Six Weeks, page 8
The sun was going down ahead of them, sending the day off in a blaze of orange and red.
They were travelling west. Where did that leave them? Jaya ran over the likely towns in her head. Burlington. Guelph. Hamilton. St. Catharines. London was too far, she suspected.
She glanced at the speedometer, then wished she hadn’t.
She sat back with a shaky sigh. Okay, London was an option.
“I only like surprises when I already know what they are,” she complained.
“I know,” Austen said, sounding a tad smug. “You used to pester me for the list of your birthday presents every year. Eventually, everyone knew not to tell me what they were getting you.”
“You still told me what you were getting me,” she recalled. “Every single year.”
“I could never say no to you,” he said. “I wish someone could have taught me how to pull that trick with you.”
Jaya smiled at his aggrieved tone, feeling a little smug herself.
She couldn’t help but point out, however, “When have I said no to you lately?”
Why would she want to say no to him at all? Jaya watched him from beneath lowered lashes. In repose, his face was pure cold perfection. Some artist might well have chiselled him out of a block of ice.
But his body wasn’t cold, oh no. It was lean and tough and very, very hot. She craved it all the time. Sprawled on top of her. Spooning her, then taking her pussy from behind. Taut muscles straining beneath her as she rode him all the way to climax.
Her face warm, Jaya stared out the window at the passing signs, registering the symbols but not the words.
“Have you ever had sex in a service station?”
She turned her head in time to see Austen’s hands tighten around the steering wheel.
“No,” he told her, adding, “and I don’t want to hear about all the times you have.”
All the times I have? What does he think I am?
“The thing about relationships that don’t last very long, as you’ve often pointed out is the case with me,” she said, “is that you never quite get comfortable enough with one person to experiment very much.”
Austen was silent. Digesting what she’d just said or still committed to his own interpretation?
“I’ve never let another man tie me up,” she told him.
After a minute or two, he spoke. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I know, but you didn’t have to tell me.” She heard the smile in his voice. “You could have let me go on in awe of your vastly greater experience.”
Her ‘vastly greater experience’ didn’t exactly sound like a compliment. Who was he to judge? Looking like he did, it was a surprise women didn’t literally throw themselves at his feet. She’d gone out with him hundreds of times in their adult years but only lately had Jaya started to pay attention to the female attention he garnered. Once she had, it was hard not to see it. It was pretty much nonstop, from servers to other men’s wives.
“I’ll bet you’ve been with more women than I’ve been with men.”
Even as she spoke the words, Katie’s words rang in her head. “I wouldn’t bet against Austen on any subject.”
Katie might be intimidated by him, but Jaya wasn’t.
“I’ll take that bet,” Austen said quietly. “Ladies first.”
Jaya quickly did the math. She’d only started dating after high school so starting at eighteen. She was twenty-eight now. Accepting Austen’s figure, she calculated six weeks for each of her relationships. Fifty-two divided by six…
Eighty.
No way, that number sounded far too high. She certainly hadn’t slept with every man she’d dated. Some hadn’t made it past the first date.
But then not all of them had made it to the mythical six-week mark either, especially when she was younger.
“Sixty,” Jaya said in a very small voice.
Austen didn’t comment. Instead, he uttered a single word.
“Six.”
Jaya folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t believe you.”
For a second, she was convinced he would have said one-tenth of whatever number she said, just to embarrass her.
But she wasn’t embarrassed. She was incredulous.
For a man with Austen’s looks, charm and worldly success, six was a pitiably low number. He could easily have been in the triple digits. He at least had to be in the double digits.
“Six,” she repeated when he failed to defend the ludicrously small number. “How is that even possible?”
Austen lifted one hand off the steering wheel and counted off each finger.
“The last summer of high school was my first. Two girlfriends in college and one in law school. Lisa.” He lowered his hand back to the wheel. “You.”
She gulped. “There was no one between Lisa and me?”
“No.”
The flat answer convinced her.
Six! The man was a sexual miser. Expertise like that deserved to be shared. A cock like that deserved to be shared.
Jaya knew how insatiable he was in bed, waking her up to take her, again and again.
She tried to remember how long it was since he’d broken up with Lisa. After a year, she lost count.
He wasn’t just a miser. He was a camel. And it seemed he’d saved it all up for her.
“And to answer your original question,” Austen said, his tone once again back to its normal velvet on sandpaper timbre, “no, I haven’t had sex in a service station. A, would you like to, and B, how much hand sanitiser do you carry in your purse?”
Jaya laughed, partly from relief. “We passed the last service station a few kilometres ago.”
He turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “So, on the way back then?”
She laughed again. “We’ll have to stop at the store and pick up some hand sanitiser.”
It amazed her how swiftly their relationship could change, bouncing from the past to the present in a matter of minutes. She couldn’t figure out which one was more complicated—their tangled past or their tenuous, undefined present state. While she worried about putting a label on their current relationship, she truly didn’t know if Austen wanted to define it. By his admission, he’d embarked on this new phase only in order to ‘work her out of his system’. She had no reason to believe this was other than temporary and fleeting. But that led to a new problem—what was their future going to look like afterwards?
