Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (9 page)

His brow creased. “Are you babbling?”

“Yeah, a little. It’s the manly chest, the lack of recent sex, and I’m nervous about what we’re going to do tonight.”

He removed the hat from her head, stroking a tendril of hair away from her cheek, an oddly tender gesture. “I’m flattered by the chest comment. I don’t get that too often. When’s Madison getting here?”

“I decided against that.”

His expression shifted into disapproval, the first time he’d looked less than affable. It made things tighten in her belly, adding to her reaction to his bare upper torso, and that was doing a good job at unsettling her all on its own. She figured he didn’t get the compliment that often because he didn’t take his shirt off much in mixed company. From what she was looking at, manly covered it. Who knew he’d have such distracting shoulders and pecs?

“It’s not just about you trusting me, Julie. It’s about safety.”

“I know that. I’m not an idiot.” She made a face. “I checked with Logan and he vouched for you 100%. If you make a liar out of him, he’ll remove one of your lungs with a garden spade. Right?”

When he continued to give her that look, she shook her head. “I really would rather get into the moment and feel it as a sub would feel it. I don’t want an audience making me self-conscious about that. I just want to feel. I trust you to stop if I say stop, or change anything that scares me or makes me uncomfortable. Am I wrong about that?”

“Not at all. But you should never just take the word of some bastard you don’t really know on that.”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? She felt like she did know him. But at least it appeared he’d decided to accept her judgment. He stood, giving her a hand up to face him on the stage. He captured her other hand, too, closing the connection between them. His gaze slid over her tunic top, belted over a mid-length skirt. “Did you bring an outfit like I described, leggings and sports bra?”

She shifted her gaze to his throat. Her shyness was silly, she knew, but it didn’t change it. “I want you to be able to do the candle thing you mentioned. So I figured I’d just undress. On one condition. That you leave your shirt off.”

His lips curved. “Quid pro quo?”

“Well, if I’m going to be fully without, asking you to leave a shirt off seems reasonable.”

“It does. The jeans okay?”

She nodded. His were loose enough at the waist that she saw a hint of hip bone, and when he’d turned to get up, she’d glimpsed the rise of his buttocks, telling her he wasn’t wearing underwear. That look would work for her just fine. Especially since the stretch of the denim in the groin area suggested she’d already successfully engaged his attention.

“All right.” He touched her chin, drawing her eyes back up to his. “I need to be sure we’re on the same page. This isn’t a performance. And even if a Dom and sub are doing a session in front of an audience, it’s not a magic show. It’s real, or it doesn’t work.”

“I get it. Sometimes even when actors are just rehearsing, they get caught up in the characters. But when the scene is over, it’s over.”

“Yes. But the best performance happens when you become the character. When this kind of session is done right, the two people involved are open to one another during it. When it ends, something has changed in each of them. It’s a gift they can carry, that binds them, even if they’re not in a relationship. If a scene is done right, you’re completely naked.”

“I said I was okay with that. I’ve been in theater forever. Costume changes sometimes happen barely out of range of the wings.”

“I said naked. Not undressed. They’re different.” His voice was calm, rhythmic like waves, but what was beneath it was deep enough to pull her under in tropical, wet waters.

Though her knees were quivering, she used the grip of his hands to counter that. “I told you I want to do this. It feels like you’re trying to scare me out of it.”

“No. I just want you to understand what it is and isn’t. I can’t let you stay detached, Julie.” He increased his hold on her. “You have way too much going on beneath the surface for me to deny myself the pleasure of diving in.”

Her pulse jumped at the sudden shift in his expression, a glimpse of something hungry. “But you can say stop at any time,” he continued. “And if you feel uncomfortable or afraid, you tell me. Okay?”

Yep, she had all the control. Control of a bag of wild cats, all of whom were wanting to tear loose, make her act in inexplicable ways.

Des let go of one hand and picked up his shirt. He kept a firm clasp on her other hand, leading her through the slit in the curtain to the stage beyond it.

He’d prepared for her arrival. A table held neatly coiled figure eights of black rope and a glittering pile of silver carabiner clips. Next to them were a half dozen pale ivory candles and a lighter. A backpack was on the floor, leaning against the table leg.

