by Lea Bronsen
Her reaction earned a pair of stinging strikes on her backside.
Heart pounding against her ribcage, body singing with desire, Lexi resumed her previous pose, making sure to keep her fingers locked tight above her head. Her chin notched upward.
Mark awarded her with a smile. “You have a very expressive face, Alexis. Are you aware of that?”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
The end of the crop traced her hip. “Your eyes sparkle when your stubborn kicks in, for example.” He watched her intently as he slid the crop upward. “And they turn to molten emerald when you’re aroused.”
Her breath hitched, but she remained still despite the trail of tingling flesh his ministrations elicited. Lexi’s nipples ached for his touch and her pussy throbbed like a chasm of desolation, desperate to be filled. Could he read all that in her expression? Her cheeks flamed.
Mark dropped the crop to his side and returned to the black duffel. He deposited the crop into the bag and reached inside. He straightened, a pair of nylon cuffs dangling from his fingertips.
A surge of fear jettisoned through her bloodstream. “What are those for?”
He moved in, stealing her view of anything but his broad shoulders. “For you, silly girl.” His aftershave tickled her nose with its masculine spice. He wrapped one of her wrists with the cuff and pressed the Velcro strip running its length into place, and repeated the process on the other wrist. “You can put your hands down now.”
He stepped back, and Lexi released a breath she didn’t know she held. She lowered her arms, the tether connecting them settling just above her pelvis.
“Lay down on the bed.” His voice held a grit she hadn’t noticed before.
She cast a quick glance behind her before turning his way. “And if I say no?”
He took a step toward her, earning one of hers in retreat. “You don’t get to say no.”
The urge to flee rocketed through her, but the knot in her stomach anchored her somehow, keeping her feet rooted to the floor. The challenge in Mark’s expression was unmistakable, but what Lexi couldn’t be sure of, is whether he challenged her to refuse him, or if he was fully aware of his effect on her, and merely challenged her to refuse herself.
Lexi had no interest in denying him. Desire singing through her veins, she sat on the mattress, shifted, and lay back. Her cuffed wrists settled on her stomach.
Mark moved to the head of the bed. He held out a hand. “Wrists, please.”
She lifted her arms, setting the tether in his waiting palm.
“Good girl.” He arced her hands downward, affixing the cuff to something under the bed frame. Something clicked, like a lock. She tested the restraint, finding only a few inches of movement before her arms stopped short. Her heartbeat jumped into a faster pace.
Mark squatted beside his bag and set to searching through it. He placed a few things on the floor to his side, but Lexi couldn’t see from her prone position.
“I told you I could replicate the high your drugs give you without something that wouldn’t destroy you.” Mark straightened, hovering over her, intense, penetrating. He traced his fingers through the tendrils of her hair fanning the mattress. “We’ve arrived at the time where I prove I can.” His lips twitched, but no smile came. Instead, he winked. “So relax and enjoy the ride, my sweet Alexis.” He produced a blindfold, affixing it over her eyes, plunging her into darkness.
Lexi let out a nervous laugh, flexed and curled her fingers. “Relax, he says.” Body stiff, skin prickling in anticipation of his silent touch, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The first whisper of a caress came across her middle. Just a tickle of sensation dancing over her stomach, around her belly button, and higher to circle each of her breasts.
A feather?
The tension seeped from her body as her nipples tightened in reaction to the gentle touch. Lexi squirmed as she imagined his hands replacing the achingly soft tease of the feather. Heat flushed her cheeks, while gooseflesh rose on her arms. The leisurely trail ended abruptly, leaving her straining to hear him, and determine where the next sensation would come.
Shuffling sounds reached her. He was by the duffel again.
Lexi licked moisture onto her dry lips, pulse racing in anticipation.
Mark’s thumb and forefinger closed over her right nipple. He rolled the hardened nub between, sending jolts of shocking pleasure through her. A soft gasp escaped her as his other hand joined the game, taking hold of the neglected needy peak. He teased the twin pleasure points in unison, kindling the ball of smoldering heat in her stomach into an inferno. Warm palms closed over her breasts. He kneaded the soft flesh with gentle fingers.
