#4: Best You Ever Had

~Lila~

“Walk to the bed. Stand beside it and wait for me,” Ryder orders.

I walk over to the low platform bed, my bare feet silent against the concrete.

Ryder prowls toward me, then sits on the silk sheet. “Come closer.”

“Don’t I get a safe word first?”

He tilts his head slightly, studying me for a moment. Then be says, “How about… Kettle. If that word clears your lips, we’re done.”

I smile up at him. “Kettle. Got it.”

He nods quickly, stepping back towards the bed. “Good. Now lay yourself across my lap and present your ass for punishment. No coming.”

“I–”

“And no talking. If I was capable of selling you to a Colombian drug lord willing to pay five million dollars for the privilege of raping you, do you think I’d be letting you speak? Follow directions or suffer more punishment.”

My body tenses as I lie face down across the edge of the mattress with my hips elevated, resting my forearms on the black silk sheets. The position puts my body on full display, exposing the vulnerability I am trying so hard to hide behind my training.

With a guiding hand on my skin that only makes my panties damper, he helps me settle.

“Count for me, Bud.” His voice is low but carrying the full weight of the command. “Lose track, and we start over.”

I feel the weight of his presence looming over me as I brace myself, clenching my teeth in preparation for the stinging pain of the first strike. I will count to three, let him deliver enough force to leave a mark for the incident report, and then I will say my safeword.

THWACK.

The first strike lands with a deafening smack, his open palm connecting with the flesh of my ass. I let out a loud gasp, digging my fingers into the silk sheets. The pain is immediate, a blinding, white-hot burst of heat that makes my entire body jerk against the mattress.

“Count!” Ryder barks.

“One,” I choke out, forcing myself to maintain compliance.

He pauses to rub my ass, the gentle touch contrasting with the hot skin and sending a wave of pleasure shooting straight between my legs.

“Ready for the next one?” he asks softly, still massaging my butt. Under him I tense, bracing for more pain.

“Yes.” I say between clenched teeth.

THWACK.

The second swat lands right beside the first, harder this time, sending a wave of throbbing fire radiating across my skin. My eyes sting with instinctive tears, but I blink them back quickly as I try to breathe through the pain.

“Two,” my voice wobbles slightly.

His hand is on my ass again, massaging and sending that same surge of pleasure through my body.

While waiting for the third strike, I open my mouth, the word Kettle sitting right on the tip of my tongue, ready to end this entire farce the moment it lands.

But the third strike never comes.

As the silence stretches out, I remain frozen, my heart hammering against my ribs, the skin of my backside burning with a fierce, blooming heat. I twist my head around, looking over my shoulder through a tangle of red hair.

Ryder is standing right beside the bed with his hand lowered to his side. He is staring down at me, but the anger in his eyes has been entirely replaced by a sharp, calculating clarity.

“Get up,” he says quietly.

I blink, confused by the sudden shift in momentum. “What?”

“I said get up,” he repeats as he steps back from the bed. “I know you’re baiting me. You’re sitting there counting the numbers, waiting for me to hit you hard enough so you can use your safe word and run back to Thorne. You want an easy exit so you can feel justified in your failure. Well, I’m not giving you an easy way out.”

I sit up slowly, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, feeling incredibly exposed in my underwear but refusing to cower. “I’m not trying to fail. You’re the one who ordered the punishment.”

“And, I’m rescinding it,” he says, his blue eyes gleaming with an intelligence that makes my stomach drop. He realizes exactly what I’m trying to do. “A physical correction only works if the submissive is willing to accept the lesson. You are trying to use the pain as a shield to keep me at a distance. If a spanking is what you expect, then we’re going to do something else entirely.”

He takes a few steps away from the bed, his hard gaze never leaving mine as he moves.

“Take off my shirt.”

The command catches me completely off guard. My gaze darts to his dark, button-down shirt, then back up to his face. “Pretty sure that’s not part of the training protocol.”

“Everything in this room is part of the protocol if I say it is,” Ryder counters, stepping closer until his knees are nearly brushing against mine as I sit on the edge of the bed. “You need to learn how to touch a Dominant with reverence. And you need to learn how to handle authority without trying to fight it or question it. Take it off.”

My hands tremble slightly as I raise them, my fingers brushing against the first button of his shirt. The fabric is cold, but beneath it, I can feel the iron-hard contours of his chest muscles. My knuckles brush against his warm skin, and a jolt of pure, electric awareness shoots straight up my arms, settling deep in my lower belly. I undo the buttons one by one, my breathing hitching as the fabric parts to reveal his heavily muscled torso.

As the shirt falls away from his shoulders, my eyes fixate on his right collarbone, tracking down to his ribcage where a bold tattoo stands out against his skin. It is a collection of black Japanese characters.

Even though I don’t understand the language, I immediately decipher what the words mean: Never Quit.

An overwhelming wave of memory crashes over me. Twelve years ago, a boy with soft eyes and a fractured soul used to write those exact words into the edges of my notebook whenever the weight I felt the weight world became too heavy to bear.

I let go of his shirt and step back quickly.

With one hand, he grabs the garment and tosses it to a far corner of the room. With the other, he latches his hand around my neck and pulls me within an inch of him. “You never back away from me without permission.”

“Why?” I challenge, staring up into his unwavering gray eyes. “You going to spank me again?”

Come on… take the bait.

His eyes hold mine for a moment more, then he releases my throat and takes a single step back.

“Lie back on the bed,” Ryder commands, his voice dropping into a rough whisper that leaves no room for refusal. “Legs spread wide.”

