12 Shades Of Surrender: Bound

“I’d forgotten,” he said quietly, “how beautiful this is.”

He moved the candle to his left hand and with his right he touched her. One by one he dipped every finger into her—his thumb, his index finger … sliding one in, pulling slowly out, and then pushing in the next as if he had to experience her from every angle. With a single wet fingertip he widened her tight entrance with spiraling circles. She was so wet she could hear herself.

Again he pressed two fingers into her. She arched her hips into his hand. He probed along the front wall of her eager body. She gasped when he suddenly pushed hard into her g-spot, her inner muscles clamping down on him.

She heard his soft laughter and she blushed again, this time at her own blatant need for him.

“Responsive little thing, aren’t you?” Daniel teased as he pulled out of her once more and leaned forward to set the candle back on the table. “I wonder how you’ll respond to this….”

Now it was his mouth on her, his tongue inside her. She balked in shock from the sheer ferocity of it. He took her clitoris between his lips and sucked. She dug her hands into the bed, desperate to hold onto something, anything to steady herself as a current of pleasure—so strong it felt as if it would drag her under—washed over her again and again. Daniel brought her once more to the sharp edge of orgasm and stopped. He crawled up her body and pressed his lips, wet with her desire, to her mouth. She tasted herself first, then him. As he kissed her with desperate hungry lips, she felt him reach for her knees. He brought her legs up, positioning them over his shoulders. He leaned in to kiss her again, a move that pushed her knees nearly to her chest.

Now it was Daniel who reached between her legs and spread her wide. She felt the wet tip of his cock against her. She barely had time to brace herself before he thrust into her so hard, so incredibly deep that she nearly cried.

Eleanor tried to breathe as Daniel rode her with long driving thrusts. He was big but she was well-accustomed to a large size. She was shocked instead by his insistence; every thrust going deeper and deeper until it seemed he pounded into the pit of her stomach. It quickly left the realm of sex and devolved into pure fucking. And he fucked her like a starving man ate. Three years of celibacy and sorrow had turned his body into a vessel of pure hunger. He gripped her wrists as he took her, holding her down hard. If she wanted to escape him she couldn’t. No part of her wanted to escape. Still some lingering defiant spark in her fought off the climax that was threatening to erupt from within her. He was so suddenly possessive of her and she so aware that no matter how he took her, she was not his, that she refused to give him the satisfaction of giving her satisfaction. But no amount of slow steady breathing could stop her. She came and when she came it felt as if her orgasm was wrenched from her. He took it from her body rather than giving it to her. His pace grew faster, harsher, and she held onto the bars of the headboard as he spent his pleasure in her, filling her stomach with his liquid heat.

Eleanor’s heart still raced even as her ragged breathing settled. She looked at Daniel who still lay embedded in her. His eyes were closed and his brow was furrowed in concentration as if he were trying to imprint in his memory this one moment inside her. Eleanor stared at his face. Long blond eyelashes lay on pale cheeks like sunlight on snow, and she felt an unexpected stab of tenderness toward him.

Daniel opened his eyes slowly. Eleanor tried to smile at him but the look he gave her was one of shock. He seemed to be seeing a stranger, and Eleanor realized with a sick churning in her stomach that he was.

“It was her you were fucking, wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice soft and without accusation. “Your wife, right? Lucky lady.”

Daniel’s only answer was to slip out of her. He left the bed and threw on his clothes.

“Keep the bed,” he said without looking at her. “Tonight this is the warmest room in the house.”

“But where will you—” Eleanor started to ask, but he was already gone.

She groaned in frustration and collapsed back on the bed. She blew out the candles and yanked the covers to her chin. After a few minutes in the dark, she felt the presence of ghosts in the room—the ghost of Daniel’s late wife and the more fearsome ghost of the man Daniel had been before her death. Eleanor knew she lay with them in the ghost of their marriage bed. She tossed the covers aside, found her nightgown, and returned to her own bedroom. She crawled back into her freezing bed where at least she knew that the only cold body between the sheets would be her own.

