The Supplicant Read online

  She lay there against him, rigid in his arms, as if she couldn't wait for the moment he would let her go. So, he did. It was his experience that most women enjoyed cuddling afterwards, but if that was not something she would enjoy, he wasn't about to force her to do it.

  She didn't quite scurry over to her side of the bed, but she made her way there quickly and efficiently, as he did to his own, and, seconds later, he heard her breathing become slow and regular, and he knew she was asleep.

  As he was not a man who slept very much, preferring work to almost anything else besides sex, he lay awake for a long while, his mind racing, this time full—not of thoughts about his next product or anything about the business, which was absolutely the norm for him, but of her, instead, and he realized with a start that—although he had absolutely no intentions of falling in love with her, he'd have to guard against becoming obsessed with her.

  Chapter 5

  Arden had no way to know it, but his mental image of what she'd done once she left him the next morning was eerily prescient, only she hadn't waited until she got home to have a breakdown. She'd managed to keep it together in front of the Lyft driver, barely, but as soon as she got behind the wheel of her own car, it was pretty much over even before the other car had left.

  As a result, the drive home, when she felt she was able to make it, was a slow, blurry, snotty mess and then she spent another half an hour in her car, in the driveway, bawling uncontrollably. It hadn't helped that, in the midst of it all, not only had her nosy neighbor decided to come "help" her, but she'd heard her phone ding, and when she checked it, it was just what she might have expected—a dry, businesslike text from him.

  To what account would you like the funds deposited?

  Just in case she didn't feel like enough of a whore and a traitor to the love of her life, he had to go and drive the idea home.

  Enough was too much for her. She turned off her phone without answering him, completely and impolitely ignored her neighbor's offer of what she considered to be assistance but was really more of a thinly veiled attempt to find things to gossip about and literally ran into her house to slam the door shut behind her—almost in Mrs. Jellison's face—leaning back against it and, for the first time in a long time, completely and utterly losing her shit.

  It was the worst crying jag she'd been on since the day he'd died, and, in a way, it was a death, of sorts, that was at nearly as deeply personal as that had been to her.

  She didn't lift her head from the bed she practically crawled to many hours later, even when she heard Syl banging on her door for the second time in less than two weeks. Of course, her friend was tenacious as all hell and when Arden didn't respond quickly enough for her, she simply walked around the side of the house to rap pugnaciously on her bedroom window.

  "C'mon, Ard, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened last night, and I promise I'll go away and leave you—for a while, anyway—after you answer one question. Are you all right, physically, at least?"

  Sylvia didn't really believe that Loch would actually cause her harm, but, like most best friends, she had been intimately familiar with the inner workings of Arden's marriage, and she was a bit worried about how certain aspects of things might have played out between her and Loch.

  Even though she knew how to phrase the question perfectly, it drew no response from inside the house.

  "Arden?"

  Sylvia wasn't known for her patience.

  "Answer me, Arden. Yes, or no. Scream it, you know I don't care. I just want to know that you're not hurt."

  Sylvia kept nattering away at her until Arden finally yelled at the top of her lungs, "Yes, you stupid bitch, leave me alone!"

  Far from taking offense, she recognized the depth of her friend's pain, replying quietly, "All right, I'm going, but you know I'll be back before long, and if you don't let me in then, I'll get the police to do a welfare check on your ass. And you know I will."

  Yes, she knew she would—she'd done it before when Arden had holed herself up in the house just after she'd lost him, sleeping on his side of the bed, wearing his clothes and doing little else but alternating between sleeping and crying for weeks on end.

  When she finally awoke and couldn't get back to sleep, the memories—of a very different sort from those she was used to this time—flooded back into her mind, driving her to get up and do something—even housework, which revealed the true depths of her desperation—in order to occupy her consciousness with thoughts of literally anything but that.

  Nothing on Netflix helped. She did all the housework she was inclined to do in a matter of about fifteen minutes, and she was too antsy to read, so she finally ended up in her tiny studio, sitting on her favorite stool and staring at a blank canvas while The Eagles harmonized beautifully in the background.

  But that was almost worse, because, as she sat there waiting for inspiration to hit her like a ton of bricks as it always did, she could see the events of the evening playing out on it, especially those most troubling ones that occurred after they had slept for a few hours.

  He had obviously awakened before she did—or perhaps he hadn't gone to sleep at all—because when she awoke in a strange bed—in his strange bed—she was alarmed to see that he was sitting up, leaning back against the headboard and watching her.

  Instantly self-conscious—which seemed to be her usual state around him—Arden sat up, clutching the sheet to her and hanging her legs over the edge of the inordinately tall bed, trying to force herself to wake up.

  "Did you sleep well?" The question was softly posed from behind her.

  She yawned loudly before clamping her hand over her mouth, answering, "I think so, thank you. And you?"

  "I don't require much sleep, and usually when I drop off, it's just after dawn, so I spent a little time working, but mostly I watched you sleep."

  That made her chuckle. "Dear God, how incredibly boring for you."

  "On the contrary. You look just as innocent in sleep as you do normally."

