Sweet Sinclair (Masters of the Castle) (7 page)

He hooked his fingers into the ring of her collar, and she offered no resistance when he pulled, bring
ing her right to him. This time, he didn’t kiss her—he cornered and captured her, locked her hot little mouth under his and took her. Desire, so long held in check, broke its chains within him. Her lips yielded beneath his. Her knees dipped, buckling weakly, but he clapped his hands onto the hot curves of her ass and lifted, pulling her hips right up to his. He rubbed her, sex to swelling, aching sex.

Sinclair made the softest moaning sound in the back of her throat. Sounds like that held the power to emasculate a man. He could actually feel it, racing through him on whirlwinds that centered in his cock first and then again in all the places where she touched him—his lips, his tongue, his chest where her breasts brushed up against him as she breathed, his stomach and hips, his shoulders where her hands came to rest, not just bracing against him now, but gripping, her little fingers curling into claws that she used to pull him into her. She wanted more. He wanted more too. A lot more.

Cupping her bottom, he lifted her completely off the ground and turned. A careless sweep of his hand shoved everything out of his way before he dropped her to sit on the table’s edge. Her green eyes were smoldering, smoky with heavy-lidded need, and so hungry.

He gripped her by her collar, commanding her attention with a practiced authoritarian touch. “Sit up straight.”

She did, stiffening her back, her hands dropping down at her sides to rest upon the table by her hips. This new posture pushed out her breasts, offering them up to him. It was an offer he was more than willing to accept.

He cupped them both
, massaging gently at first, and then squeezing. He loved her breasts—small, firm, easily filling the palms of his hands, but with far too many cloth barriers between his skin and hers.

It was time for them to go.

Her shirt was a simple blouse, long sleeved to combat the cool February weather, button down the front. Very professional for someone who worked in a candy store; incredibly overdressed for a submissive willingly captured in his hands. Were she a Castle guest, he’d have cut the buttons off her shirt, stripped her roughly, used the torn sleeves to bind her hands and laid her out right here on her back. But she wasn’t a guest. She was the woman he’d wanted for so long now that restraint at this point physically hurt. This was her first time, and this was the experience by which she would risk ever coming back to him a second time. So, his knife remained sheathed and so did his aching cock.

She watched as his hands drifted from her collar to her waist, slowly unbuttoning, baring her pale flesh one tantalizing inch at a time. He savored the agony of his restraint, parting the two halves of her blouse like they were a curtain and she the treasure they concealed.

“I wish I’d worn something prettier,” she said, looking down at the simple white sports bra that hid her breasts from his eyes.

Like anything would have been prettier than her in nothing at all. His fingers couldn’t stop tracing her dips, her valleys and curves. She was exquisite; she was his. His mouth watered. His pulse was racing. Easing her blouse over the tops of her shoulders, he let it fall forgotten down her arms. She tried to help him by taking it off entirely, but he stopped her. “Don’t move, not unless I tell you.”

Laying her hands flat on the table at her hips, Sinclair watched as he brushed his fingertips back and forth along the curving contours of her breasts. He teased only a moment, before hooking the bottom hem of her bra and freeing her breasts in the simplest way possible—by raising the front half up over her head and leaving it entangled in the half-removed folds of her blouse. Her arms weren’t exactly bound this way, but her movements were certainly restricted.

“Hello, little darlin’s,” he greeted as he bent his head to kiss first one breast and then the other.

Her shoulders hunched when he cupped her skin-to-skin. It was an involuntary flinch, one that meant she was uncertain of his attraction to her in this vulnerable, unclothed state. Women, and the thousand little things that ran through their heads—were they too small, too big, too perky, not perky enough? Were her nipples too swollen, too tight, too small, malformed somehow, did he like them? Well, there was only one way he knew to put those silly fears to rest.

When he bent, her shoulders hunched again, her back bowing, her soft breath hitching out of sheer nerves a half second before his mouth closed over her pert pink nipple.

