Paulina took a ragged breath.
“You are really getting to me,” she said.
“I don’t want to brag, but I have a few skills in this area. I can keep all my clothes on and still make you come so hard you have to call in sick to work tomorrow to recover.”
“That so?” she said.
Cyrus caressed her ear, her neck. Caught a curl of her hair and lightly tugged it. He wasn’t nervous, not a bit. In fact, he felt calm and steady and cool, like he’d slipped into his most comfortable clothes. He felt good. And this felt right.
“You can’t even imagine how good you make me feel every day,” he said softly. “I want to make you feel that good. Will you let me? Please?”
He almost didn’t care if she said “yes” or “no.” The whole thing had been worth it just to see her blushing and shivering and taking those shallows breaths.
Paulina had never looked so beautiful to him before—not in her sundresses, not in her church clothes, not even in that black bikini of hers that made him thank Jesus for allowing mankind to invent the two-piece. Just her, there, on her pillow, lips parted and breathing hard and blushing and burning and all for him. And he hadn’t even laid a hand on her yet. His words had done it to her. And if she thought he was good with his words…she ain’t seen nothing yet.
“What are you going to do to me, Daddy?” she asked.
“Nothing you don’t love. Is that a ‘yes’?”
Slowly, tentatively, looking scared as a child in front of her first roller coaster, and brave as a woman who wanted to show the man she loved how much she loved him…she nodded her head.
“Yes, Daddy.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nora watched Søren as he opened the drawers of her curio cabinet, hunting for something only he knew he was looking for.
“If you tell me what it is,” she said, “I might be able to help you find it.”
“I haven’t decided what I’m looking for just yet. But not this.” Søren pulled a massive twelve-inch dildo out of a drawer and held it up. “Really, Eleanor?”
“That’s not mine, I swear,” she said. “I only use it on Sheridan.”
Søren raised his eyebrow. “She’s tiny.”
“She’s bigger on the inside. That’s a Doctor Who joke.”
“I went to school in England as a child. I fully understood the reference,” he said as he put the gigantic dildo back in the drawer. “My God, you have enough butt plugs to start a butt plug emporium.”
“You can never have too many butt plugs. If you’re looking for the scalpels and knives, they’re in the bottom drawer on the left.”
“I wasn’t…or I thought I wasn’t.”
“I like that you can get an erection just by hearing the word ‘scalpel.’ It’s like Pavlov’s dog, except it’s Pavlov’s erection.”
“Don’t mention dogs if you want me to keep it.”
Nora grinned sleepily. “You can slice me up if you want. I don’t mind. You’ll be hard until breakfast.”
“Blood-play? On white sheets?”
“Hmm…good point. If they were cheap, I’d say go for it. But this is Millesimo Egyptian cotton. Sheridan got them for me.”
“We’ll avoid bloodstains then,” he said. He took from a drawer a long thin carbon fiber rod—a misery stick—and set it on the bedside table by the lamp. Clearly, Søren was in a mood to bring the pain.
“Did you really not beat and fuck King tonight?”
“I did not. After last night, he’ll be needing more than a day to recover,” Søren said with a little sinister note of giddiness in his tone.
“Oh, great,” Nora said. “Now I have an erection.”
Søren lowered his head.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted his head. “Nothing. Except I’m glad you’ve decided you’ll never leave me. Because even if I could live without you, I would never want to.”
“You should kiss me after you say stuff like that.”
“I will,” he said. “But I’m going to torture you first. Adjustable spreader bar?”
“How short we talking?”
“Twelve to fourteen inches.”
“There’s a one-footer on the wall by the med table.”
“Ankle cuffs?”
“In the cabinet over the sink.”
Søren—magnificently naked—strode from the little bedroom into her dungeon. Like she’d go anywhere with that view… He returned quickly with all his little wicked implements—the spreader bar and the ankle cuffs.
And one leather strip, about a foot long and a couple inches wide. He must have cut it off her flogger with the thick fat tails.
“What’s that for?” she asked as Søren passed her the leather strip.
“You may need to bite down on something,” he said. “Turn over.”
Just like that…all the punch-drunk half-asleep joking stopped. It stopped like someone had flipped a switch, turned off the lights, turned on the pain. He could do that, Søren, with a glance and a subtle change of tone that came with the standard warning—I am not playing anymore.
She turned over as ordered and rested her cheek against the cool white sheets. Søren took each ankle in his hands and wrapped and buckled the cuffs around them. With small hooks, he secured the cuffs to the spreader bar.
Then he picked up the misery stick.
Then he grabbed the metal bar in the middle and pulled her into place as if she weighed nothing.
Then he lifted the bar, forcing her to bend her knees. Her feet were at his stomach on either side. Nora started breathing hard.
“I’d bite down on the strap now if I were you,” Søren said.
“You’re going to beat the soles of my feet, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” Nora grabbed the leather strap and put it between her teeth.
