Club Helix: The Power Games

by Brynley Bush

  “At the moment, nothing. We’ve retained a renowned First Amendment attorney who specializes in FCC issues. He says the guy’s just looking for a cause to propel him to the forefront of the campaign, and we’ve been diligent in dotting our i’s and crossed our t’s when it comes to following the FCC guidelines, but I just wanted to let you know in case things go south quickly. Filming wraps up in two weeks, so I think we’ll be fine, although we may need to step up security when the hotel opens to the public for the finale. I don’t know how far this guy is willing to go.”

  “Whatever you need, you’ve got it,” I promise.

  He nods. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Ava and I eat dinner with the rest of the contestants, which is now down to eight of us—me and Ava, Emmett and Rebecca, Luke and Tessa, and Michael and Carly. After dinner, Ava and I go for a walk outside, and she laughingly pulls me into the labyrinth constructed of hedges that’s built in the center of the huge outdoor garden of the Helix. Hand in hand we walk deeper and deeper into the maze, taking a seemingly endless series of turns until we reach the center.

  “It’s like the maze from the story of Theseus and the Minotaur,” she says. “Every path, no matter how wrong it seems, leads to the center.”

  I look at her in surprise. My little submissive is as intelligent as she is beautiful.

  “Yes,” I say softly. “And I’m the monster in the center that wants to devour your flesh.”

  Her eyes darken. “You’re not a monster.”

  “Oh, but I am,” I assure her, capturing her wrists and tugging them brutally behind her as I ravage her with a kiss that’s meant to bruise her lips and send her pulse racing. When I finally let her go, she’s winded. “You’re going to find out just how much of a monster I am tonight since you’ve earned a punishment.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “A punishment? Why?”

  I take her chin in my hand, forcing her gaze to mine. “Tell me again what you said when you left for Sonoma.”

  She thinks for a moment, and then comprehension dawns in her eyes as she remembers. And dammit if she doesn’t smile impishly.

  “Say it again if you dare,” I challenge her, my voice low and threatening. The beast in me is clawing to get out, to punish and hurt her, to make her cry, but the man in me wants to give her a chance to run while she can.

  She looks me straight in the eye and says, “You’ll never own me, Roman Castile.”

  “I beg to differ,” I say, my voice a low growl.

  She’s sealed her fate, and I’ll stop at nothing to own this woman, with her cool composure and unbreakable spirit. She’s about to find out just how brutal I can be. She’s come face-to-face with the Minotaur, and I’m about to let the monster come out to play.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ava

  After our kiss inside the maze that left my insides quivering and my knees weak, both Roman and I are too consumed by lust to linger in the gardens. By wordless agreement, we find our way out of the maze and go back to our suite. In the bedroom he stands over me, invading my space and overwhelming my senses, the sheer virility of him igniting fire in my veins. What the hell is wrong with me that I’m intent on poking the devil? I’m not just encouraging Roman to unleash his violence on me, but I’m welcoming it, my sex clenching and my pussy growing wet at the thought of his ruthlessness.

  “Did you do what you said you would?” he demands, fisting his fingers in my hair and yanking my head back so I’m gazing up at him.

  “What’s that?” I ask breathlessly.

  “Did you save an orgasm for me?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “Maybe one,” I add mischievously.

  “Avalon, you are going to be sorry for goading me so shamelessly,” he promises.

  With the way sheer, unvarnished lust is coursing through me, I seriously doubt that.

  He lets go of me abruptly. “Strip!”

  I do as he says, my fingers trembling as I slip off the summer dress I’d worn to dinner, followed by the white bra and matching lace panties. When I’m standing before him completely naked, although he’s fully dressed in one of those sexy suits he wears all the time, he shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it onto the back of a chair. I watch mesmerized as he methodically rolls up his shirtsleeves, revealing his tan, muscular forearms. His tie is next, and he tugs it off slowly, letting it fall to the floor as his predatory gaze roams over my naked body.

  “Turn around.”

  I do as he says. I stand with my back to him, wondering what he plans to do next as my heart hammers wildly. “Bend over and touch the floor.”

