by Lilia Moon
He’s been warned. He knows what he’s getting into.
And the all-night cuddles were nice.
I shiver and wrap my arms around my ribs, because it might be nearly daylight out there, but the heat I turned up hasn’t kicked in yet. I either need clothes or a share of the covers. I spend another second debating, because my stomach is rapidly waking up too, along with my need for caffeine.
But like I told him last night, he’s damn hard to walk away from.
I step over to the edge of the bed and gingerly try to reinsert myself in the tangle of limbs and covers. Which is kind of like trying to play a game of twister with a sleeping zombie.
One of his eyes slides to half-mast, and there’s a glimmer of recognition in there, but just a tiny one.
I grin and squiggle in under his arm. Someone clearly doesn’t wake up with all his faculties intact. It’s good to know these things. All Doms have weak spots, and if I’m going to be in some kind of not-fuck-buddies connection with him, I need all the intel I can get.
His hand runs lazily down my spine and squeezes my ass. Something in my heart squeezes too. I tossed so very much out of my life along with the kink.
He tugs my head closer and drops a light kiss on my forehead.
I grin. Two can play that game. I slither down the mattress, out from under his arm and headed straight for the piercing he hasn’t so much as let me take a good look at yet.
His hands catch me before I get halfway there.
I look up into brown eyes that are a lot clearer than they were a few moments ago. “It’s after sunrise.”
His lips quirk, but he doesn’t let me keep heading the direction I was going.
I can feel his cock pressing hard and hot against my leg. I sigh. No vanilla fuck buddy would be holding me still right now, but vanilla this man is definitely not.
He grins and flips me on my back, sliding himself down so his head is lined up with my chest. He runs his fingers over the spiky barbells I put in this morning. “Are these a message?”
Innocent looks aren’t something I can do worth crap, but I try anyhow. “Nope. They’re just what I had handy in the bathroom. Wanted to make sure my piercings didn’t close up.”
He has the audacity to laugh, even as his tongue explores my nipples. Carefully, which is smart. Those little buggers can hurt if they get snagged on something, which is why I almost never wear them. I get a lot of orders for them, though. Subs have all kinds of tiny ways to get even.
His hands slide up my arms, finding my wrists and bringing them down by my sides. He tucks them in under my ass. “Keep them there.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t agree to a scene, mister.”
“True.” He nips lightly at my ribs. “You safewording out?”
Jerk. “Do I get to lick your cock if I do?”
He snorts and nips a little lower. “No.”
I grumble as he keeps traveling down the line of my ribs, and try to convince myself to get up. Walk away. Reassert some kind of balance. There’s even fudge in the fridge as a reward for finding some common sense and caution.
He pauses, looking up at me, his breath hovering warm over my clit.
I sigh again. It’s a really excellent bribe, but it’s not the promise of imminent and excellent oral sex that gets to me. It’s his eyes. The warm, happy ones that want nothing more than to make me feel good on a sunny Sunday morning.
Chapter Fifty
Rafe
It’s a beautiful thing when she relaxes. I know she’s not done doing battle with the part of herself that believes her needs are dangerous—but the pathway to yes is getting shorter.
And she’s letting me touch her while she fights it.
I drop a kiss on her inner thigh. Letting her know I’m still here. Ready whenever she is.
She growls, but there’s no menace in it. “Unless your tongue has sprouted feathers, that’s not the implement I agreed to.”
I grin where she can’t see. “I don’t believe the rules limited other forms of play.”
She huffs and wiggles her hands a little further under her ass. “Fine, but be warned. I get cranky when I’m hungry.”
I dart my tongue out and take a quick taste. The speed this goes is going to be entirely up to her, because I don’t intend to push this morning. I want all of this woman. The artist. The playful brat who tossed a strawberry in my whipped cream. The tender soul who laid her head on my chest and sighed softly. And whoever she might become when she stops trying to keep the lid on her volcano and embraces it instead.
She shudders as I lap at her pussy. I wrap my hands under her legs and get a good grip on her hips. I delve a little deeper, teasing open her folds, brushing against her clit as I let my tongue play. She’s still a little swollen from yesterday, which pleases the hell out of my caveman. I lick more firmly, gauging how she likes her pressure. Testing whether there’s lingering soreness to go along with the swelling.
She moans softly, her hips pushing up into my hands.
I smile as I circle her clit. She’s not nearly so pent up today. A volcano that got the venting she needed. Which isn’t going to prevent me from giving her some more. I give her pussy one last lick and back away, nibbling on her inner thighs as I go.
She mutters something under her breath that might be a threat if I was in the mood to take it that way. Since I’m not, I stretch up over her, reach under the pillow I slept on, and pull out the vibe she wrote off the second she saw it.
She snickers as I bring it into her line of sight.
There are limits to what any Dom is willing to take, even one who’s just woken up after a night of naked cuddling. I give her a look that tells her to take me seriously, even if she’s underestimating my chosen toys.
The snicker dies on her lips, and something almost hesitant rises instead.
