Hold Me (Love The Way Book 2) Read online

  Ella nods behind her blindfold. Her hands open and close again.

  Just as my hand raises to swat her ass for not verbalizing her answer, she murmurs, “Yes, I will obey.”

  With my pulse rising, the adrenaline fueling each of my thoughts, I ask, “Was it like that between you and James?”

  Tension runs through her like an electric shock. Ella goes completely still, her breath stopped and her thighs rigid and unmoving. I keep my eyes on her body, every curve down to the detail of how tight the cords in her neck are. Checking every muscle. Monitoring what I can see of her expression.

  Did I push her past some hidden boundary? The mention of his name. It’s hell to wait without touching her, but I do it. This is something that can’t be rushed. I’m going to do what any good Dom would do, and what I know to be right.

  “Would you rather I refer to him as your former Dom?”

  Ella bites her bottom lip. “Either is fine,” she whispers and then clears her throat. “And … no. He didn’t have a list for me.” There’s obvious confusion in her tone.

  “There is no one way to be submissive and no correct way to be a Dominant. But you will find I have my desires, and that includes control and obedience. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.” The second the word is uttered from her lips, I press the vibrator to her clit, letting it sit there as she screams out.

  With her hands restrained behind her, her legs bound and spread, I use my other hand to press her chest into the bed. Although she cries out in sudden pleasure, the only movements are the curling of her toes and her head thrashing from side to side. Her body is tense and I know that only intensifies the pleasure radiating through her.

  “Be still, and take it like a good girl,” I command her and she does as she’s told, biting down on her lip. As her strangled cry leaves her, her body bucks and bows with her release.

  I can barely make out the apology on her lips and I ignore it.

  “Did you come?”

  Her body shudders and she’s quick to nod and then correct herself, staying still as she answers yes hesitantly.

  “You are not allowed to come again, not until I tell you that you can. Understood?”

  Her answer is delayed, and I imagine she doubts she has the ability to obey. “Yes,” she finally says and then swallows thickly, her body finally relaxing.

  I hover the vibrator closer to her shoulder, taking my time. Closer and closer and closer until it grazes her nipple that’s pressed against the sheet. Ella gasps, trying to resist arching away, but she can’t. I’ve bound her too skillfully to leave her room to wriggle over the bed. “I’m going to make you a list of tasks to complete every day.”

  This point is easily emphasized by circling her nipples with the vibrator again. I play with the other one, testing its weight in my hand and listening to those sweet moans.

  Fuck, I need her now. I can barely think with the sight of her helpless beneath me.

  “We’ll go over the list tomorrow.”

  Placing the vibrator beneath her, I let it rest against her clit as I unzip my pants and then drop them to the floor. Her moans turn to breathy whimpers as I climb onto the bed behind her. The bed dips from my weight and Ella strains against the tape. Staring between her thighs I watch as her pussy clenches around nothing, slowly removing the vibrator and turning it off. She gasps the moment it’s taken away, as if she’s been holding her breath. God, she wants this. And I want it to be so much sensation for her that she has to give herself up to me. She needs to submit more than she already has. She needs to learn to do it, damn it, because that’s the only way I know to keep her present. It’s the only way I know to heal her.

  I notch myself to her slick, hot entrance and thrust home in one stroke.

  Hard. Possessive. Like she’s mine.

  She is mine, and her clit is mine too. I reach the vibrator around her and press it directly to that bundle of nerves again, although I’m more than aware it must be overly sensitive now. Ella cries out. This is intense for her, and I know for certain because her body has made it intense for me. Her muscles squeeze me, going tight and tighter. She can’t actually change her position. The tape keeps her in place.

  She has a safe word and she knows it.

  Ella has never been more beautiful than she is with all her weight pressed against her bindings. It’s a fucking gorgeous struggle. Her muscles tense as she tries to stay still for me because I ordered her to do it, but she can’t let go. The vibrator is driving her to a new, expansive pleasure as her walls tighten around my cock, forcing a tingling need up my spine.

