His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  “Colin!” I cry out.

  “Yeah, say my name. Let me know who fucked you into submission.”

  Again, my body has no business responding to this, but I come so hard. So hard, my entire body bucks underneath his, and the sensations rip me through me, bright and hot, stealing my voice so I can’t deny my submission. Can’t tell him this isn’t a surrender.

  Above me, Colin’s thrusts become sloppy. He’s still pounding into me, but with less purpose and more desperation. “Pussy… so tight and hot.”

  “I’m on birth control,” I suddenly find myself telling him on a gasp. “I’ve been on it for years. I just didn’t want to tell you—”

  Colin’s response is immediate. He pulls out of me. Rips off the condom and rams back into me. “Purple, girl…”

  It’s a warning, a threat, and a curse at the same time. Right before I feel his shaft expand and then release into me a few moments later.

  I have never in my life experienced anything like this. Had never been talked to that way. I’d never even been held down.

  Which is why I can’t understand why my whole body is tingling with happiness now. Why I can still feel my core contracting around him, pulling at him, like I’m still thirsty and desperate for him.

  “Christ…” he says, moving away from me. And it feels like he’s speaking for both of us.

  He stands up and I see his jeans are mostly still on, the front of them open. He must have barely pushed them down before entering me. I stare at the long, spent cock hanging out over the band of his briefs, but it’s soon hidden when he tucks it away behind his jeans.

  And that’s when I realize, with another truck load of shame, just how I must look, lying with my legs spread open on the couch, my full bottom totally exposed.

  I roll off the couch and head toward the leggings he pulled off of me. I can see them lying in a heap on the far side of the living room.

  “You ain’t going to like what happens if I so much as see you touch those pants without my permission.”

  His blue eyes burn cold fire into my back and my breath catches. I think about doing it anyway, to prove I’m not afraid. Even if I am. But he starts toward me before I can, pulling an afghan off the back of the couch as he does.

  “If you’re cold, use this,” he says, wrapping it around me. “Or me.”

  Then he takes me by the hand and says, “Come on back to the couch, Purple.”

  I follow him back to the couch, and sit down with him, my hand still in his, feeling somewhat mollified, but…

  The thought of what we just did makes my face go hot again. And I can feel him watching me, waiting to hear what I’m going to say next.

  So, of course, I give all my attention to the couch. Notice all it’s small details like I didn’t notice them before. Apparently the afghan was serving multiple purposes, lying over it. Not just decoration but a way to cover up all the cigarette burns on its back cushions.

  “So your dad was a smoker?” I ask Colin.

  “Three packs a day, and sometimes he got too drunk to put them out in the ashtray. So he’d used the couch. Or me.” Colin adds the last bit like it’s just an afterthought. Then he says, “If the liver failure hadn’t taken him early, cancer probably would have.”

  I have to ask him, “How did you get it to smell so nice in here? My grandma’s house still smells like my Paw Paw’s pipe, and he passed a few years ago.”

  Colin’s thumb strokes the back of my hand as he answers, “Had to have two cleaning crews come through and keep the house open for a month to get the smell out.”

  An image of Colin opening all of the doors and windows after he inherited the house floats through my mind, and I wish I had my journal, but it’s back in Alabama. One of the many things I stupidly left behind.

  “So your father was a monster, and your mama was a saint,” I say. “Explains a lot.”

  He kind of half sighs. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Saint when I’m out in public. Monster when I’m here at my old man’s place.”

  “How many girls have you brought here?” I fold my leg up on the couch, so I can turn to face him more fully. “Is this like… your Back to Tennessee M.O.?”

  He studies me for a moment or two as if trying to decide whether I’m asking the question out of curiosity or jealousy. It’s both. The curiosity is only natural, but the jealously makes me feel real stupid, because he’s a country star and of course he has access to a bunch of women who probably wouldn’t have batted an eye over what we just did.

  But then he shakes his head, the corner of his lips tugging up into an almost smile. “No, Purple, you’re the only one I’ve ever done this with.”

  I look from side to side again. “Because I’m the only one who’s ever agreed to meet you out in the boonies so you could have your way with me?”

  “No,” he answers with a sad smile. “Truth is, my fame attracts a certain kind of woman, and fame whores don’t really have a whole lot of boundaries. If I wanted them to do something, act a certain way, they’d just do it.”

  “So why didn’t you ask one of them to meet you out here?”

  Colin shrugs. “Groupies aren’t exactly known for their discretion. That’s why I’ve never messed with them. I’m not a very trusting man, and I can’t be with somebody I don’t trust at least a little bit.”

  “But you trust me,” I say. Then thinking about how absolutely untrustworthy I really am, I add, “…to be discreet.”

  He gives me a measuring look. “If you were going to sell me out to a tabloid, you would’ve done it already. That fight Beau and me had was a pretty juicy story—one the confidentiality agreement you signed didn’t necessarily cover.”

  Yes, it was. But it never even occurred to me to tell anyone else what happened, much less sell it for money. And I can’t imagine telling anyone this story. Not even Bernice. That’s just not how I work. Sometimes… sometimes it feels like I was born keeping secrets, like that’s how I’m hard-wired.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice wry, “I guess I just know how to keep a secret.”

