Testing The Limits (2 page)

"Ow - wait - "

"Count. And thank me properly."

His dry voice made me shiver all over, again, and my palms were slippery. The pain stung and burned and he rained two more blows upon me.

"Two, three, thank you sir," I said, and for some reason that brought tears to my eyes. Not the pain - just the ignominy of thanking him!

His hand grasped my tingling flesh, but without a blow this time. Instead, he pummeled me, rubbing at my soreness. The sting eased away into a spreading warmth. His hand was now caressing me. My nerve endings were sparking; I was acutely aware of my body, my skin, my flesh, myself. I was crackling with electricity.

I was alive.

But I had no more time to assimilate this strange shift. His hand was dipping between my ass cheeks now, seeking out my wetness, and I responded by spreading my legs apart. His fingers slithered in, and I realized I wasn't just damp for him - I was dripping. It wasn't the spanking or the fact I was naked or how he was touching me.

It was the fact that he
could
. And dammit, he would.

"You are so wet, my queen, my whore, my mistress, my little slut," he was murmuring. I would have recoiled from those words at any other time. But like this, somehow, reality was suspended. I'd let it all go. This was someplace else.

Someplace I could open myself to a man like this. And like it.

His fingers were slamming into me, rolling around, opening me out. I moaned and pushed back against his hand. It was too quick, and too much. I wanted gentleness. I wanted him to play with my clit and build me up slowly.

Yet the faster he got, the more I wanted that, too. I could feel the edge of my orgasm, already, and I wanted it
now.

Everything was contrast, with Andrew. Fuck me hard but let it linger; punish me and reward me; hurt me and treat me tenderly. I had not realized I wanted such contrast in my previously well-ordered life.

"Please, yes, yes," I said.

His hand stopped its rhythmic pumping and I tensed. "I'm sorry-" I began to say, conditioned already to tread carefully.

"At
my
direction, Jasmine Turner," he said, rolling my name around in his mouth, his laconic vowels and deep voice making me shiver. "At whose direction?" He slapped me sharply, my pussy suddenly cold and empty.

"Yours, sir, thank you sir," I gasped out.

He slapped again, the bright pain blooming fresh across the dull thud of the bruises already forming.

"Thank you, sir," I managed to say but tears were forming in my eyes again. I hated him. I wanted him.

I
needed
him.

Or at least, I needed him to finish what he was doing, and I remembered what he'd done before - left me begging and wanting for days while he toyed with me
. Oh God, not again,
I prayed.

Just as I was starting to get my head around the cruel fact that he might deny me my orgasm, his fingers slipped around my pussy lips, rubbing slickly over my engorged clit. "Ahh!" I swallowed my begs but I could not help sighing out with need.

His other hand ran along my back, firmly, then encircled my neck. Panic instinctively rose up in me and I tensed, but he held a little tighter. Curiously, his grip seemed to calm me. I relaxed and let myself fall back into his control once more.

After all, nothing else mattered but his teasing fingers, my streaming, throbbing pussy, my burning ass and my dangling breasts
. Hold me, choke me, but God damn just fuck me!

Then his fingers were inside me once more and I squeezed my eyes shut as he plunged and thrust and his hand held my neck and I could barely breathe and my whole body burned as it tingled and I came, exploding and gasping and clinging on to his ankles. I didn't want it to end yet I longed for the finish, the release, and the calm aftermath which came so slowly, so tantalizingly.

He rubbed at my buttocks and I can't remember when he let go of my neck; he stroked my hair and for some stupid, stupid, stupid reason that made me cry even more. So he picked me up and turned me around and I nestled against his wide, strong chest and in spite of my shame still I cried.

I suspect that it is human nature to want what we are told we cannot have. Such has been my experience, and it was borne out afresh with Jasmine.

She had stirred my cock from the start. Partly it was her brashness, her lack of polish, and her infuriating confidence. Partly her body and her poise. Partly - strangely - her power. She was a young high-flier and I felt her energy crackle and light me up in reflection.

I had told myself she would be a quick fuck, nothing more.

Then that man - my father, or at least, the man whose sperm contributed towards me - took her from me. I am no fool. It was
then
that I really wanted her. I could say that it revealed to me how much I cared for her, but that would be a lovely, politically correct, lie.

I wanted her because
he
had her.

So I took her back, and last night's antics still made me smile. Yes, it had been worth it, to have her lying over my lap and utterly at my mercy.

When something is taken from me, I am very angry.

And then the most important thing in my life was taken from me.