The sheer sensuality of the command makes my knees weaken. The strategic, calculating part of my brain tells me to refuse, to shout the safe word right now and end the scene. But my body is no longer listening to my brain. The sheer, intoxicating pull of his presence, the scent of his skin mixed with the command in his tone activates a hunger I have spent over a decade trying to starve to death.

I slide back onto the black silk sheets, leaning back onto my elbows before slowly lowering my back until I’m flat on my back. I part my thighs slowly until they’re spread out and the damp center of my panties is open to his intense burning gaze.

I am visibly trembling now, my chest heaving as I look up at him, feeling completely defenseless.

Ryder moves over me until his frame is blocking out the track lighting as he settles his weight between my thighs. He doesn’t pin me down, but the sheer bulk of his body puts me completely at his mercy.

Before I can form a single coherent thought, his hand cups the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my ponytail, and he brings his mouth down onto mine.

He tastes like… everything.

Like everything I need, like everything I’ve craved for the past twelve long years but haven’t been able to find. Until him.

The kiss is an absolute explosion; a raw, desperate, possessive hunger that has been building for years as our lips melt against each other. He tastes like dark desire and unfiltered passion. His tongue slides against my lips, commanding entrance and taking it without a single shred of hesitation. I fight him for a split second, a desperate instinct to protect the fragile pieces of my heart screaming at me to push him away.

But the moment his tongue strokes against mine, the walls crumble and I let out a low, whimpering moan, my arms coming up to wrap around his neck, my fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders as I kiss him back with a desperate, wild intensity that rivals his own. We are completely consumed, the professional boundaries of the club dissolving into the ash of a fire that never truly went out.

Ryder groans deep in his throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated need that vibrates against my own chest. His free hand slides down my torso, his calloused palm rough against my ribcage, before moving up to cup my breast through the thin lace of my bra. He squeezes firmly, his thumb flicking over my hard, aching nipple through the fabric, making my hips lift instinctively against his thigh.

He breaks the kiss, gasping for air, his face flushed as he buries his mouth in the crook of my neck. He bites gently at the sensitive skin right above my collarbone, his hot breath sending waves of intense pleasure crashing through my nervous system.

“God, Bud…” he growls against my skin, his voice completely undone. “You have no idea what you do to me. You’re the only one… you’ve always been the only one.”

His hand slides down my belly, moving past the waistband of my lace panties. His fingers are hot, heavy, and completely unerring as they slide beneath the fabric, finding the soaked, swollen warmth of my pussy. The moment his touch connects with my clit, a violent spike of pleasure shoots through me, making my spine arch off the bed.

“Get all wet for me, Bud. That’s it.” He lifts his wet fingertips from my wet folds and brushes them over my nipple, then proceeds to suck it into his mouth, flicking his tongue in a slow, agonizingly perfect rhythm that drives me to the absolute brink of insanity.

God, this needs to stop, and yet… his very touch makes me feel not only powerfully female, but desired in a way I haven’t experienced since the last time he held me.

As his fingers glide through my pussy again, I hold my breath, waiting. Euphoria and need ball between my thighs and when he brushes over my clit, I rush closer to the edge.

Normally, I’m professional and able to hide my emotions but Ryder completely strips that from me. Why him? Why does he always get to me in a way no man ever has?

Too far gone to puzzle it out, I lift my hips to him. “Ryder… please.”

He bites my nipple slightly, making me release a startled gasp, then immediately washes over the pain by flattening his tongue against the stiff peaks and sucking them in.

“I’m going to ramp you up without mercy, Bud,” he growls against my throbbing nipple, “then take you over the edge, again and again. When you’re boneless and wrung out, I’ll just keep petting this pussy with my fingers, my tongue, taking you up, up, and up again until you shatter. And when you think you can’t take it anymore… I’ll fill you with every inch of my cock, until I’m all you can see and feel.”

He inhales against the damp skin of my neck as if he can breathe me in, all the while rubbing my clit in slow, tender circles that only make my entire body clench with arousal. I flatten my feet on the bed, spread my legs and shift against him, silently urging him on.

“After that,” Ryder murmurs, nibbling slightly on my ear, “I’ll slide inside you again and pull every gasping, keening little breath out of you while this sweet cunt clamps down on me. Over and over. Even then, I won’t stop until you remember who’s in charge.”

Every word makes me gasp harder for my next breath. How badly I want to forget our painful past, my fiancé, the dangerous mission to come, and sink into the pleasure I know only Ryder can deliver and this connection that I only ever felt with him.

Desire roars through my entire body, making a blur of my resistance and good intentions. Being with him like this is wrong in so many ways, but it feels so damn right.

When Ryder's mouth crashes over mine, he opens me wide for his kiss and I meet him there, hungry, greedy, opening myself deep to him, then demanding more. His clever fingers graze my clit, toying, brushing, sensitizing until I feel like I’m struggling for breath.

“You feel so good, baby.” He scrapes the dark shadow of his stubble over my sensitive nipple. “I can’t have enough of you.”

A million new tingles cascade over me until I gasp his name, clutching him tighter, lost in the feel of him as the waves begin to climb.

“That’s it, Bud” he murmurs. “You’re almost ready to come for me. I’m going to make it the best you’ve ever felt, baby.”

It would be. Oh God, I want it so bad. Every nerve in my body is trembling in anticipation, quivering as I hold my breath, willing to give him anything… everything… if he’ll satisfy this ache.

But if I let him, how betrayed would Bruce feel? How much more would Ryder tighten his twelve-year grip on my body? How much more of my soul would he steal?

After a mere hour in Ryder’s presence, I’m already too entangled. As much as my body wants him, what I need is a new trainer so I can keep my head on straight, tackle my first undercover mission, and save my friend.

Closing my eyes, I draw in a shaky breath, then utter the one word I hope I won’t regret. “Kettle.”