Five Golden Rings (Facets of Passion) (8 page)

January 1
New Year’s Day
Eight Maids a’Milking

“So, do you have any new year’s resolutions?”

“I never make resolutions,” Tilda told him, which wasn’t exactly true. They sat at a little breakfast café near the harbor of the town Miguel had flown them to. She’d changed into the white Marilyn sundress he’d brought along for her and some flat sandals for walking. She’d repaired herself the best she could in the café bathroom, pocketing the feather pins and finger-combing her hair, splashing water on her face and wiping away the smears of the industrial-strength makeup.

Good thing the Caribbean was all about being casual.

“Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “How un-American of you.”

It felt a little barbed, which was why she hadn’t wanted to jump into answering the question. He’d been testy this morning, full of restless energy. The New Year’s Eve romantic evening had been chaste and lovely, but he seemed to be a happier man after a lot of kinky sex. She blamed some of her own irritation with him on the same thing.

“Which way do you go—full-on type A American resolutions or island time tomorrow-is-soon-enough?” she volleyed back.

“Ha ha,” he answered, his eyes scanning the harbor. Unsettled. Anxious.

“You know, I would be fine with going back to the resort.”

He frowned at her. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, this has been lovely and wonderful—and I appreciate all the trouble you’ve gone to—but you’re clearly concerned about your business affairs and—”

He cut her off with a chop of his hand. “I told you I don’t wish to discuss my business.”

“Did I ask you to?” The question came out tart and he squinted at her in annoyance, then lowered his sunglasses. She took a breath. Their first fight. She couldn’t even make it through a twelve-day fling without one. She reached for his hand on the table, but he pulled it away to pick up his coffee before she touched him.
Oh
,
is that how we’re playing it?
“Look, Miguel. All I’m saying is, I get you’ve got big things going on. I don’t want you to feel obligated—”

“I don’t feel obligated, Tilda. I thought you’d be happy that I showed you last night that it doesn’t have to be all about the kinky sex for me. Is it so terrible that I wanted to give you a little romance? I want to take you to see our ruins. Can’t we do something like a normal couple?”

She took a bite of some really delicious seafood Eggs Benedict and savored it, trying to process what he’d just thrown at her. A spectacularly unfair list of her supposed demands. When one of her customers accused her of some preposterous expectation, it nearly always served to cover some inadequacy of theirs. Like asserting that she’d moved up the billing dates, when in fact they couldn’t afford to pay.

What was Miguel so worried about?

“You’re right,” she agreed in a pleasant tone. “I’d love to see the ruins. Let’s not give it another thought.”

That mollified him, but the day continued as it had begun. Miguel remained prickly, though he tried to smooth things with his charm, and she felt on edge, being careful to accommodate him, so as not to set him off.

Though the ruins were fascinating, the day played as it would have if she’d spent it with Greg. They’d planned to come to this exact place, because all the guide books said to and Greg had followed that sort of advice religiously. And Tilda would have gone along, to make him happy and because it wouldn’t make her unhappy. They’d planned this entire trip around his preferences, which she hadn’t minded at the time—compromise was the heart of any successful relationship, after all. Today, however, it all seemed so clear.

She’d been compromising. She’d never had a successful relationship.

Clearly something wasn’t working.

But this. This
thing
with Miguel, up until today had been working. She’d submitted freely to the sexual demands, yes. That hadn’t been compromise. It had been all the way to his side and it had worked. However, it had also been something she had totally wanted. No balancing of her wants against his.

Now she wasn’t getting what she wanted and, dammit, she missed it.

Maybe the heart of a good relationship lay somewhere else. Not in compromising, but in finding a place where you could both fit, where both people got what they wanted and needed. She turned over the thought as they flew back to the harbor near the resort, refining what her resolution for the new year could be.

“You’re quiet,” Miguel observed.

“Just thinking.” She smiled at him, to make sure it didn’t sound like a brush off.

“You’re not supposed to be thinking—you’re on vacation.”