* * * *

The morning had started well. I'd turned up at the offices, not quite skipping - a sober financial researcher does
not
skip - but I'd walked lightly, that I'll admit. Craig, my laddish young assistant, was already there, playing a game on his phone, skyping some bit of fluff he'd met at the weekend, and allegedly filing some reports, all at the same time. Suffice it to say that I threw his phone in the wastepaper bin and pulled the plug on his PC.

The cub grinned at me and I was about to launch into a half-serious rant when I was summoned to the CEO's office.

I assumed some stock market turbulence was emerging. No doubt I was about to be chewed out on failing to predict some trend or another, and I wasn't particularly concerned as I took the stairs up to Mr. Ellison's suite of rooms.

And roughly three and a half minutes later, I was standing back outside in the corridor, dazed at the whirlwind that had blown through my life. Less than five minutes, and I'd been sacked.

I shook my head, uncomprehending. The spiky-haired secretary of his, Lily, poked her head through the door. "He wants you off the premises as soon as you can," she whispered. "And, I'm sorry."

I couldn't speak because my fury clogged my mouth and she didn't deserve my rain of expletives.

I knew who did, though. Suddenly incensed, I ran down the stairs to my office and grabbed the back of Craig's chair, spinning him around to face me.

"Hey-"

"Get up!"

To help him along I grabbed his lapels and hauled him up. He pushed back at me but I was strong and well-trained; he only had youth on his side and no finesse. "What the fuck, man?"

"I've been sacked. Why is that, do you think?"

"I don't know!"

"You're in cahoots with him, aren't you?"

"Who?"

"You know who!" I shouted, shaking him. His eyes flickered and I heard movement behind me.

"Mr. Walker-Wilkinson, you need to put him down. Thank you."

"Leave us alone, would you?"

Mike, the enormous ex-military security guard, was not going to do that, and I knew it. "No, sir. Come with me, sir."

He didn't call me
sir
the way Jas called me
sir
. I dropped Craig and he stumbled back, white in the face, a mixture of fear and anger on his face. He wanted to punch me; I could see that in the twitching of his hands. But he couldn't lay a blow on his boss.

His ex-boss.

"Let me gather my things," I said, letting them think I was defeated.

"Be quick," Mike said.

I grabbed a cardboard box, dumped out its contents - files and folders and binders - and began to stuff as many personal effects as I could into it. Mike stood by, ensuring I didn't take anything remotely relevant to the company. I rooted in a drawer and managed to palm a memory stick - I didn't even know what was on it, but it seemed important, somehow, to try and get at least one thing over on the company. It probably contained nothing more than a list of office furniture or something but it was a tiny victory.

And then I was ushered out, clutching my box to my chest, striding as if I gave not a single fuck with Mike at my back and the eyes of every damn employee in the building following me as I went.

I knew who to blame. I felt my father's influence in this, most likely through Craig.

And I knew I would have my revenge.

I didn't hear from Andrew for a few days, but that was fine by me. I had work to do, after all. Things we going well. I'd been making presentations to various companies, selling Business to Business IT infrastructure solutions, and networking like crazy. I missed a couple calls but I assumed they were my mom, and shrugged it off. Whatever.

I know I sound like a heartless bitch but you gotta understand how I was raised. My mom left my dad when me and my sister were young, and she worked her damn heart out to give us the kind of upbringing that she wanted for us. I am so proud of my mom. I really am.

So I did everything I could to make her proud of me, you know? It sounds like a terrible cliché but it's true. I wanted to repay her faith in me. I graduated college and landed a good job in the city and worked nights and days and nights and vacations and days and every hour to rise up in the company. To be in my mid-twenties on a nice fat paycheck was great. But more important was my status and my position. I could look my mom in the eye and say, "Thank you. Your sacrifices were worth it."

That's why my sister and her actions hurt so, so much. When I was working, she was partying. When I was studying, she was already having her first kid and then getting married. Now Angie had an unremarkable redneck husband, three kids with stupid trailer trash names, and she'd never worked a day in her life. I'd always thought that America was about working hard and making it; that nations which gave out welfare benefits were weak. Now here I was in London, and everyone I met from the cleaners to the CEOs worked like donkeys - and back in the good old US of A, my sister was getting by with food stamps like she was fucking entitled to it.

And she'd stolen from me. Not just money, but my identity, ripping off my credit cards "because she didn't have any other option."

And now do you see why I'm mad?

* * * *

I got back to my apartment on Thursday night at a reasonable hour, for a change. It wasn't quite seven o'clock. I'd bought various snacks from the store on the way back, and decided to soak in the bath and then lie on my couch, watching a box set and eating junk food. It was a while since I'd done anything like that.

I had just opened the first bag of chips when my phone buzzed with a message from Andrew.

