Truly Helpless: A Nature of Desire Series Novel Read online

  “Turn over and get on your back. Swivel around and put your head over the edge of the mattress on my side. I know you’re not going to make your Mistress walk around the bed.”

  She stepped back to watch him comply. His erection was at full mast. The punishment had aroused him. His hands were in half curls on the mattress. Not fist clenching anger, or evidence of him fighting himself. Anticipation and need were keeping him caught between erotic tension and emotional upheaval.

  “More,” she instructed, giving his hair a tug. “I want you looking at the wall.”

  After he adjusted his body so he could tilt his head farther over the mattress, she threaded the belt under the base of his skull and wrapped her wrists in the slack on either side. Since she’d been administering his punishment in nothing but her skin, his gaze flicked to the view of her bare pussy she was giving him, standing so close.

  Then, miracle of miracles, he shut his eyes tight. A soft smile crossed her face.

  “I didn’t tell you that you could look, did I?”

  He shook his head. “No, Mistress.”

  “You might have the makings of a good boy yet.” Though not too good, thank Goddess. She straddled his head, bringing his treat right up against his nose and lips. “I told you yesterday you’d be eating pussy over and over. You’re not done with that. Get back to work.”

  He put himself into it a hundred percent. Watching his cock get higher against his belly, the slit oozing with pre-come, goaded her own arousal to higher levels than she’d experienced with any other submissive in recent memory.

  Fucking divine angels in heaven. His mouth sucked, tongue licked, teeth nipped, and he did patterns on her flesh, swirls and stabs that had her gasping, her hands clenching the belt. What nearly pushed her over was when he started vocalizing against her, groans and grunts of pleasure, savoring his meal, encouraging her own gasps.

  As her stomach coiled up, warning her the orgasm was imminent, she stepped back, taking a forever-keeper snapshot of that first second, his mouth smeared with her juices, hair rumpled, eyes glazed with lust and the total concentration he’d given to the task she demanded.

  “Turn around so you’re stretched out the usual way, toward the headboard, but far enough down your legs are bent over the bottom of the mattress.”

  As soon as he did, she straddled his face again, only now her knees were on the bed and she was facing his feet. She set the belt to the side, her thighs spread over his face but knees clamped against his head to reinforce her pussy was out of bounds now, no matter that it was close enough he could smell her arousal, see it trickling over her flesh.

  She bent forward to take him in her mouth, all the way to the root. His breath stuttered, puffs of air against her engorged tissues. She sucked on him, clasping the base of his cock and working it.

  “Mistress…let me.”

  “Be still,” she ordered. More evidence he was a true sub, not entirely comfortable with her servicing him like this, but her command sent him a message. Whatever she was doing to him, his reaction and surrender served her.

  Wetting a finger, she traced it along his perineum to his rectum, and slid inside, earning a quiver and jump, a thickening of his cock in her mouth as she kept up her rhythmic sucking. His hands were on her thighs, clutching but not pulling. A reminder he was there whenever she was ready.

  She smiled against his cock. Yeah, he’d never be totally good. She hadn’t told him he could hold her thighs like that. But she knew he wouldn’t force her down on him. She could feel the heat of his stare boring into her pussy as it shifted above his face; could feel his body shaking with the attempt to restrain himself. A powerful man held by her command alone.

  As she’d said, there was no drug like it. It was sheer, fucking heaven.

  Slowly, she brought her pussy down, down, down. “Now,” she said.

  He attacked like a ravenous tiger. As she went back down on his cock, she swallowed him with a gasp and a moan of pleasure. He wasn’t as smooth in his ministrations now, but the erratic urgency of his passion aroused her even more.

  Fuck, he had her so close in no time, and she could tell he was ready whenever she was. She straightened and took her pussy away, muscles tightening against his grip to tell him she was moving.

  He resisted one heart-stopping moment, eyes wild, mouth set with determination to have his way. But because he was in that zone of service and need, not because he was wanting to prove he had control.

