"What did you want to talk to me about, baby? You seem awfully serious about it. Is everything all right?"
Lacy nodded her head. Everything was fine except that she had no idea how to go about telling him what she most wanted to.
She was still charmingly shy with him, her face already glowing brightly. "Something about what we were discussing last night - what turns us on?"
"I wanted to say, " she drew hesitant breath, "is that you can be . . . " she didn't want to say "a man" - he already was a man - no doubt about that at all, and a damned fantastic one at that; she didn't want to diminish that in the least or, heaven forbid, insult him in any way - "male with me - did that sound as bad as I think it did?" She sighed. This was already not going very well and she'd just begun. "Not that you're not male with me -" She rubbed her brow, knowing she was fucking this up royally. "I mean that you don't need to be as careful of me as you are. You can be more . . . aggressive is the wrong word, too . … less gentlemanly? More forceful? Am I sounding like a complete idiot or only ninety-nine point nine percent of one?"
Lacy could see the way Tom's eyebrows rose - and she was close enough to see how his pupils dilated, too, at her words.
But he played it off, uncharacteristically not meeting her eyes. "Eh he he he."
She straightened where she was sitting on his lap and in his arms, wanting to look him in the eye. "I'm not kidding, you know. You asked me to tell you more about what I liked in bed and this is something that's . . . very powerful to me."
They were already there, in his - their, she corrected - big bed, and had been all day - it was lazy Sunday afternoon and they had no plans to do anything more than what they were doing right now.
Tom quieted beneath her - the hand that had been threading its fingers through her hair halted, and she knew she had caught his attention when he met her eyes and she saw something blazing there, in the very depths of them, something that had never been explored, rarely even been acknowledged within him had sparked to life at her words, smoldering quietly in those rich, bright eyes.
"Go on," in a deep, soft tone with more than its usual hint of underlying steel.
But at his prompt she suddenly felt shy again - so much more than just physically naked as she was; the deepest, closest held secret of her life was being laid bare before him, as if she was a stranger who had splayed herself in front of him, fearing a rejection that felt more than imminent. For some reason, this wasn't anywhere near easy for her to talk about, despite the fact that she had no doubt that he loved her. She'd never been reticent to discuss what she liked with anyone else before, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her hesitation was an acknowledgement of just how much she wanted this from him.
But it had to be his decision, it had to be something he wanted, too, or, she knew from previous experience that it would become a horrid situation quite quickly.
"I want . . . You can be . . . " Dare she say the exact word she was thinking out loud to him? "dominant with me."
His eyes widened and the flame within them shot to the forefront, no longer hiding in the shadows but practically burning out of control.
His hand was in her hair again, but was it different? She wasn't sure if she was projecting her own desires onto him at this point. "Dominant. Define it for me."
She gave him a small smile on a soft, aborted laugh. "You want me to define dominant for you? You? The self-confessed logophile who is Eton and Cambridge educated?"
There was but the faintest smile on his lips at her teasing, and she knew it was no accident that his other hand had come to rest on the small of her back, his pinky and ring fingers finding the initial curve of her bottom, the tips of them pressing gently but intimately into the very origin of her cleft.
Her clit immediately sat up and took notice of where his hand was. He knew because she had told him that that was an erogenous zone of hers. It was no mistake, no coincidence, that it had ended up there.
The hand in her hair guided her cheek to rest on his chest and she could hear the rumble of his words in his chest as well as her ear. "What's important to me is what it means to you."
She hadn't realized there was going to be a quiz. Her mind went suddenly blank, and although her mouth was open she couldn't seem to get anything out. This was too important to her to screw up and she didn't want to say anything stupid that might put him off, somehow.
Tom could feel how tense she was and wished he could help her, but, considering the delicate nature of the interest she'd just brought up, he thought it was a reasonable question. Of course he knew what dominant meant. He'd played plenty of dominant roles - hell, he was playing one now as Henry V in The Hollow Crown.
