Chapter Six

Those big hands rubbed her back and held her tightly while she did her best to get her mind straight again in the aftermath, but she was only really able to get it some of the way back to sanity. He was a terrible distraction, even though he wasn't touching her sexually in the least, and the spanking had made that a-zillion times worse.

"Wh-why did you spank me, Sabin?" she asked, when she finally could.

"Sir," he corrected gently.

"Sir." He was glad to realize that he didn't detect any hesitance in her to call him that.

He confirmed her suspicions with his next sentence. "I know you want to talk to me about our relationship, and I thought you needed a bit of a reminder of what a major component of it would be."

To her surprise, he moved them both then, cradling her gently as he spread them out onto the floor together. But he took the bottom position for himself, thinking that his weight on her on a floor—no matter how thickly carpeted—was likely going to hurt her. Honey ended up straddling him this time, legs extremely wide around his still pants clad waist.

Sabin made short work of her panties, and removed her skirt and pretty flowered shirt all together, dispensing with her bra in the same pile, which he threw to one side in favor of running those enormous palms over what he had revealed to himself, but only for a short moment, even as Honey couldn't stop herself from arching her head back, eyes closed, and pressing her breasts wantonly into his hands.

Then she felt him lift her a bit, with one hand, looking down to realize that he had unzipped his pants just enough to let his thick, rigid cock loose. Otherwise, he was still fully clothed, his dick in his other hand, holding it straight and stiff at her entrance.

"All at once, my dear. Just like I took you last night. To the hilt, in one," he ordered, letting go of her.

She did it—it still wasn't easy to take him like that, and she doubted it ever would be—but she did it, and her revenge was the uncontrolled groan he emitted, when she was finally full of him, that would have echoed the one she barely managed to contain.

Even as her body was still trying to adjust itself to him, Honey leaned forward, planting her hands on the floor next to his broad shoulders, intending to ride him and tease him mercilessly while she used him for her own pleasure.

But then those long arms snaked around her, folding her arms to her sides and holding her completely still, as she found, instead, that he was doing to her what she had intended to do to him.

Sabin leaned his head up a bit to whisper in her ear, while his cock never missed a beat as he plunged relentlessly into her, and she was no freer than she had been, "Remember, my dear, who is the submissive, and who is the dominant."

With that, he managed to keep her upper body clamped to him with one arm, while his other hand reached down to cup, then squeeze, each very sore cheek in turn, which made her squeal and try to get away from his touch, understandable impulses that he very much enjoyed subduing. Then his fingers followed that natural line from her bottom hole to where they were connected.

She detested the ill-concealed triumph in his words. "I knew you'd be sopping wet, my girl. Even a hard spanking, turns you on; I'll remember that," he vowed.

Terribly conflicted, Honey desperately wanted him to move his other hand around to the front of her, where she felt it would do much more good, but he didn't. Instead, he used it to begin spanking her again.

She heaved and grunted and gave it her all, again, trying to avoid the swats—any swat—but all she got for her efforts was a deep chuckle from him.

When the smacks slowed and finally stopped, his finger found that spot again and he groaned at what he discovered. "Even wetter than before, my girl. Much wetter than before, my naughty minx."

Despite what he said, and how her body was reacting, she needed his fingers on her in order to come, and she didn't get them until he needed just a handful of strokes in and out of her to finish, not giving her anywhere near enough stimulation. As he growled and spurted himself into her, fingers leaving her hanging, she groaned for an entirely different reason. Her lower body was inflamed in several stark ways, and yet she'd had no resolution for those deep, achy feelings whatsoever.

As she lay stretched out atop him, one of his arms still wrapped around her as he relaxed, she was feeling horribly frustrated, and she was determined to rectify the situation as she grabbed his other arm.

Sabin looked at her curiously, wondering what she was about.

Then she took his hand and put it between her legs.

"Yes, I've felt how wet you are, Honey," he said, letting his hand fall when she let go of it.

"Don't be obtuse, Sabin! Touch me! You didn't get me off!"

She was beginning to hate his deep chuckles. They seemed to grow more evil, the more intimate they became.

"I know I didn't, sweetie."

"But why not?" she pouted.

Seconds later, they were lying on her bed together, on their sides, facing each other, and she tried again to get him to put his hand between her legs so that she could find some bit of satisfaction, but he wouldn't even let her pull it close to that area of her body. "I suggest you cease and desist, Honey."

