Slow Surrender Page 7

  Then he let my hand go, and I wondered if he was throbbing the way I was. He finished what was on his plate, and I did the same, though my appetite now was for something else entirely.

  I took a glance at the other diners. None of them were paying any attention to us now.

  “You know, there are advantages to the obvious things, too.” I felt bold saying it, even though “obvious things” was a euphemism for sexual parts, the one he had used a short while ago. That was the point, that we had a language that we shared only between us, that made me feel even closer to him than before. Closer to him than I’d felt to anyone, even though I didn’t know who he was. Not knowing, not needing to introduce him to my friends or family, not worrying about what he might say to people about me was liberating. I could be bolder than I could when I was trying to be what people expected. He expected bold. He expected sexual.

  “Are there?”

  “Well, I assume so,” I said, trying to think of how to say what I wanted to without coming right out and saying, Touch me, touch me, touch me.

  Maybe the expression on my face and the hungry cant of my body said all I needed to. I felt something against my knee. At first I thought it was his hand, but I could see both his hands. It was the sole of his foot, insinuating itself between my knees. I spread them apart, and his foot slid along my inner thigh from where the stocking covered to where it didn’t. Eventually it came to rest against my bare mons. I hadn’t noticed him slipping off his shoe and sock under the table, but his foot felt completely bare.

  He vibrated his foot and I had to swallow a moan. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  After the salad course, I wriggled a bit more, spreading myself open on the edge of his foot. One of his eyebrows twitched as if he was surprised I would be so forward. I hoped my squirming wasn’t too obvious to the other diners. I pretended to look around at the decor while I ground my clit up against his skin.

  “If you can come, you should, only if you can do so silently, without tipping off the other guests to what we’re doing,” he said with a pleasant smile.

  A busboy came and refilled our water glasses. I waited until he had gone before answering. “I don’t think I can come that easily,” I said. “But I’m enjoying it.”

  “Good.”

  I don’t even remember the main course. I remember him pumping his foot gently up and down. The puddle on my seat was going to be huge.

  And he was surely going to leave a huge tip. I stopped worrying about it.

  “Are you interested in dessert?” he asked after our dishes had been whisked away.

  “I’m interested in some sweet indulgence,” I said, trying to be witty. “And I’m not referring to the sugary kind.”

  He grinned. “I enjoy indulging you.” He took out his phone and thumbed a text message one-handed. “Go visit the restroom, which is right through there.” He pointed somewhere behind me and withdrew his foot from my crotch. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  In the restroom I wiped the juices off my thighs. There wasn’t much I could do about the damp spot on the skirt, though. Thank goodness the fabric was black and the place was dimly lit. I neatened up as best I could.

  He stood as I approached the table, then escorted me to the front door, walking behind me the whole way and obscuring the damp spot from any curious onlookers. As far as I could tell, no one batted an eyelash at us.

  The driver remained in the car and a valet opened the door. I went in first, and he followed me. Once the door closed behind him, I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t even realized how tense I had been.

  He merely chuckled. “Being in the public eye can be hard work,” he said, and gestured around the car, which began to move. “Ah, sanctuary. A safe little cocoon.”

  I nodded, wondering what was going to happen next. I remembered my manners, though. “Thank you for dinner,” I said.

  “Thank you for accompanying me,” he replied, in the same rote tone I had used. “Now tell me what you were thinking as far as sweet indulgences go?”

  On the spot again. “I’m really not sure. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone as much as I want you right now. But you don’t seem the type to just do it in the backseat.”

  He chuckled. “I’m tempted to, but no. Even seeing my cock is a privilege you will have to earn.”

  “Really?” I sat up a bit straighter, trying to wrap my head around the idea. A man whose number-one goal wasn’t to get off was still a foreign concept to me. “Is it that gorgeous? Or is it deformed or something?”

  He put a hand over his eyes and I grinned in triumph. Cracking him up with laughter seemed to be one of my best skills. It took him a moment to get himself together and he cleared his throat. “When the time comes,” he said, trying to sound serious, “it’ll be up to you to decide whether you think it’s gorgeous or not.” His cheeks were pink.

  It struck me then that it wasn’t merely that he was playing a “hard to get” sex game with me. He really wasn’t ready for me to see him exposed.

  “All right,” I said soberly. “I won’t be pushy about that.”

  He gave me a small nod of acknowledgment. “Now. The question for tonight is whether you have earned an orgasm.”

  “You mean, without a time limit?”

  He laughed and his moment of vulnerability seemed to have passed, or maybe I had imagined it. “Yes, without a time limit. Not every orgasm is a reward, of course, but this one could be.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to take off your skirt and show me how you masturbate. As long as you keep answering my questions, you can keep touching yourself. Go on, take off your skirt.” While I slipped out of the skirt, he took his necktie off. He tied the skinny end around my wrist and held the other end in his hand. I leaned back against the door to give him the best view and began to circle my clit with one finger.

  “My first question,” he began. “Let’s start with an easy one. What’s your favorite dish when you go out for Thai food?”

