One Hot Winter Break (Yardley College Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  I’m exhausted.

  Jonathon steps into the room, naked. He’s rubbing his thick black hair with a white towel. Droplets of water glisten on his tanned chest, his muscled abdomen, his long legs. Ryan kept in shape by running, working at his father’s small garage, and performing random acts of manual labor for local farmers and seniors. Jonathon has a huge gym in his house, and he uses it daily with admirable discipline.

  “This is to be your bedroom, Mia.”

  “My bedroom?” Suddenly I realize what he means. “We aren’t sharing a bed?” I’d assumed that was the fun part of going away together.

  “I never do,” Jonathon says. “I need privacy when I sleep. Also, a lot of times I don’t sleep. I’ll stay up and read or work. I would only disturb you.”

  I know Jonathon’s abuse has built walls for him to hide behind and filled him with deep, painful issues. “You aren’t afraid of sharing a bed with me?”

  “Of course not.”

  But I see the strain in his eyes. He is.

  He said we were alike, but we aren’t. I’m willing to take the risk and open my heart to him.

  It’s one thing to just know he suffered abuse. But it shaped him, formed him, and I want to know what happened, so I can understand him.

  Or help him.

  Chapter Six

  The next day is my first full day in paradise. I start out having the most glorious, perfect day of my life.

  Breakfast is served on our poolside terrace. Dressed in a terry cloth robe instead of the silk one—since my skin is damp from laps in the azure pool—I sip delicious coffee. Swimming is something I do well. My mom had a phobia about water, so she ensured I took swimming lessons up to lifeguard level.

  Trays of fresh fruit tempt me, along with waffles and some traditional spicy dishes. I love grapefruit and devour it. Breakfast is accompanied by rich coffee and tangy, sparkling mimosas. It’s the perfect fantasy.

  “After breakfast,” Jonathon says, refilling my coffee, “We’ll go snorkling in the reef.”

  I can’t say anything, I’m so stunned.

  I spent the morning living a life I could never have dreamed of. After chasing bright, exotic fish around waving weeds and breathtakingly colored coral, we sit on the beach to have a picnic provided by the resort, along with chilled champagne.

  The afternoon is about sex. At my urging, we have vanilla sex in our pool, then Jonathon instigates sessions on the terrace, the granite bar countertop, in the huge soaker tub in the largest bathroom. On the bar, I get the most daring—I let him blindfold me, and he introduces me to the ball gag. At first I’m apprehensive, but I find it kind of sexy to have it between my teeth, there to bite when I’m out of my mind in orgasm.

  We have dinner by candlelight on our terrace, which leads to another night of bondage to the bedposts, anal sex with me on my tummy, then showers—separate showers.

  With Jonathon, I don’t have to hold anything back. I was so afraid Ryan would learn about my past and be disgusted by it, I acted like a virgin with him. I pretended I’d never dreamed of anything naughty and wicked, like having anal sex.

  I keep remembering what Jonathon said when I told him in fall term that I was still in love with Ryan. When I insisted I wouldn’t give up Ryan for him.

  He said: You know you can tell me anything. I will accept you and desire you no matter what.

  So after he insists we bathe separately, I decide to go for ‘no-holds-barred’ approach. I surprise him in the bathroom, towel drying his hair.

  Jonathon is perfectly clean, smelling of a sandalwood-scented soap that’s so sexily masculine I could die. I start by sucking his cock, ending by rimming him, teasing his anus with my tongue while I stroke his long cock and play with his balls. I’ve heard about rimming, have never done it, but since Jonathon is fresh from the shower I want to be daring and do it. It gets just the reaction I want. His eyes go huge—round and green. His hands tighten in my hair (though he doesn’t pull on it) and he moans hard. He tastes so clean and he’s so tight around my tongue. I feel wickedly erotic. Then Jonathon shouts loud enough to be heard by every villa on the island and explodes in my hand.

  He gazes into my eyes as though he’s in shock. “I’ve never come that way. Normally it takes a lot to make me explode. Oral sex never makes me come. Neither does a hand job.” A wickedly proud look comes to his face. “I can last a long time. But not with you.”

