“What did she do to you?”
Les could tell Deidre was upset. She’d be more so if he took her to meet his parents and his mother questioned her about the nature of their relationship. He found he desperately wanted to take her home, reconcile with his family so he’d have something concrete to offer her along with himself. It wouldn’t be as much as she’d grown up with but at least he could hold his own with other men she’d known.
Tell her now. Better to lose her now than after she gets all snarled up in your emotions. Not that she isn’t already.
He leaned against the back of the sofa, pulled her against his side and focused his gaze on the roaring blaze in the fireplace.
“At first we played in her club, the usual stuff. She’d flog me until my ass and thighs bled. One of her favorite acts was to force me to lick her pussy in front of others while she let a Dom friend of hers fuck my ass. Sometimes she’d switch around and fuck me with a strap-on while she made me suck off her friend. She incorporated either the ass-fucking or the cocksucking into almost every one of her scenes because she knew I hated them so much. She’d call me fag and pussy-boy—I’m sure you get the idea.
“After a few months she decided she wanted to move in with me—or rather that she wanted 24/7 access to me even though she didn’t always make use of her key. If I wasn’t at work I was to be at home waiting for her, stripped down, shaved and on my knees, wearing her collar and nothing else.”
When he felt Deidre shudder against his side he thought about letting it go but gathered up his nerve and continued.
“Over the next few months she had me pierced and tattooed.”
She looked him up and down, then met his gaze. “You don’t have any piercings or tattoos. I’ve seen every inch of your gorgeous body.”
“The piercings have closed up and I had the tattoo removed—there was only one but it took nearly a year’s worth of laser treatments to get rid of it. God, but she liked those piercings. I had to wear earrings and nipple rings and a big Prince Albert ring through my cock, whenever I was at home or in the club.
“She made me wear a tongue ring even when I was working. It turned her on to know I worried constantly that a professor or fellow resident would notice it.”
He wished Deidre would say something, but she just sat there, a look he hoped was sympathetic, not condemning on her solemn face.
“Do you want to hear the rest?” he asked. He didn’t want to go on but he certainly didn’t want to revisit his humiliation again later.
“If you want to tell me.” She spoke softly as if what she’d already heard had practically taken her voice away.
He took a deep breath and tried not to shudder as he began to relive the worst of what he had allowed—no, what he’d invited. “One of her favorite things to do with me at the club was to drag me around by a leash hooked to the ring in my PA. She’d chain me to the wall by my cock and nipple rings and beat me with a cat-o’-nine she’d decided to learn to use for my punishment. Sometimes when we played at private parties where there was no dungeon master to intercede, I’d end up covered in my own blood.
“I could take the pain, but the humiliation tore me up inside even though I felt I deserved it all. At the time I didn’t know why. It took more than a year after we split for the shrink to help me figure out why I’d craved the torture she meted out.”
Deidre turned, her eyes wide and her expression horrified. “I can’t imagine…”
“I can’t either, now. Back then I wanted it the way I wanted my next breath. More. Yeah, I was sick. Seriously sick. I got over it, though.
“I still crave BDSM play. I get off on the thrill I get from controlling a sub the right way—without hurting or humiliating her. You’d think I wouldn’t want to see hardcore BDSM play now, but I’ve discovered that watching others do consensually what I used to do at my former Domme’s command arouses me. I don’t know what the voyeurism says about me,
chéri
. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day trying to figure that one out.”
“I don’t know either.” Deidre stroked his knee the way she might rub the back of a fractious pet. “You didn’t have to tell me—”
“Yes. I did. I want to take you home to meet my family but I couldn’t unless I told you everything.”
She looked confused but she moved her hand up along his thigh, close enough for his dick to swell and harden. “Why not?”
Les had no doubt that Deidre would have preferred not to hear the demeaning details of his past relationship. He’d much rather not have had to tell her. “My parents saw what I just described to you. Not at the club, of course, but they came to visit one day when I was expecting my mistress. I was naked, shaved from neck to toe, wearing my slave collar. I had jewelry in each of my piercings and a leash dangling from the ring in my PA.
“I had thrown the door open and was kneeling beside it when they saw me. Needless to say they were horrified. From the time they walked away in disgust, we didn’t speak for nearly two years until just before I came out here. Mama said, though, that if I ever brought a woman home she planned to ask her if she was like the depraved woman who’d done such awful things to me. I don’t doubt that she will.”
“You want to take me to meet your family?” Deidre’s hand stilled on his thigh and she looked up into his eyes.
