Claire stared at her black patent leather Mary James against the stark white marble tiles that seemed to stretch from beneath her feet to the ceiling. His words echoed off the cold walls but her heart was pounding so loudly in her chest that she barely heard them.
Until his hands on her shoulders pushed her down to sit upon the edge of the tub. He shook his head as he knelt to undo her shoes. "How can you be both the smartest woman I know and the dumbest?" he asked as the first buckle came loose. He sat the shoe to one side and turned his attention to the other.
She opened her mouth to remind James that he was not the only one that felt that way. Then she remembered his warning about comparing him to Him and thought better of it.
The feel of his slightly rough hands slowly caressing the silk stockings down the length of her legs brought her back from her reverie. It was doing things to her body that she had honestly thought she was well past. Truth was that the sex she had once craved had long since stopped being a major part of her relationship with Him.
But now needs and hormones that she believed had waned away with age were raging like a forest fire fanned by the San Andres winds. She fought to control her reaction to him. To have the self-control that He had drummed into her.
This time she did not have the corset to hide the eraser hard nipples that jutted like craggy rock precipices from the cliffs of her breast. As hard as she fought it, she was powerless to stop the tiny moan that erupted from her dry throat as he lifted her foot and slipped the silk off her toes.
She kept her head down. Concentrated on following the light golden trail that seemed to cut across the white tile closest to her toes. She tried counting as she breathed. In...two, three, four. Out...two, three, four. She repeated over and over in her head as the silence stretched out across the universe.
She was naked now. Totally and completely exposed to the one friend that had known her longer than all others. The one man that knew her better than anyone. Better than herself, she reluctantly admitted to herself. She could not bring herself to lift her head, to look into his eyes. Fear and insecurity tightened her gut into knots tighter than a ball of yarn that had become her cat's new favourite play toy.
"Now undress me," he ordered as he rose to tower over her. Her neck ached at the sharp angle that her head forced it into in order to meet those grey-green pools. She shook it violently from side to side as more tendrils fell about her face. She opened her mouth to respond but no words would come out.
His eye brows arched, "You agreed to my terms, Claire. You were the one that said, 'yes, Sir,'" he reminded her. "Until I feel you are able to manage on your own, you are mine to control. Dom you through another mess of your making." A snarky smile cut across his handsome face, "And remember I know exactly how much your little sub brain gets off to washing your Dom."
Claire choked on the air that seemed thicker than road tar. She blushed even more as she remembered an email she had sent him once. He had a shitty night at work and she wanted to lift his spirit, encourage him. She had applied her writing skills to weave a web of fantasy, describing how she would meet him at the door naked. Naked as she was right now.
His large hand brushed the hair back from her face and trailed around to the back. With a strong yank, the scrunchie that had been holding it back was gone. "I see you remember too, princess." His fingers laced through the thick auburn length, twisting around his fist. Her eyes widened and blurred with tears and he tugged firmly forcing her to a standing position once more.
"Work from top to bottom. Begin with unbuttoning my shirt," he provided clear instructions that her submissive brain craved in this chaos.
She wanted to fight, but she was so tired. He was so much stronger than she was not. Not physically, that was an obvious and foregone conclusion. No, his strength came from the one place that mattered most. His soul was the dominance that called to hers. To fight that was to fight her nature. And she was much too weary to fight a war that was doomed from the beginning.
Her fingers trembled and she could not look him in the eyes, but she fumbled with the top button. It took far longer to spring free than it should have, but in the end it surrendered just as she had. The second was a bit quicker but a task that should have taken only a minute seemed to stretch out into the eternity that her Sunday school teacher had spoken of when she was little. She was not certain though if this was heaven or hell.
When she reached the top of his jeans, she tugged the cotton from the waistband. She hesitated when the final button sprang free. "Take it off, Claire," he provided the missing piece of the puzzle, her next instruction.
Her fingers slipped beneath the crisp material and her heart stuttered in her chest. Warmth and smoothness assailed her. She had spent so many nights over the last five years sleeping with her nose against His hairy chest. She had even nicknamed it her 'fuzzy pillow.'
But this was so fucking different that her brain was struggling to process it all. Young. Healthy. Virile. The words registered but seemed almost foreign somehow. Her fingers seemed disconnected from her brain as they disappeared further inside his shirt. They danced across firm muscles. They teased and toyed with him as she explored far more than was necessary to complete the simple task he had given her.
"Damn it, Claire. Stop it," he cursed as he drew in a ragged breath and shrugged his broad shoulders. The shirt slipped easily down his arms. He tugged on the sleeves and in a single motion tossed it like malodorous rubbish into a laundry basket several feet away.
He stood staring down at her for several long moments. For the first time she felt truly naked. Naked and exposed. It was not a pleasant feeling in that moment. Finally he stalked over to the glass enclosed shower. Opening the door, he turned the silver handle until water erupted and pulsated from the wide shower head. "Get. In."
Claire's feet bypassed her clouded brain until she came to stand beside him. "What about you? Didn't you want me to finish undressing you?" she stammered. She held her breath and waited.
He frowned at her for a long moment. His fingers caressed her collarbone and she closed her eyes. Ache and need that had been barely beneath the surface burst forward like the rising of the sun in the east. She arched her chest to meet his torturous touch. Her breasts jutted out in an open invitation that she was unaware she was even making.
Then she felt the tug at something around her neck. Her eyes opened to look up into his. They had become the coldest darkest grey storm clouds she had ever seen. All trace of the warm green was gone. Simply disappeared.
"Despite your obvious invitation, princess. I don't make love to another man's property. So as long as you wear this meaningless piece of metal, forget it." He pushed her under the water as if to cleanse her from the stench of a French brothel.
Warm water seemed freezing cold as the power of his words hit her like a lorry. "The least you can do is wash the stench of fags and beer from your body even if you won't wash the selfish bastard from your mind."
His fingers caressed her chin as he lifted her face to his. "Don't go making offers that you are not free to fulfill. Five years playing second fiddle to that bastard's ex-wife should have taught you that at least."
He closed the glass door and turned his back to her. "I'll wait for you in the bedroom."
The moment she heard the click of the door closing Claire collapsed to the shower floor. The warm shower spray mixed with her tears. She had cried a thousand times or more since that sunny summer morning. But not like this.
Her tears were not for the basically good but horribly flawed man that she had loved and was committed to for so long. No, this time her tears were for herself. For the pain of his denial that she herself had denied for so long. He was right, for five years she was the secondary in a polyamourous relationship which was one thing she never wanted to be. The truth was that he had used them both...her and his ex-wife. Played them against one another for his pleasure and ego.
Worse yet, the truth was she had let him. In her misguided desire to live up to the commitment she had made to him when she accepted his collar, she had allowed him to use her and abuse her trust. The hardest truth was that she had fulfilled a commitment to a piece of metal that did not mean the same thing to the man that put it on her neck as it meant to her. She had been a fool. For five years.
And she was going to be one again. She stood up and grabbed the loofah. She poured body wash on it and drank in the deep clean scent that had permeated the confines of the car. She scrubbed. Hard and long until her skin shone a rosy pink.