  Still, that moment of defiance would be good for another five licks of the belt, but right now she had other priorities. When he released her, she flipped around to face the head of the bed. “Hands and palms up, shoulder width,” she ordered, her voice heavy with her own urgent lust.

  She already had her hands out, showing him what she wanted. She loved that his eyes lighted with fierce pleasure. She could have had him scoot up the bed so she could grab the headboard, but the only support she wanted was him.

  She gripped both his upraised hands and used the strength of his lifted arms to straddle his face again and control her movements against his mouth. As his face pressed deeper into her pussy, she watched his mouth work over her cunt, his dark lashes fanning his cheeks. She’d left him hurting for his own climax, but she’d take care of that in a minute. Right now his job was to take care of her. That was what they both needed.

  As the climax surged up and through her, her grip slipped and his went to her wrists, an arousing and intriguing dual message of who held control, who was caring for who.

  She came with low, long cries, working herself against him, the morning beard adding an almost unbearable friction as she rubbed harder, intensifying the sensation. Fuck…her brain was going to explode, her whole body overcome.

  When she came down, shuddering, the lingering effect was so strong, she didn’t want to stop. She moved on his mouth in a slow, rhythmic cycle, humming her pleasure as he kept his tongue available to her, stroking with long, strong sweeps along her still spasming tissues.

  “You are a treasure.” They were the first words she could manage, sometime later, in a voice hoarse from screaming. She found the strength to move back, touched when his grip went to her waist and hips to keep her steady as she dismounted, putting both knees on one side of his body.

  She wasn’t done with it yet. Not by a long shot. She brought her mouth to his chest and worked her way down, a laborious inch at a time, tasting and exploring, kissing and biting, chuckling darkly as he jumped at the sharpness of her teeth and let out a low curse. When his hand grazed her waist, her hip, she shook her head against him.

  “Grip the bedding above your head. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  He groaned again, a protest. She knew he wanted to touch her, and Goddess, did she want to be touched. But first, she took him in her mouth again, took him deep and sucked and nipped, hollowing her cheeks. She gripped his balls, stroked her thumb over his perineum. At the height of his arousal, when she knew how close he was, she eased three moistened fingers back into his rectum, just an inch or so past the erogenous ring of muscles, and fluttered and played.

  “Go,” she muttered, a vibration against his flesh.

  He cried out, a deep, guttural groan as the climax took him, as he came in her mouth, his hands clutching the rumpled sheets, his body bucking up to her.

  She let herself feel it, the bliss of commanding his response, of him letting it happen, of the two of them coming together the way it was supposed to work.

  As all the gods and goddesses as her witness, she wanted him like she’d never wanted a sub.

  It didn’t have to make sense. Yes, he had a unique backstory. But his response to her wasn’t unique, not if she was objective about it. God knows, she’d had others more accommodating, far less work, and just as gorgeous and hot, if not more so. But she hadn’t wanted to plumb their hearts, minds and souls the way she did with him. Endlessly and forever.

  This was the way it worked. She’d seen it happen between
Mistresses and subs before. That click moment when a Mistress knew a sub not only was all hers, but she was meant to be his, too.

  When she realized she loved him.

  Damn it all, she was as sure of it as if he’d come to her with a bow tied around his energetic dick and her name stamped on his ass.

  Hmm. There was an idea. New Orleans had a lot of tattoo parlors, after all…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Marius stood at the airport window, overlooking the area for private planes. He was in a VIP lounge where they offered sparkling water, gourmet coffees, wrapped chocolates and snacks way above economy flight peanut packet standards. A concierge stood at attention behind a desk, ready to call another someone to run and fetch whatever was needed for the small scattering of important people hanging out here, waiting for their planes to arrive or be ready for boarding.

  Regina was on a work call as she sat by another window. She was canopied by a slender trio of indoor palms. Her laptop was open as she coordinated some changes to her presentation, per the client’s needs. Leastwise, that was what he’d picked up from listening to this side of the call.