“I do. What we do in bed or at a club is strictly between us, but I want more than that. What I feel for you is more than lust—and I want you to know where I come from, who I am beyond what you’ve seen and what I’ve told you.”
She moved her hand up and cupped his sex. “You mean more to me than
this
, Master. Much more. Not that you don’t make me want to hand you the key to all I am—the bad as well as the good. I trust that you’ll control me with care…that you’ll be a good master.”
“I’ll also be your lover…and your best friend. This weekend I’ll be off call. I’d like it if we could fly out to meet my family. You make me want to embrace the heritage I nearly lost so I can share it with you—to show you where I came from.”
“I’d love to.”
Les didn’t realize until he let his breath out in a long deflating whoosh that he’d been holding it, fearful that Deidre would walk away. “Good. Now that the fire’s gone down to embers, let’s go to bed. I want to make love to my
chéri
—my sweetheart.”
* * * * *
There was something different, something infinitely sweeter tonight than Deidre had experienced before with Les—with anybody, ever. It wasn’t that he did much that was different. His touch was strong and sure but never intimidating, as she had found it every time they’d fucked. By the time they’d cleansed every inch of their bodies in the shower, she’d been frantic with need for him to toss her down on his bed and fuck her senseless.
But he hadn’t.
He took the same care to arouse her with his hands and mouth, the way he’d done while they’d showered, before revving up the kink, letting her suck his cock while he rimmed her sensitive rear hole and played with her clit until she thought she wouldn’t be able to hold back the climax he’d warned her was for him to command.
She cupped his testicles, rolling them between her palms, trying to concentrate on her master rather than on the sensations he was coaxing out of her own body. His soft moan of pleasure against her anal opening sent waves of excitement along her nerve endings.
Anal play was new to her—something she’d never allowed before but which felt good now that her lover was initiating her with care—with love. When he moved his hand along her slit and dipped his fingers in her wet, swollen cunt she’d have protested the loss of sensation elsewhere, but then he spoke, his voice as low and sexy a sound as she’d ever heard.
“I’m getting my fingers wet. I don’t want to hurt you when I see if you can take my cock up your tight little ass.”
“Mmm.” It was no use trying to say anything with her mouth stuffed full of his long, thick cock. She felt him using his lubricated fingers to rim her the way he’d just done with his tongue before working them inside her anus. When he slid three fingers past her anal sphincter and all the way inside, she clamped down on his cock to keep from yelping, because it hurt.
“Easy,
chéri
, relax. It will stop hurting in a minute and feel good. Keep sucking my cock.” He nipped one ass cheek with his teeth and that drew her attention from the burning sensation in her ass. “I said to relax. I want to take this virgin hole. I believe you want to give it to me.”
She did as he said. Or rather she tried. In her head she reminded herself this was Les and that he’d promised never to hurt her.
He’s a doctor, for God’s sake. You know he’s done this before. It’s not as if you don’t trust him not to cause you any lasting pain.
As he moved his fingers slowly, deeply in her rear passage, the stinging started to go away, replaced by a surprising sense of arousal that began where he touched her and spread to her pussy and to every cell in her body. She took his cock deeper down her throat, imagining how it would feel to have this pulsating organ where his fingers were.
Though she’d fucked more than a few men, she’d never wanted to try this—until she’d realized that anal sex was a gift she could give Les and no one else. She’d always wanted primarily to please herself, but now she found herself needing to serve her lover—her master—in whatever way would bring him pleasure.
She caressed the silky skin of his scrotum, loving the smoothness and the hefty weight of the twin orbs against her palms. She used her tongue to trace the prominent veins in his rock-hard cock and to tickle the ridge below the head. When she deep throated him she loved the soft sensation of the clean-shaven base of his penis brushing her lips.
“Stop.” His voice was ragged, as though she’d sorely tested his control. “Come up on your hands and knees. If you don’t want my cock up your ass, now’s the time to say so.”
Trying not to tremble, she gave his cock one last loving lick then sucked briefly on his balls before doing as he’d ordered and arranging herself in the center of his bed. Out of the corner of one eye she watched him roll a heavily lubricated condom over his erection.
He’d never looked as big as he did right now, when she knew he intended to put his huge, glistening cock up her ass. Part of her brain told her to tell him no, use that safe word he’d murmured to her when they entered the Neon Lasso—the one he’d told her she wouldn’t be able to forget.
Somehow that word had slipped her mind. She’d never fully trusted another man, but she had complete confidence that Les would never do anything but take her to a state of ecstasy. No man who had gone through what he had told her about earlier would ever take pleasure from causing pain to his submissive lover.
