Risk Your Heart

"I'm going to find out what you like, and make you do what I like."

Something happened in my brain. Synapses snapping and popping like fireworks maybe. Then everything around me faded away.

"Take care of you, and take you to subspace."

Holy crap, he knew what subspace was.

He found my clit again and started making slow circles around it.

"Share you. With whoever I want, male or female, if I feel like it."

My eyes closed all the way and my ears burned red. I didn't know how I felt about that.

"Take a rose petal, or a feather, or an ice cube, or hot wax—"

I couldn't hear the rest for the thundering in my ears.

"Have you come when I tell you to—here—in the park."

Then he worked me, and it was all I could do to bite my bottom lip and not make noise, not move, not let the excitement of being found out throw me over the edge.

I was desperate with the need to come, my honey soaking his hand, my mind in a zone where only pleasure existed. I didn't think the pleasure could ratchet any higher, but he moved his fingers just a little bit over to the right, and I teetered on the precipice. I had to fight not to break apart as his hands seared me into an amazing hedonism that had every nerve singing. Finally being completely still was impossible, and I started to shake.

"You may come now, Leah," he whispered in my ear.

More pleasure than I could possibly imagine blazed through me, like an untamed star expanding everywhere with satiety and safety and joy.

Lighting shot through my body, and I soared up into the sunny sky.

Then there was a moment where I hovered above my body. I was weightless, a spirit looking down on all the people crammed together in the park. Then there was a sharp buzz and a pop, and as if I was a kite yanked down hard by it's string, I plummeted down and slammed back into my body.

I felt alive! Every cell tingled. Drew's arms were still around me. His lips grazed my ear. The magician's show ended and he said, "Let's give a hand to all of the performers today and all of the staff and volunteers who make this event possible." The park was suddenly filled with noise, all those hands smacking together as they clapped and the joyous shouts as they cheered.

All the colors seemed more vibrant. Many of the kids were wearing bright yellow T-shirts with the Despicable Me Minions' thick goggles (both one-eyed and glasses style) leering out from their tiny chests. Women were wearing sparkling white slacks and jeans, getting their last white before Labor Day fashion sense in. The smell of burning hot dogs and juicy hamburgers wafted over me.

I slumped back against Drew.

"Did that do you, Tonto?" Drew asked.

I nodded.

"My work here is done," he said.

He said it like a movie quote. I had a vague thought that maybe he had called me Tonto because he was quoting The Lone Ranger, but that was far before my time, and my head was swimming with endorphins, like a minnow in a barrel of beer, so I just let a stupid smile spread on my face as people exited around us.

I tilted my face up to the sun. I felt boneless. Thank God Drew still held me, or I might have sunk to the ground.

"Is that what you needed?" Drew whispered in my ear a few minutes later when most of the park had cleared out.

I was too toasted to answer.

"Are you all right?" Drew asked, sounding very concerned when I didn't answer, not realizing that it was because I was still too satiated to speak.

I nodded, and I nodded again.

"I hate to do this to you, Princess Leia, but I'm part of the clean up crew."

I groaned.

"I'll walk you to your car," he said.

"Can you carry me?" I squeaked.

He laughed.

"Maybe I can just fly there," I said. "I feel like I'm still flying."

"That wasn't flying, that was falling with style."

I had no idea what he meant, maybe because my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. I twisted around to look at him.

"You know," he said. "From Toy Story."

"I never saw Toy Story," I said.

"You never saw Toy Story!"

I shook my head.

"You're deprived," Drew said. "Stick with me kid. I'll right the ills in your sorely lacking experience. I can't believe you've made it to twenty-six without seeing Toy Story."

"Almost twenty-seven. I made it to this ripe old age without seeing Toy Story, or getting diddled in a public place, before today that is."

"You saw Toy Story today?"

"Very funny."

"Come on, sweetheart. I'll walk you to your car. Before I get tempted to give you a pre-birthday present and diddle you in a public place twice."

I put a hand over the warm spot in my chest. Drew. He was funny, and kind, and sexy, and now I knew he could be dominating and hot as hell. He could give me everything I needed.

Happy Labor Day to me.

*

Drew might not have known how to be a Dominant before the Labor Day EXPERIENCE but he sure got it down now.

I was just finishing my work for the day the next afternoon when my phone rang. It was him.

