Jonah Noble - Anticipation is everything (3 page)

Leticia sat stiffly for long seconds. The empty house seemed to press in around us. Her eyes were closed, and her expression grim. Her brow furrowed with a crease of resolve. She opened her eyes slowly, like she was waking from a nightmare, relieved that the fears she had dreamed were not reality, and then she fixed her gaze on me with a stubborn determination.

“It’s either a problem… or an opportunity,” she said. “It’s going to depend on how we both decide to look at it.”

* * *

I flashed Leticia a wild look, and then studied her face carefully, as if it were something new and intriguing to be explored. Her gaze was steady but behind her eyes swirled a smoke of emotion and nervousness.

“What do you mean?” I asked, muttering each word with exaggerated care.

Leticia arched her eyebrows for a wicked instant, and then the demure mask she normally wore slipped back over her features.

“It’s late, Jonah,” she pleaded wearily. “And this is something new for you to think about,” she squeezed my hand. “I’ve been struggling with these thoughts for months – twisting and turning, looking for ways we can make this relationship work without losing the essence of what makes you the man you are, and me the woman that I am. Why don’t we sleep on it, and then we can talk again tomorrow?”

She got to her feet quickly and her hand slipped from mine. She stood, arching her back as though stretching after a long drive over a thousand miles of bad road. Her breasts pressed against the fabric of her sweater. She had her head thrown back, her face lifted to the ceiling with her eyes closed. She yawned dramatically and then drifted towards the staircase. When she reached the banister she cast me a sultry look back over her shoulder.

“Are you coming up to bed?”

* * *

I rose from out of a dream into a wakefulness swirling with exquisite sensations. I lay, bewildered for an instant, and then blinked my eyes open. It was utterly dark, but I could see the silhouette of Leticia propped on her knees beside my head. She was leaning over me – and then I realized with a start what was happening.

Her tongue flickered low across my naked abdomen and then with a single lunge, she took me into the warm wetness of her hungry mouth. I heard her moan, a whimper that sounded like contentment, and then I felt the instinctive response of my own body as I hardened between her lips.

“What are you doing?” I hissed in surprise.

Leticia let me slide from her mouth and stroked me lightly with her hand. “I would have thought that was obvious,” she whispered in the darkness, wicked mischief in her voice. She arched her back so that I felt her nipples brush against my abdomen, and then dipped her head back over the top of my shaft so that I could feel the ravenous swirl of her tongue.

“Why?” I persisted. It was out of the ordinary for Leticia to behave this way.

Leticia didn’t answer. I felt the wetness of her lips slide back down over me, and then the hot moist grip of her mouth once more.

I felt myself swelling, felt the flutter of her tongue along the underside of my shaft as she massaged the ridges and veins of my cock. I grunted, felt my breath seize in my chest and the start of my quickening pulse. I reached up and ran my hand along her naked back, tracing the shape of her body until my fingers dipped between the cleft of her bottom and she shuffled her knees wider on the mattress like an invitation.

My fingers brushed the wetness of her and I heard Leticia sigh and then her body seemed to go soft. My cunning fingers found the hard little nub of her clit and she pushed back instinctively, craving my touch. I feathered my palm lightly between her thighs until she began rocking her hips and the play of her mouth up and down the length of my shaft became erratic as her own arousal overwhelmed her.

“Yes!” she hissed. “God, yes, Jonah!” She went stiff for a moment and I saw her throw back her head, the silhouette of her outlined against pale moonlight through the big bedroom window. I saw the long perfect line of her throat and the pointed curve of her breasts. One of my fingers dipped inside her and Leticia gave a gurgling shudder that sounded like a growl.

“What have you been thinking about?” I growled.

Leticia rocked her hips, drawing the press of my finger more deeply inside of her. I heard a ragged rasp of her excitement and then the silence of her holding her breath. She was stroking me slowly, her focus suddenly on her own need.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Leticia muttered.

“So what have you been thinking about?” my tone became more demanding. Leticia’s head fell forward and I felt the tickle of her hair as it fell between my thighs. Her body was clenching and then going soft as if she were moving to some primal rhythm. She tried to take me back into her mouth but I withdrew my finger like a threat.

“What have you been thinking about?” I insisted. Leticia whimpered, suddenly deprived of the thrust of my fingers. She swayed back with her hips to keep contact. I flicked my touch across her clit and she seemed to fold at the waist as if her muscles had turned to melted wax.

“You!” she hissed. The sound of her voice was strained, as though she spoke through clenched teeth. I felt the grip of her hand around my length pulse tight and then release, like she was mirroring the clenching rhythm of her own body.

“What am I doing in your fantasy?” I asked carefully.

Leticia stayed silent. Her body was trembling, her skin seeming to spark with the fire of her passion. I slid my finger deep inside her and she began to undulate. She sobbed and her arms went weak. Her upper body collapsed until her cheek was resting on my torso, her hot breath coming in ragged pants against the pulsing flex of my cock between her fingertips.

“You’re training a woman – teaching her how to submit to you,” Leticia confessed. “It’s the same…” she cut the words off suddenly with a gasp that became a low throaty moan as I slid a second finger inside her.

“The same what?” I was relentless now. Leticia began to push back against me until my fingers could go no deeper and the palm of my hand was a tease against her clit.

“The same fantasy I’ve been having for months!” the words when they came were tortured by her lust and her embarrassment.

“And this arouses you?”

“Yes,” Leticia cried out, and then changed to a small soft voice that I barely heard, “because I’m in the room too. I’m watching you both.”

