Best Reception Page 2

  Talia tried not to show her disappointment as she watched him walk down the hall to his own room. But it took her lips a long time to let go the memory of how soft his felt on hers.

  Too long. He’d gotten her hot and then walked away, and she wasn’t going to stand for it much longer.

  She stood there for a long time, wishing she had the nerve to go to him now. She’d crawl in his big bed next to him and hope he’d take the hint. All he could do would be to reject her.

  Summoning her courage, she left her room and moved purposefully down the hallway to his room. For a long time she stood there, her hand on the doorknob. Trembling, she turned the knob a little and the door opened a crack.

  His big bed was empty, the rumpled bedclothes hanging half off the bed as though he’d been lying down but hadn’t been able to sleep. As though fear had glued her feet to the floor, she stood there, unable to move as she saw him looking out the window toward the river. Moonlight bathed his hard, naked body as he jerked off. The words she wanted to say—may I come in and make love with you—stuck in her throat along with her silent cries of frustration at being such a coward.

  His need practically saturated the space between them, but she was afraid to step inside, scared that he’d laugh and turn her down. Talia guessed that made her not only a sexual submissive but also a weenie.

  Reluctantly turning away from his door, she tiptoed back to her lonely room, but she couldn’t put Sid out of her daydreams. The picture of his dark, unruly hair that tumbled over his brow, his handsome features shadowed by a two-day growth of scruffy beard and his striking dark blue eyes had imprinted itself on her memory. She couldn’t help imagining those eyes lighting up with delicious passion when he met her equally hot gaze. With that thought in mind she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  * * * * *

  The next morning Sid went to the Rebels’ training facility, promising he’d be home as soon as he could. Talia decided to do as he suggested and have a lazy day, so she curled up in her favorite spot on the sun porch and gazed out at the river.

  Funny. She’d lived with Vic on the opposite bank of the Savannah River for nearly three years, but she’d never noticed back then how peaceful it could be, just sitting and watching boats move up and down the river. She stretched out on the upholstered chaise lounge and adjusted a fleece throw over her shoulders. Vanessa and Victoria shot the fleece a pair of longing catty looks then stretched out near an unshuttered window to sunbathe on the hardwood floor.

  As the sun’s warmth kissed her cheeks and the soft material of the throw caressed her throat and hands, she looked out at the river, focusing on a small boat’s bright-colored sail as it swayed at its mooring on the opposite bank. Marsh grass, brown from the cold, still was flexible enough to bend gracefully in the breeze that set the water near the shore to rippling.

  It was a typical early January day—cold, with frost still dappling the grass and ice glittering on the limbs of a winter-bare sweet gum tree perched on the riverbank—but Talia felt cozy. For the first time in her recent memory, she felt safe. Secure.

  She figured she’d ignored so many of these sweet sensations before because Vic had demanded all her attention the last few years they were together, even when he wasn’t around. He’d even started chaining her in the bedroom once they’d moved to Savannah, before he left for practice or a game, intimating that he thought she’d take up with another man if he gave her half a chance. Talia wondered now why she’d silently endured Vic’s increasing meanness and lack of trust until he’d finally beaten her up and thrown her away like the broken toy she was.

  She knew why. She’d loved Vic. And he’d been good to her at first. It was only after he’d been traded from his first team in Atlanta five years ago that he’d started really hurting her when they played. She’d excused him, thinking that once he settled in with a new team he’d go back to being the loving Master who’d taken her away from a miserable home life as soon as he’d been able to. For some reason, though, he’d never fit in, swearing each time he was traded that some coach or teammates had it in for him and wanted him gone.

  Talia figured it was a miracle Vic had lasted as long as he had with the Rebels—three years, the first of which got him his Super Bowl ring. He’d played in the big game last year, too, and he’d told her he got traded after the Rebels lost because Coach blamed him for not keeping the pass rushers away from the team’s veteran, all-Pro quarterback.

