Memoirs of a Lady Ch. 05

Her eyes flicked to his and saw that he was watching her closely while his fingers played with the place where her robe met the skin of her neck. “I’ll make a run to Albert’s for your things in a while, okay? For now, please feel free to wear whatever you can find in your room.” He smiled, a predatory sort of smile, and reached beneath the table to tug at the sash holding her robe closed. “Or you can just keep wearing this robe.”

Pulling against his fingers, pulling her robe tighter around her body, she accepted his offer of the clothes she might find in her room. “But only,” she warned, “until I get own things.”

They continued with breakfast companionably enough, even though an odd and hard-edged sexual tension flexed between them and grew more pronounced with each passing minute.

Once, without asking, he leaned over to slide a finger across her lips and down her throat. “Crumbs,” he whispered, his eyes holding hers, “are tragic on such beautiful lips.”

She lowered her eyes to her plate, alarmed and aroused at the wild response his light touch and few words had immediately incited.

When they were finished eating, he came around behind her and brushed the robe off one of her shoulders to kiss where the robe had been. His lips moved possessively over her skin while she sat completely still, barely breathing. Gooseflesh followed his touch. She was chaotically aroused but sat quietly, fingers knotted into her napkin. Her body was responding to the need surging between them but she tried to deny him the knowledge of her response. He licked across her racing jugular with the tip of a hot tongue.

“You will be mine,” he promised, the words little more than warm breath against her frantically throbbing pulse.

Erica could barely think coherently, let alone formulate a politely worded refusal.

“I’m going to Albert’s,” he informed her, stepping away, a warmly intimate tone in his words. “I need to be sure everything is okay there.” His voice dropped to a low growl. “You’ll be mine when I return, Erica.”

Erica gasped aloud at the arrogant presumption of his words while internally, her pulse soared and slippery fluids surged and collected between her thighs.

“Make yourself at home, darlin’.” He brushed a soft kiss across her parted, startled lips before he disappeared out the kitchen door.

Erica remained seated, lifting her fingers to move them across her lips for a few seconds. Her hand slid under the shoulder of her robe and rubbed gently against the spot he had kissed. Distractedly, she got to her feet and returned to her room, pausing only briefly to look at the glory of “Sleeping Beauty” once more.

Remembering his suggestion, wishing for some distraction, she inspected the clothing in her room. Dismayed, she concluded that there was very little here and certainly nothing except some sexy workout-type stuff. Reluctantly, she slipped one of the small white t-shirts over her head and then pulled on a pair of clingy Lycra shorts.

“Oh no,” she breathed, staring at her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. The tiny shirt hung trembling from the tips of her erect nipples, leaving the under swell of each creamy mound completely exposed. “I can’t wear this.”

She brightened.Andrew has clothes, doesn’t he? she thought with a sense of triumph.He’s got real clothes, regular clothes.

It doesn’t even matter that he’s so big. A too-big T-shirt is much more comfortable anyway. Her hands slid up from her hips and came to rest on her waist.Besides, a big shirt would cover these skintight shorts.

Turning, watching her reflection in the full-length mirror, she frowned at how the T-shirt clung to her body.I can’t wear this with all that wild sexuality flowing between us.

Taking a big breath, she turned toward the door.Since he’s out checking on things at Albert’s place, she decided.This is the perfect time to take a quick look through his closet and grab a shirt.

Not giving herself time to chicken out, she moved down the hall and peered into each room as she came to its door. As she’d expected, his – and it had to be his – was the last door she came to. Looking back up the hallway guiltily, though she knew she was alone, she slipped through the door into his room. She leaned back against the closed door, paused to catch her breath, and looked around curiously.

A few carefully chosen art pieces hung on the walls and Erica’s eyes widened to see a Modigliani on one wall.That can't be an original! she thought, and then,Can it?

He cares about art,approval threaded through her thoughts. She detoured to smell the delicately pink roses massed in a cut-glass bowl on his desk. And he likes roses. She smiled, surprised by their perfect scent.I wonder what variety these are?

Turning away, she moved purposefully toward what had to be the closet.What an interesting man Andrew is. She felt her unexpected attraction to him warm her soul, like a down comforter in the deep winter night. She stopped in mid-stride as a wash of guilt swamped her brighter emotions.

