by Angel Payne
“Breathe.” He commanded it again as he circled the flogger over her thighs, warming up her skin with gentle thwacks of the leather.
“Y-Yes, Sir.” Her eyes fell shut. Her muscles coiled and retracted, processing the new sensations he gave her.
And her pussy glimmered with new drops of arousal.
Z’s senses soared. “Your skin blushes so perfectly for me, subbie.” He didn’t break the figure-eight motion of the flogger, allowing him to hit her thighs with equal impact. “Damn. So pretty.”
Rayna didn’t reply with anything but a tight sigh. That was okay. Her body spoke everything for her. Her quads and derriere clenched from each impact, making it impossible for her pussy not to be stimulated. With each constriction, the muscles in her sex got to be better friends, turning her into a fusion of stings, stimulation, agony, and ecstasy.
Z kept up the pace. And steadily increased the power behind each stroke.
After several minutes, Rayna’s husky gasps turned into agonized cries. “Zeke!” she finally screamed. “Sir! I don’t know how much more I can—”
“A lot,” Zeke interjected. Though he tossed aside the flogger, he delivered a pair of sharp slaps to her inner thighs. While he pressed her flesh to distribute the heat, he intently studied her body and face. Rivulets of sweat trickled along her torso. Her carotid thundered. But most telling was the soaked flower at her core. “You can take a lot more, Ray-bird, and you will. For me. I’m not going to stop until your thighs are as crimson as your sweet, hot cunt. And you’re going to love it. You’re going to fly. And when you do, I’ll keep you tethered and safe with my cock, buried deep and hot inside you.”
She audibly gulped. “Okay. Yes, Sir.”
He gave in to the craving to slap her pussy again. His action inflamed the juicy tissues, making them red as a pomegranate. “Not good enough,” he growled.
“Wh-What do you mean?”
“Say it to me, Rayna. Give me the words. Tell me you can take more. Tell me you want more.”
To encourage her, he slicked a thumb into the center of her sweet fruit, aiming for the nub that would give her the pleasure to counterbalance her pain.
“Ohhh shit!” She bucked against him like the kickback from an RPG. “Sir! That’s— Oh God, that’s so— Please don’t stop!”
“The words,” he prompted. “What do you want, honey? Tell me.”
“Yes. Ohhh, yes. I want more. I can take more. Hurt me. Redden me. Give it all to me. Take me higher. Please!”
Higher. Dear fuck, yes.
His senses spun. Never in his life had a submissive’s words shot him up with such power. Never in his life did he feel so euphoric, so wild, so free.
He needed to give it all back to her.
It was the only goal in his mind and body as he snatched up the paddle.
The dark rose flesh of both her thighs called to him.
“Get comfy, honey.” It curled out of him as dark, savoring smoke. “And for God’s sake, you’ll need to breathe.”
He was gentle about the first few swats.
Then she moaned.
He kept himself in check during the next three or four strokes.
Then she screamed.
What a perfect harmony it made to the brutal smacks he released on her beautiful red skin.
After no more than a minute, her shrieks turned into high gasps. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her head lolled to one side.
With a growl of dark triumph, he tossed aside the paddle.
“Yeah, subbie,” he crooned. “Take a nice long flight in that cloud. You earned it.”
He stepped back between her legs, lowering a hand to each thigh. With every inch of flesh he rubbed, a blast of possessive fire overcame him. The flames licked through his body, sizzling every nerve, burning up every muscle…and pooling in his dick. Even after he clenched his jaw and swallowed hard, the fire got worse. As a heavy drop of precome discharged from his bulb, he knew even going at his balls with vise grips wasn’t going to help this time.
He slid his hands back. The globes of her ass fit perfectly in his grip. The lips of her sex teased mercilessly at his dick.
“Christ,” he grated. “Ray-bird, I don’t know how much longer—”
“Fuck me.”
Her whispered plea whipped his stare to her face. She gazed at him with heavy-lidded eyes, her breaths coming fast through parted, glistening lips. “Please fuck me, Sir. Now.”
