His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (26 page)

This time there’s no pretense in my anger. A stream of cuss words comes spewing out of my mouth as I yank at the ropes. Wanting to hit him. Wanting to inflict serious bodily harm for what he’s just done to me.

He cuts off my angry tirade, grabbing me around the back of my neck again. “Look at yourself,” he hisses. He pulls me forward, just enough so I can see his load dripping down my stomach. The sight is pure torture, and I can feel Colin’s cum, nasty and angry, working its way down the top of my pussy and coating the button between its swollen lips.

“That’s what it feels like to be hung up on by the woman who’s got your mind twisted into knots. By the woman who’s got your heart—” He cuts himself off with a disgusted sound. “Don’t
ever
fucking do that again.”

His words are harsh, harsher than any man has ever been with me. But they flood my heart with empathy as I suddenly realize with sparkling clarity that for Colin, this isn’t a game. It’s about more than me not playing by his rules. I hurt him when I refused to take his calls, even more, when I ended things without talking it out with him.

“I won’t,” I tell him. I don’t fight him on this. I don’t want to fight him on this. Somehow it becomes imperative to make him understand I didn’t mean to hurt him.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper. “I have issues, and I was trying to protect myself. Trying to protect both of us, but I shouldn’t have hung up on you. It was childish, and it was…” I can’t find the words to express how awful I feel about the look of raw pain in his eyes now. So I settle for, “I’m sorry.”

There is a dangerous moment between us, when I don’t know how he’s going to respond. He is, after all, still trying to decide what to forgive and what to punish.

But in the end, he reaches up for the ropes and begins to untie me. The action fills me with a wild disconsolation and for a few tortured moments, I’m sure this is it. That he only brought me up here to teach me a very dirty lesson and now he’s going to kick me out of his penthouse condo without another thought.

But after he frees me, he says, “C’mere,” in that lazy country boy drawl of his. And then he’s got me nestled against him in the bed. His chest against my back, his hand tipping up my whole face so I can receive his kiss.

It’s more than nice. It’s a perfect kiss. One that feels exactly like a welcome home, though this is the first time I’ve ever been in his real home.

I feel his hand swipe some of the mess off my stomach, and I suck in a breath when he uses it to massage my clit, coating the engorged button in his still warm semen.

It feels so good that my mouth falls away from his as I cry out with pleasure. But he brings my face right back, kissing me as he works me. Tongue tangling into mine as he makes me come apart with his hand. He doesn’t even let me out of the kiss when the pressure of his hand on my sensitive clit becomes too much and I start screaming into his mouth.

The kiss goes on and on, long after I’ve finished coming. And by the time he lets me go, I can feel him once again hard and rigid against my back.

An idea about how to make the last two weeks up to him floats into my head.

“Do you want me to help you with that?” I ask him, my voice husky.

“If you want to use my mouth on this dick, you’re going to have to ask for permission.”

His eyes have lost their edge, and I can sense something’s been restored. But I still have to let him know, “I will never ask for permission to give you a blowjob. Either you want one or you don’t, Fairgood.”

He considers me for a few moments. I can actually feel his manhood pulsing against my back. But then he says, “Nah, I’m not letting you have any more of me until you give me all of you.”

He moves away from me, leaving me cold as he retreats to the right side of his California King.

“Let’s go to sleep,” he says. “We can talk about this more in the morning.”

“Seriously?” I watch him curl up on the same side of the bed he used at the cabin.

“If you want to take a shower before you go to sleep, it’s right through there.”

He points to another set of double doors at the far side of the room, then punches up his pillow before settling in. “I’ll probably be asleep by the time you get back, though. Jetlag’s a bitch, so I’ll say goodnight now.”

“Colin, are you serious?” I ask.

I’m aware we both got ours, but the sexual tension is still thick in the room, throbbing like a beast that’s only just woken up.

However, Colin doesn’t even shift in the bed. He’s either ignoring me or serious about being jetlagged.

