His heart thundered in his chest, stuttering when she found a particularly sensitive spot.
“Take your tunic off.”
Darias didn’t even think. He ripped the flimsy material in half with a quick pull, dropping the ruined garment in a careless heap on the floor.
“Well, that’s one way, I guess.”
Unable to see her expression, to judge if she were amused or irritated at his impatience, Darias stilled.
Please, may she not stop.
Her hand cupped his genitals, testing their weight, the extent of his need. Behind the blindfold, his eyes closed in relief.
“You’ve been very bad. Ruining your clothes.”
His eyes shot open.
“You need to be punished.”
His heart jumped even as his cock grew harder. Was she serious? Would she really punish him for such a minor infraction?
Her hand squeezed in warning.
“Do you not?”
Darias cleared his throat. Should he agree or disagree? Was she truly angry or was she playing one of her games with him? The not knowing added an extra fillip of excitement.
She squeezed again, a little harder.
“Yes.” It was all he could manage, and barely that. Darias didn’t recognize his own voice, rough and hoarse as it was.
Her hands settled on his hips and Darias let her lead him, trusting that she wouldn’t let him trip over anything. Vaguely, he recognized the extent of that trust, but then pushed the disturbing thought away. His world narrowed, became the heat of her hands through his silk breeches, the sound of his breathing, harsh and uneven, in his own ears, and her warm, womanly scent that filled his nostrils.
They stopped. Darias heard the give of the mattress and sensed rather than felt that Riana had sat down on the bed. His heart skipped a beat and then his pulse began thrumming in his ears.
“Remove your breeches.”
His cock quivered. Encased in the thong and showcased by the black silk of his breeches, Darias knew there was no way she could have missed the betraying reaction. His hands went for the blindfold.
“No, leave that on. I like the fact that you know but can’t see me watching you undress.” Her voice was husky but firm.
Darias was somewhat reassured by that subtle evidence of her arousal.
He spread his legs for balance as his hands went to the waistband of his breeches. Leather brushed the outside of his thighs. He was standing between her spread legs. Fire raced through his blood at the image that formed in his mind.
His fingers fumbled in his eagerness. Damn, he was acting like an untried youth. Still, he couldn’t seem to grasp hold of his composure. He untied the lace closing his breeches, loosening it enough to slide his breeches down his hips.
“No. Unthread the lace. Slowly.”
Slow. His blood was on fire and she wanted slow? He inhaled in an effort to do as she asked. It wasn’t easy. His every instinct roared at him to shuck his clothes and then throw her back on the bed and bury his throbbing cock in her woman’s wetness.
Darias tugged the lacing through the eyelets, a faint tremor in his fingers, one end at a time. At last he was down to the bottom two eyelets. His cock, still constrained in the thong, pressed upward, rubbing against his hand. Even that small contact was almost too much.
He started to rip the last of the lacing free then stopped. If he didn’t do exactly as she asked, would she end this tantalizing game?
The faintest of pressure tickled his balls. “Slowly,” she reminded him.
A shuddering breath leaked from his chest. Gripping the bottom of the lacing between thumb and forefinger, Darias pulled. Slowly. He gritted his teeth as the silk tie twined around his aching cock. Each tug on the tie tugged on his cock.
Darias nearly lost it.
The moment the tie came free, he dropped it with an audible sigh of relief.
His breeches dropped as far as his knees, prevented from going any further by his spread legs.
Her hands were there immediately, silently telling him to shift so she could ease his breeches the rest of the way down.
He did as instructed, acutely conscious of the fact that his cock must be mere centimeters from her face.
From her mouth.
He swallowed a groan.
Krel, he wanted to feel the warm, wet depths of her mouth around his cock again. Wrong or not, Darias knew he’d kill for the opportunity.
“Now the thong.”
He was shoving the indecent scrap of material over his hips when he stopped abruptly. It just occurred to him what had happened the last time she had given him a similar set of instructions.
She’d blistered his ass so hard that he bore the marks for several days.
Nerves he hadn’t known he possessed set up a dance in the pit of his stomach, vying with an equally disconcerting excitement of once again baring his ass to her stroke.
His cock had no such qualms. It leaped to attention.
Filled with an unsettling mixture of trepidation and lust, Darias shoved the thong down and stepped out of both breeches and thong.
A drop of pre-come beaded on the head of his cock.
“Use your hand to pleasure yourself.”
“I cannot,” he protested without thought.
She made her displeasure with his refusal clear with a light swat on his thigh. Another drop formed.
“You can and you will. My will is your will. Now pleasure yourself.”
Feeling acutely self-conscious, Darias took his rock-hard cock in his hand. Self-pleasuring was against the rules. His throat worked as he struggled to do as commanded against years of training that a warrior never touched himself.
He circled the base of his cock, his hold light. He moved his hand in a tentative stroke and nearly gasped at the shaft of pleasure that ripped clear to his spine. He gripped tighter, his stroke firmer now.
His palm was calloused, the skin rougher and so very different from the feel of Riana’s hand on his flesh. His head arched back as he instinctively twisted his hand just beneath the cap of his cock.
