Waking Kiss Page 21

  Wasn’t I supposed to fall into subspace or something? It wasn’t happening, maybe because this was my first real “hard” scene. Even without subspace, I felt turned on, electrified with adrenaline. My pussy felt heavy and throbby. I pressed my face into Rubio’s chest. Another stroke, even harder. I loved the thrill of it but oh God… If he spanked me that hard again I would have to safeword.

  “Okay. One more,” said Rubio. I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Liam.

  “I can’t. I can’t!” I cried out, but the last one landed and I survived it.

  I survived.

  I sagged against Rubio’s chest. I felt so much relief, it was more like euphoria. A moment later Liam joined us. I turned my face to him but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to thank him for pushing me, for opening me up to this kind of experience. I was enjoying it more than I ever thought possible. I was definitely, for sure, one-hundred-percent kinky. My pussy ached with arousal even as I strained at my bonds, but I needed something more, some respite, some affection from Liam. He sidled up behind me and brushed my hair aside to kiss the back of my neck.

  “Please,” I said. “Please, Sir.”

  I said it over and over, until I didn’t know if I was calling Liam Sir, or Rubio, or whoever might calm the storm of need inside me. I didn’t know whose hands were where anymore. There was one on my ass and another tracing up my side, and another sliding down into the front of my panties, groping and fingering me. I was powerless, but not in the way I was when I was a child. This was a thrilling, erotic powerlessness. Rubio’s cock poked against the front of my thigh while Liam’s ground against me from behind. I was so keyed up, so horny by that point that I didn’t care who put it in me. I just wanted someone touching and holding me, and fucking me until the aching pressure in my middle could break wide.

  “Do you want to go upstairs?” It was Liam’s quiet voice against my ear. “Do you want to go upstairs with me and Ruby?”

  All my breath went out in a rush. I shuddered as his fingers closed on my hard-tipped breasts. “Answer me, baby,” he prompted. “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I want it. Please.”

  Ruby reached over me, working the cuffs, extricating my hands. They both had frighteningly intent looks on their faces. What had I agreed to? At the moment I didn’t care. As soon as my hands were free I reached back to rub my ass but Liam stopped me. “No. Let it hurt. I want you to hurt right now.”

  He lifted me in his arms so I couldn’t do anything but hang on to him. He carried me to a door on the back wall and stepped aside to let Ruby open it, then carried me up two flights of winding, dark stairs. “Servant passages,” he explained. “From the old lord-of-the-manor days. They’re useful for sneaking naughty, horny girls up into bedrooms.”

  Liam wasn’t even winded when we reached the landing. Someone groped my ass. That must have been Rubio. He opened another door for Liam and we were on the second floor, walking down the hall to the blue-gray room. As soon as Rubio closed the door Liam let me down and I was between their hard, tall bodies again, but this time my wrists weren’t cuffed. Liam peeled off my panties while Ruby pressed my hands down to cradle his cock.

  “Down on your knees,” Liam said. He handed Rubio a condom and Ruby put it on while Liam stripped out of his jeans.

  I sank to the floor and opened my mouth when Ruby prodded his cock against it. The condom tasted nasty but I was too worked up by this point to care. Liam held my hair in a firm grip as I licked around the head of Ruby’s shaft. He was as big as Liam, but his scent and the sounds he made were totally different. Instead of Liam’s growls, Rubio egged me on with musical-sounding Portuguese phrases. I didn’t know what any of them meant.

  “What a good girl you are,” Liam said, massaging my scalp. Ruby stepped back and then Liam pressed his cock into my mouth. I didn’t know if this was choreography they practiced regularly or if all this was off the cuff, but it felt so natural, so erotically charged. I wasn’t crazy about giving blowjobs but I could have sucked both of them off for hours. There was something about being on your knees, submitting to such physical and sexual dominance. I understood all the women downstairs now, all the sultry slut girls. Was I going to become one of them? Probably not. I didn’t have the wardrobe, the personality, or the physical equipment, but this night anyway, I wanted to join the ranks of my sexy sisters and see where I ended up.

