Masochist

by Nadia Aidan

  She wore a simple white dress that fell to her ankles and hugged her curves seductively, while her unbound hair hung in gentle waves, caressing her shoulders and slipping down her back. She was beautiful in the morning sun and he almost could not breathe as she captured his gaze and held it.

  “Ares said nothing to convince me. He simply asked me to stay with you and so I told him I would.”

  He did not know why her words disappointed him, or maybe he did. He wanted to hear that she’d returned because she loved him, because she could not stay away, not because his brother had asked her to babysit him until he was back to full strength.

  “I am sorry he wasted your time, Selena. I do not need a nurse. I can get around on my own and the doctor said I should be nearly recovered by the end of the week.”

  “I know the bullet went clear through and hit nothing. You were very lucky, the damage was minimal.” She walked over to the window and spread the draperies wider, allowing in more sunlight. “And I am glad to hear you do not need a nurse.” She turned to face him. “Because you do not have one.”

  When he frowned in confusion, she smiled.

  “I am here because you need me, Adonis, just as I need you.” Her voice was soft, quiet. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be. I told you I would never leave you, Adonis, and I meant it.”

  He could not speak. The emotion in her eyes stole his voice. He wanted to believe her, wanted to trust her, but how many had he believed, trusted and loved, only to be abandoned and hurt? His parents, Rosalina, Dieu…

  “Before we begin our day I think we should get you cleaned up.” She strolled over to the bathroom. “Do you need help standing or walking?”

  He shook his head as he planted his feet on the floor and stood. She disappeared into the bathroom when she saw for herself that he did not need her help walking. It took him a little longer than usual because he was still sore, but he made it to the adjoining bathroom. She’d left the door slightly ajar so he pushed it open then froze where he stood.

  He turned to leave, but she easily brushed past him to close the door and lock it.

  He growled out her name in warning.

  “You do not want to fight me, Adonis, not in your current state.”

  His expression hardened, his heart ricocheted violently in his chest.

  She began to remove her dress, then her high heels, and his heartbeat quickened for an entirely different reason.

  Even as lust waged a war with his anger, he could not simply set the latter emotion aside.

  He glared at her, then at the water filling up the tub, then back at her.

  “You know how I feel about this. I told you so that you would understand, not so that you would use it against me.”

  Her eyes were soft, her palm against his chest gentle. He jerked away from her, but she was persistent. She would not let him retreat from her touch, not even when his back was pressed against the door.

  “I do not know of all the people who have hurt you, but I have an idea. You loved them and then they took their love away and hurt you.” She placed her other hand against his chest. “I will not take my love away, Adonis. And I swear on my life that I would die before I ever intentionally hurt you.”

  He tried to set her away from him, but she would not budge.

  “I know you love me, but you will not say it. You will never say it until you face the demons of your past.”

  “I do not need therapy, Selena.”

  “You do, but lucky for you I am neither a nurse nor a therapist.”

  He was not amused by her coy retort or the twinkle in her eyes. He tried to push her away again, but, like before, she held fast, clinging to him.

  “I want to make new memories for you, to chase away the old, just as you did for me.”

  When she looked at him like that, with soft eyes, and spoke to him with soft words, he was powerless against her. He was weak.

  “You have asked what happened to my back many times.” Her body tensed against his. “The night I ruined you, the night I refused to take your life, I returned to my chambers and bathed. I scrubbed my skin, desperately trying to erase what I’d done to you from my mind. In my bathtub is where your father found me. And then he took me to that same room beneath my father’s house where he tortured me. He alternated between whipping me and using me for several hours. When he grew tired of one perversion, he would take up the other, until even that wasn’t enough, and he began torturing me with flame and wax from a candle.”

  Her sob and the tears streaming down her face caused his gut to clench, but he refused to stop. Now that he’d begun he could not seem to stop. “My brothers found me and they threatened him until he was forced to release me. It took me weeks to heal physically. I thought my own father would at least be upset with him for ruining my value as one of his whores. Instead, my father was upset with me for not doing as I’d been instructed. My back had barely healed before Dieu beat me, for good measure, I suppose. I knew then I had to leave but he would not let me go without the one promise that I was never to contact you again, that I would never have anything to do with you again or you would die—a promise Woodward was well aware of. I thought it strange that promising to never see you again would be the one thing to secure my freedom, but I kept it and gained my freedom. After my father died, I wanted to come to you but hesitated because of Woodward and my fear of what he would do to you if I broke my promise. I now realise our fathers wanted to keep us apart because it simply pleased them to know we were both in pain.”

  He stared down at her upturned face, expectant and full of hope. He did not want to disappoint her, but he had no choice.

  “What I did to you that night I never forgot, just as I never forgot what was done to me—none of it. So do you understand now, Selena, why I cannot get into that tub?”

  Something as simple as bathing and he could not do it. He could not sit down with her and pretend that every bitter memory of being wrenched from his bath and slowly abused and violated for an entire night did not resurface just from looking at the water sloshing back and forth.

