Her tongue tip came out below the rope and again she did the whole body tremble. I’d barely done anything. What had happened when Scrim caught her?
“Can we talk now? Over there?” With a jerk of his head, Andreas indicated the kitchen.
“Yes.” We had to figure things out.
I went round behind Kat then curled my fists about her upper arms – hard enough to make her skin twist. The hiss through her teeth and straightening of her fingers said I’d surprised her at least. She still had her hands clasped above that succulent, bruise-dotted ass.
“Is this hurting? What I’m doing?”
“Mmm.”
“Good.” I bent to growl in her ear. “While Andreas and I talk, you’re not going to move, girl. Keep your hands where they are. You’re in so much trouble that I’m not sure what the hell I can do that won’t alarm the Piñata preservation society or Andreas.” I flicked a glance across at him where he was dragging two of the red-topped stools to this side of the breakfast bench.
I took a step away then I made her turn so her body was close to full frontal toward the kitchen. No point missing out on the view as we talked.
Once we were both seated, I kicked back and propped an elbow on the counter – shifting focus between my delectable Kat and Andreas. Where the hell to start? I scrubbed at my hair, allowing some of that anger I’d kept bottled up to resurface. “Hit me. Do your worst. I’m guessing you helped her escape?”
He nodded.
“Shit.” I struggled to keep my emotions in check. “Christ all-fuckin’-mighty, Andreas. Why? We’re friends. I just don’t understand. I told you, I’d rather you be honest. Why the sneaking?”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. You have every right to fucking beat me to death. I know I messed up but I didn’t do it without thinking damn hard. Nothing, nothing, means more to me than you, mate.” He stared out across the room. “I figured you just needed a chance to get back on the right side of morality. That she deserved freedom…”
I could see him looking at her. He was struggling with something. His own morality, probably. Right and wrong – such funny concepts. We changed our ideas on murder as soon as a war came along. Different circumstances and we’d be going, wait, maybe it’s okay to do that when…if…
I brought myself back. “Why did you say you wanted to stay?”
“Because I’m a fool?” He stretched out his legs before him, leaning back against the counter. “You were right. I told her I’d let her go if she said nothing about you. But she had my laptop and there’s no reason for that unless she wanted the pictures. She was going to the cops.”
It didn’t surprise me. I swore under my breath. “Though…if I were her, I’d have done the same thing.”
“After someone asked you not to? After they said, agree to this, promise you won’t do it? Because there was no way I’d have let her go just so she could send you to jail. I thought I was helping you. I’m sorry. Plain and simple.”
I nodded, tapping the counter lightly with my fist while I thought. “And here I thought you were just trying to piss me off.”
“No.” He grimaced. “If she’d succeeded, I would have been charged too. Telling her to conceal what was done is definitely a crime and letting her go wouldn’t change that. That’s how grateful she was.”
Time to end this. As if Andreas could ever be anything but a friend. “I forgive you.” I put out my hand. “It’s water under the bridge.”
He leaned in and clasped my hand, shaking it slowly as he spoke. “Thanks. Next time I’ll listen harder.” He let go of my hand and smiled. “Doesn’t mean I’ll believe what you tell me but I’ll try.”
“Bullshit.” I snorted.
Kat hadn’t moved yet. The background light leant a luminescence to her skin. Naked and outlined in a halo of sunshine, she was the epitome of beauty to me. Maybe not to everyone. But I liked my women tied up and gagged, and at my mercy.
“If they were a friend and it was a vow made in earnest to them, I’d stick to my promise.”
Andreas grunted. “My thoughts exactly.”
I found the main point that bothered me. “But…you want me to let her go.”
His deep inhalation sounded loud enough to pull his soul from its moorings. Out of respect, I waited.
“Not now. Not after she crapped on what I gave her. It’s what I said before. I want to stay.”
Where was this heading? “To stay and…I don’t want an observer. That’s done. Creepy bastard though you may be, I don’t want you hanging about watching.”
