Authors: Cooper McKenzie
“Bob isn’t a toy. Bob is a single woman’s best friend. And he came from the nightstand.”
“Bob? Who’s Bob?”
Eden’s smile grew as she indicated the vibrator. “Battery-operated boyfriend or Bob. I think everyone woman should have at least one. Especially in this town where their men are gone months at a time.”
“Hmmm, I guess it’s okay to have a Bob, as long as there are no other men in your life who aren’t blood relations, except maybe Crow.”
Eden blinked at that pronouncement. “I’m sorry, but did you just tell me I could not have any male friends?”
Images of Wade flashed before her eyes as her ex-husband ordered her to stop seeing friends, controlled her actions, demanded to know every minute of any time they were apart. She had grown up with parents like that, and now that she was free of Wade, there was no way she would allow someone else to have that much control over her life. Especially since he was leaving town in a few days.
Bailey blinked but looked confused and did not answer.
Turning off the vibrator, Eden tossed it on the couch and stood up. After smoothing her T-shirt down to cover as much of her body as she could, she headed for the bedroom. “I think you should leave now.”
Chapter 10
Eden was almost to the bedroom door when Bailey realized something had just gone very, very wrong. He was not sure where her head was, but something he had just said seemed to trigger pain from her past. Something they had to talk about and get her past before he could make any further headway in burrowing his way into her heart and soul.
“Eden, stop,” he ordered in his powerful Dom voice.
Instead of obeying, she threw him a dirty look over her shoulder and kept stalking to the bedroom. A moment later, the door slammed. In the silent vacuum following the loud noise, he heard a soft snick as she locked the door.
“Oh, no, you don’t, little girl,” he murmured as he crossed to the bedroom.
As he expected, the door was locked. “Eden, you have five seconds to open this door before I come through it. Either way you are in for a spanking that is going to leave you with a red-hot ass.”
As he counted silently, he pulled out his knife with a thousand and one uses and flipped the awl out. At five, he pushed the pointed metal stick into the small, round lock and grinned to himself. As soon as the lock popped, he turned the knob and pushed on the door.
The door did not budge.
“Sunflower, step away from the door, or I’ll make it so you won’t be able to sit down for a week,” he promised, his voice just loud enough for her to hear through the panel separating them.
A half second later Eden jerked the door open. He took a half step back at the intense pain he saw in her expression. She planted her hands on her hips as her feet spread. She was clearly taking a stand against something, but he wondered if it was memories of her ex-husband’s abuse or something he had done.
“What makes you think I’m going to quietly let you take over my life without a fight? Spank me because I don’t do as you dictate? I don’t think so. You think you’re going to tell me who I can and cannot be friends with? No fucking way, mister. I fought long and hard to become more than a human doormat, and I refuse to go back there for anyone, no matter how good the sex is.”
He took a deep breath to fight back the urge to find her ex and beat the shit out of him. If he walked out of the apartment before they settled this, Eden would never let him back in again. And that was the last thing he wanted.
Something had happened in the last minute and a half that had caused her to have some sort of flashback to her ex-husband’s abuse. Had his appearance in the shop triggered this? Or was it his own fumbling demand of monogamy?
“Eden, baby, you can have as many friends as you want, both men and women,” Bailey said, keeping his voice soft and calm. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t be friends with anyone, I just wanted Bob to be the only other cock sharing your bed, touching your body, giving you those orgasms that make you glow.”
Bailey took a single step forward as Eden mulled over his words. He watched her anger ease, her pain drain away, before she blinked and looked at him. “Bailey?”
Only then did he take the last steps that separated them and gently wrap his arms around her. “Yes, sunflower, it’s Bailey. Can you tell me what happened?”
He closed his eyes with relief and sent a prayer of thanks heavenward as she slid her arms around his waist. She burrowed her face into his chest as she clung to him. He held her tighter, laying his cheek on the top of her head, surrounding her as much as possible with whatever comfort he could offer.
They stood that way for several long minutes before Eden finally lifted her head to look up at him. “We were only married a year, but in that time Wade turned me from a confident, self-assured woman into a spineless shadow who had a hard time deciding what to fix for dinner. I’ve found my way back and cannot, will not, go back there. It’s not right for someone else to determine and tell me what my every move will be. Can you understand?”
Bailey nodded. “And my threatening to spank you like a child probably didn’t help any either. I am so sorry. I would never be like him on purpose. I love you just the way you are.”
He froze when he heard the words come out of his mouth. Never before had he told women he dated that he loved them. But then again, no other woman made him feel like Eden did. With her in his life, he felt like he could conquer the world singlehandedly, as long as he could come home to this woman afterward.
He was not surprised when she did not echo the sentiment. It was too soon to be making such declarations, but he only had a few days left, and he needed her to understand how he felt before he deployed.
“Bailey?”
“Yes, sunflower?”
“I was a bad girl. If you still want to spank me, you can.”
