His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  “How to punish…” Colin’s voice seems almost whimsical, but there’s nothing lazy about the way he’s looking at me now. Intent, like a cobra ready to strike. “Feels like I spent near every minute of these last few weeks thinking about how I was going to make you pay...”

  My entire body tenses and I can feel myself pulling away from him, even if I can’t physically do so with his hand around the back of my neck, keeping me there.

  “So what exactly did you decide to forgive then?” I ask him. “Because it sounds to me like you’re only about the punishment.”

  His grip tightens around the back of my neck for a second, before going completely slack.

  “I decided to forgive you for being scared, and I’m close to forgiving you for running—which, trust me, Blue, for a guy with a dad who abandoned him and his mother is a big deal. But no, I’m not going to punish you for trying to call things off with me.”

  “Why not?” I ask, honestly curious. As much time as we’d spent on the phone, sometimes I still didn’t think I was anywhere close to understanding how Colin’s mind worked.

  “For a few reasons. One being that I’m not all bastard. The world of doms and subs can be… formal. The focus is on communicating boundaries and needs, and if you get deep enough into a relationship, there’re contracts to sign, rituals, and whatnot. ”

  A dark jealousy shadows over me as I wonder if he’s ever gotten into a relationship that deep.

  He reads my mind. “I’ve never let it get that far. Never been satisfied enough to commit to anybody like that. Most of my relationships ended with my subs getting frustrated because I refused to talk about us in future tense. They left. I let them. It never even occurred to me to try to stop them. But you…” he tilts his head to study me through narrowed blue eyes. “With you it’s different.”

  “I didn’t want to be formal with you,” he tells me. “So I didn’t lay down enough ground rules. Didn’t communicate the way I would have if we’d been in a normal dom/sub relationship.”

  I feel compelled to remind him, “I’m not a sub. I’ll never be your sub.”

  The shadow of a smile steals over Colin’s lips. “I know that, Blue, and I meant what I said before about not really wanting one.”

  I remember our last conversation on this subject out loud. “You want me to fight you.”

  Colin nods like I’m a good student who’s given him the right answer. “I want you to fight me. But here’s what you’ve got to understand from now on, Blue. It’s okay to fight me. It’s all right to be scared. It’s even all right to run—especially if we’re in the bedroom. But shutting me out? Not talking to me? That I won’t abide. And that’s why I’ll be punishing you for at least the next twenty-four hours.”

  Despite the menace in his voice, a sharp thrill of anticipation runs down my back. For the first time since our reunion, I feel the awkwardness sliding off of me, replaced by a dark desire.

  A dark desire that literally moves me. Without any warning whatsoever, I spin away from his hand and run. Run faster than I’ve ever run before.

  I’ll never know if I truly got past Colin, or if he was just toying with me like predators sometimes do with their prey, but I make it all the way back to the front room before he grabs me from behind, his arms coming around me like steel bands as he drags me back down the hallway into his bedroom.

  He throws me on the bed, ignoring my writhing and my hands shoving at his immovable body as he sets to removing my clothes. This morning I hadn’t known I’d be reunited with Colin and I’ve inadvertently made it ridiculously easy for him. The snaps on my cowgirl shirt come apart with little more than a jerk of his hands, and there’s even a front clasp on my bra.

  Next come my pants, black pleather shaped like jogging pants. The elastic waist means Colin has no trouble getting them off me, despite my bucking hips. The only thing that might have been a little difficult for him are my panties.

  But those he leaves on. An ominous sign for sure of the torture to come. And I can already feel the crotch of them clinging to my swollen pussy lips, already wet with heat.

  Colin’s hand settles there, a knowing smile playing over his lips. “I see my pussy missed me.”

  A shadow crosses over his face. “Tell me you didn’t share my pussy with anybody else while we were apart. Tell me you stuck to our agreement and didn’t touch yourself.”

  My face heats with embarrassment. Not because I didn’t stick to our agreement, but because I did. I don’t want to confess to him how I didn’t touch myself or anyone else, even though I was sure we were over.

  “My job keeps me busy,” I say to him. “I didn’t have time for… any of that.”

  A smug smile spreads across Colin’s too-handsome face. “Good,” he says. “I stuck to our agreement, too.”

  I don’t know whether to be touched or stunned that he was that sure I’d come back to his bed, just like he commanded.

  I don’t have too much time to ponder, though, because a second later, I feel the now familiar pressure of his knee in my chest as he ties ropes around both of my wrists. These ropes are different than the ones at the cabin. Silkier, not as rough, and I find myself thinking back to what he said before about more formal dom/sub agreements.

  As if flipping to the same mental page, Colin says, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to revisit our agreement, Blue.”

  He climbs off the bed and I watch from my bound position as he strips off his black Western jacket, letting it fall to the floor, before he begins unsnapping his own shirt.

  “Before these last few weeks, I might have been satisfied with owning your pussy. But now…”

  He finishes with his shirt and strips out of the rest of his clothes with an impressive efficiency that doesn’t match his slow drawl.

  Then he’s on top of me. One hand automatically manacling my wrists together above my head, as if he doesn’t trust the ropes to do their job. Or like he just really, really wants to hold me down.