I twirl the vibe slowly in my fingers. It looks like a feather, a creative concoction of silicone ribs and silk strands. It comes with a motor, but I don’t plan to use it. It’s time to show my Bright Eyes just how easily she can come if she doesn’t get in her own way. I trail it along the side of her neck, grinning when she squirms underneath me. I lighten the feather’s touch, which isn’t the usual choice to render something less ticklish, but it’s mine. I brush the strands of silk down over her collarbone, barely touching her skin.
Her whimper is so quiet it’s almost a whisper.
I circle, achingly slowly, navigating the curve of her breast into the valley between them. Her breath rises up to meet me, and I back the feather away, a slow, intricate dance of barest touch.
I sit up and trail the feather along the line of her lower ribs.
She looks at me, a little scared, almost lost.
I bend over and kiss her eyebrow. “Let it take you. I’ve got you.”
She looks at me a long moment longer. Then her eyes close and she lets out a breath. Trusting the touch of a feather to hold her.
Chapter Fifty-One
India
He’s hypnotized me with a chicken feather. I can feel panic off in the distance, but it somehow can’t get in. I’m a basket of clean laundry, dumped out on the bed and not yet sure what form I’m supposed to be, but warm and cozy and entirely content to just lie here.
I know I should be more freaked out than this. The bars of the cage I’ve voluntarily locked myself in for the last seven years haven’t mysteriously evaporated just because the guy holding the feather doesn’t think they’re necessary. But he’s bought me a reprieve somehow. A small window of escape, one where I don’t have to worry about the destruction I might leave in my wake.
There’s only so deep you can go with a chicken feather.
I smile as I let my limbs float a little freer. This is like those flight maneuvers he was talking about. A chance to practice, with a scene that’s literally so lightweight very little can possibly happen.
The trail of silk whispers over my belly, tracing a spiral in and back out. It tugs on th
e needs I keep hidden in my depths. Encouraging them to join the party, to come out into the light of morning and feel a feather’s kiss.
A soft sigh leaks through my skin. Definitely hypnotized. Lulled into a state almost like sleep except for the tiny hairs on my body that are reacting to the passing of the feather. He’s tracing another delicate pathway to nowhere, this one a looping trail down my inner thigh.
Flight maneuvers.
He slowly changes course, finding new territory to tease. More intimate territory. I feel myself beginning to tremble. Worry, edging a little closer to the hypnotic bubble.
The feather eases up my hip, dusting over my ribs. Another reprieve. I let myself loosen again as silk moves to tease the spiky points of my new nipple jewelry. He somehow manages to keep them from tangling. A man well used to thorns.
It takes a moment for the kick of that to land. To penetrate—and when it does, the bubble he’s been so carefully inflating whooshes into non-existence. A shudder travels all the way up my body as my armor crashes back into place. Something a feather could never penetrate.
His hand lands on my shoulder, and my eyes fly open to find his. His thumb brushes my cheek. “Let yourself feel, beautiful.”
Bitterness rises like an ocean tide in the back of my throat. “Just trust you, right? And it will all be okay?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No.” He holds up the feather. “This isn’t the same as what happened seven years ago. Tell me why.”
I manage a passable snort. “Because it’s the wimpiest sex toy ever?” And because he’s not demanding from me sexually, the arrogant jerk. He’s demanding emotionally, which is a thousand times worse.
He just smiles. “Yeah, it is. But it’s enough, if you let it be.”
My entire face wrinkles in confusion. “What kind of fucked-up Dom logic is that? It’s your job to control this gig, not mine.”
He brushes the feather over a nipple that’s only too happy to stand up and beg. “It’s my job to create opportunity. It’s yours to choose how you react.”
I growl at my traitorous nipple, at my skin that’s whimpering because I’ve distracted its new playmate and he’s not pushing through my crap and getting on with it. I add a second growl at the mystic Dom psychobabble he’s spewing instead of giving me the moments of fire I need so I can anneal and not break.
And then it hits me.
I expect my Doms to push on me. To make me let go. To beat on my ass or my clit or my ego hard enough that surrender is my only option and give me that five minutes of fire I need to soften up enough to keep living my life. And every time I do that, I take the risk that they know when to stop, that they know the difference between softened metal and metal who doesn’t know who she is anymore.
But this man, watching me with deep-brown eyes and absolute faith—he’s not that kind of artist. I can feel myself quaking as the rest of the realization lands. I’m not metal and he’s not a hammer or a torch, and he’s not the one who holds the keys to me not breaking.
He’s not that kind of artist.
The tool in his hand is a chisel.
One he’s been using to free what’s inside me from the block of marble I encased it in.
I gasp for air as the realizations hit, hard and fast, one right after the other.
This isn’t about my Dom’s skills or how much I trust him.
It’s about not trusting me. About resisting and pushing back and locking up the tornado that lives inside me instead of choosing to let go when a guy gives me a gold-plated invitation, because I’ve had the tool thing figured all wrong.
He isn’t the one holding the torch. I am.