  Her mind started to drift back to that last, awful day two months earlier, when Vic had thrown her down the stairs of their apartment complex in Phoenix and told her not to come back. He hadn’t meant it, of course. He’d told her to go, before. This time, though, she’d known deep inside that if she crawled back to him, he eventually would have killed her.

  No. Don’t go there. You’re safe now, he’ll never hurt you again.

  Actually she’d given a lot of thought to Vic over the time she’d been here with Sid. Not that she was sorry she’d left, but that she needed to figure out what had made Vic change from a decent man to someone she didn’t know—somebody who scared her so much she’d had to get away.

  It had to have been the concussions. The violent headaches that had seemed to plague Vic more each year. The hard hits and the denials that he’d been hurt. With every hit he took, he seemed to grow meaner, more erratic in the way he treated her.

  Sid had helped her come to that conclusion a dozen times since she had gotten there, on nights when she was hurting and certain that she’d failed Vic somehow. Sid had helped her realize she’d made the right decision by walking away, so that each day now she was starting to reclaim a little of who Talia Quinn was.

  And miracle of miracles, he wanted her to have her own identity, not just as his slave.

  She’d concentrate on Sid. He was different. She loved the way he acted as though she were important to him…as though he wanted to take care of her instead of having her always catering to him. As though he wanted her to experience all the things going on around her, not just the feelings he generated for his own pleasure.

  Every day she stayed with Sid, she learned more about him. Before, she’d known him only from watching him play at Rebels’ Roost. If he hadn’t come up to Vic’s car a year ago and pressed a piece of paper with his address and phone number into her hand while Vic had been picking up his stuff from the team’s training facility, whispering that she should come to him if she ever needed help, she never would have thought of dumping herself at his front door. She wouldn’t have done it anyhow, if she could have thought of any place else she might go, other than to a homeless shelter.

  After all, it wasn’t as though she had family back home who’d welcome her with open arms. Ever since she could remember, she’d felt like a burden her mother wanted to get rid of as quickly and easily as she could manage.

  While Sid had struck Talia back then as a guy who kept himself under strict control, radiating intense concentration on what he was doing at BDSM play, living with him had shown her new layers of the man. His intelligence. The guy wasn’t your typical football player. At least he wasn’t like the ones who’d hung out with Vic back when they’d socialized with teammates.

  Sid had graduated from Pitt with a degree in microbiology, and he said he was thinking about going to medical school once his football-playing days were done. But he wasn’t only smart. He had a wicked sense of humor—never mean like some guys, just funny.

  She’d never have guessed a year ago that Sid loved finding and restoring antique furniture, but he did. He was furnishing his house with his finds, one piece at a time. Her favorite was the massive oak wardrobe with its curlicues and gleaming bevel-edged mirrors that sat against the living room wall, opposite the fireplace.

  It had also surprised Talia, since Sid hadn’t had any pets until he brought the two cats home soon after she arrived, to learn he devoted a lot of his free time to helping out at the pet rescue organization. He told her Vanessa and Victor
ia, the black-and-white tuxedo cats, had been brought to the shelter by an elderly woman who couldn’t care for them anymore. He’d said he knew she’d fall in love with the cats when he first saw them, and he was right. She looked down at her sleeping companions and smiled.

  From the way Sid talked about the big dogs he worked with at the shelter, Talia got the idea he was a dog person. A week or so ago she’d asked him why he didn’t adopt one of the homeless dogs he liked so much. He’d shrugged and then pointed out the difficulty of having a dog when he was away so much for road games and training camps. “It would be unfair to a dog if I got one when I’m away so much. Unlike Vanessa and Victoria, they need to be exercised regularly. Maybe when your knee is better, I’ll take you to the shelter and we’ll pick out one together,” he’d told her.

  Did Sid really want her to stay with him beyond the time it would take for her knee to heal enough so she could try to get a job? Talia wasn’t sure. Sometimes she was pretty sure he wanted her, but other times she wondered why he hadn’t thrown her out by now.

