by Cecilia Tan
I unclipped the chains and slid the metal free of my body. He took it from me and laid it aside. When he returned, he gestured for me to spread my knees again.
And began flicking a sharp claw up and down on my clit. I sucked in a breath, caught between how much it hurt and how aroused it was making me. I was surging up my arousal scale to a whole new measure, it felt like.
“Are you going to come?” he asked, his voice hard and almost scientific.
“Y-yes! I think so—” I had barely finished saying that when my words turned to a long wail of release. I rode his hand as he ground his knuckles against me, letting me eke out every last shudder of pleasure.
When I opened my eyes, he was staring down at me as if entranced.
“It would appear you have driven a demon from me, my lord,” I said.
He blinked, remembering the scenario. “Indeed. But I remain concerned that one still lurks deep within you. Spread your legs again. I must examine you.”
I lay back again and opened my knees. This time he attached four clips to my labia and stretched them open by clipping the other end of each chain to one of my nipples or my inner thigh. The clips bit into my skin at first with a pinching sensation but the feeling soon turned to a deep ache.
He fingered me first, then held up the dagger in front of me. I swallowed and he gave a small nod, as if reminding me he’d promised no permanent damage. He ran a finger along the edge of the dagger, showing me that despite how wicked it looked, it was blunt.
He slid it into me, his gaze boring into mine as he pushed it inch by inch into me, and then with his fist around the blade, he fucked me with it. It was one of the hottest things I had ever done in my life and I think if he’d been touching my clit I would have come again right then.
Then he pulled the blade free and licked my juices from it.
Hotttt. I desperately wanted to slip my hand between my legs and rub my clit.
He unbuckled the leather vest armor he was wearing and shrugged it off, baring his chest, and then unzipped his leather pants but didn’t take them off. “Only one way to really get deep inside you,” he said, sounding somewhat breathless, more like Mal and less like a character.
I nodded in reply, praying that he would take the clips off before fucking me.
I almost got my wish. He rolled on a condom and penetrated me with the head of his cock first. And then he tore away the clips, which hurt like a motherfucker. But the moment he tore them away, he drove all the way into me and began banging me hard and deep. Is it any wonder that pain and pleasure were all mixed together in my mind?
Everywhere the clips had been touching me was pure agony, while his cock driving into me was pure pleasure, and my overworked nerves counted it all as one.
* * *
MAL
I could not have dreamed of a better scene. Did she know how enticing she was, costumed cunningly and playing her role so earnestly? I was entranced by the image burning in my head of the witch-woman willingly submitting herself to whatever violation the villain might choose, overlaid with the undeniable reality that here was Gwen submitting herself to me. If I thought she would shrink away from the knife—dulled for safety—I was wrong. She accepted it the way she accepted all of my attentions: with zeal.
Was it the condom that thrust me out of scene or was it Gwen herself? The moment I pushed into her, the last scraps of the Linder Mage fantasy were torn away and I was nothing but myself, a man burning with need for her, with the need to claim her as my own. I discarded the clamps, unable to tolerate anything that might get between me and her, my blood surging with the need to make us one.
What strange creatures we are. Humans are mammals, warm-blooded animals who reproduce through the oddest activity, requiring the male to insert a piece of himself inside the female’s body.
We could dress it up with costumes or contraptions, but with Gwen ultimately I was reduced to this primal drive to put my cock inside her. This wasn’t sadism or dominance or mastery; it was raw hunger.
Fast, slow, deep, shallow, from the side, from the rear—I didn’t care. All I cared about was pushing inside and the only reason I pulled out was so I could push in again.
This is the animal that Gwen reduced me to, a fucking machine, unable to do anything but pound my flesh into hers like my life depended on it. No woman had ever stripped away every pretense of mine like this before. She screamed, she cried, she wailed, she moaned—every reaction made me want to do it again, do it more. It wasn’t even that I was hunting down my orgasm; I was in such an animalistic state I couldn’t even think that far ahead. There was only this, this moment played again and again, of penetration, of needing to penetrate.
I don’t know how long I fucked her that way. Several positions, several changes of rhythm…half an hour, perhaps? An hour? Long enough that I was giving myself friction burns, where my knees rubbed against the insides of my leather trousers. Yes, my need to put my cock into her had been so great I hadn’t even bothered to remove them. Time to regain control. I pulled free now and shucked the trousers, my erection bobbing angrily.
I stripped off the condom, which had gotten somewhat bunched and wrinkled, and put on a fresh one, aware of her watching my every move.
“On your front. Cunt in the air. Open it for me,” I snapped. My heart rate doubled and my lust spiked as I watched her do it with alacrity. Her over-the-top poppy-red wig was bright against the white hotel duvet and her cleft was invitingly pink between her white thighs.
I pushed into her again and she pushed back, ensuring I sank to the hilt. I held her there, my hands on her hips. “Squeeze me.”
She made a little sound of dismay, but she obeyed as I felt the velvet grip on my cock tighten and loosen as if she were pumping it with her fist.
I pulled out suddenly, my arms shaking, on the brink of coming but consumed with the need to prove to myself that I was the master of my orgasm, that it was not the master of me.