"I'm coming over. Be ready."

Pavlov and his dogs got nothing on Andrew and me. I sat bold upright, half-panicked and half-turned on, already. I was relieved I'd just had a bath but he'd surely be shocked at the state of my living room. I was usually tidy to the nth degree, but he was a keen triathlete and I didn't want him to judge my food choices.

Still, when I let him in a few minutes later, he didn't seem to notice anything. He pounced straight on me, his eyes dark with lust and need, and I melted into his arms as he pushed me back against a wall and kissed me so hard I thought he'd draw blood.

"I need to fuck you," he growled in my ear. His hand went behind my neck and he held me tight, his cologne filling my nostrils and making me dizzy.

I was only wearing a short, sheer babydoll shift and my bathrobe. He nuzzled along my neck and collarbone, pushing the robe back from my shoulders. Then he put his hands under my breasts and lifted them, so that the flesh bulged above my low neckline, and he bent to suck hard on my nipples. The fire was already burning in my belly but now my back arched to push myself closer to him as he bit my flesh and made me scream.

His passion was making me hot and wet and I clawed at his chest, pulling at the buttons of his shirt. He grabbed my hands, and took half a step back.

It was like he wasn't there. I was about to ask if he was okay but he shook his head, and pulled me across the living room to the far corner, where I had a chair and desk.

"Sit," he said, and at the same time he lifted my nightdress up over my head and stretched it out between his hands, looking at it thoughtfully.

I moved the chair so it stood away from the desk and faced into the room, and sat down. He went behind me and took my hands so that they were together, round the back of the chair, and tied them tightly with the gauzy lingerie. I didn't think the satiny fabric would hold a knot, but he was clever and when I tested it, I could not get free.

Something was off. The hairs on my arms were rising up and only partly through lust, now. He strode back around to face me, unbuckling his belt and letting his pants half-drop, so that his cock pushed out. He grasped it and stroked himself. But he wasn't looking at my face; he was looking at my body, and not in the way that he had done, before.

I did not feel like his queen.

I felt like a piece of meat.

"Andrew - sir…"

"I have not said that you may speak," he growled, and he looked like his father, and now I was afraid and I began to struggle harder with the binding around my wrists.

We never did talk about a safe word, did we? I didn't know much but I had been carried away with the talk of limits. How had we missed this? Jeez. "No," I said, more firmly. "Wait a minute."

He bent forward and his left hand grabbed my jaw line, and this time when his eyes met mine, I could not speak. "Don't make me gag you," he hissed, his right hand powering up and down his cock.

I didn't want to look. Even in my fear, this was turning me on, and that was strange. He smelled now of sweat and power, and his knuckles were white as they gripped his thick shaft, and his fingers dug into my cheek.

And then he was coming on my breasts, grunting, with his eyes half-closed.

When he was done, he turned away. His shoulders were sagging and he seemed … I dunno. Defeated. I had never seen him like that.

Something
was
wrong.

"This wasn't about me at all," I said, anger making be brave. "And I don't give a fuck about whether you say I can speak or not. Because I agreed to call you sir and do your bidding in sexual situations. And let me tell you, this is
not
a sexual situation. Is it?
Is it
?"

He was still turned away from me, but his back straightened up and I realized that this could be awkward. I was tied to a chair, and naked, after all, and poking a shitty stick into a hornet's nest.

For a long moment I held my breath until he turned and glowered at me.

And said, "All right. Yes. I'm…"

I raised one eyebrow.

"I'm sorry." He deflated.

I like to think I have good sense from time to time, and this was one occasion when I used it. I didn't say anything. I let him come around and untie me, and I picked a tissue from a box and wiped myself clean. I wrapped up in my bathrobe again, and went to sit next to him on the couch.

I wasn't quite sure what to say next to make it better, so I held my tongue. It seemed kinda important to let him work this out.

He did. He sat up straight and said, quite brightly, "Okay, right. This is difficult for me to say, but in life, I suppose, we have to do the things we don't want to do, so here goes."

Good God. Was the big confident man going to confess he might - just might - have made a mistake? Would I think any less of him for that?

His voice wasn't bright - it was brittle and forced. "I've had submissive partners before," he said. "You need to be assured of that. But they've generally known the situation. I've trained up one or two, but purely in a sexual situation…"

"So you're saying this is my fault for being new to it?"

He frowned. He wanted to say that yes, it was my fault, I could see that. "No. Not at all."

Bad liar.
"So…?"

"Jasmine, I did not expect us to begin an actual relationship. In this, I am not sure of my … I mean, there are things to learn. For both of us to explore. This weekend, we're going to go to a munch."