He managed a tentative smile. “I, uh, don't have intentions of hurting her, just so you know. Truth is a woman like Connie is more likely to rip my heart out without noticing. Being a career guy for twenty-odd years didn’t leave me with a lot of room for a serious relationship. Connie can change that, which gives her a lot of power.”
“I vote we take this schmuck out and get him drunk,” Loki suggested, dark eyes dancing with curiosity. “Something tells me he's got secrets we need to commiserate over. We just need a babysitter for the girls, and we can go raise hell in Phoenix for a night.”
“Why are we going to Phoenix when we have all the booze we can drink right here?” Liam protested as though Loki had just dropkicked his baby through a plate glass window. The bar was evidently the love of his life, judging by his tone. “Connie can stay with Archie, Alicia, and Bodie in the house. They can have their own slumber party while we pick Thane's brains over here. If there's any problems, we're literally thirty seconds away.”
“Alicia's going away for a couple weeks.” Braun didn't look too happy about that. His face seemed to shroud itself in shadows as he spoke. “Bodie and I spoke to her today about going to the care facility until Connie…well, until she's ready to have Lisha back. If she is. The facility staff will be picking Alicia up and taking her there in a few days.”
“The hell they are!” Atticus exploded, stalking forward and slamming the heel of his hand into Braun's sternum. Hard enough, Thane noted with awe, to send the thick-set Dom stumbling back. “I fucking told you, Braun, you're not sending that poor girl to a facility. I'll take her. She's had enough upheaval without shipping her off to strangers.”
Okay, this had brawl potential. Thane assessed the situation, sighed. Braun had recovered and was getting in Atticus's face. Getting in between the two of them was suicide, but someone was going to have to risk life and limb to divert their attention from each other, if Braun wanted his social area leaving in one piece. Judging by the alarmed expression on Liam's face, he'd reached the same conclusion.
The Viking Master looked like he was about to start running around, gathering furniture out of the way. Thane couldn't blame him—if Braun and Atticus went at it, it would be akin to two bowling balls being fired out of a cannon at each other.
“We've discussed all the options available to us, Att. We've taken into account what Alicia wants, what Bodie wants. You don't have the time to care for Lisha, not with your line of work. Do you think I want this?” Braun erupted, jabbing his fingers into Atticus's chest. “Do you think I fucking asked for this? That I enjoy keeping my pregnant lover from her disabled sister? I want nothing more than for Bodie to have the kind of relationship with Alicia that she's always dreamed of.” Another jab, vicious this time. “I can't take care of them both. Alicia doesn't want to spend any time with Bodie, and that stresses her out. My priority has to be giving Bodie a fighting chance of carrying our baby to term.”
“I didn't say it wasn't.” Atticus smacked Braun's arm aside. “I'm saying Alicia doesn't have to leave.”
Thane mulled over his options. This was obviously a bone of contention between the two, and he didn't want to be the mongrel who slunk between two Alpha wolves to steal it. There were fifty-fifty odds—nope, make that eighty-twenty odds, he corrected, as Braun shoved Atticus back a step—that Thane would take a blow to the face if he stepped in. A blow from either one of those two would either knock him out or put him in a world of hurt, and his brain was begging him to not be a hero.
But when Braun took the first swing, it wasn't about being a hero. It became about stopping two damn good friends from beating each other bloody. With a yell, Thane lunged forward at the same time as Liam, both men determined to break it up before things got nasty.
“Stop it!” Connie screamed, loudly enough she halted Atticus's arm in mid-flight.
A sock slapped Braun across his sheepish face as she threw it at his head. She got Atticus as he turned to face her, her wadded-up panties bouncing harmlessly off his forehead. The rest of her clothes pelted them when she tossed the whole lot at the pair of them.
“You had the best person taking care of that girl,” she said quietly, her eyes glistening. “She had me. It wasn't perfect, and maybe I wasn't making enough progress to keep you happy, but I was getting there. You didn't trust me enough to get her there. Last night wasn't about worrying any of you. I wasn't thinking about you. For once, I was thinking about me. I took time for me. I got drunk for me. I was grieving for what you took from me, so don't you dare start fighting over her as though you had no other option.”