  It bothered her that he hadn’t already insisted she become more than a housemate. Didn’t he want her? She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. After all, though Sid had told her he wanted her sexually, she knew enough to figure out that she wasn’t worthy of his attention. It wasn’t just that he was practically a genius and she’d barely finished high school, or that he was a millionaire football player and she was pretty much an unemployable bum.

  I’m just plain not good enough for a good man. She’d had that proven to her more than once in her twenty-eight years of living.

  After all, she’d been Vic’s 24/7 slave for close to ten years, and for the past three or four he’d pretty much treated her the way he did his week-old garbage. And before Vic, her mom and stepfathers had made it obvious that they could hardly wait until she found a sucker to live with and got out of their way.

  Talia couldn’t understand why Sid hadn’t kicked her out or at least asked more from her than an occasional meal and a little light housework. But when she tried to analyze the situation rationally, she was glad he’d been giving her time to get over her injuries—the ones in her head as well as her body.

  At first she’d been too much a physical wreck to think about having sex except as a possible way to pay Sid back for his charity, but now she’d healed. The cast was off her knee, and the brace that the doctor had fitted her with hardly restricted her activities. Yesterday, she had even taken a mile-long hike along the river and barely broken a sweat.

  She wasn’t the delicate flower Sid seemed to think she was. His chaste kisses and casual touches were driving her insane, reminding her she’d come here because she used to love watching him play with his partners at Rebels’ Roost. Damn it, she wanted him to play with her, too.

  She’d read through some of his books on Japanese rope bondage and even tackled a couple volumes he had about the psychology of the BDSM lifestyle. She needed for him to take her, conquer the deeply rooted fears that drove her and force her to a state of sexual nirvana.

  Of course a voice in Talia’s head kept reminding her that Sid might not want Vic’s leftovers. But he’d admitted when she had first gotten there that he lusted after her. Wouldn’t he have tossed her out as soon as the cast had come off her leg if he’d decided he didn’t want her after all? She’d occasionally wondered if he’d been playing in the dungeon at Rebels’ Roost, but she didn’t think so. He’d been sticking pretty close to home every night since she’d arrived, except for the weekends when he was out of town for games.

  Stretching, she tried not to think of all the times last year when she’d surreptitiously watched Sid play at Rebels’ Roost, his strands of rope gliding with sensual promise over the skin of the club submissives he usually chose for playmates. He’d never made them cry or beg for mercy, but Talia had sensed their arousal, heard their ecstatic moans when they came. She’d envied every one of Sid’s playmates.

  Vic had gone for less sensuous methods of exercising control. She remembered his frequent scoffing assessments of Sid’s personal fetish. Why spend all that time and energy tying your slave up in pretty knots when handcuffs and shackles do a better job and go on so much faster?

  Talia wanted Sid to dominate her. She wanted it so much she could barely keep herself from going down on her knees and begging him to take her.

  Getting up, she went in the living room, found one of his books on rope bondage and curled up with it on the couch. As she studied the pictures she remembered watching Sid playing at Rebels’ Roost.

  I wish he’d play with me this way.

  Chapter Two

  When he got home from practice, Sid found Talia in the living room, looking at one of his books about shibari. She moved quickly to get her hand out of the baggy sweats she had on, but not so fast that he didn’t see what she’d been doing. “Enjoying yourself, sweetheart?”

  Her cheeks turned bright red when she looked up at him, as hot looking as his dick felt as he realized she shared his fetish on some level. “Were you imagining yourself in one of those pictures? Were you wishing I’d wrap you up that way? I want to do it, you know.”

  Long ago he’d etched those pictures on his brain, and over the past few years he’d perfected the art on casual playmates. When Talia became his playmate, it wouldn’t be casual.

