by Tracy Wolff
“Where do you want me?” she asks, all innocence as she slips those damn shorts down her thighs—except for the wicked little twist of her lips.
It’s that smirk that sends me over the edge, even as it gives me the control I’ve been looking for since the moment she walked through the door.
“On the cross.”
For the first time, her eyes go wide with what I’m pretty sure is apprehension. Good. After what she’s put me through the last few days, she deserves to worry a little.
Long seconds pass and she doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Hell, I’m not sure she’s even breathing. I wait her out, determined to see what she’s going to do. I already know that if she balks, I’ll cave. And if she runs, I’ll go after her.
It’s uncomfortable, this knowledge that I want to comfort her as much as I want to fuck her. Not to mention totally out of character. But it’s too late to back away. Far too late to call it quits.
“Naked?” she finally asks and I grin. I can’t help myself.
“No other way to get on a St. Andrew’s Cross, sweetheart. Anything else is just a waste.”
The look on her face tells me she’s not so sure and several more seconds pass as she eyes the iron and wood monstrosity in the center of the room. Then, suddenly, she throws back her head and laughs—and it’s the same deep, husky, joyful sound that’s been haunting my dreams for the last two nights.
She glances at me one more time—a long, slow, sizzling look—before heading over to the cross like a conquering general on a battlefield. Or a woman on a mission.
“You’re going to have to show me how this works,” she says as she stops in front of the giant X. “It’s my first time.”
I know she’s being deliberately provocative now, trying to cover her nerves with bravado. But knowing that doesn’t stop my dick from nearly punching through my zipper. The fact that it makes me almost jizz my jeans for the first time since I was fourteen is something I promise myself I’ll get payback for before the day is over.
“Turn around,” I tell her, because if I have to stare at those wide, surprisingly vulnerable eyes of hers while I’m drawing, there’s no way I’m going to make it through the next hour without fucking her.
Hell, who am I kidding? There’s no way I’ll make it through the next fifteen minutes.
“Around? You mean...”
“Face the cross.”
She hesitates, and there’s a look in her eyes that I’m not used to seeing from the woman who walked into my studio and captured my attention with little more than a grin. She’s nervous. Maybe even worried.
I could stop this right now, could tell her to forget the whole thing. But even as the thought occurs to me, I know I’m not going to do it. Not when I’ve had an overwhelming urge to see her bound to this thing from the moment she set foot in my studio. And not when I have this burning desire deep inside of me to sketch her on it.
In the end, I don’t say anything and I sure as hell don’t offer any reassurances. Hope wouldn’t believe me anyway.
She hesitates another few seconds then squares her shoulders. Nods her head. “You’re the boss.”
She turns around, then steps closer to the cross—so close that her stomach is barely an inch away from the center of the X. “What now?”
“Lift your arms above your head.”
She does as I ask and it’s such a pretty sight that I’m right back to the brink of coming. Jesus. Even as a kid, I didn’t have this kind of hair trigger. There’s just something about the delectable Hope that brings it out in me.
I shove the need down deep, then step forward and take one of her wrists in my hand. “Spread your arms a little more,” I tell her, doing my best to ignore how soft her skin feels against my palm. And how much I want to feel it against my lips.
As soon as she widens her arms, I press her wrist against the cross then buckle the restraint around it. “Tug a little. Let me know how that feels.”
“It’s all right,” she says, after flexing her wrist inside the leather cuff. But her voice is quivering just enough to have me concerned.
“You sure?” I ask. “Nothing hurts?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay.” I reach for her other wrist and gently tug it over to the other cuff.
She gasps a little as I buckle her in, but she still doesn’t say anything, so I ask, “Still okay?”
“Yes.” The word comes quicker now.
“Good.” I crouch at the base of the X. “Lean into the cross and give me your foot.”
A few seconds pass before she does as I ask. I don’t hurry her because I get that this is a big deal. Even if I was just going to sketch her, even if I hadn’t spent part of the last two sessions getting her off, this would be a big deal. Besides, if we’re going to do this, she needs to be totally on board. Nothing else is even remotely acceptable.
Eventually, she does as I ask, leaning her body against the cross for support as she extends her right foot toward me. I slide the restraint up a little so that her foot won’t touch the floor when I’m done. I fasten the cuff around her ankle, before letting my fingers linger on the silky smoothness of her skin. It feels good to stroke her like this, so fucking good, and even though I’m dying to step back and see what she looks like, I can’t bring myself to stop touching her yet.
I give myself another few seconds to caress her ankle, her calf, the inside of her knee, relishing the way she shivers every time I hit a sensitive spot. I’m tempted to move my hands higher, tempted to slide my thumb along her sex just so I can watch her respond.
But if I do that, I’ll be fucking her within minutes and there are too many things I still want to do to Hope to jump straight there—no matter how tempting it is. And it is tempting.
Instead of giving in, I lean forward, take a second to breathe in the sweet cinnamon scent of her. Then I force myself to move on to her other ankle.