“Sit up straight,” he reminded, and she snapped back into position, her lips parted and shimmering wet—she must have just licked them—and her gaze fixed wide and glazed and eager and excited and just a little bit frantic on the ceiling high above. She wanted him and she wanted him to want her back every bit as much, but she didn’t know what to expect here. She didn’t know the game or the rules, and he recognized the tiny flickers of her inexperience in the movements she couldn’t quite hide.

Parting her knees, he moved to stand between her quivering thighs, and she clasped him almost immediately. He wondered if she was even aware she’d done it—her knees squeezing in at his waist, her toes digging into his legs. He made himself something for her to fix on apart from the ceiling. He wanted to be all she could feel and smell and see. He rolled her nipples between his fingers, watching as her breathing quickened almost to panting.

“Oh,” she whispered when he hooked his arm around her back, giving her no more room to flinch away.

This time when he swooped down to catch her up-thrusting nipple in the heat of his suckling lips, he didn’t kiss her; he consumed her. He fed on her just to hear her gasp and then cry out, rocking her head back on her shoulders, squirming her hips in soft bucking motions that brought the heat of her pussy grinding right up against his already full-on erection. Those sexy, rubbing motions had him right on the very edge of disregarding his commitment to no sex.

“Oh!” She started to lift her hands up, as if to grab onto him, but the motion was halted by her tangled clothes and then she remembered. She slapped her hands back on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said, her hips still grinding into his.

If punishment was what she expected, he was more than happy to give it to her. He used his teeth, a gentle punishment to be sure, scraping the erectness of the tight bud in his mouth before nipping. She gasped, her hips at first stilling and then squirming with increasing wildness. She was writhing for closeness, her legs lashing up to wrap around his hips, her heels digging in and spurring him on. She arched up on her hands, trying to push her breasts deeper into his mouth.

Delicious, both her reactions and her body, and the needy little gasps and cries as he tempted and tormented her. Finding the package of peacock nipple clamps, he broke his suction on her first nipple and quickly attached the clip. Ignoring Sinclair’s swift inhalation, he switched breasts.

He wrapped his other arm around her, needing two now just to hold her still.

“Please!” she begged, but not for a second did he think she meant for him to stop. Stopping was the last thing he wanted. At that point, he might not even have been able to. Her cries and her writhing were spurring him on to greater and greater passion. He nipped, he suckled, he left hickies in a ring around her swollen breast, marking all the fleshy territory he wished were his and only his, and when she finally lost the ability to hold herself still and simply take it—both the pleasure and tiny, tempering nips—he grabbed her ass, hooking his hand as far under her as he could reach and clutched.

She was wet, that was his first discovery. She was so wet she had literally soaked through the crotch of her jeans. He had to smell that. He had to taste it.

First things first.

“Oh! No!” Her shoulders hunched in hard, but he attached the second clamp and then he gripped them both between his fingers. She sucked
in a shrill breath when he tweaked them, testing the surety of each grip.

It was cruel and he knew it, but there was nothing but rapture on her face and in the undulations of her spine. The peacock feathers brushing the under swells of each breast were sheer eye candy. The clamps themselves he tightened down almost to the point of cruelty. Almost. He was careful to temper those tiny snippets of pain with her own escalating arousal.

“Lay back.” Gripping her collar, he helped to guide her down, then caught her hips and heaved her ass right down to the very edge of the table. With his gaze locked on hers, he unbuttoned her pants. Her swollen breasts bounced and wobbled as she lifted her ass, helping him get her jeans jerked all the way off. Under any other circumstance, he’d have spanked her for that. But this was her first time; he was willing to let it go.

He left her panties on her, a punishment for them both. Hooking her knees, he bent her thighs all the way back onto her chest, elevating her hips right up off the table and showing off the sopping wet cleft of her sexual folds, swollen, brazenly needy, ou
tlined by the white and pink polka dot cloth of her underwear.

“You may cum at any time,” he told her, but only because he didn’t want to wait any more. This was the culmination of over a year of wishing and wanting. Hooking the elastic in his fingers, he bared her pussy to his sight. She was shaved, with little more than a thin landing-strip of red to point the way to heaven.