  I look around the tiny house again. “So that’s why you told me to come to this address? So you could be a monster without anyone finding out?”

  I can see from the way his eyes suddenly cut away from mine that I’ve hit the nail exactly on the head, which is why I’m so surprised when he caresses his thumb over the ball of my hand and quietly asks, “You okay after all that?”

  I answer with a shaky laugh. “I’m something. Okay would maybe be a kind of strong word to use, but I don’t think I need a therapist to come talk me through what just happened or anything. Maybe that’s because I’m still in shock. I really wasn’t expecting that.”

  “What were you expecting?” he asks with another smile tugging at his lips.

  I look down at our joined hands for a long time before answering, “Not this.”

  “But you liked it. You like what we just did.”

  The way he dips his chin to make my eyes meet his leaves me wondering if he’s telling me or asking me. Either way, it’s not the sort of question/statement I’m able to answer with words. So I settle for clamping my lips together and nodding.

  Then I immediately look away from him again, my face now the opposite of hot. In fact, my entire body has iced over with the kind of cold shame that the afghan just can’t reach.

  “But I’m still not sure why I didn’t use the safe word,” I admit, my voice quiet as a whisper.

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” I can feel his blue gaze on me again. Watching me refuse to meet his eyes.

  I’m glad, too. I’ve never come like that before. I never even knew it was possible to come that hard. Colin, for all his strangeness and confidentiality contracts, is hands down the best I’ve ever had.

  But it feels too weird to admit this to him. So instead I say, “Property taxes.”

  Colin’s entire body goes stiff. He lets go of my hand and stands, moving all the way to other sid
e of the room, coming to stop next to where my leggings are lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.

  For what feels like a century and a half, the only sound in the cabin is the wood crackling in the fireplace. Even the rain has stopped now, I realize, as I wait for Colin to say something. Anything.

  But he doesn’t. Just stands there like a soldier awaiting orders. Shadow and light playing across his now harsh expression.

  This is not how I expected using the safe word to go. I don’t feel powerful, or even like I’ve regained the upper hand. Instead a weird, desperate itch pops off inside my chest area, like I’ve lost something.

  “I… I just wanted to see if it would really work,” I finally admit to him.

  I don’t invite him to come back, but I guess he doesn’t need a formal invitation, because he sits right back down across from me on the couch. This time, though, his hand wraps around the ankle of my folded leg.

  His grip is a band of steel, allowing me no illusions about who he’s addressing, though he stares at the fire as he says, “I told myself before I came here, that if you used the safe word, we were done. This is over and we go our separate ways. I’m generous with my people, Purple, but when it comes to this kind of thing, I’m a stingy bastard, and I’m never looking to pay anybody’s therapy bills.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Okay, noted,” I say, trying to take my leg back.

  But his hand tightens even further around my ankle as his blue gaze finds mine in the firelight. “You got your answer about the safe word working. I don’t want to hear it out of your mouth again.”

  He’s become hard again. Or maybe that’s just something I’m imagining, because I can feel myself starting to throb below. My body responding to his command in a way it really, really shouldn’t.

  “I might use it again,” I tell him, forcing myself not to look away this time.

  “No, you won’t,” he says. His voice is soft but somehow more menacing than if he’d shouted the words.

  He suddenly moves forward and I brace myself, expecting him to attack. But instead he lies down with me on the couch, tossing the afghan aside and arranging our bodies so I’m half on top of him, one leg bent over both of his. I was right about him having become hard again during our safe word conversation. I can feel his length underneath the soft flesh of my naked thigh, like a pulsing animal behind his jeans.

  He tucks my head into his shoulder and says, “When we wake up, I’m going to fuck you again, Purple, but this time I’m going to make you submit to me.” His voice is matter of fact, like he’s simply going over our agenda for the next day, but his words… his words stop my heart with a fear unlike any I’ve ever known.

  He continues on, his voice a honeyed Alabama drawl in my ear. “And by the time I’m through, there will be no doubt in either of our minds who your pussy belongs to.”

  For a while we lie like this, the fire crackling, the last remnants of the storm rolling in, rain drops on the rusty tin roof. Despite the afghan being tossed aside, I no longer feel cold. Despite what just happened, I can feel myself relaxing, my heart rate coming down, as Colin holds me close in his arms. Despite what he just said to me, I soon fall asleep, his dark promise radiating through my body.

  Chapter 21

  Of course I come to my senses a few hours later when I wake up alone on the couch, cold and shivering, because now, instead of Colin, there’s only the afghan and it’s not doing near a good enough job. The fire, I notice soon after opening my eyes, has died out.

  One of the kitchen lights is still on and I use its dim glow to find my leggings, which are still lying where Colin tossed them. I pull them on, but they’re not as much help as you would think. The fabric is cold and stiff now, thanks to its time on the floor, and my sweater is still a little damp. Plus, the cabin is freezing. I don’t feel much warmer as my eyes search the dark room.

  I find him asleep in the brass rail bed, his long body covered by what looks like a much warmer quilt.

