by Lana Sky
I look up at him, dazed, my throat tightening as he reaches for his pants, easily tugging them open. Fire shoots through me, and my brain goes blank as my legs spread apart. Only a frantic warning at the back of my mind makes me gasp out, “Wait—”
“You feel it, don’t you?” he inquires with that smug confidence as he rips his pants down his legs and frees his cock from the boxers beneath. My teeth seize my bottom lip at the sight. He’s erect, his piercing gleaming, precum wetting the pulsating crown.
So beautiful.
And dangerous. I recognize that look in his eye. That cold, calculating expression. The same one he sported after tormenting me with the silver toy and locking me in the pillory.
Punishing.
“You feel it,” he repeats too quickly for my sluggish brain to keep up. “This…rightness. Don’t you?”
I nod—anything to keep him pleasuring himself with those firm, confident strokes. Only belatedly do I register his words and the husky way he delivered them. Like a prayer. Something sacred he doesn’t confess lightly.
Only in worship. Reverence. Desperation.
“Vadim…” My brain swims as I try to sit up and muster my tongue into forming some semblance of coherence. “We need to talk about this—”
He moves, cutting me off as he leans over me, bringing his pelvis dangerously close to the heat building between my legs. I writhe shamelessly, forgetting my train of thought all over again. But it’s important, I think. Something about boundaries. Reinforcing them. And if I don’t…
Things will go way too far.
“No relationship,” I insist as I arch my hips to meet his anyway. But he pulls back. My wrists are in his grasp before I know it. He spreads them apart, forcing my arms above my head. Suddenly, a firm pressure replaces his grip over my left wrist, and I hear a subtle snap! Dazed, I crane my neck back and find a strap of leather tethering that arm to the bed.
“W-What are you—”
Snap! My other wrist is immobile as well, impossible to move.
Alarmed, I look down, too stunned to fully process my predicament. Manacled again? “Vadim...”
He shifts his weight, settling between my legs, but his eyes hold my attention this time, even as my body radiates with his nearness. He’s never looked clearer, more intense. Intent. Like a dog insistent on having his bone, no matter the cost.
“So beautiful,” he praises, sweeping his gaze along the length of me. I nearly jump out of my skin as he strokes his thumb down my chest. Even through the fabric of another one of his borrowed shirts, my skin ignites. “I had everything planned, but you.”
I mull over that calculating term. Planned? Desperate to regain my focus, I experimentally tug my arms.
“You won’t get free,” he tells me as he stands, leaving a gaping absence where his heat used to be. “They are custom made from a craftsman in Germany. Specifically designed for your measurements. I can assure you that both are of the highest quality and designed to be tamper-proof.”
I frown as my gaze fixates on his cock, my body quivering. “Why tie me up?”
His smile…
It steals my breath in a startled gasp as an ominous pressure begins to build in my belly. Lust, fed by this despite my own insistence. Aware of every tendril of heat, a devious gleam sets his dark eyes alight, making them glow. He’s more beautiful than ever.
“I aim to convince you to change your mind,” he says. “I respect your concerns. I do. But I do not think I should let you cling to them without hearing my perspective.”
He releases his cock, and I bite back a groan. What an amazing perspective.
Snap out of it, Tiffy! Sex isn’t the only defining factor of a relationship. If it were, we’d be golden. But there’s so much more.
“I can’t be a mother,” I tell him, jumping right to the heart of the matter. “Helping you keep her is as far as I can go. No more. I can’t. You know why. Please respect that.”
His expression falls flat, and it’s a double-edged sword. Some of the lust churning my thoughts to mush dissipates—but in return, guilt descends like a sucker punch. The man has me tied to a bed, but the idea of disappointing him alarms me more than anything else. Maybe because he’s being open for once, hiding nothing from me.
Not even his pain.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He turns away, shielding his expression, and I strain my binds, my legs flailing.
“Wait! Don’t go!”
He leaves anyway, slipping through the doorway without a second glance. Before I can even panic, he’s back, and in his hands is an object that makes my eyes go wide.