  I comply.

  “Now spread your ass.”

  “What?”

  “Do it now.” His tone brooks no argument.

  With my face burning with shame, I reach behind me and grab both cheeks, spreading them open so my hole is humiliatingly exposed. His hand on the small of my back is surprisingly gentle as he squirts cold lube between the cleft of my ass and then unceremoniously pushes a plug into me. I inhale sharply at the burn as it breaches the ring of muscles and settles inside me. This one is bigger than the first one he used, but although I can definitely feel it filling me with its forbidden thickness, it’s not uncomfortable.

  “Stand up.”

  I obey quickly, and he turns me to face him. His eyes are dark and unfathomable, filled with power and lust. Roman the sadist has clearly taken over.

  “From this point forward, unless you need your safe word, there are only two words I want to hear out of your mouth. Yes and sir.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I whisper obediently.

  From his pocket, he pulls the twin balls he’d inserted in me when I’d gone to the spa. Forcing my mouth open with his long, slender fingers, he places them on my tongue and firmly closes my lips over them. After a moment he holds out his hand and I spit them out, wet with my saliva, although I’m not sure how that’s even possible since my mouth has gone dry. With his hand between my legs, he slowly eases the balls into my pussy. The plug is already filling my ass, and there’s not much room. My body resists, but flesh and bones are no match for Roman’s will. Soon they’re buried inside me and rolling around erotically, occasionally nudging the plug through the thin wall that separates my vagina and my ass. The entire area below my pelvis feels stuffed and overfull, and it’s creating a slow and dirty ache.

  “Lie down on your back with your arms stretched out toward the corners,” he commands, pointing to the bed.

  I do as he says, my heart thumping loudly.

  Using the long panels of fabric that hang from each corner of the canopy, he wraps my wrists in the sheer fabric and then ties each end to the corner posts of the headboard so my arms are outspread. Whoever designed this hotel—and this bed—thought of everything. Just when I think I’ve experienced it all, Roman finds a new way to tie me up. I test the bindings. Although I certainly can’t put my arms down, there’s a good bit of give, and I can move a little.

  I watch as he opens two packages of rope similar to the shibari rope he used last night, and then he kneels on the bed next to me and bends my legs, tying each of my ankles to my thighs with a length of rope. Then, using the fabric ties at the foot of the bed, he secures my legs to the opposite corner posts so I’m tied spread-eagled with my knees bent. I shiver violently at my sheer vulnerability as he kneels between my legs. He trails his tongue up the inside of one opened thigh, and my muscles quiver at his touch. Then he leans forward, and I moan as his hot, wet mouth fastens over my clit. He flicks the hardened bundle of nerves with his tongue until I’m whimpering with a fierce and violent need made all the more intense by the fact that I can’t move at all. He’s made his point; I’m wholly at his mercy.

  He lifts his head and smiles with depravity as he licks his lips. Fuck, that was hot. “I love how you’re always wet for me, Avalon. I wonder, will you still be this wet after I punish you?”

  The thought of what that punishment might entail with me so helplessly b
ound in this compromising position has a tendril of fear licking up my spine, but arousal is quickly banishing the fear.

  “Now I’m going to do what I wanted to do to you last night at the Dominion,” he says, his voice a sexy rasp.

  What? I vividly remember every single thing he said he wanted to do to me. The images had filled my dreams last night, and I’d woken up incongruently electrified by the thought but more determined than ever to make sure I never feel the painful lash of the flogger.

  “The flogger’s a hard limit!” I protest.

  “I’m well aware of that, Avalon,” he says tightly. “When are you going to trust me?”

  “I do trust you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be alone in a suite with you, stark naked and tied spread-eagled to your bed with a plug up my ass,” I retort.

  He laughs at that, and the delighted sound of his booming rumble is as unexpected as it is wonderful.

  “Touché,” he says.

  He goes to the toy armoire and returns with a thin wooden paddle about as wide as a ruler and lays it on the night table next to the bed.

  “There are more ways to whip a pussy than with a flogger,” he says mildly.