  She reached down to turn the knobs, shutting the water off. The tub appeared to have been filled to a fourth of its capacity. If he got in and sat down, the water would barely reach the sides of his thighs. It certainly would never cover him.

  “When you took baths before, did anyone bathe you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did they lather your skin in soap and rinse you with care?”

  His throat tightened. “No.”

  “Did they straddle you and ride your cock while you held their hips?”

  “Selena—”

  “Did they, Adonis?”

  “No.”

  “I cannot force you to get into this tub. I can only promise you that, if you do, I will give you new memories to replace the old.” She stepped into the basin, the water just above her ankles.

  Her eyes sparkled with lust as she sat down in the water, and with merriment when she parted her legs to drape one over the rim of the bath.

  “Would you get in and sit between my thighs and let me wash you?”

  He hesitated. Years of pain and bitter memories could not be erased in a moment, a day…even a lifetime.

  She waited patiently, not prodding him further, not pushing.

  He glanced down at her naked body, glistening wet and spread before him, then at the water roiling back and forth. There were maybe two inches of water in the basin.

  He looked at her again and swallowed the knot in his throat.

  Her eyes were patient, gentle and full of love. She reached out her hand. Droplets of water splashed to the floor. He took her fingers in his.

  He’d vowed never to do this again.

  He placed one foot into the tub, then the other. Once inside, he crouched down between her thighs and leant back until her breasts were flat against his back. She wrapped her arms around his chest and locked her legs around his hips.

  For th
e first time in a long time, he felt safe, secure…loved.

  Selena’s hands were gentle as she ran the sponge across his back, his arms. She touched his scars with delicate fingers, tracing the ridges as soap trickled across his flesh. His body was tense against hers, vibrating with corded energy as if he would bolt at any moment.

  But he didn’t.

  He gradually relaxed against her, settling deeper within the cave of her body.

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked, running the sponge across his back.

  He turned. His golden mane was now a honey brown as it clung to his shoulders, dripping with water.

  “I remember. It was at the Winter Cotillion.” She could almost hear the smile in his voice when he spoke. “You were not to be introduced that year, but I still thought you were the most beautiful sight in the room.”

  She grinned at that. “Besides my twin sister, of course.”

  “No.” His gaze was direct. “There was a fire in your eyes, a boldness in the way you carried yourself that intrigued me. An innocence to your mature beauty that appealed to me. But it was the sadness, the loneliness that I glimpsed which drew me to you and compelled me to ask you to dance.”

  “I thought it was your father, along with mine, who forced you to seek me out?”

  His smile was faint. “No one needed to force me to fall for you, Selena.”

  He turned to face forward again, for which she was grateful. She did not want him to see the disappointment in her eyes. He had easily fallen for her— that, he would readily admit—but not that he’d fallen in love with her.

  “Do you know what intrigued me the most about you?” she asked him.

  He tilted his head, so she could see the side of his face, but he did not turn fully around.

  “When you introduced yourself, I demanded to know your real name, but you refused. Until then, no one had ever told me no. ”

  “That was what intrigued you the most?” He seemed surprised.

  “Yes. Are you disappointed?”

  “No, it’s just that…” He hesitated and her brow puckered.

  “What is it?”

  Adonis shrugged. “Most have said it was my beauty that attracted them, or my handsomeness. My physique, perhaps. And several have been so bold as to acknowledge it was my reputation, but none have ever said it was my stubbornness.”

  “Would you rather I said those things?” she questioned, out of curiosity more than anything. His defiance had attracted her—she could not change what was true.

  “No. I was simply surprised.”

  “Why?”

  He leant back all the way so that his head rested against her shoulder. She cocked her head to stare down into his upturned face.

  “I guess I was surprised that even back then you saw who I truly was, and not what you were supposed to see.”

  “And what was that? What was I supposed to see?”

  “A man with the face of a god…but you have always seen only the man.”

  Adonis.

  The man, the god.

  He was just a man—with the same needs as any other, the same yearnings, the same weaknesses, the same desires.

  Adonis.

  He was just a man.

  He spoke softly, and she leaned closer to hear the faint words when he repeated them.

  She looked at him in bewilderment. “I do not under—”

  “You wanted to know the name I was born with.”

  He closed his eyes, his head still resting against her shoulder and her heart did a tiny stutter.

  “What would you prefer to be called? I mean, when we’re alone like this.” Her cheeks heated in embarrassment at the words she’d spoken without thinking. She’d just assumed they’d be alone like this again—that there would be many more times…

  His eyes snapped open and she waited, her breath stilling.

  “Adonis.”

  She exhaled. “Even though Adonis is not your real name and with it comes the weight of so many painful memories?”

  “The boy I was before I became Adonis is long dead. He does not exist anymore.” He closed his eyes again. “It is simply enough that you know who he was, who I once was. That you will mourn for a boy who died long ago, when no one else will.”