I shoved two fingers into her and she groaned and pushed back against them, squeezing. This pussy of hers—I was rapidly becoming obsessed with it. With possessing it. With possessing her. “Tell me how many men you’ve fucked.”
She looked back at me, her hands slipping from holding her wide, questions in her eyes.
“In real life. Not the book,” I clarified. The wall between fantasy and reality had crumbled once again. That seemed to happen often when I was around Gwen. “Tell me.”
“Three,” she said.
For a moment I felt a thrill that made no sense, as if I had somehow conquered these three anonymous men. Then I remembered she was supposed to be playing the part of a groupie and I wasn’t supposed to know she was Gwen Hamilton. I twisted the fingers inside her as I asked gruffly, “Three? Is that all? You present yourself as more experienced than that.”
She grunted and fucked herself on my fingers as she answered. “I’ve been holding out for the one I really wanted.”
I jammed my fingers into her brutally, as if I could punish her for lying, but instead she simply soaked up the rough treatment, her wetness nearly gushing. Did that mean she’d spoken the truth? Logic did not work when most of the blood in my body was in my prick instead of my brain and the Need was surging.
I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. “Do you want my cock?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, please!”
“Do you want it again in the future?”
“Yes, of course!”
I pulled my fingers free and teased her with the head of my cock, rubbing it up and down her pussy lips but not putting it in, no matter how she squirmed. Madness. What I spoke next was pure madness but it was everything I felt and I could not hold back. “Then I want to be the only cock you’ll take.”
She froze for a moment and I knew she was considering what I said seriously. “I…I would love for yours to be the only cock I’ll take.”
The surge of victory thrill coursed through me again. Mine! She was mine. “I want you to be as
hungry for me as I am for you,” I said, putting it in an inch and then pulling it away. “So no dildos either.”
“Yes, Mal.” She sounded breathless, elated.
“No fingers. Even your fingers would be cheating.”
She gave a little sound almost like a sob. “But…but am I allowed to come? Without you?”
“Only if you are thinking of me.” Sweet mother of angels, I had truly gone insane. I was guaranteeing that her obsession with me was only going to grow.
It was only fair, though, given how huge my obsession with her was becoming.
“I’m going away for three weeks starting tomorrow,” I said, putting my cock into her again and then pulling out. “Can you stand three weeks with nothing inside you?”
“Not even the chastity device?” she asked plaintively.
“No. Cunning though it is, it goes inside you and that makes me jealous.” I pushed into her again, freeing my hands to grab the stainless steel toy and examine it. Fascinating. The insertion ball was detachable.
I detached it. “There. Now not only may you wear this, but also you’re going to. For three weeks. Remove it only to bathe or if you need to eliminate.”
“Really?” she asked excitedly, then more seriously, “I mean, yes, Mal!”
I had no idea if what I was asking her to do was reasonable or not. I was beyond reason at that point. I did know they made these things for long wear. How she would hide it from the people in her life was not my problem. How much it tortured her with constant arousal was not my problem.
Three weeks without her was my problem.
“I’m going to fuck you now and spank you until I’m satisfied while you reach between your legs and make yourself come.”
“How many times?”
“Until I say you can stop.”
Oh, how she squeezed me internally when I said that. This woman loved being tormented with pleasure as well as pain. I laid a heavy hand onto her buttock as I drove into her and quickly fell into a rhythm, alternating hands right and left.
By the time she came her sixth time and I came my first, her cries of ecstasy had turned to whimpers of pain. I emptied my bollocks with a great bellow and then pulled out all too soon. Even utter perfection must come to an end, unfortunately. I discarded the condom in the bathroom and then returned to the bed to find she had barely moved.
Seeing her lying like that—spent, exhausted, aching from the things I had inflicted on her—made my chest tighten and my eyes grow soft with a sudden protective urge. You’re insane, I told myself. You’re the one who hurt her and now you want to be the one to kiss and make it better? Madness.
But a madness I indulged. Now I wanted nothing more than to coddle her, to care for her. “Excrucia, dearest,” I heard myself say as I encouraged her to roll onto her side. She groaned a little but did as I asked. I pulled back the covers and coaxed her under them, sliding in with her and cradling her with one arm. Her warm skin against my own was a luxurious pleasure unto itself.
“That was unbelievably amazing,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I did promise to satisfy you, did I not?”
“You did. And you definitely kept that promise.”
“For your part, you did quite well, too,” I said. The memory of entering the room and seeing her for the first time in full costume, kneeling at the ready, was burned into my brain. A more gorgeous sight I could not imagine. “I was unsure if you’d go so far as to obtain a chastity belt. I am pleased that you did.”
She wriggled happily against me and it was as if that happiness soaked right through her skin into mine. I even smiled. “I’m glad you like it. Re-reading that part of the book, do you think Ariadne Wood knew when she wrote it that things like that existed?”
“I have no doubt of it. Chastity devices are not a new invention, you know.” I petted her hair, luxuriating in the bliss we had both strived so hard to earn. Such a rare feeling. My mind was rarely so quiet. I had to wonder if part of me didn’t crave that even more strongly than the primal rutting. “I do have to wonder what the author intended for us to imagine in the scene in the tower.”