Eleanor awoke the next morning and heard the faint but reassuring hum that indicated the power had been restored to the house. She showered and dressed and scrounged for breakfast in the grand but near-empty kitchen. Still … although the kitchen felt abandoned, something told her she wasn’t alone in the house. Last night’s snow had been far too thick and heavy for the roads to be safely passable yet. Once her stomach was comfortably full, she began a cursory exploration. Ears attuned to the slightest sound, she paused outside a closed door near the backside of the house and heard the unmistakable sound of books sliding across a shelf.

She let loose a wolf whistle as she entered. The library was far larger inside than the unobtrusive door had presaged and was stocked with row after row, case after case of books. Enough books to start her own bookstore.

“I knew I heard books,” she said to no one in particular.

“You hear books?” Daniel’s lightly sarcastic voice came from the far left corner of the library. “Interesting. Most people actually have to read them.”

“It’s a gift,” she said, shrugging. “What are you doing?”

Daniel stood behind a desk stacked shoulder high with books.

“I am draining all the alphabet soup out of my library.” She raised an eyebrow at him as she walked to the desk. “I thought you were a bibliophile,” Daniel taunted in response to her puzzled look.

“I am a bibliophile. A bibliophiend even. But I still have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Well, as your book knowledge comes from the retail side of the industry then I’ll pardon your ignorance.” He winked at her and she fairly flushed as a sensory memory from last night hit her lower stomach with soft but insistent force. And the light, that certain white light created only by the morning sun reflecting off new-fallen snow rendered Daniel’s handsome features almost luminous. She almost forgot what they’d been talking about. “Let’s see, at your bookstore your books are divided by subject and then alphabetized by author’s last name, yes?”

“Right. With a few exceptions.”

“Well, libraries aren’t allowed any exceptions. The books have to be in perfect order at all times. You can’t do that with just sorting by genre and then alphabetizing.”

“Yeah, that’s what the Dewey Decimal system is for, right?”

“But there isn’t just Dewey. There’s the Library of Congress classification system. Dewey is a clean, efficient system, ten main classes divided by ten and so on. The Library of Congress is alpha-numeric and based on 26 classes, one for each letter of the alphabet. Compared to Dewey it is crude and confusing, and I only had the library that way because of Maggie. It’s what she was used to.”

“Alpha-numeric—so that’s your alphabet soup.”

“Yes, and this library has been disorganized soup for far too long.” Daniel shook his head as he wrote out a series of numbers on an index card and slipped it inside the front cover of a book.

“Oh my God,” Eleanor said, sounding utterly shocked.

“What?”

“You’re a nerd.”

Daniel only looked at her a moment before laughing.

“I am not a nerd. I’m a librarian.”

“No way,” she said, recalling again the ferocious passion and the skill he’d demonstrated last night. “Guess they were right.”

“Who?”

“You know, whoever said ‘it’s always the quiet ones.’”

Daniel’s mouth twitched to a wicked half grin. “I’m the quiet ones,” he said, flashing a look at Eleanor that nearly dropped her to her knees.

She coughed and shook herself out of the erotic reverie she’d fallen into.

“Okay,” she said, walking toward him with more gusto than guts. “I can accept that you’re a librarian and a sex god—”

“Well, considering your lover is a pr—”

“Nope. Nyet. Halt. I told you last night—”

“Oh, yes. I had forgotten. Our mutual acquaintance is off-limits to discussion.”

“If you want me to survive this week with what passes for my mental health intact, then yes.”

“Which I do. So I apologize. But as we barely know each other, finding a topic of conversation apart from our mutual friend might be difficult.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she said, sitting on the table next to a stack of books. “We’ve got books in common, sex …” She ticked them off on her fingers.

“All of two,” Daniel said skeptically.

“Well …” She stuck out her foot and tapped his leg lightly. “We’ve got you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I’m curious. You’re a curiosity. As long as you don’t mind answering personal questions—”

“How personal?” Daniel interrupted.

“Unapologetically intrusive, knowing me. Unconscionably so.”

“You have a large vocabulary, Eleanor.”

“And you have a large …” She paused as he gave her a warning look. “House.”

“I do.”

“How does a librarian afford a house like this? That was the first unapologetically personal question, for those of you keeping count.”