  He should be checking out the view, watching the prep of the planes. Instead, as he leaned against the window frame, arms crossed over his chest and foot hooked over his ankle, he watched her.

  Today she was in work wear, and damn, if it didn’t conjure some heavy-duty fantasies. Black slacks outlined her trim figure and those long, long legs he could vividly imagine wrapped around his body in a vise grip as her cunt squeezed down on him.

  She wore a silky ivory-colored blouse, open at the throat to show a necklace with a pendant of the red jasper she favored. A black blazer completed the ensemble with a small pin on the lapel. The silver and ceramic red rose was no wider or longer than her smallest finger. She wore small silver hoops in her double-pierced ears.

  He recalled pressing his face into her throat below one of her adorned ear lobes earlier this morning. Her hair had brushed his face, her pulse pounding against his mouth. She was affected by him. She didn’t bother to hide it.

  Since the night in the hotel room, she hadn’t hidden or walled off her responses to him. She was putting the attraction right out there without fear. Probably because she’d made it clear she would kick his ass sideways if he tried to mess with the gift of her vulnerability.

  He couldn’t help but wonder. If, by some miracle, one day she could trust him enough not to be on guard against his fucked-up-ness—if he could trust himself enough to let her—how far could they go together?

  The thought was just another thrown on the pile of his WTF list. He couldn’t think about anything long term with her. It was safer to keep thinking of the whole relationship as driven by The Zone membership thing. It had started that way.

  He really didn’t know what the hell it was now.

  He thought of kissing his way up her spine, those delicate bones. She’d be lying face down, her fingers curling into the blue and green comforter on her bed.

  Was it nuts that he found it incredibly hot, standing in a public place and watching her work? Her focus on her client, the capable way she spoke and tapped on the laptop, showed how comfortable she was with a job that sounded pretty impressive and demanding. Was it possible not to feel like a complete loser in comparison?

  Was he his best self with her, in the words of the bullshit self-help books? Not even close.

  He knew Lady Regina’s rep. She took on hard cases and helped them become better subs. So he was her latest project. He’d been spiraling downward, and should be grateful for the interest. If she could help him figure out how not to go down that dark road with a Mistress, to twist one up because of fucked-up reasons of his own, then he’d get back into The Zone—on a couple levels—and be able to count her as something he’d rarely had in his life. A true friend.

  A win-win. One that pissed him off. Don’t, he advised himself. Don’t screw up today. Even though so many of the things she’d opened in him were what twisted him up now, he knew those were his issues. Maybe for once, he wouldn’t make them hers.

  Her gaze slid to him, lingered. He knew what she was seeing. His body was easy on a woman’s eyes. He had no false modesty about that. He was also good in bed. When he wasn’t being an ass, he was more than capable of satisfying her sexually, exceeding her expectations. Was she thinking of his mouth between her legs, his cock inside of her? As her perusal of his shoulders slid down over his chest and abdomen, groin and thighs, and back again, he expected she was. It took his mind back to the last few days since they’d returned to Tampa, and particularly to how this morning had started…

  After they came back to the city, he hadn’t seen her for a couple days. She’d had to work on one of her consulting jobs. However, the day before the New Orleans trip, she’d told him to come stay at her house overnight. She’d warned him she’d be working part of the evening and, sure enough, when he arrived, she only had time to give him a quick tour of TV, kitchen and sleeping arrangements before she returned to her home office, telling him not to wait up for her.

  He found out she’d cooked him an honest-to-God homemade pizza, and left it in the oven for him. It was better than any pizza he’d ever had, even if it did have broccoli on it. She’d left a sticky note on the oven. “No picking off the vegetables.” Strict Mistress.

  When he took some pizza and her preferred drink to her before he ate his own meal, he won a pleased if distracted smile. Returning to the living room, he wished she could take a break to join him. He indulged the unsettling vision, the two of them hanging out on the living room floor to eat pizza and watch movies. But their relationship wasn’t about that, so he put it out of his head.

