Slow Surrender Page 24

  “I do trust you, Karina.”

  “Prove it,” I hissed.

  He pressed his forehead against mine, as if thinking, as if resting a moment. Then I felt his mouth move to my ear, his breath warm and making me melt, but not enough to give in, until he whispered, “James. Byron. LeStrange.”

  I relaxed my grip and he plunged in. I’m sure if I had not made the demand I had, he would have worked his way in gradually, but having held him back and having asked a price, the price I paid in return was the whole length of him splitting me open in one searing thrust. I couldn’t even scream as everything in my body clenched tightly around the intrusion.

  One of his hands brushed over my nipples made hypersensitive from the squeezing of the ropes. The touch seemed to make something in the center of me blossom, and to my surprise he thrust even deeper, creating a burst of pleasure in me. His mouth was at my neck then, triggering the spot that always made me wild, his thumb on one nipple, tweaking and circling, and his cock withdrew several inches before plunging back in.

  On the thrust I saw stars, my skin tingling everywhere he was touching me, and my hips rocked to meet him on the next thrust. And the next, and the next. If it had hurt in that initial moment of penetration, all trace of it was gone, as this felt like the best of the heavy, smooth glass inside me, but also the heat and friction of a real body and the tension of his desire.

  It was everything I had ever dreamed sex could be. Each thrust was a treat, an explosion of pleasure in its own right that made me want another and another and another. And he had finally told me! I felt the last barrier between us crumble. I clung to him with all my limbs as I neared orgasm and made myself come as I banged my hips against him, smacking my clit between our bodies until I screamed. And still he did not stop. He flattened me into the bed with his thrusts, sometimes fast for a while, so fast I could barely catch a breath, other times slow and relentless with a snap at the end of each long plunge that made me gasp.

  He urged me to turn over and I got on all fours. He flattened me against the bed again while his cock hunted for my opening. From this angle he felt different and I moaned, thrusting my ass up.

  His hand reached around me and made me come again with harsh, fast rubbing on my clit. I screamed into the pillow as he wrung an orgasm from me and then plowed right on to a third, fourth, and fifth, by which time I was screaming at him, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” he hissed as I came again on the vicious rubbing of his fist. “Change positions.”

  This time he lay on his back and pulled me to lie on top of him, also faceup so that I was wide open for him. The blindfold kept me from seeing the ceiling above us, but I didn’t need to see to feel every inch of him. He didn’t penetrate as deep this way, but there was still plenty of him inside me, and he used slow strokes now, rocking his pelvis under me.

  James Byron LeStrange. It suddenly hit me that J. B. Lester was a bastardized version of that, and I had been right about James being his real first name. He had wanted to tell me. I know he did. But he had to be pushed to go all the way. I wondered what had happened to him in the past to make him trust so slowly. Who had hurt him so much that I had to pry this hard to get him to let go of his name? Lucinda? Or had it been someone else?

  “Turn over again,” he said, his voice harsh with need.

  I rolled onto my back and reached for him. I heard a snap, and the next thing I felt was the warm condom in my hand.

  “I thought there were rules?”

  “I’m breaking them. It’s time you understood, Karina, that you truly, truly make me naked before you.” He plunged into me again and began to fuck me.

  It was like he had said at the beginning. He wasn’t my master; he wasn’t my boss; he wasn’t my owner. He was just…James.

  Those were the words that came out of my mouth when he suddenly slowed, whimpering from how close he was, thrusting deep and holding a moment, then thrusting again when that wasn’t enough, five, six times like that. “Mine,” I whispered, feeling the twitch and throb that was probably him ejaculating inside me. “My lover. My partner. My James.”

  He thrust twice more and then lay limp atop me, panting hard, as if he couldn’t catch his breath.

  And then, as I felt the hot juices running out of me, as he slipped free of me, I realized he was sobbing.

  “Are you all right?” I reached up to stroke his back.

  He pulled free of me suddenly.