Although he'd known that he, too, had more than a small tendency towards exactly that, he'd always squelched it in favor of promoting his very strong belief in the equality of the sexes and supporting women in any and all of their endeavors. The desire to control his lover had always been at odds with his feminist leanings, so he had stuffed it to the back of his mind, only trotting it out as the occasional fantasy during masturbation, and only rarely then, as if he was worried it might overtake his personality.
He'd never brought it up with any lover. Oh, there had been rough sex here and there, a bit of role play, as it were, depending, of course on the appetites of his lover at the time, but nothing anywhere near what he thought she was talking about which would be an actual lifestyle.
What would it be like to be her dom? Tom wondered. His cock had been at half mast since he'd placed her on his lap, rising - as always - to greet the soft warmth of her weight on him but, as he had that thought, it sprang to its full, aching length, poking up insistently at her, his body casting its vote quite decidedly about whether or not he should indulge himself in this particular brand of passion.
He pictured her bound beneath him as he fucked her hard, walking naked around the apartment because she wasn't allowed to wear clothes when he was home with her, and, yes, even exposed as she would be, kneeling before him to greet him when he came home from a meeting - dapper as she always called him in his three piece blue suit - to unzip his fly, adjust his underwear and free him to immediately envelope him in her mouth.
But by far the most powerful image that danced before his mind's eye was that of her being punished by him, and it was this vision that had always brought with it the most guilt. How could he say that he loved her - and he did - and yet enjoy inflicting pain on her? He'd never been able to sort out that dichotomy, not that he'd tried all that hard, though.
Yeah, he'd swatted her on the butt occasionally when he thought she was just being a brat or her teasing warranted it, but he could he truly spank her or whip her or whatever other things she might expect? The powerful feelings those images provoked in him was all the answer he needed to that question.
"Lacy, my love, answer me." He realized that after all this time she'd not said a word in response to his question. Was this a test? Was she trying to prod him into spanking her?
"I'm trying, Tom, believe me. But this is . . . very important to me and I don't want to say the wrong thing. I'm trying to organize my thoughts but it's not easy with Tom Jr. practically poking himself into me."
No sooner had she spoken the words then he lifted her off his lap and lay her gently down on her back, following her there to stretch out beside her, resting his head on one upraised palm, taking one of her hands and bringing the back of it to his lips for a butterfly kiss. "I love you and you are completely safe with me, you know. You can tell me anything."
The sincere truth of his words was no less evident now than it ever had been, despite the full blaze of sexual interest she still saw there. "I know - I just did! I hope you know how much I love you, too, and that you're just as safe with me. I want to know everything about you."
Another back of the hand kiss, then he laced his fingers with hers, trying not to look too expectant.
Lacy cleared her throat. "To me, a lover who is dominant is just that, first and foremost - a lover. Someone who is in love with me, who is attentive and caring and wants the best for me always - even when I maybe can't see what might be best for me. I would want his dominance - and therefore my submission - to be an undercurrent in the relationship - always there, subtly, in the background of all of our interactions - private and public."
She peeped up at him, looking for reassurance. Tom left her hand where it was between them and put his hand on her tummy. "Go on."
"I mean," she wasn't saying any of this right, of course. He was the one who had a way with words, not her. "I wouldn't want you to go out and buy a leather outfit -" she stopped herself mid-sentence with a smile, "What am I saying? You already own several leather outfits. But I mean -"
"It doesn't have to be blatant," he provided, proving to her that he understand what she was saying despite her severely awkward way of saying it.
"Exactly!" she sighed with relief that he seemed to understand. "It doesn't have to be. . . crass. You're very elegant and classy and I just can't see you in a leather g-string and a harness and a studded cap - nor do I want to." She shuddered delicately at the thought. "If it's something you decide you want to do, you won't really have to do anything to prove it to me, per se. It will simply . . . be who you really already are, only with your own natural protective tendencies amplified a bit."