  I laugh. “What’s more important to you, Jonathon? Your pride or a searing orgasm?”

  His brow puckers in a frown. He’s really thinking about it.

  “Oh God,” I say. “Don’t be so…wealthy and entitled. Orgasms should come first. Always.”

  “I agree.” He’s naked and he walks casually to his treasure-trove of kinky toys. “Now I get to choose the game.”

  He brings out a spanking paddle. At first I giggle. It does look funny, and I only remember being spanked once in my life, when I was a kid. I’d done something that could have hurt me badly and my mom spanked me with a hairbrush. She broke the hairbrush on my butt, stared at it in shock, and never touched me like that again.

  But that memory makes me uneasy. He’s already spanked me playfully with his hand, so why am I getting tense?

  Where is this going to go? Does he want to hurt me? I’m half-excited about this, but I’m wondering: why do people need this? If I feel I need to be punished, isn’t there a flaw deep inside me? Maybe what I should do is get over myself and figure out why, then make that need go away?

  But Jonathon insists the past doesn’t make you who you are sexually. But the role of the submissive still worries me. Is it natural for a victim to consent to being a victim one more time? Is that what I’m doing if I let him spank me?

  “What if I agreed to this if you get to spank me first, then I get to spank you?” I say it to tease him, to buy time, to try to figure out how I really feel about this.

  “That’s not how it works.” But he grins.

  “Why do you need to dominate me?”

  He walks around me, letting me study his face. How gorgeous he is with high cheekbones, a straight nose, emerald-green irises, long black lashes. He must be used to getting everything he wants. Except, I think, for love in his family; safety from abuse when he needed it.

  I can’t lose the nagging sense that he wants to be in control because he wants to protect himself. Or because he wants to play out different scenarios where he comes out on top.

  But I was abused and I have no interest in taking control. There really is something deeper to this, I guess.

  Finally he says, “I want to play with you. It’s about trust.”

  That’s true. A trust that is so deep, it’s frightening. “But you wouldn’t trust me to turn this around on you.”

  “Maybe I would. But that’s not my desire. This is what I do, and I want a partner to join me in this.”

  And that’s the simplicity of it. He wants a relationship where he is the Dom. I guess I can see why. I wouldn’t want that role. So I have to make one decision: will I be a sub?

  This is the simple statement that brought me to a halt at the very beginning, when Jonathon broke up with Lara and I asked him why he wouldn’t change for her.

  Jonathon Powell doesn’t want to change. Has no intention of doing it. Emotionally, he recognizes he has issues. But sexually, he is comfortable with who he is. If I want to be with him, it’s my boundaries I have to push.

  He may be indulging me by letting me have the vanilla stuff, but this is the endgame. Paddles, floggers, whips.

  I take off the robe, revealing another new bra and set of panties—purchases that mean there will be no extra snacking next term. I’ll be living strictly on residence food and I’ll probably have to give up coffee by February.

  I get on my hands and knees on the huge bed, sticking my butt in the air. “Do your worst,” I challenge. Then say, “No, not your worst. Let’s start this slow. Let’s say I’ve been barely naughty at all.”r />
  Sometimes I’ve dreamt about being tied up for sex by a guy I desire. I’ve never fantasized about actually being taken by force. I’ve never wanted pain. I don’t know if I’ll be good with pain. I mean, I can bear it when I have to, but what about when I don’t have to?

  Lightly, he smacks the paddle against my bottom. There’s a quick twinge of sensation, not really pain.

  I sense him moving, walking behind me. I wince, waiting for the next strike—

  The paddle smacks against my ass a bit harder. Then again, slightly harder, making my cheeks sting.

  Each hit gets more intense. He does it brilliantly, upping the sensation slowly, so I never feel anything that really, really hurts. He’s good at this.

  He’s spanking me and my eyes are shut, my body braced against his strokes. Taking it. Over and over. My breathing is ragged. My heart is pounding.

  Then everything shifts. Everything changes.