His hands were warm on her ass cheeks when he came behind her. “You’ve got the most beautiful ass I’ve ever seen, sweetheart,” he said as he rubbed both thumbs along her outer rim. “Relax for me. I’m going to put some lube inside you to ease my way.”
When he inserted his fingers again it didn’t hurt as much. She found herself anticipating the sensations he’d shown her could be pleasurable. This time she felt the cold, slippery lubricant he pushed deep inside her and shivered a little, not from fear as much as from anticipation.
“
Mais
yeah, the lube is cold. But my cock will warm you soon enough.” His breath was warm on her back, a damp sensation that drew her attention to his softly spoken words.
She’d noticed before that arousal seemed to make his slight Cajun accent more pronounced, and that she found that lilt in his voice incredibly titillating. “I want you to warm me, Master.”
“I will.” He moved into position, his sheathed cock flush against her hole.
“It’s warm.” Her spontaneous comment made him laugh.
“I’m on fire inside the condom, sweetheart. No wonder the lube is warm.” As though he realized the anticipation was making her nervous, he pressed inside just enough to get past the tight sphincter muscle. “There. Is that too bad?”
“It’s f-fine.” The burning sensation she’d gotten from him using his fingers was back, but she trusted that it would go away again, as it had before.
He cupped her breasts, taking the nipples between the thumbs and forefingers of each hand and tugging rhythmically. “I love your beautiful breasts,
chéri
. They’re so damn responsive, so tempting to my hands and mouth.”
His obvious attempt to take her mind off the discomfort of having his cock stretching her ass was sweet—and it worked. What had been stinging, pulling pain morphed into a delicious feeling of fullness, a need for him to go deep inside her, fill the emptiness as he’d often filled her pussy and her mouth. “Fuck me, Master. Please.”
Slowly, carefully he sank inside her, moving his hands from her breasts to her ass cheeks, controlling the angle of penetration. “No one else will ever take you here,” he said in a tone that left no doubt it was an order.
Deidre hated taking orders from Four and her brother but she found that taking them from her master made her feel happy. Fulfilled.
Chapter Seven
Tonight this felt different—right in a way Les had never experienced before—because this was a claiming, not a punishment or an exertion of command over another human being.
He had been punished this way, forced to take another man’s dick up his ass. He’d accepted a mistress’s public statement of ownership and her private humiliation with a rigid, painful strap-on. He’d also meted out punishment to others in club settings by ass-fucking. But this didn’t just feel different. It
was
different.
With every careful thrust into Deidre’s body he was claiming her as his own—as his personal property to love and protect, never to hurt. He felt her tremble beneath him and realized this had a deeper meaning for her as well.
In doing this she was granting her trust and accepting that he was there to give her only pleasure, to protect her from hurt and pain. That humbled him because he knew no human could guarantee that—not forever. He could only do what one man could do, and that was to try his best to be a good master—a good lover—and most of all a faithful friend. His testicles tightened and his cock swelled painfully within her tight rear passage.
“Come for me, sweetheart. Tell me how you feel.”
“Incredible.” The cry of pleasure from deep in her throat and the ripples of her inner muscles said more to him than mere words. “Show me I’ve pleased you, Master. Please.”
He let go, long hard bursts of semen that went on until they both collapsed, two sweat-slicked bodies made one. For the first time since he’d been an impressionable teenager looking forward to his driver’s license and his first backseat encounter, Les Fourchet knew he’d fallen in love.
* * * * *
The next day Deidre caught Four and Bye in the Bar C’s office. “Les is coming for dinner tonight if nobody gets sick and calls him out. And I’m going to meet his family in Natchitoches this weekend.”
Bye looked up from the computer screen in front of him and grinned. “Getting serious with the doc, Funny Face?”
Deidre thought about it for a minute. Neither of them had made any promises but she and Les felt…well, they just felt right together. As a sub it wasn’t her place to push, though. “Maybe. Don’t go giving him the third degree, though, the way you’ve done with every guy I’ve ever brought home.”
Four cleared his throat. “What do we know about this young man other than that he’s smart enough to have become a doctor? That’s no small accomplishment, but it’s not enough for me to entrust Mae’s only daughter to him.”
“Oh, Daddy.” She should have expected it but still her father’s attitude made her mad. “I bet you didn’t vet Karen before you welcomed her into the family, any more than you warned Jack off Liz.”
“I’ve known Liz all her life—longer than I’ve known you, so don’t get smart with me. Why would I have suggested she wasn’t right for my son? As for Jack, why would I have cared about who he picked to marry? I never knew the man—or the child, for that matter, even though I supported him and his mother.”