And my stomach drops right through the floor.
“No,” I whisper, in panicked horror. Flailing, I strain at my binds to no avail, my voice rising in pitch. “No… Don’t.”
Heedless of my pleas, he stalks forward, brandishing the object that makes me gasp, partly terrified, partly…excited. It’s a silver dildo, similar to the remote-controlled one. But larger. Longer. Thicker.
I clamp my knees together as he advances toward the bed, shaking my head.
“No. No. Vadim!”
The bastard doesn’t wrench my legs apart like a brute. He caresses me instead, smoothing his fingers up and down my hip, barely touching my skin. Over and over. The gentleness with which he does so is such a startling contrast to the intent etched within his hungry features that my brain doesn’t know how to process it. A part of me lurches into his touch while the other fixates on that damn silver toy.
“I won’t hurt you,” he swears, his voice a persistent, soothing hum. “I will never hurt you.”
And I believe him, even as he lowers that toy between my legs.
“Look at me,” he commands. When I do, I almost can’t breathe at the intensity I find in his gaze. He eyes me like I’m something more than just beautiful. Cherished. Desired. My thoughts spin again, threatening to scatter.
But when a cool, firmness nudges my lower lips, I balk.
“Vadim, please…”
Pressure. Pressure. Thick, filling pressure. Shock robs me of my voice as my head rears back. Deep down, I know that he’s using the toy, easing it inside me bit by bit.
“So beautiful,” I hear him grate as my muscles relax to adjust. “So wet for me. Trust me, beautiful. I will never hurt you.”
Because he wants to kill me instead.
This toy is deadly. I can sense the subtle differences from the last one the second he breaches me with the rounded tip. After a few days, the shape and feel of his cock are etched into my brain. How it stretches me pleasurably. The friction he can achieve with just one stroke.
And this toy…
It’s him. In almost every fucking way.
“Yes,” he says in response to my puzzled expression. Gently, he smooths the hair from my face and leans over me, trailing his lips along my sweat-slick forehead. “Another custom request,” he adds near my ear. “You ask for pleasure, I aim to deliver.”
He shoves his hand—driving in the toy in the process—and my brain goes on hiatus. Too much. Too fast. My eyes roll, my breaths shallow as my body conforms to the foreign object—familiar, yet different. Nothing in the world could ever serve as a substitute for him, and in so many ways, the toy feels worse. The pressure only heightens the lust throbbing between my legs. My inner muscles clench in vain, demanding the real thing. It’s sadistic.
It’s torture, beyond kink.
It’s exquisite.
“D-Devil,” I whisper as my senses reassemble, and I realize his intent. Drive me insane.
“Angel,” he praises, still petting my dampening hair. “So beautiful. Tell me you’ll stay with me. That I can give you what you need, oui?”
“No,” I counter forcefully as my eyelids flutter—but he nudges the toy just enough to press against my gripping muscles, sowing incredible friction. I have to gulp at the air to survive the rippling contractions. “Can’t…”
“You can,” he in
sists, maddeningly calm. “In a few days, you’ve made me rethink my entire life’s trajectory. I think you can readjust your stubborn beliefs. Tell me you will.”
But I have. I’ve thought of what life could be with him, even playing house with a child who doesn’t even know he exists. It sounds sick on paper. In reality? It could be so very good, and I’m terrified by just how appealing it seems.
Because every sense in my brain is telling me that nothing could ever be that good. Run away. Disengage. Kill that hope now before it festers.
“You belong with me.” His voice. It’s sin, falling into a deep, smooth cadence that renders me gasping. “I told you once to ask yourself… Would I ever let you go? From the moment you leaped on my cock as though it were a treat, I knew you were mine. You will be mine.”
He sounds mad. Too serious. This isn’t a game anymore.
Unease rises up to combat the pleasure swirling around my brain. “V-Vadim, please—” I cry out. At the back of my mind, I realize why—he shoved the toy in deeper.
