The Auction by Tiffany Reisz

6

Daniel could barely breathe from the shock. Eleanor…naked…kneeling on his bed and grinning at him like the last eighteen months had been the setup to a bad joke, and finally, here she was to deliver the punchline.

“Nope, just me. God’s out today.”

Daniel took nearly ten whole seconds to process Eleanor’s words, but it only took one second to get to her. He slid across the bed and took her into his arms.

“You…what are you doing here?” He held her tight to his chest, stroked her hair, her back.

“You sent me a postcard from Tierra del Fuego. The least I could do is stop in and say, ‘Hello.’”

Daniel took her face in his hands. Her eyes shone black as night and her body molded into his.

“Hello.” Then he took ownership of her mouth with a kiss so ferocious he knew her lips would be swollen for a day from it. He didn’t care. If this is how she returned the favor of a single postcard…he wished he’d sent her a thousand of them.

His hands roamed her body, sliding down her back, grasping her bottom, digging deep into her soft skin. The kiss she returned with equal ferocity as she reached between their bodies to open his pants.

“Are you sure?” he asked, afraid of her answer.

“I’m naked on your bed. Did you think I stopped by for a game of blackjack?”

“The game is poker.”

Eleanor laughed, and her laughter filled the room, the apartment, the building, the whole city, and even his heart that for so long had sat empty.

Weaving his fingers through her hair, he kissed her again. And again. He couldn’t get enough of her mouth, the taste of her lips, the tease of her tongue against his.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he breathed into her ear, and, while there, bit her earlobe.

“I heard your laugh on the stairs. I don’t know how, but I knew it was you.”

“King wouldn’t have given you my address.”

Eleanor laughed again, low, throaty, and playfully sinister. “I beat it out of him.”

“What about—” Søren, he tried to say, but she cut him off.

“Are you going to keep giving me the third degree, sir? Or are you going to beat me and fuck me like your life depends on it?”

Breathing in, he inhaled her scent—lilies, orchids—the subtle essence of every hothouse flower he could name graced her skin. She’d always seemed like a hothouse flower—something beautiful and wild, yet thrived best in captivity.

If only he could keep her. “My life does depend on it.”

“Well, then…” She slid her hands over his bare shoulders and met his eyes. “Maybe we should stop wasting time.”

She pushed his running shorts down and took his hard cock in her hands. Burying his mouth in the crook of her neck, he groaned as the hands he’d dreamed of for a year and a half did everything he remembered they could. With her slim, nimble fingers, she traced the length and width of him, gently caressed the sensitive underside, and cupped his testicles. He groaned with the shameless abandon of a submissive.

“You have to stop, or I’ll come in your hands,” he warned her.

“Oh, no. Not that. Anything but that.” Eleanor pushed him onto his back, and he went willingly. She wrenched his shorts off and threw them against the wall with the flourish of a matador. Then she pushed his legs apart and kissed the inside of his ankle. She kissed the soft indentation right under his quad muscles before dipping her head and biting his inner thigh—hard. Daniel winced. Eleanor only laughed.

Daniel’s head fell back as she wrapped her lips around his cock and caressed it with her tongue. With torturously light licks and kisses, she focused her attention solely on the head. As erotic as it was, he needed more than just pleasure. He craved connection. He reached down and found her hand, twined their fingers together.

Real…she was real and warm and here, and God, she was sucking his cock like she missed him as much as he missed her. He knew he’d be fooling himself to believe that. She’d picked Søren over him, and she would probably do it again. Why she was here now, he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. All he could do was let go and enjoy it.

He let go. With a soft cry and spurt after spurt of come, he filled her mouth. Her throat moved as she swallowed every drop he gave her.

When it was done, Eleanor sat up on her knees and licked her lips. Daniel took her in his arms and pulled her onto him, laying her against his chest.

“I still can’t believe you’re here.”

“I’m here.” She smiled blissfully, a little drunkenly. “For now.”

“Kingsley said if I agreed to be in his stupid auction, he’d let me see you again.”

“You got conned. King doesn’t get to decide who I see and don’t see.”

“But Søren does.”

“If you really believe that, you don’t know me very well.”

