“Likewise.”
His huge, tan hand engulfed Lizzy’s pale hamster paw. A tattooed tendril crept past his business suit and down his wrist.
Oh, yeah. This guy looked like a Dom. Even The Dom of The Devilhouse paled in comparison to Mannix Bonfils’s glowering, smoldering sexuality. He was chocolate-dipped Heathcliff holding a whip, staring at her through his own tortured soul.
Lizzy licked her lips. She could just bite him.
The Dom said, “I’ll leave you to get acquainted.” He caught Lizzy’s eyes one last time and, with a glance, directed her attention to the black sphere embedded in the ceiling, the eye in the sky, there for her protection.
She smiled to let him know that she was all right.
The Dom left. The heavy door slid closed behind him and clicked.
She turned back to Mannix Bonfils. Even though Lizzy had worked at The Devilhouse for almost two years, she had no idea how this was supposed to go. “So, you’re looking for a sub.”
He stepped closer to her, towering above her. He drew one finger along the underside of her jaw and lifted her chin to look at him. His light blue eyes, fringed with a thick row of black eyelashes, burned more brightly, like a blue-hot gas flame. “I was looking for you. I saw you at the membership party a few weeks ago, and I’ve been fascinated by you ever since. You’re wearing the same dress.”
Her eyes went wide, and she nodded.
He bent, and his breath touched her lips.
Lizzy almost backed up from this guy whom she had met less than a minute ago, but he pressed in and kissed her gently with warm, soft lips. His hand under her chin turned and caught the side of her face, gently holding her to his lips. Lizzy closed her eyes, feeling his warmth. His scent came to her: warm, male, and a hint of a green and woodsy cologne.
His other hand slipped around her back, pulling her body to his. He was so tall that he bent to kiss her, bowing his back like he was crouching. She leaned into his body and her hands went to his chest, wanting to feel him. Under her palms, muscle hardened his body because he was extravagantly built. Huge mounds of muscle stacked on his shoulders and arms. His suit jacket was unbuttoned, and Lizzy slid her hands over his waist. Tough, muscular lumps hid under his silk shirt.
Lizzy’s breath caught in her chest. Tension spiraled in her core and wound around her, and heat shot down her spine. She managed to whisper, “Aren’t we supposed to fill out forms or something? Discuss hard and soft boundaries? Safe, sane, and consensual?”
Mannix whispered near her lips, “SSC is pablum for the vanilla types. I practice RACK, Risk-Aware Consensual Kink.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The acknowledgment that sadism is not safe and often not sane. It is powerful and disturbing, two beautiful virtues.”
“You aren’t going to take me out to dinner first? See a movie? Send me flowers? Call me after three days?”
His voice was deeper, almost coarse. “I’m not that type of man, and this is not that type of relationship.”
Seemed like Lizzy needed to figure out the rules.
He moved sideways, kissing the corner of her mouth. He tilted her head up with his fingers under her chin and nibbled under her jaw. “Safe word?” he growled into her neck.
She gasped in enough air to whisper, “Gold.”
His hands pressed over her ass and cupped behind her knees, lifting her, and he held her in his arms like she was fluff. She melted into his kiss, holding his smooth cheeks and sharp jaw in her palms. Mannix probably didn’t have a magic dick either, so she probably wouldn’t come, but she wanted him.
“I will tell you what I’m going to do to you.” His voice vibrated against her throat, fluttering her skin. “If you don’t submit to what I want, use your safe word. If you use your safe word, everything stops.”
Lizzy nodded.
He carried her a few paces and dropped her legs, but he held her stomach against his barrel chest with one arm. Her body slid down his, her thighs and belly pressed against his muscled torso, until her toes touched down. Standing on a bench, her mouth was higher than his, and she held onto his face with both of her hands as she kissed him. His lips sucked on hers, pulling desire from her core.
Her skin heated, her whole body blushing as sensitive as fingertips.
“You should know something about me,” she whispered against his mouth, hoping that the security cam wouldn’t pick up her voice. She breathed right by his ear when he nipped her collarbone. “I’m not wired right. I don’t have orgasms. You shouldn’t bother trying.”