  “Wait,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “Wait, jailbird. You don’t come until I tell you to.”

  “No,” Ella says in a breathy voice, and quickly adds in desperation, “Please.” I won’t punish her now because she doesn’t even know she’s said it. It’s pure begging, pure pleading, and I don’t give in.

  I angle the vibrator more firmly over her clit. “Good girls come when they’re told to come.” She clenches around me at the praise. She loves it. She can’t get enough of being told what a good fucking girl she is. New arousal coats my cock as I lean down to whisper in the curve of her neck, letting my warm breath trail there, “Good girl. My perfect jailbird. It’s so hard not to come, and you’re doing so well.”

  A shiver runs down her back and her pleas turn to whimpers that she buries in the sheets.

  I brace one hand on the bed and fuck her with deep, long strokes. All the way in. All the way out. Every thrust presses against her inner walls, with no more room to spare. Stretching her. I don’t want this to be over yet. I don’t want to be finished with this pleasure. It’s mine too. It starts in the base of my cock and spreads outward along every inch of me. Up my spine. Down my legs to my toes. Every muscle works together to fuck her harder, but not faster. I’ve never concentrated harder than keeping this vibrator on her clit. Practice in obedience for her. Practice in domination for me.

  It makes me feel almost drunk, this power. A few words is all it takes to get her to stop an orgasm for me. Ella’s mouth opens, trying to get air to cry. She’s close.

  “Please, Z,” she begs. “I’m trying to be good.”

  “You need to come?”

  I’m being harsh, and I know it. Pleasure is just as intense as pain. They’re two sides of the same coin. “Yes,” Ella answers, her voice rising. “I need to come.”

  “Please,” she cries out again when I don’t answer. Her head thrashes once, barely tugging the blindfold up.

  “I can’t stop it and I don’t—” She bites down on the sheets and I fuck her slower, moving the vibrator up just slightly. Her breathing is heavier. It gives her a moment for her orgasm to lessen slightly. I barely hear her beg me again and then reason, “I don’t want you to be unhappy with me.”

  God. Such a perfect submissive. She tries and tries and tries. I couldn’t have asked for better.

  I remove the vibrator, and instantly Ella collapses away from me as much as possible. She can’t move much. The tape is too strong, but she tries. I give her three long seconds of trying to live without the vibrator and push it against her clit again while thrusting into her harder and faster.

  “Come for me, jailbird,” I say into her ear, and she explodes around my cock, gripping me as she shudders and shakes. It’s a cascade of pleasure and heat and it almost makes me come.

  But I’m not done fucking her.

  I drop the vibrator, turn her over, and drive my hips between her spread legs. I’m conscious of her hands behind her back, and her arms, and I keep it in mind while I fuck her with primal need. Her body is so pretty, arched for me this way. Her neck is exposed. Her breasts. I take one of her nipples and roll it between my finger and thumb. Over and over and over. It’s not a particularly unforgiving movement, not really, but if I do it enough, she’ll—

  “Oh.” The sound stretches out and out and out. “Oh,” she says again.

  Her voice almost pushe
s me over the edge, but I pull away and flip her over again. I want to be inside her heat. It seems like the only thing keeping me on earth. Her hot, wet pussy trying to get me further inside.

  I circle her asshole with a fingertip. She's helpless to stop me, and Ella shivers when I do it. “Have you been taken here?”

  “No,” she whispers.

  I work a finger into her pussy beside my cock. And then I bring it back to that tight little hole. Ella groans when I push my fingertip in, lubricated with her arousal, and gasps when I give her the rest.

  And then I grab the vibrator.

  One touch to her clit and she’s off, crying out, crying hard. Coming yet again. Her pants fuel me to keep playing, toying with her, pushing her boundaries slowly yet steadily.

  I pull myself free from her as she comes down. Giving her a moment, I take out the scissors after cleaning off my hands with a wet wipe.

  “Stay still.” The safety scissors easily cut through the bindings within seconds, releasing her body to fall onto the bed.