He trailed his fingertips up to her breast, letting them draw slow, lazy circles around her nipples. "Are you saying that you think I already act in a dominant fashion towards you?"
"Yes, you do - you're very unhappy about things like me missing doctor appointments and not taking my meds and not smoking and eating better and exercising . . . You're very loving about it always, and I certainly wouldn't want that to change. But if you're my dom and you, say, find a pack of cigarettes on the counter, or that I've blow off a doctor's appointment in favor of going to a movie or whatever, there could be . . . consequences that, of course, you dictate ," she chose the word very carefully, "You would be free to kind of . . . back up what you've said by making it a rule and giving me consequences if I disobeyed you," His fingers were very busy now, pinching and plucking at her nipples and she was finding it hard to concentrate on what she was saying, "Ah . . . um . . . you could p-punish me, if you chose."
Tom brushed her cheek with his lips and the barest tip of his tongue, nibbling on her neck and causing her to arch sharply. He knew what he was doing to her as he continued to raze that tender flesh with the edges of his teeth, soothing occasionally with his tongue.
"And how would you expect to be punished by me?" he asked as he tugged at her earlobe with his teeth. Had she imagined how low and almost rough his voice sounded?
She must have.
Lacy blushed at his question, not that she hadn't anticipate he'd ask it. She just hadn't realized how saying the words to him was going to make her feel - embarrassed and shy about not just the subject they were discussing but also the fact that she was flooding the sheets beneath her. She could actually feel her own natural lubricant trickling down onto the sheets; this discussion was making her so hot.
And his sure, strong hands on her didn't hurt that at all, either.
Looking anywhere but up into those pools of blue green sensuality, she answered tentatively, "S-spanking me, I guess."
"You guess?" His mouth dipped down to settle lazily over a nipple that was already standing proud, begging for him to do exactly what he did, the tip of his tongue flicking at it occasionally, between long moments of avid suckling.
"Y-yes, spanking me. I . . . I don't much want to go beyond that, though. I'm not fond of pain for pain's sake and whips and things like that scare me."
She actually shuddered beneath him, and as his mouth traveled to her other peak, he murmured against her heated flesh, "I cannot imagine ever using anything or doing anything to your on your soft skin that would result in any kind of permanent mark. You're much too precious to me for me to ever do anything that would truly hurt you in any way . . . " As his lips discovered her other nipple and became filled with it, he quit talking in favor of pleasuring her.
Somehow she'd known he'd feel the same way as she did about that.
Whether it was the fact that he seemed quite receptive to what she was suggesting or simply her uncontrollable response to his attentions, most of Lacy's worries about talking to him about this had faded considerably. "I don't want someone who just wants to punish me. I don't want someone who's so into control he wants me to ask him if I can take my next breath. I want a loving dom. Someone who puts me first - as I would him - who looks out for me - which you already do."
"I do?"
Was he fishing for compliments? she wondered. "Oh yes. Every one of your gentlemanly tendencies is an act of caring - holding open doors, helping me in and out of cars . . . remember when we went to get that coffee table I bought and you were driving my car because it has actual trunk space, and I got out and went to the back of the car before you did and lifted the flat pack out of the trunk to take it in, assuming you'd open doors for me along the way?"
"I do," he growled against a nipple as if he was unhappy with her all over again for what she'd done.
"I thought you were going to spank me right then and there."
As she remembered it, as soon as he'd seen that she had the heavy load in her arms he'd pocketed his keys and practically run to stand in front of her. "Put it down."
He had said it so commandingly that she'd done a double take. Was that stern voice really Tom's? Where had that come from? It was much more towards Loki than his usual smile filled tone.
"What?" she'd asked, truly not thinking that this was a big deal.