Was there even a future, as cousins, as lovers, as anything other than strangers whose only wish was never to meet again?
She watched Austen as he ably handled the car at a rate of speed far above the posted one hundred kilometres.
Jaya didn’t care where they were heading, as long as she was going there with him.
* * * *
Shortly before eight, they exited the highway and made their way through local streets to the town of Stratford, known for its annual Shakespearean festival, and Justin Bieber.
Austen found a parking spot along the river road.
“What are we doing here?” Jaya asked again as he helped her out of the low car. “Seeing a play?”
“Of sorts.”
But he steered her, not towards the big theatres, but in the opposite direction.
The air was cool by the river. The view was tranquil, with the water barely stirring and swans floating along the still surface. They were not the only strolling couple to find the evening pleasant. Several others appeared to be heading in the same direction.
They followed a curve in the river path and…
“Oh.”
From a distance, it was a carnival scene. Bright lights strung up on poles and threaded among overhanging tree branches. Colourful cloth making a charmingly rustic backdrop to…
“A stage,” Jaya breathed.
“A local outdoor production of A Winter’s Tale.”
“My favourite,” she exclaimed, feeling foolish a moment later when she saw the look in his eyes. Of course, he already knew that.
They sat down on the grass, Jaya on Austen’s jacket, and watched. Though the casting had clearly been done with a charitable bent, Jaya enjoyed the scenery and costumes, which were nearly of professional standard yet retained an enchantingly primitive air. When the famous stage direction came—Exit, pursued by a bear—the bear was a patchwork creature halfway between a Halloween costume and a child’s well-worn toy. It was left ambiguous whether the bear was supposed to represent a real animal or a person in disguise.
Jaya clapped enthusiastically when the cast took their bows. It had been years since she’d seen such simple, unselfconscious efforts by a group of actors.
* * * *
“I knew you would like it,” Austen said, a trifle smugly, as they ate dinner in a nearby restaurant afterwards. “Just as I knew you would go backstage and introduce yourself to the entire cast and crew.”
“You know everything,” Jaya teased.
“I know you,” he said, before he grimaced and added, “pretty well.” After a moment, he appeared to rally. “I know you like amateur plays because you spend so much time around the professional variety. I know you pay almost as much attention to set design and costumes as you do to the acting and music. And I know you don’t like to admit you like Shakespeare because you think it makes you sound out of date.”
“The classics never go out of date,” she said, “merely out of style.”
His brow furrowed. “Who said that?”
Jaya smiled. “I think I just did.”
Grinning back at her, he signalled for the bill. “Now let’s get you home before you turn into a pumpkin pie.”
“Not a pumpkin?”
He shook his head, the movement making his hair gleam golden under the dim lights. “Pumpkin is bland but pumpkin pie is sweet. I could eat it all day long.”
“And all night?” Jaya suggested, trying not to laugh.
“See?” Austen said. “You know me pretty well too.”
* * * *
As promised, Austen had her in his bed by midnight, but sleep was far from either of their thoughts.
His arms were around her as soon as they reached his bedroom, his head sharply bent as he sought out her mouth. They undressed each other by feel alone, stripping off shirts and jeans with urgency.
The sight of Austen’s naked body short-circuited Jaya’s brain. The pounds he’d lost etched out by rocky abs and great slabs of pectoral muscles. The hair on his chest was a shade darker than the hair on his head, and the hair above his genitals darker still, creating a naturally sexy ombre effect.
“Mm.” She lay beneath the wide spread of his shoulders and stroked his cock lightly, using only her fingertips. He was hard but she knew from experience he could hold out. “Do you want to tie me up again?”
Austen lifted his head, pulling his lips away from her throat. “Yes,” he said gruffly. “Do you mind?”
Jaya reached up to kiss one broad shoulder. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have asked if I did. I-I like it.”
She made the admission reluctantly. Part of the allure of being tied up and at his mercy was the layered fantasy of non-consent. It didn’t work if she was too eager.
Austen quirked his lips. “Was that supposed to be a secret? Because you came like a freight train when we tried it before.”
Jaya’s face was warm. Sometimes she forgot how well he knew her.
“A freight train?”
Still smiling, he kissed her quickly. “A very beautiful and feminine freight train.”
She wriggled deeper into the pillows. “Tie me up, Austen. I want to come so badly.”
He groaned. “Christ, baby, you should come with a warning. Being close to you makes me feel like I’m going to explode.”
“Then you should come with the warning,” she murmured, “because you always make me go off with a bang.”
“Really? Let’s see how true that is.”
He slipped two fingers between her thighs and discovered for himself the heat she’d been concealing. With his forefinger, he moved around the perimeter of her hole, causing her pussy to contract, but it found only emptiness. At the same time, he used his thumb to rub against her clit, quickly turning the building heat into an inferno.