I want to cry and laugh and scream, because I can feel the fire inside me dancing under my skin, chiding me for missing the obvious for so damn long. Ready to heat up whatever I need it to so that I can melt back into soft, pliable newness.
My face is a mess of snot and tears, but I don’t care.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours underestimating a chicken feather and the man holding it.
And the last seven years underestimating me.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Rafe
I have no idea if she’s even feeling the feather now, but I keep trailing it over her skin anyhow. Her entire body is flushed, a beautiful, visual celebration of what’s happening inside her. There are tears streaming down her face, but there’s also joy, beaming out of her from somewhere so deep and primal it’s like a second sun.
A volcano, breathing into all of who she is.
Whatever revelation is happening inside her, it’s rewriting her DNA.
And mine. Because I’m finally figuring out something my cock has known all along but my head has been too conceited to see. Volcanoes don’t need containers, and any guy who thinks he can be one is just asking to end up lava road kill. My job isn’t to shape her. Lava knows how to melt any container there is, even several hundred feet of granite mountain.
I position myself between her legs, both of us trembling in an earthquake of realization and power and nakedness and need. I brush my tongue against her pussy, as light as the feather I’ve been using. Letting her know I’m here. Stroking the very core of her slick fire so that she remembers where she began.
My job isn’t to hold the edges. It’s to hold the center so that she can lose herself and come back.
She moves her hips, reaching for more, and I give it to her. Firm circles around her clit, a tiny physical volcano readying alongside the much larger one that lives inside her. Her skin slicks under my hands, her breath coming in gasps.
A woman letting herself turn into an inferno.
The first orgasm lands with no more warning than that, a cry into the morning that finally gives sound to what’s rising inside her. I hold her, my tongue tasting the new flavors as she comes again a second time right on the heels of the first.
I chuckle into her pussy, which nearly sends her over again. Then I take the smartest part of me and slide it into the core of her.
She gasps as my cock greets her fire, her legs wrapping around my back, her hips rocking insistently against mine. I pull out and slam back in again, because there is no part of me that’s going to resist her fire for long, and she’s not even close to done yet. She’s turning herself into the work of art, the elemental sculpture that she needs to be, and the beauty of who she is right now is absolutely staggering.
She arches under me, the goddess of the volcano, and I can’t tell anymore when she’s coming and when she isn’t. It doesn’t matter. She’s utterly glorious, and she’s pulling me into a heat mightier than anything I’ve met in my entire life.
I feel my balls pulling up, trying to dissolve so they can run out through my cock and join with her. I grind our hips together one last time and give myself over to the lava.
Holding the center—and losing myself in it too.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Epilogue - India
He eyes me like I’m a bomb about to blow, which makes him a very smart man. “Consider it good customer service. She’s trying to buy a birthday present for my cousin, who has more piercings than you do.”
That’s the most dumbass excuse I’ve ever heard. “You want me to have a video call with your mother, Rafe. Your parent. That comes about five years down the line from now when we haven’t killed each other and we’re pretty sure whatever’s between us is a permanent thing.” Not two days after we sculpted something so new and shiny and fucking hopeful in my bed that I’m still scared to open my eyes and look at it straight.
I’m not remotely ready to meet the woman who shaped the man I did that with.
He waggles an eyebrow at me. “I’ll let you play with my cock ring after.”
I glare at him. “Technically, it’s my cock ring.” The man can’t keep his hands off my wares.
He grins. “Want it back?”
I snort, because I can’t help myself. He wooed me with pancakes and bacon this morning, and I’m
having a really hard time getting cranky, even if he deserves it. “My customers frown on their jewelry being pre-worn.”
He ruffles my hair, like I’m a small child or Liane’s troublesome kitten. “Good to see you have standards.”
I do. Including the one that says I stay very far away from the parents of my kinky bed partners.
He leans in, resting his forehead on mine. “I want you to meet her. In person, soon, but this way you can dip your toes in the water without her seeing the handcuffs and duct tape I’m apparently going to have to use to hold you still for a short video call.”
His words finally manage to penetrate the gooey haze I seem to fall under every time he’s around. I lurch back, trying to break the spell. “What? No way. Duct tape is a hard limit. Do you know how much that stuff hurts coming off?”
He chuckles. “No, but apparently you do.”
I scowl. “It was a greenhouse mishap, smartypants. Nothing kinky. Hostage games are not my thing.”
He runs his hands down my arms. “Five minutes with my mom on your laptop screen. Then you can lick fudge off my cock for the rest of the night.”
I groan, because I’m not sure I’d survive that double whammy—and because I can’t have them. “Can’t. Book club is at my house tonight. I have ten reading nerds who will be here in about an hour.” Which I totally lost track of, but they’re used to that, although usually my distraction is shiny and metallic, not tall, dark, and sexy.
He shrugs and leans back in his chair, a picture of unconcerned laziness. “I like books.”
Oh, no. He is not joining book club. It’s raucous enough already, and I’m completely certain him and Bee should never meet. Crawford Bay would never recover. “You have to leave. Girls only.”