He hadn't repeated himself but instead he'd simply reached out and relieved her of her burden and she'd ended up getting the doors for him, instead. And once they'd made it into her place, he'd leaned the pack against the wall by the door and caught her hand as she was walking away, using her momentum to tug her back so that she ended up plastered against him, off balance and forced to lean on him, one of his strong arms encircling her waist to hold her there. There was a smile on her lips but no answering one on his as he cupped her chin and tilted her head up so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
"I don't want you to pick up any more heavy things, Lacy. That pack weighs more than you do. I know you can do it and that you've had to before because there was no one else to help you, but that's what I'm here for." His tone hadn't softened in the least since he'd issued that first command down on the sidewalk, but he did lean down to kiss her with infinite care, pressing his forehead to hers and whispering from the depths of his heart, "I couldn't bear it if you got hurt doing something I should have been doing for you, Lacy my love."
"I should have spanked you then," he grumbled now against her breast.
"Prolly."
The big hand that had come to rest on her belly began to descend slowly as he spoke. "I should have come in the door, put the pack down and turned you around so that your tummy was against the wall. I should have pulled down your yoga pants and your knickers down to your knees and tanned your pretty little hide while I pinned your hands to the wall above your head so you couldn't interfere with what I was doing. Sometimes height has its advantages." He reached down to take her hand but not to hold it this time, as he usually did. Instead he trapped her wrist in a circle of those long fingers of his and brought it up, above her head. Then he reached down to do the same with her other wrist, holding both of them captive with almost no effort, even when she tried to test his resolve and see if she could slip out of his grip. He simply contracted his fingers a bit - careful not to hurt her - and she found she couldn't move her wrists at all.
"Tighter is better?" he questioned softly, searching those pretty hazel eyes of hers.
She knew her mouth was slightly open, her breath ragged, her body telling him wordlessly that his instincts were dead on. "In most things, yes. You don't . . . You always treat me like I'm a Dresden doll, but I'm stronger than you think. You're an amazing, attentive lover, but if you ever feel the urge, I'd love you to just not worry about me sometime when you want me and just . . . take me."
She felt his cock jump against her flank and his eyes widened, a truly evil grin spreading across his face. "You mean I don't need to be as careful of you as I have been?"
Lacy nodded. "I can't imagine you'd hurt me and," she colored brightly, "I . . . uh . . . I always want you, you know. Unless I'm sick or hurt or the like, there is really never a bad time to fuck me."
"I'll remember that."
She knew he would.
He held her eyes as his big hand inched its way down past her navel to rest just above her mons. "Spread for me, honey." The command was softly given but was no less resolute.
Realizing that he wasn't going to let her wrists go, suddenly all she wanted to do in this world was to cross her legs, to deny him access to her body, to assert her independence. But she did none of these. Tom was a sorcerer and he was weaving a spell on her with those eyes of his - she couldn't look away from him and she couldn't imagine disobeying him, especially not when she'd just essentially given him her permission to spank her if she did.
What was she, stupid?!
Her legs parted, but slowly, almost reluctantly, and when she stopped she heard, "Further," until he had her splayed wide open, leaving her absolutely no room for modesty of any kind.
Then he leaned down to her ear which he licked delicately first, then whispered, "Next time I won't be so patient with you, I'm afraid." He felt her shiver at his words and knew this was going to be a good thing for them. A very good thing.
When his hand began to move again, Lacy couldn't suppress a soft whimper. Her eyes darted away from his and it stopped, his fingers at the very top of her slit.
"Look at me, Lacy. I want to see your eyes when I touch you intimately."
Her eyes locked to his, body aching, anticipating the touch she knew so well but even more so with this titillating added dimension, this new bond they were forging between them that was in its infancy but was still incredibly strong for her, and she hoped for him, too.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, those fingers traveled downwards, until he covered every intimate bit of her.
Their eyes still caught together, he whispered roughly, "Are you telling me that you are mine? That this," his whole hand contracted, the heel of his hand pressing against her clit and his fingers just barely crooking inside of her, "is mine to do with as I please?"
Her mouth was dry, her heart slamming against her rib cage. This was more than she'd ever imagined would happen when she told him what she wanted. She'd half expected him to break it off with her, throw her out or at the very least chastise her for wanting something that he considered perverted.