“I never knew sex could be like this,” he says, sounding miles away, and yet at the same time, his voice resonates through my brain as if implanted there. “More,” he adds hoarsely. “I never knew. You think I’d let you go so easily?” He laughs as my eyes flutter to him, and I barely catch a devious grin before he thrusts the toy again. Deeper. Harder.
My back arches, jerking off the mattress. “Vadim!”
“I never knew it could be like this with another person,” he adds, his voice rasping, eyes heavy-lidded. “Tell me, do you deny it?”
“Yes,” I croak, only to gasp as he wrenches the dildo free.
“You don’t feel the same?” he wonders, his tone mocking. “Should I leave you like this?”
I shudder at the horror. “No! No!”
“Then tell me…have you ever felt this with anyone else? This pleasure?”
The toy returns, easing inside of me, and my eyes roll at the sensation.
“No,” I murmur before I can bite the word back.
“Tell me how good it feels.”
He stills again, and it’s like my body takes on a will of its own. My hips sway, seeking out more pressure. More depth.
“Tell me,” he insists, threatening to pull back.
“G-Good!” I whimper in relief as he slams the toy home. The pleasure hits like a wave. My brain goes blank, and I hear my mewling cries echoing off the walls. “So good.”
“Damn, you’re beautiful,” he says thickly, and I moan in response. “So beautiful. So wet for me. Do you ache for me?”
I nearly scream as he jerks the toy. “Yes.”
And it’s true. I’m throbbing in a way that I never have. On fire.
“Tell me how badly.”
All I can do is whimper. “Please—”
“Tell me.”
“I need you. I need you.”
“Fuck, you’re incredible.” I realize somewhere within the shambles of my brain that it’s the first time I’ve heard him curse like this. Truly unrestrained. Wild. A creature unleashed from his own constraints. “Look at me, beautiful.”
With difficultly, I refocus on him, and my heart stalls. He looks magnetic. Powerful. Like a predator, looming above dying prey. “Tell me… Tell me you need me. Say it—”
“I need you,” I croak, shameless. “Please.”
“Tell me I can have you.” He leans down, brushing his lips against my quivering throat. “Tell me I deserve you.”
My brain reels at his tone. Guttural. Broken. Teasing aside, this is far beyond sex. Too far.
“Vadim—”
He nips, rendering me silent. “Say it. I deserve you. I… I am owed you. No one can take you from me. Not him. Not God. No one.”
“Vadim, listen—”
A scream rips away any other coherent words I might say. My spine arches off the bed as ecstasy explodes through my body. Buzzing. Persistent vibration…
The toy is electric, and he’s just turned it on.
“Stay with me,” he urges, his tone radiating authority. “Stay with me, beautiful. Look at me.”
My eyes stream, throat rasping as I meet his gaze. He looks so open in this moment. So raw—and the intensity building within me only strengthens. A brutal orgasm is looming, one so devastating I almost fear it.
“I will have you,” Vadim swears. He withdraws the toy, setting it aside, and I moan wordlessly as he settles over me, his cock throbbing against my inner thigh. “I will keep you. I will own you. Say that you’re mine.”
He thrusts in so deep I think I lose consciousness. When my senses return, I’m gasping, dizzy and dazed, clawing at the sheets as he slams inside of me.
I cry out his name as my body convulses over and over. He’s steel, pulsating against my inner walls. And yet, as stern as ever, his voice drips into my ear, murmured like a prayer. “Come for me, beautiful. So wet. So perfect. Tell me you need this. You need me.”
I comply in whimpers and groans, too far gone to speak logically. As he moves, I lose track of time and space. Of how many times I come.
It’s pleasure beyond any physical understanding. I’m drugged, overwhelmed, drowning in him. But even in my dazed, broken brain, I take note of when he groans, his throat cording, hands grasping my hips.
He throws his head back, groaning my name as his release floods me in fiery waves.
And I know that my attempts at putting distance between us were pathetic, pitiful lies. Much like our very first meeting, I was never in control.