His breath came faster. Pre-come was leaking steadily from the slit bisecting the head of his shaft. With the blindfold over his eyes, it was easy to forget he had an audience watching him experiment with the forbidden.
Until she spoke.
“Use your thumb and spread the pre-come around the tip.”
For some reason, that seemed more intimate than stroking himself to culmination.
“Riana, please.” He couldn’t finish his plea.
“Are you disobeying me?”
Darias wet his lips, tempted to do just that. Finally, he gave a small shake of his head.
“Then do it.”
His entire body felt hot. Darias wasn’t sure if it was shame or lust. He nearly cursed at the bolt of sensation that tightened his balls up high against his body when he rubbed the slippery fluid around the swollen head, his touch awkward.
“Stop.”
He froze.
“Take one step forward.”
He shuddered when he felt her small hand circle his cock, right behind the engorged head. When she tasted him with the tip of her tongue, he couldn’t prevent the jerk of his hips. Or the strangled moan that escaped his lips.
Riana took her time cleaning him and capturing each drop of pre-come as it emerged.
Darias could no more have stopped the rhythmic thrust of his hips than he could have stopped the drought. Just as he was about to explode, when one more delicate lick of her tongue would send him over that precipice, she drew back.
“Enough.” To his chagrin, her voice sounded normal. “You may not come before being punished.”
Abruptly, he realized that his arousal, this entire seduction, was part of his punishment. Fury, hot and immediate, blazed. A measure of control returned. His voice icy, Darias let his scorn pour over the woman in front of him.
“Think what you will of Nexarian ways, of Nexarian traditions, of me,
at least I never misled you. You always knew the line between sex and punishment.”
“You think that was about punishment?” She sounded amazed. Then she burst out laughing in what seemed to be true amusement. “Ah, Darias, I am so going to enjoy teaching you the difference between play and true punishment.
“Over my lap,” she ordered, all traces of laughter gone.
“What?” Still trying to absorb the implication that this was play, not punishment, he was slow to comply.
“That has earned you ten more strokes.”
His cock leaped in response.
“Riana,” he began.
“Mistress,” she corrected.
Darias tamped down the feeling that he should be fighting her, refusing to obey, and agreed. “Mistress.” Rising excitement chased away his fury. “Mistress,” he tasted the word on his lip, discovering that he liked it a little too much, but continued anyway. “Mistress, I—I’m not sure what you mean.” He hated feeling so unsure but he needed to know. “Are you saying this is not punishment?”
She sighed. “Then let me explain. This is not Nexarian punishment, but I am punishing you.”
Krel, the woman could make his head hurt faster than a fall from a wild chelan. “For ripping my tunic?” he asked, needing clarification. Was she going to spank him or not?
“Zethra, you could take the fun out of a three-day layover on a pleasure planet. Look, don’t think, just feel. Let go of the reins, Darias,” she whispered. “I command you.”
Darias took a deep breath. Tonight he was slave and she was Mistress. He wouldn’t think beyond that. The tension flowed from his body, to be replaced by another, different kind of tension. He bowed his head.
“Yes, Mistress.”
She took him by the hand and guided him down over her lap until he was stretched out, full length, on the bed. His erection pressed into the leather of her pants. The feel of the leather against his skin, after weeks of wearing silk, was somehow exotic.
As was the fact he was naked while she was fully clothed.
“Put your palms down on the bed, next to your head.”
The muscles in his back tensed.
He almost shot off the bed when she ran her hand up the inside of his thigh and cupped his balls. She tapped the inside of his thighs.
“Spread your legs a little. Yes, like that.”
The cheeks of his ass clenched in anticipation. Oddly enough, Darias found that being unable to see heightened sensation as well as jangling every nerve in his body.
She kept her hand between his legs, petting him and soothing him. Darias relaxed, his breathing evened out.
Smack.
He jumped, his fingers tangling in the spidersilk sheet. Shit, he’d forgotten the woman could hit almost as hard as he could. Another open hand smack set fire to his ass.
“You have been bad. You know what we do to bad slaves, don’t you?”
“You spank them,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth as a flurry of blows landed.
“That’s right. I spank them.”
His ass burned and stung. And with each blow, his erection became harder. His nipples pebbled against the spidersilk sheets. Darias wanted to move, to rub them against the sheets, gain some relief from the sensual ache.
She stopped, her hand resting on his butt.
“No.” Krel, she couldn’t leave him like this, his ass on fire, his cock even hotter.
Darias heard the rustle of the sheet then silence again.
Crack.
“Krel!” he roared when he regained his breath. “That hurt!” Almost before he was done speaking, the hot shards of pain turned into something else. Something that was centered in his balls and cock.
His fingers dug into the sheets.
Crack.
His ass clenched and released in the simulated thrust of lovemaking with each blow as it landed. A part of Darias was appalled that he had absolutely no control over the action.
The other part didn’t give a damn.
His heart was thundering in his chest, his breath was labored, as if he’d spent hours battling, by the time the rhythmic lift and fall of her arm quit. He lay there, trembling and close to erupting in a mind-blowing climax, when she leaned over him and whispered, “Take me.”
