Chocolate milk. And Jake made brownies. Bring those.”

“One?”

“The whole pan.”

Aaron felt like a whole new man as he made Charlotte her midnight snack. Making love to her was life affirming, just as he’d told her. It was like getting into a new role, discovering the character, learning so much about the depth and complexity, with visions of how each scene would play out. Only this time, his role was real and the scenes he’d play would be ones for her pleasure.

He shuffled back with the picnic and set the tray on top of his bureau. She was curled in the bed, watching him silently, as if unsure what to do or say. How odd this must be for her, yanked from her element. If he were a bad guy, she’d spring up and kill him. But if he dared to put himself in her bare feet, he bet she felt a whole herd of weird and out of place amongst the stampede of post coital aftershocks.

Aaron sorted out what he wanted to take first to the bed and broke the silence. “I feel like I’m feeding a starving island nation.”

“I told you I don’t have food issues.” She sat up, her eyes glowing with the intent of devouring, and grabbed the paper plate he offered. She bit into the slice, moaned, closed her eyes, and looked just as close to orgasm as she had a half hour earlier. “I have been blessed with a high metabolism since doomsday. The training I do makes it worse.”

He didn’t ask what doomsday was, because that was the baggage, right there, and it had an awful name. “Are you training for something special? Jake sort of hinted at that.”

She stopped chewing for a moment, frozen. Then she shrugged. “There’s a big mission, yes. Down the road a piece.” But she didn’t attack the pizza slice quite as hard this time. “You want to know about submissiveness?”

Though he would have bet an elephant and two chickens that she’d avoid anything to do with the past, she chose it over her future. A shiver of apprehension tore down his spine. “Okay, so tell me what a submissive is. Does.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be eating pizza in your bed.” She wiped her lips with a napkin. “I would have served you naked, on my knees, bedside. I would have eaten when you finished, still on the floor. Then you’d command me to blow you or prepare myself for you pleasure.”

“Prepare?”

“Well, yes. There wasn’t foreplay unless Sir wanted it. I had to be ready for his desires. I often would be commanded to my hands and knees or to the bed on my back. If I was good, I would get to come. And like you, I had obedience issues at times. So coming was a treat.”

He felt like an ass, denying her orgasms when that man had done the same thing. Aaron wouldn’t give her husband any medals for valor, because he sounded like a dick. “So you kneeled around, wet, and ready, all the time?”

She laughed at the image. “Well, no, I went to work and did normal things. Ran to the grocery, cooked. Cleaned. And yes, I waited on him hand and foot, all of his needs. I served him gladly.” She met his gaze then and must have seen something he’d tried to hide. “I knew what I was getting into, Aaron. I wanted it. Please don’t be judgmental.”

He had a hard time picturing her waiting on a man without threatening his life for leaving his socks on the floor. “But you weren’t…you. Fiery, do it or die, scarier than a dragon?”

“I was me. But that was a different time, and I wasn’t Charlotte then. I was Abigail, I worked for an important man in Parliament as his personal assistant, and I was married to a university professor. I was…compliant, for lack of a better word. Quiet. I was everything I’m not now.”

Aaron didn’t agree—compliant and quiet was there, hidden under the layers of tough girl. The smart part of him assumed her baggage—doomsday—had tacked on cold, hard, and mean to the compliant and quiet, like a dangerous game of pin the tail on the donkey. Only, instead of a tail, she had pinned on some kickass armor. “You said he was into humiliation.”

“Yes, among other things. He’d call me things to make me feel humiliated. Like his whore or his slut, and he’d get off on how wet I was for him, without him touching me—I liked it, too.” She looked unsure for the first time, and it rattled him. “He made me dress certain ways and wear certain toys when I was out. Orgasms were gifts to be earned, and I was designed to serve his needs, sexual or not.”

“I don’t think you’d like that now.”

“No, I agree.” She picked onions from her slice, more for something to do with her hands. “I need to focus on the things that excite me now, Aaron. Humiliation isn’t going to work any longer.”

He hated feeling insecure, hated that he needed to ask. “Do I…excite you?”

“Yes, very much.” She looked up at him, surprised. “You know that.”

“You wanted to end it after our first time, so I figured I did something wrong.”

“It wasn’t because of what you did in bed. I was overwhelmed.” Embarrassment tinged her cheeks pink. “I spent five years of my new life being in control of everything, and suddenly, during sex, that control slipped away.” She smiled then, her gaze almost a little shy, her cheeks still pink. “You’re an attentive, courteous lover. I think your girlfriend will be a happy woman when she finally finds you.”

Thinking about a girlfriend when he had his idea of sexual perfection in his bed, right now, was unsettling, so he redirected her focus. “So do you agree with me, that maybe you’re a switch?”