  He imagined playing with her at Rebels’ Roost, wrapping her in the blue nylon rope he planned to buy, rope that had played in all his erotic dreams of her. For their first play, he’d use a simple pattern. One that would have her flesh straining against snug but not painfully tight bonds that would emphasize her breasts, her tiny waist. A knot at the base of her mound would stimulate her swollen clit, make it stand up and beg for his attention. Her nipples would become rigid, rosy nubs, beckoning his tongue. His teeth. He’d suspend her so her sweet, wet cunt would be level with his mouth. And he’d feast on her slick, salty musk.

  “You do?” When she spoke in that sweet, submissive voice, blood slammed into his groin. “I didn’t hear you come in. Otherwise I wouldn’t have…”

  “Embarrassed yourself? You mustn’t ever be embarrassed around me. You have no idea how much it arouses me, knowing that looking at rope bondage gets you so hot.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be, sweetheart.” Sid wanted to scoop her up and take her to his bed, but now wasn’t the time, no matter how much his cock tried to tell him otherwise, so he lightened up the conversation. “Coach let us off early today. Want to go shopping?”

  Seeing her wearing a pair of his old sweats every day was getting to him. They reminded him of the sad shape she’d been in when he’d found her on his doorstep with nothing but the clothes on her back. Remembering her battered and bruised that way made him think about that ass-wipe Reinhart, and he didn’t like it. “I’m tired of seeing you wearing my hand-me-downs. I’d have gone out and bought you some stuff, but I’ve got no clue about how to pick out things you’ll like. How about it? Shall we go get you some girly things?”

  “Okay.” She paused and her smile faded. “I don’t have any money.”

  He refused to let her dwell on the fact that Reinhart had left her destitute. “I do. And I’d like to spend some of it on you. I thought we might go play at Rebels’ Roost some night soon if you’re feeling up to it. I hear there’s some sort of get-together for Rebels’ wives and girlfriends in a couple of days, and then of course there’s the game on Sunday. I’d look like a stingy SOB if I let you go out wearing my old clothes.”

  She smiled up at him, her beautiful blue eyes sparkling as though he’d just offered her the moon. “I’d love to play with you. And I’ll go to the team events if you’re sure you want me to.”

  “I’ve been sure I want you since the first time I saw you with him.” Sid paused, hesitating to say it. But then he figured, what the hell? Talia seemed ready to accept him as her new Dom, and she deserved to know he’d been lusting after her for a long time. “You’v
e got no idea how much I envied him.”

  “He’s in the past. I’m ready to move on.” Talia’s eyes widened, as though Sid’s revelation amazed her. She had to have known for a good while that he cared about her, but he couldn’t expect that she’d have realized the extent of his attraction to her.

  Sid wasn’t sure he’d realized that until just recently. At least not on a conscious level. But the certainty in Talia’s voice gave him the courage to push forward. “With me? Are you ready to take me as your Master?”

  “I was ready for you to be my Master when I rode buses all the way here from Phoenix and passed out on your front porch.” Her shy smile made him want to hug her. And her words made him feel ten feet tall. Invincible.

  He had to lighten up or he’d start shedding tears, and he didn’t want her to know how deeply her admission affected him. “I’m glad. Come on, though, time’s going by fast. I want to buy you some new clothes first, and if we get through soon enough, we can stop at a seafood place for dinner.”

  “All right. If you’re sure you want to spend a little of your hard-earned money on me.”

  “I can’t think of any way I’d rather spend it. Not only am I running out of sweats and dress shirts that don’t have your scent and drive me nuts, I’m anxious to see you wearing something pretty. Sexy. Tight jeans and sweaters that show off your hot little body. Maybe even some stilettos and some silky lingerie.”

  “I can’t wear high heels yet. My knee…”

  “I was just kidding about the high heels, sweetheart. We’ll get you some new cross-trainers and flats. And while we’re out I’ll stop by the toy store and see if I can find some new, soft rope that won’t chafe your tender skin when we go and play at Rebels’ Roost.” He imagined her wrapped in blue rope, its bright color contrasting with her pale, creamy skin and bringing out the color of her eyes. When he imagined looking at her tied up for his pleasure, his mouth literally began to water. “I’m gonna wrap you up like a present, just for me.”