  “It’s okay, love,” I said. Plenty of people cried during incredible, emotional sex. At least in the books my mother liked to read.

  I felt the bed shift. All right. Give him a moment. Maybe he was overwhelmed. It had taken him so long to let me even see his cock; this must’ve been as intense for him as it had been for me. I wondered if he was going to get a cloth and wash me like he usually did. Such a small thing, but it had made me feel so cherished. I let a flood of images of the previous hour rush through my mind. Mmmm. A night to remember.

  Then I realized he hadn’t returned. Was the bathroom far?

  I sat up and lifted the corner of the blindfold. I was alone in the room. The door was closed.

  I pulled the blindfold off and looked around.

  There on the chair was my dress and all my things. Everything of his was gone. I blinked in disbelief. Did he want to be fully dressed to…to what? And why wouldn’t he have gotten dressed in here?

  I tried to get off the bed and found I couldn’t stand up with the rope still around my leg. It took me some tugging and cursing until I loosened it enough to slip free. I ran to the room’s balcony and looked down. There were various couples and groups milling around. The staff had changed over the hors d’oeuvres displays. A whole roast pig was being carved at one serving table. A bit farther down was the largest roast beef I had ever seen being sliced. The crowd was partly in their formal wear now, partly in various stages of nudity and silk robes, and some even still wore their artful ropes.

  There was no sign of him.

  I tore open the door and looked in the hallway, panic starting to climb up my throat. Where was he?

  I ran back into the room, wondering if I could find something to put on besides my dress, but every drawer of the dresser was full of rope. Damn it. I pulled the dress up hurriedly and held it up since I didn’t want to take the time to try to get it zipped up by myself, jammed my feet into the slippers, and grabbed the lace jacket and my purse and ran out into the hallway.

  The first people I ran into were the queenly woman and her groveling guy. She was in a different dress now, one much less formal, and he was in nothing but a collar. She held the leash. Damn, I realized, I couldn’t ask for him by name. Wait, they knew him as Jules. “Have you seen Jules?” I asked her. “The man I came in with?”

  “Sorry, dear, I only just emerged from a private room,” she said.

  I ran down the stairs and looked wildly around the ballroom again, but didn’t see him.

  Then I thought, Oh, you’re stupid. Use the phone. There’s probably an explanation.

  I took my phone out of the little purse and hit the speed-dial entry that went straight to him.

  A male voice answered, but it wasn’t him. “Karina—”

  “Stefan?”

  “I’m waiting for you outside.”

  I hung up and ran to the front door. Maybe he was sick or hurt and had turned to Stefan.

  When I arrived, Stefan was standing, very stiff, beside the back passenger door. He opened it and bowed formally. I could see no one else was inside.

  I ran up to him. “Where is he?”

  Stefan shook his head. He looked very serious. “I am directed to take you home.”

  “Home!”

  Stefan wouldn’t meet my eyes. He gestured to the interior of the car, with a half bow and a scoop of his hand.

  The doorman was standing at the front door, watching impassively. I wondered if he was under orders not to let me back in.

  I was
half tempted to scream at Stefan that he shouldn’t bother taking me home but should take me to the nearest bridge so I could jump off. I’ve never really been a drama queen, though, so I didn’t think I could pull it off. Besides, my worth wasn’t what some man thought of me. Wasn’t that what I’d said?

  I climbed glumly into the back of the car, and Stefan shut the door behind me with a solid thunk.

  The party went on, but for me it was over. It was all over.

  Fifteen: Love Dares You to Change

  I went through every kind of mood swing you can imagine sitting in the back of that dark limousine on the highway. I was upset, confused, scared, angry, confused again, righteous, hurt. There was still so much I didn’t know and didn’t understand. I played the scene over and over in my mind.

  Finally I banged on the glass until Stefan relented and lowered it. I put on my toughest “New York City Do Not Fuck With Me” voice. “Okay, what the fuck is this all about?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is I’m to take you home.” His accent was extra-thick.