  He couldn’t even sleep with me, I think, my stomach filling up with self-disgust. The warm feelings I’d fallen asleep with are now replaced with one I remember well from my time with Mike Lancer. Stupidity. As in “how could you have been so stupid?”

  I search the main room for the rest of my things. Finding my shoes is easy. Both are within five feet of where I found the leggings, though in opposite directions. And my purse is still where I placed it, on the side table next to the door. I walk out the door with my keys in hand less than a minute later.

  It’s even colder outside. Pitch black without the lights from the cabin. My old Beemer is little more than a large shadow in the cabin’s small front clearing.

  I cuss at myself again as I make my way toward it, and come up with a grip of extreme ways to tell Josie that the deal with me being Colin’s “friend” is off when she gets home in a couple days—

  Suddenly, I’m slammed into the side of my car, my arm twisted behind my back so I drop my keys.

  I hear them hit the ground with a metal clang as a voice behind me asks, “Where do you think you’re taking my pussy, Purple?”

  His hold on me is damn near immobilizing. But it doesn’t hurt. I once again thinking of bulky male nurses in insane asylums called in to deal with patients without hurting them. So no, it doesn’t hurt, but it does piss me off.

  “I’m taking my pussy out of here, to some place warm and away from you,” I answer.

  “Is that why you snuck out? Because it was too cold in there for you?” he sneers in my ear.

  Also, because I was feeling abandoned after being left on the couch, but that doesn’t exactly feel like the right answer for this situation. Because what kind of stupid girl would have expected a full on cuddling session after the kind of sex Colin and I had earlier in the night?

  “I’m going home,” I tell him. I use the same firm voice I use on my clients when they get unruly. “Let me go.”

  He does let me go, and the removal of his immobilizing pressure comes as a relief. For a second. Then the world spins upside down as Colin heads back to the house with me in a fireman carry.

  “Are you kidding me?” I yell, kicking and clawing at his back as he carries me back inside. “Put me down!”

  This is another order he only sort of obeys. Throwing me onto the rail bed like a sack of potatoes isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Or him stripping my clothes off like a rag doll.

  He releases me when I’m butt naked, but before I can scramble into a sitting position, he puts his knee in my chest, exerting just enough pressure to keep me down as he grabs one of my arms.

  “I didn’t think you were going make me tie you up this soon. Thought maybe I’d give you some time to rest. But you’re full of surprises tonight, ain’t you, Purple?”

  A length of hard, unforgiving rope wraps around one wrist, and suddenly I’m unable to move my arm more than a few inches past my shoulder. I tug on it, but Colin just laughs.

  “You ain’t getting out of this one, Purple. My father used to make me visit him up here every summer, and he wasn’t just a recreational hunter. He almost never could keep a job too long, so hunting’s how he put food on the table. Best believe he taught me how to tie a knot.”

  I continue to struggle against my one bind, reaching over with my other hand to try to undo it. My persistence only makes that mean smile of his come back in full force.

  “Tell you what, let’s make this fun. I’ll only tie one hand. Let you have both your legs and your other hand as long as you don’t break my rules. But the minute you do, I tie something else down. Got it?”

  What rules? I shake my head. “No, I don’t want to play your stupid game.”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got going on down here…” he says like he didn’t even hear my protest. He removes his knee from my chest, and I feel thick fingers scan down my body, stopping at the slit between my legs.

  If I didn’t already know, the smile that spread across his moonlit face would have t
old me what he found. I’m wet, completely slick with desire before he’s even really touched me anywhere intimate.

  He makes a sound, halfway between a grunt and growl.

  “I see you’re going to make training hard for me, Purple. But I’m not going to let you win this time. This time, you don’t get off until you tell me whose pussy this is. You ready to say this is my pussy yet?”

  I shake my head, spitting mad. “Like I’d ever say that, you asshole! This isn’t a porn video.”

  To prove my point, I reach down with my free hand and push at his wrist, trying to pull his fingers out of me. Trying to prove to him and myself that this might be something that gets me off, but it’s not something I need.

  But Colin’s fingers keep on working as if my restraining hand is nothing, and I become slicker and slicker with desire, until I can no longer force myself to fight him. Until I can feel an orgasm building inside of me, making me too weak to fight the rising pleasure.

  My hand falls away from his wrist as my back arches in preparation for the flood… but it never comes. Colin abruptly pulls his fingers away.

  “You can touch your breasts,” he says with the detachment of a doctor, only stating facts. “But not your pussy. Only I get to touch that, Purple, because it belongs to me. Those are the rules.”

  Those are the rules. For a moment, I lie there in shocked disbelief. So this is his idea of punishment? Not finishing the job, and leaving me wanting more?

  I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes, because if that’s all he’s planning to do to me, he should talk to a few of the guys I’ve dated over the years, including Mike. Not making a girl come isn’t exactly a special skill. Or all that terrible of a punishment.

  In fact, the disappointment that sets in as my body begins to cool down is totally familiar. My breasts eventually deflate, but my nipples stay hard because it’s so freaking cold.

  “If this is how I’m going to sleep, may I have a blanket?” I ask him.