  After another couple rounds of alternating cocks, Liam lifted me and led me to the bed.

  “Bend over,” he said. I complied, shivering a little as he nudged my legs open and held down my arms. I was a little scared, but at the same time, I wanted to be fucked so badly.

  When I was posed to Liam’s satisfaction, Rubio slapped my ass a few times and parted my cheeks. He probed at my asshole while I gripped the smooth comforter. He asked Liam something in a low mutter and Liam said no. I think he’d just asked permission to assfuck me and been denied. Thank you, Liam. Instead Ruby eased his cock into my pussy.

  Liam sat in front of me, cradling my head in his lap. “Okay?” he asked, brushing my hair back.

  I checked in with myself, and yes, I was okay. Wonderfully okay. I gave myself up to the pleasure of Rubio’s thick cock parting me. Ruby braced his hands on my hips and moved inside me with the sensual rhythms of a trained dancer. This wasn’t like the times I’d fucked Liam. Then, my heart had been as involved as my head. Now, it was just about getting off—and that wasn’t a bad thing. When I moaned at an especially deep thrust, Liam shoved his cock into my mouth and then they were both fucking me and grasping at me, making deep male sounds of satisfaction.

  Bizarrely, all of it felt completely natural, like a necessary development in the progression of things. Even though they were overpowering me, it was by my choice. My consent, on my terms. This was dirty, horny craziness and I loved every second of it. I pressed back against Rubio, moving my hips, seeking more contact. I didn’t think I could come this way, and I really wanted to come.

  “Move,” said Rubio to Liam. “Let me use the bed.”

  Liam eased to the side, fisting his cock and pumping it as Ruby turned me onto my back. He parted my legs and came over me, and for a moment I felt panic, but then he slipped inside me smooth as silk, lifting my hips and manipulating me while I clung to his neck.

  Oh… He moved right over my pulsing clit and sent it singing into overdrive. Yes, yes, please. More, more, more. He hit a spot inside me that set all my limbs shaking. “Please, don’t… Please don’t stop,” I whispered. I felt Liam’s hands in my hair again, or maybe they were Ruby’s. Ruby rested his cheek against mine and I reached to stroke short dark hair rather than Liam’s long waves.

  “Oh, God. Please don’t stop.” I repeated it over and over again, squeezing my eyes shut and arching my body in abandon. I didn’t want to know who was who anymore. I didn’t care, but I still had some awareness of the different touches, the different sounds. Liam rubbed my shoulder. I knew it was Liam by the size of his hands and his long fingers. He squeezed my nipples as I ground my hips against Ruby’s, scrambling to reach the momentous climax building inside me.

  “Yes, Ash-lee. Good girl.” I opened my eyes from some faraway, sex-enraptured place and felt Rubio’s lips whisper down over mine. He kissed me tenderly at first, this complex man who used to be my idol. What was he now? My friend-with-benefits? My dominant? And why was he kissing me so gently?

  It didn’t last. By steady degrees, his lips commanded mine in a harder, deeper kiss. Liam’s fingers still pinched and caressed me, driving me wild to find release. Their soft, lurid encouragements blended together into background noise. Then Liam’s voice sharpened.

  “Jesus! Enough! Why are you kissing her like that? Like you’re in love with her or something?”

  Rubio laughed, his trademark wild laugh. I didn’t care about the kiss, didn’t care about anything except trying to come. I was so close. “Maybe I am in love with her,” I heard Rubio say.

 
I felt him grin against my cheek, then he jerked and both of them were scrambling away from me, off the bed. The bedside lamp crashed to the floor, plunging us into darkness. It took me a second to realize they were fighting, locked together, throwing punches and reeling across the room.

  “Stop,” I screamed. “Stop it!”

  “You fucking prick,” Liam growled. “You don’t care about her. You don’t love her. Don’t kiss her like that.”

  “I’ll kiss her however I fucking want to.”