  She’s still unsteady from the aftershocks so I have to prop her up with my hands to get her on her knees. “Take off the blindfold.”

  Ella pulls it down with shaking hands, leaving it around her neck.

  “Hands and knees, jailbird. I want you to watch the mirror now.”

  She gets to her hands and knees, still trembling, her dark eyes locked on me in the mirror as I climb behind her, line myself up, and take her again. She’s a gorgeous sight. Her hair a messy halo, her cheeks flushed. Every thrust shakes her. Her breasts sway with the motion of my hips. I fuck her like I’ve wanted to since she first talked to me, hard and unforgivingly, until I’m close to the edge of my own pleasure. Seconds away.

  I need to see her face. I turn Ella and position her on my lap as I fall to the bed. Her small hands land on my chest to steady herself. My hips thrust up and she’s far too weak to keep herself upright. She drapes her arms over my shoulders and holds on for dear life.

  And she kisses me.

  Her lips capture mine with a need that’s unexpected.

  What that single kiss does to me is a shock I hadn’t anticipated. It strikes me how obvious it is that she was desperate for it. She tastes both sweet and sinful.

  “Fuck,” I grunt into the crook of her neck as my orgasm tears out of me.

  She holds me just as tightly as I hold her as she finds her release with mine.

  As she’s lying lifeless on top of me, I kiss the crown of her head and whisper without thinking twice about it, “You don’t know what you do to me.”

  Ella

  “A wash and wave?” Kam comments. “And I like the all white,” he adds before I can respond. His four fingers do a half wave as he gestures toward my hands.

  “The manicurist suggested it.” I peek down at my nails as the waiter arrives with a tall skinny glass of unsweetened tea. “Thank you,” I manage to get out in time for him to give a smile and nod.

  The Fooleries has been remodeled since we were last here. Seated on the outside balcony, there’s a heat lamp already blazing in each of the corners. The balcony only has three small circular iron tables, fitted with a robin’s-egg-blue tablecloth. Everything else is white. The menus, napkins and single candle burning in the center of each table.

  “You really like the white?” I question before popping one of the almonds from a small bowl of mixed nuts that was on the table into my mouth. Kam loves the walnuts, so I leave all of those pieces for him.

  “Very in. Very chic … Angels and virgins wear white, but I’ve always thought it looks just as good on the sinful.”

  Kam’s comment gets a laugh from me. “I wasn’t sure at first,” I say and shrug, lifting the glass up, “but I like it.” The last bit comes out raspy and my fingers press against my throat before I sip the cold beverage.

  When I set the glass down and peer back at Kam, his expression is riddled with concern. “How are you feeling?”

  An anxiousness sweeps through my body at the realization that the pain I felt was a reminder of what Zander did to me last night. More specifically, my cries and moans for him to fuck me harder, but for Kam, it’s a reminder of something entirely different.

  “Fine,” I answer easily, reaching for the cloth napkin and laying it across my lap.

  “Well, you look beautiful. You look—” His words falter and I’m not sure what he planned to say, but what comes out after an exhale is only a reiteration of his first statement. “Just beautiful.”

  “It was Zander’s suggestion,” I confide in him in an attempt to usher the conversation away from wherever Kam’s carefully navigating. I know my throat, my voice even, has to be a reminder of what I did while at the center. “He said I should get my hair and nails done today. This morning he handed me a credit card, then told me he made appointments and that Silas would be driving me, so I should get my ass ready to go and be pampered.” I add for good measure, “And if I wasn’t ready on time, he’d spank me.”

  Kam’s movements stop midway as he was picking up his napkin and the silverware clangs on the table. I can’t help but laugh.

  “Well I’m glad one of us is smiling,” he chides.

  “Oh please,” I admonish him in return, a genuine smile pulling up my spirits. “Since when did you become such a prude?”

  Humor lights his eyes. He even smiles as he rearranges the cutlery and places the napkin across his lap as I have. “He’s controlling.”