She dropped his hand as if it was plague covered at that unvarnished warning, stating in a huff, "Fine. I'll take care of myself, then."

Before she could roll onto her back, her arms were trapped behind her as he pulled her against him.

"Let! Me! Go!"

"No," he stated quietly. "You've mentioned several times that you thought we should talk about what happened between us and what it means for us in the future, and I agree with you."

Her eyes went wide. "I don't want to talk like this! I meant sitting up, fully clothed in your living room or a restaurant or something, with five or seven orgasms under my belt, so to speak."

His grin at her choice of words faded quickly. "Yes, well, that's not what I meant. I think you'll see things a lot more clearly from your current position—frustrated, spanked, naked, and held tightly in my arms."

Damn the man! Everything he listed was going to make it that much harder for her to think, much less come up with cogent reasons why they should go back to just being friends. Just the fact that he was still clothed, while she was utterly bare, held more power against her than she wanted to acknowledge, even without the rest of what he'd listed that didn't work in her favor, either.

"Sabin!"

He caught her eye, looking at her sternly. "Sir, and the next time you forget it, you're going to wish you hadn't, Honey." How he could manage to make her feel so submissive to him without ever raising his voice, she would never know, although she knew the untenable, utterly defenseless position he'd so carefully arranged for her to be in didn't help.

"So? What did you think of our night together, hmm?"

Honey squirmed and wiggled as much as she could within the confines of his embrace, which wasn't much. "I, uh, it was nice."

His head jerked back, mouth open, looking at her in open disbelief. "Nice?"

Sabin sounded as if she had said he was a horrible lover, which was far from the truth.

She opened her mouth to disabuse him of that notion but was struck by a genius thought. Perhaps that was a way to get back at him for the way he was manipulating her now.

So, as best she could, which wasn't easy considering how muddled her head was at the moment, Honey gave off a disaffected air while carefully not meeting his eyes. "Yeah. It was all right."

At first, he was downright appalled by what she'd said—close to apoplectic. Had she been in the same bed with him that night? Had it all been one of his frequent, fevered dreams about her?

No. It hadn't. She'd cried afterwards, for fuck's sake. Twice. That was never something he would have imagined. He'd gotten her into such a tizzy that she'd felt she had to leave rather than talk to him about what was happening with her—them—again, nothing he'd ever envisioned.

Something about how she was acting now made him suspicious, and all he had to do was catch her chin and make her look at him. Her cheeks flushed a telltale red as soon as she did.

"It was only so-so for you. I see," he murmured, reaching down between them to slide a finger into her groove, which was still soaking wet. "I'm sorry that I didn't live up to your lofty standards, Honey." That digit curled around her as he began to drag the side of it up and over a clit that had already been teased and tortured for much too long.

Honey closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on ignoring what he was doing to her.

"Funny, I seem to remember you liking it quite a bit when I touched you like this," Sabin mused, watching her like a hawk. "But I guess I was wrong, huh? You don't enjoy this, " he literally tapped her clit firmly, making her jump with every firm pat, "at all. I guess, like most men, I'm all thumbs," his thumb took over possession of her all too eager pearl, covering nearly all of its terribly sensitive surface at once as he began to swirl it very gently around, "when it comes to a woman's more delicate parts." With each sentence, he had begun lowering both his voice and his head more and more, until his cheek was against hers, his mouth less than an inch from her ear as he whispered low and slow into it.

Honey swallowed hard, knowing she couldn't keep up the ruse any longer. She would have had to be able to think in order to do that, and she no longer had that capacity—he'd stripped it from her entirely, with terrifying ease, in a matter of seconds.

"S-Sir—oh holy mother of fuck. I-I—can't," she stuttered. Honey wanted to grab onto him, but her arms were clamped to her sides.

"Can't what?" he cajoled, still holding her utterly still so he could tease her mercilessly with her own desires.

In complete and utter submission, Honey brought what she knew were her passion glazed eyes to his. "I c-can't do this."

His thumb on her clit slowed just the slightest bit. "What can't you do, Honey?" he asked almost sympathetically.

"Pretend I didn't love it!" she screamed and sobbed at him at the same time as his thumb left her—which was both good and bad—so that he could put both arms around her and hold her tenderly to him. "Pretend every orgasm you gave me didn't nearly kill me! Pretend that that night wasn't something I haven't been able to stop thinking about!" She didn't want to cry, but that didn't seem to make any difference as she collapsed against him.

