The ropes around her arms and legs tightened and then pulled her up. The ropes underneath her became a hammock that her ass and back rested on. Her arms slapped together and stretched over her head.
Her breath caught in her chest. She panted, trying to get enough air.
The apparatus hoisted Georgie into the air.
Most of her weight rested on the ropes under her butt, but she grabbed the ropes above her head. She twisted her neck, looking down at the platform falling away from her.
Panic seized her heart and lungs because she was going to fall and be broken or be torn limb from limb by this insane torture device. “I quit!”
Alex dropped to one knee and yanked a lever, and she dropped in a controlled fall, lowering her until her butt rested on the leather mattress. The ropes slackened, and she curled up and wrapped her arms around her legs. “What the hell was that?”
He climbed on the bed behind her and wrapped her whole body in his strong arms, cradling her against his bare chest, skin-to-skin. The down of his chest hair was soft against her cheek, and that clean, green grass scent of his cologne on his neck smelled like a wildflower field in the summer.
“It’s all right,” he whispered to her. “You weren’t hurt. It didn’t hurt you. Do you want these off?”
He touched the cuffs over her wrists and the stirrups tied to her feet.
Georgie clutched his neck and stammered, “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t catch myself. I was going to fall.”
He stroked her hair away from her face. “You won’t fall. I’m very good at setting up an apparatus like this. I could have done it with just rope and knots, but I thought the cuffs might reassure you, your first time. You have to trust me. You just saw that you can trust me. When you said your safe word, I released you immediately.”
This was not fun and fucking games. “What were you going to do when I was all tied up?”
His deep voice rumbled beside her cheek. “I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to. I will let you have what you want most, what you crave, but you dare not admit, even to yourself.”
“That’s fucking insane,” Georgie whispered. The black leather binding her feet looked cruel.
“Most people are frightened in the beginning,” Alex said.
“I’m not scared.”
He stroked her cheek and looked deep into her eyes. “You trusted me to help you perform on the piano.”
She nodded.
“Compared to performing, this is easy. This is just us, alone, exploring what you really want. No one will see. No one will ever know except us.”
When she had brought him in here, she had fully intended to be the Dominant one. She had planned to tie him up and tickle him, maybe get him going until he turned a little blue, then ride him until he shouted when he came.
But this! This dependency, this lack of control, this vulnerability! She couldn’t take it. Her hands and legs quivered.
Alex leaned back and rocked her as he held her in his arms. “We can stop now. If this frightens you too much, if it pushes a button for you, if you don’t want to explore this side of yourself, we can go back to my hotel or we can take you home. I thought you wanted this.”
Georgie pressed her hands on her thighs, trying to stop the shaking. “I thought I was going to be the Dominant.”
Her voice sounded stronger. Good.
He chuckled. “You’ll get to know me better tonight.”
“That was never going to happen, huh?”
“Just not my personality.”
“I don’t think this is mine, either.”
“I think it is.”
“We’ve known each other for a few days and boinked once. How would you know that?”
“The way you responded at the piano. You want to perform. You are drowning for lack of music in your life, but you couldn’t let yourself go until I, essentially, forced you to do what you so desperately wanted to. Performing is always an enormous risk. You couldn’t open yourself and allow yourself to be so vulnerable.”
“I can be—” She didn’t bother finishing the sentence.
Alex lifted her chin with just one of his long, callused fingers. He kissed her, his warm lips gentle on her mouth. “It can be terrifying to have an experience that you want so much, that is so intense, that you lose yourself. You have to trust me to take you through the place that terrifies you, to keep you safe, and to hold you until you emerge on the other side. If these few nights are all we have, let me have all of you for just this short time.”
Georgie had started trembling while he spoke, but it was just a few nights, her last nights in the Southwest before she ran. She wouldn’t ever see Alex again.
Maybe, just for tonight, just for a few hours, she could release her ironclad control of everything in her life. “Okay.”
“So we’ll start again,” Alex said. “Safe words are still ‘largo’ and ‘I quit.’ If you use your red word again, however, this might be too much for you, and we’ll stop entirely. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
He leaned down and kissed her again, an intimate, gentle kiss. He whispered, “Let me have you tonight.”
Georgie nodded again.
Alex untangled his long arms and legs from around her and slid off the side of the bed. Reaching onto the mattress, he arranged her arms—his strong hands gentle on her wrists and ankles, as he positioned her body as if Georgie were a doll.
Just give up your freakish control, she thought. Just for one night, Georgie didn’t have to be the Ice Princess. Alex would take care of her.
Something that had been clenched in her mind unfurled.
Georgie breathed.
Alex stroked her arms, relaxing them, lengthening them, and kissed her palms and the inside of her wrists. He curled her fingers around the ropes.
He ran his fingers down her legs, caressing her, and he straightened the ropes on the mattress.
The ropes, once snarled from her freak-out, were now coiled in the corners in the suspension frame, ready to be wound on the pulleys and tightened.