Even though she hoped it wasn’t true.
“I know all about you,” he said, “and don’t speak unless I tell you to.”
“But you should know—”
He slapped her ass sharply, stinging her flesh even through her dress.
Lizzy gasped, shocked.
His voice, murmuring just below her ear, was as calm as if he were trying to soothe skittish doe. “No more talking or you’ll earn a trip over my knee.”
Lizzy thought about testing him just to see if he would do such a thing and to see what it would be like, but his lips were hot on hers and she was so into kissing him that she couldn’t think. Her arms wrapped around his neck, clinging.
His hands grasped her thighs near her knees. He raised his hands, rubbing up her thighs and lifting the hem of her skirt.
Even though Lizzy thought of herself as a liberated, modern woman, she had never just jumped in bed with some guy. Well, she had wanted to screw Theo at the Devilhouse membership party, but that was different because they had talked and danced and had a Jersey connection, and in the West, meeting somebody who had lived off Exit One-Oh-Five was the equivalent of your aunts being best friends in high school.
Screwing some guy right off was Georgie’s fuck-’em-and-chuck-’em mentality. That was fine for her, but Mr. Smolder, Mannix, might be more than that. Lizzy didn’t want to chuck him.
Lizzy pushed at his hulking shoulders and stepped back, dancing backward on the narrow bench like it was a balance beam. Her lips felt swollen from kissing him, and she could feel that her eyes were glassy with horniness. “We shouldn’t.”
“Are you using your safe word?” he asked. His startling, light blue eyes weren’t sex-glazed. Indeed, his sharp stare analyzed her. His black lashes gathered so thickly around his light eyes that he almost looked like he had applied guyliner to go clubbing. The look clashed with his high-end business suit.
“No, it’s just that we shouldn’t do this yet.”
Mannix lifted his head and then stroked his chin, considering. “Why?”
“Because this isn’t how you should start a relationship, a real relationship, that lasts. I don’t know what The Dom told you, but I don’t want just a scene for a night or a fuck buddy. I mean, it’s Saturday night. If I wanted a quickie, the Devilhouse is going to be full of Doms looking for a sub for a scene. I could even volunteer for the show, if that’s all I wanted. I’m not in it just for tonight. I want a Dom-sub relationship.”
Mannix said, “The Devilhouse Dom made that clear.”
“What did he tell you about me?” Please, please not Beijing.
“That you believe that pain is necessary for your pleasure and that you are looking for Dom. Nothing else.”
Lizzy exhaled, deflating with relief.
Mannix cocked his head to the side, and a silken curl of black hair slipped over his shoulder. “This is a trial scene to determine if we are compatible in our tastes. If so, we can then progress to a training relationship, and from there, to a formal Dom-sub relationship. However, this is how a Dominant-submissive relationship with me would work: When I say that we will have a scene, we have one, immediately, and it will be whatever I want. To be with me, you have to be all in, to hold nothing back. I want everything from you.” He stared right into her eyes, and the blueness in eyes intensified like a focusing laser. “Tonight, I want to see how you respond to commands. If we engage in a Dom an
d sub relationship, I will loan you out to other Doms for their pleasure or mine. When I travel for work, and I do, you will be given to another Dom for those weeks. If submitting to a person who has not wined and dined you is beyond your boundaries, then a relationship between us will not work. In that case, thank you meeting with me, Lizzy. It has been a pleasure.” Mannix turned toward the heavy, iron-bound door.
“Wait,” she said.
Mannix stopped walking, but he didn’t turn back.
Lizzy sucked in air.
Fear trembled in her gut, and she grabbed that fear and choked it like the weakness it was. “Tonight is a trial scene, right?”
He pivoted on his heel and looked at her. “Yes. After this, if we seem compatible, we’ll have a long conversation about boundaries and the extent and responsibilities of our relationship, but tonight, we can explore each other.” The dim overhead lights glinted in the gray-blue sky of Mannix’s eyes. “Sometimes, the danger of exploring boundaries can be interesting.”