Lexi swallowed the urge to purr in satisfaction while the churning fire in her stomach tracked lower.
His hands left her again, but were replaced almost instantly when his mouth closed over her left nipple. His tongue traced the outer edge of her areola before he sucked lightly on the raised nub.
Lexi jerked against the wrist restraints, and sucked air through clenched teeth.
His mouth abandoned her.
A pang of regret stabbed at her chest.
“So reactive,” he whispered. “So very beautiful.”
Mark’s soft words washed over her. She luxuriated in them, her fingers itching to reach out and draw him back to her aching breast.
As if he could hear her thoughts, his fingertips returned, teasing her nipple back to a hardened peak. He placed something over it, and let go, but the pulling sensation remained. He flicked the source of the suction.
Shivers of pleasure shot from her nipple.
Mark repeated the process on the other breast, and gave the nipple cover a matching flick, eliciting a tortured groan from her.
“What are you doing to me?” Her words arrived hoarse, laced with breathless desire.
“Showing you the way.”
Emptiness swooped in as he stepped away.
“Open your legs for me.” He’d moved the foot of the bed.
Without hesitation, she slid her legs apart until her ankles slipped over the edge of the mattress.
Warm fingers wrapped around her calf and lifted. A cuff, like the ones encircling her wrists, surrounded her ankle.
Her stomach twisted with nervous excitement as he fastened her leg to the bed with a click. “More restraints?”
A soft chuckle caressed her ear as his presence moved to the other side of the bed. “Does that worry you?”
“Worried wouldn’t be the term I would use to describe how I am feeling right now, no.” Her cheeks burned
“Good.” Mark surrounded her other ankle with a cuff and drew her leg back down to the bed. Another loud click. He moved back to the head of the bed, giving each of the unseen nipple attachments a flick on his way.
Lexi imagined him assessing her. She was completely exposed body and at his mercy. Her clit reacted to the thought by throbbing in approval. She bit down on her lower lip. Was he aroused, too? Or was he merely playing with her?
“How do you feel?” His breath caressed her right cheek.
Instinctively, she turned her head toward his voice.
His mouth captured hers. Light exploded behind her blindfold. His tongue traced the outline of her lips, coaxing them to part and allow him entry. He swallowed her whimper as she opened to him, her mouth molding to his. Eager for a taste, her tongue reached out to join the erotic dance he’d begun.
Disappointment needled her when he pulled his delicious mouth away. She squirmed against her restraints and heaved a sigh. “Abandoned. I feel needy and abandoned.”
A soothing hand settled at her waist, stilling her. “Poor girl.” He stroked a trail over her hip and down the outside of her leg before sliding his palm over her kneecap and caressing along the more sensitive skin of the inside of her thigh, inching his fingertips ever closer to her aching mound. “What can I do to help?” Humor laced his tone.
Lexi wanted her blindfold g
one, needed to see him standing over her, touching her. “Let me see you?”
Mark clucked in response. “That isn’t an option available to you at the moment.” A fingernail traced through the landing strip of hair at the apex of her thighs. “Was there anything else?” His hand continued its path, his touch leaving her aching, so very empty pussy to tease a line down the inside of her other leg.
Her fingers curled to frustrated fists. Her nipples burned with the exquisite stinging heat of whatever he’d left attached to them. Lexi’s entire body thrummed with desire. “Please…”
His hand stopped moving, his palm searing her inner thigh where it lay. “Did you think of something, sweet Alexis? Do tell.”
He knew damned well what he did to her. What she wanted. Needed. Lexi growled, the sound coming from deep in her throat. “Please, touch me.”
“But I am touching you.”
