With Hearts Aflame: Valentine's Day Box Set Page 9

  One last step. If he tipped his leg slightly, his knee could easily have touched hers. He wouldn’t even need to stretch to reach her. All he had to do was lift his arm, and oh God, but that’s exactly what he did.

  Her knees dipped all over again as his fingers wandered up the outside slope of her thigh to her hip, following the dip of her waist across the flinching plain to her navel. He circled once, his eyes flicking up to hers with a lazy blink, before he angled his head and returned to his lazy exploration. When his gaze dropped back down, his fingers dropped too. And dropped and dropped straight down from her bellybutton right to the reddish line of neatly trimmed hair that guarded her mons.

  He played in curls barely long enough for him to pinch and then tug, and then his fingers dropped further still.

  Sinclair caught her breath. Her eyes closed as he traced the folds of her labia back between her thighs, but they just couldn’t stay that way. Particularly not when he said, “Look at me.”

  Trembling, she obeyed.

  Sliding his finger back and forth along the seam, he invaded, sliding first one, then two, and then—filling her so full she lost her composure to a breathy moan—three. Three thick fingers that instantly began to move, short in and out thrusts that made her fight to hold her hips still. She almost lost that fight, except that he stopped and withdrew his hand. His fingers glistened, so mortifyingly wet.

  “Touch your pussy for me,” he said, stealing a taste of her from his own fingertip. She hadn’t known until right then that such a sight could be so arousing.

  Sinclair placed her hand over her mons, not touching so much as hiding behind her hand.

  Parker noticed and cocked his eyebrow at her in warning. It was the kind of look that made her stomach clench in and quiver, like a tuning fork being struck.

  Spreading her fingers, Sinclair stroked herself.

  “Show me,” was all he said, but his gentle tones were growing thicker. She didn’t know how it could be possible, but that tent in the front of his pants seemed to grow thicker too.

  She could still feel everywhere he’d touched her burning as if his hand was still there. Sinclair let her fingers become his. She opened herself, showing him all the hot pinkness where she ached for him to touch. Her clit felt a thousand times more sensitive than it should have. With his gaze closely following the silken glide of her circling caresses, she peeled back her flesh with one hand and began to pet and stroke, tiny circling motions that made it so hard to stay standing and still. She’d never done anything so sinful or seductive in all her life. Masturbating was something one should only do when alone and in the dark, and it was never, ever admitted to because it was a shameful act.

  Except that, she wasn’t alone now, and it was nowhere near dark enough to hide her trembling, and there were a lot of things she was feeling at this moment, and shame just wasn’t one of them.

  “Good girl. Very, very good.” No longer willing to be just an observer, Parker pushed her hands aside. He caught her clit between two fingers, holding her captive while his thumb continued the same circular gliding motion she had started.

  “Oh.” Breathe. She struggled to stand still and not to let her legs buckle or her hands catch at his to stop this tender assault too soon. Her breaths became tight little pants. “Mm!” She locked her lips, turning the soft cry into little more than mews, but she couldn’t be quiet any more than she could be still.

  He stopped, pushing in, pinching her clit between his fingers and holding on while her hips twitched. She had to fight not to buck or grind against him, or push his hand out of the way and fall to her knees right there and find her own completion. How could he take her so far, right to the edge of it like this, then just stop? Didn’t he know what he was doing to her?

  Except that it was right there in the laughing grey depths of his eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing and he was doing it on purpose.

  For the first time, he picked the paddle up off his knees. “Lay over my lap.”

  Was he actually going to do that now, spank her? Just like the bad little girl he’d once playfully called her. Just like in the pictures she’d seen on the internet, some of them taken right here at this very Castle. And not just that, but with the paddle she had bought herself, and handed right to him because of all those pictures she had seen and because she so badly wanted him to like her. She was crazy. Insane! Completely out of her mind and yet she laid her hands upon his thighs and bent right over his lap. Settling awkwardly into place, she braced her hands against the floor and stretched her legs out behind her. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She stared wide-eyed at the hard stone floor while her stomach flipped into knot after knot and her clit pulsed and throbbed and her nipples thrilled at the back and forth sway of the dangling clamps, and Parker’s naked hand came to rest on the equally naked swell of her right bottom cheek.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist to steady her, the heat of that hand skimming under her belly, straining to reach down between her legs, past the curls in search of her clit again.