One hell of a speech. Naked and furious, Connie made a picture Thane would remember for a long time. But as she whirled away from the Masters and stalked toward the walkway, he saw the real image beneath the façade, and realized that would stay with him a lot fucking longer.
The woman was bleeding from a dozen wounds no one could see.
“If you'll excuse me,” he murmured absently, already on the move. She was on a mission to get away—by the time he limped into the walkway, he heard a door slam shut. Playroom was his guess. He took his time getting there, preparing himself for whatever he might find when he went in after her.
Would she still be masking her pain with fury? Or would she finally let some of the deeply buried trauma rise to the surface to breathe? Christ, for all he knew, she could be in there trashing the joint in apoplectic rage. As he waited outside the door, he couldn't hear anything but silence. Hmm, not likely. Trashing usually resulted in a lot of noise.
Unnerved by the quiet, Thane pushed the door open and strolled in, thinking he was ready for anything. Tears, tantrums, even an empty room. What he found was an unexpected turn of events. He closed the door quietly, then toed off his boots. Padding over to her in his socks, he set his hand on her shoulder. “Want to talk about it, sugar?”
“No.” One word. One broken word that told him everything.
Okay then, he was equipped to deal with this. Walking around her in a slow circle, he critiqued her position. Of her own volition, she was waiting for him in the nadu pose. Kneeling, thighs spread wide with her hands resting palms up. Her head was down, chin touching her chest. Hiding her face from him with her hair.
There was little to correct, but Thane made a point of doing so, just to keep her attention on him. Using his foot to tap her knees further apart, he crouched down and hooked his fingers under her chin. “Spine straight, head up. Push your shoulders back.”
“Sorry, Sir,” she mumbled, adjusting her body how he wanted.
“Eyes on me, sugar.” Gripping her chin more firmly, he brushed the hair away from her face. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly are you hurting right now?”
A punishment for lying wasn't what he wanted to give her, but he had one in mind she wouldn't like. Convinced she was going to give him a bullshit answer, he skewered her with a long, warning glare. He hated that her lip quivered, gave a passing thought to storming back out into the club proper and decking Braun for making her eyes swim with tears.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Anything less than ten would be a lie, Sir.”
Thane nodded, then leaned forward and brushed his lips over hers. “Thank you for not lying to me, Connie. I don't want to have to punish you tonight.” It was bad enough he had to dole one out for her behavior the night before, but given the vehemence of her speech to the Masters, he had to wonder if reprimanding her was the right choice. “I'll make you feel better, sugar. On the bed, on your back. Legs spread and knees up.”
“They want you to castigate me, Sir. If I were in their shoes, so would I.” Gray eyes were dull and miserable, the spark gone. “You're thinking about not doing it. Because of the circumstances.” She sighed heavily, dropping her gaze. “I deserve it. What I did was selfish, no matter how I spin it around in my head. Someone could have been hurt trying to find me. You could have been hurt.” When her eyes lifted to his again, they were wet and apologetic. “I wouldn't h
ave been able to forgive myself.”
He fell to one knee, running his hand through her hair, then fisting it hard and yanking her head back sharply. Anger surged through him as he remembered the steep drops along the path. The sheer height of the rock formations and what could have happened if she'd gone higher up, intoxicated and pissed out of her wits. It didn't bear thinking about. “Do you think I gave a fuck about myself, Connie? Do you think they did?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the bar. “You were the only thing on our minds. You, because you were hurting enough to take off without a fucking word to anyone into the middle of fucking nowhere.”
She flinched, absorbing the brunt of his fury. “I know. I'm sorry.”
“Get on the bed. Tonight, we're popping the cork on that bottle of emotion before it kills you.” Releasing her, he pushed to his feet and headed straight for the cupboards on the righthand side of the room. He'd snuck in here a few times over the past week, familiarizing himself with where everything was kept. Rummaging around during a scene broke the momentum, and he liked his scenes to run smoothly.