Several ropes were hanging from the support beams above the stage, with hooks attached to the ends of the lines. Maybe she should have brought Madison. What did she really know about Desmond? What was he going to do with those hooks?

He stopped, perhaps feeling her hesitation. “Anything you want to talk about, we can,” he said. “If you change your mind about having someone here, we can do it another night when you can give Madison some advance warning. We can go get a pizza or something.”

She swallowed. “No. I think I made the right decision. What I need… I need your help feeling right about it.”

At his quizzical expression, she colored. “It’s going to sound stupid, but when we were looking at the orchids, you had this way of tapping into what I am… I mean, what I felt. It made it okay. I think I would have let you do anything to me right then.”

His jaw muscles flexed, suggesting her bald admission had elicited a primal response, barely held back. She felt it in the strength of his grip on her hand, but he only said, “Okay.”

Pressing his shirt in her hands, he tilted his head down so they both looked at the cloth bunched in her grip. “At the end of our session tonight, I’m going to put my shirt on you.”

The worn cloth was soft, and she resisted the female urge to lift it to her nose to smell. Hard and strong he was. Broad chested, not so much. She glanced down at her D-cup breasts. “I don’t think this is going to fit.”

“We’ll button what we can. I think the effect will be interesting.”

He took the shirt from her, walked it over to the table and left it draped over the pack. Moving to the side stage, he drew back the curtains. As they retracted, he revealed the darkened theater, the empty chairs.

He returned to her, a masculine figure moving through alternating shadows and shafts of light. Any words she’d planned to say dried up. He didn’t tell her to be quiet; his expression and body language did.

Turning her to face the front of the stage, he put his hands on her shoulders. “Close your eyes. Feel the theater breathing like you talked about. Imagine there are a few hundred people out there, all silent and waiting, watching. Each of them imagining themselves in either your shoes or mine, or both, bringing their own personal stories to life in a million different ways. We inspire their imaginations, but we’re also oblivious to them, because that’s the point.”

His lips brushed her ear, making her shiver. “There’s being a story and telling one, and this is being a story. If the crowd stirs, even just a little, I’ll silence them with a look, a raised hand. I won’t permit anything to distract you or intrude on your experience. That’s part of my job, part of what you can trust me to do.”

It had been years since she’d performed on a stage, so it was peculiar to feel a bit of stage fright as he created an imaginary audience watching them.

“Everyone is quiet. Now it’s just us.”

His captivating voice, too deep for his frame, too compelling for an individual who looked like a roadie and who might be too young for her, held her in place. Through the touch of his hand, the stroke of his voice, he evolved into the Dominant she’d felt on their first meeting and in that unforgettable moment at the orchid garden.

She told herself it was just performance. He possessed that incredible charisma that incited crushes from so many actresses for their leading man, even when he was a total dick outside the role he played onstage. She didn’t have that risk of being crushed by reality. They’d set the boundaries. She could be swept up in her own character, enjoy it without losing perspective.

But he’d said he couldn’t let her hold herself apart. This wasn’t a performance with a review write-up tomorrow. This was intended to be an experience.

He swept his hands down her arms and back up to her shoulders, his fingers caressing her throat. She swayed and he closed the gap between them.

“When I do a scene, my submissive is the center. She’s everything.”

He removed the barrette from her hair so it spilled over his hands. He combed through the thick locks, tugging harder with each pass, scraping it all together as if he was going to create a ponytail. Only instead he loosened his grip, spread her hair back on her shoulders, then did it all over again, digging into her nape, her scalp, mixing force with the tug. Her eyes had closed again and she was swaying with his motions, a spiral of reaction inside and out.

"I’m going to undress you, Julie,” he whispered. “I want you to feel my hands on you, get you used to me touching you, taking control. All right?"

As she’d said, there was little modesty in theater. She didn’t see her body as a glowing treasure that had to be hidden until some presto moment where she’d reveal it to an awestruck lover. It was just a body. They were all sizes and shapes, and fit society’s definition of beauty at different levels, but in the end, a body was a body. Everyone had one.