Darias exploded off the bed, his arm about her waist, sweeping her beneath him all in one move. His other hand tore at the fastenings on her leather breeches, opening them and peeling the pants down in desperation. He managed to get them off one leg.
In the next breath, he was buried inside Riana to the hilt. It was like drowning in liquid fire. He pounded into her, incapable of even the smallest amount of finesse. With each thrust, his ass burned hotter, until he was engulfed in fire—his cock, his ass, her sheath.
Darias sank his teeth in her shoulder, hearing the material of her blouse give way beneath his assault.
Her nails dug into his sore ass, pushing him over the edge.
* * * * *
The sound of Riana’s soft laughter roused Darias.
“What?” He lay on his side where he’d landed after the mind-blowing orgasm, his arm over his eyes. He didn’t so much as try to crack an eyelid. It was too much effort to move his arm. Hell, he might not ever move again.
“This.” She tugged on something tangled in his hair.
The blindfold. He was still wearing the damn blindfold.
His ripped it off and glared at her.
“You didn’t have to use it in the first place.”
Her amusement didn’t fade. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t enjoy it? That not being able to see what was going to happen next didn’t add a little more excitement?”
She had him there and knew it. Darias couldn’t truthfully tell her that wearing the blindfold hadn’t aroused him to another level altogether. But he damn well didn’t have to admit it. Silence, he decided, was best in this case.
She smiled knowingly.
He shifted, and his butt protested. He winced.
“Turn over,” she ordered immediately. “I want to make sure the paddle operated as it was supposed to.”
Resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t let up until he did as she asked, he turned over.
“Ow.” A shock of pain followed the light press of her fingers. His cock stirred. “What did you use on me? I know it wasn’t the hairbrush this time.” Even the slightest touch of her hand elicited that stab of pain. And the shot of arousal. What in the name of Tartarius had she used on him?
He reached behind himself and felt for damage. Heat poured off his skin. Pain then arousal.
“A stim paddle.” She leaned down and brushed her lips over one abused cheek. Darias jumped. He would never get used to the way she touched him wherever she felt like.
“What’s a stim paddle?”
Riana bit, just a scraping of her teeth.
His ass clenched. The pain was sharper this time. So was the response of his cock. He breathed deeply, attempting to control the budding erection. He wasn’t in any shape for another bout of sex. It might just kill him.
“It’s a paddle that has micro nodes that emit electrical stimulation to the flesh being spanked. It stimulates both the pain and pleasure nerve endings without real damage. The effect is only supposed to last a few hours.”
“A few hours!” He turned so that she could see his glare.
She smirked back, unrepentant.
“Yep.”
“It hurts!”
“It’s supposed to. Would you rather I use my hairbrush?”
“That is not what I mean, and you know it! You said we were playing. Play isn’t supposed to hurt.” All of a sudden, Darias wanted to fight and he didn’t know why.
“What’s the matter, my dragon? You liked the way it hurt a little while ago,” she pointed out. She tapped his ass.
He thrust against the sheet before turning over, away from her touch. Pain and lust rolled over him. He flipped back onto his stomach. The back of his nec
k reddened when she laughed. He turned his head away from her.
She seemed to realize he was truly upset. Her expression softened. “Darias, the stim paddle won’t leave any marks. No one will know what we did.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Play can be anything that two people want. Don’t be embarrassed because you enjoyed what we did.”
He was acting like an idiot. Darias shifted to his side and propped his head up on a hand. If she could act as if it wasn’t a big deal, so could he. It was then that he noticed the bruise forming beneath the tear in her shirt.
Shocked, he touched it with one finger.
“I hurt you!” Keeping his touch exquisitely gentle, he moved her shirt out of the way. There, on the top of her shoulder, was the imprint of his teeth. At least he hadn’t broken the skin. The observation failed miserably to console him.
“I liked it.”
His gaze shot to hers in disbelief.
“It’s true. At that moment, the feel of your teeth was exactly what I needed.”
Dazed, he stared at the evidence of his uncontrolled passion.
Not saying a word, Riana stripped off the rest of her clothes. Still silent, she turned on her side to face him.
Darias took her in his arms, pressing a tender kiss over the mark before covering it with his palm.
Her hand cupped one cheek of his ass. There was the familiar jolt of pain, followed by an equally strong jolt of lust. Darias ignored both.
A man could get used to falling asleep like this.
Chapter Ten
The dragon lowered its head, presenting the vulnerable spot where spine joined skull.
It waited.
Hand trembling, she lifted the dagger, steeling herself to plunge it into the beast.
A breath shuddered out of the beast at the action.
It sounded like a mournful sigh.
Tears slipped down her cheeks. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill the beast. Not even to still the heart-rending pain in his silver eyes.
His?
The sudden sure conviction that the dragon was more than an unthinking beast settled into her mind and refused to go away.
He looked up. The silver eyes blazed. His muzzle gaped open in blatant threat.
Her heart stuttered and then lodged in her throat.
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