  I don’t want anything whipping my pussy! I pull hard on the fabric ties, horror at what he intends to do making me wild. I’m still tugging at the restraints as he climbs onto the bed and somehow maneuvers himself behind me so he’s sitting with his back against the immense headboard. There’s enough play in the ties for him to haul me back against his chest. His hands fondle my breasts, roughly squeezing and plumping them until they feel tight and heavy. Damn the man for always turning my own body against me.

  “I don’t want you to whip me at all, but especially not there,” I whimper as his thumbs brush across my nipples.

  “Well, it’s not really up to you, is it?” he says, tweaking the tips of my breasts savagely. Desire—dark and forbidden—stabs through me. “Remember the only words that should be coming out of your mouth are yes and sir.”

  My traitorous nipples harden beneath his punishing fingers, and when he scrapes his fingernails over the erect tips, I squirm violently against him. I can feel his cock jerk against my ass at my frantic movements; he’s totally turned on by my struggle. He takes my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers and tugs, pulling them away from my body until I feel the bite of pain and the juices seeping from my obscenely opened sex.

  “Now I’m going to punish you for your disrespect and blatant mocking of my rules. And then I’m going to make sure you don’t make the mistake again of thinking your orgasms—or your body, for that matter—belong to you.”

  Holding me still with one arm banded around my rib cage just below my breasts, he picks up the paddle and smacks my inner thigh sharply with it. Ouch! Damn. It smarts.

  “No,” I protest as he strikes the other one. “Stop!”

  He ignores me, hitting the tender skin over and over until my thighs are burning and I’m wiggling as much as the fabric ties allow.

  “When you’ve had enough in one spot, just tell me, and I’ll move somewhere else,” he murmurs as he continues spanking my inner thighs with the thin wooden implement. “I’ll give you permission to deviate from yes and sir for that.”

  I f can’t take it anymore. My thighs are on fire. “Enough,” I cry.

  I immediately regret my decision as the thin flat edge of the paddle connects with one erect nipple. The paddle hovers over my other nipple, and I quiver in tortured anticipation of what I know is coming. Then whack! I scream at the blow, made even more intense by his cruelly deliberate buildup.

  He smacks one breast and then the other with the paddle, alternating between hitting the sides, tops, and underneath of each and placing sharp, stinging slaps that land flush across my sensitive nipples until they’re throbbing. My sex is pulsing in rhythm with my tortured nipples as pain and fear dance cheek to cheek with arousal and an electrifying surge of need that’s quickly becoming a nearly frantic craving.

  The tingling on my thighs has started to subside, but my breasts are aching, and I don’t know how much longer I can take the erotic abuse. But I’m terrified of where he’ll go next if I tell him I’ve had enough. He keeps up a ruthless pace, and I withstand it as long as I can. Finally, with a strangled cry, I say, “Enough!”

  Although my back is to him, I can almost feel his sadistic smile as he moves the paddle between my legs and strikes. The smooth wood hits my bare mound with a sharp thwack, and both my pussy and my ass clench in response, pulling the plug deeper. Always intensely in tune with the way my body responds to him, he notices my reaction and grabs the base of the plug, twisting it. He moves it in and out of me with one hand as he continues to wield the paddle with the other, spanking my pussy until it’s throbbing and I’m whimpering, although not entirely from pain. While there’s an undeniable sting when the paddle strikes my sex, it doesn’t hurt as much as I’d expected, and somehow as is always the case with Roman, the bite of pain quickly turns into a pervasive and inexplicable pleasure that’s making my clit vibrate with need. The feeling is indescribable and almost overwhelming, and for some reason, I feel dangerously close to tears.

  “Enough!” I cry.

  He moves back to my breasts, concentrating solely on my nipples before I quickly say “enough” again. Then he moves back to my thighs. They’re more tender than I’d thought, and I don’t last long. When he taps my pussy again, I accept the inevitable. I won’t say enough again. He’s relentless, the paddle striking my throbbing sex over and over as his fingers pluck and pull at my nipples, which have become rigid points of pure ecstasy. The plug stretching my ass and the balls filling my pussy add to the potent cocktail of vulnerability mixed with raw, carnal need, the tension and energy building to an impossible peak. He spanks me again and again until I feel my muscles tense. With a scream, I shatter, my mind blurring as the floodgates erupt and the erotic swells of pleasure buffet my body.