I don’t know how to feel as I turn on the jet spray in his shower and let the warm water wash over me. I think about leaving. All through the shower, I think about leaving, not letting myself be manipulated by a man the way my mother was manipulated by my father for most of her time in Alabama.

I think about it long and hard, then I dry off with one of Colin’s fluffy white towels and climb back into his bed, naked.

Colin wasn’t lying about being asleep when I got back. I hear him breathing on the other side of the bed, steady breaths just a few steps away from snoring.

This is weird. So weird. I should leave, I think to myself.

Then I think about my apology from earlier. My apology for not talking to him. For not communicating with him.

But what he’s asking is crazy. And stupid. And weird. And fucked up. And a bunch of other adjectives I never thought I’d be using to describe my love life. I should leave, I think again. I can always call him later. Keep my promise when I’m back in Alabama and have some perspective on the situation.

I lie there. Eyes wide open. Trying to convince myself.

Then I hear a sleepy, “C’mere.”

I look over to my right. Colin’s eyes are half open now, and he’s looking at me. “C’mere,” he says again.

I go to him. Rolling over and scooting until my body is flush with his, my face buried in his warm chest.

Then, despite my heavy level of arousal, I fall asleep, feeling a peace I really should not be feeling in Colin Fairgood’s arms.

30

When I wake, I’m tied up again. But this time with so much slack, I don’t even notice… until I try to rub my eyes and can’t because my wrists are bound together.

“You hungry?”

I look over my shoulder. Colin’s on the other side of the room at a small table. There’s an open laptop obscuring most of his upper body, but his hair is hanging wet around his shoulders, and I can see he’s wearing a simple pair of jogging pants, like he just got done working out.

“What are you doing?” I ask. More curious about seeing him on a laptop than hungry.

“Emailing Ginny about my mama’s house. They’ve found a buyer. A family. Ginny can handle it, but I want to meet them myself. Make sure they’re…”

He trails off.

And I raise my wrists above my head, so I can turn all the way over to face him.

“You want to make sure they’re good people?” I guess.

“I’ll settle for decent. But I don’t want to sell her house to a bunch of snobs. I want to make sure they’re not the kind of people who treat their servants like my mom and me got treated by the Lancers. And I’d like for them to be happy. I don’t want my mother’s house occupied by another sad rich family, like Beau Prescott’s.”

Hearing Beau’s name sends a forbidding dark cloud over my head. I have no idea what this is between Colin and me. What it will become in the future. But I’ve got to figure out a way to tell him. Everything. Even though I suspect when I do, it will be the end of us.

I watch him work, the sound of his typing the only thing filling up the silence.

“How do you feel about that?” he asks without looking up from his computer.

“About what?”

“Happy families.”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking. Like are you wondering if I believe in them?”

He still hasn’t looked up, and I get the sense he’s embarrassed to be having this conversation with me, even though he’s the one who brought up the subject. “That and… do you want one?”

“A family?” I repeat.

“Yeah.”

“Yes,” I answer without any hesitation. “I know I don’t exactly scream good mom, but I always thought it would be nice to raise someone better than I was. You know, sort of make it up to my inner child.”

He finally looks up from the computer. “I think you’d make a fine mom, Blue. You give a fuck and you always try your best.”

“Yeah, but…” I indicate the ropes. “Apparently I’m also a little messed up in the head.”

Colin half smiles. “I love newbie songwriters. They always think everything’s gotta be so authentic. Wait until some country star comes along saying he’ll pay you six figures to write him a hit bro-country song. You’ll see how authentic everything’s got to be then.”

I shake my head, not getting his meaning. “Are you saying my feelings aren’t authentic?”

“I’m saying what we do in the bedroom doesn’t reflect on us in other parts of our lives. If every guy that downloaded porn was a bad father, then America would be in a serious parenting crisis. I’m saying you’re scared now, but eventually you’ll get used to our dynamic, and you might be surprised how much it doesn’t affect the rest of your life. You’ll still write your songs, and help your grandma get Sunday Dinners on the table again come April.”

The meaning of his words sink in, warm my heart. He’s talking about us in the future tense.

