Unrestrained Page 6

  He'd seemed to like the pencil skirt she'd been wearing, so today she wore one in purple, with a pale yellow blouse over it that had a sash that tied at her hip, the ends trailing down the side. The fabric gathered at the throat like a mock turtleneck, no decorative distraction between it and where it nipped in at her waist. As a result, it enhanced the size and shape of her breasts, drawing male attention to them. It was classy yet sensual. A message of hands off combined with I am a woman and won't conceal it. She slipped into a pair of two-inch heels and headed back up the garden walkway to the gazebo. She hadn't worn hose today, her legs excellent enough to get by without them in the informal venue of her home. Her hair was clipped loosely on her nape, a few tendrils loose and curling around her face.

  She knew she was an attractive middle-aged woman. Even so, it was still gratifying to see him turn at the sound of her heels, watch his gaze latch onto her with obvious appreciation, coursing over her legs, the sway of her hips, the movement of her breasts. When he reached her face, the heat in his eyes made her body react as if he'd licked a trail right up her inner thighs. At the sight of him, she had to take a steadying breath of her own.

  He wore black jeans and a forest green long-sleeved shirt. Her practiced eye knew it was a good quality Egyptian cotton, which defined his broad shoulders well. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing his forearms and the black watch he wore. She expected it was a military-grade or diver's watch. It had an outer dial that measured degrees and several smaller dials within the face. Given he'd been a SEAL, she was sure it was rated for underwater use. A man who wouldn't be lost, no matter where he was. The watch was probably a convenient trapping; he could likely make the same calculations in his head if needed. And wasn't she getting fanciful? In another moment she'd be imagining him in a cape and tights.

  He was dressed appropriately for their lunch, but if he'd intended to maintain a sense of social distance, acquaintances getting to know one another better, he might have chosen slacks and a tucked-in dress shirt. The fact he'd selected a more informal outfit, a contrast to her more formal one, suggested something far different. It wasn't rudeness; it was anticipation of the roles they were both projecting. She wouldn't say playing, because it didn't feel that way at all. Her thoughts on the watch might be wrong, but she wasn't off base on this. There were no casual or unintended messages at this lunch. Whether unconscious or not, she'd chosen every aspect of her appearance carefully, and intuitively she knew he'd done the same.

  His short dark hair lay smooth and gleaming against his head, and when those multicolored eyes reached her face, she was having a hard time not curling her fingers to hide their tremor. His dark lashes intensified the color, the matching brows giving his already strong face a more authoritative cast.

  It's a pleasure to see you again. As she drew closer to the gazebo, she knew that was what she should say, initiate some polite chitchat. But she didn't. Anything like that died in her throat, the effort of forcing it out too much. It would be obvious how wrong it was.

  She'd had Lynn set up their lunch in the large gazebo, because there was a good breeze today and it overlooked the man-made pond. A pair of ducks was swimming across it. Sometimes, in the early morning, deer came from the woods that backed her property, drank from it. Grazed on the lawn. The pear tree grove also screened the gazebo from the house, making their meeting private. Lynn and her assistant would bring the food or more drinks when Athena rang them, and not before.

  The china gleamed, the silver was polished. The ironed tablecloth moved gently in the breeze coming off the water. The ceiling fan blades made a rhythmic hum.

  She came to a stop a few steps away from the gazebo. He settled his hip on the rail, one long leg braced, the sole of his other boot sliding along the wood floor. They were the same boots he'd worn the other night, the ones with the silver tips.

  "Come here, Athena. Stand in front of me."

  A breath fluttered from her throat like a startled butterfly. She stood in place for another blink, teetering on indecision. Not a decision about what he wanted her to do, because the moment he said it, she wanted to go to him, but a decision about what it meant if she did. Dreams and fantasy were about to step over the line into nascent reality, and things could go wrong. Some things were better staying fantasy, letting dreams alone be the place where she let go of the reins.