Not really.
He’s always had an alternate plan, one I suspect I’m barely aware of even now. All I can do is surrender to the chaos and try to swim against the current.
Or drown.
“You are mine,” he declares, collapsing against me. “And I will take what I am owed...”
Chapter Seven
“Did I hurt you?” Vadim asks, his voice a low rasp.
I’m in his arms, too weak to move. At some point, he must have released me from the manacles because my arms are free, trembling at my sides. With what little strength I can muster, I shake my head and rest my cheek against his shoulder.
“No,” I tell him as he strokes my back with so much gentleness it leaves me reeling. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry,” he adds, brushing his lips across my damp forehead. He doesn’t say for what. For sexual torture? For pushing my fragile boundaries to their limits? For a part of his plan, I’m woefully unaware of?
“I do want you,” I croak, letting my eyes shut as exhaustion barrels through me, mixed with guilt and regret. All of it creates a tumult so vast, the only way through it is to just talk. “I do. I’m just afraid. I don’t want to disappoint you or be disappointed. I’ve been through too damn much… I can’t be disappointed.”
He laughs so deeply that I force myself to open my eyes merely to see his face. He’s eyeing the ceiling, his lips contorted into a tired grin.
“I’ve never had a relationship, so perhaps that fear isn’t entirely misplaced…”
“Never?” I can’t hide my skepticism. I’m practically in a coma after a bout of ruthless, vicious sex. Does he really expect me to believe that no other woman has experienced this with him?
No, I realize with growing awe. He doesn’t care either way, because it’s the truth. A rare hint of vulnerability shapes his expression, betraying just how uneasy he is at opening up to me. Which further reinforces the gravity of the fact that he’s doing so at all.
“What did you call me?” he wonders, grimacing at the memory. “Mean? I call it prudent. Most people don’t seek more from me than what they want in the moment. What they can gain. My brother sees me as a burden. To Ena, I am a partner. Even Milton sees me as a scared little boy he’s sworn to protect. As for women? I’ve never experienced more than sex.”
“Their loss,” I rasp, letting my face fall against his chest, utterly spent. But a part of me bristles at his boasts. Someone like him—s
o used to using manipulation as a tool—might see those relationships in such stark terms. But a partnership without true concern doesn’t result in someone stocking the fridge of their employer just to ensure they eat. And Milton… I saw how he intervened between him and his brother. Someone who didn’t care wouldn’t do that. Could a man be so blind as to the genuine love of those around him? Woe to any woman who dared to broach the topic. “I think I should be pleased to be the recipient of your pent-up lust,” I add, changing the subject to safer waters.
“Thirty-one years of it,” he declares, sliding his hand down my back. “Why shouldn’t I demand more? I am tired of waiting for my turn.”
His turn?
“You make me explore things I never thought possible,” he adds with a subtle hint of inflection that makes me quiver. “I will break you down… I can be persistent when it comes to that which I desire. You have been warned.”
Does he truly mean that? My aching body shivers at the possibilities. I could cry at the potential, and yet my toes still curl, ravenous for more.
“I love being with you,” I confess, lulled by the thrum of his heartbeat. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“You hurt me?” He laughs again, this sound more beautiful than the first. “I think I can suffer whatever pain you can dish out, as long as you perform your unique way of currying favor afterward.”
“Ah.” I lift my lips, pleased that he seems to enjoy my “ways” as much as I do. “And just to think, a few days ago, I had to fight you to let me suck your cock.”
“A foolish man, then,” he concedes. “Such a fool. But he is thankfully in the past. Stay with me, and I will learn plenty of ways to both pleasure you and explore the use of your mouth.”
He pulls me closer, holding me so tight it’s just to the point of painful. For some reason, it’s easier to write off his words as boasts made in the heat of the moment. Nothing more. Even as his gaze burns with searing intensity…
He’s bluffing.
“Promise?” I say, testing that assumption despite my better judgment.