  She closed her eyes and willed herself not to cry even as the tears burned the back of her throat. He was right.

  She did mourn for the boy who’d died years ago, whose death no one knew of but her.

  But she also mourned for the man who’d been born, the man she now held, who’d died many deaths. The man who everyone thought a god.

  Adonis.

  A god he was not. Just a man with the same needs, the same yearnings, the same weaknesses and desires as any another man.

  She trailed a series of kisses along the back of his neck and across his shoulders, until his skin warmed beneath her lips. He tilted his head at the same time as she dipped hers, and their lips met in a gentle, searching kiss. Their breath mingled, as intertwined as their bodies, and she clung to him, enveloping him within the circle of her thighs, her arms.

  His tongue probed, then forged deep, filling her…branding her. She moaned into his mouth, desperately wanting him to take her body as deeply and fully as he now claimed her mouth.

  She pulled back, gently separating their lips. He looked at her curiously when she stood. His eyes darkened with lust, with fervent desire, when she stepped from the tub only to climb back in to straddle his hips, with her back facing him.

  She settled in his lap, her bottom nuzzling the engorged length of his cock that continued to thicken against her. He held her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh.

  She turned and held his gaze, her eyes trained on him as she slowly lowered herself onto him, sinking onto his cock inch by inch.

  Her muscles tightened around him as desire warmed her core, causing him to ease further inside her slick, tight tunnel. A deep, sexual hunger stirred in her belly, the pulsing, pounding rhythm of pleasure and need filling her and warming her. She gasped when she rocked against him, taking him to the hilt until he was buried deep and tight inside her wet passage.

  He groaned—a harsh, soul-stirring sound that made her stomach clench and her toes curl. Her body began to move as if it had its own mind and its own desires. She yielded to her body’s demands as she engulfed his cock, up and down, shallow and deep.

  Adonis held her firmly, jerking her on his length at the same time as she impaled herself atop him. They moved in unison, their bodies a harmonious blending of lust and desire, their sighs of pleasure weaving together, filling up every space within the room.

  He held her writhing, pumping body to him as he slowly slid his palm along her belly to cup the mound of her breast. She drew in a sharp breath when he tugged on her nipple, sending bolts of pleasure sizzling and slicing through her until she was panting, dripping with sweat that beaded across her body, mingling with the droplets of water that also clung to her skin.

  Adonis’ breath suddenly became shallow and she looked at him again from over her shoulder, her gaze caressing him. His eyes were hooded, drowsy with lust. The longing in their depths called to her, fuelled her until she was riding his cock wildly, heedless of the water sloshing, of the creaking of the tub, of the soreness that would surely creep inside her body by morning.

  All that mattered was his pleasure.

  And hers.

  Their eyes met, and a jolt of energy arced between them, scorching them both. She was powerless to stop what came next and she didn’t want to. Her lips parted, but no sound came out, not a word as her muscles clenched around him, then her cunt flooded with juice, drenching him until he was coated with her desire.

  She shuddered violently, coming on a long, endless wave of pleasure. He joined her in her bliss with a hoarse shout of pleasure as he poured himself into her, holding her locked to him, her body imprisoned within his grasp.

  He called her name and on a breathless moan he sh
attered her heart with the only words that could break her apart and then mend her back together again.

  Tears clogged her throat as he healed her with his trust…his love.

  When he was spent, his body weary, his gaze captured hers and she lost herself in the warmth of his eyes, the closeness of his body.

  His arms tugged her to him, and with his soft member still inside her she rested against his chest, letting him wrap his strong arms around her, as she’d done with him just moments ago.

  She burrowed deeper into his embrace, listening to the beating of his heart, the steady rhythm of his breathing.

  With one hand, he pushed aside her wet hair and kissed her neck, then called her name, and the words that she’d feared would be locked inside him for eternity flowed effortlessly from him again.

  I love you…

  “I love you too,” she whispered, closing her eyes, and, for the first time in a long time, she felt safe, secure and loved—because she knew that she was. And now the man she’d loved forever—and always would—knew the same.

  Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

  Sex Therapy

  Nadia Aidan

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  You’re a fraud, a phony, a fake.

  Elena’s hand froze over the mouse of her computer as she read that one line over and over, the words swimming before her eyes.

  With trembling fingers, she set her coffee aside, afraid the shaking of her hand would send the scalding hot liquid sloshing over the rim of her mug. She apparently had a stalker, she didn’t need to add third degree burns to her list of woes.

  She read the sender’s name in the email line. jbond@rakemag.com. Every muscle in her body knotted with tension as she read the name again, rolling it around her tongue. Something about it was familiar.

  Dragging in a deep breath, she clicked on the subject line, before she could lose her nerve, sending the email popping open across her screen.

  She’d hoped this was a hoax, a prank from some dirty old man, but there was nothing about the content of the email that was remotely amusing. She skimmed the pages of the document, her fury growing with each word she read.