She hated foot torture. Hated it. Not the good kind of hate. Not the playful kind of hate. Not “Oh no, not that, Sir, anything but that, Sir.” She would rather take a hundred cuts from a scalpel, an hour-long session with a single-tail whip, or even red-hot wax-play that left her covered in first degree burns. Foot torture was one of her limits. But it wasn’t a hard limit, which meant she wouldn’t safe out if Søren tried it.
No, she wouldn’t safe out. But she wasn’t going to enjoy it.
She couldn’t even enjoy Søren’s thumbs on her insoles, caressing them tenderly. She was too tense, too scared, already breaking out into a cold sweat.
“You broke someone’s foot tonight,” he said. Nora didn’t say the kid deserved it. Søren knew that. “There is no one in the world that respects your sadistic impulses more than I, but I would be very disappointed if you got yourself arrested or sued. One of these days, Eleanor, you really are going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”
He caressed her ankles, all those delicate little bones. She wanted to cry. Instead, she grabbed a pillow and shoved it her under her breasts. It would help to have something to cling to during…
“Only five, I promise.” He ran his fingertips gently over the tops of her feet.
Five.
She could take five. She could survive that.
“On each foot.”
He picked up the misery stick.
The thing about misery sticks, Nora knew from experience, was that they were deceptive little toys. They didn’t look like they could hurt much. Nothing but very long, very thin metal rods. That’s it.
Except when you pulled the tip of the rod back and let it go, flicking it against the bare skin, it hurt worse than being sliced open by a knife that had been sitting in a red-hot fire.
And she was about to take five strikes on each foot.
The metal spreader bar rested across Søren’s stomach. She could flinch and twist, but there would be no getting away from him.
“Left foot or right first?” he asked. Nora shrugged. “I wasn’t asking you. Only talking to myself. Flex your feet. No curling
the toes or I’ll make it ten.”
Nora had to fight every instinct in her body to flex her feet. A hot tear ran from her eyes and down onto the Millesimo Egyptian cotton sheets.
Her entire body was tense as a violin bowstring. And Søren plucked it.
One.
He flicked the misery stick once and the strike landed at the back of her left heel.
Nora flinched. She couldn’t help it. Flinched and whimpered again as her teeth dug deep into the leather strap in her mouth.
Two.
He flicked it again, half an inch down the heel, inching closer and closer to the sensitive arch.
Three.
The arch was next. She knew it. She braced herself and wasn’t surprised when the next thing she felt was nearly the worst physical agony in her life.
She screamed into the pillow.
“I shouldn’t enjoy it so much when you’re in this kind of pain,” he confessed. “But I do.”
Four.
He struck her again, even higher, closer to the toes.
Nora’s head swam. She thought she might actually pass out.
“Flex, Eleanor. Flex.”
She couldn’t. She was in so much pain, she couldn’t make the muscles in her foot move.
“Oh, fine,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
He took her toes in his hands and pushed, forcing her foot to flex.
“Now keep it there,” he ordered.
She did.
Five.
He hit the ball of her foot.
“Five,” he said. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
He set the stick down on the table again and Nora shuddered. She shuddered because he’d started rubbing her foot, tenderly stroking all the burning places.
“I know you hate this,” he said softly. “And deep down, a small part of me hates myself for how much I enjoy it. Sometimes I wish it didn’t have to be like this. You understand?”
With the leather strap still clenched between her teeth, Nora could only nod, so she did.
“But,” Søren said, “it is like this. And we have five more to go.”
He picked up the misery stick again.
The last five hurt as badly as the first five, but she took them better, mostly because she was nearly out of her mind with pain. At five, she went limp, as limp as a rag doll or a corpse. She barely felt it when Søren cupped her between her legs, pushed his fingers inside her.
“And this is why I would never let you leave me,” he said, rubbing the aching hollow of her g-spot with the tips of two fingers. “You hated that with every fiber of your being…and yet you’re dripping wet.” He pulled out and unhooked the spreader bar. She hardly noticed when he removed the leather strap from her mouth.
“You nearly bit through it,” he said. He sounded impressed. Nora rolled into the fetal position, toes curled, feet aching. He pulled her to him and held her back against his chest.
“You can cry if you need to.” He spoke softly into her ear as he ran his fingers through her sweat-damp hair.
“I hate that so much,” she said, a small sob escaping her throat.
“I know, Little One. I know you do.” He slid over her, on top of her and positioned her under him. He was so aroused, she felt the tip of his erection against her stomach, throbbing like it wanted to force its way into her, any way it could. He kneed her thighs open and she was too weak to stop him, even if she wanted to.
Søren braced himself over her and, through watering eyes, she saw him lick two fingertips and press them against her vulva. He pushed through her folds and into her vagina. She yielded to him easily, her body offering no resistance. He’d given her permission to cry and she took it, hot tears she couldn’t stop rolling down her cheeks.
She was still crying when he entered her, splitting her. His thick cock went deep on the very first stroke. She cried out again, in pleasure this time, not pain.
Sometimes she hated herself, too. But not very much.
Søren found her mouth and kissed her, his cock slipping ever deeper into her as they kissed. Since her feet hurt so much every time they brushed the sheets, she wrapped her legs around his lower back as he thrust into her. They fucked in a frenzy, and the need was as much as hers as his. His hands dug into the tender flesh of her breasts as he held them, squeezing them as he rode her.