  Her gaze slid back up. Over his legs, the way his thighs outlined his groin area, though the loose shirttails hid most of that from view. Was he wearing the belt he'd worn the other day? He had a drink on the rail next to him. The dark amber liquid suggested Lynn had brought him a whiskey, or maybe a Coke mixed with something else. She didn't yet know his drinking habits, beyond black coffee.

  She started to walk. It was nine steps to him. She made it five, and then she was at the table, her hand on the back of one of the chairs. She couldn't move further.

  "Have you thought about what you want, Athena?" he asked. "Do you have an answer for yourself?"

  He didn't ask if she had an answer for him, because he'd already understood that the question had never really been for him. He knew what she wanted, as much as he understood she had to accept her answer to make those last four steps.

  "One more time, Athena. Come to me."

  He wasn't coaxing. He was commanding. Those outside their world didn't understand that the command wasn't backed by a threat, but something far more powerful. Over here, by the chair, she was outside of herself, lost. Adrift in a world of beauty muted by a cloudy veneer she couldn't penetrate until she dropped her shields, let herself accept the vulnerability that came with full awareness of who and what she was.

  One and two. Three and four. Like hopscotch when she was a little girl. She stood directly in front of the silver tip of his boot now, her elegant pumps aligned with it as the center point.

  She stared at his chest, dropped her gaze to his thighs again. His arm rested on the right one, the side where his hip was half-cocked onto the rail. His nails were clean, the potting soil that had collected under them gone, but they were still rough hands, a workman's hands. One of those hands lifted, cupped the side of her breast, just as before. She pressed her lips together, that fluttering moving down her sternum, spreading out beneath her rib cage as he curled his fingers, stroked her with his knuckles. He didn't touch the nipple, but it tightened beneath her bra, aching for him to do so. It was one of her thinner ones, so she was sure her response became visible to him, the breeze blowing the light fabric of her blouse against her. But apparently it wasn't enough to suit his tastes.

  "After five o'clock, when they're all gone, I want the bra off. You understand?"

  She nodded. Then she closed her eyes, shuddered hard. He shifted off the rail, standing. Roy had been six feet. Dale was about the same, perhaps a couple of inches taller. His shoulders were wide enough to block her view of anything behind him, even if she'd taken a step back. Now he put his hands on her upper arms, a brief reinforcement of his words. He touched her hair.

  Letting her go, he pulled out a chair, gestured. "Sit."

  When she complied, he retrieved his drink from the rail and took the chair next to hers. Though he leaned back, his knee stayed close to hers. "So tell me what you want, Athena." His expression wasn't hard or unkind, just unrelenting. She reveled in that inflexibility, the decisiveness, and it gave her the courage to set a course.

  "I'd like to try a few sessions here. With you."

  "Not at the club?"

  She shook her head. There were certain Dommes at the club who wouldn't understand this, an established Mistress deciding to switch. She didn't want to handle explanations, field veiled insults from people she liked to think of as friends. But beyond that, she was Roy's wife there. "I would pay you. A professional arrangement."

  "No." His tone brooked no discussion on that point. "We do the sessions, see how it goes."

  "Too personal. I need for it to stay professional."

  "Then hire yourself a pro. That
's not my deal. You connected with me, you want something from me. Same goes. You're not a timid woman, Athena, and I'm sure as hell not shy about what I want. I want to see where this leads. How about you?"

  If she looked over her shoulder, she thought she'd see Jimmy's shocked face and the entire membership of the club behind him, judging.

  "It's just you and me here," he said. "I know you worry about what others might think about this side of you. That's expected. But I'm interested in your husband. If he was alive, what would he think?"

  "If he was alive, I wouldn't be considering it. He needed something different."

  He studied her. "Athena, did he know you're a submissive?"

  Just like that, a simple statement that shifted her world. She'd almost backed out of this meeting several times, embarrassed at her foray into an area she experientially knew nothing about. Yet every morning she'd woken from dreams where her subconscious embraced it. Flashes of her on her knees, Dale's hands on her, his mouth demanding things that went far beyond her body and deep into the core of who she was . . . of who she might be. She woke from such journeys aroused, uncertain but titillated, flushed by the rush of imaginings that pursued her outside of sleep.