On the other hand, her body had never been unwrapped as if it
was
a treasure. A far different experience from matter-of-factly stripping off outer garb while cast and crew members passed by like orbiting planets.

“When I tell you I’m undressing you, I'm demanding a paradigm shift in your head. Answer me, love.”

She moistened her lips. “Yes. Okay.”

His fingers curved around her waist, slid around and plucked open the tunic’s sash. “Lift your arms.”

When she did, he pulled the tunic off of her. He did it slowly, so the silken fabric caressed her skin as he drew it away from her. He didn’t remove her bra or skirt yet. He wrapped his fingers over her waist again, fanned them out so they were caressing her ribs, his smallest finger below her waist band and tracing her hip bone. He rubbed her lower back with his thumbs, loosening the muscles there. His chin remained against her pulse, just below her ear, so his breath stroked sensitive nerve endings. She unconsciously tilted her body up toward that stimulation. Her breasts wanted his strong hands cupping and caressing them, and her nipples ached at the thought of him capturing them in his fingertips to pinch and play.

The shift rubbed her backside against him, and he made an approving noise. “I love a naturally sensual sub,” he said. “No calculation from the mind, just following your own desires. Move anyway you wish, love. It’s like the orchids when the wind or sun touches them. They lift and bend and, even caught on their stems, they can’t help straining toward what they want.”

He unzipped her skirt, so it slipped to the floor. When he drew back, she suspected he was examining her underwear. She’d chosen black lace for both bra and panties, and the panties were the boy short style. His palm slid over one cheek, rubbing the lace against her flesh, then he slid a finger beneath, drawing the fabric up further to expose the curve.

“Gorgeous ass,” he murmured. “When we’re done tonight, my rope will be marking it. I’ll leave that language printed all over you.”

Unclasping the bra, he slid it off her arms. He didn’t cup her breasts as she hoped and expected. He took off her underwear so she was naked, and moved to face her.

She wasn’t expecting that, him mostly dressed and examining her from head to toe. He’d let her hair drop back on her shoulders, so some of the strands had fallen forward onto her right breast, others spread over or behind her shoulders.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

When she did, it straightened her posture and she realized she’d been hunching. His eyes glowed and he cupped one breast, giving it a light stroke. She was trembling.

“Cold, love?”

She shook her head, and he nodded in satisfaction, as if he’d anticipated that answer. “Do you have any old injuries that could affect your joints, your back?”

She shook her head. “Nothing more than the usual aches and pains of middle age.”

“Yeah, they catch up with you. I’m going to be gentle with you tonight, but I like to ask. From here forward, you move only as I tell you to move. If you need something you tell me. Yes?”

“Yes.”

He left her to go back to the table. In the corner of her eye, she saw him light three pillar candles on the table and pick up a couple coils of rope, a handful of clips. He must have activated a music player, because the opening strains to “Ever After” by Marianas Trench filled the air.

“Like a candlelit dinner without the candlelight.”

“Mmm. Hush now. Don’t move also means don’t speak. Just experience this, love.”

She noticed one of the coils of rope was smaller in width than the others. It felt like he used that one first, binding her wrists together but not stopping there. He created an intricate looping between fingers, knuckles and wrist. When he was done, her hands were drawn into balled fists she couldn’t open.

"It's different, when you can't use or move your fingers. Every part I immobilize can open another level of consciousness for you, if you let it. You’ll be bound but you’ll also start to fly.”

Moving in front of her, he shook out the thicker rope and looped it over her neck. He didn’t rush, but he didn’t hesitate, tying the first knots as fluidly as if he was a spider spinning its web. Hence the Spiderman nickname, she assumed.

She was glad he didn’t tell her to close her eyes, because she could watch the movement of his hands and arms, the shifts of his body, the concentrated expression. His gaze flicked up to hers periodically, a touch of flame that made her lips part, her body quiver harder and her brain cut loose to drift in a lust-filled haze. She’d expected something dramatic to propel her into this state. She hadn’t realized all it required was him taking control, and her feeling the first brush of the rope. With every binding and loop, she was sinking deeper into an edgy, needy bliss.