“Maybe that’s the beauty of it,” she said. “People could imagine whatever they wanted. Whatever they needed.”
“Hmmm.” I rolled her onto her back and toyed with the bright red strands of her wig. “The power of imagination serves up whatever we need most—is that the idea?”
She nodded.
“Three weeks,” I said. The band had agreed to go into the studio with Larkin Johns for another try. I needed to keep myself free of distractions, but I had a strong feeling when we emerged from recording I was going to be burning with the need to see her again. “I’ll message you with who to be when we reunite.”
Chapter Eight
Heat
GWEN
Of course the day I was supposed to meet Mal again would turn out to be the day of Ricki’s app launch. Originally they called the app Stargazer, but it turned out there was an astronomy app called that already, so they renamed it the much more on-point Man Candy. The app showed you photos of hot guys—models, actors, pop stars, and so on—and let you rate them by hotness. The app would not only serve up new photos of guys from all the syndicated newsfeeds like Getty and AP, but it would also learn what type of look you liked and show you new hot guys you didn’t already know about. The app was intended to be a sideline for her media company WOMedia that would simultaneously let them do market research into what women liked while giving them a direct marketing tool right on women’s mobile phones.
Genius. That’s my sister.
Not that I was a slouch in the intelligence department myself, of course. My challenge was to figure out what to wear to a press event that would hide the chastity device I was wearing, and how to meet Mal in secret without Ricki getting suspicious.
“Your calendar’s clear, right?” she had asked.
Right, because I didn’t put my secret trysts with Mal on the calendar that she could see.
Thankfully Ricki didn’t ask for any more details when I said the afternoon was free but I would be out that evening. I knew it would sound weird if I was too vague if she asked later, though. I settled on telling her a college friend was in town and wanted to reconnect.
Mal’s instructions included the address of a different hotel from the previous one, as well as a scene from an Ariadne Wood book I hadn’t read but that featured a virgin sacrifice to a dragon.
Black wig acceptable, he wrote, but put it up, atop your head or in a bun.
To match the character in the book, who was described as wearing ritual garments made of spider silk, I packed a see-through lingerie gown. I had my full makeup kit, so I could do the heavy eyeliner and facial contouring that I figured had to be the only reason Mal hadn’t recognized me yet. My face is actually pretty generic when I’m not made up.
There were moments during the last scene when I’d felt like he was going to say something, especially after I’d dropped character completely. I was sure he’d figured it out. But then he didn’t say anything.
Maybe he knows but wants to keep up the fantasy that it isn’t me? It seemed plausible given that I wanted to keep the fantasy up for as long as possible myself. It was working so well. I felt freer somehow, less judged, less self-conscious when I was pretending to be someone else.
Maybe in order to keep it up, he really did need to pretend I was a groupie and not the kind of girl his father would have fixed him up with. I had to hope that by the time he either figured it out or dropped the charade he had decided I was worth bending another one of his rules for.
First I had to get through the press conference. I was distracted, trying to imagine what Mal was going to do to me tonight. The chastity device was very odd: I’d gotten so used to it I’d forget it was there, until I thought about Mal and suddenly I couldn’t ignore it. I know, scientifically, it was probably that thinking about him aroused me and made my clit swell, but it felt a lot like ma
gic. As if thinking about him invoked him, as if that were his hand tugging at the chain, tightening the device.
The scene he had sent described the priests binding the sacrifice to the altar with “inescapable” bonds and then leaving her there alone. The dragon had then entered the stone grotto and, tongue flicking like a snake’s, had tasted the sacrifice’s skin to determine whether she would be accepted or rejected. If rejected, she would be burnt to a crisp.
In the original scene, the dragon becomes enraged by the spider silks and tears them away with his claws. “And then the dragon’s tongue performed a most thorough and complete exploration of her skin, leaving not an inch untouched by that muscular appendage. Yes, it would seem the dragon deemed her an acceptable sacrifice.”
There the chapter ended. I had bought and devoured the ebook to find out more, but the next scene began with a priest coming to collect her charred bones and finding her surprisingly alive and whole. Perhaps Mal was going to dress as the priest?
Ricki nudged me from behind and I smiled, suddenly realizing I’d been fantasizing and hoping my face hadn’t been showing my feelings. Then again, for what the app was supposed to do, maybe some drooling was appropriate.
She was right; literally all I was required to do at the event was nod and smile. There were tons of cameras and lots of photos were taken. They showed the promo video as part of the presentation. The rest of it was blather about their business plan; I thought about Mal instead of listening.
And then, at last, it was over. I went to say good-bye to Ricki before hitting the road. She was talking with their publicity manager, Thalia Rashan, a tall woman with her hair in an upswept knot at the back of her head. I took mental notes, wondering if I could put the wig up that way.
“Oh, Gwen,” Thalia said when she saw me. “Thank you so much for doing that video. You were perfect.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to such a compliment; I hadn’t done much but goof around on my phone making faces while they filmed it. “Um, you’re welcome? It was fun.”