The Bride (The Boss) Read online

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I reminded him happily. “See Emir in London, if he’s up for it. Honestly, I think it’s pretty awesome that we have a friend with benefits together.”

  Neil raised his glass. “To our unconventional relationship.”

  I picked up my mine and added. “May it continue to surprise us.”

  Under the table, I slipped my pump off and ran my bare foot up the inside of his ankle, hooking under his pant leg.

  The darkly mischievous gleam in his eyes made my nipples harden, and my flimsy lace bra was not going to disguise anything. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he slowly half-smiled, half-smirked. “Darling, if you want to be surprised, I’ll shock the hell out of you tonight.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  After dinner, we headed back to the apartment. When we came in, we heard Emma and Michael laughing in the media room, so we snuck through the foyer and headed straight for the bedroom.

  “It’s like bringing a boy home and trying not to get caught,” I whispered, sputtering my laughter.

  “Let’s go into the bathroom. They won’t be able to hear us in there.” He pushed me along with a hand at the small of my back, which dropped to the zipper of my skirt. He deftly popped the hook-and-eye, pulled the zipper, and I stepped out as we crossed the bedroom.

  I’d opened two buttons on my top before Neil could get a chance to accidentally rip them off. It was a teal silk, cap-sleeve, scoop-neck blouse that I adored, and I didn’t want to risk not being able to find a replacement. I whipped it over my head as we stepped into the dressing room, and Neil stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

  “Wait, right here,” he said, his voice low and husky.

  “Did you lock the door?” Not that I thought Emma would ever dare come into the bedroom while we were in it, even if the door were wide open.

  “Of course I did.” Neil pulled the wing-backed armchair from near the shoe rack to sit in front of the mirror. He hadn’t taken anything off, not even his jacket, and I was standing there in my black lace thong and matching bra. So, it was no surprise when he went to the small jewelry safe and punched in the passcode to retrieve my collar.

  The collar I wore when engaging in a D/s scene with Neil wasn’t the kind you could attach a leash to or use for anything rough. A perfect circle of platinum about as wide as my thumb, ringed all around by huge, flawless white diamonds, the collar had cost Neil an asthma-attack inducing seven-figure sum. He’d given it to me on our trip to Paris the year before, which made it all the more precious to me.

  But the most important part of the collar was the mindset it put me in the moment the latch closed around my throat.

  “On your knees.” The sight of me collared had a powerful effect on Neil, as well. The change in him was instant. One moment, he’d been horny and laughing with me, the next he was stern and commanding.

  I dropped to my knees before him and caught myself subconsciously wetting my lips. He opened the clasp and fitted the cold metal band around my throat, then gently fastened it again. While I loved wearing the collar, I always had a moment of fear when it first went on. I didn’t care for anything around my neck—well, except for Neil’s hand, on occasion—and my psyche didn’t seem to notice if whatever was around my neck was a noose or a turtleneck or a BDSM collar. Neil knew this, and just as the latch clicked into place, he reached down and cupped my cheek. The reassuring touch of my Sir was all I needed to regain my equilibrium.

  His hand went to his fly, and my mouth dropped open, my lips wet and obediently waiting.

  He laughed and walked to the armchair. He unbuttoned his jacket and tossed it aside, then sat down, rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down. “Come here. Sit on my lap.”

  I started to climb to my feet, and he made an admonishing noise. “I didn’t tell you to get up.”

  Prowling toward him in a crawl, I pressed my thighs together on every pass. My vulva ached, begging for pressure, and I took it where I could.

  “Slowly,” he ordered. “Let me enjoy the view.”

  I bowed my head and fixed my gaze on the carpet as I approached. I didn’t look Sir in the eye without permission.

  “On my lap, Sophie.”

  I got to my feet, still not daring to lift my eyes. He pulled me down, so that my bottom was snuggled tight to his groin, and my legs splayed outside of his. He spread his big hand on my stomach and stroked up and down, between my breasts, over my belly button, the top of my panties and back again. Not with a gentle, feather-light touch, but a firm, kneading urgency. On one of his passes, he gripped the front of my bra and tugged at it.