Alex crawled above her again, his body sliding between her spread thighs as he moved up her body to kiss her mouth again, slowly, with such control. “Are you ready?”
Metaphorically, Georgie opened her hands and let it all fall away. She nodded.
He said. “Talk to me. No silence, this time.”
Georgie whispered, “I’m ready, Alex.”
He closed his eyes when she said his name, and his long, exotic eyes creased at the corners. He tucked his chin toward his chest and swallowed.
When he opened his dark eyes, his long hair hanging around his face, swaying, he said, “Let’s begin.”
This time, Georgie didn’t brace herself.
She let go.
Which Of Us Is Alex?
Alexandre de Valentinois
Alex.
Georgie called him Alex and it rang through his head, a clear, cold note like an aquamarine chill in the air on the top of an Alpine mountain.
Alexandre de Valentinois filled his head and body. His hand twitched, intending to reach for Georgie’s wrist and release her from this contraption, to lay her on the bed and hold her in his arms and with his body until they were both sated. This compulsion to orchestrate a performance felt alien, even though it shouldn’t have.
He had been sliding away, and he hadn’t even felt it until she called him back with his name.
The power of his name had called him back. The connotations swirled: the nine billion names of God; a deep and inscrutable, singular, jellicle name; the intimacy of being named, in the name of the Lord, and more.
Again, there was something in there, some art, something that sang to him in a deep red tone and a taste like a silver knife on the back of his tongue. It would need a strong bassline and blown-out drums during the processing. A melody line began to knit itself together in his head, a rise and fall like a plaintive wail, around the words, Call me by my name
and— something.
The words weren’t quite forming, but it was close.
Alexandre lifted his head, focusing his eyes on her. “Let’s begin.”
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Georgie
Georgie breathed, letting the air flow through her chest, just like all the panic attack therapists had taught her. The breathing exercises were working a lot better now than they ever had when all her high school friends had started hating her or when someone was watching to see if she made a mistake while playing the piano.
From the base of the bed, Alex steadied himself by holding onto one of the tall, iron posts and bent, cranking the ropes until they were snug but her shoulders and feet still rested firmly on the bed. With every dip, his biceps bulged, and his abdominals crunched and stretched.
Georgie’s mouth watered.
He crawled between her legs and lay on her, the hard seams of his jeans scraping her thighs and belly as he moved up to kiss her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against her mouth.
She was breathing deep, full breaths, not the panting fear-gasps of earlier. She kissed him back, swirling her tongue with his. His arms slid under her shoulders, and he held her.
If he unbuttoned his fly, he could fuck her right then, and she could feel his hard cock through his jeans against her stomach. Her own openness to him sent a thrill through her.
Alex just kept kissing her, deeply and sweetly. His chest rubbed her breasts as he meshed his mouth with hers, his silky chest fuzz sliding his skin over hers. His fingers toyed with strands of her hair, combing them back and away from her face.
Her heartbeat quickened, the throb pulsing against his chest.
He broke off the kiss and reared up, the muscles of his abs and chest sliding under his golden skin. Sliding backwards, he dodged under her chin and mouthed her neck, his lips sucking for a moment over her pulse. His hand slipped down her side, caressing the skin over her ribs on the way down. He slid backward, tonguing her breasts and lingering there for moments, before he climbed off the end of the bed.
Alex kept one hand on her calf as he turned the crank beyond her feet. With every dip, the aqua and turquoise ink on his back winked toward her. Darker ink looked like things were flailing in the water.
The ropes pulled, raising her wrists and her feet. Georgie pushed down on the stirrups under her shoes, and her knees rose.
The cords under her back tightened.
Alex paused to kiss the inside of her calf.
Georgie breathed and closed her eyes to better feel his mouth on her leg.
The crank clicked as Alex wound it, and the ropes drew at her limbs, pressing her arms together but spreading her legs.
The apparatus lifted her, and Georgie clutched the cords.
Alex’s mouth was pressed to the inside of her calf. “Trust me,” he said against her leg.
Georgie relaxed her hands until she didn’t feel like she was clinging to the ropes, but she still held onto them.
“Good,” Alex murmured and mouthed up to her knee.
The cranks clicked again, lifting her higher. Her ass left the bed, suspended, and the ropes under her seat swung gently. Her thighs spread farther apart.
Alex leaned in, mouthing her leg up to her knee.
Georgie sighed as his mouth moved higher, sucking at her thigh. She let her head fall back and rest against the back of the seat.
When you give yourself over to a piece of art or a work of literature, when you allow yourself to believe the impossible for the few moments that you’re inside the work, it’s called the willing suspension of disbelief.
Georgie the Ice Princess never gave up control. Georgiana was a closed-in, frightened girl with a cast-iron shell that no one could touch.
But now, she was suspended in the air and in time, and Georgie opened her lungs to take in a breath and believed that Alex would hold her until she was safe on the other side.
The ropes ascended again, and Alex moved up her leg with them. Georgie was just about to make some crack about operant conditioning when his warm mouth and sultry breath moved past her knee, his hands pressed her thighs wider apart, and his white teeth grazing the inside of her thigh occupied her full attention.