"Come down to my office. NOW." He hung up.

Wait, what? That doesn't make sense. He didn't even have an office.

I heard a siren wail briefly, so close it almost sounded as if the sound came from right below me.

I jumped up, ran to the window, and looked out. There was an ambulance parked outside.

Oh shit. I ran to the bedroom thinking I'd change out of my sweats and into something nice.

I thought about the forcefulness with which Drew said 'Now'.

Oh God. I turned around, so I ended up just running around in a circle in my living room.

"Okay, okay," I said out loud. "Ah... keys."

I grabbed my keys and ran downstairs.

I ran to the ambulance, and up to the passenger side. I had to stand on tiptoe to look through the window. Empty.

Huh. Could I have the wrong ambulance? There was only one. That was a relief. It would be really embarrassing if an ambulance came for a medical emergency, and I had to explain I was standing next to it panting for no reason.

I looked around. I went to the back of the ambulance. I knocked on the double doors. One of them opened.

"In." Drew said it firmly. His expression was all hard lines, serious business, and raw power.

I hopped up into the ambulance. Fast.

Drew closed the door behind me, shutting us in. He had put his hand firmly on the inside of my upper arm to help me get in the ambulance, and once I was up and in he didn't let go. He used my momentum to pull me forward. I crashed against his side. Drew pushed me down on the cot.

Faster than my brain could follow he had me on my back. He straddled me and yanked my hands above my head, holding both wrists together firmly in one hand while he did something with the other. I twisted around to look up at my wrists. He was binding them together, quickly, with thick gauze, and wrapping the gauze around a metal bar, some sort of stability handle I guess.

"Wha¬—?" Is all I managed to get out before he shot me stern look that said, 'Shut up and get ready.' It was happening too fast for me to process.

Drew pulled the gauze tighter, and my wrists jerked closer to the bar. The back of my fingers just barely touched it; it was cold.

I heard a rip, and then another one. The gauze? I had been watching my wrists, but now I stared at Drew. His face was intense. Is this what he looks like when he is working on someone who is hurt, giving them emergency care that might mean the difference between life and death?

Drew wrapped the gauze around my head, over my eyes, creating a blindfold. There's a slightly rough pattern to the threads of the fabric. When I opened my eyes behind the bandage, it was like seeing through a tightly woven grid of spider webs, or perfectly square lace. Everything had a white haze over it. I was able to see movement. Drew was industriously moving around, but his shape is a blur, his face obscured.

"Do you trust me?" Drew asked. His voice was low, husky, raspy. It was filled with the power I saw in his expression when he opened the door for me, but filled with something else, also.

Unbridled lust.

The answer to his question was on my lips, an automatic yes. I mean, obviously I trusted him.

But then Drew yanked the side of my shirt up and I felt something cold and sharp scrape my skin.

Fear, a shrill electric bolt of it, zapped up from my side to my heart. My heart started beating double time, and then triple, as if it were a galloping horse that could run away and burst out of my body.

That was a knife. My God, a knife. Or...or...a scalpel.

I started to breathe loud, short pants, just this side of hyperventilating.

Drew grabbed my chin with one hand. "Leah," he said firmly. If ever there was a dominant voice, that was it. It was so deep, so in control, so calm, that I calmed immediately.

He repeated his question. "Do. You. Trust. Me."

Whatever sharp instrument of destruction he had had against the side of my waist had disappeared.

"Ye-ye-yes," I stuttered.

"Not good enough," he whispered. The whisper seemed very loud in the small confines of the ambulance, almost like a shout.

Drew let go of my chin. He speared one hand through my hair and made a fist, twisting my long strands around his fingers. He used his grasp on my hair like a handle to gently pull my head back; I had no choice but to go with the motion. The delicate tug on the roots of my hair did something strange to me. The low-level anxiety I live with every day was always buzzing around, like the mechanical noises in your house you learn to ignore. With Drew's hand fisted in my hair, my neck arched back and exposed, my whole body slightly off balance, blindfolded but still able to see somewhat, and tied up to a metal bar, that constant jagged humming of 'not right' in my skin stopped—silenced—and something deep inside me unfurled, relaxed.

I remembered once seeing a TV special about a beekeeper who blew pot smoke into the hive to chill the bees out before collecting honey. The honeybees lay back in a contented stupor.