Leticia’s sudden orgasm seemed to wrench her in half. Her knees collapsed and she writhed on the bed as her muscles clenched fiercely around my thrusting fingers. She groaned and then cried out again – a sound that was unmistakable and yet with no coherent form. It was the sound of her release, a shattering climax that left her broken and gasping, breathless and trembling.

I said nothing.

I lay in the darkness, Leticia close beside me, the scent of her arousal like a perfume that hung on the air. She was croaking gulps of air, the sound of her ragged breath rattling in her throat as she came down from the perilous peak of pleasure, drifting back to earth like a fallen leaf.

Leticia had told me everything she had been thinking – told me in perhaps the only way she knew how for I doubted she would ever have the resolve and nerve to tell me the dark depths of her fantasies through reasoned conversation.

I realized this was her solution… and I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts fraught and jittering, wondering if it was the answer.

* * *

The conversation the next morning at breakfast was stilted and desultory. Leticia was withdrawn, deep in thought so that even the most banal questions seemed to require an enormous effort for her attention. I sat and ate in silence, watching her across the table. There was an edge of embarrassed nervousness in the way she held herself, and in the darting flick of her eyes when she glanced at me.

Finally I pushed my chair back and stood. Outside the morning was bright and sunny, the sky a shattering shade of blue above the ragged peaks of the distant hills. Long shadows spilled into the kitchen from the big bay window and I went towards the glass doors that opened into the garden.

“Come with me,” I told Leticia.

She followed without question, her body seeming to move as if hypnotized.

The gardens were a manicured oasis, dotted with lush green trees that sprinkled shade across the lawns. Flower beds followed a cobblestoned path that meandered through the grounds, connecting the main house to the swimming pool and beyond – a hundred yards further from the house – a small bungalow that had once been a guesthouse.

Leticia followed me obediently. It was a beautiful clear day and already the approaching summer could be felt in the flare of the sun’s light. We reached the bungalow and I stood at the front door, waiting for Leticia.

“This is a lot like my father’s home,” I explained. “The house is not as grand, but there are elements of the layout that bring back memories,” I said. “It was one of the reasons I bought this property.”

After the orchestrated ‘death’ of Jonah Noble and the rise of Jason Luke, author, Leticia and I had relocated north, further away from the city. It was impossible for us to keep the old home, and I had given the property to Mrs. Hortez and her family. This home was one I had owned for many years. It was secluded, and isolated – yet still within a few hours drive of the nearest major city. It had also given Leticia the opportunity to make a home for us – for her to decorate without trying to cover over the ghosts and the memories of my earlier life.

Now I was going to re-ignite one of those memories. Deliberately.

I pushed open the front door to the bungalow and stood on the gloomy threshold for a long moment. The air was stale, the windows all shuttered so that it took several seconds for our eyes to adjust. We were staring at a small, neat living room area. On the far side of the room was a breakfast bar that divided the space into an adjoining kitchen. Leticia followed me inside and I went to one of the windows and drew back the heavy drapes. Dust motes hung thick in the air. Leticia wrinkled her nose.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked softly.

I said nothing. I took her hand and led her down the short passageway to a bedroom and an adjoining bathroom.

“Remember when we first moved here? We talked about cleaning this bungalow up for guests.”

Leticia nodded dully.

“But we never have any guests,” I said with an ironic smile. “Because we’re not the kind of people to have close friends – not the kind of people who enjoy socializing.”

Again Leticia nodded. It was true. In all the time we had been living here, not a single visitor had come to the home.

“So I was thinking about this place – what to do with it… and then it occurred to me last night that it reminds me a great deal of the guest home on my father’s property… the place where I first spied on Claire Moreland all those years ago. I told you about her when you first interviewed me.”

“Yes,” Leticia said with sudden inflection in her voice. It was as if a spark had been ignited.

I said no more. I led Leticia into the small bathroom. “Around about there,” I pointed to a place on the wall above a shelf. “Would have been the spot I made my spy hole.” I shrugged. “The layout is not the same – there are differences in the design of these rooms… but I think you get the point.”

Leticia was frowning. “I don’t, actually,” she said. There was a tiny furrow on her brow because her imagination could not make the leap to the destination my thoughts had already arrived at.

“I was thinking this bungalow would make the perfect place to train a new submissive,” I spelled it out. “She would stay here, away from the main house, and I would train her how to submit to a Master. She would learn to pleasure me, and she would be pleasured when deserving of reward. She would learn submission and discipline… and you would be able to watch it all.”

It was out in the open now – the subject had been broached in the cold light of day and now it had to be discussed and dealt with. Leticia’s eyes became wide and fathomless for a moment, and then she drifted into the bedroom and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed, her hands clasped between her thighs, her head hanging so that her hair obscured the expression on her face. I stood in the doorway with my arms folded.

“Jonah,” Leticia looked up at me with a fraught expression on her face. “I… I just don’t know…” she began, biting on each word. “This whole idea of me watching you with another woman, training someone to submit and surrender to you… it might end up being a crown of thorns, disguised as a garland of roses.”

I blinked. Leticia’s eloquent analogy startled me. I nodded my head slowly, conceding the truth of it.

“Yes,” I said. “From a practical point of view I see no real problems, but from an emotional point of view… well that is only something you can answer.”

Leticia lapsed into long silence. She had her bottom lip trapped between her teeth.

“It might be too much,” she said at last. She glanced up at me like she was trying to search for the answers by reading my expression. “Fantasy is one thing… now we’re talking about the very real possibility of making this a reality.”

“We are,” I said. “At last. I wished we had had this conversation sooner. I wished you had talked to me rather than contemplating breaking us apart.”