Alex kneeled on the bed now, holding her hips with his hands, and he barely bent his neck as he nibbled on her skin, nearing the apex of her thighs.
Every time his jaw opened, every swipe of his tongue over her leg, and every exhale of his hot, moist breath on her skin fluttered shivers over her flesh. She couldn’t stop him, couldn’t move, couldn’t push him away.
She could have said her safe word, but she sure as hell didn’t want him to stop.
The warmth of his breath brushed the sensitive skin of her sex.
Alex’s fingers kneaded her legs as his breath became the touch of his soft lips, and that deepened to gentle sucking on the folds of her skin. The sensation vibrated through Georgie, and her breaths turned to gasps.
He kissed her more deeply, each suck turning into a slow lick and swirl of his tongue that delved between her layers of soft skin. Georgie grabbed the ropes as tension began to build inside her. Every stroke of his tongue rubbed her harder, spiraling the ache.
Her eyes fluttered open. Down between her thighs, Alex’s dark blond head rocked as his tongue worked her. When he saw her peeking, still clutching the ropes and her breath catching in her throat, he drove his tongue deep inside her and ran the rough flat of it up and over her clit.
Aching need grabbed her. Georgie bowed backward. “Alex, please!”
Alex lunged to his feet. His jeans were already unbuttoned and shoved down, his thick erection so hard that it curved back toward his navel. He bit down on a foil packet, ripping it open with his teeth, and slapped it on.
Georgie struggled in the ropes, wanting to lie on the bed with him, but the snug leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles wouldn’t budge. Even the movement of her own muscles inside her body was driving her closer to the edge.
He grabbed the ropes near her feet, swinging her to him.
Oh, wow. He had positioned the hammock ropes to the perfect height for him to—
Alex dragged the swing back, leaning over her and aiming into her body, and slid her onto his cock.
Georgie gasped and arched her back, her fingernails digging into the thick ropes in her hands.
He glided through her smoothly, his hardness slipping into her wet flesh.
The ropes creaked in the pulleys and loops. Above her, the sturdy frame didn’t sway with her weight, just the ropes moved. She grabbed the ropes and held on.
He seized her knees and pushed her back, pulling his cock out of her, and hauled her forward, all with smooth and sinuous motion, leaning into each stroke like he was rowing hard. Every thrust plunged into her, a long glide that rubbed inside and scrubbed across her clit. Georgie clenched her fists around the ropes as he drove every stroke deep inside her, cranking her body more tightly around him.
Alex pounded into her with the relentless tempo of a march, driving her toward orgasm.
Her fingernails dug into the ropes as her belly and chest tightened with the tension. Alex surged into her as she clutched the straps, her back bowing impossibly far as the energy spiraled and then seized her. The orgasm dug its claws into Georgie and ripped her in half, rocketing up her spine. Her mind turned white behind her eyelids, the pleasure blinding and deafening her with its roar. Her shout rose to a scream in her throat but she couldn’t hear herself with the tides tossing and drowning her for what felt like hours.
Later, hours or days or forever later, her cheek pressed against something warm, and her arms could move and she grabbed onto Alex, holding tight as the waves still wracked her body. Warmth surrounded her, and she was safe as the last of it billowed through her. She clutched him around his neck, that green-grass scent fading with the musk of their sex and his natural scent, and his strong arm held her up as the ropes restraining her ankl
es slackened so she could curl her legs around him, too.
“Alex,” she whispered. His name was a sigh in her mouth.
“I’m here,” he said, his deep voice rumbling against her.
Her head spun. “I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Good,” he said, his lips pressed to her forehead. “I never wanted you to be afraid, mon coeur.”
“What did you want me to be?”
“Yourself, of course. You wanted to explore certain things about yourself.”
“We sure did that.”
“We should have talked about it more beforehand. I should have told you that I tend to be—” Alex paused.
Georgie raised an eyebrow, although he wouldn’t be able to see it because she was nestled in his arms and against the silken fuzz on his chest. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“There are terms for what I like, a certain vocabulary, if one is into that sort of thing.”
She craned her neck and looked up at him. “You’re a Dom.”
He inclined his head, acknowledging. “That’s one word for it.”
“That’s the only word for it.”
“And you’re a sub.”
“Absolutely not.”
“My mistake. You just really like it when a man takes charge.” His tone mocked her, but with with humor, not sarcasm.
“Not that way. Not like, you know.”
“I know very well, Georgie.”
Even though Georgie was already running away from this incarnation of her life, even though she should already be deciding on a new name and someplace to live, for the moment, she was safe in Alex’s arms as he gently unbuckled the cuffs from her wrists and ankles.
He murmured into her hair, “We’ll go to my hotel for a few hours of sleep before I show you what I’ve been working on. I need someone to hear it.”
“Seriously? You still want to play the music?”
“It’s why I came here.”
A Terra Cotta Birthday Cake
[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take Page 17