Yeah. Fuck yeah. He was more than ready to fill her requisition.
She moaned. He shuddered. Her cunt was a furnace, cranking up the heat in his cock by fifty degrees from the first thrust. Still he dragged her body tighter and harder against him, ramming her onto his erection over and over. When the pressure in his sac tightened to an unbearable degree, he released her ass in order to lean over and drive horizontally into her.
His gaze fixed into hers again. She gave him a tentative, sweet smile. He returned one of gleeful, sadistic intent. With a deft twist, he pulled on the chain connecting her nipple clamps.
“Shit!” she screamed. “Zeke, what the—”
He silenced the rest of it with a harsh smash of his mouth. He kept his lips sealed to hers while releasing one clamp and then the other. As blood rushed back into her breasts, another yell exploded out of her and right into him.
It was the most arousing thing he’d ever felt.
“Fuck, yes.” He snarled it against her skin before soothing the pain in one nipple with the flat of his tongue. As he tasted the other in the same way, the tip surged against his tongue. The taste of her consumed his mouth. The heat of her surrounded his sex. The pounding of her beautiful, submissive heart spoke to the deepest core of his spirit.
“Sir,” she cried. “I can’t hold it back. I…can’t…”
“Don’t you dare,” he ordered. “Let it come, honey. Come for me, sweet subbie.”
“N-No. You, too. C-Come with me. Please?”
Her tight, broken words and her shaking, drenched body spoke right to all the triggers in his. The burn in his buttocks and the clench of his balls gave him the DEFCON warning about the explosion about to decimate his cock.
“I can’t, honey.” He brushed the hair off her forehead. She was so goddamn beautiful. He longed to stay buried like this for hours more. “I’m in here bareback.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. There’s no way I’m pulling a pump and dump here, honey. If you think I’m the kind of guy who—”
“Zeke, I haven’t had a period in five months.”
“Huh?”
She actually rolled her eyes. “Can we not go into it right now? Captivity. Stress. My body. Not a great match, okay? They’re trying to fix it, but I haven’t taken those damn pills in a week now, so—” As she quivered again beneath him, her head jackknifed back. “Goddamnit, Zeke, I need to come! And I need your cock inside me when I do. Please…please!”
If the shock of her health confession didn’t grab him, her deliberately dirty language sure as hell did. He lowered his mouth to her tits again, this time to bite into them as he let the blood surge his shaft, pushing at her wet, tight walls.
“You feel so fucking good.” He suckled at her with hot greed. “Every inch of you is so perfect. So golden and perfect.”
She sighed, trying to lift her head and kiss him back. “You, too.” She squirmed with delectable frustration. “Zeke—Sir—let me touch you, too. I need to get my hands on you.”
He gave her a wicked smile. “Request denied, subbie. You took all the pain in bondage. Now you’ll take the pleasure, too—just like you’re taking every inch of my dick in your sweet, hot cunt.” He gave her a twisting kiss before settling himself fully against her spread, slick body. “Now tell me you understand.”
Her eyes flashed with rebellious fire, but she replied, “I understand, Sir.”
“Tell me you want my cock to fuck you deep.”
An adorable smile tugged at her lips. “I do,” sh
e whispered. “I want your cock to fuck me deep.”
“Tell me the pain was worth it.”
“The pain was perfect. Yes. Very much worth it.”
He started rolling his hips with each thrust. Primal triumph struck when he saw the effect it had on her. Somewhere far beyond the room, he heard the growl of thunder and the patter of rain. It was part of another world. His universe became the sighs from the back of her throat. His solar system was now composed of the pulses from deep in her body. His world was now the magic of pleasuring her.
“Now tell me you’re coming for me, bird.”
She shook her head. “Not unless you’re with me.”
“I’m right here. I’m with you. My come is yours, Rayna. And your climax is mine.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Yes!”
“Now,” he bellowed. “Now!”