They were from different worlds, she and Andrew. Besides, she belonged to another, one who was giving her to yet a third. Her honor required that she proceed with the contract already formalized between the professor and Cristoforo De Medici.

Aching for the kind of deep and mutual bonding with a man that must be possible; she pressed her palms to her eyes and wiped away the hot tears spilling down her cheeks. That sort of alliance, that mutual flowering of trust between two, was likely very rare. She would never have such a love. Squaring her shoulders, she reached for the closet door.

The light came on as she entered and the rich scent of cedar enveloped her awareness. The large closet, deeper than wide, was paneled with the wood. Erica breathed in deeply; cedar was one of her favorite scents.

To her right, a number of drawers were built into the walls of the closet. She opened and closed a few of them in her hunt for shirts. Pausing, heat rising into her cheeks, she stilled when she opened one near the bottom that contained…well, she wasn’t sure what the items were, quite frankly, but they were made of metal and leather, and had straps and buckles and big rings attached. Closing that drawer, she couldn’t contain the frisson of excitement that wound into her body at the sight of those…fastenings. She’d played a few gentle bondage games with the professor but he wasn’t interested in more. She thought she might be.

Suddenly she felt distinctly anxious; her foray into his closet wasn’t right. She didn’t have his permission to be here and shame scoured through her. No self-respecting guest would engage in this kind of activity. Technically, she was going to steal from him.

Another quick glance down at the skimpy little T-shirt convinced her that she needed to borrow one of his shirts. She was just going to borrow it, not steal it. She decided to get one and get back to her room before he came home. She’d confess the minute she saw him. He’d know anyway.

At random, she opened a drawer near the top and breathed out a relieved, “Yesss…” when she recognized neat stacks of plain, work-type T-shirts. She inspected a couple of tags; all the shirts were 100% cotton and size XL. Good.

Stripping off the wispy little thing she’d found in her room, she tossed it over her shoulder toward the doorway, her attention fixed on the shirts in the drawer. Near the bottom, she found a white one that felt good against her hands. Holding it up, she saw that it was worn and soft but free of stains and holes.

“Perfect,” she purred. Shrugging into the soft garment, she rose to her feet and turned to check her reflection in the mirror against the door.

“Oh no,” she shrieked taking a large step backwards and bumping into the tie rack. Andrew, his arms crossed, was leaning against the frame of the doorway watching her. “How long have you been there?”

“I have a question for you, too,” he replied evenly. “What are you doing here?’”

She straightened her shoulders and tried not to look guilty. “Did you watch me when I changed?”

He just cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t you think you should have let me know you were there,” she asked quietly, feeling like a thief, “instead of just…just…peeping at me?

“Don’t you think you should have asked before you went rummaging through my closet?”

“Yes,” she admitted, her eyes finding a resting place on his chest, “and I beg your pardon for being here without your permission. I should have asked, Andrew, but you were at Albert’s and I needed to borrow a shirt. I didn’t think you’d mind.” She flicked a glance up at him. “It wasn’t right of you to stand there and watch me like that.”

“Did you check the closet in your room before you decided to make a raid on my shirts?”

She bent to scoop the little shirt from the floor and extended it toward him as it dangled from her fingers. “This is from the closet in my room but I felt a little uncomfortable in it. Sort of exposed, if you catch my meaning. There were no other shirts from which to choose.”

His eyes stroked her body. “Maybe if you wore something between your clothes and your skin every once in a while you wouldn’t feel so exposed,” he suggested softly.

Flushing, she stepped toward him and poked a finger into the middle of his chest. “It was wrong of you to watch me like that, Andrew, and you know it.”

He pressed her hand flat. Through the soft denim of his shirt, she felt the heat of his body and the heavy thumping of his heart. The scent of clean male skin filled her nostrils. He groaned, quietly. She looked up, startled by the sound. He was looking down at her steadily, heat flaring in his eyes.

His free hand trailed up her arm leaving puckered skin in its wake. “You have beautiful breasts, Erica,” he said. Slowly and deliberately, his eyes holding hers, his fingers whispered down over the front of the worn tee shirt to touch and cover one of her breasts.

