“Tell me, Julia, have you had enough?” His chin tilted toward the stove and ovens. “I can get us more.”
I shook my head. “I’ve had enough dinner.”
“Oh,” he said with a grin. “I forgot. Mrs. Mayhand also made us dessert.”
“I want you for dessert.”
He fell to his knees. “Me first.”
Unlike earlier, there was nothing tentative or gentle in the way Van spread my legs and buried his face at my core. The prelude had me twisted with need. As his tongue lapped at my essence, my entire body shattered. I cried out as nerve endings detonated, a chain of explosions that went off from my head to my toes. I tugged against the belt to no avail as Van continued, through my orgasm and the next.
While my thoughts were flying high above the clouds, Van cleared away our plates, lifted my arms, and helped me from the chair. With my arms still bound, he turned me until I was facing the empty table. Pressure between my shoulder blades pushed me forward, my breasts pressing upon the hard, cool surface.
A soft kick to the inside of my ankles and my legs spread.
I called out as he held my hips and drove his full length deep into my core. My cheek slid over the smooth table. Without my hands, I was unable to find a grip as he pounded into me. The gentleness he’d exercised while feeding me was gone. Contrary to his actions, his tenor was deep and soothing as the air filled with words of praise and devotion.
Although I wasn’t sure it was possible since I’d already come more than once, before I could prepare, I was overcome with a world-shattering orgasm. As my core spasmed, hugging him, Van continued his thrusts. Faster and faster. My hips bounced against the table’s edge. The weight of his body held me in place while pushing on my bound arms. Every nerve was electrified as pain was forgotten, washed away by overwhelming pleasure.
Thrust after thrust, Van continued taking what I’d already offered.
He was an animal consumed with the task at hand and yet he also tended to my needs, his fingers teasing, swirling, and pinching my clit, his kisses and nips raining over my neck back, and shoulders. His attention to my breasts came when he’d lessen his weight, allowing himself access.
I wanted nothing more than to turn, to wrap my arms around his neck, and continue this dance, this primitive ritual that had started with the first man and woman. The frustration as I pulled against the belt would come only to be washed away by another orgasm. Nothing slowed his pursuit. Faster still, he pounded until finally he stilled. His fingers dug into my hips, his cock throbbed, and his deep growl reverberated through the kitchen as his seed filled me to overflowing.
Sandwiched between Van’s solid frame and the table as my arms and shoulders ached and my core was satisfied and filled, the realization hit. This odd and unusual combination of pleasure and pain had consumed me in the best of ways. As Van pulled out of me and gently unwrapped his belt from my arms, my thoughts were consumed by what we’d done, what he’d done.
He'd annihilated my concerns and centered my entire focus on the pleasure that only he could provide.
My arms fell lifeless to my sides as exhaustion prevailed. I continued to rest upon the table’s surface. Gently Van turned me, lifting me to my feet and into his arms, raining kisses over my cheeks until my eyelids rose, and our gazes met. “You were perfect.”
“I think it was all you. I was, as they say, tied up.”
His grin grew as he ran his finger over my cheek. “Do you regret trusting me?”
The void that I’d felt earlier in my chest was gone. Beyond the windows, the dark sky was littered with light flurries dancing within the illumination of the outside lights. Taking all my energy, I lifted my arms to Van’s shoulders and pushed myself up on my toes until our lips touched. “I don’t regret it.” My forehead fell to his chest. “Thank you,” I mumbled against his warm skin.
“For what?”
“For fixing our snow globe.”
Van
Over Twenty Years Ago
My mind was too consumed with all that was happening, all the balls in the air. My drive to succeed, to accomplish more, to show the world I was capable ruled my thoughts and physical being. When the time came to sleep, I’d lie down only to stare at the ceiling. It was as if my body couldn’t rest, knowing that there were i’s to dot and t’s to cross. There were people to schmooze and investments to be made.
And then there was the fucking tightrope—the balancing act of stretching assets until they were so taut, they were ready to snap. It was no secret: I wasn’t working with a large budget. That also didn’t impede my determination that one day I’d have more.
More money—more power.
I was on the verge of greatness. It was right there, close enough to touch.
It would happen.
That belief wasn’t conceit. It was that deep-down-fucking-to-your-toes knowledge that I was meant for more than some small-town schmuck from Texas. Chicago was my new home, the third-largest city in the country, and the place where I would become more.
It was where I came to reinvent myself.
Lost in the cloud of thoughts, I barely saw outside my own bubble. My inability to sleep had me up in the middle of the night at a nearby coffee shop. Stepping inside, I gazed around the nearly empty café, my focus momentarily attracted to a woman.
There was something about her that caught my eye.
Nothing in my life had me interested in developing a relationship. There already wasn’t enough of me to go around. And yet I was drawn to her, the way she sat contentedly alone, in the middle of the night, consumed with her task at hand. With her light-yellow hair as a veil hanging over her face, a paper cup of coffee on the table, she was staring down at a book.
Is she like me, with too many fires lit to sleep?
While I was intrigued, my mind wasn’t fully on a woman.
My thoughts were racing with my latest project. My start-up company was gaining investors. The concept was simple. Only a year earlier the world had survived the predicted Y2K collapse of technology.
It seemed that these days everyone was working to navigate the worldwide web. At the same time, they were willingly divulging their personal information. SixDegrees was a relatively new way to connect to friends and family. Only in its infancy, the platform had potential. It was also a place to share, something the average person was all too willing to do.
My start-up was an investment in a programming idea. These programs created firewalls, obstacles to people’s protected personal information. Whether gaming or creating an account on SixDegrees, people entered their names, addresses, sometimes their Social Security numbers. The information was requested for demographic data. And it was a ticking time bomb.
The worldwide web was growing, and I predicted that in time, it would only grow more. The world was shrinking, and the web was the next step in communications.
I foresaw a future when anything we wanted to know would be at our fingertips, eliminating the need to spend countless hours and days thumbing through old periodicals or obsolete textbooks.
The web was also facilitating communication as revolutionary as the invention of the telephone. Telecom companies were struggling to keep up. Every family wanted their own computer. Though home computers became available in the early 1980s, twenty years later, the desire had multiplied exponentially. This technology was the way of the future and only had one way to go.