Daniel laughed softly. “Here I thought you were the world’s greatest submissive. Turns out, you’re the world’s greatest actress.”

“I really am a terrible submissive. I submit when I want to, not when he wants me to. Which is fine with him. According to him, it’s more fun to punish me when I deserve it.”

“You always deserve it.”

She turned her face up to his, grinned, and Daniel kissed her, tasting himself on her lips. The mix of his salt and her sweetness set his blood to boiling again. Pushing her onto her back, he pinned her wrists to the bed.

“I know you’ll go back to him tonight.” Daniel dipped his head and lightly sucked on each nipple before kissing his way back to the hollow of her throat, “but you’ll take my bruises with you.”

Helpless underneath him, she panted. “Yes, sir.”

He dragged her from the bed by her wrists and left her standing at the footboard.

“Kneel,” he ordered, and she went down onto her knees.

He drank in the sight of her, of this woman he’d longed for day and night for so long. She knelt at the foot of his bed, her back a blank canvas waiting to be painted with welts. From under the bed, he pulled a large case like the ones Kingsley kept in all his townhouse bedrooms.

“Hands on the top rail.”

Eleanor reached up and grasped the top of the metal footboard.

Daniel stood behind her as he handcuffed her wrists to the railing.

“I have very fond memories of this bed,” he told her as he pushed her hair off her back. “Maggie and I bought it together. She made sure to lay down and test the strength of the footboard and the headboard. The elderly furniture dealer was slightly horrified.”

“I wish I’d known Maggie, sir.”

“You remind me of her in so many ways.” Daniel knelt behind her and kissed the back of her neck and her shoulders. He ran his hand down her side and across her stomach.

Only when he said the words did he realize how true they were. Eleanor’s spirit, her sense of humor, her wild streak that gave him such pleasure to try to tame…so much like Maggie.

“I’ll take that as the compliment I know it is, sir.”

Daniel didn’t answer. Instead, he pressed his lips to the center of her back, kissing the elegant curve of her spine.

He turned his head and bit her, hard, in the center of her back.

She flinched and released a gasp of pain.

“Just marking my target,” he whispered in her ear before standing up and grabbing a stiff riding crop from the case.

He counted in his head a full sixty seconds before striking her the first time. She flinched, and the metal of the handcuffs rattled against the metal of the footboard. Music to his ears.

A welt six inches long and the color of fire burned across her pale skin. He struck her again, then again. A fourth time, then a fifth...At ten, she finally broke and cried out. At twelve, he stopped.

He dropped to his knees behind her and pressed his chest to her burning back.

“Did you enjoy that?” he said into her hair.

“Hurt like hell. I loved it.”

He reached up and unlocked the cuffs. He knew she’d have to leave sooner or later, and he didn’t want to waste a single second with her.

He lifted her off the floor and carried her to the bed. Just to hear that laugh again, he tossed her unceremoniously across the covers. As she was laughing, he grasped her ankles and dragged her hips to the edge of the bed.

No more laughing now.

He went down on his knees for her, spreading her thighs wide and opening her with his fingers. His lips sought her clitoris, and he sucked lightly on it. Her back arched. She pressed harder into his mouth. No woman he’d ever been with tasted quite like her…so sweet and tart at the same time, the scent of her more potent than any drug.

She moaned as he pushed his tongue into her. For the rest of his life, he’d remember the feel of her heels digging into his back and the warmth of her thighs against his face. Still, he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to be inside her.

Daniel stood up and lifted her legs over his shoulders as he pushed into her. He wanted to go slow, to savor every second of her. But he couldn’t hold back. He thrust into her, hard and deep, savoring the sound of her cry of pleasure.

Eleanor stretched her arms out to each side, and her head fell back in a posture of utter surrender. Daniel slid his hand up her body and took her gently by the throat. Her pulse beat hard under his fingers as he thrust into her again and again.

His fingertips found her clitoris and gently teased it. She responded just as he knew she would, as he remembered she would, grasping at the sheets with desperate fingers, hips lifting, her whole body going stiff for a brief eternity before her inner muscles began to spasm, clamping so hard around him they nearly pushed him out of her.