Four had a way of arguing what he knew he could win. Deidre had learned that by the time she’d started first grade. “What about Karen and Bye?”
Bye shut down whatever he’d been doing on the computer and shot Deidre a dirty look. “Daddy couldn’t resist Karen once he got to know her, any more than I could. He never had anything against
her
in the first place. It was just the stupid feud and we both realized soon enough that it was past time to bury that, since nobody was able to remember exactly how it got started in the first place.”
“I can speak for myself, son. I knew all about Karen. She grew up right next to the Bar C, even if we had nothing to do with her old man. Not being blind, I could tell how Bye felt about her and that she felt the same way. I wasn’t worried about how he’d get along—he’s set to inherit the Bar C. Baby, your mama made me promise to take care of you. That means I couldn’t let you go off with some itinerant cowboy.”
Deidre had to admit that had been a dumb thing to do last summer, right after Mom had died, but she wasn’t about to let Four use that as proof that she didn’t have the sense to make her own selection of a man. “Certainly you don’t think Les is some worthless con man like Travis.”
“No. From what I’ve observed of him he seems to be a decent young man. You never know, though.” Four sighed. “You’re not only my baby girl, you’re a pretty high-maintenance woman. I want to know that anybody who gets serious about you has the means to keep you in sports cars, clothes and baubles—at least a few of them.”
She couldn’t believe her father thought her so shallow. “If he can’t, I can pamper myself. Don’t tell me you intend to leave me penniless.”
“Of course I don’t, but neither do I intend to finance the lifestyle of a fortune hunter.”
“I have the trust fund you and Mom set up for me years ago, but more than that, I’ve had luxuries all my life. Les gives me something I didn’t realize until recently that I wanted. A sense of myself, apart from the cars and all the trappings of wealth. He loves me, and I want to be worthy of that love. I need both of you to see me for what I am. I know I haven’t been acting very smart this year, but in all fairness, you haven’t been acting much like a good father, either. We can both prove to be better than that.” When she glanced at Four and Bye, she saw the surprise—and the pleasure—on their faces.
Four cleared his throat. “I hear what you’re saying, little girl, and I’m proud of you. Still, I have no intention of financing the lifestyle of a fortune hunter.”
“Come on, Dad,” Bye interjected, “no guy Deidre’s likely to run into is going to be rich enough that he couldn’t be called a fortune hunter.”
“I ran into one.” Deidre hesitated, then named the billionaire oilman from Houston who’d acted as though he was in love with her until she’d found out he had a wife his own age—almost as old as Mom. “Unfortunately I found out he was married to a very nice woman who’d put up with his affairs long after she’d figured out he was a serial adulterer.”
She watched Four’s face turn red. “I’ll kill that asshole.”
“Not if I get to him first,” Bye added, his expression murderous.
“Calm down. I took care of him already. I just wanted to point out that not all rich, powerful men are ones you should be trusting with your daughter. You ought to know that, Daddy. I’ve always wanted to know one thing. Did Mom know about Ms. Duval?”
Four sank onto one of the leather sofas, his head hung low. “No. Never. You and Bye would never have found out either, if Marianne had kept her greedy mouth shut.”
“So it was good that you strung her along for thirty years or more, Daddy? Had you ever thought that just maybe one of your bastards might surface and that Bye or I might fall for them, not knowing we were siblings?”
“No, but if it makes you feel better, Jack is the only one. I feel bad for not having been a real father to him, but my first responsibility was to Mae—and to our two children even though neither of you was born yet when Jack came along.” As though refreshed by having spoken about what had remained unsaid since the day of Mae’s funeral, Four got up and paced around the room.
“Well. What do you say?” Deidre wasn’t about to give way to her father, even if she did feel halfway sorry for him because of the way his former mistress had sprung his shameful secret.
“Have Les come over. We’ll all get to know him better. You can tell him you two can take the Bombardier—it will be faster getting all the way over to Louisiana. Besides, I’ll be going with you.”
“Okay. Assuming that Natchitoches has an airfield that the Learjet can land on.” Deirdre hoped it didn’t.
Bye laughed. “It does. I have a college buddy who lives near there. I landed the Cessna there last year when I went to stand up at his wedding.”
God help her. She didn’t know a lot about Les’ background other than about his recently mended estrangement from his family and the reasons for it. She’d guessed from some things he’d said that he didn’t exactly come from poverty—but she couldn’t imagine his home being one that would compare favorably with the Bar C.
We’ll just have to brazen it out.
There was no way on earth she was going to back down from being with her master, even if his folks ended up being dirt-poor Cajuns who trapped gators for a living in the Louisiana bayous.