But none of that had happened. Instead, he was proving himself to be at least as intrigued by the idea as she was. Maybe more.
"Oh, God, yes," she sighed without thinking, her body responding on its own, circumventing the way her mind might have dissected her affirmation of the power over her that which she was yielding to him.
There was an almost smile playing about his lips as he breathed huskily, "I want your body, my darling, but I'm a greedy man. I want your mind and your heart, too. Will you submit yourself to me completely? Can you trust me with all of you?" he asked, sipping a kiss from her lips as one slim finger found its way into her wet heat, making her arch her body, offering it to him wordlessly, helplessly and even more fervently when his big thumb covered her clit and began to move lazily on it.
How could she answer him when he was doing that kind of thing to her? Every bit of sense she had flew away when he touched her like this and he knew that. "You already have my heart, Tom. I love you. And my body's been yours the start -"
"Not that you let me know that," he groused a bit, biting her nipple firmly, causing her to jump beneath him and cry out before his tongue lapped out to soothe.
"My mind, too." She began to tug at her wrists again, futilely, pouting when he wouldn't let her go. "I want to touch you, please . . . "
"No, my love. I owe you a reward for your bravery in talking to me about this - and, in case you haven't guessed, I am humbly accepting your munificent offer."
His fingers . . . his thumb . . . his voice! All three things conspired to bring her closer and closer to that point of no return, her body hurtling toward ecstasy at his behest.
But had he said offer?
"What - " she panted, "offer?"
He stopped, his hand even leaving her pussy, causing her to groan loudly in protest and she decided she really did not like the evil smile that crossed his face when she did that. He was enjoying this entirely too much.
She found her chin cupped by a hand that retained her own scent. "You were offering to be my submissive." The way he said it it was much less a question than a statement of fact.
"Oh, ah . . . " She swallowed hard.
"Yes?"
Having a feeling she was signing her life away in a manner she could never have anticipated, Lacy let go, let herself drown in those warm, loving eyes. "Yes, please." It came out like the vow it was, and she would have sworn she saw tears in his eyes at her response.
"You are and always will be the most cherished woman in the world. I can't imagine anyone else being as perfect for me as you are, and I promise you I will be most attentive, thorough, and loving."
Now there were tears in her eyes, too. "You already are all of those things, my love."
His kiss hadn't changed - it filled her heart to bursting and went straight to her loins as always - but she felt another dimension to it, something indescribably that was at once both poignant and exciting.
She was his, by her own words. Tom could hardly believe he could be quite this blessed.
He kissed his way from her lips to a proudly straining nipple, his hand settling between her legs again, this time with more purpose and he lifted his head to watch her face as he thrust two fingers less than gently within her. She was so tight it was still a challenge for her to accept all of him when he took her, even now - and he found that preparing her a bit helped, although he thoroughly enjoyed listening to the moans and squeals she'd emit along with her frequent, shuddering breaths when he finally claimed her, even after he'd prepared her.
"I bet I know something else I've noticed about your pleasure that you haven't admitted to me yet," he whispered, "that kind of ties in with all of this and is something I will most thoroughly enjoy doing."
Lacy's mind tried to raise the alarm, wondering just what it was that he was thinking of, but she was much too far gone for that. As it was, she could barely get out through heavy panting, "What's that?"
"I think you like it an awful lot when you have no control over your orgasm - when I push you past any reticence you might have about it or resistance you were going to try to put up. I've noticed you often chant 'no, no, no' at me when my mouth is on your clit, not long before I push you over the edge, even though you know that I'm going to make you do it regardless." He felt her contract once, very strongly, around his fingers and knew he was right. "I don't think you'd considered that, in agreeing to submit to me, you yielded that right to me, too, and I intend to take full advantage of it."
