Lisa Jones - Being Me

I call out to Rich and turn to catch him. “I need my car,” I tell him.

“No,” Chris says, his voice low and lethal, his hand shackling my upper arm. “She doesn’t.”

I blast him with a look meant to flatten him but find myself captured by his sharp, commanding stare. “I promise you, Sara,” he says, his voice low and intense, “I’ll carry you upstairs over my shoulder if I have to.”

Momentarily, I’m disarmed by the thrill that shoots through me at the threat. I am wet and hot and aching to be over his shoulder and in his apartment, naked and at his mercy. His distrust cuts me deeply, yet I’m thrilled at the barbaric statement that proves I am without defenses where he is concerned.

I hold his stare, and I don’t doubt he means his words. “I’ll go up, but I’m not staying.”

He doesn’t blink or respond immediately; he’s studying me, sizing me up, and I wonder if he can see my reaction to his threat in my face, if I am as transparent as the window he’d once fucked me against.

Without a word, he releases me and I start for the door. He falls into step with me. My fingers curl around the journal and I remind myself of his distrust and my stomach knots at the idea that, even if not about this, I deserve what he feels. I’m getting a tiny taste of what it will feel like if and when he knows the real lie I’ve told, and I don’t like it. I feel an eruption building inside me, emotions boiling in a wild mixture, hot and dangerous, that I can barely contain.

We enter the building and Jacob is at the front desk. I manage a nod and a small greeting. Chris and I step into the elevator side by side, and face forward, only inches separating us. The air is thick with unspoken words, the tension certain to snap any second.

Without making a conscious decision to act, that second comes for me when the doors slide closed. I whirl on Chris and shove the journal at his chest. “Mark gave this to me today. It’s Rebecca’s business notes. I told you I locked up the damn journals, and I did.”

He shackles my wrist and pulls me close. The journal lodges between us. “Do you know how much I don’t want to hear Mark’s name right now? He shouldn’t have let you go to Alvarez’s alone.”

His words are tight, laced with the anger he’d confessed back at Alvarez’s house, and I now realize he’s been carefully controlling his fury. I feel it in the tightness of his body against mine, see it in the hard glint in his eyes. Everything about Chris is wrapped around control and I forget too easily.

“He’s my boss.” My bottom lip trembles with the words. “He’s not my keeper, and for that matter neither are you.”

His green eyes glint with amber blades of pure steel. “I told you, Sara. I will keep you safe.”

There is a possessive absoluteness to his words that both arouses and infuriates me. I am once again struck by how little I seem to know about myself and why I respond to this side of Chris. “The line between protecting me and controlling me, Chris, is my job.”

“Ask me if I care about the lines right now, Sara. Ask me if I have any intention of ever living the hell I lived tonight when you wouldn’t answer the phone.”

I am taken aback by the deep, vehement reply that is laced with a threat I do not understand. “What does that mean?”

His fingers twine into my hair and he pulls my mouth just beyond his, so close I can almost taste the control he holds so easily. “It means,” he rasps, “that tonight, Sara, I’m not pink paddles and fluff, and neither are you.”

The elevator door dings open, and Chris grabs my hand and pulls me into his apartment. Before I can blink, I’m facing the entry room wall, one hand clutching the journal, the other flat on the surface in front of me. Chris steps behind me, framing my body with his bigger one, and I feel the hardness of his body as intensely as I feel the hardness of his mood.

His hand settles on the center of my back, branding me, controlling me, and he pulls my bag and purse from my shoulder and dumps it on the floor. I feel him shrug away his jacket and he reaches for mine. It catches on the journal and his hand closes around it.

The air seems to thicken and for several seconds we hold the journal, both our fingers gripping the red leather. Erotic images created by Rebecca’s words play in my mind and I remember reading one of the entries with Chris. I wonder if he is thinking about that day, too, or something completely different. About Rebecca perhaps? I want to ask, but there is this sharp pinch in my chest that holds me back.

Chris takes the journal from me and I have no idea where he puts it. It is gone and my jacket follows. He steps behind me, and I forget everything but him. His hands settle possessively on my hips, and his mouth, that delicious, sometimes brutal mouth, brushes my ear. “You want pain and darkness, baby, you got it.”