  “Like James was,” I reply without considering what I was saying until the comparison left me. Another wave of that anxiousness comes over me, but it quickly vanishes.

  “And I told you to dump his ass too.” There’s a fondness, a nostalgia in Kam’s comment.

  “I remember that,” I say and my smile falters only slightly. The rawness in my throat comes back but this time it carries a prick to the back of my eyes as well.

  “I mean, obviously I was wrong about that one,” Kam says offhandedly and I realize we’re speaking about him. Talking about James in the past tense. I don’t have long to dwell on the thought. “He went from a good time,” Kam adds, lowering his voice at the insinuation, “to taking all your time.”

  I can’t help but smile, even if there’s a painful longing in my chest. “He took his time, though.” I roll my eyes at the thought and resort to picking up my iced tea once again. It’s tart, making my lips pucker after a sip before I reach for the sugar.

  “What was it? It took him what, a year?” he asks me, and it’s easy. It turns easy, thinking about how we came to fall in love. How he went from a man I wanted and enjoyed the occasional fling with, to a man who only wanted me and who I couldn’t imagine living my life without.

  “Every third Saturday for …” I trail off, peeking up past the heat lamp and spot a small blue jay on the roof. “Maybe four months it was just that one night?”

  “At Monet’s, right?” I nod in response, the memories filtering back to me. It was a good time. That’s all he was. We ran in the same circles. Knew the same people. One night, after I’d been avoiding him, teasing him, leading him on … we hit it off and had a romp in the sheets. It was a fling, a damn good fling. I thought it would only be that one night, but the next month, at the same gathering, he made it known in no uncertain terms that I’d be with him again that night.

  “And then it was house calls and almost nine months later is when he got in that fight with Taylor.”

  Kam’s brow raises and he lifts his coffee mug and then says, “Oh yes, and that would be the moment I told you to dump his ass.”

  Biting down on my lip I remember that entire ordeal as Kam continues, “He couldn’t call you his girlfriend, but he could start some shit with Taylor.” Taylor’s no one really. He’s the son of a hotshot, who’s hot as fuck himself. He got through life on good looks. He’s nice enough, but he wasn’t looking for anything more than a good time. Which was fine, ’cause that’s what I was after too. I figured James only wanted me the once, or e
lse he would have called. He would have reached out. So I made my move for Taylor and that’s when James intervened.

  With a one-shoulder shrug I remind him, “I might have been the one to start it … technically.”

  Kam’s laugh is as genuine as it is enthusiastic. “That’s right,” he says and his smile is contagious. “Now I remember that reporter with the press article that we had to pay off.”

  I hum at the memory. “The truth was much better than fiction.” As the waiter brings the avocado caprese salad, which looks divine drizzled with a thick balsamic vinegar, I lean back in the chair to give him room.

  “The truth always is better than fiction,” Kam comments and then smiles up at the waiter to thank him. I don’t miss how the waiter gives Kam a longer glance than he gave me.

  Speaking of hot men, I think as I watch the tall young man, he’s got to be no older than midtwenties. In other words, way too young for Kam. And it’s quite obvious he’s interested in Kam.

  “Flirt,” I speak beneath my breath and smirk at Kam the moment the waiter has left us.

  Kam has the audacity to deny it as the blush reaches his cheeks. He’s freshly shaven so it can’t hide behind stubble.

  My fork spears through the ripe tomatoes and I let Kam pretend that I’ve forgotten. The bird I saw a moment ago flutters in a way that steals my gaze. He’s a vibrant blue, perched on the edge and more than likely waiting for scraps.

  “So,” Kam gets my attention before asking, “is Zander your boyfriend then?” He raises a single brow in question.

  With a thump in my chest, I don’t know how to answer him so I retreat to draining the rest of my tea. Twirling the straw forces the ice to clink against the glass. After an awkward moment, I ask him, “I thought we were going to discuss selling my properties … and you know? Moving on.” I hate the term. I’ll never move on. Damon says you move through it, and there’s a piece that’s always there. I prefer that.