He chose two sets of padded cuffs, hanging them over his arm by the interlinking chains. Four connecting straps with snap hooks. Warming lube, a square of black linen, and a crocodile clip. He tested the latter on his fingertip, wincing as the tiny teeth latched into his skin, then deeming it gentle enough to use for what he had in mind. His last choice came down to two floggers—one with rubber tips and the other with knotted ends.
Popping the cork, he reminded himself as he picked up the knotted one. He could either use a corkscrew to ease it out, or chop the top off the bottle with a knife. He set the knotted one back in its place and lifted the rubber-tipped flogger instead.
He hobbled to the bed, resisting commenting when he saw she was precisely as he'd ordered. She stared blindly at the canopy above the bed, so hauntingly sad she broke his heart. He laid out his supplies on the bedside table, then decided he wanted her more central. “Move over another foot, Connie. That's it, perfect. Good girl.”
Picking up one set of cuffs, he unlinked them as he moved to the foot of the bed. Adorning her ankles with the fluffy cuffs, he checked for snugness, loosening the left by a hole. Despite her exposed position, she wasn't aroused. There was no puffiness to her labia, no clit straining from beneath its hood. No sheen of moisture.
Thane gave her calf a soft stroke, then returned to his pile of goodies. Unhooking the second set of cuffs, he knelt on the bed and wrapped them around her wrists. Her eyes slid over to watch him, then returned to the canopy. She was ridiculously unhappy. He reached over and snagged the fabric straps, inspecting the snap hooks. Slipping off the bed, he worked his way around the bedposts, fastening a strap to each one, then attaching a hook to the D-ring on her cuff. By the time he was done, she was restrained spread-eagled on the pretty blue covers.
“As Dominants, we're taught not to scene in anger. Mistakes are made, people get hurt, when we take our tempers out on the ones who trust us.” He stood at the foot of the bed, double-checking what he'd already done. “I'm not mad at you, Connie. I'm not going to take my temper out on you. But I am going to break you apart into pieces and take away the ones you don't need.”
This time, wary eyes followed his path around the bed to the bedside table. He picked up the linen cloth, felt the weight of it in his hands. He began folding it in strips, over and over, until he held a thick wad of material five inches wide and twelve inches long.
“Thane.” It was a fearful whimper.
“It's okay. Blindfolds are a hard limit, I know. I'd like to try something, Connie. If it doesn't work, we won't use it. Trust me?”
She looked up at the canopy again as she trembled, nodding once.
He made himself comfortable beside her, taking his time brushing her hair away from her face. Normally, he'd have it tied back, but tonight he wanted to see it loose and unruly. Nothing he did here would put her at risk of being tangled up by her tawny locks. He skimmed his fingertips over her hairline, her forehead, down the line of her pretty nose. Tracing her cheekbones, her jaw, her mouth.
When she relaxed, so did he.
“Close your eyes, sugar, and breathe in. Deep and slow.” What he did next would test her courage…and her faith in him. It was a huge ask, but a necessary one. “You're such a good girl, Connie. I won't hurt you.” He brushed his thumb over her eyelids, watching every nuance of emotion on her face.
Anxiety. Resignation. Uncertainty.
Spreading the makeshift blindfold between his hands, he laid it over her eyes, soft as a whisper, and let the weight settle into position. When she jerked, he pressed his hand between her breasts firmly. “Feel my hand, Connie. I'm still here. Give me the words.”
“Blind,” she choked out, yanking at the cuffs and snapping the straps taut. “Take it off. Please, take it off.”
Thane flipped it onto her forehead. “It's not tied down, sugar. You're safe.”
She blinked up at him, apparently astonished he'd listened to her. Oh yeah, they needed this lesson in trust, both of them. Connie needed to learn she could put her faith in him. She needed to know, unequivocally, that he had her back at all times. Even when her hands were tied, her sight was stolen, she could count on him to be her rock.
Thane's lesson was that it didn't matter how much experience she had as a Domme, how much she had as a submissive beneath the cruel hand of an asshole with a sadist streak, she was fragile.
“We're going to do it again, sugar. I'm staying right here.” He reached up and lifted the blindfold. “Eyes closed, deep breath. Relax.”