  I screamed again as they tumbled to the floor. I heard fists and thuds, and hissed curses. The door flew open and Mem stood silhouetted in the light from the hall. I clutched the covers around my nakedness, not wanting him to see me in this situation. All the horny exultation I felt had dissipated into anxiety and shame. I watched as Mem pulled Liam off Rubio with a power belied by his size. When Ruby advanced, Mem held him off with one extended hand.

  “You must leave now, Mr. Rubio,” he said.

  “Both of you leave,” Liam yelled at me and Ruby over Mem’s shoulder. “Both of you, get the fuck out of my house. Get the fuck out!” He grabbed up a paper from the table behind him and tore it in his fingers. “Don’t fucking come back,” he said, flinging the pieces toward me.

  I fled, leaving the comforter behind. I found the back stairs and tripped down them in the darkness, until I came out into the noise and activity of the play room. I struggled into my bra and got tangled up pulling my dress over my head. I was crying so hard from the shock of Liam’s outburst, I couldn’t make my fingers work. Then Rubio appeared beside me, already dressed, and helped me pull the skirt down over my sore ass cheeks. We were both cast out, beating a retreat.

  “Ash-lee. Is okay. Tudo bem, querida,” he said, touching the tears on my face. “I’ll take you home.”

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no.” I broke away from him and ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I reached the first floor, I darted across the crowded living room like demons were chasing me. I heard Rubio calling out behind me but I didn’t stop. I was getting the fuck out of Liam Wilder’s house, because it was a horrible, horrible place where horrible things happened.

  This time, I was never coming back.

  Chapter Seventeen: Because, Of Course

  I came awake to the smell of coffee and the sound of dishes clattering. I blinked up at the concrete ceiling soaring above me and then across the loft apartment to the chrome-glistening kitchen. Rubio loped across my field of vision, his dog-printed pajama pants riding low on his hips.

  I sat up and stretched, and collapsed again into the comfort of his cloudlike counterpane. He was only a couple years older than me, but he had the most elegant apartment ever, and this comforter… The white cotton softness bunched up around my shoulders like a hug.

  Rubio came over and sprawled next to me. There was a faint, shadowed bruise beside his eye. “You owe me a back rub, Sleeping Beauty. I slept on the couch.”

  “That was very gentlemanly of you,” I murmured as he turned onto his side. I knew he’d slept on the couch because I’d woken from four or five nightmares of Liam screaming at me. All last night seemed like a nightmare. I barely remembered how I’d ended up at Ruby’s place. I didn’t want to remember any of it, not yet.

  Instead I concentrated on Ruby’s muscles as I squeezed and stroked the planes of his back. It didn’t feel sexual to massage him. Last night, at Liam’s house, I hadn’t really been having sex with Ruby. It was Liam I craved, Liam who still had way too much control of my heart. I’d been trying to prove to myself that I could move past him, but all I’d learned was that I still wanted him. I thought maybe he cared for me too, at least until the end, when all hell broke loose.

  “Ohhh,” Ruby sighed. “Keep going. My lower back.”

  I massaged down to knead the little dimples above his ass. “You have a really nice place,” I said, looking across to his wall-sized window.

  “Nah. Is small. I never buyed much furniture.”

  “I like it. It’s streamlined and clean-looking. I like the whole loft thing for you, although I pictured you with a bigger place. At first I thought Liam’s house was your house.”

  “Hmm.” He shuddered as I dug into the sides of his spine. “I’m not rich like Liam. Not too rich. I send most of my money to my family in Brazil. They need it more than me.”

  I knew from bios and clippings that Rubio had grown up poor, in a Rio favela, but it never occurred to me that he supported his family now. “Do you miss them?” I asked.

  He turned to me, lying back and resting his head on one arm. “I go there sometimes, when I have the time.” He stroked fingers over my tangled bed-head. “I think you have pretty black hair, like a Brazilian girl. I miss Brazil. Is hot there. Here, it’s so cold.”

  “Is that why you have these big, fluffy comforters?” I asked, squirming deeper into his nest of blankets.