  “Ha!” It was the most unladylike sound, somewhere between a laugh, a gasp and a caw, but she just wasn’t capable of anything else. Not when he gripped her like that, capturing her in a much rougher hold and yet one that felt indescribably good. Possessive. Like her clit belonged to him and he’d only just loaned it to her for the evening.

  He adjusted her legs, pushing the right one completely off his lap and hooking it between his in a way that had her hips balanced only on his left thigh. She could kick, but only with one leg, and no matter how she moved, she couldn’t close them at all. He could see everything right now, every hidden inch of her.

  “P-Parker?”

  “First names are for friends, and you are not my friend tonight.” She jumped when the soft padded side of the paddle fondly brushed her bottom. “You will call me Master Parker, Master or Sir, is that understood?”

  Not really, but she was having a hard time concentrating just now. “Yes. Yes, Sir.”

  He caressed her with the paddle, rubbing the faux fur down the back of one thigh and up as much as he could reach of the other. “Hold your bottom still for me, sweetness. You’ve been a very good girl and have made me very happy, so this is going to be a fun reward for us both.”

  His fingers massaged her clit when he said that, making her bottom first jump and then hump. She tried to stop it, her hands flying up off the floor to grab onto his thigh again.

  “Get back in position,” he told her.

  Flustered, she obeyed, feeling the brush of coolness on her bottom when he flipped the paddle over and instead of fake fur, the caress of stiff leather moved over her. It followed the same caressing pattern, covering first the surface of her bottom before moving down, skimming the backs of each leg in turn before returning to her tensing nether cheeks.

  “I don’t like this paddle,” he said, giving her the first gentle slap. The impact was barely more than a tap, but she still jumped. “Not that there’s anything at all wrong with the paddle you selected.” He spanked one side of her bottom and then the other, catching the lowest part of the curve and rolling with his fingers upon her captured clit. “I simply don’t think this paddle is right for you.”

  She grabbed his leg again. “Oh! Ooooh! W-wait…”

  He flipped the paddle again. “You’ve got a gorgeous ass, Sinclair.”

  He gave her a series of padded swats. It was nothing but sensation, pressure on the lowest curve of her bottom that set every nerve ending sparking wildly to life. Each smack raced from the place of impact straight to the rolling caress of his fingers; her hips refused to hold still. They rolled too, trying to ride his fingers.

  “Beautiful well-behaved young ladies, like yourself—” He flipped the paddle yet again, bring the cool leather back to her skin. “—deserve to be spanked by hand.”

  That wasn’t what she felt, though, in the next crisp slap—not hard, not really. Just enough to make her catch her breath—
or was that his fingers that did that, caressing in those endless circles that made her hips rock in endless circles right along with him? Her skin prickled a little, until he spanked again and then it prickled a lot.

  “Paddles are cold.” Another spank, harder this time; she jumped, tossing her head, her hair falling down in a cascade of red curls upon her back. “Stern.” Two more, firecracker fast now, bouncing off each juddering cheek in turn, and Sinclair kicked, trying to tuck both feet up high enough to protect her now stinging bottom. It felt like nothing she was prepared for, and although that sting certainly held the recognizable possibility of pain, his rolling, massaging, caressing fingers stole the bite right out of it.

  “Oh my God.” She grabbed his leg fiercely now, unable not to touch him, needing to be anchored somehow because she just didn’t know how to anchor herself.

  “Put your foot down.” He moved around it easily enough, as she could only get one leg up high enough to truly hinder him, and gave her bottom the briskest slap yet. “You don’t want me to have to spank you for real, do you?”