  "Innocent, huh?"

  "Yes, it's a vibe you have about you, probably somewhat inspired by your tragic loss," Loch watched her shoulders straighten at his deliberate mention of that. "But you could be a dime a dance hooker and you'd have them lined up for you, because you always seem a bit detached, untouched, unsullied by grasping, grabbing male hands, no matter how dirty those hands are or the depraved acts they might force you to perform."

  At that interesting little character analysis, Arden stood.

  "Where are you going?"

  She turned to him, keeping her hands at her sides when he knew that her instinct must have been to hide her nudity from him. Yes, someone had trained her well, indeed.

  "You haven't told me the rules yet. Do I need your permission to use the bathroom?"

  "Not unless I tell you that expressly, no, you do not. But I don't want doors shut between us."

  She inclined her head a bit in acknowledgement of his order, one she'd had no problem obeying when it had been instituted previously, but this was a very different situation than that, and he was a very different man from whom she was used to.

  On her way to the bathroom, she leaned down to pick up her dress, intending to put it on as a surrogate nightgown until she heard his quiet, "No," and dropped it again.

  When he heard that she was done, he appeared in the doorway. "There are new toothbrushes in the middle drawer, along with toothpaste, mouthwash and dental floss."

  "Thank you."

  When she had completed her ablutions, he came to stand behind her, his tan arm a dark stripe across her tummy as he pulled her back against him. He was rock hard, of course—he had been since she'd awakened, although, until now, he hadn't seemed very inclined to do anything about it.

  Their eyes met in the mirror, but she quickly looked down. Arden had never been very happy about looking at herself naked, so she generally avoided doing so. But it appeared she was no longer going to be allowed to do that, at least not
when she was with him.

  Without a word, his free hand came up to lift her chin so that she was again looking him in the eye, unable to ignore the picture they made together as he proceeded to hold it there, fingers extended around and down her throat, his hand so big that the tip of his pinky finger rested on her clavicle, a living collar in contrast to the other one she was still wearing, even now.

  She was forced to watch as those other fingertips—which she was surprised to realize were quite rough—were dragged over every inch of her flesh, raising goosebumps in their wake, tweaking nipples that were already—to her great embarrassment—tight and hard, flicking and pinching and twisting them as she stood there, corralled between his ever spread legs, the unmistakable differences in their sizes starkly displayed as he towered over her and continued to fondle her breasts, alternating between milking her gently and wrenching her sensitive nipples in directions they really didn't want to go, making her whimper and pant and moan softly with the discomfort, although she never overtly showed any signs of the pleasure he inspired within her.

  He moved abruptly, inserting his feet between hers, kicking her legs open so wide she could feel her inner folds part, that hand drifting slowly down over her trembling tummy as he watched the uncontrollable reactions to what he was doing playing across her face, since she seemed reluctant to let him know that he was making her feel anything but pain.

  But she couldn't hide her responses from him for long—he would make damned sure about that.

  She was just as wet for him as she had been last night, and he couldn't suppress a proud, possessive growl when he discovered it again, loading his fingers up with her slick, then positioning the outside ones so that he could splay her lips apart, using the middle three to coat the little nub that they could both see was already swollen and eager and aching for him to do exactly what he was poised to do.

  But still, when he touched her there, she jumped, although he was holding her so tightly that she didn't move much when she did, legs held wide around his, arms trapped at her sides, literally surrounded by his tall, muscled self, chin still held forcibly high, and she didn't need to test his strength to know he wasn't going to allow her to put it down again until he was through with her.

  "Stay still." The command was crisply given, designed to shock her a bit in a different way.

  Arden felt completely exposed and frighteningly helpless, watching those big fingers having their way with her. It was a picture of herself she'd never seen before—an obscene, lurid, purely sexual one—as she saw herself being touched for the first time in excruciating detail, his mouth nibbling with surprising gentleness at the curve of her neck as he worried her little button mercilessly.

  And he'd carefully left her with no way to deny how he was making her feel. She'd been stripped bare and was being held open and vulnerable, captive against him as he dragged her relentlessly towards that precipice. Physically, she'd long since lost the battle. Her emotions were unwanted and, therefore, moot. But her mind—her only real weapon of resistance against him—was mesmerized by the sight of what he was doing to her, reveling in the feeling of his powerful, hairy thighs where they were pressed against her still very sore behind and the mesmerizing sight of her clit swelling beneath those insistent, talented fingers.

  Arden made a last-ditch effort to regain some modicum of control, rising onto her tiptoes, which moved her a few inches away from his hand, allowing a few seconds of respite she desperately needed.

  What she didn't need was to be almost released but then manhandled into bending over the vanity counter with her head held down, cheek laid against the cool marble, as he yanked her hips back, kicked off a leather slipper and brought the stiff sole down onto her backside.

  He found her shrieks—of outrage or pain, he didn't much care—thoroughly satisfying, echoing around the big bathroom as he roasted her cheeks to a beautiful shade of deep, angry red in a relatively few short minutes, then drove her beyond, until he felt she had learned her lesson.