“OhmyGod, ohmyGod,” she quavered, her fingers clutching into fists at her sides. Her toes were tightly curled, and she was just so wet. Before his very eyes, a thin trickle of moisture spilled from the well of her pink core.

“Oh, sweetness,” he said, just before he bent and simply lost himself in liquid delight.

Sinclair opened her eyes, not at the crack of dawn as was her usual habit, but when her alarm went off at blaringly loud decibels thirty minutes before she was due to open the store. She rolled out of bed, her eyes burning. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night; she doubted if she’d be getting much more from now until after her catering job at the Castle was finished. Not unless she hired help to run the store during the day and slept until noon… but, no. She couldn’t afford to do that, not even if it would free her up to spend more time with Parker during the day.

Parker. Just thinking about him made her blush all over ag
ain. Staggering to the coffeemaker, Sinclair started a fresh pot and headed for the shower. She held herself under the spray, wetting her head, letting the water wash over her and away as if thoughts of all the things they’d done last night could so easily be swept off with it down the drain. Her skin felt so sensitive, much more than usual. Her nipples felt tender and swollen, the beading fall of water striking them every now and then as she tipped her head and turned under the flow, bringing back a warm flood of all the sensual ways Parker had touched her. She’d liked his fingers and what he’d done with his mouth. She’d loved the pressure of the clamps, the light squeeze that had hugged each nipple until they pulsed with pleasure that bordered just a tiny bit on pain. He’d made her come as if it were his only purpose on Earth, driving her to orgasm with his suckling kisses feeding furiously at her engorged clit, his fingers pushing deep inside her, thrusting harder and faster until the slick, wet sound of his palm pounding up against her pussy had positively filled that room.

Driven wild, she had clung to him, unable to keep back her lusty cries, unable to smother her wanton writhing, unable to protest even when, with her body spasming in the grips of yet another fierce orgasm, he’d caught both peacock clamps and literally ripped them right off her nipples. The aching pulse of pleasure/pain that had flooded her
as the blood rushed back into those areas where its presence had temporarily been denied, had been exquisitely beautiful, exquisitely awful, and somehow had her teetering once more right on the precipice of yet another orgasm. All Parker had to do was lay his thumb over her throbbing clit and press, and just like that she was lost.

He’d known her body in ways she hadn’t thought possible. And just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take another caress, he stopped
and helped her dress. He’d kept her toys and sent her home with Jackson.

“See you tomorrow, sweetness,” was the last thing he’d said to her.

Sinclair didn’t think her body would ever feel the same again, and tonight, after her shop closed for the day, she would be going back to the Castle. Back to him. It was Wednesday. She had 900 entry gifts to pack, only two days left before the party, and the only thought in her head right now had less to do with candy or catering and everything to do with how much she wished the wet warmth flowing over her still oh-so swollen nipples was from Parker’s mouth moving down her breast in preparation for his next suckling kiss significantly further south. She wanted that tickling wetness she could feel flowing down into the crevice of her buttocks to be his hands following the curve down and under before he cupped, and squeezed, and did that thing that he had done last night when he gripped each cheek and simply opened her up in every possible way a woman could lie open for a man.

Sinclair shivered and shut the water off. She toweled quickly,
dressed even more so, and because she was out of time, poured all the coffee into a thermos and ran for the car.

She opened the front doors two minutes late, not that there was a line of customers waiting on the sidewalk. Still, punctuality was good business sense and she was determined not to make being late a habit.

She threw together four different flavors of fudge to replace what she’d left on the patio break tables with a little note to the kitchen staff that said, “Eat me.” Then, because she was suddenly struck by inspiration (and perhaps the coffee had finally kicked in), she robbed her barrels of licorice strings and wove the long thin ropes together to make red and black bullwhips to use as table decorations. She had enough licorice for three of them, and each looked so good when she was done that she actually found herself wondering, as the weighted handle dangled from her palm, if it would make an impressive cracking sound when she tried to snap it or just fall to pieces.