He didn’t answer and the silence just stretched and stretched until I had to break it.
“You’re tempted?” I looked at him from under my brows. Say no, Andreas.
“That makes me a bad man though…”
“Yeah. Sometimes you have to embrace your bad side to live with yourself. But if you can’t live with that, you need to bugger off now. Run away, or stay where the big boys play.”
I was taunting him but I didn’t give a shit. He needed to get himself figured out. And I didn’t really want or need him to stay.
“Asshole.” He shook his head. “You want me to say it? Okay.” He paused. “I want to fuck her. Even…watch you punish her. I think that’s going to really make me happy. I know I’ll find it hot even though it’s kind of sick. But mostly I want to share her with you.”
For a man who’d never been kinky, that was pretty amazing. Even if I didn’t agree with the sick part.
I sat back and regarded him. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure. I’m very sure.”
“I don’t know.” To have Andreas just drop in like this. Disconcerting. I was Frankenstein about to torture Mary Shelley. Batman with a naked Catwoman in his grasp. Sharing? I turned the idea over some more.
I swiveled on the stool and found our little captive squirming a little on her feet. Clearly she could hear us. This added another whole facet to things. Sharing her with Andreas? How would that make her feel? Even more overwhelmed? Both of us fucking her, mind and body. Eventually, both of us with the prettiest slave at our feet. I could see that happening in wonderful detail. I liked that. A lot. The things we could do…
“Okay. We can try it out. Where and when and how do you want to start?”
“How? Jeez. You know how to give me dirty ideas don’t you?”
I shrugged. “No. It’s not me. The one you owe for those is the woman standing over there all tied up…waiting for us.”
Chapter 16
Andreas
No matter what Chris said, the ambiguity of this bothered me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever figure myself out, but Kat attracted me like a moth to flame. Or maybe, considering what I wanted to do to her, I was her god. Make that we were. Call her a siren, a mermaid out of water, Aphrodite fallen into the hands of two men who knew just what to do to her…whatever, we were her gods.
When she’d trampled on the agreement I’d made with her, something had broken inside me. I didn’t want to be restricted anymore by modern la-de-dah rightness, I wanted her. I wanted her in every way a man could have a woman. And I was more than willing to share her with Chris.
If anything, having seen how goddamn challenging she was, the two of us would make a good team at overwhelming her defenses.
I wondered if Chris knew how far I wanted to go with this.
“So it’s a deal,” I murmured, too low for her to hear. “We share her – but when I say that, I mean for more than sex.” I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Explain?”
“I mean we share responsibility for her well-being also. I’m not doing this to fuck her and leave her by the roadside…”
He frowned. “Me neither. This isn’t a momentary fad, Andreas. You’ve stumbled into something that’s…” For a second or two he studied her then he grunted. “She’s my version of painting the Mona Lisa. And I don’t think I’ll ever finish this work of art.”
“Painting?” Bruises st
ood out on her pale skin. “I wouldn’t have called it that. I’m so glad Leonardo wasn’t into kinky shit. But yeah, I figured as much.” I struggled to say more about what I felt, and failed. I’d wait. So many words and feelings milled around inside me, and the ones I could decipher were mostly intrigue and a desire to see what it was like when you really did own a woman.
“No more calling this sick though.”
“You’re not doing this because you’re sick and twisted?”
“Out of the goodness of my heart. You?”
A flippant answer.
We’d been talking quietly for so long that Kat was eyeing us surreptitiously, like she wasn’t sure if she should be. I pointed. “She’s listening.”
“I noticed.” Chris smirked.
“That gag.” I shook my head. Why in hell did seeing all that rope on her blow my mind? “And us making her wait.” I swallowed.
Chris chuckled. “That gets you going? And I’m sick? Tell me again why you’re wanting our little rope bunny yours?”
“Rope bunny? Cute term.” Why indeed? “Leaving aside the sexual thing.”
“Yeah. Leaving that.” He was still laughing.