As Eleanor relaxed under him, Daniel only thrust harder, deeper. He held off as long as he could, not wanting to let go of this moment. She was his, if only for now. She was his, if only while she was under him. He wanted to mark her, write “MINE” all over her body. Since he couldn’t, he did the next best thing. He pulled out of her and straddled her hips with his knees. When their eyes locked, he finally came on her stomach.

As the tension slowly drained out of him, Daniel collapsed on top of Eleanor and gathered her to him. He sighed and closed his eyes as she lightly scratched his back. The simple mindless gesture of affection so painfully reminiscent of lovemaking with Maggie nearly did him in. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to imprint this perfect moment into his mind forever.

“Yes,” he said, answering the question she asked an hour ago. “I missed you.”

* * *

They lay there a long time,not speaking, only touching.

“Are you going to fall asleep on me?” she asked, tracing his ribcage with her fingers.

“No. I’m just afraid if I open my eyes, I’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream.”

“If I’m involved, there’s a decent chance it’s a nightmare. You might want to wake up.”

Daniel shook his head and slowly opened his eyes. “The only nightmares you’re in are the ones when I wake up and you’re still gone.”

Eleanor sighed heavily, and Daniel finally rolled off of her. Pulling back the sheets, she scrambled under the covers. He joined her in his bed. He could think of at least three body parts he’d happily sacrifice to be able to find her in his bed every night of his life.

Daniel lay on his back and Eleanor draped herself across his chest.

“You know I inherited a lot of money from Maggie, right?” Daniel asked. “She was loaded and left every penny to me.”

“I’ve seen your country house, remember? And this apartment is bigger than the house I grew up in.”

“We could leave, if you wanted. I’d take you anywhere. You’d never have to work a day in your life again. You could—”

“Leave him?” she asked and looked up at Daniel. “No, I can’t. Or I can, but I don’t want to.”

“You say that, but still, you’re here—”

“I’m here because we had a great week together, Daniel. And I missed you, and Kingsley said you were still hung up on me.” She sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. “But it was one week. Just seven days.”

“You’re a Catholic, right?” He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “Don’t you think the entire universe was created in seven days?”

“If you haven’t noticed already,” she said, giving him a pointed look, “I’m a very bad Catholic.”

Daniel laughed and caressed her naked leg. “Do you really love him?”

“Of course I do. He’s my everything.”

“Everything?”

“Lover, owner, priest, best friend?”

“I find that last one hard to believe.”

“Because you don’t know him the way I do.”

Except Daniel did know him the way she did. They had been friends once. Yes, he could believe Søren was her best friend. He could believe it. He just didn’t want to admit it.

“But,” she continued, “don’t tell anybody I said that. Kingsley likes Blondie to keep his big bad priest rep intact. Admittedly, he is six-four and a sadist, so he is a little intimidating. If you’re not me.”

“You call Søren ‘Blondie’?”

Eleanor grinned. “Of course. Just not to his face. Well…not very often.”

Daniel laughed because only laughing would keep him from grabbing her, holding her down, and keeping her there until she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Daniel said. “I could give you so much more than he could—”

“Daniel, let me ask you something. Are you going to spend the rest of your life living in the past?”

Her question surprised him enough that he rolled up and leaned back against the headboard to face her. “I’m not. Not anymore. Look…if he died, what would you do?”

Eleanor pursed her lips and hummed. “In this scenario, has he died of natural causes, or did I finally break down and murder him in his sleep? Either is equally likely.”

“Natural causes.”

Slowly, Eleanor inhaled and exhaled. For once, she seemed to be taking the conversation seriously. She grabbed a pillow and pulled it to her, clutching it as if for comfort.

“I would die, too. Not physically. But there’s no way this Eleanor could go on without him.”

“Is there another Eleanor?”

She smiled and nodded. “Horrifying thought, I know. I guess to survive, I’d just think of my life in terms of acts in plays or something. Like how the old movies were so long, they used to have intermissions. Eleanor…Part One, I guess, she would die with him. But Eleanor Part Two would wait for the curtain to go up and she’d step out on the stage and put on one hell of a show. You can’t let the curtain stay down before the second act.”