  Another slap, this one putting the displeasure of a dozen angry hornets right under the surface of her bottom, Sinclair snapped her feet back to the floor. “Ouch! Ow!”

  Parker put the paddle aside. “Like I said—” His warm hand came to rest on her equally warm and tingling bottom. “—I don’t think paddles are right for you. This feels better, doesn’t it?”

  His open hand traced a lazy figure-eight across the whole of both nether cheeks. His other, busy between her thighs, wasn’t lazy at all. It was driving her mad! She couldn’t take this! He had her right there, right at the very edge and his fingers kept moving, kept stroking, and when he spanked—

  “Oh!” She snapped one hand back, jacking as far up as his hold would let her get. She tried to get her feet back up to protect her, but it was the wrong hand doing the worst of the attacking. Her hips bucked, humped, rode, and his next few spanks only seemed to make the pleasure sharper, more raw, more intense. “Please, no! Oh!”

  She shouted, the heat of his hand setting her bottom right back to stinging in only a few swats, except that he didn’t stop with only a few. He put fire and hornets in every inch of her. He made it hurt, but it felt good too and she didn’t want it to stop. She tried to snap her legs together; she tried even harder to get them wider apart, to go ahead and let him see her and touch her and just please get inside her. She didn’t want to block his hands, either of them, but if he didn’t stop she was going to come flying apart at the very seams!

  “Stop, stop!” She tried to grab his hand, but he evaded and then both of his hands became crueler.

  He punished her clit with a pinch, but that only made the pressure and pleasure explode from the inside out. His spanking hand began a wild tattoo, paddling rigorously back and forth, from one buttock to the other. He made her buck. He made her scream. He made her cum with his hand painting her bottom a hot and vibrant pink from the crack of her ass all the way down onto the back of her thighs. It would be hours yet before she stood in front of a mirror to see the full extent of the damage he was doing now, but she could feel the burning. It laved her bottom in molten waves. Heat where he spanked her, where he rubbed and circled and pinched, where the teeth of both nipple clamps bit into her aching, pulsing, bouncing breasts. She couldn’t hold still. She couldn’t stop climaxing. Her womb spasmed, assaulted by wave after wave that scalded up through her sex and ripped the groaning shouts right out of her throat.

  She was babbling, humping her ass on his knee, riding the fingers he plowed into her now, fucking her with growling aggression that only intensified with every word she cried. It wasn’t until later, when she lay limp and damn near comatose over his lap, with his fingers no longer fucking but once more stroking soothing, lazy, comforting circles in the weepy aftershocks of her release, that she came back to herself enough to realize what she had whimpered, indeed, what she was whimpering still, was “…yes, Master… please, yes, Master… don’t stop… Master, please, oh please… don’t stop…”

  “Fucking gorgeous,” Master Parker said from somewhere far above her.

  Tomorrow, maybe, Sinclair might be mortified by what had just happened, but for now, she just didn’t have the strength.

  Chapter TEN

  Thursdays were usually her best and busiest days. That was the day the local high school varsity teams took their games to other schools. Win or lose, they always stopped on the way back into town for pizza and video games at the restaurant two blocks down, and at least a dozen or so kids would habitually ditch their chaperones and dash to her shop for a bag or two (or ten), of candy to share on the bus ride back to school. Today, however, things were oddly different.

  At fifteen to three (the usual time), six kids entered her store—nowhere near the group she was accustomed to seeing, but she thought perhaps this might only be the first wave and the rest would follow momentarily. That hope was startlingly dashed only seconds later when a harried mother came charging through the door and ordered the boys back out again. She made them put all the candy they’d picked up back where they’d got it from, and just before she left, she turned and gave Sinclair the most scathing look.

  “You should be ashamed,” she hissed, and herded the youths back to the pizza parlor, scolding them as she went.