“Not in the traditional and more correct usage of the term.” She shrugged. “I don’t understand why I like being able to command you, but it gives me an odd thrill, and making you kneel is on the edge of humiliation, because I know you don’t enjoy it. But then we begin kissing or fondling, and suddenly the power shifts, like you said you’ve noticed. It’s as if…the dominance excites one side now, maybe because it was forbidden then. Or maybe because that’s what the mean part of me needs. But eventually, the submissive side wins.”

He got it—it excited him, too. Getting the power to shift was part of the fun. If she was there, waiting for him, her legs spread…it would be hot. But maybe it wouldn’t be as exciting. The whole thrill of binding and gagging her was the notion that he might die when she got up, not in the fact that she was his to control. Maybe that’s what the punk in him needed, someone to command that side, to channel it until the dominant side stepped up.

He cocked his head. “Would you kneel for me? You wouldn’t feel too humiliated?”

“Kneeling isn’t humiliating for me. It shows my desire to please.”

He chucked a pillow on the ground. “Then kneel. But on the pillow. The hardwood floors are murder on the knees.”

She slid from the bed and kneeled on the pillow, her hands on her thighs, her deep red hair cascading over her pale skin as she lowered her head. It was the most incredible sight, and his stomached tightened along with his cock. He swallowed—it had nothing to do with the pizza—and rose to walk around her.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “Your shoulders, here,” he touched the width of them, “the muscles ripple. And the way your back blends into your buttocks, that seductive curve of the small of your back…” The pads of his fingers skimmed her flesh, through that dip, trailing to the crack of her ass. “Your skin is so creamy next to the deep red of your hair. I would paint you like this if you let me.” He swallowed another lump in his throat. “Look at me,” he commanded.

Violet eyes met his. She looked at him expectantly but with patience, as if his next command was the only thing on her mind.

“Are you allowed to talk?”

“Not unless you command it. Or ask me a question. Sir.”

“You did this all the time?” At her nod, he shifted uncomfortably, hoping this wasn’t what she eventually wanted here, in the house, full time. He liked all facets of Charlotte, from the diamond hard to the molten gold. Something told him if her happiness was his destiny, then submissive Charlotte twenty-four/seven wasn’t the solution. “It sounds like a lot of work, on both sides.”

“Lazy,” she whispered. Her face fell, and she dropped her eyes to the floor.

“What?”

“I would have been punished for that. I’ve forgotten quickly how to be submissive.”

A part of him curled up and died at the thought of punishing her for telling him the truth. There was no way in hell he was breaking Charlotte. He’d seen the results of that already. His goal was her happiness. So what would make her happy?

He thought for a moment. “Your punishment is you have to give up one slice of your pizza,” he commanded, using the voice from the Medieval fantasy movie, all balls and glory. The starving island nation of Charlotte would regret that one slice. “And you have to surrender some of the brownies you’ve hoarded. Rise and eat, woman. You need strength if I’m to take you again.”

“Yes, Sir,” she whispered, but she rose and did his bidding, hiding a half smile. “Do you have any other negotiations?”

“Negotiations?”

She nodded as she sat on the bed and put the plate back in her lap. “That’s what Doms do. They negotiate things they want and need in bed. What they need from a relationship.”

“Do you get to voice what you want?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.” She cocked her head at him. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted was not to be hurt, physically. I’d do clamps or a spanking with a hand only, but that was it.”

“What do you want now, Charlotte?”

Charlotte blinked. It was as if time and space had shifted, only it was Aaron before her instead of Chase, asking her what she wanted. Her heart pounded like it did in the hotel so many years ago as she contemplated the next step in her life. Only she didn’t have an answer. None of the options were safe.

The old part of her loved easily and completely, no questions asked. She could see that old part of herself loving Aaron. He was sweet, kind, and gentle, and she realized that was exactly what the cold, hard, and mean in her needed.

“Charlotte?”

She glanced at Aaron, so handsome cross-legged on the bed, his cock semi-hard between his thighs. Her goals didn’t allow her to have wants or needs. But she could cater to his.

“I want to be the woman who helps you break the Anderson record,” she whispered, her hand at her throat. That wasn’t at all what she wanted, but it was safe.

She expected a smart-assed remark, a grin, or a whoop of joy because sex camp was in session. But instead, he stared at her, using the same locking gaze Jake used when he wished to search her soul. “I don’t want you to be ready for me, Char. For sex, I mean. If you’re horny on your own, fine. But I don’t want that to be a part of the deal.”

Her eyes flew to his. What? Why? So odd, this punk of a man.

“I want to bring you there. Myself. Okay?”

She nodded, trembling just a little, because that nod was all she could manage. How different, to want to share her pleasure, own it from the beginning. So…unselfish. She never would have thought that of Aaron, the punk snot.

He shrugged, and she realized she was staring, so she dropped her gaze. “I expect lots of foreplay if we’re going for four. And I need you to talk to me, so I can learn you better. So none of this silence crap.”

The gentleness of his demands tugged in her tummy. He did want to own her. Possess her. Just in his own way. “Anything else, Sir?”