Beg for It Read online

  “Why did it bother you?”

  “I guess I’m just not used to having people serve me,” she said with a slight curl of her lip.

  Reese had no idea what she was talking about. “You should be. You should be treated like a queen wherever you go. I’m trying to do that for you, Corinne.”

  Her smile looked a little forced. “I see that.”

  “C’mon inside. We can grab a drink, freshen up before dinner…” He spoke as he led her to the door, opening it and stepping aside so she could go through, first. “I picked this apartment for the view. Had it totally gutted and redone to open up the space so you can see the river from just about every room.”

  “It’s gorgeous, Reese. Wow.” She cast a glance and a grin at him over her shoulder. “Who knew New Jersey could look so good?”

  He came up behind her in front of the living room’s vast wall of glass overlooking the Delaware River. “New Jersey always looks better when it’s on the other side of a river.”

  Laughing, she leaned into his embrace and sighed when he kissed her neck. “Mmm. That’s good. But you promised me a drink, didn’t you?”

  “Kissing first,” he murmured. “Please.”

  “How could I say no to you?” She twisted to face him, letting him back her up to the end of the sofa facing the windows. She gave him access to her throat, sighing again when he slid his lips over the soft skin.

  His hands on her hips to make sure she didn’t fall, Reese nuzzled at her collarbones for a moment before standing and pulling her upright. “Drinks. The powder room is through there, but you can use the master bathroom if you want. It’s down that hallway.”

  “I’ll do that.” She pushed up on her tiptoes to kiss him again.

  At the bar, he poured them both glasses of her favorite red wine and carried them into the bedroom. It had also been laid out to showcase the view, with glass on three sides and the bed facing the windows. No curtains other than a few billowy white gauzy ones the decorator had chosen. This high up and far away from any other buildings, there weren’t any neighbors to peek in, and he liked the natural light. He could hear water running in the bathroom sink, so he set the wineglasses on the small table set between two comfortable chairs.

  “Hey,” Corinne said from behind him, and he turned. “This room…this entire apartment. It’s amazing. I mean, I guess I didn’t expect anything less. But wow, Reese. It’s gorgeous.”

  “Not much like the old farmhouse. Or that shitty apartment on Queen Street,” he added.

  “I loved that apartment. It had character. It was cozy.” Corinne took one of the glasses and sipped it as she went around the bed to look out the windows. “This is beautiful though.”

  He joined her, looking out over the water. “Are you hungry? I made reservations for dinner.”

  “You’ve thought of everything. I’d like to change first, if we’re going to someplace fancy.” She looked down at her work clothes. “My bag…?”

  “I’m sure it’s been delivered to the kitchen. I’ll bring it.”

  One of the things he’d always admired about Corinne was how little time it took her to get ready. She’d changed her clothes, done something different with her hair and makeup, in under twenty minutes. She came out of the bathroom looking so good he had to take a step back with a low wolf whistle.

  “Damn,” Reese said.

  She dimpled, twirling on stiletto heels to show off the sleek red dress that hugged her every curve. She stopped, hugging herself. “I can’t tell you the last time I dressed up and went out to someplace nice without kids, without it being work related.”

  “You deserve to be taken out, Corinne.”

  She crossed to him, the high heels putting her nearly at eye level. “Thank you, puppy. You make me feel special.”

  “You are special.” He brushed a lock of curling dark hair off her shoulder.

  She hugged him. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Reese had taken her a Creole place in Center City Philadelphia, a tiny restaurant tucked back along a cobblestoned street very close to the Betsy Ross House. They’d indulged in Chicken Bonne Femme, cocktails, steaming rolls glistening with butter. A bourbon bread pudding to die for. She was going to need a week to recover from this one meal.

  Better than all of that was the way he’d doted on her entire time. Old school chivalry was far from dead, at least tonight. He held open doors, pulled out her chair. He ordered for them both, though he made sure to first ask her what she wanted this time.

  “Something funny?” he asked when he caught her shaking her head.

  “You. When you came back to Lancaster, you were such a pain. I never would’ve guessed we’d end up here.”

  “I had a chip on my shoulder,” Reese admitted. “I’m trying to make up for that. For everything, I guess, that I didn’t do the first time around.”

  “Things were different then,” she said, meaning that both of them had been young. Broke. Trying to make their lives work out the best they could. She didn’t blame him then for not being able to treat her to a three hundred dollar dinner. The truth was, he didn’t need to be able to do that now.

  “I want them to be different, now.”

  And of course they were. After dinner, he took her to a club with a waiting line outside so long it stretched around the block, but the two of them went to the front and were waved inside without so much as a glance at their driver’s licenses. They were shown to a VIP section cordoned off with red velvet rope, and a table set with a chilling bottle of champagne and two flutes.

  “I called ahead while you were in the bathroom,” Reese said. “You want a drink? Or should we dance?”

  “Oh my God…I haven’t been dancing in forever!” Giddy at the thought of it, Corinne looked toward the dance floor and the gyrating crowd. She was definitely not wearing dancing shoes. But when had that ever mattered?

  Reese grinned. “Me neither.”