  Standing at her register, Sinclair didn’t know what to think. What had that been for? The tiniest hint of cold dread twined through her gut. She wanted to believe she didn’t know, but she was afraid she actually might. Casey hadn’t come in that day, not to dig for more information or even to gloat. Casey knew a lot of people, some of whom had influential, gossip-prone friends, but those friends also knew Sinclair. She’d grown up here. She knew these people and they knew her. Surely… surely, this wasn’t because of the Castle… was it?

  Sinclair shut that awful thought from her mind. She spent the day minding her empty store. She finished capping off all truffles and hearts and wrapped each one in twists of pink, white and red foil. Over nine hundred pieces in each flavor—over 2700 twists of foil, plus extras. It took all day, interrupted only twice—once by the kids who were almost immediately hustled right back out of her store, and once by two men who came in together. They browsed the displays, stealing glances at her whenever they thought she wouldn’t notice, laughed in low voices back and forth, and just when she thought she might have to pull on her Big Girl Catches the Shoplifters Panties, they each selected a couple candy bars and brought them to the counter. One tried to pick her up while she was ringing up the sale.

  “What do you say?” he’d asked. “A little pizza, a little beer… I’ve got handcuffs.”

  His friend smacked his arm and laughed.

  Sinclair’s dread grew icy teeth. It wasn’t just twisting inside her now, it was chewing. She felt sick with it, so appalled that it was happening at all that she couldn’t even think to throw them out. The men left their money on the table (one had tried to tuck the bills into her shirt, but she jerked back just in time) and then they departed, pretty much the same way they’d come in, laughing.

  If she could have stepped without her shaky knees buckling under her, she’d have run after them far enough to lock the front door. She’d have flipped both signs from open to closed and she’d have spent the rest of the day… what? Hiding in the store room?

  Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Could she be blowing things out of proportion? The chaperone with the kids, yeah, that was probably Casey, but the men? Single guys leered at attractive women all the time. It didn’t often happen to her because she spent almost all her time either working here or crashed out at home in preparation for the next day of working here. That their leer had mean overtones meant nothing more than they were mean-spirited people and she was better off not knowing either one of them.

  It was just being a really rotten day, she told herself, that’s all. It would get better. Especially once she got to the Castle tonight. The thou
ght of seeing Parker again made her feel measurably better, even knowing what lay in store. There was only one item left in his game of “Pick Your Pleasure.” Her whole body tingled, but she honestly didn’t know if it were from the embarrassment of knowing he was going to do… that… to her, or if it were anticipation.

  She had to get back to work. If she didn’t occupy herself somehow she’d never survive until the end of the day. At least, this morning she’d remembered to put on something sexy. It had required another run out to Crystal Dolphin’s, but she found the perfect thing: matching bra and panties, lacy, slinky, sexy as hell, and she absolutely could not wait until he told her to strip so she could model it just for him.

  Who would have guessed sweet little Maybe Sinclair, owner of a candy store, could be such a freak? But she was, and it tickled her! She loved nipple clamps. She loved being spanked. Maybe by the end of the night she’d love anal plugs too. She honestly didn’t know, but she could barely stand the wait for six o’clock to roll around so she could close up shop and watch for that innocuous white Castle van to pick her up and sweep her back to Parker. His hands, his arms… his mouth. Oh, that sinful mouth and all the things it had done to her!

  Sinclair threw herself back into her work, packing up tote after plastic tote of champagne truffles and foil-wrapped hearts, baking and cleaning supplies, everything she’d need to set up tonight’s party-readying labors and keep her from having to dwell on how many times Parker had made her cum for him, all with his cock frustratingly locked behind the leather fly of his breeches and out of her reach. It didn’t work really, but time still passed and before she knew it, there were only ten little minutes until closing time.

  A car pulled up to the curb, and the instant she saw sunlight refract across the storefront windows, Sinclair felt nothing but sheer excitement launch from the soles of her feet all the way up to her heart. Except that it wasn’t the van. It wasn’t a customer either, so Sinclair was able to relax again.