I was like that. I knew Drew was there, the ambulance was there, my body was there. But this time when he put whatever it was—a dagger?—against the side of my skin and slid it up from my waist to my rib cage to the band at the bottom of my bra and over the cup to tease my nipple through the thin cotton fabric of my bra, all I felt was pleasure. All I could hear was the quiet, steady beat of my own heart pumping, and the delicate white noise of comfort I had slipped into, and then the silence, complete and absolute, of acceptance.

I floated.

Subspace.

I heard Drew's voice, as if from far away.

"Picture you're laying on a beach, on a big, blue blanket. The sand is the whitest, finest, purest sand you've ever seen. You can hear the waves, lapping onto shore. You can smell coconuts, and coconut oil.

"The sun is beginning to set, and streaks of magenta and gold are resting in the sky." Drew's voice got even quieter, and his words slower. "Your wrists are tied to the bottom of a palm tree. It's just the two of us."

Slowly, as if Drew was luxuriating in the texture of my skin, he stroked the tips of his fingers up the inside of my arm.

"So soft," he whispered reverently.

Drew's hand was warm, and his fingertips were rough, like he had had super glue on parts of the tips but some of it had worn off. He grazed the back of his knuckles lightly over my hands, and traced his fingers down my other arm, moving painstakingly slow, circling in through the armpit of my T-shirt before reversing direction and caressing up again.

"You feel a warm breeze come off the ocean and dance over your skin."

I felt the wind, holding all the warmth of summer, blow gently over my neck and upper chest. I felt the ocean air.

Maybe that was Drew's breath. He was so close.

Drew lifted my hair off my neck, and it tickled me as he moved it to the side to plant slow kisses from my ear down to my collarbone.

Drew pushed my shirt way up, and twisted it around the gauze around my wrists, so it formed another layer to the makeshift handcuffs.

I heard a quick snip, and my bra parted halves a little bit at the center. That's what that blade he'd so gently edged along my skin was. It wasn't a scalpel, or a knife, or a dagger. It was scissors. Probably the kind EMTs used to cut clothes off.

"I trust you," I whispered.

Drew very gently, very sensuously peeled the halves of my bra open, grazing his knuckles over the sensitive sides and tips of my breasts as he went.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you now?" Drew asked me.

I shook my head.

"I'm going to make love to you on this beach, sweetie. In this public place, where anyone could come by and find us, but no one will. I'm going to make love to you, slowly, gently, then harder and faster, until your whole body is shaking with the intensity of it."

Drew ran his hand possessively over my stomach. He traced one finger along the elastic waistband of my sweats, playing with it, before slipping underneath. He nipped my hipbone with a quick bite, surprising me, and making me buck off the bed.

"I'm going to make love to you, right here, with you tied up, over and over and over again," Drew said. He pulled my sweats and underwear off. "I'm going to make love to you until you can feel my love for you, and know it is as real, and as tangible, as anything on this planet."

Drew settled his body weight on top of mine. I could feel the sand beneath me shift slightly. I forced part of my mind to record everything, or at least try to record everything, he did. I knew I would want to remember every little detail, to replay each action Drew was doing to me when I could think, which there was no way I could do now. Sheer pleasure washed over me so strongly, it was like I was one big raw nerve of sensation. Amazing, fantastic, hot, sticky, wildly shaking sensation.

* It was dark when Drew gently brought me back from the beach, and I found myself in the ambulance again.

"I think you really will need to carry me home this time," I joked.

To my surprise he picked me up in his arms, cradled to his chest, and carried me all the way up two flights of stairs and back to my apartment. He set me down in front of my door.

I surprised myself, when after I put the key in the lock, I looked over my shoulder at him and found myself saying, "Stay?"

He shook his head slightly. "I have to return the ambulance, baby."

My whole body slumped forward, and I must have looked crestfallen.

Drew put his hand under my chin. "But I can come back. If you want?"

My smile was bright enough to light up the entire hallway.

****

I hadn't slept with anyone in over a year, and I expected it to be weird. I lay on my side, and Drew wrapped his body around me. It was an absolutely perfect fit, with every line of the back of my body snuggly settling into his, like puzzle pieces cut from the same jigsaw. My ass nestled against his groin, apparently spent from the scene in the ambulance. His arm curled around me, and his large hand settled on my breast, holding it completely, safe and warm.