She was so preoccupied, her own perverted musing having reawakened the tingling and throbbing in all her nether regions, that she never heard the bell of the front door chime when it was opened.

“Are you out of your mind?”

Sinclair jumped, guiltily trying to tuck and hide the whip behind her back as she whirled to face her old college roommate, already standing at the glass counter where she had obviously gotten more than an eyeful.

“You went to the Castle,” Casey guessed, her face strangely both flushed and pale, giving it a blotchy half-appalled and half-delighted sheen. The malice in her eyes made Sinclair’s stomach tighten so hard and fast that for a second she thought she might actually throw up.

“What do you want, Casey?” she asked, deadpanned.

Ignoring the question, Casey came all the way around the counter. She looked from the two bullwhips on the candy counter and then at the tail of the one dangling to the ground behind her legs. She looked at Sinclair again. “Oh, baby,” she breathed, then laughed. “You have balls I never gave you credit for. That’s who’s been picking you up at nights. You’re going to the Castle. Are you a customer, Maybe, or are you doing a job for them?” She covered her mouth, deviously excited about what the answers would mean either way. “Do you have any idea what this town will do to you when they find out?”

The knots tangling in her stomach reached up to engulf her heart, putting it in a stranglehold she just couldn’t seem to breathe aroun
d. “Go away, and leave me alone.”

“Oh, baby,” Casey breathed, the endearment at complete odds with the calculating malice filling the icy blue depths of her eyes. “This isn’t personal. You know that, right? It’s all business. You’d do the same to me if you could.”

Sinclair began to shake. “I’m not doing anything wrong.” She lifted her chin, trying to make her voice strong enough to be convincing. “It’s just a party. They wanted a caterer.”

“And you agreed?” They were
the only two people in the store and yet Casey was whispering, as if so scandalized that she just couldn’t risk speaking any louder. “What were you thinking?”

She was thinking she didn’t want to lose her business! Sinclair didn’t say that though. Her mouth tightened, flattened, locking those words away where Casey couldn’t reach them to whittle them into knives.

She backed from Sinclair. “Oh baby,” she said again, shaking her head. She left, practically fleeing from the store and back across the quiet street to her car. Dread filled Sinclair as she watched Casey pull out her cellphone. She was talking on it even before she drove away.

She hadn’t done anything wrong, Sinclair reminded herself. Casey was just trying to stir up trouble. And what could she do, really, besides whisper and gossip and
poke fun behind Sinclair’s back? Sinclair grew up in this town. People knew her, knew she was a good person. Casey couldn’t hurt her or her business. Maybe’s Candy wasn’t going anywhere.

Drawing herself stubbornly upright, Sinclair packed the bullwhips carefully in plastic and then began to design the best damn gift packages to give away at the door of the party—Jordan Almonds, champagne truffles, dark chocolate hearts with raspberry or caramel centers—all neatly contained in crisp cellophane baggies and wrapped with bright red, heart-decorated ribbons. Velvet ribbons. She’d seen tons of those at the Hobby Lobby. Everything else she’d need, she had right here. When she was done, her gifts were going to look as expensive as they tasted. And later this year, when Casey’s Sinful Desserts was struggling and Maybe’s Candy was inundated with requests for a candy caterer, then it would be Sinclair’s turn to laugh and tsk and say, “Oh, baby” in that mockingly sympathetic tone.

All the way to the bank,
baby
. So there.

* * * * *

The licorice whips were coiled and wrapped in plastic, nine rack towers (ten industrial trays a piece) of freshly-filled truffles and chocolate hearts were resting in the walk-in to set up overnight, and Sinclair had just stacked the last of seven huge plastic storage bins full of candy and candy wrapping supplies by the door when she saw Jackson’s unmarked van pull up to the curb. Clicking off the neon sign and flipping the one on the door from
Open
to
Sorry, We’re Closed
; Sinclair unlocked the door for him.

“Evening,” Jackson said, handing her an anonymous-looking paper lunch sack.