  “But now,” he finishes, “I’m going to need everything from you. Your entire body belongs to me now.”

  He pushes into me, hard and thick.

  And I groan, forgetting to fight for a little bit, unable to act like I hadn’t missed this. The weight of him on top of me and between my legs, filling me up so I can’t possibly think about anything but him.

  Colin lets out a groan of his own, like being back inside of me is hurting him somehow.

  “Fuck, you feel good, Blue. I keep on waiting for you not to be this wet when I put myself inside of you, but that day hasn’t happened yet.”

  His words make me feel overly desperate, like an addict too high on lust to fight what he’s doing to me. I rally, bucking under his body, making him work to keep me beneath him.

  He uses his superior weight to keep my struggling body pinned to the bed, and it doesn’t even sound like he’s breaking a sweat when he says, “This pussy belongs to me. These legs. This stomach. And these especially…” He brings one large hand up to caress my right breast, pinching it’s distended nipple between his thumb and index finger so hard, it causes an arc of pain to shoot through me… straight down to my core.

  He ignores my whimpers and keeps on taking his lazy inventory.

  “This neck, these arms, this blue hair. These beautiful brown eyes of yours, and this smart mouth…”

  His blue eyes darken with lust as he raises his hand from my breast and runs a thumb over my lips. “It definitely belongs to me now. I reserve the right to close it however and whenever I want. That’s the new agreement. Let me hear you agree.”

  Is he out of his mind? My whole body!? There’s no telling what he’d make me do.

  “No,” I tell him, flat out. “I’m not going to agree to that.”

  His expression doesn’t change, but somehow his body becomes heavier on top of mine. “It’s been awhile, Blue, and I can feel how hot you are for my dick. You really going to turn this into an argument?”

  M
y body, which is on fire and begging for release after so many pent up weeks, is asking the same question. But I shake my head mutinously, refusing to give in.

  “Fine,” Colin says, his voice turning mean. “We’re done here then.”

  In one abrupt move, he pulls out of me, then raises up on his knees, fisting his manhood above me. Before I can even work up the mental words to wonder what he’s doing, he comes with a harsh yell, spraying across the bottom of my stomach and the top of my core. Effectively ending both the conversation and the sex.

  This time there’s no pretense in my anger. A stream of cuss words comes spewing out of my mouth as I yank at the ropes. Wanting to hit him. Wanting to inflict serious bodily harm for what he’s just done to me.

  He cuts off my angry tirade, grabbing me around the back of my neck again. “Look at yourself,” he hisses. He pulls me forward, just enough so I can see his load dripping down my stomach. The sight is pure torture, and I can feel Colin’s cum, nasty and angry, working its way down the top of my pussy and coating the button between its swollen lips.

  “That’s what it feels like to be hung up on by the woman who’s got your mind twisted into knots. By the woman who’s got your heart—” He cuts himself off with a disgusted sound. “Don’t ever fucking do that again.”

  His words are harsh, harsher than any man has ever been with me. But they flood my heart with empathy as I suddenly realize with sparkling clarity that for Colin, this isn’t a game. It’s about more than me not playing by his rules. I hurt him when I refused to take his calls, even more, when I ended things without talking it out with him.

  “I won’t,” I tell him. I don’t fight him on this. I don’t want to fight him on this. Somehow it becomes imperative to make him understand I didn’t mean to hurt him.

  “I’m sorry.” I whisper. “I have issues, and I was trying to protect myself. Trying to protect both of us, but I shouldn’t have hung up on you. It was childish, and it was…” I can’t find the words to express how awful I feel about the look of raw pain in his eyes now. So I settle for, “I’m sorry.”

  There is a dangerous moment between us, when I don’t know how he’s going to respond. He is, after all, still trying to decide what to forgive and what to punish.

  But in the end, he reaches up for the ropes and begins to untie me. The action fills me with a wild disconsolation and for a few tortured moments, I’m sure this is it. That he only brought me up here to teach me a very dirty lesson and now he’s going to kick me out of his penthouse condo without another thought.

  But after he frees me, he says, “C’mere,” in that lazy country boy drawl of his. And then he’s got me nestled against him in the bed. His chest against my back, his hand tipping up my whole face so I can receive his kiss.

  It’s more than nice. It’s a perfect kiss. One that feels exactly like a welcome home, though this is the first time I’ve ever been in his real home.

  I feel his hand swipe some of the mess off my stomach, and I suck in a breath when he uses it to massage my clit, coating the engorged button in his still warm semen.

  It feels so good that my mouth falls away from his as I cry out with pleasure. But he brings my face right back, kissing me as he works me. Tongue tangling into mine as he makes me come apart with his hand. He doesn’t even let me out of the kiss when the pressure of his hand on my sensitive clit becomes too much and I start screaming into his mouth.

  The kiss goes on and on, long after I’ve finished coming. And by the time he lets me go, I can feel him once again hard and rigid against my back.

  An idea about how to make the last two weeks up to him floats into my head.

  “Do you want me to help you with that?” I ask him, my voice husky.

  “If you want to use my mouth on this dick, you’re going to have to ask for permission.”