  That he’d remembered what I said earlier made me laugh a little, and I switched to running two fingers up and down my seam, getting them slippery and then running one to either side of my clit. “What I love most are all the appetizers. Curry, noodles, they’re okay, but the appetizers! Fried tofu with meat in it, crab rangoons, all those little fried things.”

  It felt decadent and dirty to be touching myself in front of him, and yet he seemed so genuinely interested in my answers.

  “And what did you mean by ‘real’ ice cream?”

  “Oh, you know, there is the soft-serve stuff that comes out of a machine, but you can barely call that ice cream. I mean the kind you have to scoop out of a tub, made with real cream. When I was little, there were small dairies that would each have their own stand that would open for the summer.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Columbus, Ohio. They would make hot fudge so thick that it would stick to your teeth.” As I drew my fingertips across my clit, my muscles tightened and I felt the glass Ben Wa ball again.

  “Tell me what upset you earlier.”

  “Something upset me?” I asked. He tugged a little on the tie as if threatening to pull my hand away from where I was touching myself. “Oh, the bit about my thesis advisor.”

  “Indeed. Would that have anything to do with why you called me, somewhat upset, earlier this week?”

  The thought was enough to dampen my mood. I stopped moving my hand of my own accord. The thoughts I had been obsessing over regarding Renault all week came spilling forth. “Yes. I want to graduate in May. My thesis is done. My advisor has been sitting on it for a few weeks. He’s not even my real advisor, but my old one got sick. He’s a jerk. A total and complete jerk.”

  “What sort of jerk?”

  “The sort of jerk who says I’m not fit to graduate unless I…I wear a dress…and…Get this. He hasn’t even read the thesis, but he told me the other day that if I sucked his cock, he’
d pass me.”

  “What!” His spine straightened as his eyebrows flew together in a frown. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “See! Even you don’t believe me.” I drew my legs together and turned away from him.

  “No, no, don’t misconstrue what I said,” he said quickly. “His behavior is what’s ridiculous, not your story! Of course I believe you.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him. He was biting his lip and frowning.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Please tell me you didn’t agree to go along with him!”

  “Oh, I certainly didn’t! I flat-out refused, and he tossed my dissertation into the trash. Went on and on about how I had proven myself unfit to graduate because I didn’t dress up nice and didn’t kowtow and suck his cock, like apparently I’ll be expected to in the corporate world or something.”

  He made a disgusted noise. “I like to think there is less of that these days, but his very existence proves the attitude lives on.” He shook his head. “What do you plan to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’m far from the only student he’s demanded favors from.” My voice was starting to shake. “I mean, how sick is this? He has a little pillow on the bookshelf by his desk that people can put under their knees when they…you know.”

  “Disgusting.” He seemed to fall into thought for a few moments. “Tell me. How important is it to you to graduate?”

  “Well, I’ve got student loans. It would be pretty stupid to have paid all that money for nothing.”

  “I see why you wanted to save that topic of conversation for later,” he said. “That’s a very serious matter.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill the mood with it.”

  He bent his head, looking at the end of the tie that was still in his hand; then he looked up at me through his lashes. “Never apologize for being honest with me. Please, come here.”

  I didn’t say anything but fairly threw myself into his embrace. He was all rigid muscle under his fine dress shirt, stiff and masculine, but one of his hands was gentle as he rubbed my shoulder comfortingly. The sound of the road under the wheels of the limo was soothing, even as we slowed and sped up, moving through the ever-present traffic.

  After a while I raised my head. Through the dark-tinted window it looked like we were probably on the West Side Highway. The warmth of his body and the scent of him seemed to seep into me, driving Renault out of my mind and rekindling the arousal that had roared during dinner.

  “I’m ready to continue,” I said, “if you still want me to.”

  He brushed a bit of hair away from my eyes. “Want you to what?”

  “Well, your command was for me to touch myself.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And you were asking me questions.”

  “Yes, I was.” He shifted on the seat so that we faced each other.

  “And I think you were stopping me from pleasuring myself when you didn’t like the answers I gave.”

  He clucked his tongue. “The only answers I don’t like are dishonest ones.”

  “All right.” I lay back against the door again and propped my feet up on the seat, my knees spread. “May I try again?”

  “Yes, once you answer a question. Let’s see.” He readied his end of the tie in one hand. “Tell me about your first date.”

  “Well, first actual date that counted as a date?”

  “You can count it however you wish.”

  “All right.” I slid a little farther down. His gaze was making me feel warm all over. “I count my first official date from junior high school, because I wrote about it in my diary. I went to the mall with Frank West, with his father and my mother tagging along about twenty yards behind us the entire time.”

  “As chaperones?”

  “I guess. And it counts as a date because instead of getting separate ice cream sundaes, we got one big one to share.”

  “So there is an ice cream connection after all?”

  “Maybe?” I laughed and moved my fingers in a circle, not in any hurry, merely enjoying the sensation and the game we were playing. “It occurs to me now that my mother probably considered that a date with Mr. West.” Perhaps that’s why she had been so bitterly disappointed that I wasn’t interested in going out with Frank again. The reason I wasn’t interested was that the “date” had released a torrent of criticism from my mother about how I walked, talked, dressed, laughed, and even breathed while on the date. Like I was supposed to become someone else to keep Frank interested. Frank was plenty interested, but I wasn’t anymore.