Shock slides through me at the unexpected promise and I think of us holding the journal, and of the dark entries inside that terrify and intrigue me. “What happened to me not being able to handle this part of you, Chris?” I ask, and my voice trembles with the question.

“Tonight happened,” he replies and there is nothing unsure about his voice, just hard steel and more anger. “And I damn sure want to give you a reason to think twice before it repeats.”

Conflicting emotions overcome me. I crave and resist the possessiveness I sense in him. I’m jerked out of this thought when Chris yanks my dress up my hips, exposing my backside. I hear the silk of my panties tear before I feel the bite of the material ripping from my body. His hands caress my backside, and the edgy tension in him is like a wave crashing into me.

He leans in, his lips brushing my ear, hot breath fanning my skin, promising delicious, forbidden fantasies only Chris can fulfill. “I’m going to spank you before this night is over, Sara.”

His words are a velvety seduction and taut threat and I cannot catch my breath, let alone form a coherent reply. Chris turns me to face him, shoving my hands over my head and shackling them with one of his. “But first, I’m going to take you to the edge of bliss and pull you back so many times, you’ll think you’re going insane, just like I was when you didn’t answer your phone.” He tugs down the front zipper of my dress to my waist, unhooks my bra, and begins to tease one of my nipples. “Any objections?”

“Would they matter?” I whisper, waves of pleasure washing over my body.

“Not unless you tell me to stop what I’m doing.” He leans in and nips my lip as he had the night before, laving the bite with his tongue. “But if you say stop, Sara, make damn sure you mean it because I will stop. Understand?”

“Chris—”

“Answer, Sara.” His fingers slide between my thighs, spreading the slick heat of my sensitive flesh, and leaving my nipples aching for more. I have the distinct impression he’s reminding me why stop is a bad word.

“Yes,” I pant. “Yes, I understand.”

His thumb strokes my clit and he slips two fingers inside me, filling me, stretching me. I pant with the pleasure, imagining the moment he is inside me. “Come before I tell you to, and I’ll spank you right now.”

“What?” I gasp. “I can’t—”

“You can and you will.”

His words are as powerful as his touch, and I feel the bittersweet build of release. “Why do I get the idea you’d enjoy my failure?”

“Because I want to spank you.” His lips brush mine, his fingers stroking me with slow, sultry precision that is driving me wild. “And you want me to.”

I do and I have no clue why but the certainty that he will is so intensely erotic that my sex tightens around his fingers. The beginning of an orgasm is almost as alluring as his hand on my backside.

His fingers are suddenly gone, denying my pleasure, and I growl my frustration. “Damn you, Chris.”

“Damn me all you want but you still won’t come until I say you come.” He strokes my nipple and flicks it back and forth. “I’m going to release your wrists and you will not move them. Understand?”

No, I do not understand! But I nod my agreement, certain that doing as he says is my only path to satisfaction.

His hand teasing my nipple falls away and he studies me, seeming to assess my willpower, or maybe just torturing me with the absence of his hands on my body. I’m ready to scream with the injustice of it when he sinks to one knee in front of me and his hands settle on my hips.

His gaze lifts and snags mine and I want to order his mouth to the most intimate part of my body. Slowly, his mouth lowers, not to the spot I crave him to be, but to my stomach. The soft, seductive touch of his lips, followed by the gentle stroke of his tongue, sends a shiver through me and my belly quivers beneath his mouth. The contrast of how tender he is in one moment and how hard and demanding he can be in the next fills me with anticipation and is as arousing as anything I’ve ever experienced.

Slowly, he trails his lips over the tender skin, his tongue dipping into my navel, tracing my hip bone, and finally traveling to just above the V of my legs.

I am breathing hard with the restraint I use to stop myself from reaching for him, and the muscles of my sex clench so tightly it hurts. “Chris,” I plead when I can take no more.

He rewards my urgency by licking my clit. Yes, please, more, I think, but do not dare say out loud, for fear he will do the opposite. I moan and another lick follows and it’s nothing shy of sweet bliss when his mouth closes down around me. He suckles my swollen nub, drawing deeply on my sensitive flesh and using his tongue at just the right moments until I am going insane. Sensations ripple through me and I have no willpower, no control. I tumble into orgasm and he immediately pulls his mouth from me, denying me full satisfaction, leaving my muscles clenching in partial release.