She was very close, he knew - he'd long since learned to read her body's responses and it had never been anywhere near as shy about telling him what she wanted as her mind had been. Her mind hid things from him - like this - big and little things that she was too embarrassed to talk about that would bring them both unimaginable bliss, and he would put and end to that, too. He would know all of her secrets - every last one of them.
Eventually. They had time.
For now, he was intent on her pleasure, as always. Bringing her off - every sensual aspect of it - nearly got him off in and of itself. She came unraveled in his arms every time, and he was still thrilled by how she abandoned herself to the bliss he was privileged to bring her. She was so wound up and tense the rest of the time - much more so than he would like her to be - but when they came together she left all of that behind and time slowed to a near stop as she reveled in his touch.
When he'd pressed her wrists just that much further into the mattress in preparation, he nibbled her lips, saying, "Kiss me, Lacy."
She complied immediately, her mouth blossoming under his.
He pulled away just a bit, just enough to catch those hazel eyes of hers. "I want you to cum, Lacy. And I want you to keep your eyes on me while you do. And I want you to be as loud as you need to be. No more suppressing any of your responses to me, little one. You are mine now, in every way, and every thing you are is mine to treasure."
She almost always closed her eyes at the moment of orgasm, but he wasn't going to allow her to hide from him this time. When it came to her he was a greedy sod, and he would demand more from her than she perhaps thought she could give.
But he would prove her wrong every time.
She bit her lip and nodded as his fingers began to move within her purposefully, his thumb rubbing up and down and back and forth over her clit. The room filled with the frantic sounds of her helpless odyssey and he nearly exploded himself watching her try to writhe beneath his dedicated intentions, rocking back and forth as best she could, hips arching, head whipping back and forth, her cries nearly anguished as he continued to press his fingers home within her while his thumb teased her clit mercilessly.
"Tom! No! I - I - can't - I can't!"
Determined eyes still locked with hers, he gave no quarter. "You belong to me. Every inch of you, but most particularly these inches - " he thrust his fingers particularly roughly into her, swirling the pad of his thumb over the most sensitive part of her clit. "And you will cum when I want you to, my Lady, because I will have nothing less than every single bit of you for myself -"
His words were the final straw, delivered in that deeply, husky, posh accent, hurtled her over the edge into oblivion. She heard herself scream repeatedly until her mouth was left wide open but nothing came out and still she tried to shriek well after her voice broke because he wasn't content with bestowing just one mind bending orgasm upon her, he continued to stroke her clit knowingly through another three, until he could sense that she was well-sated.
Releasing her wrists and bringing her arms down, he massaged each of them briskly for a moment, knowing that they could have begun aching from having been held above her head for so long. He figured that that had been just about as hard an orgasm as he had ever seen her have, and kept an even more watchful eye on her than he usually did. She was completely limp, her eyes closed, her breathing settling down slowly.
When he blinked he realized that he was crying. In her unequivocal surrender to him, she had undone him completely and all he could do was what his heart clamored for as he drew her into his arms, rocking them gently back and forth.
He thought she might have fallen asleep, but she jumped when his phone rang, trying to scramble away from him, out of his arms, but he held her fast.
"But your phone -" she murmured, barely intelligible even after all this time.
"Will wait. There is nothing and no one more important in my world at this moment- or any other time - than you, my darling." He subdued her carefully but thoroughly until she was trapped against him again, his insistent erection poking into her tummy. "Sorry about that," he mentioned off hand.
She almost chuckled, but it came out like an exhausted sigh. "Why be sorry about that? It's an incredible compliment to me."
"Yes, but this is about you, and that is as it should be."
Lacy looked up at him, all her insecurities about what had just happened between them in her eyes.. "So . . . you want to do this for real then? It's something you want, too - it's not all one sided - mine?"
"Little one, as you so wisely pointed out to me, we've already been doing it, really. And I cannot think of anything that would satisfy me more than taking even better care of you." He kissed her then and it was the sweetest, most romantic kiss she'd ever experienced, and he kissed away every tear that fell from the breathtaking ache they each felt at loving each other the way they did.