This time I don’t trust myself to linger, so I just fasten the cuff before snapping the small iron foot pedals into place, so that she has something beneath her heels to support her weight.
“Still doing okay?” I ask.
She nods, but she’s got her face turned away from me and I don’t like it. Don’t like not being able to see her expression, or the look in her eyes.
It’s what finally gets me moving.
I let go of her leg, then stand up and circle the X until I’m standing on the other side of it, directly in front of her. She keeps her face averted and it pisses me off. I’m drowning in sensation, drowning in the need to be inside her in every single way that I can be—including in her head. “Look at me,” I demand as my patience wears thin. “I don’t like it when you hide your eyes from me, Hope.”
The intimacy of that last statement surprises both of us, but it feels right—feels true—so instead of correcting it, I leave it hanging there as I wait to see what she’s going to do.
What she does is look up at me—finally—and when our gazes connect I’m relieved to see there’s no fear in her eyes. She’s nervous—of course she is—but she’s not afraid. That’s what matters.
“I’m going to tilt the cross a little,” I tell her, reaching down to open the locks so I can do just that. “It’ll make it easier on your muscles.”
“Yeah. Because making it easy on me is so totally your thing.” And there she is, the sassy, take no bullshit woman who walked into my studio two days ago.
“There are all kinds of easy, sweetheart.”
“Sure there are,” she answers with a snort. “And all kinds of hard, too.” With that she casts a deliberate look at my dick and I respond the only way I can that doesn’t involve fucking her. I reach around and tap her bare ass—just hard enough to get her attention but nowhere near hard enough to hurt.
Her eyes go wide. “Hey!”
“Do
n’t get your panties in a wad,” I tell her as I step back. “It’s the only smack I plan on giving you.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not wearing any panties.” She glares at me. “And it better be.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. The fact that she doesn’t take any of my shit is refreshing as hell. Not to mention sexy as all get out.
After retrieving my sketchbook and a couple charcoal pencils from the table where I left them, I grab a chair and settle in to sketch her from behind. I’m not sure yet what piece I’m going to make from this, but there’s something here. I can feel it burning inside of me, just out of reach.
I sketch for more than an hour straight, my pencil barely leaving my sketchbook for longer than it takes to flip from one page to the next. I ignore the cramps in my fingers and the fact that it’s past time to give her a break. Because I can’t stop looking at Hope any more than I can stop drawing.
She’s beautiful like this. So beautiful. Bound, but not broken. Shackled but not shamed.
I want nothing in the world more than I want to keep sketching her—into the night, into tomorrow morning, for days. I hired her for two weeks and for one specific project, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough. Don’t know if I’ll ever get enough of her. Already half a dozen sculpture ideas are circling my brain, begging to be let out. There are more on the fringe, half-developed thoughts that are rapidly becoming more than that.
I want to sculpt her in the joyous, triumphant pose I put her in the first day—the piece I originally hired her for.
I want her sprawled on my bed, legs crossed, weight on her elbows, provocative look on her face as if daring me to come closer.
I want her with that glorious hair of hers spread around her like a crown.
And I want her like this, too.
It hits me suddenly, just how much I want her—and how much I want from her. The realization has me moving for the first time, has me standing up and walking forward, until I’m once again on the other side of the iron cross. Until I’m once again face to face with Hope.
Her eyes are closed, her face oddly relaxed considering she’s strapped to something that originated as a medieval torture device. I want to touch her, want to tangle my hand in that luscious hair of hers and tug until her face is lifted to mine. Want to press my lips to hers and taste her...devour her.
But first I want to draw her, just like this.
I flip another page, and without even bothering to sit down, I start with the broad strokes that will eventually form her arms and legs...and the X she is bound to. Once I’ve captured them, I move on to the delicate lines of her torso, her breasts, her sex.
Need is riding me now, making my dick hard as the fucking iron I work with. For a second I think about dropping my sketchbook and my pants. Think about grabbing her, kissing her, thrusting inside of her until we both come in an explosion that rocks us to our cores.
But the compulsion to keep drawing is just as strong, maybe even stronger. And so I do, capturing the curve of her hip, the sharp blade of her cheek, the delicate strength of her artist’s hands.
Time passes in a kind of amnesiac fugue as I flip page after page. As I draw her over and over again, concentrating on capturing every freckle, every facial expression, every curl. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but it is and I can’t stop.
I flip the page, start again—this time with my gaze locked on the sinewy strength of her biceps—and she finally asks, “Do you have what you need?”
Her voice is husky with disuse and I know it’s long past time to give her a break. And still I bark, “Not yet!”
Her eyes fly open then and I can’t help staring into their bittersweet chocolate depths. For a second—just a second—I feel like I’m drowning in them, drowning in her. It startles me enough that I yank my gaze back down to the joint where her arm meets her shoulder.
“How long has it been?”
I glance at the clock. “Two and a half hours.”
“Two and a half hours?” she repeats. “Can we—”
“Just give me five more minutes,” I order. “I need...” So much more than that, but five minutes will do.