  During the daylight hours, she'd tried to contain and trivialize them. But when he acknowledged the truth now, all of that internal chatter died away. It simply . . . was. Like the breeze riffling his short hair, the intent focus of his blue-green eyes. It was as if he'd lifted a boulder off her chest, releasing the anxiety she'd been carrying, thinking about this moment.

  "I'm not sure I even knew," she said. "Not until he died. It wasn't something I thought about. It wasn't onerous or awful, being his Mistress when he wanted that from me. I loved him, loved making him happy, and he made me happy. People don't understand that anymore. What honor and cherish, responsibility and love really mean."

  "No. They don't." He spread his fingers out on the tablecloth. She'd said something that had surprised him, she could tell, but she wasn't sure in what way until he gave it to her. "A lot of people have a hard time understanding what drives a SEAL to do what we do. Honor and duty, responsibility . . . love of country . . . sacrifice. They don't understand, because so many of them no longer know what those words really mean. They're not monuments and medals."

  "Just the way marriage isn't about flowers and diamonds on your anniversary." She met his gaze.

  He nodded. "You're concerned what others at the club would think of you, but you don't seem to feel that way about your husband's memory. You don't think he'd judge or condemn you for it?"

  "No. His form of submission was a deliberate decision to surrender. He had a need for it like a beer at the end of a hard workday. A more intense ritual than that, but still related." She offered a faint smile, and his lips curved in answer. "But he always understood I did this because he asked me to do it. Not because I had a driving desire to be a Mistress. I enjoyed the pleasure he took in my efforts, that others took in watching."

  "Because that's what a true service sub does," Dale responded. "She takes pleasure in pleasing others. Her Master, all those in her life. A Master takes pleasure in holding power, a sub in surrendering to it. The way she surrenders may be mistaken for the flip side of the coin because of what you just described. You weren't a Domme to him. You were a Domme for him."

  He was so straightforward, stating ideas she struggled to articulate because she couldn't see their shape from outside herself. She nodded, quietly amazed by the relief of claiming it as truth.

  He leaned forward. "Put your hand on the table. Spread your fingers apart."

  Curious, she did. He began to trace the outline of her hand with his forefinger. Because of the spread of her fingers and the size of his, he made contact with her skin, a light tease as he followed outside to inside, outside to inside. Then he stopped, his forefinger resting on top of one of her nails, a subtle gesture indicating she should leave the hand where it was. All her nerves were tingling, from that point of contact all the way up the inside of her arm.

  "You have a pretty substantial Internet biography," he said casually. "You raised over a million dollars for Louisiana charities last year. Matched that from your own holdings. And you run the board of Summers Industries." He glanced around the grounds. "From what I saw of your staff, you also run an efficient household. You take care of your people. They look happy to have you as an employer, and they're protective. They all gave me the once-over, like if they were required to ID me to the police, they'd be ready. And willing. If they didn't take me out first."

  It was an unexpected change of topic, but he left his fingertip on hers, holding her in that magnetic field he was projecting. She had to clear her throat first to respond.

  "Lynn, my head housekeeper and cook, has been with us for more than ten years. Same with Hector, my groundskeeper. Lynn's assistant, Beth, has been here for five years, and most of the men who work with Hector are long-term employees or his family members. We've been through a lot of holidays, birthdays, family crises. It's perhaps made us a little more closely knit than most employer-employee relationships."

  Lynn had helped her prepare Roy's body before the funeral home came to pick him up. She'd told the hospice nurse she'd do it, but she needed help to move him. Lynn had volunteered, but Roy was such a big man, the housekeeper called her son, Delray, who was also part of Hector's maintenance crew. They did it together, the three of them, putting Roy in one of his golf outfits, khaki slacks and a butter yellow placket shirt. On the left chest, there was an embroidered logo from one of his favored golf courses, an alligator with a golf ball sitting on his nose while a golfer put his foot on his snout to take a swing. It had always made her smile, the crocodile's aggravated expression, the golfer's intent concentration.