“I want to understand her. She fascinates me. Crazy as it may seem.” I grinned and managed to unglue my gaze from her body. She’d moved just enough to be partly side on, hiding that tantalizing part of a woman – the beginnings of the split of her sex.
“Fascinates covers a lot. So do spitting cobras on a nature program. Tomorrow you can go tiptoeing hand in hand through a field of daisies with her.”
He was trivializing her. Me. I barely knew her but I wanted to know more. I’d never seen him with a woman he’d come close to wanting to marry. Did he only see Kat as an object to own? That didn’t seem like Chris at all.
There was one other problem. “Scrim. He was with her a while. What if she spoke to him? Is it possible he knows?”
Chris stared. “That she’s been kidnapped? No. I didn’t see anything like that. He thinks this is deep role play. He’s used to scenes like this. He’d never have given her back to us if he suspected.”
“True.” I nodded. It seemed right. “My other concern then is how rough he was. Kat has so many new scratches.”
“Yeah.” He looked across at her. “I’ve done worse. I’ll talk to him. But she’s not ever going to see him again, is she? She’s never going to have someone open her cage and let her out again, ever.”
What final words. “That’s so medieval.” I shook my head and frowned.
“Yes, it is.” Chris put his hands behind his head and parked the heel of one foot on the toe of the other. “Makes me damn happy. I hope you wanted a slave, Andreas, because that’s what she’s going to be when we’re done with her.”
“It’s just a label.” I stood up and adjusted my jeans. Things down below were getting terribly constricted. “I want to see you punish her now.” I cocked my head. “Or do we have to have a democratic vote on punishments.”
He untangled himself from the stool and rose to stand beside me.
“Hell, no. Consider me the enforcer in this relationship.”
Could I punish her? Hit her? I doubted it. “Technical question. Condoms?”
“I don’t think we need to. She uses an implant. I use condoms with subs. And I get tested regularly. You?”
“Health tested before I could get the oil rig job. No time for girlfriends for ages. I don’t do hookers. Tell me, though.” Again I said this quieter than she could hear. “What does she like?”
His dumbfounded expression lasted all of a second. “Like? Sexually? Apart from some pain – she’s close to a pain slut sometimes, apart from that…” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“Weren’t you a couple?”
“Nope. I was her Dom, sort of. Look, man, some of the subs call me the Interrogator because I get their secrets from them so easily. Her, though? No. I know what was on her hard limits but that’s it. Elaborate bondage was one. A couple of times I did wrist cuffs.”
“I’m not sure I know what a hard limit is. Not bondage? All that pale skin, those curves, rope looks so nice on her. You’ll have to give me a run-down on the BDSM dictionary sometime.”
“People have their different limits and things they like. They can change with time. But Kat with all her bratting and her limits, she was enough to make any Dom take up knitting instead.”
“That makes her even more curious.”
“Yes. She’s like a Rubik’s cube in a prettier package.”
We ambled over to Kat and ended up one of us to either side. Wolves surrounding Bambi. I’d always been a guy who’d hold a door open for a woman and if I was ever on a bus, I’m sure I’d give up my seat, so why was being all predator-like with Kat such a thrill?
Somehow, I’d given myself permission to fuck around with her like this. Maybe because I’d seen, a few times, how she reacted to a man going all rogue male. Kat went soft-eyed and meek, well…mostly. She definitely spit less.
She shrank back the few inches the ropes allowed. A couple of red lines on her face… Bits of dirt still stuck to her. One deeper scratch on her cheek. There was even a row of parallel scratches above her nipple. If Scrim had been in front of me, I’d have been tempted to smack him.
While Chris recovered the cord from where he’d dropped it, I went closer and rested my palms on her shoulders. This whole idea of punishing a woman, in this day and age was an odd concept.
“You know you deserve punishment, Kat?” I wasn’t sure what I expected. The rope was still in her mouth. She made some muffled noise.