"It's okay, sweetheart. I promise. It's okay," he soothed.

"No…it's…not!" she wailed, huffing a breath in between each word. "What if it doesn't work out? I can't be involved with you; I'm me!"

He almost chuckled at that abject statement but couldn't, when she was so obviously distressed about it. And it was the fact that she didn't have to be that troubled him the most.

As much as he wanted to overrule her, Sabin didn't want—refused to be—the kind of Dom, or even just man, who negated his woman's feelings when he wouldn't or couldn't understand them, simply by talking over her and trying to convince her that she was wrong to feel the way she did.

Instead, he simply held her and let her cry it out and talk it out on him, interrupting her as little as he could manage.

Luckily, being a writer, she was very verbal, once he got her started. "You're just fucking perfect! Everything you did that night was letter perfect—just exactly what I needed and wanted!"

He tried not to let his chest puff up too badly upon hearing that, but it was a challenge, since she was obviously so torn up about it. But it was wonderful to know that his instincts about her were spot on.

"It was just so big and unexpected and…fucking big! I-I couldn't deal with it, any of it. If I hadn't fallen asleep, I would have left that night."

"You could have tried," he whispered casually, but she knew he didn't mean it that way. He meant exactly what he said.

"There. Like that. Jesus, you're just too potent!"

She seemed to be winding down, crying less, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper as she curled up in on herself. "And the orgasms," Honey breathed with an undeniable reverence that humbled him. "The hardest I've ever in my life had, bar none."

Sabin was thinking to himself, Life. Made.

"Not even I can give me orgasms like that, and I've known me for quite some time now, and I tend to know what I like."

He shrugged. "It's the power of the fact that it's someone else doing it. The loss of control, which is even more stark in a D/s relationship."

Honey leaned a bit away from him so she could look him in the eye. "Don't sell yourself short. It's not because it's the gardener or the guy next door who's touching me." Her eyes slid away from his, but then she pulled them back, staring straight into his as she said, "It's because it's you. You know me so well. No one else on the planet has ever, or will ever, be able to make me feel like that."

He was pretty sure he was allowed to wear a self-satisfied grin at that. It probably said something like that in the Dom's Handbook—which he was sure existed somewhere online.

Sabin gathered her to him. "That's wonderful. I'm glad it was so good for you. I was kind of worried that it wasn't as good as I thought it was, or that there was something I had done that was seriously wrong for you along the way."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel that way, and I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you about it then and you had to spend two weeks stressing about it."

He wanted to refute the idea that he'd been stressed, but he had been, so he didn't.

"I tore out of there because I knew I was just going to dissolve into tears, and I didn't want to do it in front of you, for some weird reason. I guess I was just feeling so overwhelmed by the experiences, and you were the experiences. So, I felt like I had to get away from you and take some time to sort things out for myself."

Sabin's hand brushed the side of her face. "I understand, Honey. Thank you for talking to me about it."

Honey snorted, frowning up at him. "You didn't give me much choice."

He didn't look particularly apologetic about that. "I know, but it got you to talk to me."

"I intended to talk to you; you didn't have to break into my apartment—"

"I've had a key to this place since 1997," he pointed out.

She frowned. "You know what I mean."

"Not that I couldn't have broken in if I'd wanted to. You know, with my misspent youth and all."

Her derisive snort made him laugh. "The one spent at Exeter Academy, you mean? With all of the other Sharks and Jets who went there with you, breaking into songs and dances in the middle of the street every five minutes?"

He chuckled at that, flashing on the absurd idea of his posh classmates inhabiting the world of West Side Story. Then he lifted her onto him, spreading her out over most—well, some—of him. "So. What do you think?"

"About what?" she asked, deliberately evading the question.

A hand covered a hot butt cheek. "Now who's being obtuse, Miss Honey? What do you think about us being a couple—you know, so I can spend the rest of our lives lording over you what you just said about me being perfect, and how I made you come the hardest you ever had, etcetera?"

"I plead lack of blood to the brain on that, Your Honor, and I can prove it."

His eyebrows rose at that. "You can?"

"Yes. All of my blood is still in my genitals. Ahem." Honey gave him a pointed look.