  “And you’re not supposed to speak to me.”

  “No.”

  “But you are.”

  “Karina…I don’t know how to say it, but—”

  “I told you so? Is that it? You told me once he fucked me he’d leave me, didn’t you? But then you told me that was a lie to try to scare me off. Which is it, Stefan?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you going back for him later?”

  “No. I am to go straight home.”

  “Quit it with the Boris Karloff routine, Stefan. It’s not going to work. I know your English is perfectly fine, you Yale rat.”

  “Ah, fuck, Karina, what am I supposed to do? He told me to take you home. That’s all I know.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “Okay, then speculate about what happened.”

  “I would love to know what the hell happened,” he said, hunching his shoulders a little. “I definitely didn’t predict this. You’re right, the whole love-’em-and-leave-’em thing was just to scare you. Why don’t you tell me what happened in there?”

  I wasn’t quite ready to go into the details, but my mind was running a mile a minute. “Okay, first of all, does the name Lucinda mean anything to you?”

  He sat up straight suddenly. “It’s just a name,” he said carefully.

  “The name of a woman he used to know,” I said. “A bitter ex, he called her.”

  “She was there?”

  “Yes.”

  Stefan shook his head. “There is no way he left you for Lucinda, so put that out of your mind.”

  “Oh my God, I hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility!”

  “Then why did you bring her up?”

  “Because I thought hearing about her might jog your memory or something.” I clung to the edge of the window to the front seat. “Can I come up there?”

  “Don’t try to climb through,” he warned, as if he were afraid I might actually do it. “Look, there’s a rest area. Let’s pull over where nothing bad can happen to you.”

  “All right. Might as well visit the restroom while I’m at it.”

  I had to gather my skirts to make it up the wheelchair ramp into the rest area. Stefan put gas in the car while I went to the ladies’ room.

  When I saw myself in the mirror, I felt like crying. My makeup was a wreck, the dress was askew and still not zipped properly, and the tiara was digging into my forehead and making a red mark.

  A woman came in after me. “Are you in line?” she asked, clutching her woven straw handbag and pointing to the two stalls past the mirror.

  “Oh no, please go ahead,” I said, edging aside so she could get past without having to step on the dress. She went into the smaller of the two stalls.

  Right. I should do that. I went into the wheelchair-equipped stall, which had the high seat and room for my skirts.

  When I came out, the woman was washing her hands.

  “Um, if it’s not too much trouble,” I asked her, “could you zip me up?”

  “Oh, darling, of course,” she said. She had frizzy, graying hair and put her glasses on so she could see the zipper. “I don’t want to make assumptions, but it looks as if you’ve had a bit of a rough night.”

  “Oh, I’m all right now,” I assured her. “A, um, limo driver is taking me home.”

  “Well, that’s good. Dumped the boy who messed you up, did you? Good riddance. He can find his own way home.” She patted the back of the zipper and then reached into her handbag. “Here. If you ever need it, and if you don’t, you might have a friend who does. Okay?”

  It was the business card of a rape crisis hotline. “Oh.” I must have looked a little shocked.

  “You might not think it’s such a big deal, or worth the trouble, but sometimes it helps to talk to someone,” she said.

  “Um, thank you. Really.” I put the card into the purse with my phone.

  The woman was shaking her head as she went out. “Tsk. Ruining a girl’s prom night like that,” I heard her say.

  Stefan was waiting beside the car. He opened the door for me—the front passenger door this time.

  “Here.” He handed me a little grocery sack after I sat down and then went around to his side of the car. In addition to a Gatorade, the bag was full of chocolate bars.

  “Stefan?”

  “You look dehydrated. And, you know, all those TV commercials make it look like chocolate makes women feel better. I didn’t know which kind you like, so I bought one of each.”

  I teared up looking into the bag. “You are the sweetest thing.”