“So you think we can have a future together that doesn’t involve me waking up tied up every morning?” I ask him with a grin.

Colin grins back. “Of course we can. Some mornings I’ll be on the road.”

Even though I never admit to being hungry, Colin closes his laptop a few minutes later, goes out of the room, and comes back with some fruit and cheese.

He feeds me by hand, pressing grapes and tangerine slices into my mouth as we make casual conversation about some of the things that have happened over the past few weeks. Movies that came out, news events, and who we thought would win what at the CMAs.

“You good or you want more?” he asks after a while.

I look down and am surprised to see the plate is now empty. “I’m good,” I say. Though I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.

I watch him take away the tray, and it feels like he must have read my mind when he returns with two large red coffee cups with “Loveless Café” scrawled across them in white cursive. My heart sings with gratitude…

Only to sink when he sets one of the cups on the nightstand. Just out of my reach, even with the slack rope.

“That’s just cruel,” I tell him.

He takes a sip of his own coffee before answering. “You give me what I want, I’ll untie you and give you what you want. Let you drink that whole mug of coffee before I fuck you silly.”

I just sit there, glaring at him, wishing I was Yoda so I could float the coffee over to myself.

“Okay,” he says. He goes back to his laptop, opens it, and begins typing so long, I wonder if he’s writing a novel. Maybe he’s writing erotica under a pen name on the side. At this point I wouldn’t put much past him.

“I have to leave early tomorrow morning, you know,” I say after what feels like an hour of him typing.

“Yeah, I know,” he says without looking up from his laptop. “Kind of feels like you’re wasting our time, Blue.”

I would laugh at him taking the words I was going to say about him right out my mouth. Except I’m tied up in a superstar’s bed, brain dying for coffee, pussy aching for what only he can give me, and it really doesn’t feel funny at all when I open my mouth to ask him, “What happens if I give in?”

He stops typing. “Are you asking me what happens if you submit to me?”

I nod, unable to say the words out loud. Just having this conversation feels like a betrayal of everything I’ve ever known—everything I thought I was.

Colin closes his laptop with quiet deliberation. He then comes over to the bed and stands there, looking down at me.

I’m completely naked, but somehow I feel even more exposed when he looks at me like this. Like he’s reading the diary I never bothered to keep because I was too busy writing songs.

Then he surprises me by crawling into bed with me, running shoes and all. He lies down, facing me, nothing but my bound hands between our naked chests.

“What do you think will happen?” he asks, his blue eyes almost gentle on my face.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.” I answer. “You know I’ve never done anything like this before with anybody else. I don’t have a clue how this goes after somebody…” I have to swallow in order to get the distasteful word out my mouth. “…submits.”

And that lazy country boy smile of Colin’s comes right on back. “Alright, since you’re so innocent, I guess the better question is what are you scared of happening?”

That answer’s a lot easier for me. “I’m scared if I give you what you want…”

“Everything,” he puts in—like I need a reminder.

“I’m scared if I give you everything, you’ll make me do something I don’t want to do.”

“Something like what? Pass you around to my roadies?”

“Yes,” I answer, completely straight faced. “And that scares me, because I just know I’d fall so hard for your guitar tech, Keith. He’d have me all strung out, and then where would I be after I’ve already promised my body to you? I don’t want you to put me in that position.”

Colin doesn’t laugh, but his lips twitch at the idea of me passing him over for his balding, potbellied guitar tech.

“Keith’s married with four kids,” he informs me. “And he’s old enough to be your dad.”

I shrug. “The heart wants what the heart wants. I’m just saying I’m getting the feeling you wouldn’t be cool with something like that, so maybe we should just take the whole full submission question off the table, just in case things change.”

The grin fades off Colin’s face. “Do you really think I’d pass you around to my crew?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “That’s why I think we should—”

He takes me by the chin, makes me look at him. “Do you really think I’d pass you around to my crew?”

“It doesn’t matter. The point I’m trying to make is—”

“Kyra, do you really think I’d pass you around to my crew? Or make you do anything I didn’t think you’d absolutely want to do with
my
body?”