Her tunnel shuddered and exploded. Zeke filled it with the blinding flood of his orgasm. His body was torn from its moorings. His mind was robbed of its sanity. For a brilliant second, the heaven to which he’d sent her was the same nirvana in which his senses danced. He was consumed. Amazed.
Terrified.
The trepidation curled itself into thick silence as he rocked inside her for long minutes. Rayna’s wordlessness scared him even more, until he pulled up to look at her again.
He couldn’t remember when he’d seen her features at such peace.
He realized, with blazing clarity, the answer to that was never.
He reached up, unbuckling her wrists from both the cuffs without taking his eyes off her as he did. Finally he murmured, “You okay?”
As she lifted her hands to his shoulders, she smiled like a kid who’d just gotten away with inhaling a chocolate bar. “Better than okay.”
His first instinct was to kiss her senseless.
He coughed and looked away instead.
Three words. She’d unraveled him again with just three words.
They weren’t even those three words, but something deep in his gut told him that the vocabulary was beyond the point. The warm serenity in her voice, the summer grass beauty in her eyes, the soft strokes she gave his shoulders along with it… They all conveyed her true meaning. That the other three words were bubbling, waiting for their turn.
And when they did brim to her lips…what then?
He didn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. Even thinking of it made the sweat on his back turn cold and the high from his orgasm fade into panic.
He mumbled an excuse about getting her legs free as an excuse to pull out and back from her. But he could’ve auditioned for a Star Wars walk-on as a maintenance droid for all the grace or thought he gave the motions. After he helped Rayna gain her feet, he sent her upstairs and told her to get warm in bed. He’d be up in a few minutes, he said. Maybe they’d pick out a movie from the online queue and—
“Liar.”
He spat it beneath his breath as she reached the top of the stairs and he got to the kitchen. Anger swooped into his chest in backlash to the reprimand.
Yeah, yeah. Fine. You lied. So what? She was untied and standing; you weren’t officially her Dom anymore, anyhow. Besides, it was only a little white one.
And a hell of a lot better than the nasty-ass big one.
Not that he was in danger of letting those three words slip out, even by accident. Not as a dumb mistake. Not as a casual second thought. Not as a drunken blunder. Not ever.
Because you know damn well what happens when you allow those words into your life, asshole. Life turns them into a fun little game of craps, doesn’t it?
And when life’s at the table, the house always wins.
He found dozens of ways to turn “a few minutes” into a solid hour. By the time he got upstairs, Rayna was tangled in the blankets, fast asleep—as he’d hoped.
As soon as he walked over and gazed down at her, his decision for the delay was revalidated. She was as delectable as a naked little fairy, her brilliant hair fanned across the pillow and one hand curled against her neck. One breast peeked from beneath the covers, beckoning to him like a ripe berry.
He yearned to climb in next to her. To wrap himself around her and feel that smooth porcelain skin against his again. To smell the spices in her hair mixed with the musk he’d left behind on her. To crush her close to him and not give a damn that he was stepping closer to the door of that alluring craps game. To hope that this time, maybe life was too busy screwing over some other poor sap and he’d actually win the gamble.
“No.”
He backed away. The effort was painful at first, but looking to the tattoo on his pelvis made those steps easier to take. Barbed wire and tear drops. The pain and the loneliness of eight long years on the streets. Ninety-six months he’d survived because he’d learned to stay away from the craps table. There was no way in hell he was going back now. And if he cared at all for this woman, there was no way in fuck he’d drag her anywhere near it, either.
Oh, yeah. He was a losing bet in the hearts and flowers department. Rayna wasn’t a dumb shit; she knew it as well.
But as he settled onto the couch with the blanket from the upstairs window seat, he accidentally sat on the remote control for the TV. The motion made the screen flare to life again—and showed him what movie she’d picked out for them to watch together.
The Empire Strikes Back.
Chapter Seventeen
Rayna suppressed a little giggle.
Less than a week ago, she’d inwardly compared the man to a puma. At the time, he’d certainly represented for the wildcats in about ten different forms of sexy. She wasn’t sure whether to classify this as the eleventh…or a new category altogether.
