To Love a Man (5 page)

He could see that she was surprised by what he’d asked. “And I’d be the only girl you’d date?”

“Yes.” He’d amazed himself by agreeing quickly, but he’d meant it. He made it a point not to say things he didn’t mean.

She considered him for a long moment, and he relaxed back into his chair, despite the fact that he didn’t think anyone had ever given him quite that thorough a going over. He wasn’t used to such close perusal. He had grown up privileged, and made friends relatively easily, without trying very hard to. Women were drawn to him for some reason he really didn’t question much, but he’d never met one to whom he was willing to make that kind of a commitment. 

There was something about her that drew him to her – something that he couldn’t put his finger on, until they had been talking several dates later. He had promised her that he wouldn’t make her have to struggle with him every night about whether or not they were going to have sex, but he hadn’t promised her that he was going to be a monk around her, either. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stick to that, so he would never have made that bargain.

He had surprised her at the end of their first date by asking her out every night of the coming week, and she had laughed, explaining that she had a new job teaching and that she would be spending her evenings making lesson plans and correcting homework. 

He got her to agree to see him on Wednesday nights, as well as Friday and Saturday nights, and he made sure that she spent as much of that time in his arms as he could, or at least being touched by him in some way or other, even if it was just holding hands.

On one particularly intimate night, not long after that first date, when they had decided to eat in, he had held her on his lap – where he pretty much insisted she belonged – as they listened to music.

“So, are you afraid of sex?” he asked, leaning back from a passionate kiss that she had quite been enjoying.

She tried to sit up more in his arms but he wouldn’t let her.

“No, you stay right there and answer my question, young lady,” he said, very deliberately.

She squirmed. There was no missing it, she had
squirmed
, either at his slightly scolding tone or his carefully chosen words – either way it didn’t really matter to him. They went hand in hand, as far as he was concerned.

Ellie looked at him a bit warily and answered, “No, I’m not afraid of it, I just think it’s something really intimate, and not something I want to share with someone I’ve only known for two hours.”

Cal nodded. “I can understand that. But, just because we’re not going to have sex doesn’t mean that I’m not going to touch you.”

He saw her catch her lip between her teeth.

“Problem?”

“No, not for me. I’d love for you to touch me.”

His hips rocked up at that, lifting her a bit. “Good. Because I intend to.”

“But what about—” she stopped, mid-sentence, as his hand cupped her jaw.

“What?”

“You? Can I touch you?”

He chuckled. “Of course you can.”

“And it won’t... hurt you? That we’re… that we—”

Cal lifted her eyes to his. “I already want you. Badly. Do I seem hurt to you? I ache with it, Ellie, and if the next words out of your mouth were ‘make love to me, Cal’ I’d be on top of you in a second. But I’m not controlled by my hormones, and delayed gratification will only make things better.” He kissed her with exquisite gentleness. “And the men who couldn’t see that, couldn’t see how special you are, didn’t deserve to have you anyway.”

Ellie blushed prettily. “I’m sorry to be such a ninny, but I grew up with sisters, and I was buried in my books for most of high school and college, and I don’t know much about men.”

“Have you masturbated?”

He’d never seen anyone turn quite that shade of red before, but he refused to laugh at her.

“Um...” She seemed extremely reluctant to answer him.

“If we’re eventually going to be lovers, then I want to know things like that about you. I want to know what you thought about when you made yourself cum. I want to know what turns you on. Do you watch porn at all? If so, what kind?”

She struggled a little in his arms, but he held her close, not hurting her, but also not letting her go. “So?” he asked expectantly.

“I... uh... I have masturbated, yes.”

“What were you thinking of at the time? Or who?”

“No one in specific, really.”

“Is there a scene you run through your head while you touch yourself with those beautiful little fingers?”

“Scenes,” she confessed to her own lap.

“Such as?”

She looked and sounded truly distressed, hiding her face in her hands. “Oh dear God, I can’t tell you that!”