"That is not a valid defense. All of my blood has been in my genitals since I met you."

She shook her head, muttering sotto voce, "Too easy, honey. Too easy."

Sabin growled, pulling her up him to hold her where he could kiss her then put her down again. "Answer me, young lady."

"My original concerns are still there, Sa—"

One eyebrow rose.

"Sir. I'm not up to your standards—yeow!"

His palm connected in a vicious way with her already beleaguered backside.

And yet, she still continued. "And you are way beyond mine—Oh God. Stop! Ow! Stop!"

"Are those really your only objections to dating me, living with me, then marrying me?"

Honey had to laugh. "Jeez, jump the gun much, Northrup? Have you decided where we're going to retire to, too?"

"Give me a second, and I'll let you know."

Honey's head dropped suddenly, and he knew she was going to say something he didn't want to hear from her.

"I just…" That was getting her nowhere, so she tried again, "While you were gone, I realized that the crush I thought had gone away all those years ago, hadn't. It was there the whole time. I've loved you that whole time." She whispered the last six words. Tears flooded her eyes, and her next sentence came out choppy and squelched because of it, "And I'm not," she could barely get up the volume to even whisper, "at all sure…" The tears spilled down her cheeks and onto the hand he was using to raise her chin. "…that I could survive us breaking up."

Sabin kissed her forehead then held her tightly, rocking them just a bit. "Well, I've got us in an old age home, and you've got us broken up. Shall we split the difference, do you think? That would certainly be my vote."

He looked down into her wet eyes, framing her face gently with his palms. "I want you fiercely, Honey B. I'm in my forties and I'm as randy as a teenager at the thought of having you, and of being your Dom. I already love you, and I know you love me. We've loved each other—warts and all—for years. This can only get better."

"You're such a cockeyed optimist."

"And you're such a Negative Nellie pessimist," he countered. She seemed to be hesitating much more seriously than he wanted her to, so Sabin moved her back onto her side while still holding her to him as he let his fingers do the walking. Her gasp, when he hit that needy, greedy little spot, had him poking out of his pants again. "Say yes, Honey," he ordered.

Christ, when he touched her like that, she was instantly as mindless as she'd been before, and he damned well knew it!

She beat her hands against his shoulders, but she might as well have been beating them against a brick wall. "S-Sir! Stop that! You can't…" Gasp. "…do that…" Groan. "…to me!"

"Apparently, I can, and I will." His tone had a harder edge than she'd ever heard before. "I promise you that I will tease you and torture you and spank you, every chance I get, and I will keep you almost there but not allow you to come until you agree to give us a try if you don't say yes right now, Honey Beth Jacobsen. Right this minute—before I remove my finger."

She threw herself against him, which didn't affect what he was doing to her in the least. She panted for a few more seconds, then she said, with an alarming lack of enthusiasm, "All right."

"What was that?" He craned his ear down towards her mouth exaggeratedly.

"All right," she repeated with no more excitement than before.

Suddenly, she was flat on her back beneath him, and he moved his pants and underwear down his butt just enough to expose himself more before he drove himself into her, capturing her wrists and holding them above her head as his weight held her legs up and apart for him.

"Try that again, Honey," he growled possessively, staring deeply into her eyes. "Tell me you want me to be your Dom."

Her still damp eyes flickered away, then back to his dark, slightly intimidating ones. Nonetheless, she said, biting her lip the whole time, "I want you to be my Dom, Sabin."

He smiled at her, although it was more than a little strained. "Very good, Honey."

Mere seconds later, he made her scream, and cry, and scream again, and clutch at him frantically. And then he made her do it all again, over, and over, until she was very nearly reduced to an exhausted sleep in his arms, which he considered to be a job well done.

Perhaps this was the key to keeping her happy, he mused to himself as he adjusted the covers over them when she looked cold to him. He'd keep her alternately needy and hyper sated, and he was damned sure going to keep her bottom sore and red. That was a given.

Maybe it would be enough to keep her with him always, to dispel the doubts she had about them.

A muscle pulsed in Sabin's jaw when he thought about the idea that she might leave him again in the future. He vowed to himself that he would strive to make sure that she felt safe and secure enough with him that she would never feel the need to.

At the same time, he also had to acknowledge the fact that he certainly intended to do everything within his not inconsiderable power, legal and illegal, to make sure that it was going to be damned hard for her to ever do that again.