  “Enough of this silly thing,” he growled, jerking it upward. The lace-covered underwire rasped over my nipples, and I gasped. Even an unpleasant sensation could set my nerve endings on fire when we were together like this. He pulled the bra up, over my head like a shirt, rather than unfastening it. When I tried to slip my hands free, he stopped me with a firm grip on both my wrists. Lowering my arms and tucking them behind my back, he wrapped the bra around and around my forearms, binding them together. It wouldn’t be difficult to get out of on my own, but that wasn’t the point. It was meant to remind me to keep my hands still, not to forcibly restrict movement.

  He’d parked the chair we sat in across from the full-length trifold mirror set into the opposite wall. I took in my reflection: my long legs draped over his longer ones, spread wide, the crotch of my black lace thong pulled up between my labia. His big hands cupped my breasts, kneading them as his mouth lowered to my neck. He nibbled and sucked, and squeezed with his hands until I was writhing in his lap as much as I dared without scooting right off.

  One hand moved to stroke my hair behind my ear before he brushed his lips over the spot just beneath it, the spot that made me shiver and tickle all over. Neil loved to tease me this way, combining rough touches with delicate ones, so I never knew what to expect.

  He dropped his hand to my shoulder, gliding down my arm, veering off where my elbow was pinned between our bodies. He followed the line of my hip instead, over my stomach to the top of my panties. He clenched the lace in his fingers, drawing the material up painfully tight in my cleft. The edge of the fabric cut across my clit, and I squeaked in discomfort. He eased off and slipped his hand beneath the lace. I watched the mirror, fascinated, as his big hand stroked me beneath the thong, his fingers curled possessively over my mound as he rubbed in soothing, maddening circles.

  “Oh, did that hurt?” He was definitely not as remorseful as he was pretending to be.

  “Yes, Sir.” My lips pursed, and I was keenly aware of the slow, steady breaths I took through them. One finger slipped between my labia, over my clit, and I closed my eyes. My shoulders slumped, and I leaned forward on the hand that was still at my breast. The finger in my panties drew a lazy swirl, and I shuddered.

  He dipped lower, wetting his fingertip and slicking my fluid up and over my hard, straining clit. I mentally tried to step my arousal back, because I knew there was no way I’d be coming this soon in the evening.

  I concentrated on the sight of his hand in my panties, my body undulating in his lap. It wasn’t the most efficient way to keep myself from getting hornier. I should have thought it through better. I closed my eyes and leaned my head on his shoulder, and the hand at my breast came up to grasp my chin, forcing me to face the mirror once more.

  “Open your eyes and look,” he commanded me. “Look at what I’m doing to you.”

  It was almost too much stimulation. I wanted to clamp my thighs shut around his hand to stop him from moving. But he continued his slow circles that tugged at the hood of my clitoris and set off more throbbing pulses deep in my groin. His calm, steady breathing in my ear highlighted my own breathlessness; the brush of his clothing on my skin reminded me of my naked, vulnerable state.

  “What can I do to you, Sophie?”

  My answer was automatic. “Anything, Sir.”

  “And you don’t ever fucking forget it.” He
softly bit my shoulder and withdrew his hand from my panties to give my mound a slap that made me yelp.

  “Quiet,” he warned, and it was the voice of Neil my fiancé, not Neil my Dom. Then darker, lower, he said, “Get on your knees.”

  I sank to the carpet in front of him, and the bra around my wrists slipped a bit. He pulled it free the rest of the way when he bent down to take off his shoes.

  “Would Sir like me to take those off for him?” There was something I found incredibly sexy about taking his shoes off. That probably made me a bigger pervert than I already was. But acts of lowly subservience really turned my crank.

  Sir looked like he was considering it for a moment, then he nodded once and lifted his foot. I sat back on my heels and slipped the shoe off, then slid my hands along his foot, to his ankle, reaching under the leg of his trousers to roll down his thin wool sock.

  When I’d finished with his other foot, I felt him watching me with the kind of darkly amused intent that always gave me a pause. What had he come up with in his devious imagination? What would he do to me this time?