Z had obviously fallen asleep on the bedroom couch. She had no idea why he hadn’t just come to bed, but maybe all that intensity did something different to a Dom’s brain than it did a sub’s. He’d seemed weirdly amped when they finished, whereas the last time she’d been so relaxed, she’d been nineteen and high on painkillers after having her wisdom teeth pulled. Needless to say, she’d been down for the count from the moment she’d gotten up here.
Now, nearly ten hours later, the mountains outside were bathed in sun and the man inside was lost to soft snores. She smiled as she drank in the glory of him. Z was sprawled beneath a lap blanket across the same spot where he’d pounded into her on Sunday night. That was Sprawled, capital S. One of his legs was hooked over the back of the couch. His other leg dangled over the end, his toes brushing the floor in time to the inhalations filling his massive chest. His arms, so ripped they looked flexed even in sleep, were folded across the bronze expanse as if he were preparing to issue orders to a lucky subbie in his dreams.
She wondered if she was that subbie.
She turned away and rolled her eyes.
How pathetic can you be? A couple of times at his feet, amazing as they were, didn’t turn you into wonder subbie, okay? You’re still you. Rayna Chestain. Accomplished medic. Survivor of kidnap, captivity, and seven overbearing brothers. Marching to another man’s sexual drum, no matter how mind-blowingly great the experience, isn’t part of your total life picture.
Now she just had to decipher why that dropped a ball of lead into her stomach, forming into claws that tightened around her throat.
She took a deep breath and prepared to turn for the bathroom. And you’re going to do it without looking at him again. Because looking will mean fantasizing. And fantasizing will only lead to—
“Ray-bird.”
It was a groggy mumble, barely audible, but it whipped her stare back in a fervent second. As soon as she gave her conscience the middle finger, she rotated her body, as well.
Z hadn’t moved. His dark lashes were still solidly closed. The rest of his face, usually quartz-hard with focus, was even more beautiful in the grip of deep and peaceful sleep.
“Shit,” she whispered, shaking her head. She’d imagined it, hadn’t she? Pathetic. Why would a Dom like him, so powerful and assured and capable o
f drawing out a sub’s most illicit desires, be thinking of a vanilla dork like her in his sleep?
“Rayna.”
Her breath snagged. The lead in her stomach turned into fire.
She had not imagined that full-volume moan—nor the way his upper leg slid down and helped its twin to writhe with need.
“Fuck…Rayna…yes.”
Or the way he bucked his hips so violently, the blanket fell free from his body.
“Shit,” she repeated. The majestic strength of his legs was amplified by the tension winding through them. The springy hairs along their lengths helped to define thighs, calves, even knees that were as sculpted as a gladiator’s. And at their crux was the burnished length that now held her gaze as willing captive. His cock only twitched a little right now, but even in its half-flexed state, it was stunning to look at. It was so perfectly proportioned, pulsing with strength though it still lolled against his thigh. Her heart revved as she imagined rubbing it. Licking it. Tasting it…
She stifled a needy sigh. The memory of an after-work girls’ night came back to haunt her. Sage and one of the base’s lab techs, Jenna, had gotten all swoony about the beauty of cocks, even in their not-so-aroused states. She’d labeled her coworkers a pair of aggro-psycho-nymphos, which had earned her the tab for the next round and a pair of she’ll-find-out-one-day nods.
That day had absolutely arrived.
Fascination pulled her closer to him. Zeke let out another slumber-heavy groan. His penis shifted past the twitching phase. She licked her lips as she watched the blood flow into his long muscle, lifting it off his thigh, practically beckoning her with its forceful jerks.
“Oh…hell,” he grated. “Rayna, please.”
The raw need in his voice dragged her legs down. Though he was still sleeping, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to kneel for him. “Sir.” She placed her hands on his lower thighs, careful to be gentle about it. Though he obviously wasn’t dreaming about a mission or battle, she was well aware of the dangers of rousing a Special Forces man from deep sleep. “I’m here. What do you need?”