Within what seemed like less time than it took me to fluff my pillow, I heard him snore softly. I smiled slightly. Somehow the sound was comforting, oddly reassuring, and in a few seconds, I followed him into dreamland, happily replaying him slowly kissing his way down my hip and leg in the ambulance, and not so slowly working his way back up.

Before I knew it I was deeply asleep. It was the most peaceful sleep I'd had since I was a little kid.

*

I woke up to the smells of bacon, eggs, and fresh coffee, which was confusing, because I wasn't cooking, and I lived alone.

Drew.

I rolled over, but the spot on the bed behind me was cool, so he must have been up a while.

Drew.

I flashed back to the scene in the ambulance. His strong, large hand, low on my pubic bone, pressing firmly, while he held me down. I couldn't help thrashing up against him while he did wicked things with his tongue.

God that was hot.

A huge smile spread across my face. I jumped out of bed.

Public fingering, bondage in an ambulance that felt like I was at a beach. Damn. I felt like a kid in a candy store, but better. I actually rubbed my hands together.

I was still rubbing my palms together, like some cartoon villain, or a truly demented pervert, when Drew came in carrying a tray with a really great breakfast on it.

"What are you thinking, looking so devious yet so delectable?"

I stopped mid-hand rub and looked down at myself. Naked.

Damn.

Busted.

"Uh..." I said.

Drew smiled, a huge, brilliant, pearly white, you-could-reflect-beams-from-outer-space smile.

"I'm thinking I need to wash my hands before breakfast?" I asked lamely.

"That's not what your expression said."

I sighed. "Okay. I was thinking that meeting you was amazing. Labor Day was incredible—"

"That fair was pretty killer," Drew interrupted me.

Wise-ass. I continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Yesterday was mind-blowing. I'm beginning to think of each moment with you as a miraculous scene of its own. I can't wait to see what you will do next.

"I think you have officially given me the best summer ever," I said, and stared at him, my gaze softening. "And for the rest of my life, I'm always going to have a really soft spot for ambulances."

If possible his smile got even bigger. "I don't know why, they're loud, sterile, and occasionally bloody. It's secluded romantic beaches you should have the hots for." He lifted the tray he was holding an extra inch. "I made you breakfast in bed. You're not in bed." He raised his voice. "Get in bed, slave. NOW!"

I hopped into bed, and dove under the covers. I pulled the sheets up over my breasts. He narrowed his eyes slightly.

Drew stalked over like a fierce predator. There's no other way to describe it. "Lower the sheets, little slave," he demanded. "Let me see those beautiful breasts of yours. Our day is just beginning."

A rush of heat soared down into my core, and when he put one knee on the mattress next to me, I got even hotter.

"First, I feed you breakfast," Drew said, and if the lust in his eyes got any hotter I was going to spontaneously combust. "And then," he said, very, very slowly, so I wouldn't miss the double entendre, "you, are going to feed me."

*

We spent most of the day in bed. We alternated between having sex, napping, and eating Chinese food that Drew ordered and had delivered, so that we didn't have to leave the apartment. He answered the door to get and pay for the Chinese food, wearing my big, fuzzy, pink terry cloth bathrobe, which sent me into a fit of laughter that only ended when he tackled me and threatened to tie me down.

I will NOT fall in love with this guy.

It was almost five in the afternoon when Drew decided it was time for us to get dressed and venture out of the apartment.

I followed the order blindly. It felt so good, to have someone make decisions for me again. It relieved some of the pressure. Back when I was with Nick, I used to work at a graphic arts firm where I had to go into an office every day. Nick used to set out my clothes for me in the morning before he left for work, and set out whatever leather, strapped piece of basically nothing, and high-heeled shoes he wanted me in when he got home.

It sounds weird now, but at the time, it was my anchor, an oasis of calm in what probably would have been a terrifying minefield of my own inner mind if I didn't have that calm ritual to guide me. I used to change into whatever sub outfit he set out for me, and kneel, head bowed, until he got home, whatever the hour.

Boy, was Drew different.

When Drew said we were going out, it hardly sounded like a command, more of a suggestion really. I just followed it, but I was aware of how happy it made me. It's hard being alone. I'd been working from home, ordering everything I needed from the Internet, making all the decisions, even the little ones, by myself.