  Raising his foot, he pressed my shoulder down, and I lowered myself to my hands and knees, then to the floor when he didn’t let up. He rose and stared down, hands in his pockets, at me lying prostrate before him. Then he held my head down with one big foot gently on the back of my neck.

  “What do you say?”

  “Thank you, Sir,” I mumbled into the carpet. “Thank you for letting me please you.”

  “Who said you’d pleased me?” He lifted his foot off me and walked around my body in a slow circle. I heard him pause before the drawer we were using as a stand-in for the toy cabinet, but I didn’t dare look up to see what he was getting.

  I didn’t know he had the paddle until he dragged the wide leather surface down my back.

  “Have you been a good girl?” he asked crouching to trail the top edge of the paddle up and down my spine.

  “I don’t know, Sir. Have I been? It’s not my place to make that kind of judgment.”

  The paddle swept up and over the curve of my buttocks, before Neil brought it down on his palm with a loud crack. “Right answer.”

  His footsteps left the room, and I heard the television click on in the bedroom. The noise would provide cover for us, but the first time he’d ever done that during sex, I’d been furious until he’d explained it. I’d just thought he was stopping to watch TV. It had been one of our funnier arguments.

  He came back and rummaged through the toys again, before ordering, “Sit up.”

  The moment I lifted my head, a length of dark silk covered my eyes. As he knotted the fabric behind me, I slowed my accelerated breathing and found my center through sheer determination. I was trying to learn to pace myself, to not become over-stimulated or overwhelmed too early in the game. It was a losing battle. With every new order he gave me, my desire intensified. Soon, my need would be unbearable.

  “Up.” He helped me to my feet. I swayed a little, disoriented by the loss of a sense, but I could tell he was taking me into the bathroom. As we passed through the door, he guided me to the counter where his-and-her vessel sinks stood on brown Italian marble. He positioned me between them and bent me over the counter, making sure every inch of skin possible touched the cold surface. I whimpered. I couldn’t help it.

  “A bit cold?” he asked, one palm gliding over my ass. “Then perhaps this will warm you up a bit. Put your hands on the counter, where I can see them.”

  I’d no sooner done it than the paddle hit me, a resounding crack echoing off the stone and glass in the room. I squealed; he usually worked up to the hard ones. I wondered how much worse they’d get, and my pussy clenched in anticipation.

  “The telly only covers so much noise, darling. Don’t make me gag you.”

  I pressed my lips tightly together, but who was I trying to kid? I was going to end up gagged one way or another tonight.

  Another smack of the paddle, just as ferocious, was followed by a gentler one, and a soothing kiss on the wide swath of burning skin left behind.

  “Poor dear.” He pressed the paddle against my backside. The leather cooled me, but there was a sadistic undercurrent to comforting me with the instrument of pain. “Marks tonight, or no marks?”

  “Marks, please, Sir.” I hadn’t had a truly brutal spanking in a while, and I loved the way my ass looked with big, red welts and purple speckled bruises. If Neil was going away for the weekend, I wanted something to remember him by.

  The paddle raised, then fell again with cruel force, and he kept it pressed tight against my flesh to drive the blow deeper into my muscles. I cried out. I couldn’t help it.

  His hand fisted in the back of my thong and he jerked it down, the lace scratching like razor blades along my aching skin. He slapped one of my thighs and I stepped obediently out of the leg holes; I knew where those panties were going.

  “Open,” he ordered, pushing the scrap of fabric against my mouth. I dropped my jaw, and he forced the panties inside, pushing his fingers to the back of my throat until I choked. The taste of my arousal on the lace brought a renewed pulse to my groin, and my pussy clenched in delicious longing.

  “Good girl.” He squeezed my face, and I mumbled a muffled curse through the panties, just to goad him on. That earned me a slapped cheek before he pushed my head back down, and I grinned around the gag and tried to say, “Thank you, Sir.”