My urgency must translate, because she doesn’t say another word, even when I keep her for fifteen more minutes instead of the five I promised her. Still, she breathes an audible sigh of relief when I finally toss my sketchbook and pencil down on the nearest table and walk around to the front of the cross to unbuckle her.
I start with her right wrist, unfastening the cuff and then gently rubbing her arm and hand to help facilitate blood flow in the limb after she’d been bound for so long. I expect her to call me a dick—or worse—considering how inconsiderate I’ve been, but Hope just turns her head and gives me a little half-smile that takes me from hard as fuck to desperate to be inside her in the space of one riotous heartbeat.
I step back to give myself a second to think and start to move to the other side to undo her left wrist. But before I can take more than one more step, Hope reaches out and grabs on to me, curling her hand around the back of my neck. And then she pulls me forward, pulls me closer, closer, closer until my lips are barely touching hers.
It’s a sweet kiss—a chaste kiss—for one second, maybe two. Just the soft, gentle press of our mouths against each other.
And then all hell breaks loose.
She moans, a soft, breathy sound that shoots straight through me. Suddenly my hands are in her hair, tugging, tangling, holding her in place—her head twisted to the side—as this thing between us turns ravenous. Voracious. All encompassing,
There’s a voice in the back of my head, warning me to slow down. Reminding me that—despite the fact that I’ve made her come twice—this is our first kiss. I try to heed it, start to shackle my need even, but the moment Hope slides the tip of her tongue along my bottom lip, I’m fucking gone.
With a growl, I press myself against her even as I pull her head back further to meet my mouth. It’s an uncomfortable position—it has to be, with her neck and torso twisted to the side the way they are but she doesn’t complain. Instead, she opens herself to me, whimpering in the back of her throat as my tongue tangles with her.
Heat pours though me when she whimpers again, her hand sliding from the back of my neck up to my jaw. She cups my face in her palm, her fingers stroking over my cheekbone. It’s a soft caress, a sweet one, and it should calm me down a little. Instead, all it does is stoke the flames inside of me until all I can think about is touching her, fucking her, eating out the sweet little pussy I’ve spent the last three days thinking about.
Suddenly, it’s not enough to be pressed against her anymore, my dick resting against the centerline of her sexy, heart-shaped ass. I want more of her, want all of her and there’s nothing I won’t do to get it.
I pull back with a groan and she gasps, straining forward in a frantic attempt to keep our mouths pressed together. I give Hope what she wants for a breath, two, then start to pull back so I can take what I so violently need.
“No,” she gasps again, her fingers grabbing on to my hair and holding me in place as she nips sharply at my lower lip.
“Fuck!” The word is a guttural cry from deep inside me, half groan, half prayer, as she laves her tongue over the small hurt.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispers against my mouth. “I need... I need...”
“I know what you need,” I answer right before I slam my mouth down on hers.
Her whole body goes limp as we devour one another, our lips and tongues and mouths moving desperately over and under and inside each other. It’s so fucking hot to be pressed up against her like this, so fucking hot to feel the ragged rise and fall of her chest against mine even as I hear her uneven breaths. She smells like cinnamon tastes like butterscotch, and there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to stand here, kissing her, un
til our mouths go numb.
But my dick’s so hard I’m afraid I’m going to come from nothing more than the feel of her against me. I haven’t jizzed myself since I was a freshman in high school and one of the senior cheerleaders asked me to go down on her at a party. I’m not going to start now.
I pull back with a groan, sliding a hand over her abdomen as I do. My fingers slide lower, playing with her neatly trimmed landing strip before slipping even lower.
I circle her clit with my thumb, loving the dark, desperate sound she makes as I rub the top of it. Loving even more the way her whole body goes taut, like she’s on the brink of orgasm. When she starts moving against my hand, back arched and hips pressing forward, I finally break the kiss.
Hope whimpers as she reaches out for me. I stop her with a gentle hand around her wrist. Her eyes go wide and even darker than usual and for a moment, I can’t do anything but stare at her—not as an artist, but as a lover.
She’s beautiful. So goddamn beautiful, with her skin flushed pink and her pupils blown out. With her lips swollen from my kisses and her hair messed up from my hands. And when she smiles...when she smiles, it grabs me by the gut and the balls.
I have to recreate it, have to find a way to make that smile a part of the art that’s as necessary to me as breathing. It’s a compulsion blazing deep inside of me, this need to have some small part of her to hold on to when these two weeks are up.
As soon as the thought registers, I bury it—and remind myself that Hope doesn’t matter any more than any other model I’ve drawn or any other woman that I’ve fucked.
But even as I repeat it like a mantra, I know it’s not true.
Reaching out, I rub my thumb over her mouth, tracing her swollen lips and the smile that slays me. She responds with a kiss on the top pad of my thumb, followed by a sharp little nip—right before she sucks my thumb deep into her mouth.
And fuck. Just...fuck. The wicked gleam is back in her eyes and all I can think about now is her on her knees in front of me, her hair caught in my fist as I shove my cock down her throat.