Charmed rather than peeved at her reaction, Cal pried her hands away from her face. “Of course you can. When I masturbate, I often think about having two women in bed with me. That’s a very common male fantasy.” That was the tamest amongst the ones he used frequently, but she didn’t need to know that quite yet.

Or perhaps she did.

“What’s one of your fantasies, Elise? Tell me.” Cal tipped her chin up so that she could no longer hide her eyes from him and used the same tone as he had before when she’d squirmed.

“I think mine are... um... too... unusual.”

His eyebrows went up. “By unusual do you mean kinky?”

She would have put her head down if he had let her, but he didn’t. “Yes, I suppose, although I’m not overly fond of that word.”

“And what do they involve?” How could she possibly be that unaware of just how aroused he was? Was she truly that innocent? And would someone who was that innocent have kinky fantasies?

Knowing she was pretty well trapped, she instead buried her face against his neck, and he felt at once entirely aroused and distinctly protective, somehow.

But he wasn’t going to let her not answer him, either. “Ellie.” He imbued her name with as much sternness as he could.

And he had his answer in her eyes when her head shot up and he saw her swallow hard just before she lowered her eyes. “You’re a submissive,” he breathed, hardly able to believe his luck.

“I am not!” She frowned fiercely.

“No?” he asked. “So if I tell you that, at some point shortly, I’m going to find a reason to spank you, you’re not going to be wet when I check afterwards?”

“Check? Afterwards?” Ellie was trying to come to grips with the idea that she might just have found a guy who was actually interested in spanking her, but when he mentioned checking her afterwards, she knew she was doomed.

He kissed her once, a quick kiss. “Yes.” Another kiss, less quick. “Check.” A longer, much more involved kiss. “Afterwards.”

And then he stopped her heart completely by saying, “And if I find that you
are
wet, then I will also know that you lied to me today. And you’ll have earned another, much more severe punishment.”

Now, the first time she was in his apartment – having put him off because she hadn’t really dealt with the idea that he was as rich as he was – she wasn’t on his lap having a snuggle. She wasn’t being given a tour of his place. She was on her tummy over the back of his couch.

And he was just reaching for the hem of her skirt when her phone rang.

Her purse had ended up on his easy chair and she got down.

“I didn’t tell you that you could do that,” he said pointedly.

Ellie had rounded on him like a mother tigress. “Look. I like you a lot, and I think we’re probably very compatible in a lot of important ways. You’re pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for in a man.”

He hadn’t expected to hear that from her this evening, but it was great to know.

“And I might be a submissive, and I might be on the way to becoming
your
submissive, but if I do, I will still have a
life
. By that I mean I have friends and family who all text me or message me on Facebook or email me. But when someone actually
calls
me, then I know it’s a problem or some kind of emergency.”

He gave her a little bow with his head. Things like this were exactly what they needed to work out, and he was actually glad to see that she was willing to stand up to him. Hell, he’d had people who had worked for him for years who wouldn’t have said what she’d said to him.

And he did his best not to listen to her conversation, but it was damned near impossible. Someone was in serious distress, and she was on the phone for about a half an hour, consoling them about something.

He tried not to listen, but there was no mistaking the name she said at the end.

“Carter, give it some time. Really. You just need to be patient.”

Finally she rang off, and he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Carter?”

And damned if she didn’t look guilty as sin. “Yes.”

“My brother, Carter?”

“Yes.”

He stood up and crossed to her, lifting her out of her seat and setting her down on her feet to tilt her chin up, staring down into her eyes with intense seriousness. “You’re seeing my brother?”

She flushed, and he took it as a sign of guilt, frankly. “Not seeing him, no, but he’s always been a friend of mine – an acquaintance, and we’ve gotten closer lately.”

“Since we’ve gotten closer?”

“I don’t think I’ve noticed a correlation.”

His grip on her chin tightened just a bit. “You remember what you promised me?”

“Yes, and I am not
dating
your brother!”

She said it with such conviction that he was inclined to believe her. Besides, he simply made a mental note to have a chat with his brother ASAP.

“So, where were we, young lady?” he asked, and her blush brightened even further. “I believe you were over the back of my couch, weren’t you? Like so?” He put her right back into the position she’d been in before his brother had sort of saved her from “worse than death.”