* * * * *
On Saturday morning Les parked at the Bar C hangar. This trip to meet his parents had expanded to include Deidre’s father, brother and sister-in-law as well as Deidre. While he’d have felt more comfortable without the entourage, he appreciated the fact that Four wanted to reassure himself by tagging along. He grabbed his bag and strode onto the tarmac, where the sleek Learjet’s engines were already humming.
When he stepped aboard Deidre stood and gave him a kiss that brought his dick to immediate attention. “Good morning, Master,” she whispered in his ear before giving his earlobe a playful nip. “Sit by me and I’ll let Dad and Bye know we’re ready to take off.”
“Where’s Karen?”
“She’s up there with Bye, but she’ll come back here before we take off. Four thinks we need a chaperone.”
“That’s too bad, sweetheart. I’d thought we could join the mile-high club.” Les glanced around the cabin equipped with seating for six, plush deep-green lounge chairs bolted onto carpeted floors that were a lighter green. The walls were a soothing shade of off-white with chrome window casings that matched the trim on the chairs. Between the cabin and cockpit were a small refrigerator, some thermoses secured in custom-fitted brackets and some polished wood cabinets that he assumed held plates and nonperishable snacks. “Nice setup you have here.”
“Four bought it for Mom before she got sick. He wanted her to have a comfortable ride when she went down to Houston to visit my aunt.”
Though he hadn’t looked at Mae Caden’s chart, Les deduced from the fact that this plane was less than two years old that Mrs. Caden hadn’t lingered long after becoming ill. “You must miss her terribly.”
It was damn hard to know whether a survivor wanted to talk about a loved one who’d died or not. Les stayed quiet until Deidre opened up and told him how her mother had lived less than two months before the cancer took her. “By the time she admitted she was sick and went to Houston for tests, the doctors said the cancer had spread and there was nothing they could do.”
“I’m sorry,
chéri
.” Les’ inclination was to blame Doc Baines for not having recognized the symptoms sooner, but pancreatic cancer wasn’t easy to diagnose in any case, especially without sophisticated equipment.
“It’s all right. I think she’d have approved of you.” She reached out and caught his hand. “I know I do.”
“I’m glad.”
At the sound of engines revving higher, Les looked up and saw Bye’s wife Karen come through the cockpit door and take her place in a chair across from him and Deidre. “I think I’m supposed to see that you two don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” Her smile told Les she was kidding.
“Hey, Karen. That’s got to leave a lot of room for me to have fun.” He winked at Deidre. “We could always have a good old-fashioned
ménage à trois
if I weren’t afraid Bye would check on us and find us out.”
She laughed. “I could always just watch.”
Although he knew Deidre had never been at the Neon Lasso except the one night he’d taken her there, Les was surprised by the casual way Karen spoke with Bye’s little sister about Bye’s and her taste for BDSM play. “I guess you could at that. I wouldn’t want to embarrass my sweetheart, though.”
By the time they set down at the Natchitoches Regional Airport Les had relaxed. Deidre and Karen had distracted him from worrying about how his very conservative parents would take to Deidre’s big-as-Texas family members. He had also decided that no matter how this meeting went, he and Deidre would remain a team—for life.
* * * * *
Les’ mom and dad had come to pick them up in separate cars—nice cars, of course, and it made sense because having seven people in one vehicle would have been a squeeze. Deidre was a little nervous when his father herded all the men into a late-model Lincoln Continental while his mother took her and Karen in the smaller Mercedes.
The cars matched, both black and somber. The mood was not much brighter than the pearl-gray upholstery. Deidre stared out the tinted windshield, wishing she’d opted to share the backseat with Karen, wondering whether she should try to say something now to her silent hostess. Time seemingly stood still while Adrienne Fourchet made her way down a two-lane blacktop road. A heavy curtain of Spanish moss hung off centuries-old oak trees planted along the side of the road, lending to the dark, troubled atmosphere inside the car.
Deidre flinched when Mrs. Fourchet lost control and almost steered the car into a ditch.
“I apologize. I seldom drive, so I must pay close attention to the road. We will talk back at Belle Terre.”
Deidre had never heard Les mention the name of what she assumed must be the small community where his parents lived. Knowing what his mother had witnessed that day he’d told her about, she figured that Mrs. Fourchet must be as nervous as she was.
Then Deidre looked up and saw the words strung out in delicate script on an archway high above the narrow road. Beyond it there were fields, what looked like miles of them, on either side of a narrow road bordered by elaborate wrought iron fences whose design reminded her of the balconies she’d seen on old houses in New Orleans’ Garden District.