  She eyed him, moving closer so she wouldn’t have to shout over the thumping bass beat. “I remember when you’d go dancing every weekend. You’d come into the diner wearing that black eyeliner, your hair all spiked. Dressed all in black. Once you wore a fishnet shirt…”

  “Gah, don’t remind me!” Reese cried. “I was a dumb emo kid.”

  “You were beautiful,” she countered. “You still are.”

  For a moment they stared at each other, smiling but saying nothing. Reese took both her hands. “C’mon. Let’s dance.”

  And they did. Stupid shoes be damned, Corinne discovered she had not forgotten what it was like to shake her groove thang. Reese, she saw, had not lost any of his former talent, either. Together, they bumped and ground until they were covered in sweat.

  He tasted like salt when he kissed her. His cock, semihard, pressed her belly when he pulled her close. She lost herself in the moment, drunk not on the dinner cocktails or the bottle of expensive bubbly, but on him.

  “Take me home,” she cried into his ear, her arms slung around his neck.

  Reese pulled away to look into her face. “Yeah? You’re not having fun?”

  “I want to be alone with you,” she told him.

  She didn’t have to say another word. While she used the restroom, Reese called for a car that was waiting for her by the time she came out. They were back to his place in less than half an hour, and she’d held herself back from crawling all over him in the back of the car only because she wanted to tease and keep him on edge.

  They rode the elevator in silence, standing across from each other. Still without speaking, they went into his apartment. When the door shut behind him with a click of the lock, Corinne found her voice.

  “I want to see you the way you used to look. In my bag in the bathroom, there’s some black eyeliner. Go put it on. And take off your clothes, everything but your briefs. Then come out here to the living room.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Fuck, how she loved that, his instant obeisanc
e. The reverence in his tone, tinged with that underlying hitch of arousal. She could never pretend to understand why such submission tripped her switch, but it did, and she was so fucking glad it worked for them both.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t missed it over the years, she contemplated as she watched him disappear down the hallway and she helped herself to a bottle of cold seltzer from his bar fridge. She’d never forgotten how it had been to be in control, that was for sure. She’d done some reading about kink, mostly fiction, but a few reference manuals that had catered to the Mistress fantasy. The few times she’d searched for porn on the computer, she’d gravitated toward the clips featuring male submission. She’d known about her buttons, but somewhere along the way after breaking up with Reese the first time, she’d just stopped expecting them to get pushed.

  She’d settled, Corinne thought as she sipped cool, bubbling water. Settled for men who made promises but didn’t follow through. Men who’d let her down. Men like her ex-husband, who had never quite understood what it meant to put someone else first. Not her, not their kids, not really. It didn’t make them bad men. Just not the right men.

  Was Reese the right man? After all this time? She set her glass on the bar at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. At the sight of him, her breath caught, jagged in her throat like she’d swallowed a burr.

  He wore nothing but a pair of clinging, dark gray boxer briefs that perfectly cupped his ass and emphasized the thick muscles of his thighs. His cock pushed at the front of the soft fabric, not quite tenting it, but well on the way.

  He’d slicked his dark hair into soft spikes and yes, oh fuck, he’d outlined his eyes with black that made them seem that much bluer. When he saw her looking, he stopped, one foot flat and the other, toes pressing the tile, so he could turn. Slowly, one side and the next. Posing for her.

  His fingers curled slightly at his sides, but he kept his chin up as she came closer to look him over. She made a show of it, the inspection, running her hands over his body without lingering. Stepping back to let her gaze take in every inch of him. Now his cock strained at the fabric, and her mouth and throat went dry at the glimpse of flesh trying to peek over the waistband.

  “Tell me what you like about this,” she whispered.

  Reese didn’t hesitate. “I like feeling as though you like looking at me. That my body gets you excited. I like doing what you told me to do, turning you on. I like being…”

  “What, puppy?” Curious, she ran a fingertip down the ridges of his belly but skated away before she touched his cock.

  His voice rasped when he answered, “I like being a thing to you. I mean, I know I’m a person. But I like being this thing that brings you pleasure. It makes me want to do whatever you say.”

  “You like me objectifying you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like me adoring you,” she added, still in a throaty whisper that he could have no trouble hearing.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I fucking love it.”

  She took a few steps back from him on unsteady legs. Her dress unzipped in the back, and she let it puddle to the floor as she stepped out of it. Clad only in the brand-new panties and bra she’d bought especially for the weekend, she had a second to wish she’d added something sexier, a garter belt or something, but at the sound of Reese’s appreciative moan, she stopped worrying.

  When he moved toward her, she held up a hand. “I didn’t tell you to move.”

  Another groan, this one less pleased, slipped out of him. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She laughed and walked toward the windows, beginning to relax and enjoy this even more. The power, the control, made better by Reese’s obvious arousal. What might’ve seemed contrived with someone else felt natural to her—to command. Demand. To expect obedience and receive it, unhesitatingly.

  God, it felt so good.

  She knew there were lots of games people played. Rules. She hadn’t needed to live in the kink community to understand that much. Hell, she’d read that famous trilogy, who hadn’t? Still, formality had never quite been their thing.