“Cal?”

Her voice was soft and plaintive, and he liked that.

“Yes, honey?”

Ellie could feel his hand on the small of her back – which she had told him previously was an erogenous zone for her.

“I know this might be considered – perhaps, topping from the bottom, but can I say something?”

“Of course. As I’ve been saying, communication is key. I don’t want you to ever feel there’s something you can’t say to me, whether you think I’ll like it, or whether or not you think you ‘should’. I want you, and I like you, and I think you’re kickass. I want you to be a kickass submissive. And I want you to be confident in me, that I’m not going to be petty or stupid with you in my care, like I’m going to take it out on you if you should dare to say something I might disagree with.”

She didn’t think she’d ever get used to his compliments. They weren’t too frequent, which would make her suspicious of just how genuine they were. But they were almost always for things that she’d never thought of herself as being good at before.

And she was entirely – already – in love with the way he thought, like every single thing he’d just said.

“Of course it’s up to you, you know best, but I would feel more comfortable if I was over your lap this... first time.”

She was facing her first spanking tonight because they’d had a bit of an argument – although certainly not the screaming and shouting kind as neither of them was like that anyway, but there was a definite difference of opinion about just who was going to pay for dinner.

There was no way she wasn’t aware of who he was. The Jennings name was on everything all over town; his family money went back to the late nineteenth century, when his great-great-grandfather had discovered oil on their land.

She had grown up in this town, and had always been aware of the Jennings family. She’d interned at their corporation one semester when she was trying to decide between getting a degree in business or one in education, and that was where she had met his brother and they had become good friends.

But she balked at the idea that, just because Cal had money, he had to pay for everything they did. It didn’t seem somehow equitable to her that he was always the one shelling out constantly.

Now Cal didn’t have any problem with that at all. He was finding that he thoroughly enjoyed taking care of her. He was excruciatingly aware of the disparity in their incomes, and he didn’t want anything they decided to do to negatively affect her bottom line, nor did he want her lack of funds to prevent them from doing what they wanted to.

So when they had both reached for the bill this evening at a particularly nice restaurant, and he had tugged on it gently, he had been somewhat surprised when she had flatly refused to let go.

“No. I want to pay for dinner tonight.”

If the bill was less than a hundred and fifty dollars he would have been amazed, and he knew that she didn’t have that kind of money to throw around. He knew exactly what the school board had set as a salary for new, untenured teachers and it was an obscenely low amount, considering the work he knew she did in her spare time, not to mention the fact that she was teaching the next generation of Americans.

He didn’t want to hurt her pride, though, either. “Ellie, no. You don’t need to.”

“I know I don’t
need
to, I
want
to. You pay for everything. I want to pay my fair share.”

He felt as if he was walking a fine line here. He liked that she wanted to make the effort to pay. For so many women he dated, if they didn’t come
into
it expecting that they weren’t going to have to spend dollar one of their own money because it was him that they were dating, they seemed to come to that realization somewhere down the line.

But not Ellie. She was giving him what he’d come to think of as her stubborn look, eyes narrowed, not looking away from him but instead leaning towards him, until they were looking at each other over the table, noses nearly colliding.

“I said no, Ellie,” he repeated softly, and that should have been her first clue that he was dead serious about this.

And he should have realized that, when she capitulated so easily, she was up to something.

And she was.

She got up to go to the bathroom, and he didn’t notice that it had taken her a bit longer. Who could tell how long it was going to take a woman in the bathroom? She’d taken her purse, but then women often did. There was nothing unusual about that.

She was really, really good. Ellie even pretended to wait for the server to come take his credit card, but when he did, he didn’t even so much as reach for the little notebook that contained the bill, with Cal’s card sticking visibly out of the top. Except to take the card out and hand it back to him. “You won’t be needing this. The bill’s been paid already.” He glanced at Ellie, who was busy trying to look innocent, and for once she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

Cal didn’t say anything at first, nothing at all, and that left Ellie on pins and needle, quite sure she’d managed to piss him off by her little deception. But then he got up and put his hand out to help her out of the booth, and when she stood, he was quite close to her and he didn’t move out of the way in the least.