Eleanor leaned forward and dragged a hand through his hair. “Maggie’s dead. She’s been dead for over four years. And I remind you of her and that’s why you wanted me so much. Maggie’s dead and Daniel Part One is dead. Maybe you let her go. I don’t know. But I know you haven’t let him go. Maybe it’s time for Daniel Part Two to step out on the stage.”

He felt her words in his heart; they hurt more than his crop on her back had hurt her. And as the truth always hurt, he knew her words were true.

“I don’t know who he is.” Daniel half-whispered the confession.

“Daniel Part Two is everything Daniel Part One was. But wiser, smarter, and even sexier. Seriously, what have you been doing for the past year? You’re so cut, I could slice myself open on your quads.”

Daniel laughed, almost blushing at her erotic appreciation of his body. “Mountain climbing…trekking through rain forests…stomping all over South America.”

“Sounds like hell on earth.”

“I loved it.”

She shuddered in feigned horror. So much for all his fantasies about her being his traveling companion on his wilderness sojourns.

“So tell me, what did you love most about being Daniel Part One? And don’t say anything that has anything to do with camping.”

Grinning, Daniel contemplated the question. Not that he really needed to think about it. He knew the answer immediately.

“Maggie. No question.”

“Because she was your sub? Your property?”

“Because she was my wife.” The words seemed to hang in the air, like the echo of a church bell. “I loved being married. I loved going out with her and saying to someone, ‘Meet my wife, Maggie.’ Loved it when she introduced me as her husband. Men have this bad reputation about being afraid of marriage. I wasn’t. Marrying her was the best thing I ever did.”

Eleanor looked at him without smiling. “Now tell me…what was the worst part of being Daniel Part One.”

Once again he knew the answer in an instant.

“Maggie.”

Eleanor didn’t seem the least shocked. “Why?”

Daniel slowly exhaled as he adjusted the pillow behind his back. “She was thirty-nine when we got married. Turned forty on our honeymoon. And her career was so important to her.”

He saw realization dawning in Eleanor’s bright green eyes.

“God, Daniel… You wanted kids, didn’t you?”

It seemed like a betrayal of Maggie’s memory to even say it aloud. But with Eleanor, he couldn’t hold anything back.

“I did. She didn’t. I finally worked up the courage to suggest adoption…it didn’t go over well. And the next week, she had her yearly physical and…”

“Cancer.”

Daniel nodded. “Sort of a moot point then.”

Eleanor inched closer to him and raised her hand to his face. With fingers both gentle and knowing, she traced his jawline, his lips, his forehead.

“You know, even if I left him, or even if he died and I was free…” she paused and seemed to steel herself. “Daniel, I never would have had your children.”

His eyes flew open wide. “Elle—”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to get married, and I don’t want to have kids.”

“I don’t believe that. Not for one second.”

“Why? Because that’s what you want, and you can’t imagine someone wanting something different? If I did want to get married and have kids, it would be with him. Not you.”

“Why are you—”

“Saying this? Because it’s true, and you need to know it. What you and I had was perfect. But it’s easy for something to be perfect when it only has to be perfect for seven days. What you and Maggie had was a marriage. What he and I have is also a kind of marriage. But you and me? That was just a honeymoon.”

Her words sank into him like the blade of a heavy knife.

“You’re as much of a sadist as he is, you know.” Daniel hoped she couldn’t hear the agony behind the joke.

“I’ve picked up a few tips from Blondie on that front.” She exhaled and smiled. “But I’m really not trying to hurt you. I want to help you. You have to let me go. You know I’m not what you really want. You loved being a husband. You want kids. You’re not going to get that with me.”

He said nothing, only stared past her. The bed shifted and out of the corner of his eye he watched her get dressed. She dragged her skirt over her hips, slipped into low heels, and buttoned up her blouse without once wincing or flinching from the welts he’d inflicted on her. Twenty-five years old and the girl was already an old pro.

“You know you’d make an incredible dominatrix,” Daniel said as Eleanor came back to the bed.

She crossed her arms over her ample chest and raised one eyebrow. “You think so?”

