Her enveloping heat almost undid me. I jammed myself inside her to the hilt. “Look at me,” I said. “Who do you belong to?”
“You,” she rasped.
My hand tightened on her neck. She tried to pull my fingers away but I subdued her with a soft warning. “Don’t fight me.”
I can’t explain why I had to choke her out every once in a while. I was careful. I knew how to do it so she’d be safe, but I knew she didn’t like it, especially when I was actively fucking her. Maybe that was why I did it, to exert more control, the ultimate control. I have your life. I have your breath.
I put a finger over her pulse, exerted the necessary pressure, and watched her eyes flutter closed. Her body went slack beneath mine, her hands falling away from their death grip on my wrist. My princess, my Sleeping Beauty, out for a few seconds rather than a hundred years. I gathered her close and thrust deep so I’d be all the way inside her when she came to. She awoke with a weak, keening sound.
I cradled her against me and gentled my thrusts. “There you are,” I said. “I have you. I’m inside you.”
“Don’t…again,” she pleaded.
I hushed her. I wouldn’t do it again, but she wasn’t allowed to give orders either. I kissed her and squeezed her ass, still sore from her punishment a few days earlier. So many cruelties. I’d warned her before she came to stay with me. Now I couldn’t let her go.
“Does that feel good, baby?” I asked as she moved her hips against mine. “You want it harder? Deeper?”
“I want you to hurt me.” She clung to my shoulders. “Please, take me there…”
There. That mysterious place where both of us discarded self-preservation and inhibition and lost ourselves in the fuck. It was never hard for us to get there. Now that she seemed stronger and more lucid, I held her down and drove inside her, shuddering at the exquisite sensations in my cock, in my balls as they banged against her. She struggled against my control, reaching for her own pleasure.
I let her take it, whatever she could get. We fucked so hard we moved the bed. I could hear it scraping across the floor, but that only heightened the intensity of her surrender—and mine.
“Come now,” I gasped, unable to wait any longer. “Come with me. Do it.”
She always responded well to orders. I felt her clamp around my spasming organ, milking the cum out of me. Jesus, Jesus, God, fuck. Shudders raced up my spine. Pleasure swallowed me and spit me out on the other side of my orgasm. Or her orgasm. Our orgasm, our own creation, our “there.”
“Holy fuck,” I said, releasing her arms to grab her hair. I ground my cock inside her, still riding out aftershocks, and kissed her hard on the mouth. I stuck my tongue between her lips, wanting to taste her and devour her. She arched against me, squeezing her legs around my hips. We didn’t talk for long moments after that, just kissed and tried to extricate ourselves from the compulsion that drew us together. I never wanted to leave her. From the first time I’d fucked her, in a similarly luxurious hotel room, I hadn’t wanted to leave her.
But there were things we had to do. Unpack. Rest. Eat.
I rolled off her with a groan and lay beside her, one arm slung across my eyes. The afternoon light was fading. We’d been up early to get to the airport. Food. I wanted food.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, rolling back to pull her close.
“I’m starving.”
I groped for the phone and ordered mountains of food, and then we stumbled to the shower to wash off travel grit and sex juices, and sleepiness. We put on white, fleecy hotel robes and did some cursory unpacking while we waited for the food to arrive. Chere kept stopping to stare out at the lights of the darkening city, so I drew her over to the window. We looked down together at the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries Garden across from the hotel, and the Eiffel Tower in the distance. “The Louvre is nearby,” I said. “Maybe you can go there tomorrow.”
“Maybe. Yes. That would be fun.”
I tilted her head back to kiss the hollow at the base of her neck. “Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For being here with me.”
She gave a soft laugh. “It’s my pleasure to be with you. Whenever, wherever you want.”
I replaced my tongue with a firm press of fingers. “Really?”
She tensed, but didn’t resist. “Really,” she said. “I really like being with you. I love being with you.” She bit her lip, flushing, shy. Adorable. “I love you, Price.”
I looked at her, wondering what to say. I loved her, yes, but that wasn’t encompassing enough. She needed another poem. Maybe I could work on one tomorrow, during breaks in the symposium. A knock interrupted my awkward silence, and she started to pull away.