Her nipple peaked hard against his palm through the thin material. Her dismay was overtaken by the immediate and pressing surge of arousal flooding her senses. She was intensely aware of Andrew’s palm on the tender tip of her breast. He moved his hand and then it was his fingers stroking her nipple through the worn shirt. Still holding her eyes, he bracketed the hard point between two fingers and pulled. Heat flooded her in great waves and she gasped his name.

Swiftly, not giving her time to pull away, he leaned to fasten his mouth over the erect bud. Through the thin cotton, she felt his teeth scrape and pull the sensitive nub, once, twice, three times, and she shivered at the wild desire that radiated from his mouth to her core. He raised his head, his fingers again teasing where his teeth had just been, and lowered his mouth to hers.

“Andrew, we can’t! I can’t!” Erica whispered, confusion and alarm fighting a tsunami of desire and the urgent demands of her body.

Andrew slid his arms around her waist and cupped the softness of her buttocks as he pulled her body tightly against his. She felt the length of his arousal pressing into her hip and the wild throbbing of his heart under her fingertips.

His tongue teased the corners of her closed mouth and demanded her response. “I’ll bring you great pleasure, Erica, and ask only your honest response in return. She felt his words thrumming into her body and feeding her arousal.

His lips heated the skin along her jaw. Her heartbeat raced to match the one beating under her hand. She wanted to stroke over the hard planes of his chest, to kiss him the way he was kissing her, but she couldn’t. She didn’t really know him and he was so intense, so demanding. Besides, she belonged to another, even if he didn’t want her anymore.

He kissed along the edges of her face and she shivered with excitement at each caress. “Albert told me all about you, Erica,” he whispered, the words and kisses merging, “including the facts that the professor no longer wants you and you’ve never even met Cristoforo.”

Gasping, she struggled to free herself from his arms but he held her more tightly, his body serving as both a prison and a refuge. His words came in waves then, powered by currents of arousal and heated need.

“Erica. Listen to me. You’re here with me now and I want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you.” His words were plain and urgent. “Open to me.”

He leaned into her and his body pressed hard against hers. Again she felt the swollen length of him through their clothes and ached for the release he was offering. “I won’t hold you here when it’s time for you to go. I know you’ll go, and soon. But live with me for this short time. Live Erica, for yourself and for me. Be selfish, if only for a few days.”

“Oh God,” she moaned, tears of aching hurt and frustrated need coursing down her face. She turned to him, just a small movement, seeking the tenuous security of the pleasure he was offering.

“For now,” he whispered, taking small bites against her lips and tasting the corner of her mouth with his tongue, “you will be mine. Let me teach you a new way to love, darlin’.”

He slanted his mouth over hers and closed the gap between them. Wildfire pulsed from Erica’s lips to the core of her body and she gasped at the mounting, spiraling pressure of his kiss.

“Oh God, yes,” he rasped into her mouth, his fingers kneading almost painfully into her bottom, “open to me. Give yourself to me.” His tongue probed, questing, smoothing, and hunting an answering need in her.

She whimpered; trapped by the hungry urgency and fierceness holding her against Andrew’s body.

He heard the small sound and his body tightened again. “I need you,” he grated, the words rough and bald. Lowering his head, he took her mouth almost savagely, tearing past the slight part in her lips, opening her to his deep, hard kiss.

Erica shivered as waves of passion that crashed and boomed through her body. He felt good, tasted good. She needed him, too.

One hand moved up her hip and under the hem of the shirt. “I’m going to touch you in ways you’ve never been touched,” he promised thickly. “I want your response, freely given. I want your submission, for now, for what will be between us for these few days. Give that to me, Erica. Give me your obedience and your passion.”

“What’s happening here, Andrew? What are you talking about?” she asked wildly, the words pouring from her lips into his mouth.

He held her tightly with one arm while the other hand moved under her shirt, smoothing, touching, nails scratching and biting into her skin.

“I’m the storm, Erica, and you’re the reed bending as I pass.”

She moaned, the sound a mix of confusion and arousal. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get enough air. Her legs were trembling and she felt like she was falling.

Then he grasped her nipple tightly with a thumb and finger. She almost came apart. Waves of sensation like colored lightning flashed through her body to her very core.