Daniel smiled but Eleanor saw the pale ghost of pain pass across his eyes.

“Librarians can’t afford houses like this. But a partner in a Manhattan law firm can.”

“Your wife? She was a lawyer?”

“She was. A very powerful attorney.”

“You married a shark?” Eleanor asked, laughing.

“A corporate shark, in fact.”

“Wow,” Eleanor said, duly impressed. “How did you meet her?”

“At the library, of course.”

“She read?”

“She gave,” Daniel said with great emphasis on the last word. “She gave balls, galas, parties, charity events, fund-raisers of every stripe. She actually had a heart and a conscience. She was the human face of an otherwise very imposing old firm. She held a gala one year to raise money for a literary charity at the NYPL—”

“Holy shit, you worked at the NYPL?”

“Fifth Avenue, Main Branch,” he said with barely concealed pride.

“With Lenox and Astor?” she asked, naming the two famous lions that guarded the legendary library.

“On warm days I ate my lunch outside with Astor.”

“Why not Lenox?”

“He asked too many personal questions.”

“I like him already. So you were both guests at the party?”

“Oh no. She was the hostess. I happened to be working late that night in the Map Room. Lowly archivist. Not important enough for an invitation.”

“So you were tucked away in a dusty corner alphabetizing 18th century maps of Tierra del Fuego …”

“Something to that effect—”

“And she slips away from the suffocating crowd of the geriatrically wealthy—”

“Has anyone ever told you that you should be a writer?”

“No one who’s ever tried it themselves. But back to you and her. So you’re up to your elbows in Fuego and she rushes in all disheveled elegance, out of breath, desperate for just one moment of solitude …”

“Actually I was examining a map of Eurasia for signs of wear; she strolled in quite calmly, apologized very politely when she saw me and said she simply wanted to see the library by night.”

“I like my version better. But still that is romantic. You gave her a tour? It was love at first sight?”

“Intrigue at first sight. I assumed she was just a guest at the gala. She was lovely, intelligent, a very young-looking thirty-nine.”

“Ohh … an older woman. I love it.”

“Her age or mine was never a factor. Or perhaps it was. She was older than me, powerful, wealthy … but at night when we were alone …”

“She was your slave,” Eleanor said, finishing his sentence.

“My slave. My property. My possession.”

“Your possession … I know how she must have felt. Pressure to be in charge of the world. So much responsibility. The whole world on her … to let go and just give herself to you, to give up to you …”

“I’m glad you understand,” Daniel said as he started sifting through another stack of books. “Few women do.”

“Oh, they do. They’re just afraid to admit it. Yeah, equal pay for equal work and our bodies our selves and Gloria Steinem and all that jazz … but in that dusty dark little corner of every woman’s heart where we keep our maps of Tierra del Fuego lives the hunger to fetch a powerful man his slippers on her hands and knees.”

Eleanor was pleased to see her words had a similar effect on Daniel as his did on her. His breath quickened just slightly as his hands deliberately stroked the leather binding of the book in his hand.

“So you,” she said, meeting his eyes, “are a librarian. What does that make me then? A seven-day loan?”

Daniel laughed as he set his book aside. He moved toward her and lightly gripped her knees.

“Seven-day loan … I’m not sure I like the thought of giving you back.” He slid his hands up her thighs and took her by the hips.

“But what about the overdue fines?” she asked, playfully flashing her eyes at him.

“I think I can afford them,” he said. Eleanor tried to voice another protest but his mouth was already on hers.

He kissed her with an urgency she hadn’t felt last night. Last night he’d discovered, taken for his own. This morning she felt the need to have her. It wasn’t about her body as a stand-in for his wife. Eleanor had made him laugh, given him a break, if only momentary, from three years of pain. This time he wasn’t conquering. This time he was just grateful.

Daniel pulled her from her seat on the desk. She wondered if he would take her on the floor or take her back to his bedroom. Instead he turned her so she stood with her back to his chest. He laid one slow, possessive kiss along the length of her neck before pushing her forward onto the desk.