  There were some new things she’d been thinking about though.

  Without turning to face him, she could still see the hint of his reflection in the glass. He hadn’t moved. She let her fingers press the window, feeling the chill. Her nipples tightened, though not from cold.

  “My list,” she told him. “It’s gotten very long.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Standing in his briefs with a boner that could have broken bricks, Reese should’ve felt ridiculous. Especially with the makeup lining his eyes—shit, yeah he remembered doing that back in his club kid days, but he was well past that, now. Putting it on had come back to him though. The way to keep the lines smooth but smudgy. His father had always scowled at the sight of him heading out to the clubs, and a huge part of Reese’s reasons for wearing it had been defiance.

  His queen had asked it of him, though, so all he felt was pride that he’d pleased her.

  Reese had grown pretty used to pride over the years. Arrogance, too, according to more than one of his ex-lovers and most of his business colleagues. What they’d seen in him, though, was different than this…this calm. This sense of peace, of waiting and being ready to please. It was not, exactly, that she was making him a thing and not a person, but that with her, doing this, Reese felt beyond himself. Bigger in a way he never did doing anything else, not making a deal, not pulling a company out of the ground.

  Corinne settled herself on the armchair, her ass on the edge of the cushions. She smoothed her hands up and down her thighs and cocked her head to look at him with a small smile. “Take your briefs off and come over here.”

  He shucked out of the briefs immediately, instinctively wanting to grab his cock as it bobbed, tapping his belly. In front of her, looking down, he hoped she meant to take him in her mouth, but Corinne had other plans. She gestured.

  “Over my lap.”

  Reese paused. “Huh?”

  “My list. I told you what would happen, there’d be consequences. This is it. Over my knee.”

  “I’m too big.”

  She gave him another of those wicked smiles that burned him from the inside out. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  He remembered the crack of the ruler on his knuckles. This was something else that should’ve made him feel ridiculous, a schoolboy punishment. At the glance of her gaze at this straining dick, though, he knew there was no way he could pretend to her that he wasn’t completely at her mercy.

  “Oh, see?” she murmured, eyeing his cock. “Look how pretty.”

  She spoke to him differently when she was like this. Her voice changed. It triggered him to respond even more, letting his hand drift up his shaft so his fingers stroked through the glistening droplet of precome leaking from his cockhead.

  Fitting himself onto her lap, though, that was more of a challenge. Awkward, to say the least, with his head hanging down, hands on the floor to support himself, his dick snugged somehow in the space between her knees and his own knees not close enough to the floor to touch. He was too heavy for her, he thought even as the warmth of her hand caressed his bare ass.

  “Do I get to know what was on the list?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said as her hand caressed him. “Being argumentative. Speaking poorly of my apartment on Queen Street. You were generous to the driver, but you need to learn to treat the people who provide services to you like people, not servants. Being late—”

  “I was early to get you leaving the office.”

  “Not that first time, when you came to my house. I told you very specifically, forty-seven minutes. You were late,” she said sternly.

  “That shouldn’t count. That was before we came to an agreement.”

  “Argumentative,” Corinne said.

  “Argumentative is on there twice?” He closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of her hand moving over his rear.

  “It will be on there every time you argue with
me,” she said in that voice that got his cock twitching.

  “I want to be better for you,” he told her. “I’ve never said that to anyone else.”

  “I’m honored.” Her hand teased the undersides of his butt cheeks, tickling. “So. How many spanks do you think you should get?”

  “Ten?”

  She swatted him lightly, not nearly hard enough to sting. “You get twelve. To start. I want you to count them, and say ‘thank you, Ma’am’ after each one.”

  He laughed because she did, and twisted to look up at her. “You really…okay. Yes, Ma’am.”

  Still laughing, Corinne ran her hand over his ass again, like she was testing him out. “Hush. Yes. You get the spanks.”

  The first crack of her palm on his skin was more tentative than he expected, though it hurt worse than he’d thought it would. Felt better, too, a small sting followed by a spreading heat. He’d always liked a little pain, and she knew it, but the underlying elements of this had nothing to do with that. It was about giving up, giving in, doing what she asked of him; it was about the anticipation of the next smack.

  After the fifth, he found himself pushing up to meet her hand as she cracked him. Rolling his hips to get his cock any kind of pressure, any friction at all in that sweet, slightly too open space between her thighs, if only she’d just squeeze him a little, it would feel so fucking good…

  “Six, thank you, Ma’am,” he said.

  The next came. The sting was worse, the spreading heat centering in his balls and the base of his dick as much as in the meat of his ass cheeks. With his head hanging down, the blood was rushing, but that only made all of this that much more surreal.

  By the eleventh, he wasn’t sure he could last for one more, and not because it hurt. It would take a lot more than eleven or twelve spanks to really be painful. No, it was because his cock was betraying him, dripping clear, slick fluid all over her thighs and all it would take was a few stealthy thrusts to start easing him toward orgasm. It was all he could think about, really. Thrusting, grinding against the smoothness of her skin. It was strenuous, even, to bark out the words she’d demanded of him, and he knew the breaking of his voice would get to her.