She arched her back and pressed her bottom into the mattress. “You missed a spot.” Her voice held more petulance than she’d planned. She gnawed the inside of her cheek, chastising herself for letting her desperation show. “I mean…”
Mark’s fingertip found her opening and tickled her clit. “You mean you want me to touch you here?”
Lexi groaned and lifted her hips, pushing her center against his hand. “God, yes. There. Please touch me there.”
His hand slipped lower, slowly, until an exploring finger pushed inside her slick folds. “Like this?”
She drew a ragged breath. “Please…yes.”
Mark dipped two fingers inside her. “Please what, Alexis?” His free hand released the suction on her nipples, first the right, then the left, letting loose a surge of stinging tingles in her breasts, while his plunging fingers wreaked havoc on her desire soaked pussy.
Lexi writhed beneath his ministrations, her head tossing side-to-side as she strained at the tethers holding her in place. “Please, sir!” She lifted her hips to drive his probe deeper. Heat coiled in her stomach and radiated outward. Pressure built in her center.
Mark pushed his fingers deep, the base of his hand pressed tight against her pelvic bone. “What do you want?” He teased her engorged clitoris with his thumb. “Tell me.”
Lexi moaned in response. Her pussy contracted around Mark’s waiting fingers in time with her heartbeat. “Please don’t stop.”
Mark drew his hand back and added a third finger on the next thrust.
“God, yes. More.” She rolled her hips against his hand, wantonness overruling any sense of embarrassment she might have had left. Her thoughts, her senses, were consumed by him, what he did between her legs.
As his fingers pumped into her, Mark teased her clit with his free hand, pushing Lexi closer to the edge of bliss with each stroke. Her body answered his pace of its own accord, her hips lifting to meet each thrust. She gasped for breath and climbed higher, her nerve endings singing with pleasure.
He increased his pace. “Do you want to come for me?” His voice took on a gravelly tone that made Lexi’s heart soar. A sign of his desire, proof he was as caught up in the moment as she.
The knowledge pushed her over the edge of oblivion. Her muscles tensed. “Yes!” She arched her back and pressed her head against the pillow. “Oh, God!”
She crashed over the precipice of desire, her pussy pulsing around his fingers, throbbing out her orgasm. She rode the wave of her explosion, breathing ragged, until the quivering in her limbs subsided. A soft moan slipped past her lips as she relaxed into the soft mattress.
Mark withdrew his hand, drawing a forlorn whimper from her. “You didn’t wait for me to give you permission, my greedy girl, but since this is our first therapy session, I can forgive the misstep.”
It took a few moments for his words to penetrate her bliss-addled skull.
Misstep?
Had he expected her to hold back? She recalled the feeling of his fingers inside her. No way in hell could she have stopped her orgasm. Not when he so expertly teased her into a frenzy. Who could? Had the other girls done so? “For real?”
He released her ankles from their restraints, came around to the top of the bed and untethered her wrists. When he slipped the blindfold from her head, the dimmed light of the room stabbed at her eyelids. She blinked, squinting beneath the onslaught.
Mark stood over the bed, his arms folded, expression stoic. Where had the longing she heard in his voice gone? Had this really been some twisted kind of therapy? Had she only imagined his desire for her?
Lexi pushed to a sitting position, mind spinning.
“I’ll be back shortly with breakfast and your medication.” Without another word, he grabbed his duffel bag, turned, and left the room, locking the door behind him.
She heaved a sigh. He’d forgone reattaching her ankle tether, but she remained his prisoner. Self-doubt washed over her. Hugging herself, Lexi curled up on the mattress, confused.
What the fuck am I doing here?
If she wasn’t there because Mark desired her, why had he stopped? Why hadn’t he fucked her? Surely that wasn’t really part of his attempt to cure her of her addictions. But, he left. Without so much as a blow job. Could he be mad because she came? She thought that would have been the point. Show her pleasure without drugs. But, he just left…
“Who does that?”
He was human. Like all humans, he had to have some motive for going through all the trouble of tracking her down. Finding out who she sold for, then working out a deal with Billy. Everyone had ulterior motives. Selfish motives. He wasn’t fucking Superman.