Instead, he tugged on her arm and she fell a bit against him, his arm sneaking around her waist to hold her there. “That, my dear, was a very naughty thing to do when I’d already told you not to. While I appreciate the sentiment, I, above all, expect you to obey me, most especially when you don’t want to. So you’ve earned your first spanking, which I will administer at my place when we get home.”

She could hardly fume at him. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been talking about this for quite some time now – heck, he’d told her on their first date that he was going to spank her eventually. It had been fodder for her masturbatory fantasies – the ones he kept asking her to tell him about – for quite some time.

And now it was going to happen. It was actually going to happen! She was so nervous she was shaking.

He seemed to sense her understandable unease and, once he’d helped her into his car with the old world manners she adored, then had gotten them under way, he’d reached for her hand. “You’re cold,” he’d said, frowning and turning up the heat.

“I’m... I’m just nervous.”

Cal brought the back of Ellie’s hand to his lips, then laced his fingers with hers again, holding her hand against his thigh, hoping to warm it for her. “I know, and I know this is stupid to say to you because it’s not going to do any good, but I think I’m contractually obligated to do so: you don’t need to be.”

“I know.”

“I know we haven’t been together for too long – at least as far as you’re concerned,” he teased her, hoping to get a smile out of her, but the corners of her lips barely rose at all. “But do you have enough of a sense of who I am to trust me?”

“Oh yes. It’s just nerves at something new, not a lack of confidence in you, Cal.”

He gave her a wink. “I’m glad to hear you say that. This is the right pace for us to proceed?” he asked, hoping to get her mind off what was to come.

“Yes, perfect. You’ve been amazingly patient with me. You must be so bored, not to mention so frustrated?” she murmured under her breath.

“Not at all.”

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t explored each other’s bodies, they had. But she had told him that she would be much more comfortable if they started with him, realizing, he was sure, that he was damned unlikely to turn an offer like that down.

So as much as he adored watching a woman explode in his arms because of what he had said and done to her, he was more than enough of a hedonist to enjoy teaching her exactly what it was that pleased him about her, and how she could please him.

And she had been a very quick, eager study, with her hands and her mouth. He was much less frustrated now than he would have been if she’d asked that question a couple of months ago.

They were going at a glacial pace, and he was quite amazed that he’d been so blasted happy to do so, even though the blue balls were likely to kill him first.

Tonight, though, after her punishment, he intended to take things just a bit further than they had before.

And he wasn’t going to let her say no to him, either.

He had taken his time responding to her suggestion that she be over his lap when he spanked her for the first time, and she had waited for his decision quite patiently, not fidgeting at all or craning her head to look back at him.

“No, Ellie, I don’t think so. This is where I want you. In this position. Although with a lot fewer clothes.”

She was very modest, and had often earned a swat or two when her little hands deliberately got in the way of him trying to peel a layer of clothing away from that creamy skin of hers.

This time he wasn’t going to allow her to be coy.

His hand rested on the top of her dress, right on her bra strap as he spoke. “I want you to remain in this position until I tell you that you have my permission to get up, Ellie, no matter what I do to you.”

She squealed at that last bit, but he handed her a pillow and she clutched it to her like it was a lifeline.

“I’m also going to spank you on the bare.”

Her head came up all of a sudden, and he saw her open her mouth, but then, long seconds later, he saw her close it and lower her head. He made no comment about what was obviously an inner struggle, but instead lifted up the hem of her very pretty pink flowered dress so that it was folded quite neatly over her back, revealing her pretty pink flowered panties – that almost matched the dress – and matching pink garter belt and hose.

“Did you plan to be spanked tonight?” he asked as he stared down at her, his already full blown erection growing to epic proportions, such that he had to reach down and adjust himself or he was sure he was going to break right through the wimpy zipper.

Ellie laughed softly. “No. I’ve been wearing them the majority of the time since you said one night while we were talking that they turned you on.”