Eleanor forced a deep calming breath as Daniel stripped her naked from the waist down. She braced for his entrance, expecting it to be as sudden and fierce as last night’s. But he waited, running his hands over her thighs, across her lower back, slipping a hand between her legs to caress her outer lips until she was so eager for him she stood on her tiptoes in readiness. When he finally penetrated her it was slow and methodical. He gripped the back of her neck as he began thrusting. He didn’t go as deep today as last night either but moved in spirals in and out of her, reaching every corner inside her.

She moaned quietly, her hot breath steaming a patch of the cool mahogany of the desk under her cheek.

“You like it from behind,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“God, yes,” she confessed without shame.

“There’s more than one way to enter from behind.”

“If you think that’s a threat, then you don’t know me very well,” she said, smug even while squirming underneath him.

“I don’t,” he admitted, slightly breathless, but still in control. “But that will change.”

As if to prove his point, he pushed down and deep into her, eliciting both a muscle spasm and a sharp gasp.

She closed her eyes. He increased his pace. When she came she came as quietly as she could but still loud enough for Daniel to hear and laugh just before he let himself come with three final thrusts and a muffled grunt at the back of his throat.

Eleanor’s breathing slowly settled. She blinked and raised her head. All she saw were thousands of books stacked and shelved and neatly scattered. Daniel was still inside her.

“God I love a man who reads,” she breathed and laid her head on the desk, spent.

The sex out of their system—for the moment, at least—Eleanor and Daniel made diligent progress on his library. Daniel sorted, reclassified while Eleanor dusted the bookcases in question and reshelved the newly Deweyed books in proper order.

Sometimes they talked as they worked: Eleanor learned about Daniel’s childhood in Canada, the source of his imperviousness to New England winters, and Eleanor confessed her frustration with her lack of ambition. She wanted, in theory, to do more than work in a bookstore but was so happy, most of the time, with him that she couldn’t bring herself to make any sort of profound change.

“Contentment can be the enemy,” Daniel agreed and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “But don’t worry. Life, death, or an act of God will eventually intervene. Enjoy the contentment while it lasts. It won’t last forever.”

Eleanor shivered at the bitter truth of his words.

“You’ve been content to be alone for three years. So am I the life, death, or act of God sent to shake things up?”

“You,” he said, “are a force of nature.” He slapped her bottom and ordered her back to work.

They worked mostly in silence, companionable silence after that, speaking only about the books and how they should best be arranged. During a back-stretching break, Eleanor wandered into the corner of a windowless alcove. Two dozen or more cardboard boxes were neatly stacked.

“What are these?” she called out to Daniel.

“Discards,” he said, coming to her corner. “Maggie’s old law books. There’s a business college with a paralegal program in town. I was going to donate the books to their little law library.”

“Going to?”

“Well, I still am. I just haven’t quite …”

Eleanor gave him a flat, steady stare.

“How long have these been sitting here in those boxes?”

“A year, I suppose.”

Eleanor continued to gaze blankly at him.

“You do recall I am the dominant in this particular relationship, yes?”

Eleanor wasn’t intimidated. “Then act like it.”

“I will.” At that, Daniel scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, carrying her squirming self back to the case they’d been working on. “Back. To. Work,” he ordered as he put her down, gently but firmly, on her feet.

“Yes, sir.” She turned and climbed nimbly up the library ladder.

“Eleanor,” Daniel said, after a few minutes of actual work had passed.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ll call the college tomorrow.”

Eleanor smiled a smile only the shelves could see.

“Yes, sir.”

Eleanor groaned in unconcealed ecstasy.

“My god … this is so good…. “

“I know,” Daniel replied, taking another bite for good measure. “I have a neighbor, an older lady on the property adjacent mine. She made this.”

Eleanor licked her fork and dove into the lasagna yet again. “God bless her. Did you go get this while I was in the shower?”

Daniel’s eyes flashed at her innocent question. After an entire day of dusty library work, Eleanor had spent a solid hour showering and changing into her nightclothes, and when she emerged Daniel had dinner waiting for them.