  Inside, something hot and vile is taking root in my heart. I can feel it growing. It’s sharp and its burning and—I don’t know why—it suddenly explodes.

  I’m back in my bedroom in our four bedroom house in suburbia, before my parents split up. My mother is making breakfast. My door opens and my stepfather—my dad—comes into my room...

  I remember lying there, sometimes with my eyes shut, because I couldn’t open them and face him and say no. I was too much of a coward. I thought he would throw me out if I said no. Maybe throw both my mother and I out and we’d starve, because what could mom do to support us? She married young—to my birth father—and didn’t even go to college. She thought my real dad would end up wealthy with a good job—his father had a successful business. But my grandfather-by-birth shot himself and it turned out he’d been draining money off the business for years. There was nothing left but debt. My birth dad was stunned, devastated, and he did the same thing as his father—he took his own life. Leaving my mom widowed, with me. Then my mom met my stepfather, and to have her, he had to take me. I always felt my stepfather did things to me because he had to put a roof over my head and feed me, so he should get something out of it, shouldn’t he?

  In the mornings he would come to me. And I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.

  Stupid little coward.

  My breathing is ragged. My heartbeat feels like an alarm clock’s ring, strident, with no rhythm, too loud, too fast.

  What am I doing? Letting some guy beat my butt, that’s what, because he wants to. Because I’m being coward again.

  It all slams into me. Sickening memories, sickening anger, sickening self-loathing. I do deserve this. I was a stupid whore with no brains, who didn’t stick up for herself. Any other girl would have said no or said stop. Not me. Not stupid, cowardly me.

  I get off the bed, my legs shaking. My throat is so tight, it feels my head’s been twisted on my neck seven hundred and twenty degrees.

  “What’s wrong?” Jonathon drops the paddle to his side, holds out his hand and comes toward me.

  But that’s just shit. He doesn’t care about me. He’s just getting what he wants. Just like how I let other people take what they wanted.

  Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.

  The words gouge into me. The anger is incredible. I feel like I’m going to explode with it. I have to move. Do something. I grip my hair and pull it so hard it makes me scream.

  My hair doesn’t come out, damn it. So I run.

  Run. Run. Run. Can’t outrun memories. Can’t outrun everything you did wrong.

  I can try.

  But the damn sand doesn’t help an escape. My legs are like rubber. And while my heart is beating so fast it should be able to blast into orbit, I discover that doesn’t help me move.

  I collapse on the beach.

  What have I done?

  Torn at my hair like a crazy person. Run out on Jonathon. Acted like I need to be committed.

  Maybe he’ll lock the doors and you’ll be stuck out here all night. How are you going to get home? Charge a flight on your credit card? There’s no way you could afford it.

  I know what I should have done. Know it now that I’m on my hands and knees on wet sand in the dark. I should have played along. Drawn the line in the sand in the fucking morning, when I had time to get a flight and get out.

  I want to be sick. I can’t do what Jonathon wants. I can’t do it and not remember who I was in the past.

  Tears well up suddenly. I give in to them because I’m sitting on a beach in paradise, certain I’m going to have to sleep on a beach with no money and nothing on my back but my underwear. I’m so angry I’m ready to hit myself with the damn paddle.

  The crying really ravages me. It takes all my breath, turns my throat into sandpaper, makes my lungs heave. I want to vomit so badly. I think if I cry long enough, I will.

  “Mia.” He touches my back, stroking it. “What’s wrong?”

  I want to lash out at myself. But why? I push his arm away, which makes me fall on my side in the sand. I scramble to my feet.

  The anger coursing through me is amazing. I’ve never felt like this. It’s like I’ve drunk six bottles of champagne. I feel high, wild, furious, incredibly sick.

  “No,” I say. “Why do you need to do this? Why should I be punished? Hit? I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone. I never meant to do anything wrong.” My voice rises. Panic—I don’t know why I feel panic—makes my heart pound.

  “I don’t deserve this,” I blather. “I’ve done bad things but I never sat down and said: I want to destroy someone. I was destroyed. I hated myself. I blamed myself for everything that happened. But to feel like I deserve to be hit, that I deserve to be punished—”

  I want to run. I want to scream.