  This time, when the paddle landed, I was glad to have my cries muffled. There was no way I would have kept quiet enough… Though I doubted Emma and Michael would really hear all the way down the hall, over the noise of two different televisions, I would have been mortified if they had. I’d asked for marks, and Neil gave them to me, blow after blow. He’d learned my body and my limits to perfection, and the moment I thought about asking him to stop, he did so of his own volition.

  “This,” Neil said in a low growl as his fingers slicked down between my folds. “Looks very inviting.”

  I moaned against the make-shift gag as his fingertip slid into my cunt, just far enough to rub in and out of my sensitive opening. In the darkness behind the blindfold, I imagined what I must have looked like, bent naked over the counter, still wearing my red patent leather pumps. My ass probably matched them; I ground my teeth against the bruised ache.

  My vulva, bare and still a bit swollen from my wax the previous afternoon, tingled as the backs of his knuckles bumped my labia. He pushed his finger deeper, twisting it as he pumped and withdrew. I sobbed at the loss of penetration, my hands opening and closing on the lip of the counter.

  “Oh, a very warm welcome indeed.”

  I heard a rustle of fabric, then felt hot skin and the coarse touch of his chest hair against the backs of my thighs. He leaned down and kissed the curve of my bruised ass, kneading the flesh with both hands as I moaned in exquisite pain. More kisses pressed along the seam beneath a cheek, and I wriggled in his grasp, my toes curling in my shoes.

  When his tongue touched my clit, it startled me. Blinded by the silk over my eyes, I had been using his slow progress down my backside as a map to predict his destination. He’d skipped over a lot of road to take me by surprise. He flicked the hard, straining nub with the very tip of his tongue then licked over it with flat, wide strokes. I pushed back on him and rolled my forehead against the counter.

  I’d watched him go down on me a hundred times, at least. Either looking down my body, or seeing his reflection in a mirror. Almost always, he would hold my gaze as he sucked and stroked me. Now, even without the blindfold, I wouldn’t have been able to see him, and it drove me mad.

  He knew it would, of course, and that was the point. It was no secret that having something taken away from me was a sure fire way to make me want it even more. I’d become more practiced at delaying my orgasms, but robbing me of a sense had removed one of the distractions I used. If I were watching Neil eat my pussy, it was easier to remove myself from the act, as though I were watching it happen to anoth
er person. Now, it was too much. There was no distance. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep from coming out of sheer willpower.

  So when Neil murmured, “You have my permission to come, Sophie,” against my labia, my knees buckled with relief.

  “As many times as you like,” he added.

  I had become so attuned to obedience that just having permission to come was nearly enough to get me there. A long, slow swirl of his tongue helped me along, and a finger gliding easily into my vagina took me the rest of the way. He pressed hard on my g-spot and I let go completely, rocking on his hand, my inner muscles gripping his finger in waves of ecstasy and desperation. It wasn’t enough, wouldn’t be nearly enough until his cock was inside me.

  But with Sir, it was never so simple. Though I’d just had an orgasm, he didn’t stop, laving my over-sensitive flesh with demented purpose while I sobbed through the gag, begging him to stop despite the fact that my words were lost in the sodden mass of lace filling my mouth.

  Or the fact that I didn’t really want him to stop. If I did, I could give him our signal, and he would stop immediately. That’s what made the futile begging so fun.

  He kept me there, pinning my hips against the counter, sucking and licking me to another peak, and another.

  When my knees buckled from exhaustion and I nearly toppled to the floor, he stopped and helped me to straighten. I leaned on him for support.

  His hands worked at the back of my head to untie the blindfold. “I’m checking in, Sophie.”

  I blinked at the change in light, and Neil pulled the panties from my mouth. Two tear tracks of mascara cascaded down my cheeks. My face was flushed from the slap he’d given me, the marble pressed against my skin, and the head rush of too many orgasms.

  My throat was hoarse. “We’re still green, Sir. But I do need some water.”

  He pulled my hair into a ponytail in his fist and wrapped it around his knuckles. I flipped on the tap, and he lowered my head so that I could drink from the long stream that flowed from the tall, arched faucet. The man could make getting a drink of water arousing.