It wasn’t enough to let him have her. She had to have him in return. Nora clung to his shoulders and, with her legs twined around him, she lifted her hips again and again, taking his cock as hard as he gave it to her. The pain wasn’t the thing. She wasn’t aroused by having her toes stepped on by a stranger in a crowd any more than she was aroused by the strike of a metal bar on her insoles. It was him, Søren, and who he turned into when he let himself free with her. The master. The monster. The beautiful sadist. That was the secret she never told anyone, not even herself, that she loved him more for his cruelties than his mercies. He was kind to everyone he met. He was only cruel like this to his lovers.
Since he hadn’t bound her wrists, she was free to pass on a little cruelty of her own. She slid her hands down his long back, and every time his cock made her vagina spasm she dug her fingernails into his skin. He let her do it—but only twice.
Then he pulled out and turned her onto her hands and knees. He forced her legs wider from behind, so wide her belly touched the bed. He entered her with a rough thrust, impaling her hard enough she cried out. But his fingertips found her clitoris and stroked it as he used her from behind, stroked her until she was nearly blind with the need to come.
Søren gripped her by her shoulders, thumbs on the back of her neck, immobilizing her against the bed.
His thrusts seemed endless, as did her desire for them. Long moans escaped her lips, which she tried to stifle with the sheets. Søren’s fingers knew her body too well. He had her trapped at the edge of orgasm. He held her there with his touch, with his organ that slid in and out of her slick hole. He might punish her if she went over the edge, if she came without permission.
She came anyway. She couldn’t help it or stop it. She was too wet and the fingers stroking her were too wet and everything inside her quivered and tensed and there was no telling her body no when it was ready to scream “yes.”
When she came, she buried her mouth against the bed to scream and only the last syllable of it hit the air as he lifted her back against him. She sank down on his cock as he held her on his knees. His hand came around and clasped her throat. His mouth was at her ear so she could hear his ragged breaths. He fucked up and into her until his own release. He inhaled and inhaled, his breath hitching and then he was coming inside her, filling her.
Only when he finished did he release his iron grip on her throat. He let her go and she collapsed onto the bed. Søren lay down on his back next to her, ran one hand through sweat-soaked hair and then used his hand as a pillow.
“You’ll have to apologize to Sheridan about the sheets,” he said.
“What? It’s okay. Come comes out.”
“Blood might not.”
“Blood?”
Søren rolled onto his side away from her. He had eight bleeding claw marks on his back just under his shoulder blades.
“Fuck,” she said, then laughed. “Oops?”
Søren only laughed and rolled onto his wounded back again. She rested against his chest, listening to his wild heartbeat.
“Broke a man’s foot. Tore open my back. You are bloodthirsty, Eleanor. It’s no wonder you fell in love with me.”
She made a little “humph” sound and Søren said, “What was that?”
“Nothing. Just…you’re the second person tonight to tell me I’m violent.”
What Søren said then said everything. “Only the second?”
She traced his collarbone with her fingertips. She’d nearly drifted off to sleep when Søren spoke.
“When did you start watching Doctor Who?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t really,” Nora said. “Z
ach’s favorite show when he was a kid. He’s been showing the old episodes to Fionn. I’ve watched it with them a couple times. Just the ones with the guy with the long scarf. The new ones are too scary.”
“Does Fionn like it?”
“He loves it. Last visit, I played Sarah Jane Smith and Zach was a Dalek. Fionn’s always the Doctor.” She raised her head and looked down at him. “Why do you ask?”
“It never would have occurred to me that he would like Doctor Who. He’s only three.” Silence again. Then, “Zachary’s a good father to him.”
“He is.”
“I hate him.”
Nora laughed. Søren did, too, a quiet self-deprecating laugh that turned into a soft groan. He rubbed his forehead.
“Being apart from him is harder than I ever dream. Why did I do this to myself? To you? To us?”
She reached across him and on the nightstand lay her keys. She grabbed them and held up a key.
“Here,” she said. “Here’s my TARDIS key. Take it. Hop in. Go back in time and stop yourself from conceiving Fionn. Would you if you could?”
He took a long breath then reached out, not to take the keys but to stroke her face.
“I thought so.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cyrus lay down next to Paulina and pulled her to him. He kissed her. That was all. Nothing but kissing and more kissing for as long as he could stand it and as long as she could take it. Her small delicate hands moved over his shoulders and back, under his t-shirt to find bare skin to touch. As he kissed her, she made small soft murmurs of pleasure, beautiful sounds he wanted to record and put on his phone to play back tomorrow and the next day and every day until their wedding night.
They were both tangled in the covers and it was killing him not to feel her skin on his. He dug for the sheet and yanked it out of the way, found her long bare legs and stroked her thigh. She was a runner, like him, and had long strong thighs, and every time he stroked upward, toward her hip, he felt her muscle tense, and every time he stroked downward, to her knee, she relaxed.
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