* * * *
Fear and excitement shivered through her as she waited for Bailey’s reaction to her offer. His admission that he loved her just the way she was gave her the courage to offer him this opportunity. With Bailey, she found herself willing to try anything he suggested. With Wade, after the first couple of times, she hesitated because he always took taking things too far too fast without discussing things with her before he did.
Bailey shifted against her, stroking her back then kissing her forehead. “Are you sure, sunflower? I don’t want you to do anything you feel uncomfortable with or unsure about just because I ask it of you.”
“But isn’t that what a Dom is supposed to do? Push their sub’s boundaries and limits? And punish them when they’re bad?”
“Yes, but—”
Eden smiled as she lifted a hand to touch his lips with the pads of two fingers. At the same time, she shifted her hips, pressing them forward as she moved them slowly side to side. The half-hard erection she felt against her lower belly immediately grew larger and harder.
“Please, Sir, please punish me for being a bad girl. I ruined your game, and then I locked the door against you. I’ve been a very bad girl and deserved to be spanked.”
“Hmmm, that is true. You have been a naughty little sunflower who deserves a spanking. After your spanking, you will apologize by sucking my cock before I fuck you until we both melt into a puddle of goo.”
As he shared the agenda, Eden’s pussy juices once again flowed with her anticipation. When he released her and stepped back, she swayed a moment before finding her balance.
With the blank expression that she had come to identify as Bailey’s Dom face, he took her hand and led her into the great room. Once out of her bedroom he dropped her hand. He held up a hand and she stopped. He then crossed the room to the wooden chair by the dining table.
After pushing his boxer’s off his hips, he sat down and just stared at her for a long, long moment. Eden grew nervous and began to wonder if she should have made such an offer.
“Strip bare before you lay yourself across my lap,” he said, his voice soft and low.
His tone combined with the serious expression and fire in his eyes sent more shivers of awareness through her. The heat and need settled in the sexual nerve center just behind her pussy.
“Yes, Sir,” she whispered after swallowing hard.
Reaching for the hem of her T-shirt, she pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor. With her heart in her throat and her skin tingling with anticipation and nerves, she crossed the room to stand beside Bailey’s chair.
The view of his hard cock caught her and held her prisoner. She tried to figure a graceful way to lie down across it, but could not come up with one. Instead, she knelt on the floor next to the chair. She then crawled her way up near side of the chair and across his legs. She grabbed the chair on the far side and pulled her body across his lap. She stopped when her pussy rested atop one thick, muscular thigh.
She squeaked when Bailey wrapped a hard arm across her back and slid her a little farther across his lap. She sighed when a large, hot hand massaged one cheek of her ass and then the other. The cock pressing into her hip twitched. She smiled as her clit throbbed in response.
Without saying a word to prepare her, the hand left her ass and a heartbeat later came down hard on her left cheek. She jumped and tightened her ass in preparation for another. Instead of more pain, Bailey rubbed circles over the punished flesh until she relaxed her muscles again. Instant pain to her right cheek, which he immediately stroked away, once again caught her off guard.
The combination of hot pain from the spanking and soothing strokes afterward sent Eden’s arousal spiraling higher and higher. A strange sense of freedom washed through her as he continued to punish her and arouse her by equal measures. She sucked a breath when two fingertips traced between the globes of her ass. When a single digit brushed over her puckered star, she clenched her asshole tight, expecting a pain-filled breeching.
“Has anyone ever fucked you here?” he asked as easily as if he were asking about the weather as his finger drew circles around and around the flesh
“Wade tried once, but it hurt too much. It was one of the last times he ever fucked me at all.”
She slowly relaxed as he continued to brush circles around her back hole. Then he brushed his fingertip back and forth directly over her back hole.
“Have you ever played with a butt plug before?”
Eden shook her head but realized he wasn’t looking in that direction. “No.”
“No, who?”
“No, Sir.”
He patted one ass cheek. “Before I leave next week, I’d like to make love with you in every way possible. But only if you want to try it.”
“But it hurts,” she said in automatic denial.
“Didn’t he prepare you?”
“No. He just decided to try it and shoved in without warning me or anything.” Eden blinked back tears at the painful memory.
“Well, we’re going to do it the right way. I’ll stretch your pretty asshole with my fingers and maybe a plug or two from your wonderful little shop before I can take you there. We will also use lots of lube and make it as easy for you as possible. Now take a deep breath and try to relax,” Bailey said as he slid his finger down toward her pussy.
His finger slid deep into her open wetness, causing her breath to catch again. He fucked her with it several times, twisting it back and forth as it moved in and out. When he pulled it free of her pussy, she made a whining sound of need.
She made a strangled sound when his finger gently but persistently pressed through her back hole to the first joint. Her muscles immediately clenched at the intrusion, but he held his finger steady as his other hand rubbed up and down her spine.
“Shhh, it’s okay, sunflower. We’ll just sit here for a little bit before you make your apologies.”