  “I have them because girls like them,” he said with a grin. “Hey, you okay today? How’s your ass?”

  “It’s fine. A little tender, but I’ll live.” I couldn’t hold his gaze beyond a moment or two. “Ruby, about last night… You and me…it’s not… I can’t…”

  He made a dismissive sound. “I know. Was just playing, between friends.”

  I studied the rigid set of his mouth. “If you want to cast someone else in your ballet, I’ll understand.”

  “Why would I do that?” His pout deepened. “Really, you’re best for the part. I think all the money Liam gave me, I’m going to give it back to him. I don’t need it.”

  “He doesn’t need it either.”

  “A charity then. What charity you want, Ash-lee? You say, and I’ll give the money in your name.”

  He waited for my answer, his hand lying beside mine on the comforter. Perhaps The Great Rubio was worth my adoration after all. I thought about it, turning my cheek from his pillow. “Maybe something…some charity to help victims of child sexual abuse.”

  I never intended to reveal any of that to him. I probably wouldn’t have, if our gazes hadn’t met across the space between us. He was silent a moment, then he made a soft sound and touched my fingers. “Merda. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, looking away. “I’m better now. All of that is in the past. Liam helped me move past it for good.”

  “Oh. I wondered what was going on with you two. He never told me anything about you, nothing. But last night, I knew something bigger was going on.”

  “God, last night.” I sat up with a groan. “Thanks for letting me stay here at your place.”

  “It was my fault, last night. I was bad. I push him sometimes. He’ll get over it.”

  “He won’t get over it. He was mad at me, not you.”

  “No, he was mad at himself. He gets that way. Sometimes, in his head, he is just…” He made some scattered gesture with his fingers.

  “How long have you known Liam? How did you meet?”

  “He helped me once in a bar fight. Four or five years ago now. Protected my pretty face,” he said, breaking into a grin. “This was before he had his own play room for me to be wild in. After that, he was a friend who put up with me, and so we became closer. With guys, you know, friendship is just knowing each other. Accepting each other’s weirdness.”

  “Like last night?”

  “Last night was not about me and him.” He turned his dark, piercing gaze on me. “Until now we were always ‘bros before hos,’ but you changed him. Since you met him, he is not the same.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think he fell in love for you. I don’t think he ever loved anyone before, any woman. I know he didn’t. But now he does. Ash-lee, you know, it is really messing him up.”

  I felt a terrible pain in my soul, because I wanted so badly for that to be true. “I don’t think he loves me. I tried to get closer to him, tried to tell him how much I cared for him, but he didn’t want any part of it.”

  “But you see
how he acts? Brooding and yelling, and hanging out at the theater all the time? He wants you.”

  “Wanting and loving are different things,” I argued. “Just because we want each other doesn’t mean we should be a couple, that we’re ‘in love.’”

  “You’re wrong,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “He is in love with you. Sometimes I love you, Ash-lee, and sometimes I want you, but I am not in love with you. He is.”

  I collapsed back onto the pillows, unable to deal with his glib confession. What did love mean, anyway? “It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Liam threw me out of his house. He told me not to come back.”

  “I called you a whale once, and an asshole,” he pointed out. “I didn’t mean it. People say things they don’t mean sometimes.” He walked around the bed and pulled me to my feet. “The question is, do you love him? Enough not to listen to his mean stuff?” He patted my face. “Don’t worry about it now, girl. Was a difficult night, yes? It happens. Come have coffee. Eat something.”

  After he fed me breakfast, Rubio walked me the two blocks to my place in the late morning sun. We talked about Waking Kiss and some of the other ballets being choreographed for the showcase. Amazing that in a few months’ time Rubio had gone from an untouchable god to this…this friend. He really was my friend. I turned to him at the door to my building.

  “You know, Ruby, about last night… It was great up until the end. There was a time I would have given anything for your attention, so it was special to me. I know it was just crazy sex games to you, but I’ll always remember your kindness, and the care you took to make it good for me.”