  “Consider it a bribe, or a thank you, or whatever, for telling me about Lucinda,” he said. “So we’re even.”

  I drank some of the Gatorade and then capped the bottle and stuck it in the cup holder. Halfway through the first chocolate bar, I started to feel a little more human. “Okay, so to pick up where I left off. First, we ran into Lucinda. Then he tells me she’s there tailing this creeptastic professor of mine.”

  “A professor?”

  “A guy who tried to solicit me for sexual favors in order to allow me to graduate.”

  “Ah, creeptastic. I get it now. And he was there?”

  “Yes. James told me he—” I broke off as Stefan turned to look at me so fast he nearly swerved the car.

  “He told you his name!”

  I nodded and pointed ahead.

  Stefan put his eyes back on the road, but they were very wide. Fortunately there was barely anyone on the road at that point. We were on what seemed a fairly rural highway, two lanes on either side of a picturesque, tree-lined divider. We passed under an arched stone overpass.

  “He told me his name was James Byron Lestrange.”

  “Wow.” Stefan shook his head in confusion. “I wonder what made him leave.”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question. Why would he confide in me and then leave me?”

  “Hang on, hang on.” Stefan drummed his fingers on the wheel. “So he told you and then left right away?”

  “Yes.” I decided not to mention the mind-blowing-sex part.

  “And it didn’t occur to you that he left because he told you his name?”

  “What, you mean because I burst the bubble of anonymity the magic was lost?”

  “No. I mean, he’s a very secretive person, Karina. You know. He…exposed a big secret to you there.”

  “Oh, come on, was he any more exposed than I was?” I argued, but then I remembered something. “Oh.”

  The last thing he said when we were in bed: “It’s time you understood that you truly, truly make me naked before you.”

  He’d made other little comments about his own vulnerability in the past weeks, but I’d brushed them off. I thought about how Stefan and the beautiful assistant whose name I hadn’t learned had both considered me the one who was dangerous to him, not the other way around.

  “I forced him to say it,” I co
nfessed weakly.

  “You what?”

  “Forced him to. Or coerced him. It didn’t feel like I was violating him at the time.” Oh God, I felt like sinking right into the seat and disappearing.

  Except, wait. “Didn’t I have a right to know it? He’s known my name for weeks! Aren’t two people in love supposed to share everything? He was the one who went on and on about honesty!” Now I was getting pissed off again. “He made a rule that I had to be honest all the time, even to other people. I finally ask him for the truth and he flips out and dumps me?”

  “The rules aren’t always the same for everybody…,” Stefan hedged.

  “That’s bullshit, Stefan! What’s so special about his name, anyway? What’s the big deal? I’m not about to go telling the whole world that the mysterious glass artist J. B. Lester is actually that guy in the back who acts like an art dealer.”

  Stefan nearly banged his head against the steering wheel. “Are you really in love with him?”

  “Yes. And I know he’s in love with me even if he’s afraid to say it. I didn’t want to tell him directly because…because that always wrecks things, you know?”

  “And forcing him to give up his most closely held secret wouldn’t?”

  “Stefan, come on! He had to start acting like a normal human being sometime!”

  Stefan looked at me sideways. “Conformity is not his strong suit.”

  I put my face in my hands. “Did I actually just say that? You’re right. That was completely stupid. Of course I don’t expect him to suddenly become someone he’s not.” Hadn’t I told James how miserable my mother’s attempts to make me conform had made me? “I meant the game had to end so a real relationship could begin.”

  It looked like we were going through a more thickly settled area. Yonkers. “Are you sure?”

  “Okay, you’re right. No either/or. We could have the game and still begin a real relationship. I was so sure we had something special. I’m sure he’s in love with me.”

  “Or was.”

  “Shit.” I started to get teary again, and Stefan opened the glove box and apologetically handed me a pristine, white handkerchief. “Well, I’m completely sure I’m in love with him. It makes no sense, to be in love with someone whose real name I didn’t even know.”