“No.” His voice was even. Whatever she’d seen had come and gone. “Her husband brought it by. He does some of my property maintenance. And he brought more firewood.” He took another log and threw it on the warm orange fire. The wood crackled and sizzled; Eleanor breathed in the raw smoke with pleasure. She was silent for a long moment. When she was sure Daniel was watching her she said, “I was thinking.”

“Always a dangerous pursuit.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What were you thinking about?” Daniel asked, a wary note in his voice.

“Why am I here? Really? I mean, you seem okay. Sad still. Very sad. But hardly a desperate case. What am I doing here?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I mean he,” she still wouldn’t say the name of her love who’d abandoned her here, even if she was enjoying herself far more than she wanted to admit. “He said I’d be good company for you, that I’d help you get back out into the world. But like I said, you don’t seem like you need that much help.”

“Back out into the world? Quite a way with words that one has. Only he could tell the absolute truth and still keep everything a secret.”

“So what’s the truth? And what’s the secret?”

“Back out in the world …” Daniel said again. “It’s a cliché. Somebody gets divorced or dumped, widowed. And after awhile it’s time to get back out there. Date again, make new friends, find someone new. It’s figurative, not literal. But me …”

She knew the secret before he could tell her.

“Daniel? How long has it been since you left the house?”

“Oh, I leave the house all the time. But I have eight acres and—”

“When?”

“My wife died three years, five months, and eleven days ago. So it’s been …”

“Three years, five months and eleven—”

“Nine days. I made it to the funeral. I was on the human equivalent of a horse tranquilizer but I made it.”

Eleanor shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. But how? Over three years?”

“Maggie left me a wealthy man. Money, good neighbors, and the internet is all you really need. They’ve been my wardens, my guards on the tower. A pleasant prison,” he said, glancing around at the exquisitely furnished living room they lounged in. “No bars necessary. I suppose our mutual friend was hoping a week with you would give me a taste of what I was missing.”

Eleanor snorted in derision. “He’s not that altruistic. Not when it comes to me. He thinks you’ll fuck me until you fall for me. Hook, line and sinker and then when I go, you’ll follow.”

“I’ve grieved in this jailhouse every day for three years and he thinks I’ll be in love with you in a week?”

Eleanor shrugged and looked away from his face and into the fire. She started when she felt Daniel’s fingers slide under her hair and touch the nape of her neck.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “Maybe he’s right.”

He bent in and kissed the sensitive spot below her ear, misdirecting her attention as he took her plate of lasagna from her and set it aside.

“But I wasn’t done,” she pouted, no longer hungry for anything but him.

“Yes, you were.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lay down on your back.”

“Very yes, sir.”

Daniel smiled down at her once she’d positioned herself on the plush rug by the fireplace.

“You could at least pretend to be intimidated.”

“No offense but I’ve had scarier gym teachers than you. And remember who I belong to,” she said, not really wanting to remember at just that moment. “He makes you look like a floppy-eared fluffy baby bunny.”

“Ouch. Not even an adult rabbit but a baby bunny.”

“Yup.” She reached up and grazed his cheek. He really was unnecessarily handsome.

“That bad, is he?”

Eleanor shook her head. “That good.”

Daniel laughed. “I keep forgetting who I’m dealing with. The Queen of Kink.”

“I’m a trained submissive. More like King’s Consort. I’m not worthy to hold actual rank,” she said with a wink.

“Well, I’m honored to consort with you.”

Eleanor gave him her best wicked grin. “Then consort with me already.”

Daniel grinned back. “Yes, ma’am.” He looked her up and down and something changed in his eyes like he suddenly had a very good idea.

“Where are you going?” Eleanor asked when Daniel stood and moved to leave.

“To get supplies. Stay.”

Eleanor stayed flat on her back in front of the fireplace. She closed her eyes and wondered what sordid things Daniel did to his wife on this rug. She opened her eyes and saw Daniel standing over her. He sat a tube of lubricant and a towel on the floor by her hip. Deliberately he began to roll up the right sleeve of his shirt.

Eleanor didn’t have to wonder anymore.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, her heart racing.

“Does it look like I’m kidding?” Daniel dropped to his knees. He eased her pajama pants down her legs and tossed them aside. With a flourish he unfurled the towel and slid it under her hips.