“Condom,” Lizzy said, making sure it sounded nothing like a question.
“Absolutely, unless we share our medical histories and mutually decide otherwise.”
If she wanted a relationship with Mr. Smolder, this was the way, and she wasn’t a weakling who would run at the first sting. “A trial scene, then.”
He swept across the room in a heartbeat and stood in front of her, his hands on her upper arms. “Even tonight, you will do as I say, everything I say. Unless you use your safe word, you submit to my desires.”
Fear closed her throat so she nodded, but she was so turned on that she could barely breathe. Her body vibrated with a high-pitched tone, wanting him.
Mannix dipped his head, and his breath whispered from her shoulder, up the tendons of her neck, and to her ear. “Say it.”
Lizzy choked out, “I submit,” and Mannix grabbed her.
His lips weren’t softly seductive this time, and he didn’t coax her. He took her lips with his. He dragged her body to himself, pressing the breath out of her.
Lizzy glanced up at the eye in the sky, a black globe that gathered all the light around it, knowing that Jeff or some other guy would be in the booth, protecting her, just in case Mannix’s exploration of her boundaries got too rough.
He broke off the kiss and scraped his teeth down her neck, obviously holding back from biting her. “I’m going to remove your clothes now, and then I’m going to tie you up and explore your pain tolerance. Do you submit?”
Lizzy gathered a deep breath. Pain is weakness leaving the body. “I submit.”
Pain is Weakness
Fourteen years before, Lizzy held onto the side of the vaulting table, balancing, while her father screamed at her in front of all the other little girls in the gym, who looked away, embarrassed for her. Her other leg dangled, just the toe touching the blue mat. Her ankle swelled around the blue tape binding it. Pain spiked in the joint between her small bones. “But it hurts,” she said. “I need to stop.”
She was so tiny back then, back when she thought that whining about pain would result in sympathy.
“Nyet,” her father said. Towering over two feet taller than she was, Viktor Pajari shouted in Russian at her. His sweaty hair flopped on his forehead. “Olga didn’t quit training because of little sprain! Nadia didn’t quit! Neither did Veronika or Mary Lou or Mallory. If you want them to say that Elisaveta did not quit, then you don’t quit! You give everything you have to gymnastics! Everything!”
“But it hurts. I just want to rest.”
“You are eight years old, Elisaveta! Quit whining!”
“I just want to sit down for a few minutes.”
“Nyet! Back to vault. Five runs and then you can work on bars to rest weak leg. You are weak, afraid of such minor injury! Fear is weakness. I don’t want to hear, and I don’t want to see any evidence, or you work longer on vault!”
He cuffed her on the back of the head, throwing her off balance. She grabbed the leather-covered vaulting table and put her foot down to keep from falling flat on her face on the gym mats. A dagger of pain drove into her leg. She gasped.
“Go practice now! You give it all. You give it everything you have, or you regret it tonight. We have only nine months until nationals. Every moment counts! Pain is weakness leaving body!”
Across the mats, Lizzy’s mother was watching another girl flip back handsprings on a low practice balance beam. She shook her head at Elisaveta, her lips pressed tightly together.
Elisaveta strode over to the vault, not limping. Her father was mad, and her mom was mad. Tonight at home was going to be tough.
Home had been tough ever since the last Olympics three months ago when none of the girls from the Pajari Gym had medaled.
Elisaveta had eight years until her own Olympics in 2008.
Maybe she could hide in the closet for an hour or so tonight with the Nancy Drew book that she got from the school library. Elisaveta could curl herself down to a very tiny ball when she needed to.
She stood at the end of the vault runway and stretched to her toes, preparing. Her ankle ached. The mats led to the springboard, the vault, and the air that she would fly through.
The runway was only twenty-five meters, which was eighty-two feet. She could survive anything for twenty-five meters.
Lizzy sprinted, muscular thighs pumping and calloused feet slapping the tacky mats, running full tilt at the vault. The crack in her cuboid bone in her ankle shot agony into her right leg with every step.