  His eyes have lost their edge, and I can sense something’s been restored. But I still have to let him know, “I will never ask for permission to give you a blowjob. Either you want one or you don’t, Fairgood.”

  He considers me for a few moments. I can actually feel his manhood pulsing against my back. But then he says, “Nah, I’m not letting you have any more of me until you give me all of you.”

  He moves away from me, leaving me cold as he retreats to the right side of his California King.

  “Let’s go to sleep,” he says. “We can talk about this more in the morning.”

  “Seriously?” I watch him curl up on the same side of the bed he used at the cabin.

  “If you want to take a shower before you go to sleep, it’s right through there.”

  He points to another set of double doors at the far side of the room, then punches up his pillow before settling in. “I’ll probably be asleep by the time you get back, though. Jetlag’s a bitch, so I’ll say goodnight now.”

  “Colin, are you serious?” I ask.

  I’m aware we both got ours, but the sexual tension is still thick in the room, throbbing like a beast that’s only just woken up.

  However, Colin doesn’t even shift in the bed. He’s either ignoring me or serious about being jetlagged.

  I don’t know how to feel as I turn on the jet spray in his shower and let the warm water wash over me. I think about leaving. All through the shower, I think about leaving, not letting myself be manipulated by a man the way my mother was manipulated by my father for most of her time in Alabama.

  I think about it long and hard, then I dry off with one of Colin’s fluffy white towels and climb back into his bed, naked.

  Colin wasn’t lying about being asleep when I got back. I hear him breathing on the other side of the bed, steady breaths just a few steps away from snoring.

  This is weird. So weird. I should leave, I think to myself.

  Then I think about my apology from earlier. My apology for not talking to him. For not communicating with him.

  But what he’s asking is crazy. And stupid. And weird. And fucked up. And a bunch of other adjectives I never thought I’d be using to describe my love life. I should leave, I think again. I can always call him later. Keep my promise when I’m back in Alabama and have some perspective on the situation.

  I lie there. Eyes wide open. Trying to convince myself.

  Then I hear a sleepy, “C’mere.”

  I look over to my right. Colin’s eyes are half open now, and he’s looking at me. “C’mere,” he says again.

  I go to him. Rolling over and scooting until my body is flush with his, my face buried in his warm chest.

  Then, despite my heavy level of arousal, I fall asleep, feeling a peace I really should not be feeling in Colin Fairgood’s arms.

  Chapter 33

  When I wake, I’m tied up again. But this time with so much slack, I don’t even notice… until I try to rub my eyes and can’t because my wrists are bound together.

  “You hungry?”

  I look over my shoulder. Colin’s on the other side of the room at a small table. There’s an open laptop obscuring most of his upper body, but his hair is hanging wet around his shoulders, and I can see he’s wearing a simple pair of jogging pants, like he just got done working out.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. More curious about seeing him on a laptop than hungry.

  “Emailing Ginny about my mama’s house. They’ve found a buyer. A family. Ginny can handle it, but I want to meet them myself. Make sure they’re…”

  He trails off.

  And I raise my wrists above my head, so I can turn all the way over to face him.

  “You want to make sure they’re good people?” I guess.

  “I’ll settle for decent. But I don’t want to sell her house to a bunch of snobs. I want to make sure they’re not the kind of people who treat their servants like my mom and me got treated by the Lancers. And I’d like for them to be happy. I don’t want my mother’s house occupied by another sad rich family, like Beau Prescott’s.”

  Hearing Beau’s name sends a forbidding dark cloud o
ver my head. I have no idea what this is between Colin and me. What it will become in the future. But I’ve got to figure out a way to tell him. Everything. Even though I suspect when I do, it will be the end of us.

  I watch him work, the sound of his typing the only thing filling up the silence.

  “How do you feel about that?” he asks without looking up from his computer.

  “About what?”

  “Happy families.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking. Like are you wondering if I believe in them?”

  He still hasn’t looked up, and I get the sense he’s embarrassed to be having this conversation with me, even though he’s the one who brought up the subject. “That and… do you want one?”

  “A family?” I repeat.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes,” I answer without any hesitation. “I know I don’t exactly scream good mom, but I always thought it would be nice to raise someone better than I was. You know, sort of make it up to my inner child.”

  He finally looks up from the computer. “I think you’d make a fine mom, Blue. You give a fuck and you always try your best.”

  “Yeah, but…” I indicate the ropes. “Apparently I’m also a little messed up in the head.”

  Colin half smiles. “I love newbie songwriters. They always think everything’s gotta be so authentic. Wait until some country star comes along saying he’ll pay you six figures to write him a hit bro-country song. You’ll see how authentic everything’s got to be then.”

  I shake my head, not getting his meaning. “Are you saying my feelings aren’t authentic?”

  “I’m saying what we do in the bedroom doesn’t reflect on us in other parts of our lives. If every guy that downloaded porn was a bad father, then America would be in a serious parenting crisis. I’m saying you’re scared now, but eventually you’ll get used to our dynamic, and you might be surprised how much it doesn’t affect the rest of your life. You’ll still write your songs, and help your grandma get Sunday Dinners on the table again come April.”