The refrain was getting a bit old. “I like thinking. The point of a vacation is to give yourself the mental space to think about things in a considered way. I’m pondering what kinds of changes I want to make to my life in the next year. I’ve loved the sun and sea so much—maybe I’ll leave Philadelphia.”

“Aha.” He nodded sagely as he taxied the seaplane in, talking over the engine. “That’s vacation-brain, right there. You’ll get home and realize that you won’t move.”

“Why do you say that?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “People don’t change. Not fundamentally.”

She contemplated arguing, but that wasn’t their deal, was it? The driver picked them up and they rode back to the resort in silence, each absorbed in their thoughts. Walking into the gorgeous open-air lobby, with its splashing fountains, Tilda asked herself what she would demand for herself.

“What do you have planned for tonight?” she asked Miguel. “Do you need to deal with the problems with your work?”

She asked it deliberately, setting a little spark to the wick.

Irritation passed over his face like a cloud. He whisked it away and settled a hand on the small of her back. Possessive. Demanding. That was better. “Would you like to come up?”

“It’s nearly sunset—that sounds wonderful.”

They rode up in the glass elevator and, though he seethed beneath the surface, he didn’t play any of his games. He called down to have tapas and drinks served, but made no move to dress—or undress—her. The collar and cuffs he’d taken off her the night before when they slept, unused to attach her to anything, remained tucked away wherever he’d put them.

She shifted in her chair, as if she’d absorbed some of his restless energy. She’d had enough of whatever was eating at him.

“So why did you lose?”

His dark brows lowered. “I beg your pardon.”

So prickly. She shrugged. “The other day, you said Miramoto went home because you lost. I didn’t think you ever lost.”

He gazed out at the sunset, jaw clenched. “Every lawyer loses from time to time. There are many variables you don’t understand at play here.”

“Only because you haven’t told me. I am an intelligent, educated woman. I think you’d find that—”

He swiveled in his seat to glare at her. “I didn’t invite you into this relationship so we could have conversations.”

“So it’s all about the fucking? You’re truly not interested in knowing me as a person at all?”

He ground his teeth. “You know it’s not like that. I did my best to show you that it’s not only about that. I treated you with romance and respect and—”

“And no fucking.” She pointed out.

“It doesn’t behoove you to use that word.”

She laughed. “Really? After all the seriously dirty things we’ve done, you’re bothered by me saying a word?”

“It’s about context.”

“Sometimes I think people seize on context as an excuse. ‘You took my words out of context,’ as if that changes the meaning.”

“What’s gotten into you? You’re not being yourself, Roo.”

“I’m Tilda, too. And this is also me.” Someone who might be tired of going for less than exactly what she wanted.

He scowled at his drink, not replying.

“Where are my eight maids a’milking, anyway?”

“I’ve decided against that.”

“Isn’t that breaking the rules?”

He leveled a glittering stare at her. “Maybe I’m changing the rules. It’s my game, after all.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “Are you doing a Madonna/whore thing with me? Is that why you’re picking on context—lady in the drawing room, whore in the bedroom?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then why is it either romance or kink with you? Why no New Year’s Eve shenanigans in the waterfall pool?”

“You’d had your wax. I am considerate of such things.”

“I had it
that
day at your direction. Besides, why not force me to my knees and make me suck you off? We’ve done that before.”

“That is a sacred place to me.”

“So the kink
is
dirty.”

“Of course it’s dirty,” he flung back. “Do you think I do these
things
with my girlfriends?” He swept a hand at her, encompassing all they’d done.

“So this has been a vacation fling for you, too. Find a willing female and what happens in the Penthouse of Kink stays there.”

“That’s unworthy of you. You mean far more to me than that.”

“I didn’t at first. I was some stranger on the rebound who looked ripe for a sexual excursion.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed and he looked away. She continued pushing him.

“But then it changed, didn’t it? You wouldn’t talk to me about the problems with your work, to protect me, but to keep yourself as seeing me as someone more than to play kinky games with. Only it didn’t work.”

“Do you have a point, Tilda?”

“Yes. Tell me why you lost.”

His hand slammed down on the little table with enough force to make her jump. “No! I have no intention of whining about my problems to you.”