“What’s this?” She side-stepped, holding the door well open while he picked up the first two bins at once.

“No idea.” Jackson started back out the door, but then stopped, stepped back and looked down at her. “Actually, that was a lie. I have a very good idea, but I haven’t confirmed it by peeking. I was told to tell you, if you don’t want a repeat of last night, then come to the Castle however you are. If, on the other hand, you would like a second experience, then you are to put on whatever is in the bag and he’ll take care of the rest. You are to be wearing it from the moment you step out of the car, or he won’t play.” Jackson looked from her, to the bag, and back again. “Spoiler alert: I rather suspect it’s a collar.”

Electrified thrills sparked through every nerve ending as Sinclair clutched the bag a little closer. Her face—heck, her whole body burned, and it was such a stupid thing to be embarrassed over. Jackson almost certainly had to know what their “play” had consisted of. But then, he’d probably seen, passed out and played with hundreds of collars himself. Maybe even thousands, she honestly didn’t know. Either way, he hardly seemed scandalized by the thought of his friend playing kinky games with her. Still, she kept the collar in the paper bag, hidden from everyone’s view, including her own, until all the candies were packed into the back of the van and they were safely on their way.

Holding the bag in her lap, Sinclair sat in the front passenger seat, staring out the window at absolutely nothing, her mind bouncing wildly between memories of last night and all the possible things that Parker might want to do to her tonight. She didn’t open the bag. She wanted to. She badly wanted to. There was no way in hell when she got to the Castle that she would not leave this vehicle without first donning whatever this bag contained, but at the same time she was afraid to open it. She was afraid someone here in town might see whatever lay inside or might somehow just magically know
. Then everyone in Granger would just know. Casey, in particular. She couldn’t have that. She didn’t think she could handle another visit from her frenemy/candy shop competitor. So, she waited, until the sparse buildings of town faded into a backdrop of wheat, then soy, then corn fields, surrounded in the distance by the dense growth of trees that would eventually give way to grey-stone turrets.

Tonight, her first sight of the Castle was just like two days ago, only now her nervousness stemmed from other reasons. She waited while Jackson turned off the main road, driving slowly up the long and winding gravel drive. She actually hid the bag so the security guard wouldn’t see it when Jackson paused at the checkpoint to check her in and request that kitchen bitches (that’s what he said—Sinclair was a little offended) be present with a dolly to help bring her bins into the Castle. By the time they reached the hidden employee parking lot, her hands were sweating and shaking and she felt a little sick to her stomach from nerves alone.

Parking under the shade of a sprawling Walnut tree, Jackson climbed out of the car. He waved to the line of costumed servants heading their way and shut the door, leaving her alone for the first time. Almost afraid of what she might find, Sinclair opened the bag.

It was a collar, just like Jackson said, but not the same collar she had bought and worn the night before. This one was heavier, stark black but with soft velvet padding on the inside rim. The rings on the front were thicker and more sturdy than on the one she had bought, as was the buckle. While she would have thought the collar she’d bought the real deal, it took seeing this one to realize Crystal Dolphin’s had sold her a toy. This—she pulled the collar out of the lunch sack, her fingertips running appreciatively along the soft inner padding—was a real collar. It even had a tag on it, a heart-shaped gold-colored locket engraved with two simple words: His Sweetness.

The whole van jostled when Jackson jerked open the rear doors and the heavy bins were heaved out onto the dollies.

“Are you coming?” Jackson called up to her.

“Just a minute.” Her voice was trembling as badly as her hands as she unbuckled the collar and fit it around her neck. Her hair tangled, getting in the way and her fingers felt so damned foreign that she had trouble putting it on. She couldn’t find the hole. She felt and felt along the collar’s tail. She even flipped the visor down, but there was no makeup mirror on the reverse side. The engraved heart rested cold in the tiny dip between her collarbones and she was so rattled by the sudden fear of what it would mean if she was such a newbie that she couldn’t even put her own collar on, that she nearly jumped out of her skin when the door beside her abruptly swung open.