“Definitely.”

“Last time you told me I should be a writer.”

Daniel shrugged. “You could always do both.”

Tilting her head to the side she hummed a moment and tapped her chin.

“I’ve heard worse ideas. But forget about what I should do. What are you going to do?”

“Let you go…if that’s what you want me to do.”

“What I want is for you to be happy. You won’t be happy with me.” She ran a hand through his hair again and he felt the affection in her touch, the respect. But no love. Not the kind of love he wanted or needed. “So the question is…what do you want to do?”

Daniel released a mirthless laugh. “Your owner asked me the very same thing the day I buried Maggie.”

“I hope you have a different answer.”

He paused before answering.

“You’re right,” he said, finally. “I do want to get married again. I want somebody to have kids with. God, I don’t even care if they’re mine or hers or adopted or foster kids. I just want a houseful of children. Always have.”

“You’re only thirty-eight.” She touched his cheek. “And rich. And you’re about as sexy as it gets. There are women in this world who’d let you knock them up just to have your DNA inside them for nine months.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’m going to miss you. And when I stop missing you, I’m going to miss missing you,” Daniel said and prayed that made sense to her.

“I don’t love you. But I sort of wish I did. I hope that helps.”

“It does a little. But just a little.”

“I have to go now. Slumber party with the King.”

Daniel nearly groaned aloud at the surge of envy that rushed through him. “Doesn’t Kingsley have enough subs to keep him company?”

“Yeah, but they’re all shit. Anya’s the only good female submissive he’s brought home in two years and she’s off-limits.”

“Anya? A good submissive? She’s the most temperamental woman I’ve ever met,” he said. He got out of bed, started to dress. “Loathed me on sight.”

Eleanor looked genuinely taken aback by that. “Really? She’s about the sweetest person I’ve ever met. Too sweet to be hanging around with deviants like us. Of course, I could say the same to you. Was she rude to you?”

“Extremely.”

“Hmm…interesting. Sounds like she’s got a crush.”

He doubted that. Attraction and affection were two very different things. “Doesn’t matter. Off-limits, like you said. Stupid auction.”

“Very stupid auction. The girl is fucking terrified out of her mind about it. Even Kingsley told her she didn’t have to do it. But she’s determined to go through with it. Last virgin in one of Kingsley’s auctions walked off with two-hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars, and that girl wasn’t half as beautiful as Anya.”

“I hope somebody can talk some sense into her.”

“You should try.”

He gave her a stern stare. “You know I’m the dominant in the room. Not you.”

Eleanor cocked an eyebrow at him and he saw a smile twitch at the corner of her mouth. Raising her chin, she strode toward him and stopped only a foot in front of him.

“Is that so?” she asked with quiet menace. “You’re the dominant here?”

He took one step forward so only inches separated them. He gave her his very best Ouch stare.

“I am.”

Without any warning, Eleanor’s hand shot out and slapped him quickly across the cheek just hard enough to sting, just light enough to be insulting.

“Then act like it,” she said.

She’d slapped him. Actually slapped him. He’d slapped Maggie a thousand times just like that—quick and wicked, hard enough to get her attention, not hard enough to actually hurt. A perfect dominant’s slap.

He needed that.

“I will.”

Daniel pushed Eleanor against the wall and kissed the breath out of her. His tongue invaded her mouth and her head fell back in surrender, taking the kiss like a well-deserved punishment. Finally, he released her.

“Okay.” She panted the word as he let her go. “You’re the dom in the room.”

“That’s better.”

“But you should still talk to Anya.”

Daniel laughed out loud. Maybe someday he would find a woman to love him and marry him and have children with him. But he would never forget her.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Eleanor finished straightening her clothes, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“I better go,” she said. She left his bedroom and headed for the front door. Opening it, she paused and looked back at him. “I will miss you. I did miss you…for a long time. Longer than I’ll admit to.”

“I promise I’ll stop loving you,” Daniel said. “But it’ll hurt.”

“Only until you fall in love again. Then you’ll thank me for leaving.”

“Maybe,” he said, “But not yet.”

She merely gave him one last smile before walking out of his apartment and out of his life.

Forever.