She screamed, a high, thin, short sound, and Andrew dropped his mouth to hers.

“Come on,” he urged into her mouth. “For me. Now.”

He twisted her nipple again, moving her from pleasure into pain, and she cried out again. His other hand snaked down and stroked hard between her shorts-clad legs, unerringly settling against her erect clit. She shouted hoarsely, her body undulating and her arms wound tightly around him. Fiercely pleasurable contractions robbed her of all coherent thought.

After she had calmed a bit and was resting more quietly against him, he steadied her and stepped away. “Strip, please,” he ordered quietly, tersely. His chest was rising and falling, his tight control over the arousal boiling through his blood was obvious.

Still shaking from the last errant tremors of her pleasure, she obeyed, though her fingers fumbled and her movements were slightly clumsy. When at last she was naked, she stood before him, head down, trembling.

“Look at me.”

She obeyed, blushing. He was standing very close and he leaned down to kiss her the way a man sure of his woman kisses.

“You’re beautiful, Erica,” he told her, and she knew he meant it. “I’m going to teach you about the part of your sexuality that you probably don’t know much about, a part of you that needs someone like me to be whole.”

“I don’t really know what you mean,” she confessed, her voice barely a whisper.

He opened a small drawer and retrieved a length of black velvet. “You already and naturally bend to the wishes and desires of the one who holds your allegiance, darlin’. When that one also knows how to control and use your eroticism, and knows how to push you into a tandem exploration of the wild edges of your sexuality, he’s called a Dominant.”

He brushed the soft black velvet strip across the tips of her tightly budded nipples. She gasped and stepped away but he pulled her back to her original position with one hand on her arm and stern look.

“You’re a sexual submissive, Erica, at least now, with me, here. I’m a Dominant. Together, we’re whole. Together our needs match.”

He fastened the length of velvet around her throat and she shivered with a return of hungry need. His fingertips brushed lightly against her skin before he palmed her breasts and squeezed hard into her pliant flesh.

She gasped and trembled but didn’t move.

“Good,” he whispered, releasing her. “You learn quickly.”

Hesitantly, she reached up to touch the length of velvet. “What is this?”

“It’s a collar, Erica, an item of great importance to both submissive and Dominant. It signifies my commitment to do you no harm, to use you for our mutual pleasure -- and to release you a more fully sexual woman at the end of our time together.”

Her finger stroked the velvet. “And my responsibilities to you?”

He brushed an errant strand of hair from her face and she shivered at the trailing heat from his fingers. “Honesty, Erica. That’s all. I require only your honesty in every way during every moment we are together.”

Reaching into another drawer, he pulled a small pile of objects from it. He fastened her wrists and ankles into soft suede cuffs, speaking to her soothingly all the while and touching her nakedness with knowing fingers.

Erica trembled under the sweeping tide of her turbulently sexual feelings and her need to submit to this man. His fingers pulled desire from her as though it was his by right. His words produced a dizzying current of throbbing response in her body. She’d never expressed her submission desires aloud to anyone and had only fantasized about them alone in the dark of night.

Andrew was so assertive, physically and emotionally, and took from her an answering intensity as if it was his by right. But how could he know the darkest corner of her sexuality so easily, so intimately?

When fully cuffed, he laid her on the floor of the cedar closet. The warmth of the thick Berber carpeting cushioned her nakedness but opened her body. It was obvious - to him, to her - that wanton desire ran madly through her flushed and overheated body.

He attached lengths of chain to each cuff and fastened the ends of the chains to stout hooks set into the walls of the closet. Eventually her limbs were stretched out tightly in four directions. She could barely move.

“Andrew, please, I’m confused and…and I want you.”

He ran the edge of his fingernail up the inside of her leg, from her foot to her thigh. His lips and teeth followed it, and she gasped, undulating under his touch.

“You must accept what I want to give, sweet one,” he murmured, nipping into skin high on the inside of her thigh and then licking the spot with a wet, slippery tongue, “when I want to give it.”

Standing, he stripped with spare economy of motion before kneeling next to her again. He stroked up one leg and she moaned deeply when his finger paused and circled lightly over her clit.