Chris arrived behind her and from the quiver of her eyelids he was trailing the cord across her back or ass. “Lift your hands away, girl. I don’t want to injure your fingers. Hold onto Andreas’s hands.”
Some visceral energy seemed to pass from her to me as she responded to his teasing threat. Enthralled, I kept my hands where they were, rubbing her shoulders, then Kat settled her hands over my wrists. This wasn’t how it should be. I reversed it and held her wrists snug up to her neck. “Be good,” I murmured, and she blinked at me.
“Look at all the dirt on you.” Chris flicked the cord at her butt. Her flinch turned into a sway of her body. “I’m thinking we need to clean you up before I lay into you with this.”
I studied her. Pale face beneath the smears. Trembles came and went in waves. “We could clean her up in the bathroom but here seems good.”
“I’ll go get a bucket and some warm water.” Chris came up behind her and grabbed a handful of her hair. Her lips moved against the rope. That fucking sensuous rope. “When I get back, we’ll clean you, and you will stay still for us.”
As if she had a chance of going anywhere now. We were both several inches taller – enough to make Kat look small sandwiched between us.
He stepped away, and headed for the hallway.
So…innocent, those eyes. No wonder she’d taken me in with her trick. I watched her for a second then stroked my thumb along her skin above the rope gag. “There’s a pretty woman under all this dirt.”
Her eyelashes fell then rose. Soft veils. God, I could fall in love with her just from seeing those eyelashes. But they were mine now. All of her was.
A new thrill ran up my body, from my toes to my balls. Ours.
I’d said I’d take care of her. That freaky sexy gag had been on a while. Even if I didn’t want to remove it, I should. I pressed my lips to her forehead. “I’m going to take the gag off. You’re going to be good, right?”
Her grunt might have been indignant or just a yes, but I let go of her wrists and started to undo the knot. Though my left hand cramped up, I managed and unwound it.
“There. Is your mouth okay?”
“My jaw hurts.” She licked her lips then said hoarsely, “I’m not good at being good.”
“I noticed.” Understatement of the year. “I think Chris plans to help you learn.”
The man himself was coming u
p behind her, bucket in hand.
Fire flared in her eyes. “Him? Never. Asshole.”
Over her head, I exchanged a smile with Chris. The woman was digging herself a deep hole.
“Oh fuck. He’s there, isn’t he?” she squeaked quietly.
Chapter 17
Kat
The realization that Chris was behind me hit like a scene from a horror movie. Sneaky. God. I didn’t know what to do. What I could do. I’d exhausted all my avenues. Escaping had meant Scrim had actually grabbed me again and brought me back. To my own chagrin, I felt guilty over what I’d done to Andreas.
Which sucked. He had that stupid look on his face that said he knew I’d been caught bad-mouthing Chris. Yet, I liked him.
Those little black curls looping over his brow made me think naughty school boy. But he was six feet. At least.
Someone male with an erection, Chris, who else – I resisted rolling my eyes – pressed up against me from behind. If he tried to put that in me, I’d do more than scream. I’d kick his balls in. I’d…
I breathed out, mind going nowhere, feeling, eyes closing.
Inhaling made the rope around my breasts tighten. God, that was nice. Only it shouldn’t be.
I hated being trapped even if I loved it when I could tie up women, or when I could watch someone else suffer. Yet, with Andreas to the front and Chris behind I was involuntarily melting. Every breath reminded me of man.
Stupidly, I pushed back at Chris. He grabbed my wrists and hung on even when I tugged.
“Let go,” I muttered, teeth clenched, and trying not to hiss like a snake.
“Why’d you take off the gag?”
“I figured she’d had it on long enough.” Andreas still had that smile on his lips, full Greek-looking lips…yeah, if ever I went on a Mediterranean cruise I was ordering one of him. “She’s also been calling you an asshole.”
“You bastard,” I mouthed to him. That he smiled wider gave me unexpected hope. Why had I thought that? Just because he smiled nicely? I didn’t understand my own logic.
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