Jaya arched her hips into his grasp. She didn’t want him teasing her. She wanted him inside her.
For now, all she could do was hump his hand, prolonging the pleasure, making it build.
Abruptly, Austen got up and moved across the room. He retrieved the restraints they’d used the last time—a pair of her tights—from a dresser drawer then came back to the bed. He took his time. Hell, he was sauntering. Only his stiffly bobbing cock told the story of how much his playing with her pussy was affecting him.
Jaya’s body was thrumming to a far more urgent beat and watching him take his time made her wilder.
She fought him as he grasped her wrists. “No! Take me now.”
Austen drew back, his stare intent, measuring. Satisfied, he reached up and looped the tights around her left wrist, twisted it around a bedpost, then back to tie around her right wrist.
“I’ll take you when I want, where I want, how I want.”
Jaya whimpered, testing the bonds and finding them secure. He had her right where he wanted her.
For a moment, Austen remained on his knees between her outstretched legs, admiring his handiwork. From behind lowered lashes, Jaya saw the excitement flare deep in his eyes. Naked and bound, she was his, and he could do anything he wanted with her.
He ran his hands down her body, raising the fine hairs on her skin. He knew the exact amount of pressure to apply to trigger a reaction, the right degree of force needed to thrill her.
Jaya moaned as he pinched her nipples between the pads of his fingers then gasped as he leaned down to bite them, first one then the other. Pleasure coursed through her, followed by just the tiniest amount of pain to sharpen the pleasure.
Seeing her reaction, he continued to bite her all over, big tender love bites that left fleeting marks on her skin.
He moved lower and lower, white teeth flashing like a predator’s, threatening to devour her whole.
He bit her belly lightly, making her writhe. Then her inner thigh, the skin there so sensitive, she hissed with anticipation of pain that never came. Where her skin was most tender, his bites were softest.
Austen pushed apart her thighs, spreading her pussy lips and revealing the part of her which was the most delicate of all. He stared at her vagina like it was the most delectable meal he’d ever been served.
Then he shoved his face between her legs and bit down on her clit.
Jaya jerked as though her body had been touched by an open flame. Just enough to scorch. Her nerves screamed, and she cried out along with them.
What was he doing to her?
What was he still doing to her?
It took a few seconds for her to make sense of the wild pleasure pounding through her veins. Not pain but a sweet harsh joy unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
His head buried in her crotch, Austen nibbled, bit, licked and sucked her clit like it was his own personal chew toy, and he meant to get every scrap of enjoyment out of playtime.
It wasn’t easy. Her hips moved of their own volition, trying to buck him off, even as she strained for more…more contact, more raw pleasure.
She twisted her hands in their binds. She couldn’t urge him on. She couldn’t hold him off. She had to lie there and take whatever he gave her, until he was ready to give her what she craved.
Suddenly, he wasn’t holding back or slowing down when she was ready to race to the end. He sucked on her pussy and was rewarded with her creamy juices.
Jaya sobbed his name as she came in his hungry mouth. But this was merely the preliminary. She was ready for his cock, ready to pull him down on top of her and invite his invasion of territory he’d already conquered.
Instead of releasing her, Austen checked her bonds, making sure they were still tight.
“I want you inside of me,” she begged, in case the clear loud clamour of her body had fallen on deaf ears.
Begging didn’t move him. Writhing her naked body against him was like trying to hump a block of wood—a hot, muscled block of wood.
Austen held her from beneath, taking his time teasing the peak of her breasts with his tongue.
“What did I tell you?” he asked. “When I’m ready, I’ll take you. Not before.”
His cock was thick and hard against her stomach. He wanted her. But having her at his mercy made him deny even himself.
She came again, wordlessly, with his fingers inside her and his mouth covering her nipple.
Sweat covered both their bodies. It was well past midnight. He’d eaten her pumpkin pie to his heart’s content. She wanted—she needed—his dick.
She was too exhausted even to try fighting her bonds.
“Please, Austen.” In desperation, she asked, “What do you want from me?”
Jaya didn’t think he would answer, didn’t think there was an answer, but he replied clearly and quietly in that dark voice of his.
“Tell me you love me.”
The quiet command shook her all the way to her heart.
Oh God.
“Austen…”
He stared down at her, his face a mask. “Say it.”
This time the velvet in his voice was thinner and the iron showed through.
“I love you,” she said. “I love you.”
Sweet release. As she said them, Jaya realised she’d been swallowing those same words for weeks, biting them back, afraid to let them loose. He’d freed her by forcing her to utter them, just as by tying her up, he’d acknowledged his lack of control when he was with her.
He entered her then, his hands bruising but his pace steady.
Even so, Jaya cried out. Two orgasms had left her pussy highly sensitised.
“I can’t,” she gasped.
“You can,” Austen assured her. He kissed her hard. “I love you.”
As she grasped the bonds that tied to her to his bed, she lifted her hips, closed her eyes and took him. All of him. Long and slow for as long as he could maintain it, then fast rough fucking as he loosened the tight reins he usually kept on himself.
