Page 47 of Salt Kiss
“Please,” I whimper into his kiss. “Please, sir.”
“If you can come like this, then you may,” he says, his lower body flexing and flexing. Sweat is wet between our chests and stomachs and is damp on my forehead. I can’t tell the difference between the smell of the rain outside and the smell of him. All there is, all there can be, is him.
I come, my back bowing, my mouth falling open in a silent gasp, the release tearing up my thighs, vicious and biting for all the times it’s been denied. My erection swells against Mark’s and then begins spurting warm jets of cum between us, slicking the way for him to fuck against me even harder, even faster.
He slides both arms underneath me—one under my neck, the other under my waist—and bites my jaw as his hips give a few rough thrusts and then go completely still.
Warm release spills, adding to what’s already there, and with him pressed all the way to the top of me, his mouth against my jaw, I feel everything. His harsh breath, his moving ribs.
The shivering tension in his thighs and stomach as his cock finishes jerking between us.
For a minute, we stay just like this, the ejaculate trapped between our bodies, our hearts trying to collide through our chests. Rain coming down in loud, wet whispers just outside the open door.
And then he lifts himself enough to look down at me, to run a thumb over my swollen mouth. His expression is rueful.
“There go all my careful plans,” he says.
I have no idea what plans he means, but I know he was right in Singapore when he said this would complicate things. How could it not?
But also how could I resist?
He unties me and checks my wrists and ankles, even though the bonds had been expertly tied: tight enough to restrain but not so tight that I lost sensation in my toes and fingers. I’m once again reminded that there is a reason why he might be good at tying people up that has nothing to do with fun afternoons and romantic Cornish rain.
He has me sit up, gives me a glass of cool water. “How do you feel?” he asks.
I stare at him, knowing I need to speak but finding that the words are floating just out of reach. But the dizzy, well-used thrum in my body needs only a few words. “The fucking best,” I say honestly, and that surprises a laugh out of him. Not a dark one, not a mean one, but something unplanned and delighted. It comes from deep in his chest.
“You’re high,” he says finally. “On endorphins. You can’t be trusted.” He gets off the bed and takes the glass from me, setting it on a small tray he’d brought in. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
In the shower, he’s just as imperial with my body as he was on the library floor. He has me stand with my feet spread so that he can run the warm washcloth up and down the inside of my thighs, the valley of my ass, the soft place just behind my balls. He pays close attention to the aching furl of muscle that he made such use of earlier; he’s careful when he cleans my abused cock, forgoing the cloth to wash me with only a soapy palm. I’m hard almost instantly from this, even though ithurts—it hurts to have an erection after being aroused all day, and the soap stings the sensitive skin. He only snorts to himself when I twitch and stir in his grip, but he doesn’t let me come.
He washes my hair, my hands, the bottoms of my feet until I make sharp, sucked-in laughs against the tile, and then once I’m finally clean, he turns me so that my back is against the wall.
“Stay,” he commands, like I’m a dog that will start shaking out its fur the minute it can, but I don’t mind—it’s a relief to know exactly what to do. Not to have to wonder if I’m supposed to get out or if I’m supposed to clean him the same way he just cleaned me.
All I’ll have to do is listen, and I’ll do the right thing. After what happened in Carpathia, I could nearly cry from the simplicity of an equation like that.
Besides, it’s a lovely view, watching Mark wash himself. Suds track over the ridge of his collarbone and down the faint corrugations of his stomach. The hair on his chest is darker when it’s wet, lying flat, as is the line down his stomach and the hair on his thighs. His penis, even flaccid, is thick and heavy looking, lightly veined. His testicles have lowered in the heat of the shower, some swing to them as he scrubs himself with utilitarian brevity, and his nipples have flattened. I wonder how long it would take for them to stiffen against my tongue or fingertips.
He washes his hair, the motions efficient, not for show, but it doesn’t matter, it’s still a show for me, because it’s him and his body is a work of art under the running water. The muscles, the neatly inked tattoos. The wet arch of his throat and gleaming rise of his cheeks.
The hair—longer when wet, longer than I thought. Long enough that I could spend hours stroking it if he ever let me.
I try not to think about this specific shower, though, or even this specific house. This house with its sweater and rose tucked into a bottom drawer, this house where Mark comes on some sort of yearly pilgrimage to lock himself inside the library and drink. I don’t think I’m the first person to be in this shower with Mark, nor the first to be tied to the bed in the other room.
And I promised myself that I was content being physically available to Mark with no emotional attachment. No matter how hard I fell for him, I wouldn’t expect him to reciprocate, and I’d plan on being alone in whatever cyclone of emotions this churned up. And the promise would of course preclude jealousy because how could I be jealous of someone who owned a club for fucking? Who fucked people on his desk like it had been penciled onto his daily agenda?
But I find thin tendrils of jealousy twisting in my rib cage anyway, because if the man in the picture is the reason Mark comes here every year—if the memory of the man in the picture is worth that—then he must have meant so much to Mark. Been so much for him.
I want to be that much for him.
Ridiculous.
The shower stops, and Mark pulls me out onto a small rug to towel me off. I blink at the abrupt brush of cool air, and then I find myself swaying. He catches me easily with both hands, grabbing me by the shoulders and holding me so he can study my face.
I blink back at him. Water is dripping from the ends of his hair onto his shoulders.
“How do you feel now?” he asks.