  Jonathon’s going to say something, but I shout, “I do deserve to be punished. Why don’t you do it? Whip me raw. Hurt me. Hurt me like I should be hurt.”

  The fury scares me. And I’m angry I said all those things. It’s not what I want. “I’m supposed to feel less because I don’t want this. I’m supposed to embrace being a victim, because somehow I deserve it,” I scream at him. “I can’t do this.”

  His arms go around me. “I don’t want you to feel less. You are not a victim.”

  “What I need is to be loved and respected. Period.”

  “I will love and respect you. I would never do anything but that. You are strong.”

  “I’m doing this because you need this, not because I do.” This isn’t what I want and that should be a simple decision, but it’s not. I feel twisted up inside. I want to share things with Jonathon. Deep things. Intense things. I can’t. Can’t. Can’t. What I said isn’t true. He’s right. It’s not all about him. It’s about me too—that’s why I’m here, why I told him I would try things.

  “Talk to me,” he says. “Get angry at me.”

  I—I can’t. He must hate me now. I have to get out of here. I’m shaking, because I hate confrontation. I let my soul and psyche be destroyed to avoid confrontation with my stepfather, after all.

  I push away from Jonathon. I run down to the beach. What do I do now? I should run for the hotel’s marina, because I’m going to have to go home now, aren’t I?

  And I’m going to get a boat to the airport using what?

  I run and run until water splashes my bare feet and I almost fall over because the sand is wet and kind of dissolves under my soles.

  The rolling, rushing sound of the waves wraps itself around me. My heart rate slows down. I breathe in salty air.

  If I were the little mermaid, I could keep on walking and dissolve into the water and become part of the sea. That’s the ending I remember to the story. Not the happy Disney one. No, in the story I remember, the little mermaid isn’t enough for the prince. He loves someone else and he isn’t going to change his mind. That’s the tragedy. He doesn’t do anything wrong—he’s just in love with someone else. She gambles everything and loses.

  I feel like that. I gambled on a relationship with Jonathon. I’ve
lost.

  He’s seen me act crazy. There’s no way he’s going to want anything to do with me.

  Why couldn’t I just be able to play kinky games? Why should I go off the deep end when it really is just a meaningless sex fantasy?

  “Mia?”

  Jonathon has followed me again. I’m ashamed of my outburst. He didn’t even hurt me and I went nuts.

  “I’ll pack and leave, if you want.” I speak calmly.

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “You want a content little submissive. You saw me—I’m a mess. That’s the truth, Jonathon. I am a complete mess.”

  “You are not. The fault and blame lies with me. I pushed you too hard. I set off one of your triggers.”

  I turn, confused. “A trigger?”

  Moonlight turns his eyes to a silvery-green. It illuminates the concern on his face. Concern for me. He reaches out for me and puts his arms around once more. “I’ve had a hell of a lot of therapists.” Quietly, beneath the soft, dark, star-dotted sky, he explains about triggers. He holds me against his chest as he does.

  He tells me stuff I know—that repeated abuse has effects that last forever. Like panic attacks, thoughts of suicide, flashbacks. Apparently, flashbacks are called intrusive memories. A traumatic event can trigger those memories and reactions. Can make me feel all the things I’ve felt before, like shame, depression, humiliation, guilt.

  I realize I feel something new, too. What I feel is an all-encompassing, consuming anger.

  Jonathon’s body is warm, damp. I press my cheek hard against his chest and close my eyes. “I can’t play the submissive who just takes a whipping. I’ve realized that now. It’s more than just a sex game to me, Jonathon.” I shake my head against him.

  I realize he ran out after me naked.

  “There are many other aspects to what I do. Many things that won’t make you react like that.”

  “It won’t work,” I say softly. I’m scared to try. Scared to go back into the past. “Now I know it for sure.” His heart is pounding in his chest. I feel it against my cheek.

  “Stay through Christmas,” he says, his voice husky. “No whippings, no spankings. I promise.”