  "Stay. Still," he cautioned firmly, still holding the sole against her throbbing skin.

  Then Arden found herself right back where she had been, only this time, when she was forced to look at herself in the mirror, she wasn't panting from desire but from pure misery. Her eyes were swollen and red, her face wet with tears, and she had to come to grips with the hard fact that her resistance—such as it was—had crumbled in an embarrassingly short amount of time as he reclaimed every bit of her, slipping those rough pads over a clit that she could practically see rose shamelessly, greedily, to greet his touch.

  The words slipped past her lips almost without her knowing she'd said them as she felt herself growing closer and closer to what she knew was going to be an incredibly powerful orgasm that she truly did not want to experience. In her mind, that that was an even worse betrayal of her dear husband than allowing Loch to discipline her.

  "Please—don't," she whispered, and he saw her look of stark disbelief when she heard herself say them out loud.

  All her plea earned her was a broad, wicked smile. "That's it, baby. I love to hear you beg. I know you know better than to beg me not to punish you, because a dom's gotta do what a dom's gotta do. Most women don't beg not to come, though. But then, you're really not most women, are you? You're a very special case. It must be hard for you to deal with the fact that I'm going to make you come uncontrollably, just like I'd imagine you've been made to before, that your body is going to respond to me even though there's no love between us, whether you want it to or not." He increased the rhythm of the way he was stroking her, and he could tell by the tense way in which she was holding her body that she was seconds away from oblivion. When he knew it was absolutely imminent, he pressed his mouth to her ear, whispering, "I'm not your lover. I'm not your husband. I'll never be your husband. I'm your dom. I'm just the man you agreed to submit to for money—"

  She screamed when she finally came, one long, sustained, angry word.

  "No!"

  And that was the moment when she began to actively fight him.

  But, in a physical battle with him, she would always lose, and he made sure she realized it, holding her tight and never letting her puny efforts make him miss a single stroke, wringing as many screaming, writhing orgasms from her in a row as he could before he bent her over and beat her ass hard again for resisting him.

  At the last, he pulled her none too gently up, turned her around and slammed her against the nearest cold, tile wall, reaching under her thighs to lift her above him, so that her cunt was at mouth level, those small, slender legs parted over his shoulders so that he could make her obviously exhausted body comply with his desires again. Not that she didn't still want to fight him—despite the punishment she'd just received—but her precarious position made it even less possible than ever to get away from him, so she found herself hurled into another long string of violent climaxes that had her clutching at him—his hair, his shoulders—anything to steady her in the sea of sensuality into which he had flung her with nothing and no one to help keep her afloat—culminating in him sliding her down his body to be caught and hung by gravity alone on his spike of a cock that felt as if it was splitting her in two, but she was too tired to continue resisting him in any form and he took her savagely, one hand around her hips to hold her in place and the other wrapped tightly around her throat.

  And he didn't let her escape her own pleasure, even then, not letting up until he felt her spasm hard around his cock before he allowed himself his own release, dissolving immediately to the floor afterwards in a controlled slump, careful to make sure she wasn't hurt on the somewhat unexpected and decidedly inelegant way down.

  And those were far from the only times he had her that night. He allowed her to sleep it off for a while, but she found herself subjected to his demanding attentions probably five times in less than twelve hours and, to her surprise, only a few of which involved satiating his own needs. The rest of the time, as if he just loved pr
oving to her that he could, he brought her off. Slow. Fast. Easy. Hard. But always pushing her past her own natural—and deliberate—intransigence to the point where she couldn't help but scream out her pleasure while he skillfully piled even more on top of it.

  The man was good.

  Dangerously, devastatingly good, she mused from her perch on the stool, staring blankly at the virginal canvas.

  She still hadn't moved until, moments later, she heard yet another round of loud knocking at her door.

  "Jesus H. Christ, since when do I live in Grand fucking Central fucking Station?" she muttered, making her way to the foyer again, to yell like a fishwife, "I told you to go the fuck away!"

  There was a pause—a much longer one than Sylvia would have allowed—before she heard, "You didn't tell me to go the fuck away."

  And he sounded very much as if that was something that she would do well never to attempt.

  But, of course, she had to say it, anyway. "Loch, go the fuck away."

  "Look, I texted you this morning because I don't know where to send the money. I told you that I would get it to you the next day, and I really prefer to keep my word."

  "I hereby absolve you of the need to do that. Now go the fuck away."

  He stood on her doorstep, not really wanting to discuss the particulars of their arrangement in front of her neighbors. And he'd received a worried call from Sylvia, so he'd come over not just to get that information—which he did want—he hated loose ends—but to make sure that she was all right.

  "Arden, I want you to come to the door."

  "Three words, Frazier. Off. The. Clock. Care to guess what my next four are going to be? Shall I hum the Jeopardy theme while you guess?"

  With that, she turned and walked back to her studio, her heart beating furiously in her chest for no reason that she could fathom. She was under no obligation to him whatsoever. She hadn't signed anything, he hadn't paid her, and her obligation to him as a sub had ended this morning.