They spent ten minutes going through the steps, over and over. Eyes closed, deep breath, relax. Blindfold on. Kneejerk reaction. Blindfold off. But the seconds between her instinctive panic and the removal of the blindfold began to increase. After ten minutes, she could tolerate the weight and the blindness for twenty seconds.
After ten minutes, Thane was crazy about her. Her inner strength. Her vulnerability. Her need to please him even when he was the source of her discomfort. More than once, she'd reached for his hand as panic grabbed her by the throat, and every time, he'd been there.
Now she was exhausted, her brain quiet behind those heavy gray eyes, and Thane was ready to move things along. He tossed the blindfold onto the table, leaning down to kiss her languidly. She responded in kind, her lips moving sweetly under his. “I'm proud of you, Connie. Do you think you can handle a reward?”
She hummed softly in reply.
“Yeah, I think you can.” With one last brush of his mouth over hers, Thane pushed away and rose. He had to stretch out his leg, pre-empting the cramp he could feel building. When he was sure he was in the clear, he concealed the small bottle of lube and the clamp in one hand, and picked up the flogger with the other. “The question is, do you have enough wits about you to safeword if you need to?”
“I can say what I need to,” she assured him sleepily. “That was…tiring.”
“Facing your fears is a tiring process, sugar. All that adrenaline pumping through your veins, then fading away. Over and over again. I think I have just the thing to wake you up.” He draped the flogger over the end of the mattress, then dropped the items in his other hand between her legs. “This time, you'll have to use your safeword if you need me to slow down or stop. Understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good girl.” He selected the lube, squirted a few drops on his fingers and rubbed them together. “I'm using warming lube, Connie. It's going to heat up, but it won't burn you. It's not caustic.” He ran his fingertips over her labia, circled her clit. His skin was beginning to tingle. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a cotton handkerchief and wiped the rest of the lube off. A simple taste was all he wanted to give her.
For a few long moments, she watched him through half-lidded eyes. If he wasn't mistaken, she wasn't far off falling asleep. Then her cheeks pinkened, her eyes lost that sleepy haze and widened subtly. The relaxed muscles tensed,
her hips rolled with tiny undulations. “Um…I'm prickly. Is it supposed to…oh.”
“You're okay with it?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the prize between her legs. Arousal was evident now, her pussy responding to the lube. He stroked her gently, encouraging her to lift her hips into his touch. “No burning, no pain?”
“No, I'm just tingling all over.” Her head arched back, exposing her throat.
Thane smiled, pleased she was finding the excitement rather than the fear. He ran his thumb over her clit, coaxing it from beneath the hood. Her moans deepened, her hips moving faster. Pressing one hand just above her mound, he used the other to open the clamp and settle it over her clit. Those menacing little teeth scraped the sides of the bud, then bit.
Connie went rigid. Froze exactly as she was, head thrown back, hips raised.
A snapshot in time he wanted framed and hung on the wall.
It shattered too soon, her body twisting in the restraints, her legs kicking. One long scream died into keening wails, then faded into throaty groans. No safeword. She was utterly beautiful, writhing on the covers, her hands fisted and pulling steadily against the straps. Delicate cords in her neck stood out, the muscles in her arms and shoulders following suit.
“Fuck me sideways,” she breathed, eyes huge and dilated when they met his. “What did you do?”
Chuckling, he unfastened the straps around the posts nearest her feet and dragged her further down the bed until her arms were almost straight. Reattaching the straps higher up the posts, he arranged her legs in a wide, upright vee. Perfect. “Ten strokes of the flogger, Connie. One for each point Jasper counted off, plus two more for good measure. Under no circumstances are you to orgasm—I'm going to feel you come around my cock in about five minutes.”
“Oh, not the flogger,” she protested. “Just fuck me? Please?”
“Sugar, if only I could.” He picked up the flogger, spun the handle around in his palm. Balanced the weight before giving it a testing thwack against his own leg. “But I'll wait until you're begging for it first.”
Talk For Me: Club Avalon Book 3 Page 17