Even if he was, how did he even know she needed saving? Her mother didn’t know. Lexi was good at making sure nobody knew. Except Billy. He was the only one who knew how deep the rabbit hole went. How tight Vicodin’s hold on her was.
* * * *
The churning tumbler of the door lock alerted her of Mark’s return a few seconds before the door swung wide.
“Breakfast is served.” He swept into the room holding a tray encumbered with steaming plate of succulent smelling food, and a white ceramic mug Lexi prayed contained coffee.
He moved to the dresser to unload his burden. A small black bag draped from his shoulder.
More therapy?
Her cheeks heated. “What’s in the bag?
“Pressure cuff and a stethoscope. I need to check your vitals.”
Lexi joined him by the dresser, refusing to let him see how their interlude had affected her. She plucked a strip of bacon from the plate and quirked a brow. “You weren’t that good. I’m sure I’ve recovered from the ordeal.” She popped the strip of bacon into her mouth and held it between her teeth while she added cream and sugar to the coffee.
“Funny. No. I want to make sure your body is handling the methadone properly before you get another dose this afternoon.”
After giving the coffee a quick stir, Lexi set the spoon aside, grabbed the bacon perched in her mouth, and tore a healthy bite free. She brought her drink back to the bed with her, sitting as she chewed. A sip from the mug rinsed her mouth before she answered. “You said you’d be back with breakfast and medication. If the Methadone is in the afternoon, what am I taking now?”
Mark came about with a paper cup of water. He extended a hand in her direction, a pair of round white pills resting on his palm.
A tingle of warning danced down her spine. Lexi knew pills, was more of an expert on them than she preferred to admit, and she had no idea what these were. “What is it?” She made no move to take them.
He chuckled. “Such a cynic. They’re just Vitamin D pills. Not really a suitable replacement for UV light, but it should help make up for the lack of windows.”
Lexi frowned. “How long do you plan to keep me locked up down here?”
“That really depends on you.” He moved his hand closer and held out the paper cup. “And how willing you are to participate in your own sobriety.”
She popped the pills into her mouth, and swallow them down with a drink from her mug.
“Speaking of my sobriety, what difference does it make to you?”
Mark set the paper cup back on the breakfast tray. “Don’t deflect, Alexis. This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be? At least in part? Why else would you go through all this trouble? Why me? I’m not the only addict at the university. Hell, I can give you a list, and it’s a long one. So why is it me who’s imprisoned in what I assume is your basement? At first, I thought you were attracted to me. That you wanted me. But this morning’s therapy, as you call it, burst that fantasy bubble pretty effectively. So, now I’m obsessed with knowing why.”
His brow furrowed. “And why have you determined I’m not attracted to you?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You have me quite curious.”
“Now who’s deflecting?” She met his gaze over the rim of her mug. “I’ll tell if you will.”
“I told you. This isn’t about me.” He slid the bag from his shoulder and removed the stethoscope, settling the earpieces around his neck. He fished out the blood pressure apparatus. “This is about seeing you well and back to your old self.”
“What do you know about my old self?” She scoffed. “All you know about me is I took your class sophomore year.”
The mattress sagged as he sat down, the shift in weight distribution bringing her shoulder into contact with his. Tingles raced along her arms. She straightened quickly, as if scalded by the incidental touch.
Mark’s warm fingers caressed the sensitive flesh of her upper arm as he wrapped the cuff around it. “When you took my class, you were impossible to ignore. So vibrant. Sexy in an understated way.” He put the ends of the stethoscope in his ears and rested the cool metal disc at the end to the pulse of her arm. His concentration fell to the dial affixed to the air tube. “There was just something about you, a spark of fire, a light in your eyes that drew me to you.” He pumped on the ball at the end of the tube, filling the pressure cuff with air as he spoke. “I couldn’t get you out of my thoughts. I wanted you like I have wanted no other woman I’ve known.”