Wanna Be Yours Read online

  “I’ve met someone,” Madeline said despite her hesitation.

  Mitsoku’s eyebrows lifted. “Tell me!”

  “He’s a very nice man. A doctor, here in Ohio. We met through a mutual friend.” It was the smallest of untruths, not really a lie.

  “Will we meet him at Christmas?”

  Madeline shook her head. “I’m not sure. I suppose, if we are still seeing each other then and he doesn’t have other plans, you might.”

  “Good,” her daughter said. “I’ll be happy to meet him.”

  They spoke of other things after that, nothing serious, and by the time they signed off, Madeline was stifling a yawn behind her hand. “I love you, Mitsoku-chan.”

  “I love you too,” her daughter replied, to Madeline’s surprise.

  Fifteen minutes later, tucked into her bed, Madeline had just set her phone on the nightstand when it hummed with another call. She’d been ready for sleep, but checked it anyway, in case it was Mitsoku again, or who knew, maybe Kenji. She smiled at the sight of the name on the screen.

  Eric.

  Twelve

  The past week had felt more like a year. Eric had been half-hoping Madeline would have sent him away for the weekend with a list of instructions, at the very least including a command that he call her every night or somehow check in, but she hadn’t even asked him where he was going or why. It was too soon for that, and he knew it, and he appreciated her reticence and respect for his privacy even as he was already wanting to tell her everything. To obey her, whatever she asked.

  The morning before he left for Pennsylvania, he’d woken in Madeline’s bed after a final night of teasing and denial that had left his balls aching so much he thought he might not be able to stand wearing pants. It was the longest he’d ever gone without feeling resentful. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That he was willing, no, more than that, eager to let her dictate his orgasms?

  The heavy sensation hadn’t let up. Nor had his thoughts of Madeline. Pain, pleasure the taste and shape and feeling of her beneath his hands, tongue, lips, teeth. The smell of her breath. The sting of her flogger and the bite of her fingertips when she pinched him. He’d been so distracted on the plane that the flight attendant had asked him three times if he wanted a beverage before he’d been able to coherently say yes.

  He hadn’t felt this way about a woman in so long…hell, Eric had never felt this way about any woman, ever. If he cycled back his recollections to boyhood, he could pinpoint a lot of different situations and experiences that had shaped him into who he was today, even if he hadn’t been able to identify and accept his need for submission until he was an adult. He’d been in love before, a time or two. He’d had a few dominant partners. He’d never had both at the same time, had in fact, accepted the idea that he probably never would. Yet now…

  It was too soon, he reminded himself even as his fingers tapped the phone’s screen to call her. They’d known each other too short a time. They had a connection, yeah. The sex was amazing, yes, not that they’d even had intercourse yet, but everything they had done so far had blown his mind even if Madeline had not yet allowed him to blow his load. Crude, he thought, but the weight of his balls and his aching cock made that phrase totally accurate. When she did allow him to come, he was going to blow like a volcano.

  “Hello.” Her melodic accent came through the phone, soothing and arousing him at the same time.

  “Hi. Is it okay that I called now?”

  “Yes, of course,” she told him. “I was just getting ready to go to sleep. How’s your trip going?”

  The truthful answer would be “terrible,” but then he’d have to get into a description of exactly what he was doing and why, and the day had been shit enough without going into all that, now. “It’s all right. I’ll be home Sunday night. Probably too late to see you.”

  “That’s all right,” Madeline said.

  Eric stretched out on the firm hotel room bed with one arm behind his head. He’d showered already. Naked, he shifted a little against the white sheets. His dick was half-hard just from the sound of her voice. “I don’t want it to be all right.”

  “You want me to ask if you’ll be able to see me when you get home?” She laughed and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Are you aching for me, Eric?”

  “Yes.” He groaned.

  Madeline made the noise a woman makes when faced with a decadent slab of chocolate cake. His cock twitched, fully hard now, at the thought she might be imagining him as something she wanted to eat. A treat. The hand not holding the phone drifted toward his dick, but he held back. She hadn’t given him permission. He hadn’t asked for it, not wanting to seem like he was about to break so soon. Anyway, if he had and she’d said “no,” he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he’d have been okay with it, that he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from being grouchy about it, especially with being gone for the weekend and not even having the torture of pleasing her to at least partially sate him. They were still in the weird place where he didn’t want to screw this up. Still on his best behavior.

  “I want to see you, whatever time you get in,” she said.

  “I’ll text you when I land?”

  She made that noise again, a murmuring sound of “yum.” After a beat, she added, “that will be lovely. I’ll be ready for you.”

  “I’m ready for you,” he said. “God. I’m so, so ready.”

  Madeline laughed. “I imagine so. Do you want to know how long I intend to make you wait?”

  “No. Yes. No,” he repeated. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it, if it’s a long time.”

  “Fair enough.” She paused, and the sound of her soft breathing embraced him. “I’ll look forward to seeing you. I’m falling asleep now, though, and I’m afraid I won’t be a very good conversationalist for much longer.”

  He was tired, too, more emotionally than physically. His visit with Harriett today had been stressful. “I’m ready for sleep, too. I’ll text you tomorrow when I land, okay?”

  “Yes,” Madeline said. “That will be perfect.”

  They said their farewells, and she disconnected first. Eric put the phone on the nightstand and lay back against his pillows. He wanted to touch himself, but did not, despite knowing that Madeline would never know if he did. He’d know it, though, and he wanted to be for her just what she’d said.

  Perfect.

  There’d been little change in Harriett since his last visit. She was neither improving nor failing, but simply existing in the same limbo in which she’d been trapped for the past few months. Eric knew there wasn’t much that could be done except to make sure she wasn’t in pain or distress. He knew, too, that she could die at any time, without warning, that she might simply slip away into the darkness while she slept, and the chances that he would be there for her final breaths were very small.

  He’d finished reading the book to her, and Harriett had smiled for some parts of it, even when her eyes remained closed. He’d just closed the book and tucked it into his messenger bag, meaning to leave it for the nurses at the desk in case any wanted to read it, when Karen arrived. She scowled at the sight of him and moved immediately to her mother’s other side to take Harriett’s gnarled fingers.

  “I’ll go,” Eric said mildly when Karen didn’t bother to even acknowledge him.

  She frowned, refusing to look at him. “I’m having you served with papers. You’re going to be banned from here.”

  Harriett’s daughter had been threatening that for a long time, but something in her voice sounded less like a threat, more like a promise. Eric sighed. “Karen…”

  “Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. You have no idea what it’s like, do you? You waltz in here once a month or so —”

  “I come when I’m able to,” he interrupted.

  She twisted to glare at him. “Why can’t you just leave her be? She doesn’t even know who you are, anymore!”

  “She knows who I