  After she'd tied his loafers, she sat down in a chair. Delray sat on one side of her, Lynn the other, and then they held hands and cried together for a little bit.

  "Are you ready for this, Athena?" Dale spoke in a low voice. Not interrupting her memories as much as stepping into the room and taking her hand. Prepared to lead her out of it, back to the present. "Or are you still grieving?"

  "I don't think you ever stop grieving someone you loved for so many years," she said. "You learn how to make his memories part of your life, how to interweave them into your future, rather than letting them hold you down in the past. That's what I'm ready to do."

  He nodded, his gaze telling her he approved of the answer. She knew SEALs were a small force, only a few thousand of them total, and they were assigned highly hazardous missions. As such, he would know the shape and feel of loss in a sharp, immediate way, one that would be empathic but not pitying. He'd likely faced some of the same lessons about grieving she had.

  It might seem incongruous, that a New Orleans steel magnolia who'd lived in financial comfort and safety all her life could have things in common with a man who'd lived a large portion of his life in dangerous, difficult situations, but she'd learned emotions and loss were things all people faced, no matter what path they walked. People tended to celebrate their differences, make it their clarion call of accomplishment to the world; she'd learned it was discovering the similarities, the connections, that brought quiet joy and built lasting relationships. Such connections could sculpt happiness. And reassurance, especially in an uncertain moment like this.

  "You're self-disciplined and selfless, and being both of those things takes a powerful will," he observed. "Anyone who doesn't really understand what a Dom and sub are about, would find it hard to believe you're not really a Domme. What we are deep inside is often the opposite side of what we show to others. Deciding to reveal that, explore it, brings balance. Are you seeking balance, Athena?"

  "Yes." She looked down at his hand. He'd spread out his other fingers so they rested between hers. Just his fingertips, the curved digits above like a cage holding her hand there, a restraint she willingly accepted.

  She moistened her lips. "How does what you feel . .
. differ? As a Dominant, I mean." She'd often wondered, but of course had never been able to ask anyone without inviting curiosity about why she wouldn't know the answer herself.

  He blinked. Crow's-feet from his age and exposure to the elements accentuated his eyes, adding to his rugged appeal. It balanced the beauty of his thick lashes, though she couldn't imagine anyone looking at this man and thinking him effeminate in any way. "I take pleasure in a sub's reaction, but my power over her gives me something, too. Like I said--two sides of a similar coin. It brings Master and sub together." He turned his gaze back to her hand. The sharpening of his attention drew her own like a rope cinching around her wrists, the slack end coiled around his strong hand.

  "Close your eyes, Athena."

  When she complied, he moved his index finger, but this time he traced her forefinger only, sliding down toward the V between it and her middle finger. When he reached it, he slid back up the inside of her middle finger, then returned to her forefinger again. "Part your legs, as much as you can in that snug skirt of yours. Are you wearing panties?"

  "A thong. Yes." The skirt was tight enough panties caused unsightly lines, so she'd gone with the thong.

  "After five, that comes off as well. You'll give it to me, so I can smell how wet you've gotten during our two hours together." His finger began to move again, sliding slowly, slowly down the inside of her forefinger. "Imagine this is my hand, moving over your ankle"--he passed over her first knuckle--"then past your knee." It quivered beneath the table, her legs instinctively pressing against the hold of the skirt, trying to widen for him. Her back arched against her chair.

  "Now, deeper, deeper, until I reach your cunt." His fingertip caressed that tender juncture between index and middle finger. "It's hot and wet for me, isn't it?"

  "Yes." She was breathless, lips parted, a flush climbing her cheeks, but not from embarrassment.

  "Good. That's how I intend to keep it." He massaged that small V of skin, and she vividly imagined him rubbing her between her legs, such that she made infinitesimal lifts from the chair, her buttocks flexing. "Now, I'm moving from your cunt to your stomach, your sternum . . ." He moved up between the two knuckles, tracing the vein on the top of her hand, following the line to the joint of her wrist, and then he captured the wrist in his hand. "All the way to your neck."