  He tugged on the tie and I realized I had fallen silent. “Yes?” I asked.

  He licked his lips. “Pre-Raphaelite art, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

  He tugged on the tie. “Lying to me counts as not speaking. In fact, it’s worse. Five-second stop.”

  “I’m not lying!” I moved my hand to my thigh and squirmed.

  “Then you are lying to yourself. You don’t spend years studying something just on a casual interest.”

  I slumped. “You do if you’re me.”

  “You’re telling me you think graduate school was a waste of time, then?”

  “No! I mean, well, I don’t know.” I sighed. “That’s the truth. I don’t know what I want.”

  He must have believed me because he let the tie go slack again. My clit was suddenly too eager for touch to care that my mind was in turmoil.

  “Tell me your favorite painting,” he said as I began to pant.

  “So many of them are gorgeous,” I answered. “I love how beautiful the women are. Sappho by Mengin. Edward Burne-Jones has King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.”

  “Ah, yes, I’ve seen it. At the Tate in London.”

  “Have you? I’ve never seen it in person. I really want to, though.” I moaned a little.

  “Is that painting special to you?”

  I paused to think for a moment and he let me. It was only one of many paintings I’d included in my thesis, but part of me wished I’d concentrated on it a bit more. “Well, it’s kind of my Cinderella story again, isn’t it?”

  “Tell me the story,” he said.

  “Well, there are various versions of the legend, of course. Basically, the king looks out his window one day and sees a beggar maid so poor that she has no clothes. He falls in love with her at first sight and vows to wed her.”

  “Ah. Love at first sight.” He licked his lips. “Are you close?”

  “Very.”

  He leaned in. “I’m going to make a rule, Karina. I don’t just mean for right now. I mean a general rule. Lie, and I’ll deny you. Speak the truth and I’ll reward you. Does that sound simple enough?”

  “Yes. How will you know if I’m lying?”

  “You’ll tell me yourself because if you don’t, then we have nothing here but smoke and false promises.”

  I licked my lips, completely lush with desire and taut with near-peak arousal, but I wasn’t so drunk with lust that I didn’t realize he’d said we had something more than a kinky game. Something he cared enough about to demand the truth over. “Yes,” I said. “That sounds right.”

  He leaned closer and put a hand on each of my thighs. “I’m going to suck you now.”

  “Oh—” At that moment, my phone started to beep. “Ack, my alarm.”

  “Alarm?” He raised one eyebrow.

  “I’m supposed to call my moth—I mean, my roommate—at eleven. To assure her you’re not an ax murderer.”

  That made him snort. “Your roommate is savvy.”

  “Is she? She’s actually kind of a dork.”

  He slapped me lightly on the thigh. “Call her.”

  “I could just send her a text.”

  “I said to call her. And remember, no lies.”

  “What? To anyone?”

  “To anyone.” He brushed his thumb over my clit and I sucked in a
breath.

  It took a moment to dig my phone from my purse. Even though I had Becky on speed dial, it seemed to take forever to get the call to go through. He looked up at me from between my legs, licking his lips and trying not to smirk. She picked up right away. “Rina?”

  “Hey, Becks. Just calling in like I said I would.”

  “So everything’s okay?”

  “Everything’s great.” I yelped suddenly as he planted a kiss right onto my clit.

  “Rina? You okay?”

  “Yes, yes! Sorry, he’s tickling me.”

  “Tickling you.”

  “Yes!” His tongue darted out and swiped across my clit. “Yes, it tickles a lot!”

  “Oh, jeez, are you, like, in the middle of something?”

  “Yes, of course I am. Hey, you’re the one who insisted I call!”

  “Okay, you’re right. Look, do you know when you’ll be home?”

  He raised his head and mouthed, “Under an hour.” I repeated it to her. She said she’d wait up and then disconnected the call.

  I couldn’t stop giggling as he licked all around my clit. The laughter stopped suddenly when he took my clit in his mouth—sucking like he said he would. That made me gasp and jerk my hips.

  He sucked and teased with his tongue at the same time. I’d never felt anything like it, and my arousal shot right to the peak and then held there while the tip of his tongue did wicked things.

  “So close,” I said, and it came out a high whisper, like even my vocal cords were stretched to the max.

  He hummed then, as if agreeing with me, and did something I didn’t expect.

  He bit down, not hard, but firmly. I probably would have been outraged, except that I started to come instantly. And his tongue kept milking my orgasm, my hips bucking but his teeth holding me fast as he drew the explosion of pleasure out longer than any orgasm I’d ever had before. When at last I went limp, he let go but continued to lick me, very gently now, as if he knew how sensitive I might be.

  It was only as my mind cleared I realized his fingers were inside me, too. I made a surprised noise and squeezed.

  He lifted his head and grinned, then moved inside me. Quite suddenly I was on the verge of a second orgasm and I sucked in a breath.