  He doesn’t give me time to recover, and I’m still dazed and panting as he unties me and then drags me up onto my knees so I’m facing the end of the bed, my toes touching the headboard. He secures each of my ankles to a steel ring attached to the headboard. Next, he encircles my thighs with more rope, tying the ends to rings spaced slightly closer to the bedposts so my legs are held open as I kneel.

  He grabs more rope and winds it around my hips, creating a harness below my navel much like the one Emmett had used on Rebecca. By now, I’ve regained a little of my equilibrium.

  “Someone was paying attention in rope class,” I quip.

  Without a word, he goes to the armoire and returns with the ball gag. I know my eyes flash with both dread and an odd thrill at his undeniable show of power and dominance over me, even though I hate the gag with a fiery passion. He forces it between my lips, buckling it into place behind my head. Anxiety—fierce and primal—squeezes at my lungs until I can barely breathe.

  Unperturbed, he goes back to his rope work. He fashions a simple breast harness that squeezes my already hypersensitive and tortured breasts before tying the end of the rope attached to it to the center of the footboard. I watch him closely, my excitement and trepidation building with each rope he adds. Finally, he binds my wrists behind my back with more rope, securing them to the O-ring centered in the headboard so I’m completely immobilized, kneeling on the bed, my hands behind me, my chest pulled forward, and my legs tied open. He gazes down at me, his eyes hot with greed as he drinks in my helplessness.

  “I love seeing you bound like this, Avalon. Almost as much as I love the marks the rope leaves on your skin when I untie you. If I untie you,” he corrects.

  He leaves me like that as he walks out into the living area, and I try not to panic. When he returns a few minutes later, my thighs are slick with my juices, and my pussy is fluttering again. He stands next to me, rubbing his hands across my aching nipples, and I moan behind the gag. My breasts have become swollen and achy between the ropes. His fingers slip between my legs,
and like the devil he is, he spreads the evidence of my shameless depravity over my thighs and belly.

  Then I notice the vibrator in his hand. He flips it on, holding it for a minute and letting my anticipation build before lightly pressing it to my clit. I jolt, pulling on the ropes at the unexpected and exquisite pleasure. He chuckles and removes it, turning it off again. I watch in agonized need as he positions the vibe against my pussy, adjusting the ropes so it’s held in place next to my body, positioned right over my already throbbing clit. Oh, God. What sweet torture is he going to put me through now? Smiling, he switches it on to low and then pulls up a chair and settles into it, his eyes never leaving my face.

  “We’re going to see exactly how many orgasms you saved for me,” he says ominously.

  My body twitches against the insistent and blissful vibration. The sensation is blinding, and the orgasm takes me by surprise, my body spasming uncontrollably. The vibrator stops, and in my pleasure-fogged state, I dimly register that Roman’s holding a remote control. Heaven help me.

  The vibrator whirs to life again, and I realize Roman has taken the ultimate control away from me. I’m not in charge of my own body. I twist against the restraints as I try to squirm away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of subjugating me so completely. With a knowing smile, he increases the speed, and my fingers grasp at air, my teeth clenched against the gag as I try to deny the pleasure he’s so determined to exact from me. I last for several minutes before the next hedonistic surge ripples through me. I’m panting now, struggling for breath, my quivering body strung out on bliss.

  I glare at him. He laughs and turns the vibrator back on.

  This time he leaves it on as one orgasm rolls into another, my body convulsing and quaking with the flood of unrelenting pleasure. My cries become guttural behind the gag; I’m like an animal. I have lost all control, and I give myself over to the inevitable, my mind unable to process the pleasure he’s forcing from me.

  He eventually decides I’ve learned my lesson and switches the vibrator off, removing the gag and quickly untying my now limp and exhausted body. He cradles me in his arms, and I sigh and snuggle into his chest.