Elisaveta’s mind shifted, refusing the pain, refusing the fear, refusing to feel anything.
With every step, the pain faded.
She ran harder.
Pain is weakness leaving the body.
Sub Space
Lizzy held her breath as her gold cocktail dress crumpled around her feet on the black leather bench. The cloth glittered from the wan recessed lights.
Mannix slid her panties over her slim hips and let them fall on top of the dress. His hands circled her waist, and with the slightest push, he lifted her out of her clothes. The flashing cloth fell to the floor, and Lizzy stood naked except for her black pumps.
His hands were still around her waist, thumbs and fingers almost touching. “You’re so small.”
“Yeah,” Lizzy said. “I didn’t grow much.”
Mannix’s look was sharp. “The Dom said that you are twenty-two.”
Lizzy nodded. “Yep, for another couple months. Swear to God. I just didn’t grow.”
Actually, she had grown. When she was seventeen, she had grown three inches, getting her near enough to five feet that she could claim it without fibbing too much.
He ran his hands up her thin ribs to the sides of her small breasts, which she thought of as pecs instead of boobs. He said, “Don’t misunderstand: I’m not criticizing.” His light blue eyes glanced up at hers, startling in their intensity from his black lashes. “I get rough. I don’t hold back.”
She settled her arms around his shoulders. His gaze was solemn, and she said, “I’m not asking you to.”
His bulky arms, wrapped around her, was like being trapped by steel bands lined with iron globes. His fingers ran up her short hair and pressed her body to his. She fit her thin arms around his neck, feeling small and overpowered.
The fire in her body leapt.
His hands groped her waist and hips, nearly bruising, but he released her flesh at the instant between pain and damage. His lips on hers became rougher, sucking and biting. Lizzy’s lips swelled under his attack.
His hand slid around her hip and over her ass, and he kept going. His fingers gripped her thigh, lifting her leg to wrap it around his waist. Her pussy opened, and cool air brushed her for just a moment before his fingers slid back up her thigh.
Lizzy held her breath, her lips still against his warm mouth, and her heart thumped, waiting.
He dipped his head to mouth her neck, heating the skin there. His hand warmed the back and inside of her leg and cr
ept higher.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t have a magic dick, and she was Sisyphus’s motherfucking rock.
Her heart beat like trapped birds.
His hand reached her pussy. His fingertips stroked her thin skin down there, slipping on her light blond fuzz. The skin between her legs felt smooth, like the skin on her thigh, and rubbing there brought her no particular pleasure.
Mannix’s breath on her neck was even and smooth, not rough with desire, and he opened his mouth to scrape his teeth over the trapezius muscle that ran from her neck to her shoulder. Shivers fanned over her skin. His sharp teeth snagged her fine skin.
Her breath stuttered out of her lips, and she gasped it back in.
His fingers slipped between her legs and massaged, searching. Lizzy arched her back and tightened her arms around his neck, holding on.
God, this was dangerous. BDSM scenes were supposed to be as choreographed as a gymnastics routine, with boundaries discussed and consent given and training for months ahead of time.
The danger sparked fear, and she choked the fear. She became stronger.
His fingers caressed her folds, gently sliding over the skin.
She buried her face against his corded neck and squeezed her hands into fists. Fear was weakness. His scent wafted out of his shirt, like a green forest and natural male.
As she clenched her fists, the fear receded.
She lifted her head, feeling for what he was doing. Mannix’s fingers slid gently over her slit and opening, but the skin down there felt like the skin on her back. His stroking felt like a backrub, nice, but a backrub.
Back to normal, then. She sighed.
His fingers moved away from her slit and down her leg, like he could tell that it wasn’t doing anything for her.
Mannix’s arm around her waist firmed as his muscles flexed, and he lifted her whole body with just his one arm. Her feet dangled, and she stretched her toes but found only cold air.
He reared his head back and kissed her, still holding her against himself. She held onto his neck even though his grip around her waist seemed secure.
Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) Page 14