She stood up, tossed her napkin on the table. “Fine.”

“Where are you going?”

“If we’re not talking and we’re not having sex, I’m leaving. I don’t want to be part of your madonna/whore complex. I’m tired of being someone who meets in the middle.”

“Come back here.” His voice held a warning that made her spine tingle.

“Make me,” she tossed over her shoulder and kept walking.

“You’re looking to be punished, Roo.”

Ah, there he called her “Roo” again. The true Miguel.

“Promises, promises.” She went through the open sliding glass doors, into the condo and pressed the elevator button. “Come on, Miguel,” she muttered under her breath. The elevator doors opened.

An arm clamped around her waist.

Miguel pulled her back against him, hard. She struggled and he caught a flying hand, pulling it up and behind her. The elevator doors closed again with a whisper, and he spun her around, seizing her wrists and stretching her arms above her head, pinning her against the metal doors.

“Say your safe word,” he demanded.

She turned her face away and he bit her neck where it joined her shoulder. She cried out, the sharp thrill of it making her knees weaken. Finally.

“Say your goddamn safe word or you’re in for it, Roo. I’m not joking.”

She met his eyes, sparking wild, brimming with that ferocious energy that had driven him the last few days. Then blew him a kiss and pressed her lips together.

The transformation that shimmered through him was remarkable. As potent as if he’d become a werewolf or Mr. Hyde. The restless irritation gelled into that focused sensuality that had captured her from the beginning. He might think his intellectual machinations had cornered her, but it was this. Animal and sexual both, he demanded her surrender and she gave it.

With a snarl, he dragged her over to the couch and pushed her over the high back, then pulled the white skirt over her head, baring her ass and blinding her to the world. His hand smacked the underside of one cheek, hard, and she yelped, rising up on her toes. With a grunt of satisfaction, he positioned her hips over the edge and kicked her ankles wide apart, so only the tips of her big toes touched the floor.

“Don’t you dare move.”

She didn’t, holding the pose and trembling with excitement. This emotional state could be called neither happiness nor fear. It transcended both—a kind of pure ecstasy of simply being.

He returned and clicked the cuffs around her ankles, then ordered her to cross her wrists behind her back. She had to fight her arms out of the voluminous skirt to get them there and, without the support of her hands and with her body pitched forward so much, her face mashed into the couch. He slapped her upturned ass again and told her to hold still. Whimpering a little, she did her best to obey. He roughly locked her wrists together, all hint of indecision gone, and her body melted at it.

A pinch and her clit flared. The familiar clamp tightened, far more than it ever had, and she cried out into the couch cushion. He chuckled and fiddled with it, not making it tighter, but adding something—some kind of weight that dragged it down. She rolled her hips, trying to assimilate the pain, tears springing to her eyes, and she made a noise of protest while he spanked her several times in rapid succession.

“Your safe word or nothing, Roo. You asked for this.” He pumped two fingers inside her slick channel, curving them into her G-spot so the incipient climax eclipsed the sting of the clamp. “Haven’t you ever heard to be careful what you wish for? I’ll teach you to bait me.”

He loosened the halter ties and reached under her, squeezing and kneading her breasts, pinching the nipples so her pussy flooded in response.

“Do you know what I originally planned for you tonight? Eight maids a’milking.” He pulled her upright and turned her, so she sat on the back of the couch, pulling off her dress and making her spread her legs widely again. The weight on her clit dangled down between them and she desperately wanted to see it—but didn’t dare look without permission. Miguel had her breasts in his hands, pumping them suggestively, his expression savage. “A little titty torture. Is that dirty enough for you? Do you even know what that is? No you don’t because this isn’t really your scene, is it, Roo? This is a vacation excursion. Dabble in some kink and go on your merry way.”

He took something from the counter and fastened it onto her nipple. “This isn’t the clamp you had before.” He tightened it down and she bit her lip not to cry out, while he studied her face. “Is this what you wanted? Because I will give it to you. I’ll keep pushing you until you say that fucking safe word and end this.”