  He ate the rest of the pizza, broccoli and all, while watching TV. Despite his best efforts to stay up for her, he fell asleep on the floor in front of it. He felt odd about stretching out on her furniture without her say-so.

  When she woke him, it was nearly midnight. She clasped his hand, and led him down the hall, to her bedroom. Maybe because he was half-asleep, he was over the threshold before he could experience the volatile need to retreat he’d had last time she’d tried to take him there.

  He’d been distracted from that by the sight of the pallet on the floor, next to her bed. It was made up with sheets, blankets and two pillows. He stared at it, bathed by the soft glow of the bedside lamp. He was being given a place to sleep. For the first time in a long time, it felt like it was in a place where he belonged. Where he was supposed to be.

  That should have sent him in full fight-or-flight mode, but the sleepiness and excess of pizza were apparently dulling his survival skills. He was fully capable of undressing himself, but she brushed his hands aside and did it, taking all of it off.

  “This is how my sub sleeps. No clothes but his Mistress’s approval. And you don’t put them on in the morning until I say so. If you get cold, you tell me.”

  She put firm pressure on his shoulder. “Down. Get in bed.”

  He complied, though being naked made him want her to get in with him. Tucking him in and brushing a kiss on his lips and forehead, she chuckled when he tried to tug her down.

  “Sleep, bad boy,” she murmured. He watched her move away. Cruel and blessed goddess that she was, she slipped out of her clothes where he could watch, but as if she was alone, unselfconscious, practical. Perversely, that made him harder. Her nightgown was an ivory thing with lace that showed the dark smudges of her nipples and cleft of her ass. She climbed into her bed, shut off the light…and went to sleep.

  It should have been sexually frustrating, and it was, but another part of him was content. He listened to her breathe evenly, to the sounds of the house settling as he slid in and out of a doze. Eventually he dropped off, in that extraordinarily deep way he did around her. When he’d woken up in his car at the prison and seen her sitting next to him, he couldn’t believe she’d been able to get in without rousing him. She didn’t believe him when he told her what a ligh
t sleeper he was, and why should she? Around her, he slept like a baby in his mother’s arms.

  What he’d read it was like, that is. Remembering her humming the lullaby to him in the hotel, he was uncomfortably aware that what he’d experienced with her might be the closest thing to it he’d ever had. He’d seen the Mommy/little boy scenes at the club, and that definitely was not his thing, the thumb sucking and diapering and all that shit. But Regina had mentioned there were a lot of layers to that kind of play, something about the need of the male spirit to find and cleave to a Goddess Mother through a lover’s arms...

  She’d said that during some of their random pillow talk, laughing at his dubious and blank look. Her laugh was sultry and raspy, making him feel the way he did when her fingers caressed the base of his spine.

  She woke him in the early morning light with those tempting fingers stroking the strands of hair away from his forehead, teasing his temple with the scrape of her nails. “Good morning,” she said when his eyes opened. Her voice was calm and throaty, not too loud.

  She straightened from her squat by his pallet. She was already dressed and sipping a cup of coffee. The brisk energy around her suggested she’d been doing some prep work for the trip today. He wondered if she’d gotten enough sleep last night, and if he could have done something other than watch TV to help her get ready for her trip. He should have asked.

  “Take a shower in the guest bathroom,” she said. “We leave in an hour.

  He wished he’d woken earlier so maybe she would have let them shower together. It irritated him.

  As he propped himself up on his elbows, she touched his jaw, her eyes darkening when he gripped her wrist. “You like doing that,” she said softly. “Holding me like you’ve captured me, even though your nature is to accept a Mistress’s dominion. You need something to help you keep things straight in your head.” She nodded to the bed. “I’ve left out clothes for you. This trip, you’re under my command and direction, unless I tell you otherwise. Think you can handle that?”